A POET AND A PROPHET

Continuing our Russian Nietzsche-admiration series from the last entry, we are looking at another example of his identification as a prophet and a poet. In order to understand what we are talking about, one must be familiar with Pushkin’s powerful poem The Prophet, where the poet, akin to the great Prophets of the Bible, is called up for the prophetic duty by an angel of God. The fact that Nietzsche is a consummate philosophical poet must be apparent to everyone who is reading his works. The fact that he is a mighty prophet, as well as a poet, is revealed by Nietzsche himself, in the person of Zarathustra. The Russian critical tradition has always identified Nietzsche with Zarathustra, the poet and the prophet. Not surprisingly, Nikolai Gumilev puts Nietzsche in one rank with Confucius, Muhammad, and Socrates, who are, to him, all poets and prophets.
The great Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky gives himself the highest praise in the following lines of his long poem A Cloud in Pants:

“Listen!

“He is prophesying, ranting and raving,

“Today’s shouting-lipped Zarathustra!”

He is comparing himself to Nietzsche here, through Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and not to the Persian prophet Zoroaster. All Russian literary critics writing about Mayakovsky emphasize Mayakovsky’s feeling of a very special affinity with Nietzsche, whom he considers as his precursor, a fellow revolutionary of the spirit.
I must again emphasize that Gumilev and Mayakovsky (to name the giants only) are not some isolated cases of Russian Nietzsche-philia. They are just two big examples of an incurable Nietzsche-philia as a congenital obsessive “disease” infecting the Russian Intelligentsia since well over a century ago.

NIETZSCHE THE HOLY FOOL

I have been saying all the time throughout these pages that Russia has a particular affinity with Nietzsche’s blessed spirit, and that I am apparently a part of that tradition. In today’s Russia, despite the cultural, social, economic, and political difficulties still experienced by the nation reeling from the cataclysm of the 1990’s, the typical Intelligent philosophizing is going on in full swing, and Nietzsche is of course second to none in the amount of attention given to him in the intellectual and philosophical circles.
Looking through the enormous amounts of Nietzsche-related philosophizing, I was especially struck by the curious comparison of Nietzsche to the historic Russian Yurodivy, the Holy Fool, made by the well-known modern Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Borisovich Mikushevich (born in 1936). It has been usual for the Russian Yurodivy to be perceived as not just ranting and raving like a lunatic, but doing it purposely, for a reason, like the best of the European court jesters were known to speak truth to power in an offensive and highly controversial manner. In Pushkin’s and Mussorgsky’s drama/opera Boris Godunov, the Yurodivy speaks one offense after another to Tsar Boris’s face, to all of which Boris replies by asking the Yurodivy to pray for him. To which the Yurodivy replies: “One must not pray for Tsar Herod, Mother of God forbids!”
Comparing Nietzsche to a Yurodivy is an immensely powerful comparison. It turns out, for Russian mystics (by no means for Mikushevich alone!), that Nietzsche is actually religiously akin to the great Prophets of the Bible, that his attack on Christianity is a Jesus-like attack on the Pharisees, that is, an attack on all religious hypocrisy, on behalf of Christianity. Nietzsche’s Antichrist is in fact a fighter for Christianity, perhaps, even Jesus himself!!!
Terribly interesting, I have looked through the Russian philosophical sites on Nietzsche, and they all seem to agree that Nietzsche as a moralist (or immoralist, if you like) is by no means a denouncer of morality, but, on the contrary, he is a warrior on behalf of morality, seeking its liberation from hypocrisy and coercion, calling for its purification. It is Nietzsche’s quest, the Russians argue, to make morality take root within one’s soul, rather than being imposed on the individual by the force of social custom, religious power, and the authority of the State.
My opinion on this matter is as complex as Nietzsche wants this to be. (He is the unsettler of commonplace platitudes, the revolutionist on behalf of the human mind, which he indeed believes to be capable of morality without coercion.) Remembering the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, God was proud of His creation, yet He chose to allow them to make their own choices, realizing that even immorality is better than morality under coercion. On the other hand, I believe that the moral authority of the State, religion, and custom is necessary for social guidance, even to the point of allowing coercion. As the reader can see, I am of two minds about this, and perhaps, this has to be the case with all complex moral and philosophical problems. Unfortunately, accepting one side of the complex controversy closes the mind on the merits of the opposite side, leading to oversimplification and doctrinairism. These latter qualities are useful for the shepherds of the herd, but they are anathema to the free spirit.

THE PHILOSOPHIZING PHILOSOPHER

Just as there is a Laughing Philosopher (Democritus) and a Weeping Philosopher (Heraclitus), let there also be a Philosophizing Philosopher, which title goes to Nietzsche.

What exactly do I mean by that? There is a long-standing tradition among the Russian intellectuals, which has earned them the very special untranslatable name Intelligent, to take deep philosophical issues close to heart and make a sort of life quest of them. The best word to describe this honorable activity is “philosophizing.” All Russian writers of note have traditionally been philosophizers. So have been artists, scientists, religious figures, engineers, and social activists in all walks of life. So have also been many blue-collar workers and peasants. In fact, no Russian man or woman can gain respectability in the society without proving himself or herself as a philosophizer to reckon with. (Here is a very good hint for today’s Russian nouveau-riche. None of his breed can be respected automatically: just for being rich and prosperous. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Wealth alone is sure to earn nothing but disdain, unless its owner is also in possession of the natural Russian propensity for philosophizing, which, of course, must be out there, for everybody to see.)
Now, what is the difference between a philosopher and a philosophizer? In my usage, for the purposes of this entry, a philosopher is a professional who is adept in the specific philosophical lingo which is easily recognizable as deliberately esoteric and largely incomprehensible. In fact, such professional philosophers take pride in their belonging to a restricted club, where only the initiated are supposed to comprehend each other’s parlance. Needless to say, all of them are miserable writers, compensating for their lack of literary ability by being professionally incomprehensible.
A philosophizer, on the other hand, tackles philosophical issues outside the professional club, using normal language and making himself comprehensible to fellow philosophizers. Professional philosophers will argue that his level is not deep enough and will call him derisively “an amateur.” And here I shall point them to an example of brilliant philosophizing by a philosopher--ecce Nietzsche!
No one would dare doubting Nietzsche’s philosophical depth. No one would dare denying him the status of professional philosopher, but at the same time he is coming across as a writer-philosophizer, and to Russian philosophizers he is a fellow philosophizer, a Russian Intelligent par excellence. This should explain to the reader why the Russian Intelligents are in love with Nietzsche’s kindred spirit, as well as my own seemingly inordinate preoccupation with him.

CYNICALLY AND WITH INNOCENCE

Nietzsche’s iconoclastic reputation is, no doubt, richly deserved. His irreverent manner of close scrutiny of everything he wishes to examine, religion included, is bound to offend the religious sensibilities of anyone without exception, whoever accepts the first part of Nietzsche’s own dictum: “Of what is great (in this case meaning sacred) one must either be silent or speak with greatness (meaning with reverent trepidation).”

But here, in being just the first part of a two-part whole lies the key to the puzzle. Nietzsche does not deny greatness to the sacred. However, in his inimitable lexicon, to speak “with greatness that means cynically and with innocence.”

One can argue that genuine innocence, that is, being without guile, without a hidden agenda, and without all those self-imposed restraints on free speech, described by the modern-day term political correctness, can be equated to cynicism in its most refined manifestation. Or, putting it more accurately, cynicism, in one of its essential connotations, is an inherent quality of innocence. But then, again, one can argue that cynicism, in a slightly different connotation, is the opposite of innocence, which is the utmost level of sophistication. For instance, the epitome of worldly sophistication Oscar Wilde is known as a great cynic, and no one can ever suspect him of the possession of as little as one iota of innocence. But this little argument returns us to the question raised in several previous entries, concerning the dependence of meaning on the context, as well as on the specific angle of vision, employed in the definition.

Ironically, getting back to the roots of Greek philosophical cynicism, we find out that neither definition of cynicism quite fits the original, and if either of them is to be preferred, Oscar Wilde’s cynicism would win over Nietzsche’s cynicism hands down. But, as all linguists have known for ages, the etymology of a term gives no authority to the parameters of its usage, and, in this case, cannot be cast as the decisive weight on the scale of either argument, which leaves the issue delightfully unresolved, for the benefit of all wordplays and double entendres.

Returning however to the subject of our entry, it is not Oscar Wilde’s sophisticated cynicism that Nietzsche is talking about, but the guileless offensiveness of a childlike innocent, and so in the Nietzschean context his understanding of cynicism as on a par with innocence, wins hands down.
And this is how he speaks, and this is how his speech is mistaken for blasphemy, whereas I see no offense in what he says.

