Week+2

... I mate with my free kind upon the crags; the hidden recesses Have heard the echo of my heels, in the cool light, in the darkness. -Ezra Pound, //Tenzone// __ Reprocessed trimmings from the Gayest Science __ ...and the saying, 'Know thyself', addressed to human beings by a god, is near to malicious. ※335

=**An autobiographical remark about the author herein treated: **= “…and Tacitus, who did not slander the wise, said even of the wisest of men: quando etiam sapientibus gloriae cupido novissima excuitur (since the desire for fame is the last thing even the wise are able to rid themselves of) – //which for him means never.//” ※330

“//Will and wave//. – How greedily this wave is approaching, as if it were tring to reach something! How it crawls with terrifyin haste into the inmost crevices of the craggy gorge! It seems to be trying to arrive before someone else; something of value, of great value, seems to be hidden there. – And now it is returning, a bit more slowly but still quite white with excitement – is it disappointed? Has it found what it was seeking? Is it simulating disappointment? – But already another wave is nearing, still more greedily and wildly than the first; and its soul, too, seems full of secrets and the hunger for treasure-digging. That is how the waves live – that is how we live, we who will – I will say no more.” ※ 310
 * On the infinite and ultimately meaningless play of forces we call //the// //universe:// **

“Since only the ultimate reconciliation scenes and final accounts of this long process rise to consciousnss, we suppose that //intelligere// must be something conciliatory, just, and good, something essentially opposed to our instincts, when in fact //it is only a certain behavior of the drives towards one another.//”
 * On the infinite and ultimately meaningless play of forces we call //the// //mind:// **

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= =  Our Problem? = “ ‘Rather do anything than nothing’ – even this principle is a cord to strangle all culture and all higher taste. … For life in a hunt for profit constantly forces people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense or out-smarting or forestalling others: the true virtue today is doing something in less time than someone else.” ※ 329

=Transcript of a dream:= = Comeuppance and Rallying Cries =

“Long live physics! – So, how many people know how to observe? And of these few, how many to observe themselves? ‘Everyone is farthest from himself’ – every person who is expert at scrutinizing the inner life of others know this to his own chagrin; and the saying, ‘Know thyself’, addressed to human beings by a god, is near to malicious. //That// self-observation is in such a bad state, however, is most clearly confirmed by the way in which //nearly everyone// speaks of the nature of a moral act – that quick, willing, convinced, talkative manner, with its look, its smile, its obliging eagerness! People seem to be wanting to say to you, ‘But my dear fellow, that is precisely //my// subject! You are directing your question to the person who is //competent// to answer it: there is, as it happens, nothing I am wiser about. So: when man judges, “that is right” and infers “hence it must come about!” and then //does// what he thus has recognized to be right and described as necessary – then the nature of his act is //moral!//” But, my friend, you are speaking of three acts instead of one: even the judgment ‘that is right’, for example, is an act. Wouldn’t it be possible for a person to make a judgment in a way that would be moral or immoral? //Why// do you take this and specifically this to be right? ‘Because my conscience tells me so; conscience never speaks immorally, since it determines what is to count as moral!’ But why do you listen to the words of your conscience? And what gives you the right rto consider such a judgment true and infallible? For this belief – is there no conscience? Do you know nothing of an intellectual conscience? A conscience behind your ‘conscience’? Your judgment, ‘that is right’ has a prehistory in your drives, inclinations, aversions, experiences, and what you have failed to experience; you have to ask, ‘how did it emerge there?’ and then also, ‘//what// is really impelling me to listen to it?’ You can listen to its commands like a good soldier heeds the commands of his officer. Or like a woman who loves the one who commands. Or like a flatterer and coward who fears the commander. Or like a fool who obeys because he can think of no objection. In short, there are a hundred ways to listen to your conscience. But //that// you hear this or that judgment as the words of conscience, i.e. //that// you feel something to be right may have its cause in your never having thought much about yourself and in your blindly having accepted what has been labelled //right// since your childhood; or in the fact that fulfilling your duties has so far brought you bread and honours – and you consider it right because it appears to you as your own ‘condition of existence’ (and that you have a //right// to existence seems irrefutable to you). For all that, the //firmness// of your moral judgment could be evidence of your personal wretchedness, of lack of a personality; your ‘moral strength’ might have its source in your stubbornness – or in your inability to envisage new ideals. And, briefly, had your reflected more subtly, observed better, and studied more, you would never continue to call this ‘duty’ of yours and this ‘conscience’ of yours duty and conscience. Your insight into //how such things as moral judgments could ever have come into existence// would spoil these emotional words for you, as emotional words, for example, ‘sin’, ‘salvation of the soul’, and ‘redemption’ have been spoiled for you. And now don’t bring up the categorical imperative, my friend! The term tickles my ear and makes me laugh despite your very serious presence. I am reminded of old Kant, who helped himself to the ‘thing in itself’ – another very ridiculous thing! – and was punished for this when the ‘categorical imperative’ crept into his heart and made him stray back to ‘God’, ‘soul’, ‘freedom’, ‘immortality’, like a fox who strays back into his cage. Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage! What? You admire the categorical imperative within you? This ‘firmness’ of your so-called moral judgment? This absoluteness of the feeling, ‘here everyone must judge as I do’? Rather admire your //selfishness// here! And the blindness, pettiness, and simplicity of your selfishness! For it is selfish to consider one’s own judgment a universal law, and this selfishness is blind, petty, and simple because it shows that you haven’t yet discovered yourself or created for yourself an ideal of your very own – for this could never be someone else’s, let alone everyone’s, everyone’s! No one who judges, ‘in this case everyone would have to act like this’ has yet taken five steps towards self-knowledge. For he would then know that there neither are nor can be actions that are all the same; that every act ever performed was done in an altogether unique and unrepeatable way, and that this will be equally true of every future act; that all prescriptions of action (even the most inward and subtle rules of all moralities do far) relate only to their rough exterior; that these prescriptions may yield an appearance of sameness, //but only just an appearance//; that as one observes or recollects any action, it is and remains impenetrable; that our opinions about ‘good’ and ‘noble’ and ‘great’ can never be //proven true// by our actions because every act is unknowable; that our opinions, valuations, and tables of what is good are certainly some the most powerful levers in the machinery of our actions, but that in each case, the law of its mechanism is unprovable. Let us therefore //limit// ourselves to the purification of our opinions and value judgments and to the //creation of tables of what is good that are new and all our own//: let us stop brooding over the ‘moral value of our actions’! Yes, my friends, it is time to feel nauseous about some people’s moral chatter about others. Sitting in moral judgment should offend our taste. Let use leave such chatter and such bad taste to those who have nothing to do but drag the past a few steps further through time and who never live in the preset – that is, to the many, the great majority! We, however, want to //become who we are// – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves! To that end we much become the best students and discoverers of everything lawful and necessary in the world: we must become //physicists// in order to be creators in this sense – while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been built on //ignorance// of physics or in //contradiction// to it. So, long live physics! And even more long live what //compels// us to it – our honesty!” ※336