CURIOSITY

Among the doom and gloom enveloping our struggling and warring, tired and terror-stricken world, here comes a ray of shining cosmic luminosity: the perfect landing of NASA’s space rover Curiosity on the planet Mars. The unique pictures have already started coming back to Earth.

Why is this feat so important? Apart from its colossal scientific value, an even greater achievement has been its demonstration of an optimistic mental attitude and an uplifting state of mind, which used to characterize the American nation from the very beginning. There is much more to human life than the minutia of daily struggle for survival. Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Bach do not pay our bills, but they elevate the quality of human life above and beyond mere animal existence. In this sense, for humanity in general, Curiosity, at the very least, symbolizes such a transcendence. There is more to a superpower than dollars and bombs.

The task is now to bring home this tremendous achievement to the disillusioned, skeptical and embittered American public. It is admittedly hard to persuade millions of people who have lost their jobs, their houses, their savings, even their belief in the American Dream, that there exists a sublime value, far greater than the here and now of waking up to the unpleasant realities of today and going to bed in fear of tomorrow. It is, indeed, tragic that so many, far too many, feel like they have nothing good to live for.

It is therefore imperative to spin the Curiosity story like no other story has been spinned, for, unlike most of today’s stories, this one deserves the best spin. The media must make it front page news, the country’s top pundits, psychologists, clergymen, and celebrities must use all their persuasive skills and authority to make the American public fall in love with Curiosity, and be proud of her and of their country. For, indeed, this is a worthy cause, and there is much to be proud of here.

So, bravo, America! Don’t lose this true superpower spirit! Cultivate and perpetuate it!

GENIUS AND GOD

Etymology Of Genius.

The word genius comes from Latin, where this word means the guardian spirit either of a person (attached to each person since birth and guiding him or her to the kingdom of the dead after death) or of a place, as in genius loci. It is closely related to the word genitor, meaning begetter, creator, father, emphasizing creative ability and the power to produce.

Transferring this etymology to figurative use, genius can be seen as the guiding spirit of humanity, a path-layer. Genius in this etymological sense is not a leader, as being a leader is a human quality, whereas a genius is always “superhuman,” something of a deity. Also do remember that a guiding spirit of humanity is not necessarily a good spirit, and the notion of evil genius is by no means foreign to any of us.

Genius And God.

Before we start the entry proper, let us have that Isaiah verse from a previous entry (Creator Of Evil, which was part of my mega-entry The Mystery Of Things, posted on January 20, 2011) back again:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7)

Considering what I said there about God being admittedly the original Creator of Evil, this and the next entry have now become absolutely necessary. What is the relationship between God and genius, and also what goes on between genius and Satan? Let us leave the second question for the next entry, but right here we are talking about the relationship between genius and God.

Why is God interested in people at all? Leaving Adam and Eve aside, where God was the direct creator of both, which should entitle Him to a legitimate curiosity regarding the post-creation “independent” workings of His creatures, let us look at God’s relationship with the first couple’s sons Cain and Abel. First, the Bible passage proper:

“...And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. (Nota bene!) And she again bare his brother Abel. (And here the Bible does not quote her saying: “I have gotten another man from the LORD.” Nota bene!!!) And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.(Whatever respect means here, the Bible leaves us with no record of what went on!) But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.” (Genesis 4:1-16.)

Presumably, Abel is the good son here, and Cain is the bad son. But all we know about God’s relationship with Abel is that “the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering.” The Bible, which is, to a Christian, the Word of God, and thus an expression of what God wants us to know and what He doesn’t, gives us no further indication of any communication between God and Abel whatsoever, and not a single word has been exchanged between them on the record, whereas in Cain’s case we notice God’s inordinate interest in Cain, with plenty of direct dialog going on between them. Why is the Bible silent about God’s communication with the good son Abel? Is he of no interest to us as a person, whereas Cain is? The mystery here is not too great, perhaps. The answer is probably the one already suggested. Cain is the man to watch, while the good Abel is a man of… well, no importance, what we might call a mediocrity.