NIETZSCHE AND WOMEN

Nietzsche’s unflattering utterances about women have been rather extensively psychoanalyzed, and should I say, overanalyzed, particularly in what concerns his “relationship” with his sister (and, I might add, with his mother too, judging by some of his unhappy references to mothers and children). Another suggestion points to the strong possibility of Nietzsche’s prejudice rooted in his contraction of an STD from a prostitute, early on. Honestly, I am always skeptical with regard to such suggestions. For one thing, all this guesswork about the alleged motives behind what the author says, clouds the purity of our judgment of what is actually being said. Secondly, in Nietzsche’s case, I am always subjectively inclined to attribute such statements, even the most outrageous ones, to the man’s undeniable eccentricity and propensity to challenge. Walter Kaufmann, whom I have already quoted on several occasions, gives this issue a modest passing comment,--- “There are some passages striking me as blemishes without which the book [Jenseits] would be better, for example the tedious remarks about women.”. Bertrand Russell treats this as a far more serious offense, with which view I, however, tend to disagree. But, considering that this issue has risen to a level of some importance, I feel compelled to comment on it myself as well.

Among Nietzsche’s numerous scandalous and shocking statements about women, we have already cited a few elsewhere, including the famous “Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip.” (Zarathustra). In an elaborate remark in Jenseits, one of those which Kaufmann calls “tedious,” Nietzsche writes:

“Woman wants to become self-reliant, and for that reason she is beginning to enlighten men about woman as-such: this is one of the worst developments of the general uglification of Europe. For, what must these clumsy attempts of women at scientific self-exposure bring to light! Woman has much cause for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness and immodesty lies concealed in woman-- one only needs to study her behavior with children!-- and so far all this was at bottom best repressed and kept under control by fear of man…” (#232)
Or take this one: “Man likes woman peaceful, but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to seem peaceable.” (#131)

These examples are plenty. In Jenseits alone there are some twenty-four entries directly devoted to women, and, of course, the very first sentence of Nietzsche’s Preface to Jenseits, much quoted by me already, reads: “Supposing truth is a woman--what then?” Much unlike the overwhelming barrage of the negative stuff said by Nietzsche about women, and often gleefully quoted by his critics, comparing truth to a woman cannot be altogether deprecating to either one, and so, here we are either looking at a terrible inconsistency in our bad boy woman-hater, or else, a much more complex phenomenon, when the same object can be seen in totally different lights, depending on the angle. There is no suspense to break here, as the latter must obviously be the case, and we have many other examples in Nietzsche (he does this also with quite a few great philosophers) when he would mercilessly chastise the object of his invective, but then would suddenly reverse himself, and lavish great praises upon him. (As he does with Plato, Spinoza, Pascal, Kant, and many others)…)

There can be no doubt that Nietzsche’s negative talk about women is not sheer sexism, but that he is making a much finer psychological argument, using women as his case in point. Incidentally, he is not the only one who treats women so disparagingly. The Holy Bible is full of what any modern psychologist would qualify as fierce sexism, starting with the story of how the wily Serpent chose the woman Eve as "the fifth column" to seduce the man Adam. Tertullian, who was not a very pleasant man, as I have observed elsewhere, but, still, a bona fide Father of the Christian Church, called woman “the gateway of the Devil.” Homer, in Odyssey xi, says, “No trust is to be placed in women.” Aristophanes goes still further with his invective: “Nothing in the world is worse than a woman… save another woman.” (Compare this particular line to the Ecclesiasticus xxv:19: “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.”) Springing all the way to the twentieth century, here is our “best-beloved” Rudyard Kipling, with his sarcastic “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

There is little sense in continuing the ten-thousand-mile-long list of authoritative yet uncharitable quotations using women as their target. My closing point here is that not all of them are soaked in some misogynic poison, and it is in their company, and in their historical context, that Nietzsche’s “womantalk” has to be placed, and judged. And guess what? By this reasonably impartial standard, we may even find it… “fair and balanced.”

LA PATHÉTIQUE

The word pathetic has two meanings, both derivative from pathos. One is taking pathos seriously, while the other, more familiar in the English-speaking world, is making a mockery of it.

By the same token, Nietzsche’s great aphorism from Jenseits (150): “Around the hero everything turns into a tragedy…” can be understood in both manners: as a serious statement of fact, and as sarcasm. Nietzsche’s ambiguity is delightful: he keeps us guessing. But there ought to be no guessing here, I am sure. The line between the great and the ridiculous is thin, as Napoleon once reminded us not exactly in the same words, but with the same import, and, just as Memento Mori was supposed to bring Roman dignitaries down to earth from their delusions of immortality, so does Nietzsche’s implicit ambiguity, which I have likened to the explicit ambiguity of pathos, ought to warn our “pathetic hero” about the hidden dangers of the natural, all-too natural delusion of grandeur.

NIETZSCHE AND THE JEWS

The immensely important question of Nietzsche and the Jews requires more than one entry, and here is yet another one. As I said many times before (but such repetition is necessary), the tag of anti-Semite has been pinned on Nietzsche by the critics who use against him many insinuations, but he of course provides enough fuel for the bonfire to ignite the charge, with, say, the following unpleasant sentence from his Antichrist XXIV : “Anti-Semitism is the final consequence of Judaism.” On the surface, it may appear as if Nietzsche were making the Jews themselves, rather than the Jew-haters of the Gentile world, ultimately responsible for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. But if we cared to restate this sentence, as, say, “without the Jews, anti-Semitism would never have existed,” it comes out as a logical truism, and the only thing we need to bother about is the reason why it is being said in the first place, and thus about the full context in which it appears. I shall provide the full context in the Appendix at the end of this entry, which will hopefully clear the air enough, without me or anyone else having to write a lengthy commentary on it.

But, returning to our principal question, which has been answered several times in the negative already, is it at all possible that Nietzsche could indeed be the virulent anti-Semite that he is habitually portrayed as?

It is rather hard to imagine a bigoted Jew-hater engaging in an amiable correspondence with an enthusiastic admirer of his, who happens to be openly and unmistakably Jewish. But such was his relationship with the Danish Jew Georg Brandes (Cohen), whose name, if the reader remembers, has already popped up before, along with Brandes’s remarkable praise for his iconoclastic idol.
I know that most people have a large respect for established authority; and whose opinion can elicit greater respect than that of Bertrand Russell, who insists that Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite? (See my earlier entry The Nietzsche Doctrine, where he is convincingly quoted on this subject.)
Of the same opinion is Nietzsche’s authoritative German-born Jewish-American philosopher, Nietzsche's translator and commentator, Professor Walter Kaufmann. It is of utmost interest what he says in his Footnote to Jenseits #248, in the American edition which uses his English translation and Commentary…
But first let us be reminded of what Nietzsche says there, to which Kaufmann reacts:

“There are two types of genius: one which above all begets and wants to beget, and another which prefers being fertilized and giving birth. Just so, there are among peoples of genius those to whom the woman’s problem of pregnancy and the secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting has been allotted--- the Greeks, for example, were a people of this type; also the French--and others who must fertilize and become the causes of new orders of life---like the Jews,* the Romans, and, asking this in all modesty, the Germans? Peoples, tormented and enchanted by unknown fevers and irresistibly pressed beyond themselves, in love and lusting after foreign races (after those who like “being fertilized”), and at the same time domineering like all that knows itself to be full of creative powers and hence “by the grace of God.” These two types of genius seek each other, like man and woman; but they also misunderstand each other--- like man and woman.” (Jenseits 248.)

And here is Kaufmann’s reaction:

*“Nietzsche inverts the anti-Semitic cliché that the Jews are uncreative parasites who excel, if at all, only as performers and interpreters… The image of the Jews “lusting after foreign races” was a cliché of German anti-Semitism, but it is entirely characteristic of Nietzsche’s style of thinking and writing that the phrase is “spiritualized” (to use his own term) and moreover used in a context which makes plain--- for those who read and do not merely browse--- that Nietzsche’s meaning is utterly opposed to that previously associated with the words. His famous “revaluation” begins with words that receive new values.
“Nietzsche’s conception of the Greeks and Romans also inverts the usual view. In his frequent insistence on the debt of the Greeks to earlier civilizations he was at least half a century ahead of his time.” (Footnote to #248.)

There is no point in continuing to quote other Nietzsche’s defenders against the charges of anti-Semitism. It is clear that he is being attacked by people who must know well that their accusation is without merit. They are doing it mainly for two reasons, in my opinion. In the first place, some do not wish to allow Nietzsche’s most controversially sounding statements to circulate with impunity, and it is infinitely safer to brand a source as "anti-Semitic" (or "anti-Christian," etc.) than to suffer its unwarranted popular interpretations without an explicit blanket condemnation. And, secondly, although it is well known that Nietzsche’s words had been habitually misused, even falsified by the propaganda machine of the Third Reich, the very fact of Nietzsche’s most oblique association with the Nazi regime has by itself made him unacceptable to those of his critics, for whom such association alone is enough to indict him, regardless of his own innocence or guilt in this matter.

