In
this paper, I will argue the importance of living like a person who is made of
glass by the support of Nietzsche's aphorisms from The Gay Science, book three.
Nietzsche argues about different types of danger and advantages of being a
person made of glass.[1] I
will build some arguments on this idea and metaphor. I will also argue the
importance of errors and the problems of morality. In addition, I will create
some arguments about prayers which differ from Nietzsche’s aphorisms.
You have no idea what you are experiencing; you run through
life as if you were drunk and once in a while fall down a staircase. But thanks
to your drunkenness, you don’t break your libs in the process; your muscles are
too slack and your head too dull for you to find the stones of these stairs as
hard as the rest of us do! For us, life is a greater danger: we are made of
glass- woe unto us if we bump against something! And everything is lost if we
fall! (Book Three 132, 133)
When
I read this section, I thought that who are these two types of people for
Nietzsche and for me? Nietzsche probably includes people to the drunken group
who postpone today for the sake of optimistic tomorrow and also who believe
afterlife. I believe that what we believe creates our social profiles, but what
we believe and how we believe creates our characters. For this reason, the
believers of afterlife in different ways can be excluded from this drunken
categories based on their perspectives and unique practices, but definitely not
the people who have optimism obesity. For instance, I do not do something for
the motivation of heaven or scariness of God or hell. I believe that these are necessary metaphors
to educate human soul until it became mature. A child can expect some award for
his or her good behavior and can stop himself or herself from some behavior
because of some punishment, but if this child expect benefit or punishment to
take or avoid actions when he or she grows up, we find something problematic
about them. For human soul and character, I think the religious metaphors
function similarly. However, after reaching a level of maturity, I believe that
doing or not doing something for its benefits or harms, but not for the action
itself is not ethical. For this reason, I think every person can switch his or
her drunkenness to an active, fragile existence which is metaphorically equal
to be a person made of glass. On this way, I think we do not have any luxury to
look down to any drunkenness experience. All types of intoxication can be a
stairway to reach this kind of active existence.
If
I can go back to the notion of being a man made of glass, this must be our
ideal position in our lives. I believe that being a person made of glass is
equal to be active and probably in Nietzsche's argument being an evil. If we
can manage to be an individual who is made of glass, we can stay awake and with
this awareness we also can accept other people and all beings as made of glass,
fragile. By this way, our interactions with people and all nature can become
sensitive, active to not become lost and broken. We can manage to not destroy the other’s
existence. This perspective of existence creates an active awareness. Moreover,
by this way we can get rid of the danger of “vegetarians’ or dieters’” narcotic
ways of thinking to avoid the dangers of the staircases of life.[2]
In
addition, I believe that if we really consider ourselves as “made of glass,”
this perception alters our goals and motivations, too. This awareness is
powerful enough to make us get rid of our desire to become a function and an
instrument for others. This motivation and practices of altruism which makes
human addicted to use others as instruments rather than trying to manage
self-actualization. A wild flower does not need any one to support its
existence to produce beauty, actually it becomes a beauty. If there is a link
between its existence and other natures, it is higher than using them as an
instrument, it is an active relationship. If we manage to be a person made of
glass, this can save us from parasitic lives. I think this way of living
produce naturally active things that are more valuable than being instruments.
We need pessimism, fragility for a self-actualization. As Nietzsche argues: “I recognize the spirits
who seek rest by the many dark objects with which they surround themselves: he
who wants to sleep makes his room dark or crawls into a cave.-A hint to those
do not know, but would like to know, what they actually seek most!” I believe
that this darkness is also equal to pessimism. To become ourselves actively, we
need darkness and fragility.
Moreover,
Nietzsche argues that “Prayer has been invented for people who never really
have thoughts of their own… The wisdom of all founders of religions, small as
well great, has prescribed to them the formulas of prayer as a long mechanical
work of lips, combined with exertion of the memory and a same fixed posture of
hands and feet and eyes!”[3] I
believe that this argument has a great generalization that makes it weak. I
agree with Nietzsche’s argument at some point, because many traditional prayers
become habits in many religions. The traditional prayers are mostly ritualistic.
Step by step they lose their core and the only thing left for the believers are
the empty shells of the rituals. Mostly, these prayers passivize people and
create barriers between them and today’s responsibilities. They make them
postpone the action and only lean to the power of God or other kinds of mystic
powers. On the other hand, this is not always the case. I know a lot of people
who change their verbal prayers and their physical positions or quit praying
time to time just not to lose the meaning of it by getting used to it. For
these people, prayers are the reminders of the face of active life. They do not
beg for help, they just communicate and argue or fight intellectually with the
God that they believe. Their prayers are also equal to questioning. For
instance, I quit ritualistic prayers for a while, but I only accept active
behaviors, taking positions in front of different situations as prayers. Not
only these, but also producing questions and seeking answers are prayers for
me. Also in Protestant life, working is a way of praying even though nowadays this
idea becomes a tool or trigger for Capitalism. Nietzsche may argue that this
type of working also equal to become an instruments for others, but I think we
cannot monopolize all the Protestants’ interpretation of this acceptance as
passive.
