RENAISSANCE MAN, WHERE ARE YOU?

This entry opens the Philosopher series, whom I am normally inclined to equate with the Original Thinker. But in my first entry I am emphasizing the other quality of an accomplished philosopher: his encyclopedic learning. Original thinking is a prerequisite of philosophy, but when joined with an uneducated ignorance, it is like a rare beautiful flower, planted in the world’s wilderness, and left uncultivated and unwatered, and next we see it withered, and wasted, and gone.
Renaissance Man is therefore a well-educated original thinker, and this crucial point ought not to be lost on the reader. “Philosopher” here is synonymous with “Renaissance Man,” as opposed to what Nietzsche calls a “specialist” in the following passage from Jenseits (205):

"The dangers for a philosopher’s development are indeed so manifold that one may doubt whether this fruit can still ripen at all. The scope and the tower-building of the sciences has grown to be enormous and, with it, the probability that the philosopher grows weary, while still learning, and becomes a “specialist,” never attaining his proper level, the height for a comprehensive look around and down."

Nietzsche’s philosopher, or our Renaissance Man, is simply a well-educated thinker-scholar, in the best sense of the word, who, by virtue of his encyclopedic learning, has a macroscopic grasp of the whole picture, and not the kind of microscopic fixation on a tiny part of it, which characterizes the specialist and can lead to critical errors of judgment, especially, in the area of social sciences. As I once wrote in a letter of self-recommendation:
“You can ask me anything you like, either personally or on the widest spectrum of issues of public interest, where you will find me well-qualified across the board. In a world that is a giant jigsaw puzzle, missing as little as a single piece renders the set worthless. No student of world affairs can afford such missing pieces in his set.”
On another occasion, an American Professor friend of mine criticized my Curriculum Vitae (which included strong professional background in mathematics, structural and traditional linguistics, general humanities, etc., alongside political science, philosophy, and other "usual suspects"), on the grounds that the broad scope of my proficiencies would be confusing to potential employers in the United States, as to which of my skills was the preponderant one and strongly suggested trimming my résumé, to target only my specific objectives with a bare minimum of my specific qualifications in that department.
Even as I was trying to persuade my learned friend that it was exactly the breadth of my grasp, which had to be of greatest value, he conceded that, while it was true, it would not be correctly understood in our day and age of specialization, when the Renaissance Man had long been known to be an extinct species.

Too bad that we are living in the age of specialists… Renaissance Man, where are you?!

THE EVIL GENIUS

It is just one small step from the previous discussion of the criminal genius so much admired by Bakunin, to the more general concept of the evil genius. It starts with Satan, one of God’s most capable angels (perhaps, the most capable, considering that he was the Lucifer), who fell from grace when he disobeyed God. (In the Koran, we have the most intriguing interpretation of that disobedience, as he refuses to bow to Adam! This act of defiance has been reinterpreted by some as Satan’s refusal to bow to anything except God, thus giving him an honorable motivation. Whether this is going too far or not is beside the point, as the point itself goes to suggest that the concept of evil is far more complicated than most of us may have supposed.

It is customary to associate the evil genius primarily with politics, and to exclude the possibility of evil from the creative fields. It is in this sense that Pushkin proclaimed (in Mozart and Saglieri) the incompatibility of genius and evil, as if the latter were all concentrated in worldly power. It was, however, Pushkin, too, who would express his admiration for Peter the Great, although Peter, no less than Ivan Grozny before him, and Comrade Stalin after him, could be seen (but curiously was not) as a tyrannical and even sadistic evildoer by his victims. The denunciation campaign against Stalin, which was started by Nikita Khrushchev half-a-century ago, and appears to be still in progress, extends no similar condemnation to Stalin’s great predecessors, far more than him marked by exceptional cruelty, and virtually soaked in violence and mayhem. I have no doubt that fifty years down the road, Stalin’s name will be officially and unequivocally inscribed in the Pantheon of Russia’s rulers of genius alongside Peter the Great, and all the current criticism of him will be swept away from the mainstream channels of communication, reduced to the far-out margins of the Russian media and to those Western outlets which are always critical of Russia anyway.

The fact that I am not writing a subjective apology of Stalin ought to be clear from my next reference to one of the “paragons” of quintessential evil, Adolf Hitler. One of his early postwar biographers at the time when objectivity was still allowed in his historical assessment, noted that, curiously, had he died of a heart attack in, say, 1939, he might have easily gone down in history as one of the greatest statesmen Germany ever had. I might candidly add to it as well that, had Hitler won World War II (which was quite possible had he not attacked Russia), his place in history could have been very different from having lost the war. Which only goes to reiterate what I said earlier, that the concept of evil is far more complicated than most of us might suppose.

And finally, let me end this rather odd, but intellectually important entry (where I must by no means be seen as some kind of defender of evil, which I am not!) by quoting a passage from the Bible, where God and evil are juxtaposed, revealing a peculiar and awesome connection. Here is that remarkable passage (from Isaiah 45:7), which will be best to conclude this entry with, without any further comment:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”

BEYOND LAW AND ORDER

There is an old saying that the criminal of today shall one day become the hero of the legends of the future. This certainly applies to the Thief of Baghdad, Robin Hood, Gianni Schicchi, and Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (of the Bonnie & Clyde pair), not to mention the Greek Titan Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus, the Nordic god Wotan, who committed an act of brazen assault and robbery, against the Dwarf Alberich, to gain possession of the Nibelungen Ring, plus a great number of venerable Biblical characters resorting to all sorts of high crimes and petty misdemeanors at various stages of their great lives.

Public fascination with the criminal is a universal phenomenon particularly well manifested in the American legends of the Wild West, stories of the great gangsters of the Prohibition, and the by now perennial classic The Godfather Saga of Mario Puzo and of the Coppola Trilogy.
Conan Doyle’s criminal genius mastermind Professor Moriarti is a formidable nemesis to the genius sleuth Sherlock Holmes; James Bond may well lose his “authenticity” without the sinister Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the creator of Spectre; and even the incomparable Maxwell Smart is unthinkable without his lovable antagonist Siegfried.
The whole genre of Law and Order would have been a hopeless flop without the clever criminal. The next question to ask is how clever is the criminal in real life? The answer is, of course, that it depends. There is such a thing as a dumb criminal, and many of them, for whom crime is just a means to an end, are indeed as unexceptional as the average non-criminal Joe. But there are many others, for whom crime is the end, rather than the means, for whom crime is a lifestyle, a vocation, an inspiration. In this section, I am addressing the exception, rather than the rule, and such is the criminal who is presently our object of interest. He does not just break the social law and order, he exists beyond law and order, “on the other side of good and evil.” Thomas Crown (of The Thomas Crown Affair) is superrich, and for him theft is not a way to make a living, but an exciting way of life. Further such examples are in abundance…

In the world of our friend Mikhail Bakunin, that is, in his psyche, the criminal is the vital force of progress throughout history, the most active, energetic, enterprising, smart, and creative element of human society. Whereas among the law-abiding citizens genius is the rarest of exceptions, in the criminal world genius is the rule. “A certain disregard for the rules,” which Professor Dumbledore approvingly finds in the character of J. K. Rowling’s hero Harry Potter, becomes reckless disregard for all established philistine social norms in Bakunin’s legiclastic hero, akin to the profound amorality of Nietzsche’s blond beast.
Ironically, Bakunin’s hero-criminal may be an accurate representation of the criminal spirit, but the reality is too often falling short of the ideal. The case in point is Bakunin’s criminal-genius friend Sergei Nechayev (1847-1882), who was also the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky in Dostoyevsky’s Demons. A manipulative conman and scoundrel, Nechayev was playing on Bakunin’s weakness for the criminal spirit long enough to ruin him financially, and to cause him considerable political trouble, as if he had not had enough of his own. But Bakunin’s association with Nechayev gave birth to one of the most remarkable documents in the history of criminal psychology, the super-notorious Catechism of the Revolutionary. Penned by Bakunin himself, allegedly under Nechayev’s guidance, the Catechism is a practical manual for the brightest aspirants to the life of organized crime, laying down the basic principles of criminal activity, and providing useful advice on how to build an effective criminal organization from the ground up.
Bakunin’s voice was perhaps the clearest and most straightforward glorification of the criminal spirit. The Demons of Dostoyevsky were all consciously unsympathetic, but the somber atmosphere of their perverted existence, like the poisonous mist surrounding Fafner’s den, added to their clout, no less than Nietzsche’s grudging admiration for the Russian nihilist, virtually equating the latter with the man of the future.