The rest of this entry is an Appendix (followed by my short concluding statement), which includes the most significant Nietzschean passages representing his diverse opinions concerning the Jews. Here is some truly fascinating reading, indeed. From the very first of these excerpts, it becomes quite clear that those who are calling him an anti-Semite are promoting a false identification. This one is from Menschliches #475:

“Incidentally, the whole problem of the Jews exists only within national states, inasmuch as their energy and higher intelligence, their capital of spirit and will that accumulated from generation to generation in the long school of their suffering must predominate to a degree that awakens envy and hatred; and so in the literature of nearly all present-day nations (and, in fact, in proportion to their renewed nationalistic behavior), there is an increase in literary misconduct, leading the Jews to the slaughterhouse, as scapegoats for every possible public and private misfortune. As soon as it is no longer a matter of preserving nations, but of producing the strongest possible mixed European race, the Jew becomes as useful and desirable an ingredient, as any other national quantity. Every nation, every man has disagreeable and even dangerous characteristics; it is cruel to demand that the Jew should be an exception. Those characteristics may even be especially dangerous and frightful in him, and, perhaps, the youthful Jew of the stock exchange is the most repugnant invention of the whole human race. Nevertheless, I would like to know how much one must excuse in the overall accounting of a people which, not without guilt on all our parts, has had the most sorrowful history of all peoples and to whom we owe the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Spinoza), the mightiest Book, and the most effective moral code in the world. Furthermore, in darkest medieval times, when the Asiatic cloud had settled heavily over Europe, it was Jewish freethinkers, scholars, and doctors, who, under the harshest personal pressure, held fast to the banner of enlightenment and intellectual independence, and who defended Europe against Asia; we owe to their efforts not least that a more natural, rational and at any rate unmythical explanation of the world could finally triumph again, and that the ring of culture which connects us to the enlightenment of Greco-Roman antiquity, had remained unbroken. If Christianity did everything possible to orientalize the Occident, Judaism helped substantially to occidentalize it again and again, which in a certain sense is to say that it made Europe’s history and task into a continuation of the Greek.”

Here is another interesting and telling excerpt, this time from Genealogie I (7-8):

“One will have divined already how easily the priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly-aristocratic, and then develop into the opposite. This is particularly likely when the priestly caste and the warrior caste are in jealous opposition, and are unwilling to come to terms. The knightly-aristocratic value judgments presupposed a powerful physicality, health and in general all that involves vigorous, free, joyful activity (war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games). The priestly-noble mode of valuation presupposes other things: it is disadvantageous when it comes to war... As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies, but why?--- Because they are the most impotent! It is because of their impotence that, in them, hatred grows to monstrous proportions… All that has been done on earth against the noble, the powerful, the masters, the rulers, fades in comparison with what the Jews have done against them, who, in opposing their enemies and conquerors, were ultimately satisfied with nothing less than a radical revaluation of their enemies’ values, that is to say, an act of the most spiritual revenge. It was the Jews who dared to invert the aristocratic value-equation: good=noble=powerful=beautiful=happy=beloved of God, saying, The wretched alone are good. One knows who inherited this Jewish revaluation. As I said in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, section 195, with the Jews begins the slave revolt in morality that has a history of two thousand years and that we no longer see because it has been victorious.
“From the trunk of that tree of Jewish hatred there grew something equally incomparable, a new love, the profoundest and sublimest kind of love… and from what other trunk could it have grown? That love grew out of it as its crown by the very same impulse which drove the roots of that hatred deeper into all that was profound and evil. Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate gospel of love, who brought blessedness and victory to the poor, the sick, and the sinners, was he not this seduction in the most irresistible form, a seduction and bypath to precisely those Jewish values and ideals? Was it not part of the secret black art of truly grand politics of revenge that Israel must itself deny the real instrument of its revenge before all the world as a mortal enemy and nail it to the cross, so that all the world, namely all opponents of Israel, could without a second thought swallow just this bait?”

Here now is the Antichrist #24 item, from which one sentence I was already quoting before:

"Here I barely touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity. The first thing necessary to its solution is that Christianity is to be understood only by examining the soil from which it had sprung, it is not a reaction against Jewish instincts; it is their inevitable product; it is simply one more step in the awe-inspiring logic of the Jews. In the words of the Savior, “salvation is of the Jews...” The second thing to remember is that the psychological type of the Galilean is still to be recognized, but it was only in its most degenerate form (that is at once maimed and overladen with foreign features) that it could serve in the manner in which it has been used: as a type of the Savior of mankind.
"The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world for when they were confronted with the question “to be or not to be,” they chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be, at any price: this price involved a radical falsification of all nature, of all naturalness, all reality, of the whole inner world, as well as of the outer world. They put themselves against all those conditions, under which, hitherto, a people had been able to live, or had even been permitted to live; out of themselves, they evolved an idea, which stood in direct opposition to natural conditions-- one by one they distorted religion, civilization, morality, history and psychology, until each had become a contradiction of its natural significance. We meet with the same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only as a copy: The Christian Church, put beside the “people of God,” shows a complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the Jews are the most fateful people in the history of the world: their influence has falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter to such an extent that today the Christian can cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it is no more than the final consequence of Judaism.
"In my Genealogy of Morals, I give the first psychological explanation of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a noble morality and a ressentiment morality, the second of which is a mere product of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system belongs to the second division in every detail. In order to be able to say ‘Nay’ to everything representing an ascending evolution of life-- that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval-- the instincts of ressentiment, here become downright genius, had to invent an other world, in which the acceptance of life had appeared as the most evil and abominable thing imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a people gifted with the very strongest vitality, so much so that when they found themselves facing impossible conditions of life they chose voluntarily,-- and with a profound talent for self-preservation,-- the side of all those instincts, which make for decadence-- not as if mastered by them, but as if detecting in them a power, by which “the world” could be defied. The Jews are the very opposite of decadents: they have simply been forced into appearing in that guise, and with some degree of skill approaching the non plus ultra of histrionic genius they have managed to put themselves at the head of all decadent movements, for example, the Christianity of Paul, and so make of them something stronger than any party, frankly saying Yes to Life… To the sort of people who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,-- that is to say, to the priestly class,-- decadence is no more than a means to an end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in confusing the values of “good” and “bad,” “true” and “false” in a manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it."

And now, to finish off this selection, here are excerpts from Jenseits #250 and #251:

“What Europe owes to the Jews? Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing that is both of the best and of the worst: the grand style in morality, the terribleness and majesty of infinite demands, infinite meanings, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionabilities-- and hence precisely the most attractive, captious, and choicest part of those plays of color and seductions to life in whose afterglow the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, is burning now--- perhaps burning itself out. We artists among the spectators and philosophers are--- grateful for this to the Jews.” (#250.)

“…I have not met a German yet who was well disposed toward the Jews; and however unconditionally all the cautious and politically-minded repudiated real anti-Semitism, even this caution and policy are not directed against the species of this feeling itself but only against its dangerous immoderation, especially against the insipid and shameful expression of this immoderate feeling--- about this one should not deceive oneself. That Germany has amply enough Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood has trouble (and will still have trouble for a long time) digesting even this quantum of “Jew”--- as the Italians, French, and English have done, having a stronger digestive system--- that is the clear testimony and language of a general instinct to which one must listen, in accordance with which one must act. “Admit no more new Jews! And especially close the doors to the East (also to Austria)!” thus commands the instinct of a people whose type is still weak and indefinite, so it could easily be blurred or extinguished by a stronger race. The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (even better than under favorable conditions), by means of virtues that today one would like to mark as vices--- thanks above all to a resolute faith that need not be ashamed before “modern ideas”; they change, when they change, always only as the Russian Empire makes its conquests--- being an empire that has time and is not of yesterday--- namely, according to the principle: “as slowly as possible.”
“A thinker who has the development of Europe on his conscience will, in all his projects for this future, take into account the Jews as well as the Russians as the provisionally surest and most probable factors in the great play and fight of forces. What is called a “nation” in Europe today, and is really rather a res facta than a res nata (and occasionally can hardly be told from a res ficta et picta) is in any case something evolving, young, and easily changed, not yet a race, let alone such an aere perennius as the Jewish type: these “nations” really should carefully avoid every hotheaded rivalry and hostility! That the Jews, if they wanted it--- or if they were forced into it, which seems to be what the anti-Semites want--- could even now have preponderance, indeed quite literally mastery over Europe, that is certain; that they are not working and planning for that is equally certain.
“Meanwhile, they want and wish rather, to be absorbed and assimilated by Europe; they long to be fixed, permitted, respected somewhere at long last, putting an end to the nomads’ life, to the “Wandering Jew”; and this bent and impulse (which may even express an attenuation of the Jewish instincts) should be noted well and accommodated: to that end it might be useful and fair to expel the anti-Semitic screamers from the country…” (#251.)

Enough has been quoted already to establish the falsity of Nietzsche’s critics’ charges of anti-Semitism, and the last sentence in our selection is a particularly nice finishing touch. On the other hand, I am wondering how much Nietzsche’s view of the Jews would have changed had he lived today with the State of Israel on the map, and the might of the United States behind it?… "To be absorbed and assimilated" is naturally the last thing on the Jewish collective mind (some individual exceptions to this are quite insignificant), and Nietzsche was demonstrably mistaken about this, particularly, having altogether missed the phenomenon of Zionism that was already gathering momentum in his active lifetime.
But in one thing about the Jews he was not mistaken, but, we can say, was prophetic. That is his prediction that the Jews, as well as the Russians, are the provisionally surest and most probable factors in the great play and fight of forces for the future of human civilization.

WHO IS A BIGOT?

(This short entry is a preamble to the entry Nietzsche And The Jews.)