In
addition, in some theologies, for instance in Islam, if a person find something
unpleasant and harmful for humanity and for the individual, the verbal prayer
is only a reminder for the behavioral prayer. There is an advice from Prophet
Muhammad: “If you
see any injustice, try to correct it with your hands, if
you cannot fix it with your actions, and then try to fix it with a good language. If you cannot manage to stop it by these two ways, then feel displeasure in your
heart to not get used to it, this is the weakest point of
believing.”[4] According
to Nietzsche, the evil is the active one more than the good, but I think there
are active goods, too. I think, religious expression that I just shared is very
similar with Nietzsche’s this argument: “Put on your armour for a hard fight,
but believe in the miracles of your god!” [5] In
my opinion, behavioral prayer is equal to this quote. Even though it is not the
universal interpretation of the prayer, it is still common in my social
environment. This is an intellectual call for action, unfortunately some people
might understand and misinterpret Nietzsche same as some religious call for
actions differently and violently. I
also believe that for some people, religion and prayers are the opiate of
people, but what is not? It is related with people’s perspectives. Same as
religion, ideologies or philosophy can be an opiate, too. For this reason, we
need to pay attention to our own interpretations.
Moreover,
we should not become a tool in the hand of religions, philosophy or any
epistemic groups with our existence; they need to become staircases and tools
to help us to continue our self-cultivation. At the end, I believe that our
soul will leave all tools behind with respect and loyal feelings same as a bird
that needs to leave the ground to fly. After one point, believing and refusing
should not be different or matter. I will support this argument with a Religious
Philosopher from Anatolia, Yunus Emre says that “I understood that being a
believer or a faithless are covers on the way of life, and I hug blasphemy and release
my beliefs to the wind. They are both the same.”[6]
All of these differences are the social covers, but the core of our characters
should be over these preferences. By this way, same as Nietzsche argues, we can
avoid the herd instinct: “Where ever we encounter a morality, we find an
evaluation and ranking of human drives and action. These evaluations and
rankings are always the expression of needs of a community and herd… With
morality the individual is instructed to be function of the herd and to ascribe
value to himself only as function… Morality is a herd instinct in the
individual.”[7]
Nietzsche’s this argument is also parallel with the Anatolian Philosopher. To
avoid being an instrument, we need to have a merciful distance with tradition
and crowd’s common morality. These create hierarchy by using positive images of
morality in our lives. They shape and whittle the differences of people’s
characters. If we do something, we need to do it by the fruit of the action. On
the other hand, I do not feel any complex if there are some overlaps between my
personal choices and common preferences. I am also criticizing to put compulsive
distance between ourselves and the crowd to not have any similarities with “herd.”
For instance, even though Nietzsche emphasizes the importance and value of
being active and “evil” in many places, he does not look down on all kinds of good,
either. He argues that “who always wants to put people to shame”[8] is
a bad person. And also, he frames a
person as most human who spares someone shame. I think he affirms this as the
opposite of bad and it seems like he gives credits to the notion of good in
this argument. To avoid of being a part of herd, having an allergy against
morality, traditions and norms can also make us rootless. We need to use some
of the commonness or the sources of herd same as Nietzsche. He uses the Greek
Tragedy as a source of self-cultivation. As well as the sources of the society,
we can use our errors as tools for our self-cultivation and as the sources of
knowledge. Nietzsche argues that “Man has been educated by his errors.”[9] I
definitely agree with him. We owe a lot to our errors. However, we need to not
convert the knowledge or philosophy to an occupation or duty. Nietzsche argues
that:
The intellectual fight became an occupation, attraction,
profession, duty, dignity- knowledge and the striving for the true finally took
their places as a need among the other needs. Henceforth, not only faith and
conviction, but also scrutiny, denial, suspicion, and contradiction were a power; all ‘evil’ instincts were
subordinated to knowledge and put in its service and took on the lustre of the
permitted, honored, useful and finally the eye and the innocence of the good. (The Gay Science,
111)
I believe that, these kinds of
practices are passivizing the knowledge and us. Hopefully, our awareness of our
existence as being made of glass can support us to menage our individual
self-actualization and avoid of living passively as an instrument. Ultimately, in
this paper, I argued the importance of living like a person who is made of
glass by the support of Nietzsche's aphorisms from The Gay Science. I also
argued the importance of errors and problems of morality. In addition, I
created some arguments about prayers which differ from Nietzsche’s aphorisms at
some point. As Nietzsche argues that “the thoughts cannot entirely reproduce in
words.”[10] I
did my best interpretations. I tried to
put the ideas together like a philosophical wagons, because “one is always
wrong; but with two, truth begins.- One cannot prove his case, but two are
already irrefutable.”[11]
[1] Friedrich
Nietzsche, The Gay Science, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011,
p 132,133.
[3] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p 122.
[4] Prophet
Mohammed, Bukhari Hadith translated from Turkish version by me.
[5] Friedrich
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006, p 98.
[6]
Yunus Emre, Translated from Turkish version by me.
[7] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (GS), p 114.
[8] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (GS), p 114, 152.
[9] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (GS), p 114, 115.
[10] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (GS), p 148.
[11] Nietzsche,
The Gay Science (GS), p 150.
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