Among the most explicit examples of a deliberate glorification of the criminal, in the Bakuninian sense, as a tremendously resourceful individual, a patriot, and a superhero, worth a platoon, or more, of better trained soldiers, is the American movie The Dirty Dozen. It may be argued, feebly, that the cutthroats, selected for that suicide World War II mission, were not exactly criminals, in the ordinary sense of the word. But if we look closer at the criminal records of the movie’s "Dirty Dozen," all of them are actual criminals, both in the eyes of the law, and in the most liberal view of conventional wisdom.
But I do fully agree with this, that they are by no means a bunch of common criminals. What makes them all uncommon, however, is not the uncommonness, or any extenuating circumstances of their previous crimes, but the aura of their present-day heroism, the sense of a legend being created around them, by the writers’ plot and their art of its development. The criminals of yesterday are thus being turned into the heroes of the new day, to be unconditionally admired by the viewers and the readers of the future.

THE SAINTLY BEAST

An old Chinese proverb says, "Frogs croak in the pond day and night, and nobody listens, but the rooster only crows at dawn, and all take heed." It could well be a Libyan or an Albanian proverb, but its meaning has no dependence on its source, and it will be universally understood, in the "silence is golden" vein.
On the other hand, the words “sour grapes” ought to be put in the context of the Aesop/La Fontaine/Krylov fable, in order to be properly understood. Most of us are reasonably well educated to make the connection automatically, but those who do not know the fable, will have trouble understanding the meaning of these words. (Ironically, most people believe that “sour grapes” stands for some embittered never-happy grouch, whereas the fable’s real meaning is far more subtle: it is not the fox who is called “sour grapes,” but, rather, the unattainable object of the fox’s lust, the actually delicious grapes, branded as “sour” for being out of the fox’s disappointed reach.)

Bakunin writes, in Dieu et l’État: “If society had not been invented, man would have remained a wild beast forever, or, what amounts to the same thing, a saint.” One can venture a wide variety of philosophical and pseudo-philosophical interpretations of this sentence, but its proper understanding may never be arrived at, without knowing who Bakunin was, and what he stood for. Otherwise, our understanding of “beast” will be torn between Luther’s super-negative (see below) and Nietzsche’s super-positive (as in “blond beast”), and thus, into the bargain, we shall be left awfully confused about Bakunin’s understanding of “sainthood.”
Bakunin was, of course, the internationally-acclaimed co-father of anarchism (along with Proudhon), but his distinctively peculiar Russian soul, and his special historical significance, as the challenger extraordinaire to the authority of Karl Marx, within the First International, make him a particularly unique character. As an anarchist, his attitude toward the invention of society (the hidden clue of the word "invented" is easy to miss) leaves little to second-guessing, from which it follows that both the wild beast and the saint, of his account, must surely represent some sympathetic traits. As, indeed, they do!
Bakunin’s famous fascination with the revolutionary Spirit and the awesome destructive-creative Power of the Buntar, be that the unstoppable surge of the peasant rebel, or the devious genius of the master criminal and his underworld, leaves no doubt that, from his lips, wild beast comes like the greatest compliment one can bestow on the human race. How far is that removed from, say, Martin Luther’s thinking:
“All wild beasts live in fear and quaking; they have black flesh by reason of their fear, but the flesh of tame animals is white, for they live securely with mankind.” (Tischreden, cxxvii)
Luther’s reasoning is, of course, rather suspect here, but taken at its face value, and compared to Bakunin’s wild beast and Nietzsche’s blond beast, representing among other things extreme fearlessness, the contrast between these two opinions is astounding.

On the question of the imagery of the saint, here we clearly encounter Man in a state of innocence. Sancta simplicitas, the innocence of the Saint! The Saint fears nothing (like Wagner’s Siegfried), and is ashamed of nothing (in the words of Rousseau’s Émile). Perhaps, Adam was the first Saint, and the Fall represented the inevitability of this Saint’s corruption. In his primordial state of innocence, the Saint was totally fearless of God’s power, and totally mindless of his own punishment for disobedience. Fearlessness, like all innocence is reckless!

My concluding thought reunites those two Bakuninian descriptions of man in the blessed state of innocence, as a wild beast and a saint, in one last reflection on the genius recluse, ordinis eremitarum membrum, one of the solitary armies of one:

Without civilization (as represented by the Serpent), man is a saintly beast. Civilization tames the beast and corrupts the saint.

CAPITALISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND USA TODAY.

(Introductory Caveat:
It can be well argued, and it has been argued, that “capitalism” in the best classical sense of the word no longer exists in this modern era of "financial capitalism." We shall, however, use this argument only as a preambular caveat, and proceed with the practical definition of "capitalism," as it exists in our time.)

I was quite thrilled to find this USA Today posting on their website an hour ago. At last they are talking about this very uncomfortable subject!!! So, here is their article, and my very extensive comment on it.---

USA Today, April 20, 2011.
Poll: Americans See Christianity, Capitalism Clash.
By Nicole Neroulias, Religion News Service.

Are Christianity and capitalism a marriage made in heaven, as some conservatives (Some conservatives! So, what does this tell us about conservatism in America?) believe, or more of a strained relationship in need of some serious couples' counseling?
A new poll released Thursday found that more Americans (44 %) see the free market system at odds with Christian values than those who don’t (36 %), whether they are white evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, or minority Christians.
But in other demographic breakdowns, several categories lean the other way: Republicans and the Tea Party members, college graduates, and members of high-income households view the systems as more compatible than not.
The poll, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, found that although conservative Christians and evangelicals tend to want their clergy to speak out on issues like abortion and homosexuality, they also tend to hold left-of-center views on some economic issues.
“Throughout the Bible we see numerous passages about being our brother’s keeper, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and healing the sick,” said Dr. Andrew D. Walsh, author of Religion, Economics and Public Policy and a religion professor at Culver-Stockton College.
“The idea that we are autonomous individuals competing for limited resources without concern for the welfare of others is a philosophy that is totally alien to the Bible, and in my view, antithetical to genuine Christianity.”
The findings add a new wrinkle to national debates over the size and role of government and raise questions about the impact of the Tea Party’s cut-the-budget pressure on the GOP and its traditional base of religious conservatives. The poll found stronger religious distinctions over the question of businesses acting ethically without government regulation, and whether faith leaders should speak out about economic concerns, such as the budget deficit and the minimum wage.
White evangelicals (44 %) are more likely than the other Christians or the general population to believe that unregulated businesses would still behave ethically and place a higher priority on religious leaders speaking out about social issues over economic concerns.
Minority Christians in contrast believe clergy should be vocal about both areas particularly on the economic issue of home foreclosures, which 76 % considered important, compared to 46 % of the general population.
“Minority Christians have a deep theological tradition of connecting faith and economic justice, and we see that link in the survey, said Robert P. Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute. Because minorities in the U.S. generally continue to have lower incomes than whites, economic issues are also more salient in these congregations.”
In other findings:
•Half of women believe that capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37 % of men.
•A majority (53 %) of Democrats believe capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37 % of Republicans and 41% of independents. A majority (56%) of Tea Party members say capitalism is consistent with Christian values.
•Nearly half (46%) of Americans with household incomes of $100000 a year or more believe that capitalism is consistent with Christian values, compared to just 23% of those with household incomes of $30000 a year or less.
•Most Americans (61 %) disagree that businesses would act ethically on their own without regulation from the government. White evangelicals (44 %) are more likely than Catholics (36 %), white mainline (33 %) or minority Christians (34 %) to say unregulated businesses would act ethically.
“The most idolatrous claim of the Christian right is that the invisible hand of the free market ... is none other than the hand of God,” Walsh said, “and any attempt to regulate the free market, according to this theology, belies a lack of faith in God.”
The Reverend Jennifer Butler, executive director of the Washington-based group Faith in Public Life, said the fact that religious values seem to trump political or class differences can help groups like hers advocate for the poor.
And in ongoing debates in Washington over the budget and cuts to domestic spending, that means “making the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay their fair share in taxes,” she said.
“People of faith have a unique ability to show political leaders that the economy is a moral issue,” she said. “Even some members of Congress are beginning to echo our argument that protecting the most vulnerable as we get out of debt is a moral duty.”
The PRRI/RNS Religion News Poll was based on telephone interviews of 1,010 U.S. adults between April 14 and 17. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
(End of the USA Today piece.)

...As far as my very extensive comment on it is concerned, I am referring my reader to the following postings on my blog (being excerpts from the section Capitalism and Christianity: A Contradiction in Terms of my book Nunc Dimittis), all published in January 2011:

For Whom The Closing Bell Tolls; Economics And Human Nature; and To Owe Or Not To Own.
There are also several aphoristic entries, themed Capitalism and Christianity: A Contradiction in Terms, in my blog posts Apte Dictum and More Apte Dictum.

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

(This entry’s title calls for an acknowledgement of Jules Verne’s book title of exactly the same name. As an adolescent, I used to love everything written by Jules Verne, and now the fact that I have a special fondness for this particular title of his, and for what it means in the context of my own book, gives me great pleasure today, to discover yet another connection with one of the dearest friends of my childhood.) By A Journey To The Center Of The Earth I mean going into the depth of things.