…Who is a bigot? One who looks at the world through a rigid prism that channels a deliberate single angle of vision, refusing to take in the sides which do not confirm to the said angle. Whether he realizes it or not, a bigot is an intellectually dishonest person, and therefore a liar, according to one of our definitions of truth, equating truth to intellectual honesty. He is a liar not necessarily because of telling lies (in fact, he could be actually “telling the truth” on occasion), but because he misrepresents it as the only truth in existence, due to his deliberate suppression of all other aspects of the thing in question. (As the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead puts it: “There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”)

…Was Nietzsche a bigot, as some allege? Even a question like this is ridiculous. He was a philosopher par excellence. Granted, he did have some pet ideas, but he never had an agenda, and never looked at the world through a one-dimensional prism. In fact, he often contradicted himself and his pet ideas exactly because he saw things from whichever side was open to his mental eye at that particular moment, and courageously (or recklessly, as someone will say who cares more about reputation than intellectual honesty) let the chips fall where they may.

It is very easy to besmirch an intellectually honest person by quoting him out of context or by pulling out an isolated phrase reflecting a very negative view of something, while suppressing a host of other phrases that reflect very positively on that same something. Incidentally, those who engage in this kind of “selection” are among the worst type of bigots themselves…

Being controversial is inimical to being a bigot. In fact, bigots are never really controversial, but consistent, and even trite, in their predictable bigotry. On the other hand, an honest thinker whose honesty has made him many enemies has probably the biggest chance of being branded a bigot, as there must surely be more than enough out-of-context quotes of him that are “politically incorrect.” Just because an honest thinker is never “politically correct”…

Nietzsche was a consummate honest thinker. He was always politically incorrect, and never a bigot.

SONNETS FROM THE ROMAN ANTIQUITIES

(Offered as an Intermission.)

It is strange to the point of being incomprehensible how the great Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus would abandon Rome to his enemy Julius Caesar, not daring to take Rome’s treasury along with him, on the assumption that Caesar wouldn’t dare to touch it either! Well, guess what? He did!

It is quite ironic how the great Caius Julius Caesar, unabashedly idolized by some of the mightiest pillars of subsequent generations as one of the greatest geniuses of the human race, has not been taken to task by them for his horrendous historical crime against humanity of having accidentally burned down the greatest library of the ancient world: Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

...To the victor the spoils. Vae victis...

"CONTROVERSIAL TO THE MARROW'

Nietzsche seems to have been accused of all deadly sins, and, had there been more such sins, he would have been accused of them too. The tag of ‘anti-Semite’ has been slapped on Nietzsche by his many critics, who love to quote the following line of his Antichrist, XXIV, to substantiate their charge: “Anti-Semitism is the final consequence of Judaism.” (For much more on the delicate subject of Nietzsche And The Jews, see the next entry.)
The essence of this famous sentence seems to place the blame for the phenomenon of anti-Semitism on the Jews themselves. When taken completely out of context of Nietzsche as a whole, it does sound “virulently anti-Semitic,” but is this the case in reality?

Many Nietzsche passages are extremely offensive to religion, to women, to men, to the British, to his own Germans, to the same individuals whom, in other passages, he would elevate on a lofty pedestal. There can be no question that his outspoken forthright style is often abrasive and insulting to things and persons that he would later praise and exalt. In a sense, he may be compared to a loving spouse, who occasionally scolds her husband, while being perfectly civil to strangers, which can be psychologically explained by her general indifference to strangers; but as to her husband, being the person she loves and cares about the most, he is subjected to the brunt of her storms of emotional engagement and deep caring. But there is another explanation for this as well: Nietzsche loves to challenge his readers and the world, and, on many occasions, he deliberately invites red-hot controversy, and delights in it. Here is what Nietzsche’s leading translator and commentator Walter Kaufmann says about Nietzsche’s extraordinarily controversial nature in his Translator’s Preface to the 1965 English translation of Jenseits:

"Nietzsche was controversial to the marrow. He sought controversy, and is still controversial. But the area of agreement about him is growing. Nietzsche was one of the greatest German writers and philosophers of all time, and one of the most interesting and influential Europeans of the nineteenth century."

Kaufmann goes even farther than this, in his exuberant praise for Nietzsche and Jenseits:

"This (Jenseits) is one of the great books of the nineteenth century, indeed of any century. There is much in it with which I do not agree; but that is also true of Plato’s and Aristotle’s writings, of Dostoyevsky’s and Dante’s ideas, and of the Bible.
"It is possible to say briefly what makes it great: The prophetic independence of its spirit; the hundreds of doors it opens for the mind, revealing new vistas, problems and relationships; and what it contributes to our understanding of much of recent thought and literature and history. Readers might ask, for example, about the relation of various passages to psychoanalysis, to analytical philosophy, or to existentialism. But even a longer list would not do justice to the book. There remains another dimension. This (Jenseits) is one of those rare books in which one encounters not only a great thinker, but also a fascinating human being of exceptional complexity and integrity."

These are very good words, and I could not agree more with Kaufmann’s assessment of Nietzsche. In fact, much of what he says closely corresponds to my own, independently made assessment, as the reader might remember. But we could rightly add here that Nietzsche’s exceptionally controversial nature is inseparable from his most admirable qualities. It is his honesty and courage, his challenge and intellectual innocence, which account for him being, in Kaufmann’s words, "not only a great thinker but also a fascinating human being of exceptional complexity and integrity."

There is nothing more controversial in the human world than intellectual honesty and truth itself. We may now be finally able to answer the ultimate question, What is truth? by replying: Truth is man’s intellectual honesty, and… God! In this last respect, Nietzsche is in very good company.

THE NIETZSCHE DOCTRINE

Repeating the key point of the previous entry, calling Nietzsche a poet captures the essence of his genius. It is his sublime poetry, rather than what his critics call his doctrine, which ought to be considered first in any discussion of his legacy. This is indeed my central focus in thinking and talking about Nietzsche.
Generally speaking, the reader already knows my negative opinion of all systematic philosophical doctrines, which I have always found inferior to the same thinker’s splashes of spontaneity and extemporaneous asides or deliberate aphoristic dicta.
But this so-called Nietzsche’s “doctrine,” being an unceasing topic of critical discussions, is still a matter to reckon with, and in the present entry I shall talk about it at some length following the critical line delineated by another superior philosophical mind, Lord Bertrand Russell, in the Nietzsche Chapter of his masterpiece The History of Western Philosophy.

Russell starts his critique with this clever reconciliation of a seeming contradiction in Nietzsche’s outlook. He describes this outlook as aristocratic anarchism, akin to Byron’s.---
“He (Nietzsche) seems to combine two sets of values that are not easily harmonized: on the one hand, he likes ruthlessness, war, and aristocratic pride; on the other hand, he loves philosophy, and literature, and the arts, especially music. Historically, these values coexist in the Renaissance. Pope Julius II, fighting for Bologna and employing Michelangelo, might be taken as the sort of man whom Nietzsche would wish to see in control of governments.”

A ruthless warrior and a generous patron of genius. Such a person has indeed existed, as Russell is pointing out, and his reference frame is the Renaissance, which identifies Nietzsche as a ‘Renaissance Man,’ in more senses than one. A very thoughtful observation on Russell’s part!
Russell observes, however, that Nietzsche has his own objects of admiration: Wagner before Parsifal, and… Napoleon. In Nietzsche’s admiration for the latter, Russell sees his affinity with Machiavelli, who, after all, did admire the controversial to the bone Cesare Borgia. To both, their heroes were very great men defeated by petty opponents. (In Napoleon’s case, however, I would certainly ascribe his historical defeat to his own arrogant folly, as he swallowed the poisoned pill of his self-serving wellwishers’ advice and invaded Russia, on a predictably disastrous misadventure.)

…Before proceeding with Nietzsche’s objectionable theories, Russell, with a commendable fairness, points out what objectionable vices he does not possess. (All underlinings below are mine.)---

“Nietzsche’s ethic is not of self-indulgence in any ordinary sense; he believes in Spartan discipline and the capacity to endure as well as inflict pain for important ends. He admires strength of will above all things. He regards compassion as a weakness to be combated, and prophesies with a certain glee an era of great wars.
“He is not a worshipper of the State, far from it. He is a passionate individualist, a believer in heroes. The misery of the whole nation, he says, is of less importance than the suffering of a great individual.
“He is not a nationalist, and shows no excessive admiration for Germany. He wants an international ruling race to be the lords of the earth… He is also not anti-Semitic, though he thinks Germany contains as many Jews as it can assimilate, and ought not to permit any further influx… He dislikes the New Testament, but not the Old, of which he speaks with admiration.”

On the sharply negative side, Russell singles out Nietzsche’s contempt for women and his fervent critique of Christianity. Nietzsche’s bad opinion of women is “offered as self-evident truth, not backed up by evidence from history or from his own experience.” I look at it, however, as a very personal peeve (as I understand it, Nietzsche may have been infected with an incurable STD in his early contact with a prostitute), and, for this reason, I am not inclined to take it all too seriously as a “philosophical” attitude. His attack on Christianity, though, is a far more serious, and philosophically interesting, matter.

