Commentary on Megan's Paper

Twilight of the Idols: “Morality as Anti-Nature
 Meryem Rabia Tasbilek

When I read Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols: “Morality as Anti-Nature” and our friend Megan’s analysis about it, these made me think deeper about the problem morality. I understand that Nietzsche criticizes moral person and morality too, but it seems like he finds moralists more problematic. I cannot think his Anti-Morality argument without this distinction when I synthesize these notions and arguments with my observations. It seems like being moralist is equal to feed an individual’s existence with measuring everyone with the scale of synthetic morality scale. I think Nietzsche was discussed from this human weakness.

                My friend Megan uses Nietzsche’s argument about Matthew 5:29 to emphasize the sharpness of moral rules and their possible violent faces. I think including religious books can give us some intellectual sources to alter anti-nature parts of morality even though mostly we use them to create anti-nature types of morality. They are all raw materials and we need to synthesize them with our wisdom of life and avoid them to be stable, but dynamic to make them active materials for our self-cultivations. If we use them actively, we can create some standpoints which is not anti-nature. Unfortunately, even the religions or philosophies that are intellectually or sometimes physically idol breakers became untouchable idols and their shadows are bigger than the ones they broke in the past.

I want to share one of my favorite parts from Matthew about hypocrites and religious leaders and moralists which support Nietzsche’s anger and critique against moralists. Even though, Nietzsche finds hypocrites valuable because this specialty needs strong character which is very rare in our modern societies. Unfortunately, we easily switch our paradigms when we came across with some resistance in the society:
                 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy--full of greed and self-indulgence! Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs--beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Matthew 23:23-27

It seems like Nietzsche’s strong critiques about Morality is a reflection of this practices that were are able to read even in Matthew. My interpretation might be understood wrongly. I am not trying to link Nietzsche to Christianity directly. However, I insist that the anti-nature morality is mostly being moralists and trying to worship to morality rather than trying to use it as a natural tool in our lives. My friend Megan emphasizes the distinction between two types of morality in Nietzsche’s argument very well. “In section four, Nietzsche makes a significant distinction between natural and anti-natural morality. He argues that morality is healthy when it is natural and governed by one’s instincts.” Nietzsche also argues that “Morality is just a sign language, just a symptomatology; you have to know what it means in order to take advantage of it. He is against violating the nature by idealizing our moral rules and our norms which seems equal to put ourselves to the center of the existence and taking ourselves too seriously. By this way we objectify all the rest. From this perspective, Morality is anti-nature. We invent the meaning of morality and also fences of beauty and concept of purpose. This is problematic for Nietzsche.  

Megan also emphasizes Church’s problematic attack against the roots of passion. “The church attacks the very existence of the passions, and in doing so, Nietzsche argues, attacks life itself. It never asks: ‘how can a desire be spiritualized, beautified, deified?’” (172). Based on this perspective, attacking to passion functions together with morality and produce anti-nature side effects. It is like the human kind is cutting her own arteries. Megan also emphasizes that “in the second section of “Morality as Anti-Nature”, Nietzsche argues people who act aggressively hostile towards their passions do so because they are too weak of will to act moderately; hostility is the only way they can prevent themselves from acting rashly. In this way, the severe hostility of Christian doctrine toward passion is a symptom of a sickness of one who cannot act moderately.” When Megan links this to the spiritualization of hostilities in Christianity, it seems like a very good synthesis. Same as the people who can only manage to act moderately by attacking to their own passions, the societies who spiritualize their enemies owe their existence to their opponents. If they were able to produce enough power and character by themselves from their own roots, they would not need to spiritualize their enemies and try to invent more hostilities intellectually, religiously, militaristically. Megan argues that “It is a new way of thought which is quite different from the reasoning of the Church, which is not able to spiritualize its hostility because it has always endeavored to destroy its enemies.” At one point, I disagree with him, because in our post-modern world, yes we mostly destroy our enemies, but the concept of spiritualizing the enemy and hostilities are still very strong and function for the societies which cannot survive moderately by their own sources. Megan’s analyzes on Nietzsche’s argument about the importance of spiritualizing our inner enemies is very valuable. I believe that when the individual use this spiritualization in her inner world, she decreases these practices against external world. Megan underlines Nietzsche’s argument about the lack of strong will, the existence of laziness produce misinterpretation of ‘peacefulness of the soul’ which is not a good thing the way we want to see.

