Apollinianism as the greatest powerfulness of the will.

When I posted part of WP 382 on my Facebook wall (https://www.facebook.com/Sauwelios/posts/1264090380310900), I added Raphael's Transfiguration as an illustration to it. This addition was actually an allusion to BT 4--the only place in the book (bar the introduction, which was only added fourteen years later) where Nietzsche explicates his "artists' metaphysics"--:

"In [Raphael's] Transfiguration, the lower half of the picture, with the possessed boy, the despairing bearers, the bewildered, terrified disciples, shows us the reflection of suffering, primal and eternal, the sole ground of the world: the 'mere appearance' [der 'Schein'] here is the reflection of eternal contradiction, the father of things. From this mere appearance arises, like abrosial vapor, a new visionary world of mere appearances, invisible to those wrapped in the first appearance--a radiant floating in purest bliss, a serene contemplation beaming from wide-open eyes. Here we have presented, in the most sublime artistic symbolism, that Apollinian world of beauty and its substratum, the terrible wisdom of Silenus; and intuitively we comprehend their necessary interdependence. Apollo, however, again appears to us as the apotheosis of the principium individuationis [principle of individuation], in which alone is consummated the perpetually attained goal of the primal unity, its redemption through mere appearance. With his sublime gestures, he shows us how necessary is the entire world of suffering, that by means of it the individual may be impelled to realize the redeeming vision, and then, sunk in contemplation of it, sit quietly in his tossing bark amid the waves." (BT 4, Kaufmann trans.)

Now WP 382 opens as follows:

"Schopenhauer interpreted high intellectuality as liberation from the will; he did not want to see the freedom from moral prejudice which is part of the emancipation of the great spirit, the typical immorality of the genius[.]"

And Martha Nussbaum writes:

"[By the time of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche is] already profoundly critical of much of Schopenhauer's account of both cognition and desire, and profoundly hostile to his normative 'pessimism.' Most of the basis for the explicit denunciation of Schopenhauer in his later works such as The Case of Wagner and our epigraph [WP 851 and 808] (from 1888) is already firmly in place. But Nietzsche's strategy, in The Birth, is not, as later, to use direct argument or explicit polemic against his revered predecessor. Instead, he proceeds by stealth, using Schopenhauer's very terms to undermine his distinctions and arguments, borrowing the surface of his language to subvert the core of his thought. [...]
That opposition emerges almost immediately, as Nietzsche presents both the Dionysian and the Apollinian as both 'tendencies' and, 'drives' (Tendenzen; Triebe) in human nature; also as 'impulses,' as 'energies that are satisfied.' [BT 1.]" (Nussbaum, "The transfigurations of intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus", in: Kemal, Gaskell and Conway, eds., Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts.)

This is explicit in later writings:

"In the Dionysian intoxication there is sexuality and voluptuousness: they are not lacking in the Apollinian. There must [in addition to the difference between being clearly present and being seemingly absent] also be a difference in tempo in the two conditions... The extreme calm in certain sensations of intoxication (more strictly: the retardation of the feelings of time and space) likes to be reflected in a vision of the calmest gestures and types of soul. The classical style is essentially a representation of this calm, simplification, abbreviation, concentration--the highest feeling of power is concentrated in the classical type. To react slowly; a great consciousness; no feeling of struggle." (WP 799 whole (1888), Kaufmann trans.)

Perfect.

Now let me divide it.

Apollo is the strength that compresses the Dionysian flux which in human terms can only be "understood" as (which means in) Dionysian rapture, into marble and order, into fine work that imposes. The Apolliniac is Apollo, but the Apollonian, the Order that forms the central image to the city-state, and thus to the deep psyche of Doric politics, includes both Apollo and Dionysos.

It could be called a Dionysian order, if that were no insult to the god -which perhaps it is not, as even though the order is Apollonian in style, the substance that it emanates is, albeit latent, Dionysian.

Zeus conspired with his ancestors. This is not merely Olympian.

Fixed Cross wrote:: Apollo is the strength that compresses the Dionysian flux which in human terms can only be "understood" as (which means in) Dionysian rapture, into marble and order, into fine work that imposes. The Apolliniac is Apollo, but the Apollonian, the Order that forms the central image to the city-state, and thus to the deep psyche of Doric politics, includes both Apollo and Dionysos.

It could be called a Dionysian order, if that were no insult to the god -which perhaps it is not, as even though the order is Apollonian in style, the substance that it emanates is, albeit latent, Dionysian.

Yes. Though Nietzsche does not distinguish between Apollinian (a.k.a. Apollonian) and Apolliniac (which would be a drug inducing an Apollinian state), there is indeed a sense in which the Apollinian subsumes the Dionysian. In terms of the "artists' metaphysics", the Dionysian ecstasy consist in being transported into the shoes of the primal unity (which in BT 4, by the way, is also called "eternal contradiction, the father of things": compare Heraclitus, "war is the father of all" and "compounds are wholes and are not wholes"); from that position, the "real world" is seen as itself a vision, a dream. The Apollinian, then, is the highest, but only when seen from the deepest; not from "the real world":

"The genius as the 'not waking but only dreaming' man [Mensch] who, as I said, is prepared and comes about in the at the same time waking and dreaming man, is Apollinian nature through and through: a truth which, after the characteristic of the Apollinian which we have observed in advance, becomes clear automatically. With that we are urged toward defining the Dionysian genius as the man who has, in total abandon [völliger Selbstvergessenheit, literally "total self-oblivion"], become one with the primordial ground of the world and who now, from out of the primordial pain [i.e., the pain of the "Primordial One"], creates the reverberation thereof for the sake of his [own] redemption: as we have to venerate this process in the saint and the great musician, who are both simply replications and second castings [as in a mould] of the world.

"When this artistic reverberation of the primordial pain brings forth yet a second reflection, as a side-sun [Nebensonne], from out of itself: then we have the conjoint Dionysian-Apollinian work of art, to whose mystery we seek to come closer in this metaphorical language [Bildersprache].

