Post by dudetyson on Sept 30, 2011 22:18:41 GMT -6
I took a course with some Nietzsche in it ages ago, though I had already read half his corpus before hitting it. Anyway, I ended up selecting some quotes from Beyond Good and Evil for some reason, for some essay or something, and stumbled upon that paper denoting the quotes today while prepping to move residences.
Don't take this as me 100% agreeing with this stuff, it's more like food for thought. I think Nietzsche achieved what the 4th Way people were trying to achieve, but with less focus on technicality, and more fire and darkness. I think he should be considered one of the core influential authors here in the Cult.
The quotes...
Why philosophy (and arguably religion) should not limit itself to metaphysical matters:
“Philosophy reduced to a ‘theory of knowledge,’ in fact no more than a timid epochism and doctrine of abstinence – a philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold and takes pains to deny itself the right to enter – that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something inspiring pity. How could such a philosophy – dominate!”
“If a man is praised today for living ‘wisely’ or ‘as a philosopher,’ it hardly means more than ‘prudently and apart.’ Wisdom – seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and trick of getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosophers – as it seems to us, my friends? – lives ‘unphilosophically’ and ‘unwisely,’ above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life – he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game – ”
On purely objective, “reasonable” people:
“The objective man is an instrument…but he is no goal…in whom the rest of existence is justified…but he belongs in the hand of one more powerful.
“If love and hatred are wanted from him – I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them – he will do what he can and give what he can. But one should not be surprised if it is not much.”
Two types of skepticism – that of purely objective people, and that of independent evaluators
“For the skeptic, being a delicate creature, is frightened all too easily; his conscience is trained to quiver at every No, indeed even a Yes that is decisive and hard, and to feel as if it had been bitten. Yes and No – that goes against his morality; conversely, he likes to treat his virtue as a feast of noble abstinences…
‘What use are all rash hypotheses? Entertaining no hypotheses at all might well be part of good taste. Must you insist on immediately straightening what is crooked? On filling up every hole? Isn’t there time? Doesn’t time have time? O you devilish brood, are you incapable of waiting? The uncertain has its charms, too’…
“Skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain complex physiological condition that in ordinary language is called nervous exhaustion and sickliness.”
“This skepticism despises and nevertheless seizes; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe but does not lose itself in the process; it gives the spirit a dangerous freedom, but it is severe on the heart…”
“I do not say this because I want it to happen: the opposite would be rather more after my heart – I mean an increase in the menace of Russia that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long, terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence – so the long-drawn-out comedy of its many splinter states as well as its dynastic and democratic splinter wills would come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth – the compulsion to large-scale politics.”
“Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, ‘thus it shall be!”
“A man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today.”
“He shall be greatest who can be loneliest.”
Don't take this as me 100% agreeing with this stuff, it's more like food for thought. I think Nietzsche achieved what the 4th Way people were trying to achieve, but with less focus on technicality, and more fire and darkness. I think he should be considered one of the core influential authors here in the Cult.
The quotes...
Why philosophy (and arguably religion) should not limit itself to metaphysical matters:
“Philosophy reduced to a ‘theory of knowledge,’ in fact no more than a timid epochism and doctrine of abstinence – a philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold and takes pains to deny itself the right to enter – that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony, something inspiring pity. How could such a philosophy – dominate!”
“If a man is praised today for living ‘wisely’ or ‘as a philosopher,’ it hardly means more than ‘prudently and apart.’ Wisdom – seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and trick of getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosophers – as it seems to us, my friends? – lives ‘unphilosophically’ and ‘unwisely,’ above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life – he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game – ”
On purely objective, “reasonable” people:
“The objective man is an instrument…but he is no goal…in whom the rest of existence is justified…but he belongs in the hand of one more powerful.
“If love and hatred are wanted from him – I mean love and hatred as God, woman, and animal understand them – he will do what he can and give what he can. But one should not be surprised if it is not much.”
Two types of skepticism – that of purely objective people, and that of independent evaluators
“For the skeptic, being a delicate creature, is frightened all too easily; his conscience is trained to quiver at every No, indeed even a Yes that is decisive and hard, and to feel as if it had been bitten. Yes and No – that goes against his morality; conversely, he likes to treat his virtue as a feast of noble abstinences…
‘What use are all rash hypotheses? Entertaining no hypotheses at all might well be part of good taste. Must you insist on immediately straightening what is crooked? On filling up every hole? Isn’t there time? Doesn’t time have time? O you devilish brood, are you incapable of waiting? The uncertain has its charms, too’…
“Skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain complex physiological condition that in ordinary language is called nervous exhaustion and sickliness.”
“This skepticism despises and nevertheless seizes; it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe but does not lose itself in the process; it gives the spirit a dangerous freedom, but it is severe on the heart…”
“I do not say this because I want it to happen: the opposite would be rather more after my heart – I mean an increase in the menace of Russia that Europe would have to resolve to become menacing, too, namely, to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long, terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence – so the long-drawn-out comedy of its many splinter states as well as its dynastic and democratic splinter wills would come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth – the compulsion to large-scale politics.”
“Genuine philosophers, however, are commanders and legislators: they say, ‘thus it shall be!”
“A man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today.”
“He shall be greatest who can be loneliest.”