Having said that, we can go on, and define genius as a person of special interest to God, whom He engages in conversation. Apparently Cain was a person of interest to God, albeit an evil genius. I suspect that God’s brief reference to “Abel and to his offering” has been made on Cain’s account in the first place, to provoke him, rather than to reward Abel… The implications here are for everybody to see.

So who is a genius? It is one who engages in a conversation with God. For some persons the Bible provides us with records of such conversations. For others, and for all those living in later times, after the Books had been closed, such records are also available, although they are of a somewhat different nature.

Each work of genius, be that a masterpiece of literature, art, architecture, or other, is a public record of that genius’s conversation with God.

Genius And Satan.

The question I raised in the previous entry: what goes on between genius and Satan? naturally assumes that there is a relationship, and this assumption is perfectly correct. After all, there is a protracted relationship of sorts between Jesus and Satan in the Bible: Jesus engages in a conversation with the devil, instead of telling him off!

“Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.” (Matthew 4:1-11.)

This is of course a different kind of conversation from the one God had with Cain in the last entry. But its purpose is clear: the Bible teaches us a lesson about what a temptation is and how it must be fought off. The Bible also tells us that temptations come from the devil.

With regard to the particular lesson of Matthew 4, as its story is applicable to our subject Genius And Satan, and stipulating the fact already in evidence that a work of genius is a conversation between genius and God, Satan would just love to sabotage genius by turning him into a success story, whereas genius must resist not so much the fact of success, as the contributing role of Satan in it.

Ironically, Satan’s arguments in the Matthew 4 story come across very much like arguments of a capitalist apologist, emphasizing the advantages of success at all costs and twisting the demands of morality, to bring home his immoral purpose.

And finally, unless the reader may have noticed it, the story of Matthew 4 may be a good Biblical lesson of how to handle Satan, but coming from the Christian Bible, it does not give us a conversation between Satan and genius, but one between genius and God! In this sense, Satan and Jesus are having a conversation, somewhat like the one between Cain and God in the last entry. Jesus is by no means the genius here, as, in Christian theology, Jesus is God. Thus, in the stories quoted in my last two entries, both Cain and Satan are geniuses, and not because this thought has just entered my mind, but by the nature of my specific definition of genius: Only a genius is privileged to have a recorded conversation with God.

HARLOTS AGAINST PUTIN AND COMPANY

Another violation of human rights in Russia!!! Young female performers put on trial and facing prison for exercising their freedom of speech!!!

Western media loves this! A criminal trial is underway in Moscow where the defendants face the maximum of seven years in jail for” criticizing Putin.” In legal terms, their crime has been labeled as hooliganism.

Bravi! to the ladies and gentlemen of the press, they have done it again! Their story is sensational, and who is its greatest beneficiary? Mr. Putin, of course!

On February 21, 2012, a group of young women, mockingly identifying themselves as Pussy Riot, however concealing their faces behind flashy executioner hoods with slits for eyes and mouth, stormed into the main Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and occupied the altar, where they performed a “prayer,” represented in the West as an anti-Putin song. As a matter of fact, Mr. Putin was not the sole beneficiary of their punk prayerfest. The whole world of religious believers ought to have felt uncomfortable during their spirited obscenity-laden rendition of the Prophet Isaiah’s “Holy, Holy, Holy!” God Himself was victimized by a few choice words, Virgin Mary was most unkindly mocked, the Russian Patriarch was called names that are normally left out of print, and, yes, Mr. Putin got some of the muck too, although suspiciously not as offensive as the others did. It was however not an insult for Mr. Putin, but, in fact, the greatest honor for any Christian to suffer together with your God and the Holy Mother. I am sure that both Mr. Putin and the Russian Patriarch are extremely proud of the Company they have thus found themselves in.

As for the Russian pro-Western “opposition,” they must be really proud of this too. By taking advantage of this opportunity to trash Putin, rather than disassociating themselves from the harlots who had turned “the house of prayer” into “a den of thieves,” they not only demonstrated to the whole world of believers in God whose side they are on, but more importantly they managed to identify Mr. Putin’s side here as God’s side! I am sure that Mr. Putin is delighted to have such an obliging “opposition.”