"For that single eye of the world, before which the empirical-real world together with its reverberation in the dream pours itself out, that Dionysian-Apollinian union is consequently an eternal and unchangeable, yea single form of enjoyment: [for that eye] there is no Dionysian appearance [Schein] without an Apollinian reverberation [Widerschein, translated by Kaufmann above as "reflection"]. For our shortsighted, almost blind eyes, that phenomenon falls apart into purely individual, partly Apollinian partly Dionysian enjoyments, and only in the work of art that is the tragedy do we hear that highest twin art which, in its union of the Apollinian and the Dionysian, is the image [Abbild] of that primordial enjoyment of the eye of the world. Even as the [Apollinian] genius is the apex of the pyramid of appearance for this eye, so we may regard the tragic artwork as the apex of the pyramid of art that our eyes can reach." (N, Nachlass Anfang 1871 10 [1], my translation.)

So what you are getting at I gather is a political form of the Apollonian great eye in whose vision occurs the primordial world of suffering.

I agree that this looks to be a possible and perhaps necessary fate for Europe. Honesty I see only one path of contained destruction, which is a Frexit and an axis Rome-Vienna-Amsterdam. Rutte's leadership could in the best case amount to such a thing.

In case of a return to the primordial, I have severe doubts as to whether an individual can represent the eye.
I think it has to be a 'god' of sorts, a sign. Or a scepter, a totem, a wild-making object. A scent, of the wild.

For such a return to the primordial, not a single leader, but a primordially sanctified family unit would be required. A marriage of gods and titans. A symbol of pure life to transport man to meet the gaze of Apollo and do its will.

Men must be irreducible to other men to hunt like wolves.

Here's an excerpt from another post in that thread, which I think pertains to your post:

::

"[W]e are urged toward defining the Dionysian genius as the man who has, in total abandon, become one with the primordial ground of the world and who now, from out of the primordial pain [i.e., the pain of the "Primordial One"], creates the reverberation thereof for the sake of his [own] redemption."

If he has become one with the primordial ground of the world--that is, as Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy, "with the original Oneness" (BT 5)--, then the reverberation he creates for the sake of his own redemption must be one with the "vision-like reflection of the Primordial One"--that is, with Nature... But it is not the whole of Nature, even as his perspective, even in his union with the Primordial One, is not "that monstrous[ly broad] omnipresent perspective of the Primordial One"; from the point of view of the Primordial One, he only sees a very specific part of Nature: that part which, when he is sober, he calls "himself":

"The man Archilochus, with his passionate loves and hates, is really only a vision of genius, a genius who is no longer merely Archilochus but the genius of the universe, expressing its pain through the similitude of Archilochus the man. Archilochus, on the other hand, the subjectively willing and desiring human being, can never be a poet. Nor is it at all necessary for the poet to see only the phenomenon of the man Archilochus before him as a reflection of Eternal Being: the world of tragedy shows us to what extent the vision of the poet can remove itself from the urgent, immediate phenomenon." (BT 5.)

This last sentence does not contradict what I've just said; for, though the poet Phrynichos did not have to describe the personal life of the man Phrynichos, the former's material was of course still limited by what the latter knew: for instance, of the capture of Miletus; and though the poet does not even have to draw his material from real life, but can also base his poems on the myths he knows, this only serves to confirm that the poet can only create from what the man knows--that is, his perspective is limited to a highly specific part of Nature.

When "the genius in the act of creation" has "merge[d] with the primal architect of the cosmos", when "[h]e is at once subject and object, poet, actor, and audience" (BT 5), he does yet not see himself as "primal architect of the cosmos", as Dionysus; rather, he sees himself as satyr:

"Enchantment is the precondition of all dramatic art. In this enchantment the Dionysian reveler sees himself as satyr, and as satyr, in turn, he sees the god--that is, in his transformation he sees a new vision, which is the Apollinian completion of his state. And by the same token this new vision completes the dramatic act." (BT 8.)

He sees himself, not as part of the Primordial One, but as part of the chorus of satyrs. Indeed, Nietzsche later came to wholly abandon the idea of a "Primordial One", of a God with an omnipresent perspective--that is, of an omniscient God:

"That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a causa prima, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as 'spirit'--that alone is the great liberation; with this alone is the innocence of becoming restored... The concept of 'God' was until now the greatest objection to existence... We deny God, we deny the responsibility in God: only thereby do we redeem the world." (Twilight of the Idols, "The Four Great Errors", section 8.)

Now we can understand how the Overman is the replacement of God. The idea of a "Primordial One" is abandoned. Who then is to justify the world by enjoying it as a work of art? There cannot be any doubt: the Dionysian genius, that is, the genius who has become, not one with the Primordial One, but part of the chorus of satyrs--who has himself become a satyr! [https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/human_superhuman/conversations/messages/66]

::

Is not the chorus of satyrs a kind of Dionysian family? Or rather the whole train, including maenads, lions, etc...

The last line is crucial. Maenads, lions, et cetera.
A chorus of Satyrs is still sterile.

Nice post by the way.
That great liberation is explicated further in VO and its necessary implication, that there is no whole.

Fixed Cross wrote:: The last line is crucial. Maenads, lions, et cetera.
A chorus of Satyrs is still sterile.

Right. I'm reminded of the Hindu teaching that even the greatest Gods are still powerless, incapable of even moving, without their Shaktis.

Quote :: Nice post by the way.
That great liberation is explicated further in VO and its necessary implication, that there is no whole.

Indeed. I'm thinking, though: doesn't "being a satyr" then mean to see one's world as a Primordial One would see it? I.e., there is no being that sees all our worlds at the same time, but it's still possible to see one's world "as a ravishing hallucination", to speak with yet another post from that thread.

Sauwelios wrote:

Fixed Cross wrote:: The last line is crucial. Maenads, lions, et cetera.
A chorus of Satyrs is still sterile.

Right. I'm reminded of the Hindu teaching that even the greatest Gods are still powerless, incapable of even moving, without their Shaktis.

Excellent.
I'd like you (leading us) to explore that vein further.

Quote :

Quote :: Nice post by the way.
That great liberation is explicated further in VO and its necessary implication, that there is no whole.

Indeed. I'm thinking, though: doesn't "being a satyr" then mean to see one's world as a Primordial One would see it?

That is exactly the direction of my own thoughts.

Quote :: I.e., there is no being that sees all our worlds at the same time, but it's still possible to see one's world "as a ravishing hallucination", to speak with yet another post from that thread.

Yes, and I will contend that such a perspective is Dionysos.

Edit - no, the vision - and the ravaging and amalgamating power that represents that vision in the world - is Dionysos, but the man who holds that perspective is Apollo.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:: doesn't "being a satyr" then mean to see one's world as a Primordial One would see it?

That is exactly the direction of my own thoughts.

