ONE FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE? PART II.

Nietzsche’s Jenseits-199 continues.

“This state is actually encountered in Europe today: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those commanding. They know no other way to protect themselves against their bad conscience than to pose as the executors of more ancient or higher commands (of ancestors, of the Constitution, of right, of the laws, or even of God). Or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd’s way of thinking, such as “first servants of their people” or “instruments of the common weal.”

In Soviet Russia, government officials used to be called, half-sarcastically, half-seriously, “servants of the people.” I doubt that they will ever be called that again, not because of the word’s implicit hypocrisy, but because of the strongly negative connotations from its previous usage, even though the meaning is by no means off the mark.

“On the other side, the herd man in Europe today gives himself the appearance of being the only permissible kind of man, and he glorifies his attributes, which make him tame, easy to get along with, and useful to the herd, as if they were the truly human virtues: namely, public spirit, benevolence, consideration, industriousness, moderation, modesty, indulgence ,and pity.”

Nietzsche has repeatedly emphasized that these standards of a democratic society are exactly what he is referring to, in his diatribe against the sickness of modern will. No wonder then that the social standards of American society today are essentially the same as the ones which he caricatures. The question still remains unanswered of course as to why such soft social values characteristic of both the capitalist and socialist societies, jointly referred to as developed democratic societies, should be made fun of at all, whereas their opposites, the malevolent, the inconsiderate, the non-industrious, the immoderate, immodest, non-indulgent, and pitiless are to be preferred. I do not approve of this idiosyncratic Nietzschean preoccupation with barbarian virtues, not even as a reaction to the despicable vice of social hypocrisy. I do not approve of Savonarola, of an overreaction, in place of a reaction. That is why I want modern society to improve itself from the inside, by enlightenment, not by a revolution, by civilized, not barbarian means. If American society cannot heal itself, then the “surgeon” is already looming large, and much closer than the horizon. The bin Laden outrage, if I may use this name metaphorically, is ready to sweep America again within and without her borders, and the Russians are going to watch from the sidelines, to see their nemesis punished for her hubris, and Europe is also watching, secretly rooting against the bully for the other guys, whoever they are, to come and beat the bully up, and this is not a good solution, because much of it is only the mindless, thoughtless, negative reaction of revenge, unbecoming the latest generation of our esteemed Western civilization… No, I’d rather much prefer the soft, sophisticated touch!

“In those cases however, where one considers leaders and bellwethers indispensable, people today make one attempt after another to add together clever herd men by way of replacing commanders--- all parliamentary constitutions, have this origin. Nevertheless, the appearance of one who commands unconditionally strikes these herd-animal Europeans as an immense comfort and salvation from a gradually intolerable pressure, as last attested in a prominent way by the effect of Napoleon’s appearance… The history of Napoleon’s reception is almost the history of the higher happiness, attained by this whole century in its most valuable human beings and moments.”

I know for a fact that Russian liberal nobility (even including Tsar Alexander I in their number) did welcome the appearance of Napoleon with an exultation. Whether it was indeed the instinct for emancipation from the dark-age legacy of the past, is hardly the question. The right question would be: emancipation which way: toward liberal democracy, which Nietzsche ridicules, or toward barbarism, which appears more to the heart of this wishful thinker? Or, was it an inchoate, unspecified “will to change,” come what may? Maybe the answer is like the emblematic life history of Konstantin Pobedonostsev: a liberal democrat in his young years, growing up into a conservative reactionary in his mature years? (As they used to say, if you are young and conservative, you do not have a heart; if you are old and liberal, you do not have a brain…) Maybe the whole Nietzschean concept of the master race, the barbarian coming, the blond beast of prey at the gates, is a telltale sign of a certain immaturity, characteristic of all young-age idealism, but later--- sometimes much later--- maturing into something else?

…Is it at all possible that we may have touched upon a Nietzsche secret here?

The End.

ONE FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE? PART I.

(In case the irony of my title is too subtle for its own good, let me decipher it in the following way. I am not referring here to some Dumas-esque camaraderie of the four musketeer spirits, but to the direct relationship between authority and obedience. One authority for all, all obedient to one…

This is my Jenseits-199 comment, and as such, it belongs in the Nietzsche section. However, as an entry on totalitarianism it may also be placed in the Collective section. Considering that the latter is already saturated with similarly themed material, the placement of this one here is well justified.)

Totalitarianism runs like blood through the veins of humanity. Doktor Hegel exposed its mind; the twentieth century exposed its body. In the following passage Nietzsche exposes its soul, revealing to us that it is not an aberration of some sort, and not an unnatural perversion, but, on the contrary, it is the most natural manifestation of the homo “sapiens” as a herd animal. (Defenders of Democracy, do not underestimate the herd! The herd is democracy! Who knew it better than Thomas Jefferson?..)

So, here is the passage, constituting Nietzsche’s Jenseits-199, and I am giving it here in toto, because of its tremendous significance.---

“Inasmuch as at all times, as long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of men (clans, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches), and always a great number of people who obeyed, compared with the small number of those commanding-- considering then, that nothing has been exercised and cultivated better and longer among men so far than obedience, it may fairly be assumed that the need for it is now innate in the average man, as a kind of formal conscience, which commands: “thou shalt unconditionally do something, unconditionally not do something else,” in short, “thou shalt.”

Obedience is the stuff, which makes totalitarianism not only possible but even desirable... Does Nietzsche’s allusion to the Ten Commandments indicate his opinion of Christianity as a “herd religion”? In such a case, it should not be surprising that the idea of Communism has never offended the Russian Christian sensibilities, and then I must also be right to diagnose as a peculiar case of national schizophrenia the inconsistency of those American Christians who embrace capitalism, as if it had been sent to them directly from God, as an expression of His Goodness, and condemn communism as if it were from the devil, whereas this whole thing is the other way around…

“This need seeks to satisfy itself, and fill its form with some content. According to its strength, impatience and tension, it seizes upon things as a rude appetite, rather indiscriminately, and accepts what is shouted into its ear by someone who issues commands: parents, teachers, laws, class prejudices, public opinions.”