Well, those Russian “oppositionists” are hopeless, anyway. But here is a word of advice to Western media, and to all those anti-Russian politicians who have hurried to jump on this Trojan bandwagon:

If you want to play a game, first learn who the players are. Then, once you find out that the rules have been set by your opponents, stay away! Otherwise, in the words of none other than Mikhail Khodorkovsky, you are participating in a “circus,” where you are the clown.

THE VOICE OF THE SOVIET STATE

This Yuri Levitan entry is being posted on my blog in commemoration of the twenty-ninth anniversary of his death. It is best read in conjunction with the Arkady Raikin entry Stalin’s Favorite Comic, posted on June 19^th, 2011.

Both Levitan and Raikin were outstandingly distinguished Soviet Jews, icons, if I may use the word, of the Soviet state. Both were noticed and launched into exceptional prominence by Stalin personally. Both represent more than themselves alone, but, together with Stalin, they had become national symbols. All three of them illustrate my point about personality cults in totalitarian societies, that is, not just the cult of the leader but a special appreciation of all truly exceptional personalities. And finally, once again reminding the reader about the fact that both these men, Raikin and Levitan, were very explicitly and unmistakably Jewish (or should I say Yiddish?), yet were thus wholeheartedly embraced by the totality of the Russian people, young and old, city dwellers and villagers, college graduates and manual laborers, who is it talking about Russian ingrown anti-Semitism?! The Russians love their genius, whether he looks Russian or non-Russian, Turkish or Tatar, Jewish or Negro, the last referring to Russia’s greatest poet and writer Alexander Pushkin.

And indeed, you couldn’t possibly be more Yiddish than Yudka Berkovich, the son of Ber Levi, who was to become known and literally revered by every Russian as The Dictor Yuri Borisovich Levitan (1914-1983). Born to the family of a provincial Jewish tailor, he possessed an exceptionally strong and expressive voice of a unique timbre, and at the age of seventeen (in 1931) he came to Moscow to study acting, but was not admitted to the acting school, not so much on account of his heavy provincial accent, which could be easily corrected by special training, as for the lack of acting talent. The admission panel, however, recognized his unusual vocal ability, and rather than sending him back to wherever he came from, a meeting was arranged for him with the great Russian actor Vasily Kachalov, who on hearing him speak was so impressed that he offered his personal help to the aspiring young talent. No, Levitan was not acting material. But he was obviously a unicum, and his exceptional voice was that which made him one.

As a result of this conversation, Kachalov recommended him for the class of radio announcers (“dictors”), where Yudka Levitan by sheer hard work, and with the help of his able teachers, got rid of his accent, and developed his own incomparable style and a singular diction. At the age of just nineteen, he became a radio announcer, and, according to the story that sounds much like a typical legend, but is actually quite true, he immediately caught the attention of Stalin, who happened one day to hear him on the radio. Extremely impressed, Stalin demanded that this particular announcer, and nobody else, must read for the Soviet nation his, Stalin’s, upcoming Report at the opening of the Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, to be delivered the very next day, January 26, 1934.

This demand created a nightmarishly intense situation for the sorely inexperienced nineteen-year-old, but Levitan passed the test with flying colors, delivering the text on such short notice without a single mistake, with a uniformly perfect diction and intonation. Stalin was very pleased, and he made sure that his newest protégé’s meteoric career as Dictor Number One of the USSR would be assured, with no opposition from the bureaucratic establishment, or from some envious senior colleagues of this “upstart” youngster in the announcing business.

Levitan’s voice went on to become the most recognizable voice in the USSR especially during the war with Nazi Germany when he was the designated announcer of all official daily releases of the SovInformBureau. To be fair, the people all over the Soviet Union would have been crowding around the public loudspeakers anyway to hear the announcements from the Kremlin each time, usually several times a day, whenever such announcements were expected to be made, and they would have cherished any voice that was making them, but the fact that Levitan was selected for this announcing job, and the fact that he indeed deserved such an honor, speaks for itself, and, as they say, the rest is history.