Actually of course Ive just said that this would be beyond the satyr, and Ive opened up a can of worms with that. Let's see what you say.
What I am referencing as exactly the direction of my thoughts is what I started to develop here:

"The artist is superior in this way to the Buddha, that the Buddha renounces suffering where the artist submits it to a greater joy -- the only freedom that exists in this causal world, creating fantastical forms beyond purpose, solely meant to be irresistible to the human mind. Art is the will to power over what is, and if God exists, he may have started out as an artist, he does not necessarily have to stand at the root of being (and cannot stand at the root of "raw existence" no-thingness, timeless potential), so it is even possible to conceive that we could war with God, separate from him, recreate our segment of the cosmos as an autonomous valuing system. Our culture could live to be older than God. If God is not in fact worthy of being part of, and if we choose to believe in a meta-being at all. What's more - we don't even have to believe in God to become God-like, to stand at the root of a universe.

Perhaps the myth of Lucifer is meant to illustrate this possibility, perhaps it is even a historical account. If this is so then there will always reign a conflict in our cosmos between the alien values of God, which we see shine through in his believers -- endurance, lack of logic -- and the Lucifereans who partake in this separated world, which lives by the more direct necessities of valuing, instead of the perfected & megalomanic ones of the supreme Artist Tyrant, the Lord of Eternal Order & Justice.

On this humble plane we do not seek to serve what has been determined to rule eternally for the greatest pleasure of the common denominator. We need to keep our options open; It is possible that God did not fully understand what he was doing." - From humble soul-searching to hijacking the universe.

4 days after the first vision, I created a second.

"I have created a God. He spans the evening sky like a web of perpetual lightning. He can not be prayed to without arms spread wide open and the face towards the sky -- his presence demands an open chest.

"Created" is perhaps a strong word, "envisioned" may be more true to what has happened. I demanded, in the described pose, that a great world-spanning entity like this exited, and there it was.

This God is meant to fill the void that has been left by all existing Gods, who all demand meekness. This God can not be addressed, understood, contacted in a meek state of heart or mind. His presence in ones consciousness demands a reckless kind of pride which is rooted in the firm knowledge that, as a being of strength and commanding intelligence, one has no other choice but to be reckless in this time, where creators are extremely rare, where the space to create is still so virgin-like, and there are not yet any standards.

The creation of this God is part of our great project (5) to create a master-ethics for mankind.

To you who are not meek but do feel the desire to bestow your will-power on a psychic meta-structure that will support projects of boldness and spiritual fearlessness, I make known this New God, who has no name yet but is electrical and directly accessible if ones pure energetic potential is above average, well developed and rooted in moral independence.

The New God is hereby offered to you as a means, a part of a new infrastructure for valuing.
From hereon prayer works the other way around -- God does not bless us, we bless God. We do not ask God for anything, we offer to God from our abundance.

Already this God is fierce, as I envisioned this God so. Spread out your arms if you and open up to this mighty creation, and you will see that giving and receiving are no longer a matter of loss and gain, but that one can only give, and only gain." - I've created a New God

I wonder if perhaps this does not already stand beyond the satyr, as it moves from and by the experience of being the primordial one into a controlled direction. So whereas apparently limited, in valuing integrity it is moved by that identification, which grants absolute freedom and absolute duty to oneself and everything that flows from ones actions and restrictions.
If this is not an act of Apollo.

Apollo is first-mover.
Vision moves power.
Shakti is vision to power.
Shiva is blind, Rudra is power without vision.
The eye of Apollo relates to Shakti as the fury of Dionysos relates to Shiva.

Shakti as first mover: as dunamis.

Shiva as potential, as self-valuing without external, without direction. Primordial suffering, unborn values.

Apollo holds the chaos in his gaze and transforms it into Dionysos, the god. Apollo is the master artist, the artist-tyrant.
The order he envisions has him as its roots. The eye of Apollo is the center of the universe. But the universe dwells within the void, the chaos, the all-father, Odin, the ground of the abyss, the empty rune, possibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XYdLFbQqqQ

I think this is a decent video for my standards. It addresses a central issue, namely the state of the people with respect to violence.
Perhaps you would consider a video as well.

A first reply:

::

Good video. I especially liked the point at which you spoke of putting oneself in the service of something greater than oneself: that really invoked that image in me.

That's basically what Strauss held against (modern) liberalism, and of course I myself recently raised this very issue:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/threads/196644-Things-to-do-in-the-stateless-classless-society (This thread may be new to you, but the first blockquote is the "Christmas Day Facebook post on Humanism" that I also posted on ILP.)

Now the "something higher than all reconciliation" mentioned there is of course the willing of eternal return. And as recently as this discussion of ours, you and I still disagreed on that:

https://www.facebook.com/Sauwelios/posts/1247364438650161?pnref=story

The fact that the ER is "the most extreme form of nihilism" (WP 55) may mean that it cannot be attractive enough for large numbers of people to constitute a new Catholicism for Europe; but in any case, in that discussion I was immediately put on a train of thought that led me to Dionysus and Ariadne. Now I will ask you to bear with me and consider these two posts of mine:

http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2655258#p2655258
https://www.facebook.com/Sauwelios/posts/1255169247869680

The Bhairava-mask in the picture under the second post should remind Classically schooled people like us of the masks of Greek tragedy. And indeed, did not Oedipus, for example, "flagrantly violate even the most fundamental taboos of his society"?

Now compare that first post to Euripides' Bacchae: was not the man Dionysus really a satyr who arrogated to himself the godhood of Dionysus, for which he had to 'punish' himself by "sacrificing a stand-in for himself"--namely, his full cousin Pentheus? (More precisely, it was Pentheus' 'Doric' kingship, his suppressing Dionysus, which made it necessary for the man Dionysus to appear, like Bhairava from the flame, and lead him to be beheaded by his own mother gone manic. The real crime is the suppression of the female.)

Haha, this post has a weird effect.
I can literally not concentrate on any specific section.
The archetypes are too many, too violent and shifty, in flux.
I like that, though. Give me some time to let it sink in or crystallize.
Also, wherever it isnt too much trouble, please do quote these posts here in this thread, if only just to have these texts of yours backed up and spread around some more - but of course also because it is easier to connect everything. My mind isnt as agile around the web as yours.

It appears easier to grab it by the tail.

Why is the real crime the suppression of the female? Is there a specific myth you can reference?
The last paragraph transported me somewhat yesterday, and I do not know the myth of the beheading, so I was left somewhat... headless.