Whether we want it or not, whether we realize it or not, thinking is the essential part of our being. Each of us is, therefore, a philosopher, in a sense. The “sense” being that philosophers come in different shapes and shades. We can be good thinkers, awful thinkers, self-destructive thinkers, but always thinkers, throughout our conscious lives. For this reason, we must become aware of the fact that we think. We must think about thinking, and in the course of this book the subject of thinking has been constantly raised and prominently placed. Now, here is an intriguing question, whether the faculty of thinking can be dangerous to humanity, alongside with its incontestable benefits? For, thinking can turn us into sometimes benefactors, sometimes scourges of humanity? On this point, I can only say that free thinkers are always beneficial to humanity, it is the manipulator, the propaganda spinner, the agitator, the mind controller, in short, someone who wishes to prevent us from being our own thinkers, this jailer of the mind of humanity, who becomes the scourge.
Furthermore, I deem it necessary to highlight the key point here that it is not the thinking of evil thoughts, which harms humanity the most, but the act of submission of the follower’s mind to the mind of the leader, whether that leader is a saint or the devil himself.
Now, what can be wrong with someone following the saint, one may ask? Nothing wrong if the follower is a free thinker, who chooses to follow the saint as a matter of thoughtful principle, while maintaining complete intellectual independence. But not unthinkingly! For, it is easy for the devil to dress up as a saint, and thus to deceive his followers, without whose following he would never have become known as the prince of the world. Thus, it is not even the devil himself, but his dumb unthinking followers, who constitute the greatest evil of all. The evil of surrendered thought thus morally equates the manipulated with the manipulators, and condemns both to infamy.

But all free thinkers, whether they are constructive thinkers or destructive thinkers, as long as they think as individuals, and not as a political action group, who engage us in conversations about important things and thus help us develop our mental capacity, these are all good people, no matter what they actually say. They might say there is a god or that there is no god, they might say that the truth is so deadly that we ought not to seek it, or, contrarily, that the pursuit of truth is the only pursuit worth living and dying for, or they might tell us that any pursuit of happiness is a false pursuit, unless we define ‘happiness’ as something worthy of being pursued… whatever they say, they are our friends, but on this one condition always: that they do not become a substitute god, an absolute authority, ipse dixit, but always encourage us to think for ourselves.

Talking of the devil, as we have in this entry, here comes a quaint philosophical paradox, which serves as a reminder of sorts that in the context of infinite eternity, where time and space carry no weight, our sense of direction inevitably becomes confused as well. Ordinarily, we look up to the heavens for God and imagine Hell, and its master residing in it somewhere down there, deep near the center of the earth. Yet, the blessing of thinking goes directionally down, in-depth, and in this entry’s title I metaphorize the best type of thinking-- which is philosophical thinking-- as a journey to the center of the earth, that is, presumably, to exactly the same place, or nearby, where the devil dwells.
What can I say, except that the devil is a tricky fellow, who used the lure of “knowledge-as-power” to coax the hapless Adam and Eve couple into an act of disobedience against God. Alas, Adam was not a powerful thinker, and he could be rather easily brainwashed by Eve, whereas it required the persuasive powers of the serpent himself to sway the lady… A note to the wise!
Now, concerning the devil being a tricky fellow, what prevents him then from dressing up as a saint, to lead us astray up into the rarefied air on top of the mountain, where we find it so difficult to exercise our thinking powers and easily fall victim to his guiles. This is what regrettably happens in most modern mega-churches, where the pastors, taking the faithful on an expensive whirlwind tour of the heavens, create a make-believe rapture caused by an induced atrophy of the thinking capacity… To tell you the truth, I would rather keep my thinking ability intact, with neither the devil nor the saint standing between me and God, who, I am sure, can be found irrespective of the up-down directionality and rather deep down there than at the dizzy heights, where our good senses are bound to freeze over.

...Coming back to our journey into the depth of things, I wish to repeat my praise of the independent thinker as-such. His difference from a philosopher-genius is quantitative, more than qualitative. Both have been on the same trip to the center of the earth, and differ only in how deep each of them has managed to descend.

TALENTS ARE US?

Do our talents determine what we are? Among other things, this entry is an indirect reflection upon one of Nietzsche’s particularly subtle and thought-provoking aphorisms: “Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.”
(Incidentally, Nietzsche is not complete, when he says that good memory is a hindrance to original thinking, because we can see such hindrance also in bad memory, when we are nearly quoting some great thinker and, in the process, forget that it is his, and not our own thought. Now if both good memory and bad memory are at fault here, what does it say about all other pitfalls in store for the original thinker?)
In the historical fantasy-movie Gladiator Richard Harris’s philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius says to his unworthy son Commodus (who has none of his father’s love for wisdom, that void being filled, instead, with naked ambition): “Your failure as a son is my failure as a father!” In the movie, Marcus Aurelius deals with this failure by deciding to disinherit Commodus, yet he commits a deadly error of judgment underestimating his son’s ambition, and, by forewarning him of his intention, precipitates parricide. In the historical records, the real Marcus Aurelius comes out even more blind and undiscerning and raising some serious doubt about the practical value of all his wisdom, as he is, apparently, content in appointing his insane and unpredictably tyrannical son Commodus as the co-ruler of Rome, to be soon thereafter officially renamed (fortunately, not for too long) Colonia Commodiana,--- one the worst breaches of historical propriety and decency ever.

This little mix of fantasy and history is now directing us to a more general question of why would someone, like Commodus, choose not to take after his philosopher-father Marcus Aurelius, but, instead of gratifying his ego in intellectual pursuits, would prefer physical activity to the insane extreme of becoming a gladiator and a lion-fighter, and in that process comparing himself to Hercules, the strongest, but also the dumbest, of all Graeco-Roman heroes? I can now paraphrase the Nietzschean maxim that opens this entry, by rephrasing the previous question into whether it is possible that many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his physique is too good?
Commodus’ athletic ability must have been well above the average, rousing his self-pride in this particular type of talent, while dimming the lights on all other pursuits, where his skills had not been as outstanding. There is nothing shameful in becoming an athlete, rather than a philosopher, or a man of science, if that is what one is the best at: after all the Biblical Parable of the Talents teaches us to capitalize on our God-given abilities, rather than to seek after other men’s pursuits, no matter how lofty and commendable.
The ancients saw it in the same way. Hercules was never too bright, yet his dimwittedness did not disqualify him from becoming a great hero by virtue of his physical strength alone. Aphrodite’s supreme beauty let her win the famous brainwashing contest, with Paris as the mark, against her super-brainy rival Athena, despite her manifest intellectual handicap, by capitalizing on her greatest talent, her beauty, and allowing it to guide her intuition, appealing to Paris’s weakness, rather than to his manly soldierly ambition, in a situation where even the consummate divine logic was fated to be vanquished by pure earthly lust.
In this context, the question of prioritizing our talents, and taking advantage of our strongest advantage, is coming to the fore, which leads me back to Nietzsche’s aphoristic pearl. One of his best-known assertions is that of the intellectual superiority of the “original thinker” over the epitome of intellectual prowess, that is, the scholarship of the scientist. Are we then to conclude, on the basis of his remarks, that a good memory is a boon to the scholar, but a bane to the thinker? I am willing to admit that this, indeed, may be the case.

By the same token, the future of chess, as a game of human minds, depends on the eventual outcome of the ongoing Man-against-Machine match-up which can be properly likened to a superiority contest between the original thinker, here in the person of Man, versus the scientist, here adequately “personified” by the mighty machine. Even the best human brain, when functioning as a well-organized mechanism, a smartly-designed arrangement of gray/white cells, stands no chance against the much superior scientific memory, contained in the electronic brain of the machine. There is only one way for us, humans, to win, and that is by countering the ironclad scientific predictability of science with the unscientific unpredictability of the original thinker!

…Imagine identical twins getting married and moving out of their parents’ house, to live under the different roofs of their respective husbands. We now continue the discussion on the defining properties of our natural talents, and on their development, under the circumstances of our individual lives. Almost identical in making the same point, that our talents determine what we are, the legitimate reason for keeping these two entries apart is that the first is fashioned as a variation on a Nietzsche theme, while the present one is cooked up, Iron Chef-style, featuring as its key ingredient a passage from Dèscartes spiced up with a pinch of Karl Marx.
Here is that promised passage from Dèscartes' Method, Book I:
"Good Sense, or Reason, is by nature equal in all men, and the diversity of our opinions consequently does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of Reason than others but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to possess a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it."
How does this Cartesian wisdom relate to the famous dictum of Karl Marx: “Das Sein (or Dasein, meaning the circumstances of being) bestimmt das Bewußtsein (determines the consciousness)”? The fact that we do “conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects” can mean exactly those differences in the circumstances of life. No doubt that Dèscartes looks at this matter through a very different prism, than Karl Marx, but what I am driving at is that their two angles lend themselves to “harmonization,” and this aspect is interesting enough, to keep thinking about.