And Levitan had become that history. For many years after the war he would be assigned to make the most important announcements for the Kremlin. The classic recordings of Yuri Levitan’s radio announcements subsequently entered the ‘gold fund’ of Soviet Art, as he himself was named People’s Artist of the USSR as a modest acknowledgment of the long-evident fact that he had become an immortal national legend.

CRITICS AND SKEPTICS

How is being critical different from being a critic?

It is quite obvious that the steaming buckets of acrid disdain poured on the critics, compared to “venomous snakes who delight in hissing” (W. B. Daniel, 1801), refer to the occupation of the critic (not a person who compares and judges, but one who does it for a living). Only the professional critic is thus mildly, but still contemptuously, defended by Nietzsche, in Menschliches, ii., against the charges of sadism, brought in the Daniel line above. As Nietzsche writes, “Insects sting, not in malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics: they desire our blood, not our pain.” (Menschliches, ii.)

But, whatever, let those professional critics be, for they are getting paid for being vilified. Let us focus now on the philosopher-critic, the one who doubts, as all philosophers must, the one who criticizes as a means of creating new concepts, and new values. We already had our good historian, it is time for us to focus on the good critic.

And here comes good Nietzsche again:

“Critical discipline will be demanded by these philosophers, nevertheless, they still do not want to be called critics, on that account. They consider it a disgrace for philosophy when people decree: ‘Philosophy itself is criticism, and critical science, and nothing besides.’ Such evaluation of philosophy may elicit applause from the positivists of France and Germany (and it might even have pleased Kant, remember the titles of his major works!); our new philosophers will say nevertheless that critics are instruments of a philosopher, and for that reason a long way from being philosophers themselves. Even the great Chinese of Königsberg (Nietzsche talks about Kant, and the word Chinese is probably his associative slang for sage ,not to mention the fact that Kant’s nearly incomprehensible German could well be mistaken for “Chinese” by his readers) was merely (!) a great critic.” (Jenseits, 210.)
(Compare this discussion of critical philosophy to Nietzsche's identification of three types of history: monumental, which is, apparently, the closest to his heart, antiquarian, which focuses on the minutia with no prioritizing of historical importance and value, and, lastly, critical, which Nietzsche criticizes on a far greater scale of disdain than anything exhibited here.)

The philosopher-critic (and Nietzsche’s denigration of Kant as ‘merely a great critic’ reflects his opinion of him as a failed creator of new values) and the philosopher-creator, ideally, ought to go hand in hand in one person, as, in Bakuninian terms, a passion for destruction (here, criticism) is the first step to the passion for creation (which does not have to be the pipe dream of a positive general theory, already recognized as an intellectual chimera, but simply, the mental propensity for sparking up intuitive constructive philosophical concepts). Thus, the critic becomes the destroyer of a previous world, so that, brushing away the dust of its total and complete destruction, the creator could now create a new world ex nihilo.

It may be necessary to resolve the apparent contradiction here, namely, that in order to create we destroy all that had existed before us. Yet, I am quite comfortable with coexisting in the world of magnificent shadows, rather than supplanting it with my own. The explanation is quite simple. The critic will be exceedingly silly to attempt to intrude into the worlds of others, with his destructive and creative passions, as such an errand would be both futile and ridiculous. To each his own world, and in one’s own world there must be none of other people’s property. That intellectual property belonging to others inevitably accumulates with learning and it must be really hard to let go of it, once we falsely imagine that we own it by virtue of the fact that we find it within the confines of our mental home. But other thinkers’ ideas still have only one owner and once we imagine that they are ours, they begin to own us, and our whole world is then no longer ours, either. The task of the creator is to demolish all foreign clones in his mind, and to begin a new creation ex nihilo. Then, and then only, can we come to terms with our own world and start enjoying a communion with the worlds of the magnificent shadows, and love them dearly, like a master loves a master.

Thus, the good critic is not an intruder in other people’s homes, but a housecleaner of his own, and only in such a capacity is his criticism made legitimate and original.