Thanks for the comment on the video. I am glad that part in particular struck true.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:

Fixed Cross wrote:: The last line is crucial. Maenads, lions, et cetera.
A chorus of Satyrs is still sterile.

Right. I'm reminded of the Hindu teaching that even the greatest Gods are still powerless, incapable of even moving, without their Shaktis.

Excellent.
I'd like you (leading us) to explore that vein further.

Well, for one thing I don't think it's just a matter of their Shaktis functioning like "carrots", but also like "sticks". That is, it's not in the first place the case that their Shaktis attract them with their beauty, but that they repel them with their ugliness... In fact, the latter is what impels men to impose their will on women, to subject them to custom and thereby make them beautiful! In order that woman, even when driven "mad", manic, maenadic, not be a satyr, a blatant beast (as my girlfriend and I call our cat when he's running around like crazy in the early morning), man has to appear to be one or be capable of being one. Perhaps Adriaan Roland Holst's dictum, "Only idealism can change lambs into tigers", in the first place applies to men: only when their ideal of woman is crossed by her reality, when she doffs the sheep's clothing her man bought for her, does the lamb don his lion's clothing, causing her to shrink back into a cat or a cub.

"[In our age], woman loses her modesty. Let us immediately add that she also loses taste. She unlearns her fear of man: but the woman who 'unlearns fear' surrenders her most womanly [i.e., feminine] instincts.
That woman ventures forth when the aspect of man that inspires fear--let us say more precisely, when the man in man is no longer desired and cultivated--that is fair enough, also comprehensible enough. What is harder to understand is that, by the same token--woman degenerates. This is what is happening today: let us not deceive ourselves about that." (BGE 239, Kaufmann trans.)

That the man in man is no longer desired and cultivated--"Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep"--is precisely, paradoxically, because of man's idealism:

"Socrates's turn [from the non-human] to the human taught him that the humans in charge, the males in charge, judge nature to act unbearably toward humans, like a sea always in motion, always threatening humans and human constructs with destruction, always failing to distinguish worthy from unworthy [e.g., "good" from "evil"...]. Xenophon's images bring to light Socrates's insight into the male need to master feared and hated nature, to conquer nature." (Lampert, The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, "Socrates, the Real Real Man".)

And this is, again paradoxically, why feminism may actually be a good thing:

"A transgressive sacrality that would do justice to the empirical data of the avowedly male-centered tradition of goddess worship that we have been analyzing and interpreting till now, and yet be operative from the perspective of both the sexes, would necessarily have to focus on the theme and goal of androgyny and bisexuality. In traditional societies, whether Brahmanical or tribal, where there is a clear demarcation and even opposition between the socio-religious roles and psycho- physical characteristics attributed to the male and the female, such ‘gender confusion’ is a mode of transgression that is equally applicable to either and both of the sexes. However, this return to an inner often invisible androgyny seems far removed from the increasing trend towards the blurring of the (roles of the) sexes so visible in contemporary (Western) culture. The androgynous ideal (ardhanārīśvara) in such traditional societies is not achieved through a simple loss of masculine (or feminine) traits but rather presupposes their exaggeration and subsequent negation. It is the tantric “hero” (vīra), exemplified above by the virile Hindu king, and not the ordinary male devotee, who seeks to identify himself with the Goddess. Likewise, the dūtī [female partner] of the kulayāga [esoteric tantric sacrificer] who enables and facilitates his goal by identifying herself wholly with her partner, as the incarnation of Bhairava, is portrayed by the tantric texts as the very flower of womanhood. Bisexuality constitutes a separation and maximization of both the male and the female poles, with a view to their eventual reunification and ultimate transcendence.
It cannot be denied, however, that it is the same leveling trend in contemporary culture—in particular, the rise of the feminist movement—that has facilitated the appreciation of this hidden dimension of the feminine not just in archaic and primitive religions but also in the even more exclusively male-centered traditions of monotheism. [Cf. Patai, The Hebrew Goddess.] The resurgence of the Goddess in our midst—as the repository of the ultimate secret of not just female but also of male identity—could well result in the emergence of a new understanding and experience of gender that will be tainted neither by the religio-cultural biases of tradition nor by the sweeping and often exaggerated claims of a feminist activism dictated solely by the socio-political needs of the moment. As her public guardian, Bhairava may well have served as the instrument of the Goddess’ domestication and subordination; but as her partner in transgression, he still offers us the secret of their mutual liberation." (Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, "Bhairava and the Goddess: Tradition, Gender and Transgression", end.)

Quote :

Quote :: Nice post by the way.
That great liberation is explicated further in VO and its necessary implication, that there is no whole.

Indeed. I'm thinking, though: doesn't "being a satyr" then mean to see one's world as a Primordial One would see it?

That is exactly the direction of my own thoughts.

Quote :: I.e., there is no being that sees all our worlds at the same time, but it's still possible to see one's world "as a ravishing hallucination", to speak with yet another post from that thread.

Yes, and I will contend that such a perspective is Dionysos.

Edit - no, the vision - and the ravaging and amalgamating power that represents that vision in the world - is Dionysos, but the man who holds that perspective is Apollo.

Yes, excellent: the satyr envisions his whole world as Dionysos, and especially the more representative aspects:

"The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence--my formula for this is amor fati.
It is part of this state to perceive not merely the necessity of those sides of existence hitherto denied, but their desirability; and not their desirability merely in relation to the sides of existence hitherto affirmed (perhaps as their complement or precondition), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more fruitful, truer sides of existence, in which its will finds clearer expression." (WP 1041.)

And yes, the philosopher in this supreme sense is Apollo, the apotheosis of the individuation principle. Compare:

"The military genius [i.e., war as well as slavery, and indeed "the entire world of suffering" (BT 4)] is necessary for any artificial development of Apollinian genius. But he is not himself aware of this fact; nor are most other kinds of Apollinian genius. The only kind of Apollinian genius who is aware of this is the genius of wisdom and knowledge (who may perhaps not be simply equated with the sage, by the way [I later confirmed this]). Case in point: Nietzsche, in this very essay. In this sense, then, Plato was right, if not in excluding the genial artist from his state, at least in placing the genius of wisdom and knowledge at the head of it." (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2141290#p2141290)

I seem to agree with what your wrote in your first vision. As for the second, I wonder if you raised the subject of your God in answer to your video. As for your video, however, I think Catholicism only was what kept Islam at bay insofar as it was still Roman--Roman-Republican, that is. Insofar as it's Christian, I don't think Catholicism is better than Islam; in fact, I think medieval Christian culture was far inferior to medieval Islamic culture.