Returning to the different personas of Commodus and Marcus Aurelius, as depicted in the movie Gladiator, the question is, why do bad apples happen to a good tree? Is it peer pressure from other trees’ bad apples, or what?
I will repeat, that peer pressure has little to do with it. Commodus of history was obviously very well-built, and physically fit, which tempted him (insanity a contributing factor, rather than the underlying reason) to challenge gladiators and lions in the Colosseum arena. Had he been less physical, the attraction of martial excellence should not have had such power over him, that he would want to spend most of his time in this particular type of activity. Had he been a physically-inadequate nerd, philosophical contemplations might perhaps have had more charm for him, and he might have even been able to discover in his soul something that would have been more in tune with his father’s intellectual pursuits. Or, even had he been of average built and athletic ability, he might have found more time and pleasure in reading books and in listening to his Greek tutors. But like a talented musician from tender age spends four to six hours a day practicing his skill in the art, at the expense of other interests and occupations, so does the athlete of excellence employ himself in accordance with his inclination. Again, the main reason for my repetitive interest in the person of Marcus Aurelius’s son, in this entry, is that it has a most direct connection, in my mind, to what Dèscartes is saying, in the passage above.

THE GOOD HISTORIAN

In his Antiquities of Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus writes: "History is philosophy teaching by examples." I cannot agree more, as long as it is understood, that we are talking about the best of what we call history. It must also be noted that the factual veracity of the historical account is not a necessary requirement for our historian. Herodotus is a historian of genius not for telling us the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but as an exceptional supplier of meaningful historical examples, which have become the perennial fodder for the philosopher-teacher. The question of factual veracity is by no means a moot matter. History is replete with errors and deliberate falsehoods. Recording it, with a naïve belief in its truthfulness, perpetuates the lie, and makes the straight historian an unwitting accomplice in the crime thus committed. In my entry Historian And The Poet, I look at Schopenhauer’s distinction between the two, in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, #51, where the poet is pronounced superior to the historian for several obvious reasons (see that entry), and find Schopenhauer right in his description of a bad historian, whereas in my notion, the good historian is a creator and, yes, a poet himself, rather than a recorder, the thought having been expressed by Nietzsche, but certainly finding its source in this passage from Schopenhauer! (Here is the passage itself, in shortened form, given here for reference: "That which is significant in itself is found far more accurately in poetry than in history and thus however paradoxical it sounds, far more really genuine truth is to be attributed to poetry than to history.
For the historian must accurately follow the particular event, according to life, as it develops itself in time in the manifold tangled chains of causes and effects. It is, however, impossible that he can have all the data for this; he cannot have seen it all and discovered it all. He is forsaken at every moment by the original of his picture, or a false one substitutes itself for it, and this so constantly, that I may assume that in all history the false outweighs the true. The poet, on the contrary, comprehends the Idea of Man from some definite side, which is to be represented; thus it is the nature of his own self, which objectifies itself in it for him. His knowledge is half a priori; his ideal stands before his mind firm, distinct, brightly illuminated, and cannot forsake him; therefore, he shows us the Idea pure and distinct, and his delineation of it is true, as life itself. The great ancient historians are, therefore, poets." Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, #51)
When Nietzsche talks about the only type of good historian, the one, who not just records history, but also makes it, he rightfully discerns the creative aspect of being a political scientist and a political philosopher in the best and, perhaps, the only true sense of the word. One must always have a nose for the truth, and an imagination to look for it in strange places.
There is another alleged aspect of the good historian, as stated by Polybius, and reiterated by Lucian:
"It is natural for a good man to love his country and his friends, and to hate the enemies of both. But when he writes history he must abandon such feelings, and be prepared to praise enemies who deserve it, and to censure the dearest and most intimate friends." (Polybius, Histories, I)
Lucian is even more uncompromising:
"He should know in his writings no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king." (Lucian, How History Should be Written.)
Seeing the valid point of them both, in the quoted passages, I still wonder, whether they have gone too far, in denying the good historian a healthy measure of prejudice for his own "volk" and "Reich," if not always for his "Führer." After all, Stalin would seriously contradict them both, in describing history as a class concept, written by the ruling classes, and from their perspective, and Stalin did know a thing or two about the real life, as opposed to wishful thinking.
But returning to the good historian, does he really have to be a mirror rejecting all teleology, affirming as little as he is denying, in the sarcastic words of Nietzsche’s Genealogie (III-26)? One does not have to be a Sybel or a Treitschke, of Nietzsche’s ridicule, in Jenseits-251, to be a nationalist-historian without being a nationalist bigot. The examples of the greatest Russian historians: Karamzin, Solovyev, Klyuchevsky, plus Zabelin, Kostomarov, and others, show us that it is possible for a historian to be unabashedly patriotic, yet superlatively professional, and almost poetically all-encompassing and complete. Of course, these Russian historians were all historiographers of Russia, putting their motherland at the center of the universe by the virtue of their set task. None of them set out to write an objective history of the entire world, down to their contemporary times, which only an arrogant German scholar, like Dr. Jäger or Dr. Ranke, could venture. The best Weltgeschichte is always necessarily a derivative work. All original history must be both native in origin and thoroughly, poetically subjective.

READING BOOKS!

Spontaneous Generation And The Origins Of Thinking.
I have devoted several entries to the subject of the origin of thoughts, starting with a tongue-in-cheek look at the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, which can be derived from the following Nietzsche comment, discussed in the entry When I Think That I Think:
"A thought comes when it wishes, not when I wish, so that it is a falsification of fact to say that the subject I is the condition of the predicate think." [From Nietzsche’s Jenseits (17).]
The counterhypothesis that our thoughts may have fathers, while our minds serve as mothers, is presented in such entries as Reading Books and Genius: The Question Of Gender, to which I am summarily directing my reader. In this entry here, I am putting up front and center my idea that some thoughts, even if they may not be great of themselves, may still serve as “fathers” to greater ideas, by the same token as in human history so many relatively undistinguished fathers have given birth to timeless geniuses:
Nota bene: a great thought does not have to be useful in the utilitarian, or even in a constructive sense, when its greater purpose, and therefore, all the legitimacy it requires, comes from being a stimulant for other great thoughts. In fact, I can go further, suggesting to you, and to myself, that it is much more difficult to generate good ideas ex nihilo, than to have them begotten in the course of a conversation, or by parent ideas, which of themselves can be below par, or otherwise totally undistinguished…

Inside The Mind Of A Genius.
Michael Corleone, of the Godfather fame, makes the point that the key to success in every situation is being able to think like the other people think. Aside from all sorts of social interaction, the Godfather kind, or the more general sort, occurring in our everyday lives, this essential idea can be carried over into the sphere of pure intellectualism in its uppermost reaches. The case in point is our understanding of genius. Is it possible for us to think like a genius thinks?
My answer is: yes, it is possible! Our genius friend has already opened the door into his mind for us, leaving us with his writings. As we are reading these, the only thing required of us to get into his mind is to realize that what we are reading is precisely such a door, and from here on, to start thinking accordingly.
How often when trying to get from point A to point B are we so deeply engrossed in our mission that we fail to notice the gorgeous scenery on the way from A to B, as well as a host of other interesting things? By the same token, whenever we are reading works of genius, we are too often preoccupied with the subject of the reading, which is, of course... ourselves. It is necessary, then, to try to be less vain and presumptuous, and to start identifying ourselves with our genius writer, and this should allow us to follow the path of his thought, along the intricate way, which leads right into the mind of the genius, allowing us to experience the feeling of his thought,--- the only possibility to ever reach our destination.

Genius: The Question Of Gender.
Having pronounced the original mind of an independent thinker to be the mark of genius (in a bit broader than customary definition of genius), I am ready to move on to a number of intriguing questions, some of them apparently demented (a certifiable wackiness of genius is historically and universally recognized, so there should be little surprise if the questions about genius would fall into the same category), immediately rising in this connection.
What is the gender of a genius? Perhaps, this is not such an idiotic question, as it appears at first sight. On the contrary, it is so deeply philosophical that it approaches that common gray area of the mind where the greatest wisdom is indistinguishable from the rants of insanity, from the opposite side. The greatest of all undiluted philosophers, Nietzsche, has been there, and done that! And so, not only is he our consummate authority on the subject, but the magnificent question itself on the gender of genius, originates with him as well. According to Nietzsche’s Jenseits (248):
"There are two types of genius: one, which above all, begets and wants to beget, and another, which prefers being fertilized and giving birth. These two types of genius seek each other, like man and woman, but they also misunderstand each other, like man and woman."
This thought about genius being either male or female, engenders thanks to Nietzsche a whole intriguing line of priceless philosophical inquiry. He himself, however, stops short of making his argument complete. There are several interesting possibilities here, to account for the distinction of the desires to beget, and to give birth. One of them, that our genius may be ambigenous, if I am allowed this cryptic pun, or putting it in simpler words, bisexual, in the sense of being capable of both types of reproduction.
Such a possibility makes it not two, but three types of genius, the third, more comprehensive and complete than the other two.
This discussion reminds me of my epigram in Apte Dictum:
“Perfect conversation is such that produces the magic click in our mind, the click that opens the floodgate of free uninhibited thought and generates ideas. Perfect conversation is a mental sexual act.”
The inference here is that, reproductively-speaking, conversation is a two-way street, where begetting and giving birth are mutually complementary activities. (Which harmonizes with my other epigram of similar nature: “Besides action and reaction, there is also interaction.”)
There is nothing demeaning, of course, nothing perverse or unnatural in the combination of the two desires: to beget and to give birth, as they are judged in the context of mental activity. One of the highest paragons of masculinity in the history of human culture Zeus, has begotten infinite myriads of sons and daughters, but he has also sort of ‘given birth’ to his daughter Athena, even though it may be argued that the circumstances of Athena’s birth do not qualify Zeus as a mother. However, the very fact that the great and mighty Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was born out of Zeus’s head, could be accepted as a metaphor for precisely that kind of mental reproduction that we are talking about in this connection.
As a matter of fact, we should wonder about the mental condition of any kind of genius who would wish to beget without the simultaneous desire to be fertilized, and, perhaps, vice versa. Something might be wrong with such a discriminating genius! Here I am inclined to disagree with Nietzsche’s either-or classification of genius gender, which implies otherwise.