It may be shocking at first, but at the end it turns out almost a platitude, that the American society, the freest of the free, is, in fact, a closet totalitarian, searching for someone of authority--- a politician, a cult leader, a snake oil salesman, a dominatrix---- to give their obedience to, to be commanded, disciplined by… “The strange limits of human development, the way it hesitates, takes so long, often turns back, and moves in circles, is due to the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is inherited best, and at the expense of, the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct progressing for once to its ultimate excesses,--- then, those who command and are independent would eventually be lacking altogether; or they would secretly suffer from a bad conscience and would find it necessary to deceive themselves before they could command --- as if they, too, merely obeyed.”

This insight compares to my own observation that the true totalitarian leader does not represent his own person, but the totalitarian State, the System, and to this System, even if he is the one who had made it up himself, he submits his obedient will.

Nota bene: The greatest commander is he who commands as if he, too, merely obeyed…

End of Part I. To be continued.

INSTINCT AND REASON MEET AGAIN

Instinct and reason meet again in Nietzsche’s Jenseits 191. This important theme keeps recurring on these pages, stemming from my insistence that God contains both the rational and the irrational sides, whence it is perfectly clear that the question of instinct versus reason is not of the either-or sort (few phenomena are of this sort anyway, no offense to my hero Kierkegaard!), but rather of balance, or to put it sharper, of the right mix. With this in mind, let us read the promised Nietzschean passage:

“The ancient theological problem of faith and knowledge, or, more clearly, of instinct and reason, in other words, the question whether--- as regards the valuation of things--- instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants us to evaluate and act in accordance with reasons, with a ‘why?’--in other words, in accordance with expedience and utility,-- this is still the ancient moral problem, which first emerged in the person of Socrates, and divided thinking people long before Christianity. Socrates himself, to be sure, with the taste of his talent, that of a superior dialectician, had initially sided with reason; and in fact, what did he do all his life long, but laugh at the awkward incapacity of noble Athenians, who, like all noble men, were men of instinct and never could give sufficient information about the reasons of their actions? In the end, however, privately and secretly, he laughed at himself too: in himself he found, before his conscience and self-examination, the same difficulty and incapacity. But is that a reason, he encouraged himself, for giving up the instincts? One has to see to it that they, as well as reason, receive their due. One must follow his instincts, but persuade reason to assist them with good reasons. This was the real falseness of the great ironic, so rich in secrets, he got his conscience to be satisfied with a kind of self-trickery: at bottom he had seen through the irrational element in moral judgments.” (Jenseits #191.)

Let us make a stop here, before proceeding with Nietzsche’s second paragraph. It is extremely important to distinguish now between pre-Christian and non-Christian “instinct” and the Christian faith per se, which Nietzsche, not without some good reasons, equates with Christian instinct. Considering that Nietzsche has a low opinion of the Christian faith, meddling in the affairs of philosophy, we will find that those reasons do not apply to Socrates, whose falseness, therefore, is not a negative moral valuation of “the great ironic,” but ought to be seen more as the skill of an accomplished juggler who succeeds in creating a strong illusion without actually deceiving the people who are watching him.

His observation that reason is more befitting the plebeian type, whereas instinct is a defining characteristic of the aristocratic frame of mind, is absolutely fascinating. It cannot be put to a test successfully, however, as in most cases we are dealing with mixed types. Men of the highest order of nobility have all been lowly plebeians some time back in their ancestry, and their plebeian genes may even show from time to time. On the other hand, there is an overwhelming historical evidence of people of humble birth who have displayed a great abundance of natural aristocratic tendencies. It’s said about Goethe and Beethoven that in their lives their certain disparity of birth was reversed in their behavior, etc. Let us now move on, however…

“Plato, more noble and innocent in such matters and lacking the craftiness of a plebeian, wanted to employ all his strength-- the greatest strength any philosopher so far has had at his disposal-- to prove to himself that reason and instinct of themselves tend toward one goal-- the good, “God.” And ever since Plato, all theologians and philosophers are on the same track-- that is, in moral matters it has so far been instinct, or what the Christians call ‘faith,’ or ‘the herd,’ as I put it, that has triumphed. Perhaps, Dèscartes should be excepted, as the father of rationalism, who conceded authority to reason alone; but reason is merely an instrument, and Dèscartes was superficial.” (Jenseits 191.)

With regard to Plato, here is a most commendable desire to reconcile instinct and reason as two paths that lead to the same goal, which is “good life” and God. In the same paragraph we find a brilliantly insightful, albeit delightfully understated, explanation of the origin of rationalism in Dèscartes. Apparently, his quest for the triumph of reason, manifested by his philosophically flawed, but otherwise spectacular Cogito, ergo sum!, has not been directed against instinct, but against the appropriation of the irrational element, and its imposition on reason, by the Christian faith. (One of the interesting offshoots of this situation has been the doctrine of double-truth, which is being discussed elsewhere.) For this reason, Dèscartes’ superficiality in this case does not prevent him from getting generally uncontested top grades, in Nietzsche’s own eyes.

NIETZSCHE'S RELIGIOUS GENETICS

Another case of the chicken and the egg. Who was first--- Luther seducing Northern Germany, or Northern Germany producing Luther? Apparently, this question has something to do with Nietzsche’s discussion of “talent for religion” in Jenseits 48-50. Here are the pertinent excerpts:

(48). It seems that the Latin races are far more deeply attached to their Catholicism than we Northerners are to Christianity in general, and that consequently unbelief in Catholic countries means something altogether different from what it means among the Protestants,--- namely, a sort of revolt against the spirit of the race, whereas with us it is rather a return to the spirit (or non-spirit) of the race.