Fixed Cross wrote:: wherever it isnt too much trouble, please do quote these posts here in this thread

From today on, I will do that. In fact, contemplating a reply these last few days led me this morning to want to revisit the posts I collected for a(n e-)book I meant to compile last year. Thus from the concept "self-valuing", which as I've said I consider a mystification, albeit in the supreme sense of the union of Dionysus and Ariadne at the most fundamental level, I was led to the statement "Being is Presupposing beings" (Zijn is zijnds vooronderstellen, which as Zijn is (zich) zijnd(s) voor(onder)stellen also means "To be is to imagine beings" and "To be is to imagine oneself being")--and from there to this passage from a post of mine:

"[B]elow average intelligence need of course not necessarily mean stupid. Relatively stupid, perhaps, but modern humanism considers everyone to have a pretty high intelligence: this is the basis of 'universal human dignity'. But if this is not necessarily at hand, it may be wiser to establish a tradition for the upkeep of this intelligence. A foundation of men who are entrusted with versing themselves in the meaning (sense!) of that dignity.

"'Intelligence' here does not have the sense as in 'Central Intelligence Agency'--mere information. It means understanding, and especially the understanding of understanding. Self-awareness or, as I quoted above, "letting-oneself-come-toward-oneself in having-been as making-entities-present". This formulation is from Cahoone's lecture on Heidegger's Being and Time. But Picht, in his speech on Nietzsche, argues that Aristotle's noeseos noesis is really poieseos poiesis, the figmenting of figmenting, thinking thinking itself--that is, making phenomena appear making itself appear. Nietzsche insists that this is a forcing of oneself. But this forcing oneself does not spring from oneself, that is, it does not come from nothing. This tyrannical will is no free will. It is the result of one's environment in the profound sense that one's environment as well as one's self is the result--and never the end result--of a practically unsurveyable process. What metaphysics is is the will to survey that process 'in theory', that is, in the mind's eye, nay the mind's senses. This already suggests that it's a modest kind of person who lets her own history be as short as 6000 human years. She leaves the rest to God--but God is represented by the male, who after all claimed to speak for God. Thus in the Manu Samhita it's said: 'Punishment is (in reality) the king (and) the male', which is to say "compared with him all others are (weak) women."" (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2627200#p2627200)

But with this I'm back at some kind of Platonism--existence is simply "there"--, which is at odds with my Nihilist inclinations. Paradoxically, this Platonism and Nihilism are scientific and religious respectively:

"What, then, is the law and belief with which the decisive change, the recently attained preponderance of the scientific spirit over the religious, God-inventing spirit, is most clearly formulated? Is it not: the world, as force, may not be thought of as unlimited, for it cannot be so thought of[?]" (WP 1062.)

Of course, I've argued that the notion of a finite world just runs into the infinity/nothingness problem, for example at the end of that recent discussion of ours:

"I do think, though, that the eternal recurrence must be an imposition, including in the sense of a lie--for it runs into the infinity/nothingness problem. But this doesn't mean the 'goal' that is attained--the will to power and, at some level, to the eternal recurrence--is a lie; the process could still be an infinite straight line--although, inasmuch as infinity is tantamount to nothingness for us, that would indeed mean the part of the process we can see and comprehend must end in a finale of nothingness for us. Neumann thought of existence as such infinite nothingness, by the way..."

Neumann in fact presents this idea as an even more extreme form of nihilism than the ER. And speaking of him, he presents his Nihilism as scientific and all Platonism as religious. But my reversal thereof is also supported by the following passage:

"Strauss does not say the converted philosopher [i.e., the one who was converted to philosophy] converted back to Judaism: he 'returned to the Jewish fold,' returned irremediably different, viewing Judaism from the perspective of philosophy. Why return? Because 'in that moment he had experienced the enormous temptation, the enormous danger of philosophy.' Footnote 39 is helpful: separating the danger from the temptation, it puts the danger first, puts the fruit before the blossom where it cannot in truth be. The danger of philosophy lies in its 'pernicious' fruit, the doctrine of the eternity of the world that contradicts the Jewish teaching of God's creation of the world; the temptation of philosophy lies in its blossoms, which are 'evidently beautiful ones.' Converted to philosophy, drawn by its beauty and persuaded by reason of the eternity of the world, Halevi returned to the Jewish fold having experienced the enormous danger of its greatest adversary." (Lampert, op.cit., "Exotericism Embraced". Cf. https://www.facebook.com/Sauwelios/posts/1223440497709222?pnref=story)

Ah, persuaded by reason... But:

"Kant's doctrine 'that reason only has insight into what it itself, according to its own design, brings forth' is taken so radically [by Nietzsche] that it now comes to light how reason itself has been brought forth in history by man, according to his own design. The force which brings forth and posits both reason and the principle of identity that constitutes it bears the name 'the will to power'. Thinking, knowing and acting is now interpreted out of the historical carrying-out of designing, that is to say out of value-positing. Whereas in Kant the apriority of reason is condition of the possibility of designing, through the change carried out by Nietzsche the design becomes the condition of the possibility of reason." (Picht, Nietzsche, "The Aphorism as the Form of Thinking in Unclosed Horizons--the Determination of the Philosopher as a Friend of Enigma", my translation.)

Now in that passage mentioning Heidegger I used the term "metaphysics". Immediately after Aristotle, philosophy was subdivided into Logic, Ethics, Physics, and Metaphysics. In the very beginning of this year, you and I agreed on a provisional characterisation of you as rather a natural philosopher and me as rather a moral philosopher (and note that this was already a qualification of what I initially said: you rather a scientist and I rather a religious man). In other words, you as rather a Physicist and myself as rather an Ethicist in the Aristotelian sense. But logically, Ethics is prior to Physics, and even to Metaphysics insofar as the latter refers to "First Philosophy", the study of being(s) as a whole or the Being of being(s) (to use Heidegger's formulation--Heidegger, whose equivalent to Zarathustra's ten years in solitude was probably his reading Aristotle, which he recommended doing for ten years). Now Being is literally, etymologically, Physis; and the fact that the meaning of "Being" has evolved to be the opposite of its original meaning, "Becoming, Growing", is perfectly in order: for phusis in the philosophical sense does not mean rampant growth, but a most definite kind of growth--for example the growth from an acorn to a fully grown oak tree. But this meaning--the concept of "nature"--is itself imposed, in part, on reality: there are no eternal, unchangeable natures; all growth is subject to evolution. This imposition, however, is a moral imposition. As Strauss says:

"Philosophy as distinguished from myth came into being when nature was discovered, or the first philosopher was the first man who discovered nature. [...] Prior to the discovery of nature, the characteristic behavior of any thing or any class of things was conceived of as its custom or its way. That is to say, no fundamental distinction was made between customs or ways which are always and everywhere the same and customs or ways which differ from tribe to tribe. Barking and wagging the tail is the way of dogs, menstruation is the way of women, the crazy things done by madmen are the way of madmen, just as not eating pork is the way of Jews and not drinking wine is the way of Moslems. 'Custom' or 'way' is the prephilosophic equivalent of 'nature'." (Strauss, Natural Right and History, "The Origin of the Idea of Natural Right".)

The ancient Greek word for "custom or way" is ethos--as well as nomos!--; the Latin plural for it is mores. And as Heraclitus said, Ethos anthropoi daimon, "For man, custom is a deity." The "discovery" of nature, the beginning of philosophy, is the primordial crime in that it implies that not eating pork is not natural (for Jews. I put this between brackets because it's also the way of Muslims, of course. In fact, Islam obviously teaches that the way of Muslims is the right way for all men. This basically makes being a Muslim the natural end, the Aristotelian final cause, of man). In implying that mestruation is simply woman's nature whereas being modest is not, the beginning of philosophy was the beginning of the end of history, of the coming of the Last Man, of the great levelling. Thank God therefore for the death of the God of the philosophers, Reason, the eternal nature of human reason!

"Nature, the eternity of nature, owes its being to a postulation, to an act of the will to power on the part of the highest nature." (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil".)

"'Postulation.' The word invokes those most famous postulations of modern philosophy, Kant's moral postulates of God, freedom and immorality, those famous antinomies of nature that somehow, somewhere, inexplicably but necessarily, we hope, transcend nature and guarantee our unnatural morals. The postulation of the complementary man does not differ from being a postulate--'no one knows that,' says Life when Zarathustra whispers in her ear his passionate affirmation of her, the affirmation of eternal return (Z 3.15, 'The Other Dancing Song'). Nor does the postulation of the complementary man differ in being the foundation of morals--it is the highest Yes addressed to what is valuable in itself, it is the relapse into Platonism which cannot be avoided by genuine philosophy.
But this new moral postulate creates values consciously on the basis of the insight into will to power; it is the postulate of the one who has glimpsed the nature of nature and been transformed by that glimpse into its lover." (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, "Solving the Highest, the Most Difficult Problem".)

Let us "postulate" that nature is history! Let's make an Ass-God out of U and me both!

A bloody enormous post, and I mean in addressable content.
I will take my time and respond in part now.

Sauwelios wrote:: I seem to agree with what your wrote in your first vision. As for the second, I wonder if you raised the subject of your God in answer to your video. As for your video, however, I think Catholicism only was what kept Islam at bay insofar as it was still Roman--Roman-Republican, that is. Insofar as it's Christian, I don't think Catholicism is better than Islam; in fact, I think medieval Christian culture was far inferior to medieval Islamic culture.

But the fact remains that they did manage to withstand them - and it was a drunken Polish bishop who came to the rescue at Vienna.
I do not agree that Islamic culture was ever superior to Medieval France.
It's a matter of standards, obviously - there is already far too much wrong with the obedience required of the muslim for that religion to ever be able to touch the feet of anything Roman-spawned, certainly not something that actually moved beyond Rome in finesse of the spirit, as France did.

Quote :: Thus from the concept "self-valuing", which as I've said I consider a mystification, albeit in the supreme sense of the union of Dionysus and Ariadne at the most fundamental level, I was led to the statement "Being is Presupposing beings" (Zijn is zijnds vooronderstellen, which as Zijn is (zich) zijnd(s) voor(onder)stellen also means "To be is to imagine beings" and "To be is to imagine oneself being")--and from there to this passage from a post of mine:

Note though that VO does not claim that there is being. It simply offers a logic to address, if we presuppose being, that being.
I can't see the mystification in that.
But I do appreciate the way you use it to exalt the presupposition of being into a vital dance.
Such steps i do not make with VO - to me it is of the bitterest somberness in its implications for thought - we have to start all anew.
It's only because I have enormous strength that I derive joy from it.

And for that matter, I take your approach to it in the same way - to derive a joyful form of VO is proof of strength - and excess of strength.

Quote :: "[B]elow average intelligence need of course not necessarily mean stupid. Relatively stupid, perhaps, but modern humanism considers everyone to have a pretty high intelligence: this is the basis of 'universal human dignity'. But if this is not necessarily at hand, it may be wiser to establish a tradition for the upkeep of this intelligence. A foundation of men who are entrusted with versing themselves in the meaning (sense!) of that dignity.

"'Intelligence' here does not have the sense as in 'Central Intelligence Agency'--mere information. It means understanding, and especially the understanding of understanding. Self-awareness or, as I quoted above, "letting-oneself-come-toward-oneself in having-been as making-entities-present". This formulation is from Cahoone's lecture on Heidegger's Being and Time. But Picht, in his speech on Nietzsche, argues that Aristotle's noeseos noesis is really poieseos poiesis, the figmenting of figmenting, thinking thinking itself--that is, making phenomena appear making itself appear. Nietzsche insists that this is a forcing of oneself. But this forcing oneself does not spring from oneself, that is, it does not come from nothing. This tyrannical will is no free will. It is the result of one's environment in the profound sense that one's environment as well as one's self is the result--and never the end result--of a practically unsurveyable process. What metaphysics is is the will to survey that process 'in theory', that is, in the mind's eye, nay the mind's senses. This already suggests that it's a modest kind of person who lets her own history be as short as 6000 human years. She leaves the rest to God--but God is represented by the male, who after all claimed to speak for God. Thus in the Manu Samhita it's said: 'Punishment is (in reality) the king (and) the male', which is to say "compared with him all others are (weak) women."" (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2627200#p2627200)

But with this I'm back at some kind of Platonism--existence is simply "there"--, which is at odds with my Nihilist inclinations. Paradoxically, this Platonism and Nihilism are scientific and religious respectively:

Yes, I take again the VO solution to this conundrum: If being is, it is this. And.... now that we recognize that, indeed, it seems to very well be - we can actually work with it very powerfully in this formula.