Reading Books!
There is a certain embarrassing temptation, when I am challenged by an intellectual outburst, which goes to an extreme to make its point, to underestimate the intelligence of the other party, and thus, to miss entirely this rather uncommon type of subtlety, where the thinker does not expect you to take him too literally, that is, one-dimensionally; and the trap into which you have fallen to reveal to the world, and then, eventually, to yourself, how dumb you are, is completely of your own making.
The following extract from Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo: Why I am so clever, Section 8, is of that tricky nature, and almost pushed me into a posture of defending the “reading of books,” before I realized how ridiculous such posture would be. Here it is:
"Another counsel of prudence and self-defense is to react as rarely as possible, and to avoid situations and relationships that would condemn one to suspend one’s freedom and initiative and become a mere reagent. As a parable I choose association with books. Scholars who at bottom do little nowadays but thumb books, philologists, at a moderate estimate, about 200 a day, ultimately lose entirely their capacity of thinking for themselves. When they don’t thumb, they don’t think. They respond to a stimulus (which is a thought they have read) whenever they think; in the end they do nothing, but react. Scholars spend all their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought: they themselves no longer think."
Reaction is, of course, a negatively-charged word in the sense that Nietzsche uses it. It is unbecoming for an original thinker to be a reagent. But engaging oneself in what I call a “perfect conversation” with a brilliant interlocutor should hardly mean being reactive, inasmuch as we are extremely selective choosing only those thoughts of the other party that resonate in a certain way with our own, original thoughts. The key word here is commonsense, meaning a balance. Action and reaction are both quite commendable, when they represent a healthy mix: action without reaction means ignorance, which Nietzsche himself denies, as he stresses the importance of reading for himself. In our sensual perception of reality, we never see our first impressions and experiences as reactive. Thus, reading books truly becomes a two-way street, unless we allow the other party, especially, a brilliant and powerful thinker, like Nietzsche, to control us, in which case our reading does become reactive, submissive, and, as such, clearly undesirable. But if this author is only a distinct part of our sensual experience, or a fellow conversationalist, whom we prefer to the small-talkers of everyday occurrence, then this is healthy. In other words, aside from action and reaction, there has to be such a thing as interaction!
Compare this to Schopenhauer’s skepticism regarding reading as “thinking with somebody else’s head…” Yet another hyperbole, not to be taken too literally!
Another take on Nietzsche’s ‘action-reaction’ thinking is contained in this fragment of a sentence in Ecce Homo, The Birth of Tragedy, Section 4: “the unlimited power to learn, without damage to the will to act.” This speaks to my concern about his opposition of the two principles (action and reaction) which need to be harmonized, rather than placed in opposition, and raises the interesting question, whether learning is indeed a reaction (which would then be consistent with the fragment quoted here), or a special form of action, as I see it, namely, interaction. This argument leads me to an improvement on my own thoughts, in this regard. There can be actually two distinct types of learning: defective learning, where the teacher (or the writer of the textbook) is in control, and the correct type of learning, where the student (or the reader) is himself (or herself) firmly in control.
This does not, however, eliminate, in its totality, the indisputable conflict that exists between learning and acting, the former being an inhibitory factor to the latter. This conflict ought to be recognized, but happily accepted, as providing a useful check on the will to act, which if left unrestrained will be eager to forsake all wisdom, and eventually fall victim either to a stronger will, or else… to the indomitable powers of fate, that is, to a set of unforeseen circumstances.
This theme reminds me of the Kantian aprioris: synthetic and analytical… thinking. Are we thinking with our own head, or with someone else’s head, when we are exposed to the great thinkers of the past, reading books? The question has to be silly: the real issue here is a proper ratio between the intake and the release. Original and derivative thinking. It is clear to me that one person cannot be a Janus-like amalgamation of the two. He is either demonstrably original or hopelessly derivative, whether he analyzes or synthesizes. In other words, the original thinker can function in various modes: active (corresponding to the Nietzschean male), reactive (the Nietzschean female), and interactive (my “ambigenous genius”), but, even at his most passive, he never becomes a derivative thinker! This settles the question, as far as I am concerned.
...Besides action and reaction, there is also interaction... Among several things to consider further, may be this expansion of my aphorism: “When you are young, you react, when you are older, you act, when you are old (a reflection of wisdom, rather than senility), you interact.” By interaction, in this last case, I mean primarily the descent to the world of the no-longer-living, to communicate, as I myself love to do, with the magnificent shadows, who are yet more alive in their peaceful eternity than all the living of our day, put together.
…So much for reading books!

Masters, Not Followers!
Continuing our discussion of learning and reading, as functions of an original, rather than derivative, mind (the latter being of no interest to us so far, till we get to the subject of charlatans and experts), here is what Nietzsche says in VERMISCHTE MEINUNGEN UND SPRÜCHE  (#341):
“Not as apprentices do, loves a master a master.”
Compare this to Dèscartes’ admonition to his disciples not to become a parasitic vine around the master tree. Here is that famous metaphor from Dèscartes’ Book VI of the Method. He compares the followers of great philosophers, unlike pioneers, charting their own course in thinking, to “the ivy which never strives to rise above the tree that sustains it, and which frequently even returns downwards when it has reached the top; (meaning those) who, not contented with knowing all that is intelligibly explained in their author, desire, in addition, to find in him the solution of many difficulties, of which he says not a word, and never perhaps so much as thought. Their fashion of philosophizing, however, is well suited to the persons whose abilities fall below mediocrity; for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles of which they make use enables them to speak of all things with as much confidence as if they really knew them.”
As I say in one of my aphoristic statements, the one and only subject taught in class by a great instructor is himself. In practical terms, this means, that the master student is never a slave of his teacher’s vision of the science he teaches, but he is a pioneer explorer in his own right, always charting his own course in a chosen field, which he must necessarily appropriate as his exclusive private possession. This is what distinguishes a master, as opposed to a follower. And so, here is another exceptional quote from the Cartesian Collection of wisdom:
“My design is not to teach the Method, which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe the way, in which I have endeavored to conduct my own.” (Method, Book I)
This is in ideal harmony with Nietzsche’s “master’s love for a master” contrasted to the dogged dependence of a follower. A huge ramification of this idea is that, in any philosophical understanding of Dèscartes, his insistence on the subjective individuality of himself, as well as of any independent method of philosophical inquiry, must be taken literally, and his unique contribution to philosophy must only be assessed in the light of this statement. What he does, in essence, is making a forceful repudiation of any claim to the universality of his philosophy. It is in line with my general views on the revaluation of the history of philosophy. Only a mediocrity who cannot create a method of his own, can claim universality on behalf of his master, so that he can further claim his own shabby rendering of the master’s philosophy as his own unique contribution to the humanity’s never-ending quest after Universal Truth.
It is on account of such derivative geniuses that George Bernard Shaw is attacking the teaching profession, in his previously quoted wicked witticism: “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” And, by the same token as not every learner is an ape, not every teacher is a failed doer, either, although the incidence of the Nietzschean master on either side, in the actual classroom, is, indeed, very rare.