           My question for Megan is how we can have the knowledge to be able to separate natural and anti-natural morality? And, how we can improve our spiritualization of inner enemies based on Nietzsche's arguments? Do not we produce similar actions when we evaluate morality with our philosophical scales? This is a general question for all the audience: When we create an anti-morality perspective and start to measure and critique moral ones and morality, do not we become the twin of this anti-nature practices? Maybe we need to break all the scales and try to practice Nietzsche’s last part of Gay Science and say yes to morality and anti-morality at the same time from a distance to both sides. Megan uses a quotes from Nietzsche that says: “Which type of life is making value judgments here?—But I have already answered this: it is a judgment of a declining, weakened, exhausted, condemned life” (175). When we judge morality, do not we copy this argument and become weakened, too? I think we cannot change anti-nature morality by using anti-morality rhetorically. I thank to Megan for his paper which made me think about these arguments deeper.

Mixed notes on Zarathustra and Invisible Man

In this paper the reader will be able to read some information about how Zarathustra's experiences are like the protagonist and how Ellison is performing variations on these ideas.  First of all, it seems like both of them Zarathustra and the protagonist of the Invisible Man left their family at some point to experience life by them. In addition to these similarities, they prefer some solitude stage in their lives. Zarathustra goes to the cave to live as a hermit, the protagonist goes underground. "I could only more ahead or stay here or underground" (Invisible Man, 571). The protagonist experience these a little differently especially because of their ages. The Invisible Man’s solitude restarts and really starts when he realizes his invisibility. We may say that, Zarathustra's solitude is voluntary, but the protagonist’s is a result. We are able to be witness of the protagonist’s journey that makes him decided to go underground. On the other hand, we are mostly able to observe Zarathustra's after the solitude stage.  When Zarathustra mentions going down, he means leaving the solitude and going back to the crowd. When the protagonist was going underground, to solitude, Zarathustra was going back from there. He speaks with sun and says that “like you, I must go under-go down, as is said by man, to whom I want to descend” (Zarathustra, 10). In addition, I think music for the protagonist seems that has similar function with Zarathustra’s connection with sun. "The song that the protagonist had heard on the street "They had touched upon something deeper than protest, or religion, though now images of all the church meetings of my life welled up within me with much suppressed and forgotten anger" (IM, 453).

In addition, it seems like at the end of the Invisible Man, when Ellison wrote that he needed to share these ideas and feelings, he needed to write his anger and other parts of his inner world. This can be seen similar with Zarathustra's statement like “Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that gathered too much honey; I need hands out to stretched to receive it” (Zarathustra, 10). On the other hand, Ellison wrote that "The fact is that you carry part of your sickness within you, at least I do as an invisible man. I carried my sickness and though for a long time I tried to place it in the outside world, the attempt to write it down shows me that at least half of it lay with me" (IM, 575).  This statement seems to have similarities.

Moreover, I think when Zarathustra went to the solitude, the cave and went back to the society he had some hope to change some people by talking and sharing his wisdom with them same as the protagonist’s hope of change by joining to Brotherhood. However, we are able to read the protagonist sentences such as: "He had struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners and he thought it would make him more human, but he died like any dog in a road" (IM, 457). Addition to this, in Zarathustra, we are able to read saint advices and statements. He says that, going to society and try to change them is dangerous and problematic, too. “Love of man would kill me… Give them nothing, rather, take part of their load and help them to bear it that will be the best for them, if only it does you good!” (Z, 11).

In addition, we may say that the saint of Zarathustra and Ellison’s Clifton character might have some similar function in both texts. For the protagonist "Clifton and he was full of illusions" (IM, 457).  He left the Brotherhood and started to sell dolls. And, for Zarathustra, saint was similarly a person who gives up about the goal of changing the society. He says that “Do not go to man. Stay in the forest. Go rather to the animals!” (Z, 11).

