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Posted by allen A man who says, "I like this, I take this for my own and want to protect it and defend it against anybody"; a man who is able to manage something, to carry out a resolution, to remain faithful to a thought, to hold a woman, to punish and prostrate one who presumed too much; a man who has his wrath and his sword and to whom the weak, the suffering, the hard pressed, and the animals, too, like to come and belong by nature, in short a man who is by nature a master--when such a man has pity, well, THIS pity has value. But what good is the pity of those who suffer? Or, worse, those who PREACH pity? BGE 239
on 3/8/2007, 1:18 am, in reply to "Re: Zarathustra Prologue 3"
76.172.152.X
Here it is:
--Previous Message--
: I really don't think Zarathustra implied that
: he "didn't love man after all"
: when he was speaking to the other hermit
: (QUITE the contrary, actually). What
: happened in that passage was a little of
: Nietzsche's humor: Zarathustra had let the
: weighty word LOVE slip in front of the wrong
: kind of person--one with a poisoned idea of
: "love"--and realized it as soon as
: the fellow started talking -- "Wow!
: uh, did I say "love"? What I meant
: was..well, suffice it to say I have a GIFT
: for man".
:
: "The hour when we say: 'What good is my
: pity! Is not pity the cross
: on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my
: pity is not a
: crucifixion.'" -- the essential thing
: here is that pity is more likely to end up
: being a self-serving martyrdom (see Matthew
: 6:1) and, yes, if anything only to INCREASE
: suffering by adding just one more sufferer
: (Antichrist 7); but it is never constructive
: unless it is a "tough love" that
: licks like lightning and forces change or
: death.
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: [My ideas are in brackets. Thomas]
:
: When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest
: town which adjoineth the
: forest, he found many people assembled in
: the market-place; for it had
: been announced that a rope-dancer would give
: a performance. And
: Zarathustra spake thus unto the people: I
: teach you the Superman.
: [Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen: amazingly
: Stanley Rosen (The Mask of Enlightenment)
: got his German grammar all wrong I think:
: because he translates: "I teach you
: about the supermen" and comments:
: "The use of the plural Übermenschen
: shows that Zarathustra is not prophesying
: the coming of a single superior being, but a
: new human type."
: But "den Übermenschen" is a
: singular masculine accusative (the object of
: the teaching); the accusative plural would
: be:
: Ich lehre euch die Übermenschen." So
: Rosen is wrong from the very start,
: Nietzsche is NOT calling for "a new
: human type".
: In fact the text does not yet tell us what
: the Superman could be.]
:
: Man is something that is to be surpassed.
: What have ye done to surpass man?
: All beings hitherto have created something
: beyond themselves: and ye
: want to be the ebb of that great tide, and
: would rather go back to the
: beast than surpass man?
: What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock,
: a thing of shame. And just
: the same shall man be to the Superman: a
: laughing-stock, a thing of
: shame.
: Ye have made your way from the worm to
: man, and much within you is
: still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet
: man is more of an ape than
: any of the apes.
: Even the wisest among you is only a
: disharmony and hybrid of plant
: and phantom. But do I bid you become
: phantoms or plants?
: Lo, I teach you the Superman!
: The Superman is the meaning of the earth.
: Let your will [Wille in German] say: The
: Superman shall he the meaning of the earth!
: [With the call towards a Superman, Nietzsche
: is invoking the voice of our Will to bring
: it about.]
:
: I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to
: the earth, and believe
: not those who speak unto you of superearthly
: hopes! Poisoners are
: they, whether they know it or not.
: Despisers of life are they, decaying ones
: and poisoned ones
: themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so
: away with them!
: Once blasphemy against God was the
: greatest blasphemy; but God died,
: and therewith also those blasphemers. To
: blaspheme the earth is now
: the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart
: of the unknowable higher
: than the meaning of the earth!
: Once the soul looked contemptuously on the
: body, and then that
: contempt was the supreme thing:- the soul
: wished the body meagre,
: ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to
: escape from the body and the
: earth.
: Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly,
: and famished; and
: cruelty was the delight of that soul!
: But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What
: doth your body say about
: your soul? Is your soul not poverty and
: pollution and wretched
: self-complacency?
: Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must
: be a sea, to receive a
: polluted stream without becoming impure.
: Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that
: sea; in him can your
: great contempt be submerged.
: What is the greatest thing ye can
: experience? It is the hour of
: great contempt. The hour in which even your
: happiness becometh
: loathsome unto you, and so also your reason
: and virtue.
:
: [What follows looks to me like a remake of
: Jesus sermon on the mountain,
: Nietzsche is continuously reversing values.]
:
: The hour when ye say: "What good is
: my happiness! It is poverty
: and pollution and wretched self-complacency.
: But my happiness should
: justify existence itself!"
: [Happiness should be this-worldly, embracing
: concrete existence ("Dasein" in
: the text),
: not seeking other-worldly happiness.]
:
: The hour when ye say: "What good is
: my reason! Doth it long for
: knowledge as the lion for his food? It is
: poverty and pollution and
: wretched self-complacency!"
: [The lion as symbol for eagerness, not
: lukewarm wisdom.]
:
: The hour when ye say: "What good is
: my virtue! As yet it hath not
: made me passionate. How weary I am of my
: good and my bad! It is all
: poverty and pollution and wretched
: self-complacency!"
: [Advocating passion, rather than Aristotle's
: virtuous mean?]
:
: The hour when ye say: "What good is
: my justice! I do not see that
: I am fervour and fuel. The just, however,
: are fervour and fuel!"
: [Fire as an image of passion...]
:
: The hour when we say: "What good is
: my pity! Is not pity the cross
: on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my
: pity is not a
: crucifixion."
: [Nietzsche seems to connect pity to
: suffering, and his pity is not such a pity,
: just as he told the hermit that no, he
: didn't love men after all.]
:
: Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever
: cried thus? Ah! would that
: I had heard you crying thus!
: It is not your sin- it is your
: self-satisfaction that crieth unto
: heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth
: unto heaven!
: Where is the lightning to lick you with
: its tongue? Where is the
: frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
: Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that
: lightning, he is that
: frenzy!-
: When Zarathustra had thus spoken, one of
: the people called out: "We have now
: heard enough of the rope-dancer; it is time
: now for us
: to. see him!" And all the people
: laughed at Zarathustra. But the
: rope-dancer, who thought the words applied
: to him, began his
: performance.
:
:
:
:
:
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