GAGARIN

12 April 2011.
An event took place fifty years ago, which is today celebrated all over the world, being declared by the UN “The International Day of Human Space Flight.” Google celebrated it too, by putting up the graphics of a space helmet with the letters “CCCP” (“USSR”) on it, and a rocket blasting into space, in the background.
Fifty years ago the USSR was the superpower of the Sputnik and the superpower of Gagarin, while America was the superpower of JFK’s cosmic vision, which would later triumph as Apollo, after the name of the god of light in Ancient Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization.
Then, twenty years ago, the USSR was declared non-existent, and with it the Soviet superpower was gone. I understand why America immediately started pretending that there was nothing “superpowerful” left in the geographical space vacated by the now defunct USSR, and I also understand why the Russians pretended that America was perfectly right to claim it. The temptation of calling oneself "the only remaining superpower" was too great for America, while the Russians, with their excellent nose for history were probably smelling a new “French Revolution” in the post-Soviet air, and had learned from Philippe Égalité that in such times it was wiser not to claim yourself as royalty, but to claim to be "one of the people." The poor French prince's mistake, for which he was guillotined all the same, was that he did not just renounce royalty, but effectively stopped being royalty, swimming with the current, but having no control over its course. Whereas the Russians were very much in control... and besides, there was no power in the world that could chop off their head.
…As we are looking at the world today, we see a certain nuclear superpower (which seems to have cornered the world’s nuclear market)… but, God forbid, not a superpower-superpower! A certain energy superpower (which has cornered the world’s energy market)… but, God forbid, not a superpower-superpower! A certain space superpower (which has monopolized the world’s space market, and starting this year becomes the one and only country capable of launching man into space)… but, God forbid, not a superpower-superpower!!!
On the other hand, the only remaining superpower-superpower, which was once ready to spend millions to be the first on the moon, today has to depend on her former rival’s good graces to continue her severely cut space exploration program, as it has been spending trillions on projects like Iraq and Afghanistan, and these days the Libyan rebels, none of whom can either lift her into outer space, or solve her down-to-earth energy problems, or at least elevate her international image and improve her geopolitical standing in the world.

The title of my entry is Gagarin, but I shall not be rehashing the all-too-well known facts about the first man in space. Gagarin in this case is a reminder, a codeword for a certain country, which is no longer counted as superpower royalty, but which, judged by what is being said, and not being said, about her in the American media, apparently still strikes so much fear in the hearts of her erstwhile adversaries that she has effectively become a ghost from the world beyond, a “She Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.”
So, let us today, just for this one day, call her “Gagarin.”

SAMSON THE SUICIDE BOMBER

This entry is by no means an affirmative statement of any kind. It is rather an intellectual challenge, posing a question which is not expected to be answered.

St. Augustine, who deemed suicide so evil that he chastised hapless Lucretia for having killed herself after being raped, made an exception for Samson, whose ‘suicide’ was not a sin, but a glorious death, eminently justified by the destruction of so many enemies of Israel, whom he had no other means of defeating, except by destroying himself in the first place.
What a stinging historical irony! The Jew Samson, suicide-murderer of unsuspecting Philistine civilians... My parallel with our modern times must already have occurred to the reader, the parallel in reverse. These days, it is the Palestinian suicide bomber, the Philistine, who destroys unsuspecting Jewish civilians, using the very same rationale which Samson had used, and St. Augustine had so gloriously exonerated… Would the great Saint have condoned it in this case too?…

HEROES AND MARTYRS

Genius As A Hero.
Is genius a hero? The last time we talked about genius, we have concluded that there is a certain connection here, although, perhaps, not all that obvious. There are certain types and instances of genius, which instantly qualify as bona fide heroes in the traditional sense, but, on the other hand, there are those who cannot be so identified without some special qualification. Bach was a genius, but his life seems far from being heroic. In another example, Leibniz was a bona fide genius, yet in life an unpleasant, perhaps, even a petty man, as far from being a hero as one can imagine. So, what is the verdict?
Realizing the acute exceptionality of genius, it is, probably, necessary to expand the common understanding of the heroic, in order to put the sign of equivalency between the two. After all, the superhuman drive which characterizes genius (remember the previously quoted spectacular definition of genius, in the Last Words of Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton: "Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can!!!") is in itself an indication that genius and the heroic are inextricably related. Archimedes was a genius of science, but not a recognizable hero until the moment of his death, when he showed his fearlessness of physical extinction, but defended his compulsion to finish the work that he had been doing at the time.
Thus I am certain that any genius under the appropriate circumstances will perforce reveal his heroic nature, and it is only the question of whether such circumstances present themselves or not. To make this even more clear, every genius carries within him the seed of the heroic, and just like with any genuine hero his heroism is revealed when, and only when, if at all, the circumstances dictate it.

The Making Of A Hero.
Having talked a lot about heroes in this section, it is time for us to let the Advocatus Diaboli take the floor.
They say that one man’s terrorist is another man’s hero. But is martyrdom of a hero a sign of his strength or his weakness? This is not just a crass question, intended to shock, rather than inviting to think. Here is one of Nietzsche’s perhaps profoundest insights into human nature (Menschliches, 73):

“The martyr against his will.--- In one party, there was a man who was too anxious and cowardly ever to contradict his comrades. They used him for every service; they demanded everything of him, because he was more afraid of the bad opinions of his companions than of death itself… His was a miserable, weak soul. They recognized this, and on the basis of those qualities they made him first into a hero, and finally into a martyr. Although the cowardly man always said “no” inwardly, he always said “yes” with his lips, even on the scaffold, when he died for the views of his party. Next to him stood one of his old comrades, who tyrannized him so by word and glance that he really did suffer death in the most seemly way, and has since been celebrated as a martyr and a man of great character.”

Heroism, especially in our day of suicide bombers becoming the rule, rather than an exception, raises the question of whether indeed it comes from inner strength, or from the exact kind of weakness described by Nietzsche here. I would venture to suggest that among these men and women we could find a few who are doing this out of sheer heroism (wherever such is their way of fighting against the injustices done to their respective nations, in which case their martyrdom becomes an expression of patriotism, that is, upholding the perceived interests of their nations above the value of their own lives), but an overwhelming majority of these martyrs are committing such acts apparently for the reasons noted by Nietzsche, especially among those martyrs, whose nation is not directly affected by an occupation, or a similar abuse on the part of their enemies.

ARMIES OF ONE

The following are excerpts from the section The Genius and the Scholar of my book Nunc Dimittis---

Here Comes The Genius.
They say that geniuses are born only once in a generation, and that goes not even for every great nation in its own right, but for the whole of humanity, which, incidentally, gives us no account for Shakespeare and Galileo, Bach and Handel, Hegel and Beethoven, or Wagner and Verdi, each pair born in the same year, not even to mention Michelangelo and Raphael, Goethe and Schiller, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and scores of others born to the same nation and to the same vocation, and separated in time by just a handful of years.
Not that we should swing to the other extreme, for sure, like Lichtenberg, jokingly suggesting that at least once a year everybody is a genius. Nor can we say that the truth is somewhere in between the two extreme points, for it is possible for a generation or two, or maybe even more, to pass without a genius born to them. There is no law of nature or any demonstrable causality to relate genius to the timeline of history. Had there been such a law, I would imagine it would have stipulated genius showers somehow occurring more during tragic times, rather than during the times of prosperity, but luckily, in its absence, I do not have to defend my rather shaky proposition. It comes out of equating genius with the heroic, and therefore, tragic, according to Nietzsche, but genius, of course, carries his own heroism around with him, and thus creates tragedy equally, whether in war or in peace.
What follows from all this is that perhaps the incidence of genius is as random and unpredictable, as genius itself. But what do we know about genius in the first place, how do we define what we are talking about?
Leaving aside the apparent platitude that it takes a genius to discern a genius, let us attempt to probe into the mysterious nature of genius. According to Edgar Allan Poe, who was a dark genius in his own right, “What the world calls a genius is the state of mental disease, arising from the undue predominance of some one of the faculties.” It is not surprising, with this definition, that Poe should go further, to claim that men of genius are far more abundant than is supposed. I am more impressed though with the less macabre representation of genius in John Stuart Mill’s treatise On Liberty, where he says:
“Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than other people and less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of molds society provides, in order to save its members the trouble of forming their own character.”
It would, therefore, seem much more practical than tinkering with the mystery of genius to make its narrow definition a matter of personal opinion, while accepting as a working definition of genius the restless spirit who is extremely uncomfortable inside the box assigned to him by society and at the same time is obsessed with the pursuit of his life-idea. In this sense I could go further than J. S. Mill, who, in the same treatise On Liberty, talks, rightly so, about genius being only able to “breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.” In my opinion, genius, indeed, needs social freedom, to pursue his idea, but he is far from being free himself, being possessed by it, like no slave has ever been possessed by his master.
But whatever genius is, it accounts for an exceptional personality, which stands out of the anthill, to which it was born and well justifies the creation of this special section dealing with the phenomenon of the exception as opposed to the previous section on society, dealing with the phenomenon of the rule.

