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.
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.
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