We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races even as regards our talents for religion — we have little talent for it. One may make an exception in the case of the Celts, who have therefore furnished also the best soil for Christian infection in the North: the Christian ideal blossomed forth in France as much as the pale sun of the north permitted it. How strangely pious for our taste are even the most recent French skeptics, in so far as there is any Celtic blood in their origin! How Catholic, how un-German does Auguste Comte’s Sociology seem to us, with the Roman logic of its instincts! How Jesuitical, that amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port Royal, Sainte-Beuve, in spite of all his hostility to Jesuits! And especially Ernest Renan: how inaccessible to us Northerners does the language of such a Renan sound, in whom every instant the merest touch of religious thrill throws his refined voluptuous and comfortably couching soul off its balance! Let us repeat after him these fine sentences—and what wickedness and haughtiness is immediately aroused by way of answer in our probably less beautiful, but harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls!—

“Disons donc hardiment que la religion est un produit de l’homme normal, que l’homme est le plus dans le vrai quand il est le plus religieux et le plus assuré d’une destinée infinite… C’est quand il est bon qu’il veut que la vertu corresponde à un ordre éternel, c’est quand il contemple les choses d’une manière désintéressée qu’il trouve la morte révoltante et absurde. Comment ne pas supposer que c’est dans ces moments-là, que l’homme voit le mieux?”

These sentences are so extremely antipodal to my ears and habits, that in my first impulse of rage on finding them, I wrote on the margin, “la niaiserie religieuse par excellence!” But my subsequent rage actually took a fancy to them, these sentences with their truth absolutely inverted! It is so nice and such a distinction to have one’s own antipodes!

(49). What is amazing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the enormous abundance of gratitude it exudes: it is a very noble type of man that confronts nature and life in this way.

Later on, when the rabble got the upper hand in Greece, fear became rampant also in religion, too; and the ground was prepared for Christianity.---

(50). The passion for God: there are peasant types, sincere and obtrusive, like Luther — the whole of Protestantism lacks the southern delicatezza. There is an Oriental exaltation of the mind in it, worthy of an undeservedly favored or elevated slave, as in the case of St. Augustine, for instance, who lacks in an offensive manner all nobility in bearing and desires. There is a feminine tenderness and sensuality in it, which modestly and unconsciously longs for a unio mystica et physica, as in the case of Madame de Guyon. In many cases it appears, curiously enough, as the disguise of a girl’s or youth’s puberty; here and there even as the hysteria of an old maid, also as her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman in such a case.

Whenever I lay my hands on some extra time in the future, I will be eager to write an extended and meaningful comment on this, but, alas, the time is not now. Which is not a good excuse, however, to keep this marvelous edificational piece under lock and key…

THE HERO AND THE SAINT. PART III OF 3.

In the last seventh book of the Harry Potter series, the Elder Wand is the symbol of ultimate power, and its possession has been sought by all wizards--- the best and the worst--- as a natural expression of the ultimate Nietzschean Wille zur Macht. Applying this to Schopenhauer, we might even say that the denial of the last bastion of pure will, this Wille zur Macht, is the denial of the will as such, the denial of Heldenleben, and--- heroically speaking--- the denial of life and an embrace of nothingness.

So, here is Harry:

‘And then there’s this.’ Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived state, Harry did not like to see.

“I don’t want it,” said Harry. “What?” said Ron loudly. “Are you mental?”

…“That wand is more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry, “And honestly… I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”

…Try to enter “life,” instead of “wand,” in the last sentence, and you will know exactly what I mean!

The conclusion of Jenseits-47 asks the question why the Saint phenomenon is so interesting to men of all types, including philosophers. Once again I must interject that the line between the hero and the saint, in this case too, is awfully thin, and the following passage proves it:

“Let us ask what precisely about this whole phenomenon of the saint has seemed so enormously interesting to men of all types and ages, even to philosophers. Beyond any doubt, it was the air of the miraculous that goes with it, namely, the immediate succession of the opposites, of the states of the soul, which are judged morally in opposite ways. It seemed palpable that a bad man was suddenly transformed into a saint, good man. The psychology that we have had so far suffered shipwreck at this point: wasn’t this chiefly because it had placed itself under the dominion of morals, because it, too, believed in opposite moral values, and saw and read and interpreted these opposites into the text and the facts? What? The miracle merely a mistake of interpretation? A lack of philology?”

No, I would hardly call it a lack of philology, except if the philologist is a heartless dried-up scientist, who stays unmoved and uninfluenced by the air of the miraculous, which is always present around both heroes and saints. Both give rise to mythologies, legends, and cultural traditions, based not so much on facts as on beliefs, and these beliefs are forever imbued with morality and with the acceptance of the ‘supernatural’ as these exceptional men’s way of life. (Up to this day, the presence of supernatural occurrences has been the necessary qualifying condition for the canonization of saints by the Roman Catholic Church! I am somehow convinced that in all these cases, where sainthood has been conferred on post-Biblical historical candidates, we have been looking each time at mythological, not objectively historical situations and circumstances.)

As for the “miraculous” transformation of a bad man into a good man, this usually happens to both heroes and saints. Take the perfectly “factual” case of Napoleon. At the time of his death he was the most vilified villain known to the world, but his legend had already been working miracles for him, and-- lo and behold!-- a couple of decades later he would become universally accepted as France’s greatest hero, and one of the greatest heroes who ever lived… Was this miracle “merely a mistake of interpretation?” I do not think so. “A lack of philology?” Melior ancora!

 

The End.

THE HERO AND THE SAINT. PART II OF 3.