“…Nietzsche’s objection to Christianity is that it caused acceptance of what he calls “slave morality.” He is not interested in the metaphysical truth of either Christianity or any other religion; being convinced that no religion is true, he judges them by their social effects… Buddhism and Christianity, he says, are both “nihilistic” religions, in the sense that they deny any difference of value between one man and another.”

In other words, I might add, Nietzsche’s objection to these religions is their egalitarian character, whereas he himself is a dedicated elitist. We may argue, in this case, about his oversimplistic reduction of religion to its egalitarian principles, but I see Nietzsche’s bigger weakness in overlooking the egalitarian underpinnings of nationalism, conveyed in the egalitarian principle of fatherland (or motherland) and the very nationalistic slogan of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” made politically unacceptable only by its immediate association with the defeated Nazi regime in Germany, but, otherwise, reflecting the totalitarian essence of nationalism remarkably accurately. Russell’s observation that Nietzsche “is not a nationalist,” and that he “wants an international ruling race to be the lords of the earth,” highlights Nietzsche’s essential failing to recognize and acknowledge the universal character of nationalism, which leads him to a further misjudgment of the nature of Russian nihilism, which he, for some inexplicable reason, differentiates from nihilism in religion (he does abhor religion!), mistaking it for a harbinger of the Nietzschean elitist revolution, whereas it was an unquestionably egalitarian force, inimical to Nietzsche’s peculiar brand of aristocratic anarchism, unfurled in the service of Great-Russian patriotic nationalism. It is possible, however, to explain Nietzsche’s mistake about Russian nihilism by his mistake about Mikhail Bakunin, the consummate Russian aristocrat-turned-anarchist, credited with the theoretical expounding of the principles of nihilism. Bakunin was hardly what Nietzsche expected of him (which was, unsurprisingly, a Nietzschean hero), but a peculiar type of Russian nationalist, easy to mistake for what he was not. (For more on this subject, see my entry Egalitarianism And Aristocratism As Two Faces Of Nationalism in the Collective section.)

Nietzsche’s most effective anti-Christian diatribe, in Russell’s opinion, has been the following:

“What is it that we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble, that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards against themselves-- until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example.”

And now Russell thus continues his critique:

“…In place of the Christian saint, Nietzsche wishes to see what he calls the “noble” man, by no means as a universal type, but as a governing aristocrat. The “noble” man will be capable of cruelty and, on occasion, of what is vulgarly regarded as crime; he will recognize duties only to equals. He will protect artists and poets, all who happen to be masters of some skill, but he will do so as himself a member of a higher order than those who only know how to do something.” (There is an uncanny resemblance here with what Stalin used to tell my father. “A baker only knows how to bake bread, but he cannot make boots for himself. An accomplished cobbler knows how to make boots, but he cannot bake bread. A statesman does not have to bake bread or make boots, but he must go into the depth of all things, to make sure that each skill is there and working properly.” Was Stalin perhaps a Nietzschean adept? I would not be at all surprised!) “From the example of warriors he will learn to associate death with the interests for which he is fighting; to sacrifice numbers, taking his cause sufficiently seriously not to spare men; to practice discipline; to allow himself cruelty, violence, cunning in war… The “noble” man is essentially the incarnate will to power.” (And once again, this description fits the profile of Stalin with an incredible precision!)

Having thus finished expounding Nietzsche’s theories, Russell makes the sharp observation that Nietzsche’s influence has been the greatest not among the “technical philosophers,” but among the people of literary and artistic culture. He could easily have added: “among the Russian Intelligentsia,” which amounts to virtually the very same thing, provided the understanding that this Russian Intelligentsia, apart from being people of literary and artistic culture, which they all certainly are, belongs, as a whole, to the class of “non-technical” philosophizers, preoccupied with all the usual questions of philosophy, but having its own, “non-technical” way of going about them. To this very distinctive group I am proud to belong, and in the course of reading through the present massive volumes of my writings on diverse subjects, the reader may probably get some feel of what these words entail.

The Nietzsche chapter of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy continues thereafter, for a few more pages, with his arguments against the Nietzsche Doctrine. These arguments are of some interest, and I recommend them to the reader, along with the suggestion to read Russell’s whole worthy book. But for the purposes of this entry, my journey through his comments has now come to an end. Once again, I repeat that I place the greatest value on Nietzsche’s spontaneous insights and gems of original thinking, rather than on some general theories of his, which have become known to his critics as The Nietzsche Doctrine.

IT TAKES A DISCERNING EYE

In the previous entry My Friend Nietzsche, references have been made to the unfortunate efforts to connect Nietzsche’s philosophical legacy to Nazism and anti-Semitism, thus establishing a classic case of “guilt by association.” It is therefore necessary to set the record straight by pointing out that such popular associative stereotypes are by no means representative of the collective Jewish attitude toward the great German. More on this subject can be found in my series of entries on Russia And Nietzsche (see, for instance, my post of August 23, 2011), where glowing tributes to Nietzsche on the part of the Russian Jews, such as Lev Shestov and others, are being discussed. It makes sense, then, to start this entry with a short discussion of the Jewish angle on Nietzsche, which is, of course, by no means limited to the Russian Jews.

It is commonly known that Mendelssohn “returned” Bach to Western Civilization, and I had another entry already, where I commented on it. The reason why I am bringing up this fact again here is that most notably another Jew, the Danish literary critic and historian Georg Brandes (1842-1927) was among the first who discovered Nietzsche’s genius early on, and wrote the following Note, circa 1872! (This unbelievably early date almost seems like a misprint, but even had this been written at a much later date, during Nietzsche’s lifetime, this would still have been remarkable!)----

“I read constantly my crazy friend Nietzsche. I squeeze him, I turn him inside out, press him, and turn him upside down, I knead him this way and that, so he now gets one face, now another. I am fond of Nietzsche. Here is this one great man that Germany has, and nobody values him in Germany, hardly anybody knows him.”

To be sure, I dislike the rather vulgar tone of the second sentence here, but it can be forgiven to Brandes on account of everything else.

Before I close my brief reference to a particular Jewish discernment of genius, I must add this indispensable note on this subject, well in tune with this entry’s title theme. It was yet another Jew, the eminent American student of philosophy Professor Walter Kaufmann, who devoted his life to the study of Nietzsche and made a large number of commendable translations of his works into English. Many of his translations are used in my Nietzsche quotes, which thus makes Kaufmann an indispensable part of my Nietzsche discussion.
Next, we turn to a reiteration of the point of special Russian discernment of Nietzsche’s genius, and we start with a stunning paradox. Compare Brandes’s quote above to the following “obituary” for Nietzsche, written by Russia’s own Lev Tolstoy, in his 1902 essay What is Religion?--

“An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.”

One must show some indulgence to Lev Tolstoy, for here writes not a healthy genius in the prime of life, but a seventy-four-year-old religious freak deep in his life stage of repentance for the sins of his earlier life, who is greatly troubled by the late Nietzsche’s negative influence on Russia’s religious thought and its dangerously rampant iconoclastic tendencies. The good news is that Tolstoy’s badly biased opinion of Nietzsche was by no means representative of Russia’s opinion as a whole.

As some relief for my Russian pride, I have said this before, and it is very proper to say it again in this fitting place, Nietzsche’s great influence in Russia has been a singular factor in Russian philosophical thinking, and, no matter how Lev Tolstoy talks about him, this lasting historical influence is a far better tribute to Nietzsche than any single comment or epitaph. In fact, even the Russian Orthodox Church herself has been strongly influenced by Nietzsche in a positive way, with numerous theological dissertations and essays written by the Church’s leading theoreticians, discussing the indisputable merits of Nietzsche’s finer points for Orthodox Christian spirituality and religio-philosophical apprehension.

To give an example of Nietzsche’s special place in Russian discernment, here is an interesting reference to him in Nikolai Gumilev’s 1911 Review of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s volume of poems Cor Ardens. It ought to be taken into consideration that Gumilev is a poet par excellence, and for him to call another person a poet is a mark of highest distinction.

“If this is true-- and this is most probably true-- that one who creates a fiery heroic feat of his life is a poet; that a truthful tale of one’s truthfully trodden mystical path is poetry, that Confucius and Muhammad, that Socrates and Nietzsche are poets,-- then it is true that Vyacheslav Ivanov is a poet too.”

Gumilev is giving a glowing review here to the great Russian talent Vyacheslav Ivanov, but it is his choice of the four great poets of the mystical path, to whom he compares Ivanov, which is the principal reason why I am quoting him here... Confucius and Muhammad, Socrates and Nietzsche,-- here is some company!!! Here is some lofty Russian praise, which would have left Nietzsche flattered.

But what is particularly wonderful about the Gumilev passage is that calling Nietzsche “a poet” captures the essence of Nietzsche’s genius, that very same quality of his that makes Nietzsche my friend…

MY FRIEND NIETZSCHE

It is politically incorrect to admire Nietzsche, for obvious reasons made even more obvious by the following characterization of him in the respectable Webster’s Biographical Dictionary (1963). [This is the complete characterization. What precedes it are the basic facts of Nietzsche’s life; what follows it are his Werke]:

"He denounced all religion and championed the “morals of masters,” the doctrine of perfectibility of man through forcible self-assertion and glorification of the superman or overman (Übermensch). His theories are regarded as influencing the German attitude in the World War and in the Third Reich (1933)."

