>Just a comment on the ongoing discussion involving the painting analogy
(which
>perhaps fatally inserts a thread of Plato into the Heraclitean weave which
>George's signature quotation refers us to):
>
>George wrote,
>
>> . . .In our study of the ancients we may
>>come to an epiphany, which can be compared to the moment of a finished work
>>of art. Once we reach an epiphany, or once we finish a work of art, that is
>>not the end of it, but only the beginning. In both cases, we have "gone
>>under," below the surface of tradition and deeper than we thought reality
>>could go, and we want more. More importantly, we now know there is more. We
>>"go under" to deeper depths of life that hide below "mere appearance." In
>>other words, we start a new painting, only in this one we have "a yes, a
>>no, a straight line, a goal."
>>
Ingrid Markhard also wrote:
>"Going-under" in _The Gay Science_, in _Zarathustra_, in _The Will to
Power_ &
>elsewhere in Nietzsche, esp re the overman/superman and ER is quite often
>the verb "untergehen" which means to sink, be wrecked, to founder, go to
ruin,
>perish, be lost or annihilated, become extinct, and not "going-under" or even
>"undergoing" This is important both in terms of "creation"/affirmation,
and in
>terms of the "surface" which is to be allowed to veil the deeper depths. see
>"Nietzsche Contra Wagner" at the end of _The Portable Nietzsche_ where he
says
>(this is from memory--I'm at work & away from my books)
>
>"Oh those Greeks! They had the courage to stop at the surface. . . adorers of
>appearances,. . . tones!"
>
>Does this perhaps tuns the thread again slightly to a discussion of music,
>tempo, rhythm...? a crucial element in _The Birth of Tragedy_, and the
notion
>of ER.
>
Could it be that I harbor a deep misunderstanding of N? Quite possible,
perhaps even probable, since my reading and interpretation of N is based on
experience and not scholarly debate, or, for that matter, any type of
debate. This is why I joined the list, to put my views to the test. In the
context of this thread, I offer this quote from Kaufmann's Nietzsche (p 216):
"Nietzsche proposed to explain all human behavior in terms of the will to
power... One may now quote him specifically: 'our drives [Triebe] are
reducible to the will to power' (xiv, 287). This is the result of
Nietzsche's 'small single questions and experiments' by which he penetrated
human motivation far more deeply--so he thought--than any of the more
systematic philosophers had done before him: they had all been impeded by
the conventionally moralistic presuppositions of their systems:
'All of psychology to date remained stuck in moral prejudices and
apprehensions: it did not dare go into any depths. To comprehend it
[psychology] as the morphology and the _theory of the evolution of the will
to power_, as I do--that nobody has come close to doing yet even in
thought--insofar as it is permitted to recognize in what has so far been
written a symptom of what has so far been kept secret (J 23; cf. xviii,
399].'"
So my question is this: Wouldn't leaving the surface meaning behind be a
"going under" below the depths of surface meaning, resulting in
'"untergehen" which means to sink, be wrecked, to founder, go to ruin,
perish, be lost or annihilated, become extinct'? After all, isn't the
Dionysian a death and a rebirth? Isn't an existential nihilism a perquisite
to an overcoming?
"I would give away and distribute, until the wise among men find joy once
again in their folly, and the poor in their riches.
For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go
behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you overrich star.
Like you, I must _go under_-- go down, as is said by man, to whom I want to
descend" (Zarathustra, 1,1).
What is it that N gives away and distributes if not deeper insights? So I
propose that a self-going-under leads to an affirmation of the moment, the
ER, which leads to the overman through a will to power. After all, isn't
the experience of music the experience of the moment?
And then there is this: "What you are doing and opining now is not really
you." (a paraphrase?). Wouldn't this realization itself result in
"untergehen"? But if we wish to discover the real self, "_one thing is
needful_," and this one thing is a search for the real self and a creation
of the same, which of necessity requires suffering--"untergehen." Somewhere
along the line, we might also experience the "great contempt" for the
surface illusion we thought was life--we thought was us. Sure, there will
be nausea, but "What does not destroy us makes us stronger."
George
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A man's maturity--consists in having found again the seriousness one had as
a child, at play" ~ Nietzsche.
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