Here Comes The Schoolman.
It would be inexcusable to drop the subject of genius after so many questions have been left hanging in the preceding entry, and rest assured that this subject has not been dropped. After all, our sectional title has the word genius prominently featured in it, which means that we will be returning to it again and again. As soon as the present sectional preamble is finished, we will continue the general discussion started in Here Comes The Genius, right where we left off.
The word schoolman in the title is a throwback to the old section title The Genius And The Schoolman that has long since been changed. There is a good reason, though, for me not to change it here. The “schoolman” of (502) is by no means identical to the “teacher” of (504). In order to avoid any unnecessary confusion on this account, I was almost tempted to rename my schoolman as the scientist. I was quick to realize however that this would have led to several other confusions, seriously distorting my original purpose, which I could not allow to happen. Therefore, any potential remaining confusion between the schoolman and the teacher is regrettably unavoidable, unless and until I might figure out something else in the future.
The personality of the schoolman is contrasted with that of the genius, but this does not mean that there is a contrast here between the extraordinariness of the one and the ordinariness of the other. The schoolman is also an exceptional person, and, just as the genius, and, perhaps, with an even greater public recognition, is standing out of the anthill, to which he was born, or in which he resides.
He is a scientist, a scholar, a researcher, and an educator. The question is, why do I call him the schoolman? In Webster’s Dictionary, the primary meaning of ‘schoolman’ is “one of the medieval university teachers of philosophy, logic, and theology.” I confess, however, that the word itself comes from Hobbes, who uses it very unkindly, in reference to “deceived philosophers and deceiving Schoolmen,” such as in his Leviathan (I:3). Having fallen in love with the word ‘schoolman,’ thus acquired from Hobbes, I am however not using it in the Hobbesian sense until later in the section, but, for the time being, following Nietzsche’s distinction between the genius and the scholar in Jenseits-206, here quoted with several omissions in condensed form:
"Compared to a genius, that is to one who either begets or gives birth (for a clarification of this see my entry Genius: The Question Of Gender, later in this section), taking both terms in their most elevated sense, the scholar (or “schoolman,” in my current usage), the scientific average man, always rather resembles an old maid: like her, he is not conversant with the two most valuable functions of man. (Funny how in translation, the gender-neutral word Mensch mutates into an inferred masculinity, with a hilarious outcome in this case.) Let us look more closely, what is a scientific man? He has industriousness, patient acceptance of his place in rank and file, evenness and moderation in his abilities and needs; for example, that bit of independence and green pasture, without which there is no quiet work, that claim to honor and recognition, the sunshine of a good name, the constant attestation of his value and utility, which is needed to overcome, again and again, the internal mistrust, which is the sediment in the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals…" (I wonder, if being “dependent” in one’s Dasein debars an otherwise independent thinker? I don’t think so.)
…Brutally hurtful, in a less straightforward, but much more insulting, albeit not necessarily unfair, manner than Hobbes’s, the Nietzsche description of the scholar/scientific man (the English word scholar is used in lieu of such original German terms as Wissenschaftlicher Mensch and Gelehrte, but Nietzsche is not using them with any particular consistency throughout his writings, reflecting a certain equivocality, exhibited in the title of his Part Six of the Jenseits, for instance, which is Wir Gelehrten, or We Scholars, in the English translation) seems to bring my schoolman down to the level of all dependent men and herd animals, but it is not quite the case. It appears that the schoolman is not a qualitatively inferior species in Nietzsche, but it is basically a number of lower rungs in the ladder of exceptionality. The following passage in Wir Gelehrten, in Jenseits, makes this point the best: "People should finally stop confounding philosophical laborers, and scientific men generally, with philosophers. It may be necessary for the education of the true philosopher that he himself has also once stood on all these steps on which his servants are still standing. Perhaps, he himself must have been critic, and skeptic, and dogmatist, and historian and also poet, and collector, and traveler and solver of riddles and moralist and seer and free spirit and almost everything, in order to pass through the whole range of human values and value feelings, and be able to see with many different eyes and consciences. But all these are merely preconditions: his task demands that he create values.
Those philosophical laborers, after the noble model of Kant and Hegel, have to determine and press into formulas, whether in the realm of logic or political (moral) thought or art, some great data of valuations, that is, former positings of values, creations of value, which have become dominant and are, for the time, called truths. It is for them to make everything that has happened and been esteemed so far easy to look over, to think over, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate anything long, even time, and to overcome the entire past, -- an enormous and wonderful task. Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, thus it shall be!" (Jenseits, 211)

For more on the profound distinction between a genius and a scholar, this time the unlikely courtesy of Leo Strauss (!!!), here we are.---
Occasionally you can find spiritual and intellectual affinities in the most unlikely places. With my extremely negative attitude toward modern American neoconservative movement, who could ever suspect me of being able to write glowingly, and most positively, about the acknowledged founding pillar of the neoconservative ideology Leo Strauss?! And yet, this is exactly what I am doing, for if we can learn anything from history, it is that what has been always known to be a well established fact may in fact turn out to be a well established lie. In other words most things are not what they appear to be, and the case of Leo Strauss is one of them.
No discussion of the Genius and the Scholar can be complete without citing the opinion of the German-born Jewish-American political philosopher (he wisely calls himself a scholar, which, to him, is inferior to being a philosopher) Leo Strauss. It is that selfsame Leo Strauss who has been declared the spiritual father of the neoconservative movement in modern America, and who has also been suspected of fascist tendencies and a devilish attempt to take over power in the United States, using specific methods much reminiscent of those developed by… Vladimir Ilyich Lenin! We are not going to discuss these sinister plans and activities here, though, as our purpose in this entry is quite specific and limited, but we do have a separate entry for Strauss in the Tikkun Olam section, which I am presently sending my reader to, unless he/she still remembers it from earlier reading.
Insofar as our subject here is concerned, I find the view of Leo Strauss on the title difference of the present section remarkably in tune with my own thinking. This view is not original, of course, but well formulated. Strauss makes the distinction between a great thinker and a scholar to the effect that the great thinker is bold and creative, whereas the scholar is cautious and methodical. The thinker fearlessly takes on the world face to face and tackles the biggest problems there are in a groundbreaking and original manner. The scholar is a secondhand thinker, so to speak. He deals with the philosophical problems indirectly by describing the ideas presented by the thinkers, and comparing them in a critical and well organized fashion.
Well, my hat off to Leo Strauss (sic!) for his wonderful contribution to this section!

…It is now hopefully clear, what I meant by the original sectional title The Genius And The Schoolman, that this is by no means intended as a mocking disparagement of the Schoolman, but only to point out that I am thereby talking of the whole range of the ladder of exceptionality, from its lower rungs to the highest.
Having said that, nor does it mean that I am holding this ladder in such an awe that I would refrain from a scathing attack on the experts and academics, who have been enjoying the privileged status of exceptional worth, but, in effect, are charlatans and impostors, having gained unmerited access to the green pastures of intellectual labor. In this sense, the Hobbesian “deceiving Schoolman” is very much à propos.

Here Comes The Statesman.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a statesman is a person who shows wisdom and skill in conducting the affairs of the state, and in treating public issues, as well as one experienced or engaged in the business of government. I can imagine a wide range of talented amateurs-turned-statesmen, in many cases, “statesman” being an epithet bestowed on people quite liberally, who do not qualify as either geniuses or schoolmen, in the strict sense of these terms. Once again, however, this section is not about the narrow meanings of such words, but it covers an extended field of exceptionality, in contrast to the previous section on the Collective, where the field is the rule.
In my Collective entry Leaders and Followers, I may seem to have contradicted the opening paragraph of this entry with this closing thought there:
“My concluding thought is that, in the clear distinction between the exception and the rule, while the great leaders of history have indisputably been exceptional personalities, their personae have to be substantially different from the persona of a genius-recluse. The latter shuns the herd (which is by no means to suggest that he can subsist on his own), whereas the genius-leader cannot live without it.
However, in both these cases, we are looking at truly exceptional personalities, both possessed by genius. I must therefore reiterate that all other kinds of leaders, who are called geniuses just because those who call them so cannot correctly count the number of feet in a centipede (see the Lichtenberg aphorism above), do not qualify for the exceptionality status, and organically remain part of the herd.
We shall return to the leaders of genius in the next big section, but as for the rest of them, let them remain where they rightfully belong, in the Collective.”
There is no contradiction here, however, and the clue is my use of the word statesman, rather than leader, in this entry. Not every leader is a statesman, and, conversely, not every statesman is a leader of the masses, in the sense the word leader was used in that Collective entry. A non-genius statesman can be exceptional as a “schoolman,” that is, as an intellectual laborer, in which case he would be able to exhibit wisdom and skill in conducting state affairs and in treating public issues, but he should always experience discomfort in a public setting, where his leadership qualities are in demand.
In my judgment, only the genius leader enjoys his communion with the masses as he objectificates his will in those masses, in the idea of the state, and in what I have called the nation-idea, while a different type of creative genius objectificates his in the métier of his own creative vocation.
A non-genius statesman is incapable of such objectification. Therefore, as an exceptional personality, he is definitely incapable of honest enjoyment of any communion with the rule, the herd, which to him becomes synonymous with the mob, and must be forever frightening. He does not want to be anybody’s leader, and, by a logical progression, anybody’s follower, either. This aversion to being part of the herd is complicated under the conditions of an authentic totalitarian state, where even exceptional persons become followers of the totalitarian ideal, and their acceptance of the Führerprinzip, in which case they may become dedicated followers of the nation-state’s leader, has a different quality from that exhibited by the lovers of the follow the leader game, who are playing it for its own sake.
As for those millions of “leaders” who love to play the game for its own sake, and do not mind playing the follower, as long as they are, at the same time, allowed to be leaders of others, I have nothing but contempt for them, and to me, their positions of leadership have nothing extraordinary about them, and make them no more eligible for the exceptionality status than they would make any sheep that happens to find itself in front of a moving herd. (I have a particular disdain for all sorts of political activists and functionaries in a free society, where follow the leader turns into an ugly, dangerous game {see my entry Follow The Leader in the Collective section} employing certain elements of the totalitarian rule, but without any rationale for it, and with no redeeming value. I must confess, however, that this disdain is perhaps hypertrophied to a large degree, reflecting a personal prejudice on my part, but the danger to free society from these creatures hasn’t been that much exaggerated, particularly, in the light of fairly recent developments within American society, caused by what amounted to an attempted power grab by the George W. Bush Administration.)

