Introduction: Nietzsche, Philosophy, & Poetry
Dear friends,
I want to offer a subject for discussion that I have already discussed at length with some of you and which I think is of interest to us all. I will try to give some thoughts upon the issue and to give some passages from a new book on Nietzsche that I think could provoke some discussion.
I suppose that there is something repulsive about the student of anglo-american philosophy who says that he finds Nietzsche's works to be nothing but 'literature.' When someone said this to me I did however wonder whether it was really an insult since it shows Nietzsche to have been open to using literary style to explore philsophical issues. Of course the speaker really meant that being literary Nietzsche gives out only wholly 'subjective' pieces of flowery language.
On the one hand we have Nietzsche's Time-Atom Theory(1873) in which a very analytical style is used to argue that time is not a continuous series. Against this we have the poetry of the Dithyrambs of Dionysus. Two different styles. The Genealogy of Morality is systematic enough for Deleuze to suggest that it is Nietzsche's re-writing of Kant's critique. However, Thus Spake Zarathustra seems more a piece of prophetic literature. This simple opposition between 'poetry' and 'thought' falls apart when we consider the truthbehind Deleuze's description of Thus Spake Zarathustra. He called it a symphony of thought because within it thought moves.
I have started with a very simplistic an inadequate definition of the terms 'poetry' and 'thought.' Of course, seeing poetry as bound to subjective relativism wrongly ties it to a supposed sollipsism of the poet. Poetry can be intensely subjective and personal but this doesn't stop there being poetic truth, truth about the world and existence bestexpressed through poetic inspiration. Nietzsche powerfully portrays the intensely personal and'subjective' experiences of the human being into the terms of Willing as opposed to any interior andpsychological ego. If we take the Will to Power to be a form of externalism we find that the ego becomes a state or point upon a broader canvas. Therefore, we cannot draw a distinction between the philosopher as a seeker after objective truths and a poet as a seeker after wholly 'subjective' and relativistic experiences.
The fact that truth is often attacked by Nietzsche as a reactive way of characterising or 'reading' reality shouldn't mean we have to assume that Nietzsche wantsto be a relativist. What survives the Genealogy and trasnvaluation is of course going to be complicated and hard to grasp. The Will to Power as a standard of truth allows Nietzsche to make very real and credible what were before denigrated as merely relativistic and subjective experiences. Poetry is in this sense liberated - it is able to capture reality by embodying forces that before were not considered fully or properly real.
Nietzsche will value the ability to think in different ways, to have different perspectives. Poetry must complement a relentless logic and vice versa. This does not mean we have no truth but that grasping truth demands virtuousity of thinking. I think Nietzsche calls it a 'gymnastics' of thinking. Kant was prone tothe occasional literary flourish and no one would denythat these all to brief moments are compatible with, and take further, the force of his rational arguments.
'Oh! how happy we are, we knowers, provided we can keep quiet long enough!...'['On the Genealogy of Morality,' p. 5, ed KAP, CUP(1994)].
The book I would like to select passages from is Alenka Zupancic's 'The Shortest Shadow: Nietszche's Philosophy of the Two', The MIT Press, 2003.
p. 7-8
Nietzsche was an 'anti-philosopher' but 'Nietzsche didnot oppose himself to philosophy, for instance, in the name of a more artistic mode of expression; ...Something else is at stake that could be formulated in these terms: to locate the point of the inner limit,or the inherent possibility, of a given discourse(...), and to activate this precise point as the potential locus of creation.'
p. 15
The subject must travel a certain distance in order to'take place', to 'happen' at the point of the Other thing. 'Zarathustra is the epic of such travel.'
p. 94
Truth is not an epistemological category but a matter of courage.
p. 97
Perspectivity does not make all truth subjective and partial for Nietzsche. If we relativise everything we hold onto a 'last solid truth' that there is no truthand in this we can still take refuge.
p. 98
Perspectivism is not a point of view but is truth engaged in life. It makes truth immanent while scepticism excepts itself from the situation it describes.
p. 99
'Is there a perspetive that belongs to no subject, and that no subject could claim to be his or her own, although there would be an intrinsic link between this singular perspective and the constitution of every subject belonging to this situation? The Nietzschean enterprise concerning a new notion of truth is heavily dependent on the answer to this question.'
p. 122
Truth can only take place within life, in the 'middle' of life.
I hope this makes sense and is of interest.