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…

THE HERO AND THE SAINT. PART I OF 3.

[Is this entry about Nietzsche, or about Schopenhauer, or maybe... about Harry Potter? Rather than explaining myself as to why this is so obviously a Nietzsche entry, I will simply lay my claim under the authority of the writer of this piece, that this is merely my comment on Nietzsche’s Jenseits 47. No more argument (with myself) is allowed in this matter!]

The Hero and the Saint, where is the line drawn? What exactly is the relationship, in public consciousness, between the images of a hero and a saint. Where is the line drawn on the general idea of an exceptional personality? There may be yet a vague suspicion, a whiff of insight, that two complete opposites, driven to their respective extremes, have more in common with each other than with their less exceptional likes, and that they might even become indistinguishable. In this case, the denial of the will by the saint and the affirmation of the will by Nietzsche’s superman, aren’t they both two exceptional twins of the hero mold, both embraced, both feared, both admired, both, maybe, the same man?

Here is another Nietzschean well, to draw our thirst-quencher from, Jenseits 47. He starts it with an incisive description of what he calls a religious neurosis. Before we start reading it, I wish to interpose a question of my own, for consideration: by the same token as we speak of a religious neurosis, can we equally talk in the same terms about a heroic neurosis? Let the reader be alert to this possibility of interpretation, as he, or she, reads the opening paragraph of Jenseits 47:

“Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared, we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence. But one cannot decide with certainty what is cause and what effect, and whether any relation of cause and effect is involved here. The final doubt seems justified, as among its most regular symptoms, among both savage and tame peoples, we also find the most sudden, extravagant voluptuousness, which, then, just as suddenly, changes into a penitential spasm and denial of the world and will, both perhaps to be interpreted as masked epilepsy? But nowhere should one resist interpretation more than here: no older type has yet been surrounded by such lavish growth of nonsense and superstition, and no other type seems to have interested men,-- even philosophers,-- more. The time has come for becoming a bit cold right here, to learn caution,-- better yet: to look away, to go away.”

The last suggestion is of course sheer nonsense poetry. Just as Nietzsche has made things interesting for us by his irreverent emulation of Toto tugging at the Wizard’s drawn curtain, he is telling us… “to look away, to go away”! No, we shall do no such thing. Let us force the curtain open!

To be continued…

NIETZSCHE AND STENDHAL

Aside from the usual suspects of Nietzsche’s affection, admired, and occasionally maligned, in groups or as individuals, Marie-Henri Beyle, aka Stendhal, occupies a special niche, rivaled by very few in importance. Nietzsche exalts him both as a psychologist, based primarily on Stendhal’s 1830 masterpiece of fiction Le Rouge et le Noir, and as an aesthete, based primarily on his 1822 non-fiction work De L’Amour. Although in Nietzsche’s psychological realm Fedor Dostoyevsky reigns supreme, Stendhal stands a most respectable second to the Russian genius. (“…Dostoevsky, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life, even more than my discovery of Stendhal.” [In Götzen-Dämmerung: Skirmishes of an Untimely Man #45.])

Ironically Nietzsche lavishes quantitatively more praise on Stendhal the psychologist than on Dostoyevsky, and here are some of those laudatory instances:

“A final trait for the image of the free-spirited philosopher is contributed by Stendhal, whom, considering German taste, I do not want to fail to stress -- for he goes against the German taste. “Pour être bon philosophe,” says this last great psychologist, “il faut être sec, clair, sans illusion. Un banquier, qui a fait fortune, a une partie du caractère requis pour faire des découvertes en philosophie,--- c’est-à-dire, pour voir clair dans ce qui est.” (Jenseits 39.)

At this point it may be useful for me to quote myself from an autobiographical entry built around Jenseits 39, under the title Dry, Clear, Without Illusion, where I see Stendhal clash with Nietzsche in a paradoxical, yet definitely undecided battle:

“Nietzsche is quite obviously in love with Stendhal. But isn’t the Frenchman denying his philosopher label to Nietzsche, once we try to literally interpret his dictum? Who can be less dry, or more passionate, or more filled with all sorts of illusions than our dear Nietzsche? Philosophy for him is a continual non-stop inspiration, and prophetic speech of the highest order. To say that anything he says is in any way compatible with the person of a “banker who has made a fortune” can make a good paradox in the tradition of Oscar Wilde, but a grave and outrageous insult to Nietzsche himself, that is to the philosopher inside him. Take this quality of clarity, for instance. Even this is a very different quality in the philosopher than in Stendhal’s banker. And finally, if Stendhal has nailed it on the head, what then, is Zarathustra, and whatever on earth can he have in common with the concept of sec which Stendhal makes the cornerstone of his thought in the quote? Mind you, I am talking about the true philosopher… My view of the philosopher then, is a clash of the opposites, the meeting of Stendhal and contra-Stendhal in the person of the philosopher.”

Returning to our quote from Jenseits 39, it is almost hilarious how standard history of literature calls Stendhal the first great psychologist, whereas our Nietzsche calls him “the last.” I wish that Nietzsche had explained his judgment, in terms of who can be called Stendhal’s predecessor psychologists: from the first to the penultimate…

But Nietzsche persists in calling Stendhal, or Henri Beyle, as below, the last, rather than the first. We continue now with Jenseits #254:

(By way of contrast to the German inexperience and innocence in voluptate psychologica which is none too distantly related to the tediousness of German company, and as the most consummate expression of a typically French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and precursory human being who ran with a Napoleonic tempo through his Europe, through several centuries of the European soul, as an explorer and discoverer of this soul--- it required two generations to catch up with him in any way, to figure out long again a few of the riddles which tormented and enchanted him, this old Epicurean and question mark of a man-- who was France’s last great psychologist.)