We may link between the ideal missions of the Brotherhood and Zarathustra’s overman. “I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him” (Z, 12). For the brotherhood, public, the societies are the same way. They need to be domesticated. Normally, Nietzsche is against domestication of human, but getting overcome the human kind is a different type of domestication even though it is a kind of evolution. The protagonist was trying to do similar things for different goals when he was with the Brotherhood. "Can't you see I am trying to tell them what is real, I thought. Does my membership stop me from feeling Harlem?"(IM, 471).

Moreover, Zarathustra was saying that “Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary; so let them go” (Z, 13). Similar to this, in the Invisible Man, "They were all up there somewhere, making a mass of the world. Well, let them" (IM, 571). In addition, Zarathustra was trying to connect with the society after his solitude, but he was changed and gained an intellectual distance that separated him from the crowd. Same as him, the protagonist says in the Invisible that "I had to keep contact in order to fight But I would never be the same" (IM, 478). And, "Because at a price I now see that which I could not see, I said… I am not afraid now, but if you will look, you will see…" (IM, 570).

Zarathustra was saying that “man is a rope, tied between beast and overman- a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on the way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous stopping” (Z, 14). It seems like Ellison have similar ideas for different concepts. He uses similar perspective for time, society and different identities.  "Outside the Brotherhood we were outside history; but inside of it they, did not see us. It was a hell of state of affairs, we were nowhere." (IM, 499). Addition to this the protagonist says "I could only more ahead or stay here or underground" (IM, 571). Thankfully, Zarathustra says that “what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end” (Z, 15). So, when the protagonist realized that he cannot eliminate his invisibility, he became a bridge for himself and he transfer himself to the underground.

Zarathustra says that “the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man” (Z, 17). At the end, Ellison reach to similar conclusion by the help of the protagonist:

And for the first time, leaning against that stone wall in the sweltering right, I began to accept my past and, as I accepted it, I felt memories welling up within me I was though I would learned suddenly to look around corners; images of past humiliations flickered through my head and I saw that they were more than separate experiences. They were me; they defined me. I was my experiences and my experiences were me… (Invisible Man, 508)

Similar to the Invisible man, Zarathustra also argues that “in the end, one experiences only oneself” (Z, 152). He continues and says “You are going your own way to greatness: now this must give you the greatest courage that there is no longer any path behind you” (Z, 153). Same as Zarathustra, Ellison also says that "How does it feel to be free of one's illusion?.. Painful and empty" (IM, 569).

            Ultimately, both of the texts end by mentioning something about love which is very interesting. Zarathustra says that “love is the danger of the loneliest; love of everything if only it is alive. Laughable, verily, are my folly and my modesty in love” (Z, 155). Addition to this, the protagonist was saying that I could only accept responsibility for the living, nor for the dead" (Invisible Man, 447). And about love; "I denounce because though implicated and partially responsible I have been hurt to the point of abysmal pain, hurt to the point of invisibility. Ann I defend because in spite of all I find l that Love. In order to get some of it down I have to love" (IM, 580).

 Meryem R. Tasbilek

Nietzsche and Self-Cultivation Task

Meryem R. Tasbilek

Nietzsche

02.28.2014

Nietzsche and Self-Cultivation Task 

In the Gay Science, Nietzsche emphasizes that “The brief tragedy always changed and returned into the eternal comedy of existence.”[1] I believe that to resist this cycle and give rebirth to our own tragedy, we need a specific type of education that Nietzsche argues by reading ourselves by the help of right educators and culture to extend our limits of existence to reach a self-actualization. In this paper, I will write about the problem of self-cultivation as a tool of “kidnapping ourselves out of our own caves.”[2] I will share some quotes and arguments from Nietzsche to support this paper’s journey to find some useful analysis about this ontological self-cultivation problem and the notion of “Know Thyself.”[3]

I believe that after increasing our intellectual level, we can use ourselves as a mirror to know ourselves and the universe. This is a very painful journey of humankind, because generally we use all other things around us as a tool to feed our ego and all the external knowledge as a tool for our conformism. However, when we use our personal existence as a surface and foundation to know ourselves deeply, our own existences become tools for pure knowledge. In addition, Nietzsche argues that “Human Existence is a task.”[4] In my opinion, to fulfill this mission, we need to have a deep longing for knowledge and reaching a “know thyself.” We need some trigger frames like Nietzsche’s notions to have deep questions and a long journey of thinking.