We turn now to the important, yet extremely subtle, distinction between the critic and the skeptic. Ideally, they will be one and the same person. In our discussion above, when I mentioned how difficult it always is to relinquish other people’s property, which we accumulate in our mental home in the process of learning, being a critic may not be enough to do the right thing. One must also necessarily become a skeptic. In the context of our discussion, it is much easier to criticize others, which is a sure way to make ourselves look ridiculous, but, in order to become a critic inside one’s own home, the critic must, first and foremost, turn himself into a skeptic!

There is another angle for looking at this distinction, and so here is our good Nietzsche again, in the same, earlier quoted, Jenseits, 210:

“Suppose that some trait in the image of the philosophers of the future poses the riddle whether they would not perhaps have to be skeptics, in the sense suggested last, this would still designate only one feature, and not them as a whole. With just as much right one could call them critics: and certainly they will be men of experiments.
No doubt, these coming philosophers will be the least able to dispense with those serious qualities that distinguish the critic from the skeptic. I mean the certainty of value standards, the deliberate employment of a unity of method, a shrewd courage, the ability to stand alone and give an account of themselves.”

Which is then higher, in Nietzsche’s eyes, the skeptic or the critic (if such ordering of rank is permissible, and, as I suggest, it is essential here)? In my mind, skepticism is a necessary quality in the philosopher, or should I put it in these terms: both types of skepticism are necessary qualities in a philosopher. There are indeed two important and distinctly separate types of skepticism: the general philosophical principle of the Greek philosophers-skeptics, denying the certainty and, therefore, the possibility of true knowledge… (This principle is so easily acceptable (religion being a matter of belief and science being a matter of hypothesis, at the bottom of a factual construct), that I summarily suggest, that all basic philosophical principles, such as God, for instance, ought to be arrived at, via the authority of the postulate, that is to say, “by definition,” or “scientifically,” which, in this case, means exactly the same thing, and, therefore, creates the wonderful philosophical paradox, that there is only one way to prove the existence of God, the scientific way, which is by postulate! See the Philosophy section for much more on this argument) …and also the Cartesian method of philosophical doubt, which is equally praiseworthy.

In fact, Dèscartes’ Dubitandum cultivates the mental attitude of skepticism, rather than of criticism, and, as such, reinforces the point that I am making, in highlighting the subtle difference between the critic and the skeptic, quod erat demonstrandum.

As to the role of critic, a sharp distinction must be made between criticizing “fiction,” (which is incredibly silly) and practical reality (where any good citizen ought to be a critic, as his first public service to society). Too often this distinction is missing, especially in the public mind, as the very same thing can be fiction in general theory, but become practical reality in application. Therefore, the object of our criticism ought not to be the theory itself (which is here understood in the sense of its underlying hypothesis, that is, its purely fictional part, but its actual or even potential applications (which, of course, include its rationalization and the logic of its substantiation). Needless to say, criticism in the latter sense is highly commendable. (Once again, for more on this, see my Philosophy section.)

GENIUS AND GOBBLEDYGOOK

We are accustomed to automatically separate masterpieces of literature from scientific gobbledygook: look, here is proper literature, and here is proper gobbledygook! But is there more to this separation than the difference between “literature” and “science,” the former being addressed to a general reader, and the latter, to a professional reader? What about the difference between good writing and bad writing?

I can be easily suspected of being completely off the wall, as surely there has to be a difference in principle here, but am I so much off the wall, at least in what pertains to the workings of genius? Technical science is a legitimate field of human endeavor, and nobody should ever confuse it with literary work. A professional dissertation never aspires to steal the laurels of Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Pushkin, etc. Yet, this is hardly a trivial and pointless discussion. For we are talking about genius, and every genius is always a pathfinder for humanity. But in order to serve in this role, he must be understood, first and foremost, and who will be able to understand him if he is speaking incomprehensibly?

In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, gobbledygook is mentioned in passim, with clever casualness, as one of the many languages of magical communication. Drawing a parallel between magic and professionalism, does genius indeed speak gobbledygook, and if he does, who would be able to understand him? Mind you, we are not talking of very complicated formulae, the use of rare symbols, and such. All these are more or less comprehensible to the professionals in the field. We are talking about incomprehensible ways of expressing one’s thoughts.