Best wishes,
Edward
I want to offer a subject for discussion that I have already discussed at length with some of you and which I think is of interest to us all. I will try to give some thoughts upon the issue and to give some passages from a new book on Nietzsche that I think could provoke some discussion.
I suppose that there is something repulsive about the student of anglo-american philosophy who says that he finds Nietzsche's works to be nothing but 'literature.' When someone said this to me I did however wonder whether it was really an insult since it shows Nietzsche to have been open to using literary style to explore philsophical issues. Of course the speaker really meant that being literary Nietzsche gives out only wholly 'subjective' pieces of flowery language.
On the one hand we have Nietzsche's Time-Atom Theory(1873) in which a very analytical style is used to argue that time is not a continuous series. Against this we have the poetry of the Dithyrambs of Dionysus. Two different styles. The Genealogy of Morality is systematic enough for Deleuze to suggest that it is Nietzsche's re-writing of Kant's critique. However, Thus Spake Zarathustra seems more a piece of prophetic literature. This simple opposition between 'poetry' and 'thought' falls apart when we consider the truthbehind Deleuze's description of Thus Spake Zarathustra. He called it a symphony of thought because within it thought moves.
I have started with a very simplistic an inadequate definition of the terms 'poetry' and 'thought.' Of course, seeing poetry as bound to subjective relativism wrongly ties it to a supposed sollipsism of the poet. Poetry can be intensely subjective and personal but this doesn't stop there being poetic truth, truth about the world and existence bestexpressed through poetic inspiration. Nietzsche powerfully portrays the intensely personal and'subjective' experiences of the human being into the terms of Willing as opposed to any interior andpsychological ego. If we take the Will to Power to be a form of externalism we find that the ego becomes a state or point upon a broader canvas. Therefore, we cannot draw a distinction between the philosopher as a seeker after objective truths and a poet as a seeker after wholly 'subjective' and relativistic experiences.
The fact that truth is often attacked by Nietzsche as a reactive way of characterising or 'reading' reality shouldn't mean we have to assume that Nietzsche wantsto be a relativist. What survives the Genealogy and trasnvaluation is of course going to be complicated and hard to grasp. The Will to Power as a standard of truth allows Nietzsche to make very real and credible what were before denigrated as merely relativistic and subjective experiences. Poetry is in this sense liberated - it is able to capture reality by embodying forces that before were not considered fully or properly real.
Nietzsche will value the ability to think in different ways, to have different perspectives. Poetry must complement a relentless logic and vice versa. This does not mean we have no truth but that grasping truth demands virtuousity of thinking. I think Nietzsche calls it a 'gymnastics' of thinking. Kant was prone tothe occasional literary flourish and no one would denythat these all to brief moments are compatible with, and take further, the force of his rational arguments.
'Oh! how happy we are, we knowers, provided we can keep quiet long enough!...'['On the Genealogy of Morality,' p. 5, ed KAP, CUP(1994)].
The book I would like to select passages from is Alenka Zupancic's 'The Shortest Shadow: Nietszche's Philosophy of the Two', The MIT Press, 2003.
p. 7-8
Nietzsche was an 'anti-philosopher' but 'Nietzsche didnot oppose himself to philosophy, for instance, in the name of a more artistic mode of expression; ...Something else is at stake that could be formulated in these terms: to locate the point of the inner limit,or the inherent possibility, of a given discourse(...), and to activate this precise point as the potential locus of creation.'
p. 15
The subject must travel a certain distance in order to'take place', to 'happen' at the point of the Other thing. 'Zarathustra is the epic of such travel.'
p. 94
Truth is not an epistemological category but a matter of courage.
p. 97
Perspectivity does not make all truth subjective and partial for Nietzsche. If we relativise everything we hold onto a 'last solid truth' that there is no truthand in this we can still take refuge.
p. 98
Perspectivism is not a point of view but is truth engaged in life. It makes truth immanent while scepticism excepts itself from the situation it describes.
p. 99
'Is there a perspetive that belongs to no subject, and that no subject could claim to be his or her own, although there would be an intrinsic link between this singular perspective and the constitution of every subject belonging to this situation? The Nietzschean enterprise concerning a new notion of truth is heavily dependent on the answer to this question.'
p. 122
Truth can only take place within life, in the 'middle' of life.
I hope this makes sense and is of interest.
Best wishes,
Edward
posted by Scott at 1:06 am
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