Truly, plain logic is not enough for our self-cultivation. It can be only a tool and a kind of human capacity to help us to fulfill this goal. Nietzsche also argues similarly that “logic curls up around itself at the limits and finally bites its own tail, and then a new form of knowledge breaks through, tragic knowledge, which simply to be endured, needs art for protection and as medicine.”[5] To achieve this journey, a person needs to give up from his or her stable mind sets. 

Unfortunately, humankind uses knowledge to hide herself behind it, not as a tool of knowing herself. The common, formal education tries to keep us inside the traditional fences that passivize us and put more distance between us and our “education” goal. Self-cultivation is possible only when a person sacrifice her conformism. Nietzsche argues that “We have only ourselves to answer for our existence.”[6] I believe that this also means, we owe this only to ourselves. This is not equal to individualism, but I think this journey of self-cultivation needs to be a personal experiences. In the same essay, Nietzsche emphasizes that “nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life.”[7] In this journey, the traveler, the bridge and the destination are all the same: This is we.

After reading Nietzsche’s arguments about education, it became clearer that human in general not use knowledge to educate herself, but consume it like everything she reaches. Because of this misleads, bad motivated knowledge consumerism and its self-confidence obesity side effect, we put more and more distance between us and life. Nietzsche frames this condition as “a disorder in the modern soul which condemns it to a joyless unfruitfulness.”[8] The way we reach art, history and knowledge is poisoning us and for healing ourselves we need more from them. “In true Dionysian music we find just such a general mirror of the world-Will; a vivid event refracted in this mirror expands immediately, we feel, into a copy of an eternal truth.”[9] We are curving some parts from the mirror of life to create direct reflections of Will, but maybe if we were not doing this selfishly, the entire universe could be a whole piece reflector to us. We lost this wholeness at one point, that’s why we are seeking it by the guide of Apollonian and Dionysian arts which Nietzsche argues that “differ in their deepest essence and highest goals”[10] and philosophy again. For instance, Nietzsche argues that for our self-cultivation and fulfills our task of existence, history is a rich resource, but we misuse it, too. He labels this situation as “consuming historical fever.”[11] He also argues that “All acting requires forgetting, as not only light but also darkness is required for life by all organisms… The unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary for the health of an individual, a people and a culture.”[12] We use history and optimist hope for future deadly and miss the reality of present and pacifies ourselves. I think, this is also very similar with the way we have relation with educators and culture. Educators and culture needs to be only stairs for us and we need to leave them behind at some point to confront face to face with ourselves and knowledge alone. I believe that self-cultivation requires this and at this point; wellness, health and even sickness can be a useful tool for it which Nietzsche emphasizes.

Moreover, after reading Nietzsche's argument about education and thinking deeply to fulfill the self-cultivation, the benefits of thinking deeply seemed to me better than conformists’ synthetic and anesthetic joys of not thinking or semi-thinking. For instance, in the Schopenhauer as Educator book, he argues that:

The work will produce a depressing and painful effect only if the semi-thinker and semi-artist has exhaled over it the vapor of his inadequacy; while nothing better or happier can befall a man than to be in the proximity of one of those victors who, precisely because they have thought deeply, must love what is most living and, as sages, incline in the end to the beautiful.[13]

            In this part of his article, Nietzsche argues about the profile of a good educator, but his educator elements; “honesty, cheerfulness and steadfastness”[14] are also useful and necessary specialties for the individuals who seek an educator for themselves.