I say that the “esoteric professionalism” of gobbledygook is all too often just a lame excuse for bad writing, but the worst thing that we can do in a discussion of this nature would be to fail to separate the technicality of any professional subject matter from the literary means of bringing that subject matter to the professional or semi-professional reader. It is true that a scientist communicating with a fellow scientist does not have to decipher his professional gobbledygook for the benefit of a layman. But what if our autistic genius speaks “gobbledygook” not professionally, but precisely because of his handicap?

I insist that in such a case we should build a science of comprehension around him, as any bona fide genius deserves to be properly understood and if that is what it takes, we must learn his idiolect of gobbledygook ourselves, to benefit from his uniquely manifested inspiration.

At the same time, quod licet Jovi non licet bovi. What can and must be forgiven to a genius, must not be forgiven to someone who is deliberately complicating his writing to pass himself off as a superior thinker, who is supposedly, like God, incomprehensible to the mortals. Admittedly, it is virtually impossible for an amateur to comprehend the extreme subtleties of a technical subject matter, or even to know the difference between technical gobbledygook and sheer abracadabra, but how often do we encounter a philosopher, a music composer, a graphic artist, etc., who are trying to impress us not with their substance, but with their linguistic or artistic voodoo, thus hiding that substance, or more likely its absence, behind the impenetrable complexities of form.

But this kind of intimidation is not supposed to work with us. Unlike mathematics, or chemistry, or other hard science where in order to understand we must first qualify, by getting the necessary highly specialized education, which obviously requires years of proper schooling in the subject, the same does not apply to the other areas of human activity. One does not have to take five or eight years of university philosophy, to be a competent philosophizer. One does not have to finish a conservatory of music or an advanced art school to be an aesthete and to be able to distinguish between art and trickery.

By the same token, let us dispel the very popular myth to the effect that politics is a specialized science too, and that a layman simply cannot comprehend its technical nuts and bolts. In reality, the only real difficulty to public comprehension of politics is due to a dire deficiency of available information. Otherwise, I could imagine literally millions of laymen doing a better job at policy-making than most politicians, whose game of wheeling and dealing, pulling the strings and being pulled by the strings, is putting policy-making proper in the most uncomfortable back seat of their policy bus. To this I may add that a layman will surely make a better political commentator than most pundits in the business, unless he, too, is being paid for his opinion.

As for the scholars of politics, the political scientists, take it from me who used to be one, they are the real nowhere men, sitting in their Nowhere Land, making all their nowhere plans for nobody…

…Few are geniuses in this world, but plenty are those who want to pass themselves off as geniuses, and are using gobbledygook to that effect. They are the clever tailors to the emperor, and we the public ought to see through their manipulative cleverness, lest we end up without clothes.

PHILOSOPHER'S WILL TO POWER

One of Nietzsche’s most refreshing leitmotifs (and a telltale indication that the late Leo Strauss was a loyal Nietzsche reader and borrower) is his distinction between the Philosopher and the Scholar. The former is a free spirit, an inventor, a creator. The latter is a collector and organizer of other people’s ideas, an analyzer of already-created realities. Considering my thought that at the foundation of science lies a hypothesis upon which the whole structure of the science is being built, through most scrupulous rationalization and logical reasoning, Nietzsche’s philosopher is the postulator, the fiat-sayer or to put it rather irreverently, the God of his own created universe, while the scholar is the developer of such basic ideas in accordance with the rules of the scientific trade. In the phrase R&D, the philosopher is the R, and the scholar is the D. In other words, the philosopher is the Law, and the scholar is the Rule.

While I should further work on this fundamental complex idea, which includes Nietzsche’s legitimate and insightful distinction between intuitive inspiration and intellectual thoroughness, here is a relevant passage from his Jenseits (211):

“People should stop confounding philosophical laborers, and scientific men generally, with philosophers. It may be necessary for the education of the genuine philosopher that he himself has also once stood on all these steps, on which his servants are still standing. Perhaps, he himself must have been critic, and skeptic, and dogmatist, and historian, and also poet, and collector, and traveler, and solver of riddles, and moralist, and seer, and “free spirit,” and almost everything, in order to pass through the whole range of human values and value feelings and to be able to see with many different eyes and consciences. But all these are merely preconditions: his task demands that he create values.

“Those philosophical laborers, after the noble model of Kant and Hegel, have to determine and to press into formulas [whether in the realm of logic or political (moral) thought, or art], some great data of valuations, that is, former positings of values, creations of value, that have become dominant and are for a time called “truths.” It is for them to make everything that has happened and been esteemed so far, easy to look over, to think over, intelligible and manageable, to abbreviate everything long, even time, to overcome the entire past, an enormous and wonderful task. Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, thus it shall be!”

Curiously, in my initial spontaneous comment on this last sentence, I raised some doubt about Nietzsche’s consistency here:

…Very interesting, but isn’t Nietzsche once again overenthusiastic in his glowing dream of the “man of the future”? I may be able to see and understand his distinction between the creator and the working bee, but I do not associate the loner-type philosophical spirit with the will to command and legislate, which ought to necessarily require a forceful display of leadership qualities: commanders are leaders, not loners.

My very next comment reconciled the seeming contradiction:

…Does it mean that an original thinker can also be a Nietzschean philosopher of the future, one determined to command and legislate? The answer is yes for in his own created world of pure fiction the philosopher is always the commander and legislator, the anything and the everything, just because there is nobody else out there, to fill all the vacancies!

But as I kept thinking about it, it struck me that genuine philosophers do not have to be commanders and legislators necessarily within the confines of their own minds, which my intermediate comment seemed to suggest. In fact, the philosopher’s mind has no confines, and can even spill over into the outside world:

In my Leaders And Followers entry, I noted that a genius-leader is a genius, too, but, unlike a herd-leader, the genius sees the crowd not as his milieu but as his métier. From this observation it follows that the act of destiny, which turns a genius philosopher into a genius leader, is exactly that spilling over of the genius’s mind into the world of real people and real events. Philosophy as the will to create evolves into the will to command and legislate, and spilling into the real world, as it knows no bounds, becomes indistinguishable from the will to power.

Philosophy as a will to power? So what? Welcome to Nietzsche’s Jenseits (9):

“Philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the “creation of the world,” to the causa prima.”

Here is another proof of Nietzsche’s claim that creation is an act of supreme egoism (if I may be forgiven this aphoristic paraphrase). Once again, he talks about the greatest thinkers and the greatest philosophies. Extreme subjectivity, the most spiritual will to power… This is not an occupation, this is a preoccupation! Playing God, the creative urge, he is not just implying it, he says it explicitly… So what? Isn’t every great artist, every great writer of fiction such a creator of his own world glorifying and generalizing the author’s moral principles and fantasies? I might go even farther: every great writer of non-fiction, be that history or any other science, or statesman in his political activity, fictionalizes objective reality, appropriates it, owns it by the right of creator, refusing to accept its existence independently of him. He desires absolute control, not independence of his subject matter. In fact, we may go even further, suggesting that the sole difference between a statesman and a politician is exactly such a creative urge, a will to control and to own. Great men of history were despots. George Washington was a great military leader who imposed his “fiction” both on the British and on his own colleagues and supervisors. He won by creating history. For George Washington being the commander-in-chief could never be a job. As the military leader he was despotic, yet he rushed to refuse the title of king for himself, perhaps realizing only too well that peace was not the best season for his greatness.

It is interesting to find a strong disagreement on the point of “philosopher-king” in Kant’s Perpetual Peace, where he argues:

“…That kings should become philosophers, or philosophers, kings, can scarcely be expected; nor is it to be wished, since the enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty.” (Supplement II.)

The key word here is, in my opinion, enjoyment. Whenever enjoyment results in contentment, whenever it focuses on the nonphilosophical side of being, such enjoyment does indeed corrupt. But great philosophers are all tragic figures, and their enjoyment is necessarily of a tragic nature. It flows out of reason, it is fed by the philosopher’s liberty. Such enjoyment of power is not drawn by the pleasurable paraphernalia of power and cannot be corrupted by them. But Kant’s point is still well taken. It makes one think...