He is wickedly caricatured in the hilarious British comedy A Fish Called Wanda, and, generally speaking, there seems to be no one who would dare say a single good word about him.
Before I proceed with my fireworks of good words about him, let me offer just the briefest of refutations to Nietzsche’s criticism, in Webster’s Biographical Dictionary. Yes, he denounces religion for its hypocrisy. Yes, he prefers master morality to slave morality, but, as I discussed this somewhere else, master does not characterize a superior race, but mostly a superior character. Yes, he was admired by the Nazis, but so was Richard Wagner, admired all over the world for his genius. As for exerting an "influence," the Nazi ideology, like any other ideology, claimed its affinity to a number of philosophies, in order to establish its intellectual legitimacy. But all ideologies manipulate philosophies, and it is idiotic to make any philosophy responsible for any ideology.

This opening entry of the My Friend Nietzsche section makes the title speak for my own general attitude to Nietzsche. This could have been turned into a resplendent Apologia, but what can I say, even in a thousand consecutive words, better than what I have already said by now, in a million words scattered throughout all sections of my book? Perhaps, the latter is the best tribute to my friend Nietzsche that can be paid, and so be it!
But one caveat above all must be added here. I am not a champion of the “Nietzsche doctrine,” so to speak, concerning the superiority of the animal-like Superman, devoid of human sympathy toward the suffering of others; concerning the contemptible nature of Christianity, invented by a “holy epileptic,” as a “gospel of a completely ignoble species of man”; concerning his distinction between a man and a woman: “man shall be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior, all else is folly.” Needless to say, in matters of "doctrine" I disagree with Nietzsche far more often than I agree with him.

It is not for his doctrines that I love Nietzsche, but for his superlative intellectual challenge, his incredible courage, his freedom of thought, his fascinating insights into the nature of men and things. In all of these qualities, he rises far above the most, and is inferior to none of the few greatest geniuses of all time. I love Nietzsche because he stands outside time and place, follows no political or personal agenda, cares nothing about authority, speaks his mind without holding anything back, and is, in every way imaginable, a kindred spirit, no matter what he says. This is what I expect from a perfect friend, and Nietzsche is such a friend. He energizes my mental faculties, and pushes me to think, and to think hard. For all this, I am infinitely grateful to him, and will be so grateful forever…

It’s obvious of course that should I attempt to bring into this section all my Nietzsche comments spread over some twenty other sections, this one will become too bloated and disproportionate in size to the rest and this is something that I have no intention of doing. Therefore, this section includes only a part of my Nietzsche-centered essays, and with this understanding let us proceed to other things.
After a number of general Nietzsche entries, I shall proceed with my comments on various Nietzsche texts. These will be organized in the manner which I first adopted in my Sources & Comments folder, which boils down to following the proper course of the Nietzsches Werke in their chronological order, as represented in my entry How Random Are Nietzsche’s Titles? where they are listed in the Appendix. Within each work, the place of each comment is coordinated with the relative places of the passages to which they belong. This simple procedure makes short shrift of any thematic coherence, but for the purpose of the latter I already have my thematic sections anyway...

APPRECIATION OF PERFECTION

Perfection can be of three different kinds. Divine Perfection is one of these three, but, of course, it cannot be humanly apprehended.

There is another type of perfection, which is open to intellectual apprehension. We appreciate geometrical symmetry or perfect physical balance. We marvel at a skillful singer hitting every musical note at a perfect pitch, the same going for a proficient violinist. But in these last two examples the point of this entry already makes itself felt. Any aesthetically sophisticated listener, and especially, a hypersensitive percipient of what is known as "the perfect pitch," will tell you that the sound borne out of it is always artificial, “unfeeling,” and basically lacking that elusive but indispensable component, which is associated with human emotion.

Maria Callas was not admired for the perfect pitch, which, incidentally, she seldom delivered. The very best singers and the best string players have always striven to convey their unique personal emotions by singing or playing “under the pitch,” and occasionally, “over the pitch,” which means “imperfectly”!!!

And here comes the bottom line, which I have already followed elsewhere, usually philosophically and most significantly, theologically. Perfect symmetry, perfect intellectuality, perfect rationality can never be perfect from a more comprehensive point of view. In fact, they are all deficient in their complementary partner, that is in asymmetry, emotion, irrationality. As I said elsewhere, I am convinced that perfect divinity is a healthy and equitable combination of rationality and irrationality, from which it follows that perfect rationality can never be perfect.

It is therefore the appreciation of that higher form of perfection, which constitutes the aesthetical acumen, leaving the so-called  “perfect pitch,” and all of its formally perfect, but aesthetically and emotionally deficient brethren, on a lower, much inferior rung of human experience.

...BUT YET FAR FAIRER HOPES

The inscription on Franz Schubert’s tomb reads: "The Art of Music here entombed a rich possession, but yet far fairer hopes: Franz Schubert lies buried here-- born on January 31, 1797, died on November 19, 1828, 31 years old." (This epitaph was written by Austria’s greatest playwright Franz Grillparzer.)

…But yet far fairer hopes. Here is our perplexing question at the heart of this entry. The life of a genius cut short. Schubert was thirty-one when he died. Mozart was thirty-five. Pergolesi was even younger, dead at 26 from tuberculosis. Among the literary geniuses, Pushkin died at 37, Lermontov at 26, Christopher Marlowe and Percy Bysshe Shelley both died at 29 and John Keats at 25. The list can go on, but the point has already been made. The question is why is any great genius, whose life is presumably destined to benefit humanity, thus fated to die so young, before his God-given plant has been allowed to bring forth its richest fruit? God giveth and God taketh away… but why?

To be completely truthful, I am utterly puzzled by this inscrutable mystery. To me, it represents the strongest argument against intelligent design, far stronger than the deaths of billions of innocents throughout the ages of history. It is true that in many of these deaths society is to blame, but there are many more where society has nothing to do with it. Death of a disease, like Schubert’s or Pergolesi’s, etc., which disease society is not equipped to battle, can be called nothing else but a force majeure, or, as they often say with an unintended finger-pointing, an act of God. And so, there is no way of answering this question intelligently. What is, then, the intelligent design in God’s making a precious gift to the world, and then teasingly taking it away before it can be joyfully and piously enjoyed, and benefited from, at its full potential?

FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, AND THEIR MOTHER WISDOM

One of Nietzsche’s famous dictums defines Faith as “not wanting to know what is true.” Leaving aside the religious emphasis of this aphorism, we might say that the same goes for all three sisters: Faith, Hope, and Love. Moreover, we might add that their old mother Sophia must be silently nodding her head in approval of her daughters’ nolumus noscere.

ART AS BEING RATHER THAN BECOMING

I disagree with Plato’s "There is no being, but only becoming," even if Comrade Trotsky's ready comment would have been: I told you so: There is nothing permanent in this world, except for my "permanent revolution." (Which is, of course, the quintessence of becoming, as opposed to being!)
But man shall not live by permanent revolution alone. A great work of art is in its essence a state of being, rather than of becoming, and thus it represents a triumph of true permanence over change, and, mind you, it has nothing to do with permanent revolution. Having said that, enough of Trotsky!
...No wonder Plato disliked art so much: It disagreed with him too!

THE MEANING OF LIFE

The doom and gloom of the complete failure of the public person ought not to distort the ultimate answer to the big question about the meaning of life. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, as he is quoting Pindar, the true meaning of life is to become what you are. If public success turns you toward the actualization of that public persona that has met with success, where does that leave your private self? Is your private person truly satisfied with the public triumph of your Janus’s other face, or will it now be forced to live out the rest of its worldly life in its shadow, succumbing to its temptations, and trying to deceive itself about the ugly fact that “the lamp has been shattered, and its light in the dust lies dead?” (For the record, that was a slightly rephrased line from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)
I guess that even great success has its miseries. Am I right in this, or simply envious toward what I could have been as a successful public persona, had I chosen that kind of success?… Well, at least, today I am much closer to my private person than to the public one, which is literally non-existent. That, at least, is some accomplishment, ultimately revealing to me the key to the meaning of life.

PROOF OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP

Compassion for the misery of others and a ready willingness to help a person in distress, represent a quality much easier to find than an altruistic delight in the other’s joy. My mother used to say that the best proof of ‘a friend indeed’ is not necessarily ‘a friend in need.’ A much truer friend, she said, is one who has no envy for your good fortune and who can share with you a moment of your happiness like it were his or her own. I think that this is a much deeper and subtler observation than the one about a friend in need. Because we are not talking in this case about pretenses and ulterior motives. We are talking about the real thing, which is indeed a priceless rarity.

SECRETS

(The reader ought not to see any irreconcilable inconsistency in my treatment of “secrets” in this entry. I am not talking about such impersonal secrets which belong to posterity as public knowledge, and therefore must be revealed by their carriers in recognition of their preeminent importance, and solely for the sake of history. The reader is already well aware of the fact that this is exactly what I am doing in the historical sections of my book. [A number of such entries have been posted on this blog by now.] But certain personal secrets of “subhistorical” importance are quite another matter. Some of them will eventually come out, impersonally, perhaps, while others surely never will.)

