Solitude, fasting, and sexual
abstinence, preceded by their opposites. Are we supposed to see them only
as cases of the religious neurosis, when the manifestations of the heroic
neurosis are basically the same? Take Harry Potter, for instance.
Here is a boy who hates his loneliness and desperately needs company, be it his
godfather Sirius, or his two great friends Hermione and Ron. Here is a boy who
relishes good food and has at least a couple of romantic interests throughout
the seven years of Hogwarts... But watch this boy don his Superhero apparel
whenever the circumstances demand it of him. He shuns the company of his
friends, he loses appetite, and deliberately keeps his romantic interest as far
away from himself as humanly possible?! Now, I do not imagine anyone mistaking
Harry for a saint, but a hero he is, in all readers’ eyes… So much for the
religious neurosis then. What Harry suffers from, is the heroic neurosis, and
these two are absolutely indistinguishable, being one and the same thing. A
hero cannot afford to be sociable, even if he appears as a centerpiece figure
in popular surroundings. Nor can a saint, for that matter. The saint’s acts of
most humane nature are, at a closer look, supremely impersonal. Both care about
the world-historical, not what is close at hand. Both care about the
human-generic, the collective, not what is singular, and human-specific. Both
are larger than life, and therefore not suitable for life, not capable of fitting
in, in the most common sense of the word…
Now, back to Nietzsche. Let us
read on---
“Even in
the background of the most recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find,
almost as the Ding an-Sich, this gruesome question mark of the religious
crisis and awakening.--- How is the denial of the will possible? How is
the saint possible? This really seems to be the question over which
Schopenhauer became a philosopher and began...” (Jenseits 47).
There are several things about
Schopenhauer, which must be kept in mind, as we comment on Nietzsche’s reference
to him. Schopenhauer is a pessimist. He is not too fond of Christianity,
preferring Hinduism and Buddhism (for my explanation of such preference of
his see my entry Foreign Religions To The Rescue Of Philosophy). He puts
Will above all other motive forces in man, and, being a pessimist, his Will is
charged negatively, which is essential for the proper understanding of the
implications of his holy man.
Schopenhauer’s saint is a
good man, filled with love and compassion for others. His “enlightenment” turns
him away from life toward a glorification of Nirvana, which is for him,
as it is for me, nothingness.
“…There arises within him (the holy man) a horror of the nature, of which
his own phenomenal existence is an expression, the kernel and inner nature of
that world which is recognized as full of misery.”
Schopenhauer’s saint practices
solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence, and even self-torture, but
not as a means of gaining acceptance to the Paradise: this would have been too optimistic
for a dedicated pessimist, such as Schopenhauer was. The saintly practices
of self-denial and renunciation of life are all intended as a preparation for
embracing the Nirvana:
“We must banish the dark impression of the
nothingness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final
goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade it
like the Indians do through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption
in Brahma, or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather, we freely acknowledge that
what remains after the entire abolition of Will is for all those who are still
full of will certainly nothing, but, conversely, to them in whom the will has
turned and has denied itself, this, our world,--- which is so real, with all
its suns and milky ways--- is nothing.
“(As the will is completely subdued) all those
phenomena are also abolished, that constant strain and effort without end and
without rest at all the grades of objectivity, in which and through which the
world consists, the multifarious forms succeeding each other in gradation; the
whole manifestation of the will and, finally, also the universal forms of this
manifestation, time and space, and also its last fundamental form, subject and
object;--- all are abolished. No will: no idea, no world. Before us there is
certainly only nothingness.”
Ironically even here a direct
comparison with Harry Potter is also possible. Harry does not seek the
kind of philosophical nothingness, which the literal reading of
Schopenhauer affords.
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment