The Importance of being Made of Glass-Meryem Rabia Tasbilek

                       

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]

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[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p 132,133.

[2] Nietzsche, The Gay Science (GS), p 128, 129. 

[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.

Eternal Honey Making with the Pollens of Knowledge-Meryem R. Tasbilek

            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]

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[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.