Until here now - I must renounce Neumann in very strong terms, especially in the context of this or that philosophy being a mystification.

Neumanns ideas on engineering a literal ER are entirely mystical, arent they. There is no science or logic in his assertion that this could be done, there is no method. And as WL said, in the end method is all there is, all we can rely on. He doesn't have a starting point, not only not in terms of technology, or of physics itself where Relativity precludes a central, omni-applicable perspective, but also of non-theistic logic - we would have to literally be the center of the universe to be able to begin to conceive of the requirements for such an operation. Thus Neumann is simply imagining himself, or mankind, a Jewish God.

At this point I must ask the question: what do you mean with the word mystification? Can we demystify this word?

Fixed Cross wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:: I seem to agree with what your wrote in your first vision. As for the second, I wonder if you raised the subject of your God in answer to your video. As for your video, however, I think Catholicism only was what kept Islam at bay insofar as it was still Roman--Roman-Republican, that is. Insofar as it's Christian, I don't think Catholicism is better than Islam; in fact, I think medieval Christian culture was far inferior to medieval Islamic culture.

But the fact remains that they did manage to withstand them - and it was a drunken Polish bishop who came to the rescue at Vienna.

That was in 1683, which is well past the Renaissance even (look up 1673 in my "How the French Became So Gay"), let alone the Middle Ages.

Quote :: I do not agree that Islamic culture was ever superior to Medieval France.

I think it was. The Moorish culture of Spain inspired southern France to its greatest (Medieval) greatness. This it could do because, contrary to Christianity, Islam continued the Graeco-Roman philosophical tradition.

Quote :: It's a matter of standards, obviously - there is already far too much wrong with the obedience required of the muslim for that religion to ever be able to touch the feet of anything Roman-spawned, certainly not something that actually moved beyond Rome in finesse of the spirit, as France did.

I don't think that obedience was so different from the obedience required of the Roman. The Roman Republic was in great part Platonic, in that its highest individuals, its immoralists, paid lip service to its moral men. Not so different then from the Islamic--and Jewish!--political philosophers, who pretended to be, in the crucial respects, faithful members of the fold.

France's spiritual finesse is due precisely to the conflict between its Christian and its Roman values. Anyway, I'm not saying the _religion_ was superior, but the culture. And in fact, I think the culture was superior precisely insofar as it transcended the religion, as in Moorish Spain! When other Muslims from North Africa came to the Moors' military aid, they found them over-refined and religiously lax... Islam is after all, like Christianity, a Platonism for "the people", the vulgar,--the rude.

Quote :

Quote :: Thus from the concept "self-valuing", which as I've said I consider a mystification, albeit in the supreme sense of the union of Dionysus and Ariadne at the most fundamental level, I was led to the statement "Being is Presupposing beings" (Zijn is zijnds vooronderstellen, which as Zijn is (zich) zijnd(s) voor(onder)stellen also means "To be is to imagine beings" and "To be is to imagine oneself being")--and from there to this passage from a post of mine:

Note though that VO does not claim that there is being. It simply offers a logic to address, if we presuppose being, that being.
I can't see the mystification in that.

The mystification for me is precisely in its contradicting logic, i.e., the logic of A=A. More below.

P.S. The statement "Being is Presupposing beings" (note by the way that I consistently use Krell's capitalisation to distinguish the gerund from the participle) does not claim there is Being, either. It is, however, based on experience, at the very least of a hallucination of Being.

Quote :

Quote :: "Below average intelligence need of course not necessarily mean stupid. Relatively stupid, perhaps, but modern humanism considers everyone to have a pretty high intelligence: this is the basis of 'universal human dignity'. But if this is not necessarily at hand, it may be wiser to establish a tradition for the upkeep of this intelligence. A foundation of men who are entrusted with versing themselves in the meaning (sense!) of that dignity.

"'Intelligence' here does not have the sense as in 'Central Intelligence Agency'--mere information. It means understanding, and especially the understanding of understanding. Self-awareness or, as I quoted above, "letting-oneself-come-toward-oneself in having-been as making-entities-present". This formulation is from Cahoone's lecture on Heidegger's Being and Time. But Picht, in his speech on Nietzsche, argues that Aristotle's noeseos noesis is really poieseos poiesis, the figmenting of figmenting, thinking thinking itself--that is, making phenomena appear making itself appear. Nietzsche insists that this is a forcing of oneself. But this forcing oneself does not spring from oneself, that is, it does not come from nothing. This tyrannical will is no free will. It is the result of one's environment in the profound sense that one's environment as well as one's self is the result--and never the end result--of a practically unsurveyable process. What metaphysics is is the will to survey that process 'in theory', that is, in the mind's eye, nay the mind's senses. This already suggests that it's a modest kind of person who lets her own history be as short as 6000 human years. She leaves the rest to God--but God is represented by the male, who after all claimed to speak for God. Thus in the Manu Samhita it's said: 'Punishment is (in reality) the king (and) the male', which is to say "compared with him all others are (weak) women."" (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2627200#p2627200)

But with this I'm back at some kind of Platonism--existence is simply "there"--, which is at odds with my Nihilist inclinations. Paradoxically, this Platonism and Nihilism are scientific and religious respectively:

Yes, I take again the VO solution to this conundrum: If being is, it is this. And.... now that we recognize that, indeed, it seems to very well be - we can actually work with it very powerfully in this formula.

My Platonism says being is simply "there"; my Nihilism says it was or may have been created out of nothing. Thus the Platonism is scientific, whereas the Nihilism is religious: it embraces the possibility of an Abrahamic "God" (who then however, insofar as he is being, also created _himself_ out of nothing).

Quote :: Neumanns ideas on engineering a literal ER are entirely mystical, arent they. There is no science or logic in his assertion that this could be done, there is no method. And as WL said, in the end method is all there is, all we can rely on. He doesn't have a starting point, not only not in terms of technology, or of physics itself where Relativity precludes a central, omni-applicable perspective, but also of non-theistic logic - we would have to literally be the center of the universe to be able to begin to conceive of the requirements for such an operation. Thus Neumann is simply imagining himself, or mankind, a Jewish God.