Now, instead of moving on textually/chronologically further within the Jenseits expanse, we shall proceed thematically, with yet another Nietzsche testimony to Stendhal the great psychologist. Here is Ecce Homo: “The Case of Wagner” #3.

“…And when I occasionally praise Stendhal as a deep psychologist, I have encountered professors at German universities who asked me to spell his name.”

With this last mention of Stendhal’s psychological brilliance I am ready to stop the flow of these particular illustrations. (Or am I? Yet another mention of Stendhal the psychologist will still come near the end of this entry!)

Our next topic is Stendhal the aesthete, and here we shall limit ourselves just to two Nietzschean passages. One is from the Genealogie de Moral: Third Essay, Section 6:

“Schopenhauer used the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem, although he did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant thought he was honoring art, when among the predicates of beauty he emphasized those, which establish the honor of knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not a place to inquire if it was a mistake; all I wish to stress is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of seeing the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist, the creator, considered art and the beautiful purely from the point of view of the spectator, and unconsciously introduced spectator into the concept beautiful. It would not have been so bad had the spectator been sufficiently familiar to the philosophers of beauty, namely, as a great personal fact and experience. But I fear, the reverse has always been the case, so they have offered us definitions, in which a lack of experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. ‘That is beautiful,’ proclaims Kant, ‘which gives us pleasure without interest.’ Without interest! Compare this with the definition once framed by a genuine spectator and artist Stendhal, who once called the beautiful “une promesse de bonheur.” He rejects the one point, which Kant has stressed: le desinteressement. Who is right? If our aestheticians rule in Kant’s favor that under the spell of beauty one can even view undraped female statues without interest, one may laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of artists are more interested,--- and Pygmalion was not necessarily an unaesthetic man.

And here we come to Schopenhauer who stood much closer to the arts than Kant, and yet did not free himself from the spell of the Kantian definition. He interpreted ‘without interest’ in an extremely personal way, on the basis of one of his most regular experiences.

Schopenhauer speaks with great assurance of the aesthetic contemplation as it counteracts sexual interestedness. He glorifies this liberation from the will as the great merit and utility of the aesthetic condition. Thus aesthetics calms the will, creating ‘the painless condition that Epicurus praised as the highest good and the condition of the gods.’ (World as Will and Representation). However, Stendhal, a no less sensual, but happier person says that ‘the beautiful promises happiness,’ that is, arouses the will, not calms it.

Unlike the Kantian definition, Schopenhauer, like Stendhal, sees the beautiful from an interested point. And to return to our question: what does it mean when a philosopher pays homage to the ascetic ideal?, the answer is: he wants to gain release from torture.

The second excerpt on Stendhal the aesthete comes from Der Wille zur Macht #105:

“The preponderance of music in the romantics of 1839 and 1840. Delacroix. Ingres, a passionate musician (cult of Gluck, Haydn, Beethoven and Mozart) said to his students in Rome: ‘Si je pouvais vous rendre tous musicians, vous y gagneriez comme peintres’; also Horace Vernet, with a special passion for Don Giovanni (as Mendelssohn testifies in 1831); also Stendhal, who said of himself: ‘Combien de lieues ne ferais-je pas a pied, et combien de jours de prison ne me soumetterais‑je pas pour entendre Don Juan ou le Matrimonio Segreto: et je ne sais pour quelle autre chose je ferais cet eport.’ At that time he was 56.”

Now, here is one of the most compelling Nietzschean testimonies on the importance of Stendhal for his life and thought. This is from Ecce Homo. Why I am so Clever #3, where Stendhal the psychologist still shines:

“Stendhal, one of the most beautiful accidents of my life--- for whatever marks an epoch in it came my way by accident, and never through someone’s recommendation --- is truly invaluable with his anticipatory eye of a psychologist, with his knack for the facts which is reminiscent of the greatest of factual men (ex ungue Napoleonem) ; and finally not least as an honest atheist --- a species that is both rare and almost impossible to discover in France — with all due respect for Prosper Mérimée.

Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheistic joke which I of all people might have made: ‘ God’s only excuse is that He does not exist.’

I myself have said somewhere: What has been the greatest objection to existence so far? God.”

And finally a couple more Nietzschean references to Stendhal, which by no means exhaust the complete list of such references, some of which are fleeting and perhaps superfluous to the purpose of this entry, that has already been abundantly served.

From Jenseits 256. Observe the illustrious company where Stendhal belongs, courtesy of Nietzsche:

“Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily be only an interlude policy-- owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes to be one, are now overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labor of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis, and tentatively to anticipate the European of the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to the ‘fatherlands’ --- they only rested from themselves when they became ‘patriots.’ I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal (sic!), Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must not be taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them…”

And lastly from Ecce Homo again, namely, from Unzeitgemässen#2:

“At bottom all I had done was to put one of Stendhal’s maxims into practice : he advises one to make one’s entrance into society by means of a duel. And how well had I chosen my opponent!--- the foremost German free spirit.” (An easy to get reference to Wagner.)

In conclusion of this large entry, we need to ask the natural question: what is it about Stendhal that attracted Nietzsche so much? This question may appear asinine to those who have read and admired Le Rouge et le Noir, until they come to realize that it is a rhetorical question. The real one ought to be: how come that the works of Stendhal are so little known to the modern generation? There is a good reason to study Stendhal’s undoubtedly eminent contribution to world culture, and Nietzsche’s cue gives a helpful hint to that.

HOW MUCH TRUTH CAN WE HANDLE?

(For the record, the movie quoted in this entry and alluded to in its title is A Few Good Men.)

