Wednesday, April 16, 2014

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]



[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.

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