Nietzsche's Zarathustra - 5 - Pity versus Gratitude

[@MichaelPiercePhilosophy]

This video by essentialsalts, regarding the last section of Beyond Good and Evil, is relevant to some of the topics in my own video. I'm especially thinking of his discussion around 26:40 onwards: kzbin.info/www/bejne/epmQp2V_irOijcU

[@lakemccullough4987]

Thank you for your work in relating Nietzsche’s writings to subjects that feel very relevant in current philosophy, like power dynamics. As an INTJ I can understand Nietzsche’s conflict with philosophies that seek to turn merit against those who hold it in the name of those who lack it. That was indeed a provocative excerpt from the notes of Will to Power. Also speaking from an INTJ perspective, I feel that Nietzsche’s struggle with empathy (pity) is not so much that he doesn’t value it, as that he has to guard against it becoming overpowering. An entirely personal sense of empathy (Fi) can feel at odds with sympathy for the plight of the masses (Fe), and it is the plight of the masses that informs the doctrines Nietzsche seems to be so against. Looking forward to the next episode!

[@MichaelPiercePhilosophy]

This is very helpful! Thank you!

[@johnschultzbarnes3196]

Does Nietzsche have an account of the human person offering himself up? It would seem to follow from this idea that cells and animals offer themselves up to us.

[@MichaelPiercePhilosophy]

So, there are a couple answers to that question. The climax of Zarathustra (at least of the first three books, which form a trilogy) is Zarathustra's submission to what is presented as a divine call, to leave his friends, return to his solitude, and will the Eternal Recurrence. The whole thing clearly parallels Christ in Gethsemane; Zarathustra is terrified of the coming ordeal but ultimately submits. When Zarathustra wills Eternal Recurrence, he is clearly under intense pain, and he falls down as if dead for seven days, and the imagery used when he wakes up implies that he has symbolically recreated the world, serving as a kind of Christ figure in the story's symbolism (atonement creates the world). Some theorize that Zarathustra actually dies shortly after this (don't worry about book four, that's the weird one). So that's pretty nifty. On the other hand, there is no getting around the fact that Nietzsche clearly seems to promote an aristocratism and elitism (very stereotypically INTJ), and so insists upon a distinction between the noble elite and the commoners who support them. He believes most people want/need someone to command them and give them direction, in effect, to give them meaning, something to live and die for, and to make them assist in the accomplishment of some task beyond their comprehension but spanning over hundreds of generations. In other words, religion as a sociopolitical force. Thus, those who create new religions (new "gods", if you will) give swaths of humanity direction. They give them something to sacrifice themselves unto. Meanwhile, these Creators effectively sacrifice themselves to give birth to this new direction, forgoing a normal life and happiness for the sake of achieving a sublime level of power as an artist of civilization. Now, is there anything beyond these Creators (we could even say, prophets?) besides their own arbitrary value-god-creation? Nietzsche, I maintain, is unclear on this point. I think his atheist side insisted that there couldn't be, but his mystic-religious side kept slipping hints of a greater symphony behind it all (with notions like the Will to Power and the Overman). In any case, I think that Nietzsche consciously disagreed with and yet unconsciously agreed with Jesus' saying that he who is the greatest is the servant of all. Nietzsche doesn't like the idea of the "great man" being nothing more than a servant of the masses. But on the other hand, what makes the great man great is precisely that they are willing to give form and purpose to the masses: to lead and guide them, even at the expense of their own happiness. There are parallels between Nietzsche's "politics" and Plato's Republic: what the "commoners" sacrifice is power, but what they gain is contentment. For, the commoners, the bottom tier, is in Plato's Republic the wealthiest in material goods, but the poorest in spiritual capital. The guardians are Spartan communists but hold all the political power because they have the greatest spiritual capital. This seems to be Nietzsche's notion. The commoners sacrifice power and spiritual maturity so that the elite can achieve it, at the expense of contentment and happiness. Something like that, anyway. I'm still working some of this out myself, to be honest.

[@johnschultzbarnes3196]

@@MichaelPiercePhilosophyGot it. If he had a clearer image of how the creators offer themselves up to their muse or something, I could more easily embrace the rest of what he says.

[@AeonBaudrillard]

@@MichaelPiercePhilosophy Do either of you claim that this "offering up" applies to all forms of violence, especially the sexual kind?