Here Comes The Teacher.
Of all social occupations, none is of greater importance than that of the teacher. What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, writes Cicero, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation? (De Divinatione, II). However, the greater importance means the greater responsibility, and the expectation of excellence in teaching puts such a high onus on the teacher that no wonder that so few have measured up to the challenge, that the teacher has become the butt of numerous jokes, all boiling down to the assertion that the teacher is a failed and incompetent scholar. Compare this to George Bernard Shaw’s "He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches," or in exactly the same vein, Oscar Wilde’s "Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching."
Whether it is the pedantic intransigence of the academic tutor of yore, or sheer incompetence of the public school system in our modern mass society, the result is essentially the same. The teaching profession must have fallen so short of its billing that the end result is nothing better than scandalous.
The truth of the matter is that, as I wrote in my Teachers and Students entry, “education may be ‘public,’ in the sense that both the teacher and the student belong to the social aspect of schooling. However, teaching, at its best, is an utterly individualistic experience, a vigorous ‘chemical’ reaction between the educator and his ward, a communion of two vibrant minds of comparable value, one old and one young, both capable of independent thinking. It is now an experience qualitatively different from the situation in the ‘egalitarian’ classroom, where the genius and the idiot are treated the same, by law and by the rules.
“A passionately dedicated instructor must not fail to educate his students up-front on the general purpose of all instruction, which is not to indoctrinate, not to force knowledge on the student-victim of such scholarly aggression, but to inspire the student to think for himself, to facilitate his natural scientific curiosity, to let him become an explorer of terra incognita, rather than a follower in other people’s footsteps.”
I may be mocked on the premise that my Socrates-and-Plato, Aristotle-and-Alexander idyll must perforce be a long-lost fossil of a long-gone aristocratic past, but this is hardly the point. My “idyll” is by no means a historical anachronism, but a timeless combination of great professional competence, and proper mental attitude, in the exceptional personality of a teacher in search of a perfect student.
As for those teachers, for whom teaching is “just a job” or a vain power trip, of exercising control over their students, such teachers deserve no place among my exceptional personalities, and they should have no other distinction than their general membership in the herd.

Armies Of One.
Concluding my sectional preamble, this entry with the joking title parodying the well-known catch phrase “Army of One” extends the designation of exceptional personalities from ‘all of the above’ to any member of society who is even occasionally capable of exhibiting originality and independence of thinking.
Free thinking thus becomes my main criterion of exceptionality. No matter how many or few they are (but alas there are fewer of them than is generally recognized), independent thinkers are the gold reserve of any society, and, as such, merit the lofty distinction of being placed alongside the genius and the scholar. (I am intentionally using this unpretentious term in its straightforward sense, to avoid the irrelevant associations raised by the term schoolman.)
Freedom of Thought is by far greater than Freedom of Speech. What can be more silly, useless, and even dangerous than the freedom of ignorant speech? Have most of us ever considered the fact that the freedom of thought is never subject to political repression? There is always brainwashing and indoctrination going on in every society, both by the official agitprop, and by private groups, such as religious authorities, cults, bosses at the workplace, business and product advertisers, peer pressure, and what else not. Yes, plenty of brainwashing, but no repression of thought as such. The whole purpose of agitprop and brainwashing is in finding a substitute for repression in the area of thought where repression carries no power.
But free thought is a natural talent. If someone is brainwashed, it is not an indication of the strength of the oppression but of the weakness of the individual brain. Yes, there are leaders and followers born every day in about the same proportion both in the freest of the free, and in the most repressed nations on the face of the earth. There are also independent thinkers born to every nation, and, paradoxically, but, come to think of it, logically, free thinkers turn out the best and the greatest among the most repressed nations. (More on this, in my entry Freedom Thinkers in the Twilight section.)
There are two kinds of mental aptitude: one that discovers the new in the old (see Nietzsche’s great insight on originality in Vermischte Meinungen und Spruche: "Original: not that one is the first to see something new, but that one sees as new what is old, long familiar, seen and overlooked by everybody, is what distinguishes a truly original mind!"), which characterizes the original mind, and the other one, which seeks the old in the new, and characterizes the regular type. I must add, however, that each of us, no matter how brilliant and original we are, possesses this latter type of pattern-recognition capacity, allowing us to communicate with one another fairly adequately even under extremely adverse conditions, like, say, a bad telephone reception. It is however the original mind’s unique capacity to rise above the social utility of our pattern-recognition apparatus, forgoing those wonderful clear-sky communication skills for the cloudy menace of a gathering storm, where and only where, a sudden blinding flash of lightning accompanied by a thunderous burst of deafening noise, becomes possible, the primordial force, transforming a creature into a creator.

QURAN BURNING AND ITS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES

Everybody knows the cliché about the man crying “Fire!!!” in a crowded theater. Nobody in their right mind would ever blame the theater’s audience for going berserk after that. It was clearly the instigator’s crime, through and through.
There are laws in the United States and in all civilized countries to protect society against such maniacs. We are familiar with the legal definition and the legal consequences of “hate speech” and other cases of inciting violence. When I was younger, I used to be under the impression, long proven mistaken, that in America, at least, such laws surely offered sufficient protection against the most egregious offenses, such as the one that had been long in the making, in front of all of us, yet was allowed to be perpetrated, and, in all likelihood, will go unpunished, written off as “free speech,” while its horrific consequences already in evidence, will be felt and compounded for a long time to come.
Pastor Jones’ intent to burn the Quran had been made public a long time ago. His congregation had known about it, so had his fellow pastors, the National Association of Evangelicals, the whole American Christian community, the politicians, from the locals in Florida to the whole United States Congress, the media, both national and international, and, of course, the American public and the whole world.
Yet, he had not been stopped. Even worse, he must have been strongly encouraged, rather than discouraged, or, putting it mildly, placed in a safe mental institution.
The very unfortunate conclusion from all of this is quite obvious: there are extremely powerful forces in the United States today, for whom the current American presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is only a small part of a wholesale war against the Islamic world. It is a tragedy that apparently this demented and suicidal perception is the only big game in town, as everybody else holding a different opinion has offered nothing better than casual lip service to the opposite view.
It is also tragic that some very wrong conclusions have been drawn from the Quran burning incident and the reactive violence against the UN in Afghanistan. No, the burning of Islam’s Holy Book was not an instance of “religious intolerance.” It was clearly a criminal political act, provoking Moslem violence, in order to be able to raise the stakes exponentially, in the ongoing “war of civilizations.”
…I deeply regret President Obama’s inadequate reaction to the series of events started by the Florida Quran burning. To begin with, he called the burning “an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry,” certainly, a very bad understatement. He also said that it did not justify attacking and killing innocent people in Afghanistan, which effect, rather than the cause, he called “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity.”
The crazed reaction of the audience in the crowded theater to somebody crying “Fire!!!” could probably be also characterized as “outrageous and an affront to human decency and dignity,” as people go over the top, stepping on children and the elderly, to save themselves from a non-existent threat. You can say I am mixing apples and oranges, comparing the proverbial theater massacre to the real massacre in Afghanistan? To which I can only reply that the extent of the crime perpetrated by Pastor Jones with the complicity of the American establishment is much-much greater, on a global scale, than that of that miserable theater pervert. Yet Pastor Jones has been allowed to enjoy his celebrity status with impunity, while people have died, and more are to die, as a direct result of his monstrous action.

Mr. Putin certainly knew what he was talking about, and why, when he compared the latest Western military involvement in yet another Moslem country to a “medieval crusade.” After all, the former President George W. Bush was the first to talk about “crusades.” And, most regrettably, the current President Barack Obama has missed a perfect chance to clear the air in the crowded global theater, to let it be known that the theater was not on fire.