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