As a preamble to this entry, we might compare truth in existence to poison in medicine. The word poison is weighted with some pretty scary connotations, for as we well know poisons do kill people. But on the other hand, the more educated among us also know that poisons are the essence of medical cure, and quite often the only way to save a patient (educated or uneducated makes no difference here) from an imminent death is to administer poison to him, provided that it is done professionally by someone (namely, the physician) who knows what he is doing. Bearing this in mind, let us now proceed with the bulk of our entry.

Paraphrasing Nietzsche in a previously quoted passage, “one man’s nourishment is another man’s poison.” Spoiling the aphoristic brevity of this sentence, for the sake of clarity, the exceptional man’s nourishment is the ordinary man’s poison. This is very much in the same vein as the point made in the next passage which has become the centerpiece of this whole entry, about that nourishment and poison being the truth. (But this passage is also remarkable because of its immediate association with the memorable Jack Nicholson movie line: “Because you cannot handle the truth!!!” I wonder if the writer of this line had any knowledge of the passage in Nietzsche, which we are about to discuss, or was inspired by something else, maybe even by his own wisdom?!) So here is our promised passage from Nietzsche’s Jenseits 39:

Nobody is very likely to consider a doctrine true merely because it makes people happy or virtuous, except, perhaps, the lovely “idealists,” who become effusive about the good, the true, and the beautiful, and allow all kinds of motley, clumsy, and benevolent desiderata to swim around in utter confusion in their pond… Happiness and virtue are no arguments. But people like to forget, even the sober spirits, that what makes unhappy and evil are no counterarguments. Something may be true, while also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, this might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of the spirit should be measured by how much of the truth one could endure, or to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified. (Jenseits 39.)

There is a good reason why this passage is so unusual, or rather, so perfectly usual for Nietzsche that it just leaps out at you. If truth is ‘good’ (by our Christian logic of “From God is good and God is truth it follows that truth is good,” or, in formal terms, a=b & a=c®b=c), then ù(happiness=good), from which, however, it does not follow that happiness=evil. Should this contradiction become psychologically unbearable to us, it can be overcome by admitting that we have stepped into the perplexing territory of the Twilight Zone, or, to use Nietzsche’s famous original terminology, Jenseits von Gut und Böse.

And finally, returning to the question of how much truth we can handle, the obvious answer is not much, if it does not arrive at our doorstep in the same glossy and red-ribboned package, with the niceties mentioned above. Without being wrapped in this obligatory package we cannot handle truth at all. In a clear-cut sense, truth for us is always secondary to the package it comes in, and thus even the cheapest lie, being richer than our poverty-stricken truth, all nice and fancy packages have been sold out by the time the unpackaged truth makes herself ready to become available to us.

SOCIETY STINKS?

(As a note for the record, this entry’s title is a deliberate allusion to the title of the Mel Brooks 1991 film Life Stinks. I am sure that when the reader reads this entry, the natural connection will be obvious.)

Jenseits 26 and Jenseits 30 are not exactly neighbors in Nietzsche’s book, but they have become neighbors in my two entries, this and the previous one. In fact, they are both closely united by their leitmotif, which is the elitism of the exceptional personality, and the present entry picks up where the last one left off.

Nietzsche’s Jenseits 30 is loaded with themes of utmost significance and some of my comments, placed in different sections of this book, reflect their variety and profundity. Let us look at them, briefly, one by one, until we come to the society stinks part, which is the culmination of everything said before.

The higher man, according to Nietzsche, is so much different from the lower man that not only are their respective angles of vision in direct opposition to each other, but what is nourishment to the higher man is a poison to the lower man; what is uplifting for the higher man is dangerous for the lower man, even the air around them is different: it is pure around the higher man, but foul and stinky around the lower man.

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… The difference between the exoteric and esoteric, known to philosophers who believe in the order of rank, and not in equality and equal rights, does not so much consist in the exoteric coming from the outside and not from the inside, but that it sees things from below, whereas the esoteric looks down from above. There are heights of the soul, from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic… 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… There are books that have opposite values for soul and health. Where the people eat and drink, even where they venerate, it usually stinks. One should not go to church, if one wants to breathe pure air. (Jenseits 30.)

Who else, but Nietzsche, could have said it, especially, in the way he says it! Here is the dream of spiritual hermits: to be justified on the grounds of physiological reason! You simply stay away from where it stinks. Pure air is good for health, and here Nietzsche’s distinction of opposite values for soul and health, all of a sudden, looks no longer as a distinction to a philosopher, unless he is motivated by extreme ‘ressentiment’ for the “plebs.” As for his attitude to the air in church, which seeps through the last sentence of the passage above, he is absolutely right if the kind of church he knows from his own experience is something like what Kierkegaard has in mind, or any critic of religious hypocrisy, for that matter.

Needless to say, I am talking about the figurative stench, making no judgment on the physiological stench, which, I understand, can vary from place to place, regardless of what Nietzsche says.

There was a different air of spirituality in a different type of church: the Russian church of my Soviet experience, which is again consistent with Kierkegaard, whom the Russians have always revered for this reason. It was always exceptionally pure in the figurative sense (no hypocrisy without political power!), and, quite naturally, due to the traditional practice of the Orthodox Russian service, always filled with the distinctive pleasant fragrance of the incense, which I shall always remember with a nostalgic trepidation. (The shrewd Keepers of the Faith and of the Nation, about whom I was writing in my Russia Article, knew exactly what they were doing, when they surrendered the Russian spirit to a forcible purification by fire, in 1917, and in subsequent years.

The subject discussed so far touches upon our discussion of patriotism in the previous entry, which we can now reformulate in the following manner: An exceptional personality is radically different from his lowly compatriot in many substantial ways, and very much alike his elite peers among other nations (at least, we are talking within the parameters of our Western ‘European’ Civilization), but does his membership in the international club of the elite exempt him from fighting against his foreign co-members in the trenches of a war between the nations? And similarly, doesn’t his estrangement from the bulk of his national roots uproot him from his native soil, rendering him isolated and vulnerable, unable to receive the nourishment that his wholesome countrymen are receiving, and without which his exceptional nourishment transforms itself into a long-acting deadly poison, which will destroy him in the long run?