[@johnschultzbarnes3196]

@@AeonBaudrillard I would never presume to tell a victim of sexual violence to offer up their suffering to God, or to accept it simply as the permissive will of God. I think one could only point to God’s co-suffering. This is why I’m not with Nietzsche on compassion. If one were to look down from on high and have pity, yes one could easily see that the world’s existence cannot be justified. But God has entered intimately into his creation because of his mad eros for his creatures. I think that would be the place to start with someone who has experienced sexual violence. That Nietzsche doesn’t start there, I think, is why his philosophy is ultimately unworkable. He wants to go straight to the “yes to life” without knowing of the creator’s love. And so ultimately it is possible for even the victim of sexual abuse to offer their suffering up and unite it with Christ’s. But Christ is first baptized and transfigured before that is possible. At both events his identity as beloved son of God is revealed. Sorry if my reply seems to didactic but I do think that’s the path of healing set out for us in the gospels.

[@AeonBaudrillard]

@@johnschultzbarnes3196 And you do not find this "mad eros for his creatures" at least uncannily similar to an ur-violation of sorts?

[@Max_00770]

Incribleee

[@Heart.headed]

00:00-04:00 How I like to start everyday 😎🙏🏼💪🏼💜✅💯

[@AeonBaudrillard]

Definitely your worst series yet. Why do you keep rhetorically asking if life itself should be denounced as if it was some taboo question? Categorically, yes. And, apropos of your "ambiguity" and argumentative impotence, stepping on the icon of life is constitutive of Philosophy as such (and of Christianity, of course, as opposed to Catholicism); note how you've repeatedly invoked categories such as "responsibility", "sacrifice", "necessity", etc. without question (i.e. what is it that necessity is necessary for? is necessity itself necessary? should one not denounce a true necessity all the more precisely because it is true?). Pull life out of your mouth. Be Christian, for once.

[@MichaelPiercePhilosophy]

Sir, I would like to reply fairly to your criticisms, not just on this video but on the last two as well. But, with all due respect, your criticisms are very unclear. I am not sure what your points are, except that you are upset with these videos. Nevertheless, I will do my best to reply to you. -- "Definitely your worst series yet." What, then, would be my best series in your estimation? If you can rank this one as "worst", that means that there is a "best" as well. You may still think that my "best" series is crap, too, but what makes it better than the others, relatively speaking? Or, alternatively, what would be a comparable series by another person which you consider superior? I want to know where you're coming from. -- "Why do you keep asking rhetorically...Categorically, yes." I assume that you are answering "yes" to your own question here, and that you think life itself should be denounced. I confess I find this a rather disturbing position to take. It seems inconsistent to denounce life itself, while continuing to live oneself, and/or allow other beings to live. How do you justify your position (assuming I have characterized it correctly)? -- "And, apropos of your "ambiguity" and...Philosophy as such." First of all, I'm not sure why you put "ambiguity" in quotations. Are you quoting something I said in the video? Second of all, you accuse me of "argumentative impotence", but yourself fail to provide any discernible argument to support that accusation. You simply assume it. Perhaps you think it is just so obvious that it is fair to assume it, but it is not obvious to me where I am "argumentatively impotent" nor that this is a general trait of my videos. Could you elaborate? Third, I don't see any clear connection between the first clause and the second. What do my "ambiguity" and "impotence" have to do with "Philosophy" "stepping on the icon of life"? I don't understand the transition. From my perspective, it looks like you are just stringing unrelated criticisms together to give the impression of logical argument, when all that is really happening is jeering and interjection. What am I missing? Fourth, I'm not sure the purpose of the phrase "stepping on the icon of life." If your intent was anti-Catholic imagery (icons being a very Catholic thing), then the metaphor is artistically subtle and well done. That being said, I am not sure why precisely you place Philosophy and "Christianity" against Catholicism. You mention this opposition as though I should already be informed of it. Evidently I am out of the loop; could you enlighten me? And in what way is "stepping on the icon of life" constitutive of Philosophy? That is a very strong claim--is not Nietzsche a philosopher, with a philosophy doing the precise opposite of that? -- "note how you've repeatedly...without question." Again, what does this have to do with the previous sentence? The same goes for the parentheses that follow. For instance, "what is it that necessity is necessary for?" Are you arguing against necessity itself? If so, what on earth would that entail? And would not that entailment itself be a kind of necessity? -- "Pull life out of your mouth. Be Christian for once." I don't know what the first sentence is supposed to mean. Do you want me to stop talking about "life"? As for the second sentence, could you explain to me what a Christian is? Evidently I am gravely mistaken about this, so could you explain how I have gone wrong here so that I might mend my ways and become more fully converted?