Secret kept is priceless; secret revealed is worthless…
Stalin used to teach my father that secrets have value only in so far as they are kept secret. A revealed secret no matter how valuable it had been before it was revealed, is completely worthless. The key to this riddle is to let others know that you are in possession of certain secrets, but, at the same time, to keep them in a state of perpetual suspense.

I have learned this story from my father, but I have learned some very pertinent lessons from life. There are many people who are talented with the excellent quality of being able to keep their secrets throughout their life, only to succumb to vanity or thirst for profit and reveal them at an advanced age, or, as the very pinnacle of vanity, to have their secrets published post mortem. There is not much value to such secrets, though, and, in the final analysis, all revealed secrets are sort of disappointing, like a lengthy Poirot monologue at the end of an exciting Agatha Christie whodunit.

Secrets are an integral part of the individual’s mystique, and those that die with the individual never revealed, either as a deathbed confession or posthumously, are the only treasures he takes with him to the other world. These unrevealed secrets are the protective shell of the person’s soul, which allows him to be apart from the rest of humanity.

There are great, precious secrets, which I am taking to the grave with me. Those who expect that I shall bare my soul in this book, letting it go naked the rest of the way, are badly mistaken. As a fit consolation for their bitter disappointment, let the advice contained in this entry be clearly understood, and properly internalized: never let your soul go naked either in this world or in afterlife. Treasure your greatest secrets and never part with them, or else, even the memory of you shall end up in the poorhouse of tomorrow.

MARXISM TODAY

Marxism is academically defined today as the philosophical, political and economic teaching founded in the nineteenth century by Karl Marx. There are different interpretations of Marxism associated with a variety of political parties and movements. Political Marxism is a type of socialism, alongside left anarchism, Christian socialism, and non-Marxist democratic socialism/social democracy.
Having said that, it is time to get real, and in today’s reality Marxism is something more than what has been described. Today’s Marxism is perhaps the most powerful ghost that ever existed, or that was ever imagined by fiction writers of all time. It is the global ghost of anti-capitalism, and as such, it has been growing all the more potent as Globalist capitalism is retreating around the world.
There is a peculiar factor, which has much helped its current surge. Twenty years ago, at the time when the USSR was breaking up, America was gloating not just because her most formidable rival was falling apart, but because it appeared (at least within the national boundaries of the United States) that the dawn of a new American century was upon us, and that Marxism and all that communist nonsense now lay buried under the rubble. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Marxism is not some thing of the past. It is a symbol for the present and the future of a principled opposition to capitalism, and especially to American imperialism. One can say that Marx himself got lucky, having become larger than life, larger than the historical Marx. But it is certainly to his credit that he has qualified for this role.
It is therefore most fitting that we should conclude the Marxian subsection of the Magnificent Shadows on this magnificent note.

TROTSKYISM AND MARXISM

(A note for the readers of my blog: In my book, this entry is part of the fairly lengthy Karl Marx subsection of the Magnificent Shadows section. Regarding Trotskyism, see also my entry Trotsky, posted on this blog on February 3, 2011.)

Writing this Marxian subsection of a presumably serious philosophical section, the first impulse is to stay away from the philosophically frivolous international political movement, which Trotskyism has become, as there is hardly any novelty in Trotskyism per se, that can be substantially distinguished from a certain stage, we may call it the Leninist stage of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution. Ironically, Trotskyism is derived from Leninism, which was not so much a philosophical version of Karl Marx’s teachings, as a political movement to take power in one country. Considering that the centerpiece of Trotskyan alleged originality is the idea of a permanent revolution, denying the feasibility of achieving its goals within a single country, here is already the core contradiction within Trotskyism, which in practical terms has always striven to achieve exactly that: a victory in the country where it has been practiced.

It will be eminently worthwhile to recall the historical fact that the term Trotskyism was coined in 1905 by Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov, but not to distinguish it from Bolshevism and other ultra-leftist movements, as much as to stick Trotsky’s distinctively Jewish face on Russian radicalism as such. In specifying what it meant, Milyukov essentially described the basic Bolshevik political platform, and called it Trotskyism. The term remained meaningless outside its "Jewish connection" to Bolshevism, until the 1920’s, when, having won the Russian Civil War, Bolshevism proceeded with the next stage of institutionalization of its power in Soviet Russia.

I have explained already elsewhere, and, hopefully, with sufficient clarity, that Leninism and Stalinism were representative of the two different and consecutive stages of the Russian Revolution, representing a logical continuity, rather than some kind of internal tension and conflict. Lenin represented the destruction of the old order; Stalin’s role was to build the new one. Trotskyism, then, can be best described as the perpetuation of Leninism after it had outlived its purpose in Russia.

Needless to say, there was no logical place for Trotsky’s permanent revolution in the USSR, where the task set by the Bolshevik Revolution had already been accomplished. But, ironically, and most instructively for those who wish to be instructed, it was to become an immensely useful tool for the advancement of strategic Soviet interests. It was for exactly this reason that Trotsky was let out of the country (officially deported), in 1929, and the plan worked to perfection. Thus it was the Soviet Union that effectively launched Trotskyism around the globe, and then further obliged its proponents by turning their hero-leader into a martyr.

By thus unleashing Trotskyism on the outside world, the USSR was able to kill several birds with one stone. It allowed several strands within international “Marxism” to coexist, positioning itself in the more moderate part of the spectrum and finding a way to disassociate itself from the more obnoxious international activists and social pariahs. It was also able to provide a choice for those who did not wish to be perceived as Soviet agents, yet wished to remain in the Marxist fold. There were others, legitimate and respectable independent Western Marxists, who continued to function in their own quiet and unobnoxious mode, but, as they say, the more the merrier, and Trotskyism was certainly making life merrier, to use Comrade Stalin’s famous phrase first said in 1934, and then repeated again and again.

Thanks to Comrade Trotsky, radical Marxism was alive and extremely well.

HUMILITY OF THE SILVER SPOON

Before saying anything of our own, let us establish the proper context:
“And everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” (Matthew 19:29-30.)
...Harsh, provocative, challenging, even confusing words! For a believer who accepts faith as knowledge, an irresistible temptation arises to take Christ’s words literally and calculatingly, and to start selling off one’s earthly assets: houses, brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, lands, converting them into a stock in the afterlife. Just like another shrewd business deal, and just as amoral, but, in a certain sense, infinitely worse than a regular Caesarian business deal: Thus trading in God’s property makes it utterly immoral, an unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit, the dreaded guarantee of an eternal damnation!
One cannot buy God’s Grace by literally forcing oneself into poverty, pain, and deprivation, for the reason that a mercantile interest may hide behind such actions. The Gates of Heaven are closed to the merchants of the afterlife, shaking their alleged salvation IOU’s in St. Peter’s face… So, what is the true meaning of the first and the last?

I have always thought, even as a little child, that the last had nothing to do with being poor, as opposed to being rich, socially underprivileged, as opposed to being born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, or being physically or mentally sick, as opposed to being healthy, etc. To me, it was always a matter of attitude and demeanor. One did not have to mortify one’s flesh, like a flagellant, which to me constituted an inordinate preoccupation with the flesh, quite the opposite of its intent, turning a virtue into a vice. For me, the right approach meant to be indifferent to material matters, to channel your energies toward things worthwhile. I guess, in my previous life in Russia I could afford all kinds of eccentricities, because once you are known to be at the top, you can never be mistaken for a beggar, even if you start panhandling in the street. People like myself could indeed well afford to be genuinely humble; it’s what I call “humility of the silver spoon.” Alas, should one’s circumstances suddenly change, pragmatically demanding arrogance, rather than humility, as a better means of adaptation, it’s probably unrealistic to expect that one’s inbuilt attitude to life would change accordingly, on the strength of those external circumstances alone…

The point of my preceding tirade was to emphasize that I see the virtue of “the last” not in one’s deliberate withdrawal from the world, nor in a loud renunciation of every perk and privilege granted to him by life (my willingness to renounce them all had proved that I was indeed capable of such renunciation), but in being unpresumptuous, “unposturing,” yet caring so little about these things that, by the same token as I would never seek them, nor would I seek to deliberately relinquish the advantages of my status and material possessions, for the sole ulterior motive of becoming "the last."

Ending this entry on a note of sheer psychology, and to be quite honest with myself and with my reader, I’m not too sure, however, if at all, that were I to have been born without that precious silver spoon in my mouth, I would have developed into the naturally humble person which I genuinely am. After all, paraphrasing Karl Marx just a bit, the original Dasein, and not just some ‘primeval’ Bewußtsein, is most certainly responsible for quite a few permanent fixtures in every person’s psyche.

"POWER MAKES STUPID"

(This short entry was written several years ago, at the height of the neoconservative folly, that is, during the George W. Bush Administration, but its currency still holds today, and, I am afraid, may hold well into the future.)

The Arrogance of Power, as Senator Fulbright once put it, as the title of his memorable book, does not seem to go far enough in making the most compelling point, which Nietzsche has expressed with his usual brilliance: "Power makes stupid!" Had Washington politicians, but especially “America’s white-haired elders,” as I once called the thinking branch of this nation’s power elite, read more Nietzsche, they might, perhaps, have stumbled on this profound statement of his, which reaches beyond the simple Andersen’s child’s observable fact that the “Emperor has no clothes,” to exposing the reason why the Emperor is naked.