Moreover, in our age we are getting weaker and weaker to achieve self-cultivation. Related to this, Nietzsche argues that “philosophers in Germany have more and more to unlearn how to be pure knowledge.”[15] He mentions only Germany, but we can apply the same argument for all places. If the philosophers’ condition is like this, common people’s situation must be worse. Most of the time, we function our lives with the imitations of pure-knowledge. Nietzsche argues that many people are positive for willingly to exchange pleasant, life-preserving illusions with destructive truth. Useful lies and deceptions are more acceptable for them.[16] This conformism take our opportunity to reach pure knowledge and cultivate ourselves.

Moreover, if we limit ourselves in safety, we cannot succeed to know ourselves. However, by the help of philosophy, we may have some kind of “asylum… which no tyranny can force its way, the inward cave, and the labyrinth of heart.”[17] But, first we need to escape from our safe zones and challenge our limits to reach this inward cave. This place is only a step for a person who seeks self-cultivation. He or she cannot stay inside this cave to fulfill this goal. They have to experience inward and outward in balanced way. If we cannot find the balance, Nietzsche labels this situation dangerous isolation when he talks about Schopenhauer as Educator specifically. The second one that he labels as dangerous is “despair of the truth”[18] To get rid of these dangers, we have many tools and one of them is using history and ahistorical perspective together. Nietzsche argues that:

Almost every age and stage of culture has attempted at some point to free itself, with deep feelings of anger, from the Greeks, because, in comparison with them, all one’s own achievements, although apparently completely original and quite sincerely admire suddenly seemed to lose colour and life and to shrivel into an unsuccessful cop or even a caricature.[19]

This is not only limited with culture and history comparison, but also for the people from history or all philosophers who can be educators for us to have self-cultivation. We create unreachable walls from them between us and knowledge. We idealize the philosophers too much and same as representations of truths, they start to create distance between us and self-experience required knowledge and cultivation. At one point, we need to learn how to put distance between us and history, culture and also educators rather than ourselves. Nietzsche also emphasizes that “only read your own life and comprehends from it the hieroglyphics of universal life.”[20]

I believe that human cannot reach an absolute reality in this world, but all the time he or she can grab a wider, bigger piece of the “reality” or realities that can fit in the individual’s mind. Related to this, Nietzsche argues that “Every human being is accustomed to discovering in himself some limitations, of his talent or of his moral will, which fills him with melancholy and longing.”[21] He also labels this as the root of culture.

Moreover, the individual who longs for self-cultivation experiences petrification.[22] I believe that to avoid this danger, we need the support of valuable educators; art, history and isolation from history to help us during this self-cultivation journey. Only this way we can “kidnap ourselves out of our own caves”[23] and know ourselves. We have to accept life as a task and a philosophical problem and must generate more philosophical questions to refresh ourselves to continue longing for self-cultivation. Only this way, we are able to educate ourselves against our handicaps of our ages. Ultimately, it is worth to listen Nietzsche’s call: “Put on your armour for a hard fight, but believe in the miracles of your god!”[24]

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[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, New York: Cambridge University Press, 20011, p 29.

[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Untimely Meditations, Transl. R.J Hollingdale:

Cambridge University Press, 1983, p 17.

[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Adventages and Disadventages of History for Life, Hackett Pub, 1980, p 64.

[4] Nietzsche, On the Adventages and Disadventages of History, p 64.

[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p 75.

[6] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,”  p 17.

[7] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 2.

[8] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 5.

[9] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BOT), p 83.

[10] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BOT), p 76.

[11] Nietzsche, On the Adventages and Disadventages of History for Life, p 8.

[12]  Nietzsche, On the Adventages and Disadventages of History for Life, p 8.

[13] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator” , p 6.

[14] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 6.

[15] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 7.

[16] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense,” New York:   Cambridge University Press, 2006, p 143.

[17] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 8.

[18] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 8.

[19] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BOT), p 72.

[20] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 8.

[21] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 9.

[22] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 10.

[23] Nietzsche, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” p 17.

[24] Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BOT), p 98.