Neumann says Nietzsche wanted a superman to engineer a literal ER. Neumann himself believed nothing--and only nothing!--was impossible, because nothing was the only "thing" that was actual... He believed that all sciences and logics, and all other things as well, were merely methods, arbitrary ways of seeing or doing things. His starting point is (indeed) nothing; so is his "finishing point". The center of the universe was everywhere and nowhere for him. He did indeed think of man as a Jewish God, except that that God also creates _himself_ out of nothing.

Quote :: At this point I must ask the question: what do you mean with the word mystification? Can we demystify this word?

I mean it in the sense of "mysticism". The union of Dionysus and Ariadne is a mystical union. I consider the concept "self-valuing" mystical in that it transgresses the law of non-contradiction; it's circular, it contains a self-reference. I think the concept should be broken down, which means "valuing" is to be analysed into at least two parts: then "self-valuing" can mean doing one thing (valuing, part 1) to some other thing or activity (valuing, part 2). With the statement "Being is Presupposing beings", I basically did that by invoking Heidegger's "ontological difference": applied to valuing, that difference is between Valuing and valuing(s). Then the Valuing can actually be of a self that is not the Valuing itself. Dionysus must have an Ariadne who is not Dionysus in order to Dionysify--

Sauwelios wrote:: Being is literally, etymologically, Physis; and the fact that the meaning of "Being" has evolved to be the opposite of its original meaning, "Becoming, Growing", is perfectly in order: for phusis in the philosophical sense does not mean rampant growth, but a most definite kind of growth--for example the growth from an acorn to a fully grown oak tree.

An example of rampant growth would be a cancer.

Being is literally, etymologically Phusis in that the Be- part is etymologically the same root as the Phu- part. In fact, I think we should write Bhusis, since the Greek letter Phi can be an aspirated Beta as well as an aspirated Pi. The -ing part, however, is obviously not cognate with the -sis part. Yet as far as meaning is concerned, -sis is a

"suffix in Greek-derived nouns denoting action, process, state, condition, from Greek -sis, which is identical in meaning with Latin -entia, English -ing (1)." (http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=-sis)

Quote :: Let us "postulate" that nature is history! Let's make an Ass-God out of U and me both!

This is actually an allusion to The Silence of the Lambs, where Clarice Starling tentatively uses the word "postulate" in front of Jack Crawford so as to avoid his little "when you assume you make an ass out of you and me both" lecture. I first wrote the first sentence, then inserted the last Lampert quote under the last Strauss quote, and only then wrote the final sentence. The point is that if nature is history, then "nature as a whole", which includes you and me, is what Seung called the Ass-God. Immediately before the passage on custom, by the way, Strauss writes:

"The purport of the discovery of nature cannot be grasped if one understands by nature 'the totality of phenomena.' For the discovery of nature consists precisely in the splitting-up of that totality into phenomena which are natural and phenomena which are not natural: 'nature' is a term of distinction."

And Lampert writes:

"Nietzsche does not deny that there is a nature of man, though of course he denies that it is timeless or even that it is now unalterable: the very threat to human nature in one of its forms requires that Nietzsche act. [...] Nietzsche cannot and does not magically dispense with nature, transporting himself into some radical historicism that supposes it can solve the problem of nature by treating nature as a conceptual fiction. Nietzsche does not conquer nature conceptually, denying its sway and affirming the modern fiction of our radical power to make ourselves whatever we fancy. Nor does Nietzsche surrender to nature under another name, affirming the radical subjection of our minds to the shifting power of what is given, to Being, say." (Lampert, ibid.)

What Nietzsche does is something in between: timeless, unalterable nature, eternal nature, is a conceptual fiction (a simplification: cf. "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense"); but because "[t]he Nature-God [i.e., the Ass-God] takes billions of years for creation, whereas the Christian God takes only six days" (Seung, Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, "The Dionysian Mystery"), nature does hold sway--though not as absolutely as Heidegger's Being:

"History is the account of the genesis and development of all the deeply ingrained prejudices fostered by common sense. [...] If nothing exists but one's perceptions and thoughts, why do most men so passionately cling to selves, and pursue goods, which they believe exist independently of their cognition? That question can be answered in liberal terms only by a historical account, a record of the origin and development of the sensations and thoughts responsible for faith in common sense. If nothing exists but perceptions and thoughts, the common sense belief denying this liberal conviction must itself arise from perceptions and thoughts. History explains how illiberalism or superstition arises in an essentially liberal reality. It is the story of all moral-political life which, as such, is sparked by nothing but superstition. It is the account of blind aimless wills and their foolish conflicts which superstition forces men to take seriously. Far from being guided by evident insight, as the nihilist rejection of common sense is, history is merely a record of the blind resolves enslaving men to certain prejudiced perceptions and thoughts such as faith in one's family, tribe, city, state, race, sex, church, or humanity. Superstition manufactures an 'objective' reality for the objects of these faiths." (Neumann, Liberalism, "Illiberalism or Liberalism?")

The will to the recurrence of history is basically the self-affirmation of nature Nietzscheanly understood:

"The leaders who can counteract the degradation of man which has led to the autonomy of the herd, can however not be merely men born to rule like Napoleon, Alcibiades and Caesar. They must be philosophers, new philosophers, a new kind of philosophers and commanders, the philosophers of the future. Mere Caesars, however great, cannot suffice, for the new philosophers must teach man the future of man as his will, as dependent on a human will in order to put an end to the gruesome rule of nonsense and chance which was hitherto regarded as 'history': the true history--as distinguished from the mere pre-history, to use a Marxian distinction--requires the subjugation of chance, of nature (Genealogy II n. 2) by men of the highest spirituality, of the greatest reason. The subjugation of nature depends then decisively on men who possess a certain nature." (Strauss, SPPP, "Note on the Plan".)

"Strauss's whole argument on this chapter requires that the subjugation of nature by the highest natures be understood as a response to the already existing attempt to subjugate nature, primarily the modern moral attempt to subjugate human nature to the imperatives of one type of human being. As Strauss said in On Tyranny, we are now brought face to face with a new form of tyranny because of '"the conquest of nature" and in particular of human nature' (OT 27). Nietzsche's new task is the task made imperative by our history of the subjugation of our nature. The new task does not subjugate human nature; it sets out instead to conquer the already far-advanced rage to subjugate human nature through the elimination of its supreme forms. To achieve this end, the new task grants sway to the predatory beings, to 'men of the highest spirituality, of the greatest reason,' those who act in accord with their nature and in accord with reason." (Lampert, LSN, "Following Leaders".)