It is under this angle that we must read both Jenseits 26 and 30, otherwise, we may find Nietzsche’s food poisonous in itself, whereas immunized by a proper perspective, we shall find it to be a cure from many an incurable disease…

ORTHODOX EASTER 2015

 

To our Orthodox readers --- XB!

THE RULE MORE INTERESTING THAN THE EXCEPTION. PART I.

We, people who want to rise above the crowd, like to see ourselves as exceptional, as opposed to the crowd, who are the rule. Proudly applying to ourselves the beaten cliché we eat to live whereas they live to eat. We are the cream of the human race, and what fool should ever imagine that under any circumstances we can be not as interesting as they are? Well, Nietzsche is that blessed fool, and here is our case in point, Jenseits 26:

“Every choice human being strives for a citadel and a secrecy, where he is saved from the crowd, the many, where he may forget men who are the rule, being their exception, except only the one case, in which he is pushed straight to them as a seeker after knowledge in the great and exceptional sense. Then, one day, as he remains proudly hidden in his citadel, he would say to himself, “The devil take my good taste! But the rule is more interesting than the exception, myself, the exception!” And he would go down and, above all, he would go inside… The long and serious study of the average man constitutes a necessary part of every philosopher’s life-history, perhaps, the most disagreeable, odious and disappointing part. If he is fortunate, he will encounter suitable shortcuts and helps for his task; I mean so-called cynics, who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace, the rule in themselves. Cynicism is the only one form in which the base souls approach honesty and the higher man must listen closely, and congratulate himself.”

But, distancing ourselves from this remarkable Nietzschean passage, let us ask ourselves in earnest: can the rule be indeed more interesting than the exception?

To this I can reply with conviction that under certain circumstances this is indeed the case, and, going even further, I shall add, not only more interesting, but more important as well, and here is my argument.

In fact, there are two arguments here, objective and subjective. Objectively speaking, we ought to stipulate that only an exceptional person can properly judge whether a certain human phenomenon is interesting or not, whereas the common person does not have a sufficient understanding of such things to make the proper judgment. But, in so far as an exceptional person is concerned, the other members of his exceptional club are not too different from himself, having their exceptionality in common with each other. Going even further, we may assert that each such person projects his own exceptionality on the exceptionality of the others, and in this sense, all exceptions are alike and, frankly, not that interesting to each other, being specimens of the same species.  Incidentally, and in direct conjunction with this, I have come up with the following useful aphorism:

The greatest patriot is an exceptional person who is capable of identifying himself with his unexceptional fellow countrymen more than with other members of his own international ‘exceptional’ club, species una sumus, transcending all national borders.

Now, if any of these exceptional personalities (as the reader may have guessed, we are returning to them!) should be looking for a rare avis, the most honest and philosophically consistent among them will find his bird among the unfamiliar rule, rather than among the familiar exception, and this is exactly what Nietzsche may have had in mind, writing his Jenseits 26.

To be continued.

PSYCHOLOGY AS THE QUEEN OF ALL SCIENCES

Dr. Sigmund Freud, to give him his due, openly admitted his indebtedness to Nietzsche. Perhaps, no other place in Nietzsche’s writings makes that indebtedness more overt and straightforward than Jenseits 23. So, let us go through it piece by piece, as it so much deserves. Ironically, it is not characteristic of Nietzsche’s controversial challenging style, being in fact too true, to be able to stir up much controversy. It is profound thinking on Nietzsche’s part, and also one of his truest and most incontrovertible statements, as long as we think about it long enough to comprehend its veracity.

23. All psychology so far has got stuck in moral prejudices and fears; it has not dared to descend into the depths.

Here is our first intriguing question: does psychology need to depart from Christian thought, divorce itself from religion, and become essentially atheistic, to be effective. There is little, if any, religion in Freud, but we already know that all ways in psychology are not exactly his ways. It is true, however, that at least one thing about psychology must be scientific: its departure from religious reverence and doctrinality. Without this precondition it will surely get stuck in moral prejudices and fears and will never dare to descend into Nietzsche’s depths.

Religious prejudices are primarily moral prejudices, and Nietzsche rightly writes about them as such:

“The power of moral prejudices has penetrated deeply into the most spiritual world, that would seem to be the coldest and the most devoid of presuppositions and has obviously operated in an injurious, inhibiting, blinding, and distorting manner. A proper physio-psychology has to contend with unconscious resistance in the heart of the investigator, it has the heart against it: even the doctrine of the reciprocal dependence of the “good” and the “wicked” drives, causes (as refined immorality) distress and aversion in a still hale and hearty conscience--- still more so, a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from wicked ones. If, however, a person should regard even the affects of hatred, envy, covetousness, and the lust to rule, as conditions of life, as factors which fundamentally and essentially must be present in the general economy of life (and must therefore be further enhanced if life is to be further enhanced)--- he will suffer from such a view of things as from seasickness. And yet, even this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this immense and almost new domain of dangerous insights; and so, there are in fact a hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it who---can.”