[@AeonBaudrillard]

@@MichaelPiercePhilosophy Do you suppose that you are consensually vivified and/or that your death is left up to you? Even your Paul disagrees with you here. Regardless, one could say the same to the slave, the madman, the wife, etc., that denouncing slavery, carcerality, marriage is "inconsistent" from their positions, the point being that life itself is the ultimate prison and that it does not allow one to die any more than said institutions allow their respective prisoners an exit-which is, indeed, unjustifiable whenever it does happen through a catastrophic anomaly. In this sense, the philistines and/or Atheists are absolutely correct when they denounce Philosophy and/or Christianity as "useless" or "false", since this is what the Rational and the Christian truly are as long as the carcerality of life (the Empirical, the Ontic, the Phenomenal, the Material; whichever you prefer) remains intact. There is no Dialectic between the two, there is only figuratively going nowhere by indefinitely traversing the carceral ouroboric structure-according to the whole-or literally going nowhere by stepping on the serpent's head. In this sense, Catholics are absolutely correct when they denounce common Gnosticism (Historically speaking, the so-called primary sources) since it is fundamentally impotent most of all (incidentally, of course, the Theologically inclined will surely bristle at the total parallelism between the two, and ultimately ask if Catholicism is not too original, so to speak, having proactively fabricated its own plagiarism, not unlike God proactively fabricates his own "opposition" or "absence"). Only Protestantism, culminating in John Calvin, has granted Gnosticism is fatality-the prominent critique that Calvin's thesis "unwittingly" makes Yahweh into something worse than Yaldabaoth is precisely the point. I only disagree with Girard's claim because he does not take the Calvinist leap into despair: before Calvin, the banality of the claim that Law is universalized crime has been sustained and made bearable by the obscenity that the "good" of the Law was always elsewhere (in the "Ideal", in the "hypothetical", in the "future", in "you", etc.; here, if nowhere else, Catholicism and common Gnosticism are one the same, the "absence of good" and the "lost origin" being analogous), conversely, the Calvinist claim that the good of the Law is nothing but crime as such-the crime of Golgotha-puts the Father himself in the crosshairs of Jesus Christ. That is to say, sacrifice is not bad because it is unnecessary, but precisely because it is necessary: the category of necessity is compromised (as is the category of truth itself) by this perfect coincidence, or non-contradiction, or complicity, or overcontiguity of Evil and "good" (or, indeed, their nuptial enjoyment!); the Causality of the "great work" collapses (excrementally, it must be said) into ludic Occasionalism. Also, I think your best video is the one about the mortal enmity between Ni and Si (in fact, what I said here maps onto it fairly well).

[@MichaelPiercePhilosophy]

@@AeonBaudrillard Well, having pondered on your reply, I can only really say that I respectfully disagree with your position on life. I simply do not view life as a prison, but as an opportunity, a school, a training ground. Also, I contend that, although taking away one's own life has grievous moral ramifications, it is always possible to do so---in fact, it is precisely because it is possible to do this that it is a moral issue at all. So, I'm not sure what you mean by saying "it [life] does not allow one to die", since people die all the time and take their own lives all the time. That is, unless you are assuming something like a wheel of karma or reincarnation cycle, that keeps us returning to life over and over...? We also disagree on the issue of "necessity". My faith is that Creation (i.e., existence, the universe) is fundamentally good, and consequently whatever turns out to be genuinely necessary in existence is good, being effectively the will of the Creator. The question, of course, is what is genuinely necessary, and I do not think this is at all clear. As for me, as a personal theological point, I do actually believe I am "consensually vivified", if by that you mean that I chose to be born. My death is up to me to the extent that I could take my life, but I agree that beyond that I do not consciously choose my death date.

[@AeonBaudrillard]

@@MichaelPiercePhilosophy Can you think of one instance of imprisonment that does not try to justify itself by purporting itself as an opportunity, a school, a training ground? Moreover, is this justification ever wrong? Recall that the reactionary argument against liberation of all kinds (global, domestic, individual, etc.), that liberation only amounts to geopolitical, cultural, social, etc. death of that which is liberated, must be absolutely rejected precisely because it is true-any and all instances of imprisonment were not deemed abominable and fought against DESPITE their good, but BECAUSE of it; one only has to go one minute step further regarding "recognition" (in the Hegelian sense, i.e. the indispensable facilities that one is granted for so-called social life, everything that distinguishes one from animals or objects) only being given on the condition of total abjection before worldly power and claim that life itself is only given on the condition of total abjection before Divine power (and, of course, that abjection and life are one and the same). In this sense, you are far more right than you yourself know or want to know: indeed, the opportunity, the school, the training ground is there for God himself to "grow" (with all the obscene implications of the word) at the expense of everything else.

[@a_lucientes]

@@AeonBaudrillard Ive never seen anyone write so much to say so little in an online comment. You must be fun to live with. Not at all a pompous pseudo intellectual know it all,who begins every comment w/ obtuse, rambling and condescending questions followed by equally obtuse and rambling, semi-coherent monologues that evoke nothing so well as someone who forgot to take their medication. My advice is that you spare yourself and others your _intellectual acumen_ [read deluded and desultory comments] and make your own SUPERIOR videos on the subject.