The sense of possessing superior power does make one stupid. The fall of the Dark Lord Voldemort in J. K. Rowling’s delightful and profoundly philosophical Harry Potter series, is splendidly explained by the very fact that, overconfident in his Dark Arts proficiency, the wizard treats everything else with utmost disdain, refusing to understand the seemingly “inferior” powers (which he himself does not possess), and, as it turns out, these are exactly the powers which are destined to defeat him!

I am far from calling anyone a "Dark Wizard", but the comparison with Voldemort is very proper. As a matter of fact, a far more benign character Sirius Black suffers from the same lethal shortcoming in his own attitude toward the House Elf Kreacher, and toward all other such "Untermensch," and he too has to pay the ultimate price for his folly. The arrogance of power is stupidity, as no one in modern world wields absolute power, and to denigrate and casually dismiss the combined, even if individually inferior, powers of others; to go against the elementary common sense contained in the principle of the Balance of Power, will prove again and again that there are no exceptions.

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF "POISON"

It is almost eerie to find the exact circumstances of your situation put in sharp focus under the bright light of a genius, in his own precise words, where nothing can be added or needs to be taken away, like it happens in the following excerpt from Nietzsche, in direct application to the circumstances of my life:

“Our highest insights must and should sound like follies, and sometimes like crimes, when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed, and predestined, for them… What serves the higher type of men as nourishment must almost be poison for a very different and inferior type. The virtues of the common man might signify vices and weaknesses in a philosopher.” (From Nietzsche’s Jenseits 30.)

By the same token as I have been benignly characterized as being "ahead of my time," I've also been called, less charitably, "radioactive," and even "poisonous," practically in the same breath. All of it may be true, but not terribly instructive. Nietzsche is more to the point on my situation. My truth was indeed poison to those same people to whose better sense and elementary decency I had been trying to appeal, for a quarter of a century. Now, having established that, with Nietzsche’s help, let us go further.

So what can I do about it now that I see, looking at what has become of American foreign policy, that I have failed in my efforts to administer my honest poison, the reason being that one can’t persuade people to take a poison against their will? Do I modify my tactic, or reconsider it altogether, and come up with something totally new that would work better? But then, the substance of my offering would still remain the same. Call it being ahead of one’s time, or whatever, the fact is that by any other name, poison is poison!

And now here comes the answer. Regarding poison, please consult the following paragraph from Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica by Dr. Kent, the great American homeopath.---

“…The first impression would be to rebel against the use of such substances as Crotalus, Lachesis, Apis, and other animal poisons, and it is true that the lay mind must look with something like horror upon their administration; but when they are properly used and when we consider the dreadfulness of the necessity demanding them, and also when we have ascertained that there can be no substitute when demanded, and again that they are potentized and changed until they are perfectly pure, because, reduced to a state of simple substance, the horror passes away from the mind. It is true that the diseases that call for the use of such substances as Crotalus are very grave. When at the bedside of a Crotalus patient one feels that death is very near, the subject is horrible to look upon, and the mother in regard to her child, or the husband, would immediately say, ‘Doctor, use anything in order to save the life, resort to anything in order to heal this sick one.’”

Poisons are the foundation of extreme homeopathy. They cure very sick people better than any allopathic drugs do. Provided of course that the persons in charge of the sick patient recognize that he is very sick and wish the patient to be cured.

LIFE AS A GIFT AND A BURDEN

What is the worthiest subject of human contemplation? Many will jump with the answer God, remembering the noble endeavors of Isaac Luria and of the rabbis of the Kabbalah, and of all those religious philosophers and mystics who devoted their lives to contemplating the Divine and the esoteric. Yet the answer given in this entry is a different one. It does not mean that I am against such supernatural contemplations, far from it! But, as always, it is most edifying to offer a variety of different answers to a complex question, thus doing justice to its complexity.

One of my Apte Dictums says that “life is a contract between man and God, at the end of which we receive our wages.” (I bet that if one could be put to the test of writing down a thousand one-word descriptions of “life,” like the word “contract” above, in the course of a single day, such a task would not turn out to be too hard. After all, almost any word in the dictionary can apply, isn’t that true? In my wife’s splendid definition, for instance, “life is… an experiment.” Well, c’est… la vie!)

Among these thousand epithets, the words ‘gift’ and ‘burden’ ought to occupy distinguished positions. If we attempted to compare a large number of such lists and ran a semantic word-count analysis of these lists, both these words would appear high on the composite tally.

Now, how does the word "gift" apply, except to indicate something given? On the other hand, this is not a free gift, in the “take it or leave it” sense. Noblesse oblige that we do not discard this gift, when the giver is not looking. Yes, it is noblesse, and not the ignoble dread of “the undiscovered country.” As I have put it elsewhere, the words “death before dishonor” become meaningless, to the point of mockery, when death itself turns out to be a greater dishonor than a dishonorable life.

But let us be fair to the better, non-mechanical connotation of the word “gift.” After all, the many presents each of us used to receive for birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions, especially as young children, have meant much more to us than the fact of their being ‘given’ and dutifully ‘received’! Most of them were delightful and pleasurable in themselves, and they never failed to brighten our life. Let us, therefore, look at our life as an exceptional gift in that sense, too.

For many obvious reasons, life is a wonderful gift, especially, when we are young, and our list of “capital” regrets is short and mostly inconsequential. But extremely lucky are those for whom, at some critical point, life does not become a burden, either due to the infirmity of old age or an incurable disease, or else because of a mental anguish, caused by particular circumstances. On the first scenario, here is Nietzsche’s take on suicide, in Menschliches (80):

“The old man and death. One may ask, why, aside from the demands of religion, it is more praiseworthy for a man growing old, who feels his powers decrease, to await his slow exhaustion and disintegration, rather than to put a term to his life with complete consciousness? In this case suicide is quite natural and should rightfully awaken respect for the triumph of reason. This it did in those times, when the preeminent Greek philosophers and the doughtiest Roman patriots used to die by suicide. Conversely, compulsion to prolong life from day to day, anxiously consulting doctors and accepting the most painful, humiliating conditions, without the strength to come nearer the actual goal of one’s life, is by far less worthy of respect. Religions provide abundant excuses to escape the need to kill oneself. --- This is how they insinuate themselves with those who are in love with life.”

My opinion is that, of course, in most cases, suicide is a dishonorable ploy to bail out of our contract with God, which requires us to live out our life in toto. However, I am categorically opposed to prolonging one’s life artificially, without a perfectly good reason, that is, in Nietzsche’s words, purely out of being “in love with life.” The only reason to prolong life is when one has some useful unfinished business to wrap up, and that business is truly important. On the other hand, that reason should not, at any time, become an excuse…

So much, then, for prolonging life. But suicide is an altogether different matter.
I would not call suicide either a weakness or a strength of character, but rather a luxury no decent man can afford. In this sense, “death before dishonor” is an empty phrase. The so-called “dishonorable life,” if it is a life of involuntary dishonor, must be viewed as a penance, as an expiation of sins, so to speak, and as such it is no longer a dishonor. The real dishonor is avoiding penance, becoming “a fugitive from justice.” There is a remarkable passage in Plato, referring to the secret practices of the Pythagoreans, which, in my view, has a surprising relevance to this subject, although, to my knowledge, it has not been understood the way I see it, by anybody else:

“The saying uttered in secret rites, to the effect that we men are in a sort of prison, and that one ought not to loose himself from it nor yet to run away, seems to me something great and not easy to see through; but this at least I think is well said, that it is the gods who care for us and we, men, are one of the possessions of the gods.” (From Phaedo: 62 B)

I find this passage remarkable, in the sense that here I can clearly see an explicit prohibition of suicide, so unexpected to be found in classical Greek thought, which seems to treat suicide rather casually, especially if one allows himself to be convinced on this matter by the authority of Schopenhauer, who attributes to the Greeks an explicit approval of honorable suicide.
 Therefore, it is not what Schopenhauer thinks about it, but this Pythagorean Commandment of sorts-- Thou shalt not loose thyself from this prison, nor yet run away, as we men are one of the possessions of the gods! -- that, to me, becomes the definitive expression of the real Greek position on the inadmissibility of suicide as an easy way of bailing out of one’s duties and responsibilities to one’s life, and those who are of a different opinion, must rather be treated as an exception, and by no means as the rule.

But Schopenhauer, whether we disagree with him on the tricky subject of suicide or not, teaches us a very important pessimistic lesson about life (we need his old-age pessimism to balance our youthful optimism), suggesting that, generally speaking, life is more of a burden, than anything else:

“There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome, to be got over with.” (From Schopenhauer’s Counsels And Maxims, Section I.)

Here is a statement of profound philosophical and religious importance, because there is no greater subject of thoughtful contemplation than the meaning of life. True, that objectively there can be no greater subject than God Himself, but how arrogant and disrespectful would we be, should we dare to aim our incompetent thinking at God, at the expense of that most tangible to us of all manifestations of His Existence: our own life!