Where does that new dangerous course lead us? Nietzsche explains his own unique role in this journey:

“To understand it (psychology) as morphology and the doctrine of the development of the will to power, as I do-- nobody has yet come close to doing this even in thought-- in so far as it is permissible to recognize in what has been written so far a symptom of what has so far been kept silent.” He goes on to explain the kind of dangers awaiting us on that path:

“On the other hand, if one has once drifted there with one’s bark, well, all right, let us clench our teeth, let us open our eyes and keep our hand firm on the helm!--- We sail right over morality, we crush, we destroy, perhaps, the remains of our own morality by daring to make our voyage there…--- But what matter are we! Never yet did a profounder world of insight reveal itself to daring travelers and adventurers…”

What Nietzsche is essentially saying here is that in order to take the fullest possible advantage of the tool of psychology, one must be liberated from all moral caveats and preconditions, which restrict our journey into the danger zone. Does this condition of its own dispense with religion as such? I do not think so. We do not put icons and other objects of religious veneration in an outhouse, as this would be extremely improper. But in a certain sense psychology is a mental outhouse of sorts, and so, the question here is not of compatibility, but of propriety. Our animalistic bodily functions of all sorts truly “sail right over morality,” but I will have to disagree with Nietzsche when he goes too far with this. I do not think that by sailing over morality in all such situations (our engagement in psychology as the study of our animalistic instincts and practices is obviously included), “we crush, we destroy.” All we do, I think, is suspend the laws of morality, until we are done with our animal study, and thereafter we shall return to these laws, as we resume our ways of life as moral human beings.

And finally, as Nietzsche crowns Ms. Psychology “the queen of all sciences,” my first and foremost comment is that it makes a lot of sense. Here is the conclusion of Jenseits 23:

“And the psychologist who thus “makes a sacrifice”(it is not the sacrifizio dell’ intelletto, on the contrary!) will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall be recognized again as the queen of the sciences for whose service and preparation the other sciences exist. For psychology is now again the path to the fundamental problems.” (Jenseits, 23).

In the spirit of teipse nosce, science, like charity and everything else, ought to begin at home. According to this principle, psychology is the first subject of interest to the scientist. But not only that, psychology is also indispensable to the historian and the philosopher. Herodotus was, in a manner of speaking, a psychologist. Socrates too was a psychologist, but the same cannot be said of Spinoza, or Kant, or Hegel. There is indeed a gap between the early philosophers and Nietzsche (although I think that Nietzsche may be too unkind to Hobbes in general, to notice the Englishman’s interest in poking into matters, yes, psychological!). So, why does Dr. Kaufmann, Nietzsche’s learned translator, seem to object to the word “again” occurring not once, but twice in this short passage? “Again is surely open to objections,” he writes in a footnote to Jenseits 23, without a word of explanation of what exactly he has in mind, whereas Nietzsche’s again comes out clearly and easy to understand.

Come to think of it, religion is also a very interesting subject for the psychologist (no wonder Nietzsche is so good at it!). And of course, for the teacher, psychology is not only the basic tool of studying his students, but it is also the conduit for driving his van right through the roadblocks and sinkholes to where the unloading zone is.

 

BEHIND THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS

[Having mentioned in this entry the world-famous German national anthem known as Das Lied der Deutschen, best recognizable by its deliciously ambiguous line Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles, I am compelled to state, for the record, the far less familiar fact that it was written to the music of the great Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn by the notable German poet and linguist August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874).]

During my mathematical linguistics years at Moscow University, I became acquainted with a considerable number of interesting linguistic theories, some of which were not particularly politically-correct, putting it mildly. Among such theories was one which flatly contradicted the anthropological egalitarianism of Franz Boas, asserting that, in fact, different races, nations, cultures, peoples could not possibly be equal, because they spoke different languages, and their intelligence, capacity for abstract thinking, even the basic modes of perceiving the world, were largely dependent on the levels of development of the languages they spoke, and those who spoke primitive languages had levels of development far inferior to those who spoke better developed languages.

This ostensibly racist, albeit perfectly reasonable theory (mind you, I am not judging its scientific credibility here, which, for all I know, may very well be solid!) did not belong to some Third Reich champion of German superiority (one can say that the great propensity of the German language to produce a multitude of exceptionally nuanced abstract terms, which have empowered German philosophy beyond all others, speaks for a certain German superiority in the realm of abstract thinking and therefore seems to substantiate the otherwise questionable claim to national superiority, Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles), but it had been espoused by a pair of humble Jewish-American linguists-anthropologists, Messrs. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, sometime before Hitler came to power (Sapir’s book Language, an Introduction to the Study of Speech came out in 1921), receiving the name of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

The question can be asked already, what do Messrs. Sapir and Whorf have to do with my Nietzsche section, and the answer is predictably simple. Read this passage from Nietzsche’s Jenseits, 20. Please observe that the great Nietzsche stresses the difference among world cultures, rather than superiority of some over others:

“The strange family resemblance of all Indian, Greek, and our German philosophizing is explained easily enough. Where there is affinity of languages, it cannot fail, owing to the common philosophy of grammar that everything is prepared for a similar development and sequence of philosophical systems; just as the way seems barred against certain other possibilities of world-interpretation. It is highly probable that the philosophers within the domain of the Ural-Altaic languages (where the concept of the subject is the least developed) look otherwise “into the world,” and will be found on paths of thought different from those of the Indo-Germanic peoples and the Muslims: the spell of certain grammatical functions is ultimately also the spell of physiological valuations and racial conditions.” (From Nietzsche’s Jenseits, 20).

Here is a brilliant work of contemplative comparative linguistics, giving away the hint that not only Freud, in his field, but even such illustrious investigators of anthropological linguistics as Messrs. Sapir and Whorf may have had a thing or two to learn (and maybe even to steal?) from that bottomless chest of treasures, the legacy of Nietzsche. Well, this linguistic brilliance on Nietzsche’s part, and my particular partiality for it, do make up an unbeatable combination, explaining my somewhat inordinate enthusiasm here, as well as my eagerness to revisit this entry again and again for further contemplation. (To be fair to Sapir and Whorf, they did not rely entirely on Nietzsche’s reference to the Ural-Altaic languages, but chose to strike their gold closer to home, among the native American Indian tribes.)