> would it also be utterly unfounded arrogance to wish for a homogeneity of
>opinion regarding, say, the evil of rape? Yes, yes, I am sure I don't
>need anyone to lecture me on the difference between rape and bad literary
>judgement, but my point is not to suggest the two are equal.
Arrogance, dear Mr. Rhodes is for judges and moralists. The single
greatest impediment to your pointless wishes and their comical german
niaiserie is reality. Add to it that such homogeneity would be utterly
boring, as monotonous and boorish as the view that rape is fun. For
those who rape are as sick as those who don't out of moral compulsion,
prejudice and horror. Neither is evil, because evil is nothing.
"As regards the whole moral twaddle of people about one another, it is
time to be disgusted with it! To sit in judgment morally ought to be
opposed to our taste! Let us leave this nonsense and this bad taste to
those who have nothing else to do, save to drag the past a little
distance further through time, and who are never themselves the present,
- consequently to the many, to the majority!" (GS, 335)
>My point is
>simply that there are some things upon which one cannot avoid wishing for a
>homogeneity of opinion, and this is the result, not of arrogance, but of
>simple moral thinking (here, I, of course, agree with Kant).
We already knew that you did. That is precisely your consummate
Chinaism, why it is that you search for rules and judgements, utilizing
the weapons of equalization and opposition. But what would be the
homogeneity you aspire after other than the kingdom of the profoundest
mediocrity? Isn't this the ultimate end-point of the modern cloaca of
the soul?
"...we do not need first to stop our ears to the song of the
market-place and the sirens of the future- their song of "equal rights",
"free society", "no longer either lords or slaves", does not allure us!
We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of
righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under
any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity
and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger,
war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be
captured, conciliated and stunted."(GW 377)
Do not misunderstand us, we came to enjoy your presence in this list -
as you do deserving violence to a majority of self-styled nietzscheans,
even if Mr. Callihan has taken your interventions so personally (we
presume everybody is still waiting for his other shoe to fall). But
this violence of yours is also but a reaction to Nietzsche, whom you
distort for your righteous purposes. This is what makes Callihan
indignant, though, if it deserved such indignation, one cannot help
wonder why he bothered instead to address such ephemeral effects as
dyuresis or cackling hens, etc.
>I cannot
>avoid wishing that the condemnation of rape were universal, and I cannot
>avoid wishing disgust at self-glorification were universal as well. I
>think self-glorification is just another kind of solipsism, and this is
>especially clear in N.'s prodigal praise of his own work. No one else was
>praising it (except, perhaps, his anti-Semitic brother-in-law), so he had
>to--lonely man, could console himself only with embarrassing self-flattery.
>By the way, if N. truly knew that his work was as great as he claimed, he
>would not have indulged in such insufferable megalomania. Methinks N. doth
>protest too much.
This is where Rhodes was and you should have jumped off. The venom here
erupts through the pores. Your arrogance at being convinced that you
hold some universal principle of moral behaviour and truth is what leads
you to these tirades against one Nietzsche that so much consumes you
with passion and so deeply disagrees with your body. How the will to
truth conceals a will to death! You managed to erect yourself judge of
Nietzsche's thought and you find only misplaced narcissism...Mirror,
mirror...
Nietzsche's concept of the ER is neither moral nor immoral; it is amoral
exactly because it is an ethical thought that affirms life, including
its cruelty. Mr. Callihan is quite right in positing life as the
invaluable source of all noble values. Why don't you take issue with
that? May be you are afraid we might then find your vitus dormitiva
exposed to the sunlight?
Lambda C, as gay as ever
PS1-
"Thus I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises:
but I do _not_ deny that there have been alchemists who believed in
these premises and acted in accordance with them. - I also deny
immorality: _not_ that countless people _feel_ themselves to be immoral,
but that there is any _true_ reason so to feel. It goes without saying
that I do not deny- unless I am a fool- that many actions called immoral
ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be
done and encouraged- but I think the one should be encouraged and the
other avoided _for other reasons than hitherto_. We have to _learn to
think differently_- in order at last, perhaps very late on, to attain
even more: _to feel differently_."
(DB, 103)
PS2-
"Who are we after all? If we wanted simply to call ourselves, in older
phraseology, atheists, unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still
be far from thinking ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in
too late a phase for people generally to conceive, for _you_, my
inquisitive friends, to be able to conceive, what is our state of mind
under the circumstances." (GS, 346)
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