After
reading several books of Nietzsche as a requirement of the class, all of his arguments
made me rethink about many concepts and sources that we use to educate
ourselves. Nietzsche’s various arguments made me think that our relationship
with knowledge shapes the effects of it on our existence. The way we use
knowledge can make us domesticated animals, weak and passive creatures that poisoned
by optimistic happiness or we can use knowledge actively for our self-cultivation
that makes us strong enough to use all types of knowledge as stimulus. In this
paper, I will write about how we can use Nietzschean type education as an eternal
honey making process by the pollens of knowledge.
First of
all, I learned that the education should not be Platonic type. When I read
Nietzsche's sections that criticize Socrates and Plato, these made me think
that the notion of platonic love is probably coming from Plato’s one-way
dialectic arguments. Nietzsche argues these two philosophers as symptoms of
decay especially because of their dialectic types of arguments. Their dialectic
type of self-defense seems like dialog, but it imposes the audience a
monologue. Same as platonic love, it has and produces distance between two
sides of the discussion and also the motivation is trying to win the discussion
rather than gaining knowledge from each other for their self-cultivation.
Nietzsche argues that “Dialectic is a type of self-defense used only by people
who do not have any other weapons.” [1]
Unfortunately, nowadays the formal education has also one sided relationship
and mostly functions as indoctrination. Same as Nietzsche labels Socrates and
Plato’s dialectic as tyrant and humiliation of the people that receive the
dialectic argument, current education also function as tyranny and produce herd
culture. Current and common education makes us domesticated and get ready as a
replacer of civil servants. Moreover, education works like factory and to keep
us inside the web of its tyranny it also promotes the illusion of freedom. We
gain some abilities to internalize the herd psychology and gain habits to obey
and follow stable moralities that make us passive and weak. The education that
Nietzsche criticizes produces many representations that put distance between us
and nature. That is why, Nietzsche made an exception for Heraclitus that thinks
“the apparent world is the only world: the true world is just a lie added on to
it.”[2]
By the help of right educators and educations, we can manage to peel the lies
and artificial purposes of life and can gain enough strength to face with life
as problem and as an error. Same as the artist, we can manage to “value some
appearance of more highly than reality” time to time, but this does not mean
that we ignore the reality of it. By choosing some appearance and take them as
the reality of our tragedy, we can say yes, too to all types of faces of life
and use them all for our self-cultivation. By the help of Nietzschean type of
education, we can become better philosophical bees which are picky for their
pollens of knowledge.
In
addition, by the Nietzschean type of education, active and un-Platonic ones, we
can use our passion to gain more intellectual pollens from the tragic world and
manage to spiritualize everything that tries to domesticate us. We can convert
them to the sources of self-cultivation. This can give us enough strength to deal
with the horror of life. To maintain this, based on Nietzsche's arguments, we
need to use education and knowledge as a hummer. Probably first, we need to use
it to tear down the idols that make not even twilight, but shadows on our
lives. Moreover, it seems like sometimes the idols, the philosophers who give
us light to curve out our existence can become shadows and barriers for our
self-cultivation when we idealize them. All of the things, including
philosophers, the educators need to be distanced when they started to create
distance between us and nature. I think, Nietzsche's this argument is very
valuable when he includes himself to this group, too. He indirectly argues that
even his philosophy has to be distanced when it starts to prevent us from being
a wanderer further.
Nietzsche takes self-cultivation as
an opposition to improvement and domestication which has to make us re-think
about our wrongly nested notions. When we can separate these notions from each
other, we can use knowledge clearer for our intellectual honey making process
that make us stronger to deal the problem of life. He argues that “The project
of domesticating the human beast as well as the project of breeding a certain
species of human has both been called ‘improvements.’”[3]
He continues and says that “to call the domestication of an animal an
improvement almost sounds like a joke to us. Anyone who knows what goes on in a
zoo will have doubts whether beasts are improved there. They become weak, they
become less harmful, they are made ill…”[4]
Nietzsche labels this as a joke to ridicule the practice, but I think the
notion of improvement has chosen by the systems on purpose to make the
domestication attractive for the herd. By these fancy labels, notions and
social statuses, the members of the herd can be poisoned with the optimistic,
idealistic hope and happiness for not questioning the practices. We have been
sickened by the overdose of “improvements.” We need to unlearn what we have
learned. With these unrealistic notions that cover the face of domestication we
become happy with being pacified and chain ourselves to the herd and lose our
capacity to become a wanderer. In the Gay Science, Nietzsche also argues
similar things that support my argument. He emphasizes that “we have grown sick
of this bad taste, this wills to truth, to truth ‘at any price,’ this youth
madness in the love of truth: we are too experienced, too serious, to jovial, too
burned, too deep for that…” [5]
Because of the madness and addiction of improvement and love of “truth,” we
stabilize ourselves at one point and stop our self-cultivation, but become only
consumers of artificial “truths.”
Moreover, in the Gay Science,
Nietzsche argues that whoever feels “strange, rare, extraordinary; and whoever
feels these powers in himself must nurse, defend, honor and cultivate them
against another world that resists them.”[6]
We need to use our self-cultivation to defend our own character and quality
against the society’s herd maker forces and its domestication process that open
war against us by using morality, religion, science and even philosophy by
making them stable resources for us. Only this way, we can produce our own
personal philosophical honey in our intellectual beehive. This process will
continue eternally while we continue to exist. This journey is very hard.
Sometimes we might have to use our stinger; philosophical hammer to continue
our self-cultivation. To maintain these, we should avoid using Philosophy as an
instrument. We need to improve more active relationship with philosophy and
knowledge.
Ultimately, after reading Nietzsche
and think with Nietzsche, I am trying to re-set my relationship with knowledge
and Philosophy. He made me think that, we may not able to stand the eternal
return completely, but if we set our relationship with Philosophy, education
and the problem of life “correctly,” we may gain enough strength to experience
eternal thinking as philosophical honey bees with the pollens of all kinds of
knowledge. This will lead us to self-cultivation and save us from passive
selflessness. These experiences can produce a higher culture and give birth to
our own tragedy. Maybe, by this way we can convert our existence, our errors
and the errors of the life to a Dionysian Music. As Nietzsche argues that “the
intellect produced nothing, but errors.”[7]
Who knows, we may become an “eternal joy even in negating.”[8]
[1]
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Anti-Christ,
Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols. Trans. J. Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005. Pg. 164
[2] Nietzsche.
Twilight of the Idols. Pg. 168
[3]
Nietzsche. TOI. Pg. 183
[4]
Nietzsche. TOI. Pg. 183
[5]Nietzsche,
Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. J. Nauckhoff. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008. Pg. 8
[6]
Nietzsche. The Gay Science. Pg. 36
[7]
Nietzsche. TGS. Pg. 36
[8]
Nietzsche. TOI. Pg. 228.
