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.We LIVING WITH NIETZSCHEshould contrast such a conception of life with ordinary morality and the ethics of “being a good person” as well as the age old philosophical questfor passionless “peace of mind” and “tranquility” ( apatheia and ataraxia).It is a vision of life that burns brilliantly rather than rusts inexorably.A Dionysian temper of life is suggested by dynamic rather than static metaphors,notions of “energy,” “enthusiasm,” “charisma,” even mania. It is also the erotic conception of life suggested by such poets as Homer, Byron and (Allen) Ginsberg, occasionally weighted down with despair and Weltschmerz,perhaps but buoyed by joy and exuberance as well.Throughout philosophy (East and West), there has been staunch resis-tance and loud condemnation of strong, violent emotion—the sort that issaid to “sweep us away”—as at best untoward but more often disastrous,even fatal.Ethics has long been defended (even by Plato) as the employmentof reason in opposition to the unruly passions, and modern ethics (Kant, inparticular) has quite decisively opposed reason to the “inclinations,” butespecially to the passions.And even in Aristotle, it turns out that the virtues are “states of character” and not passions.It is obvious that many if notmost of the virtues involve concern for the emotions, but too often in anegative way.Courage, for example, has much to do with overcoming fear, as Aristotle argued at some length in his ( Nicomachean) Ethics.Phillipa Foot has famously argued that the virtues are “correctives” of emotion, keepingin check the more vulgar, self-interested emotions. Most of the traditional vices (avarice, lust, pride, anger, and perhaps envy, though notably notsloth) are readily defined as excesses of emotion.Too often, however, theabsence of any such emotion is counted as virtue (abstinence, chastity, mod-esty, etc.) Thus Nietzsche warns us (in various places) against identifyingthe “emasculated man” with the good man. It was David Hume, reacting to this long opposition, who famously insisted “reason is and ought to bethe slave of the passions,” thus reversing the long-honored priority of rea-son and sticking it to those who would degrade the passions.But whereHume was content to defend the gentle “moral sentiments” and “calm pas-sions” under this banner, Nietzsche heaps scorn on pity and other senti-ments that he finds wimpy, merely “sentimental,” or worse.Indeed, hetakes them at their worst, shot through with smugness, a bullying superior-ity, and hypocrisy. Nietzsche claims something far more revolutionary (in keeping with his usually unacknowledged romantic background): reason isand ought to be the slave of even what Hume called the “violent” passions,including, perhaps, some of those traditional vices and “deadly sins” thatso much of the tradition has warned us against.But, better, those passionscan and should be cultivated and mastered in their own terms.The pizzazz of the phrase “the will to power” captures this general visionof the passionate life while making clear that it’s not hedonism or ordinaryhappiness that is at issue here.The will to power isn’t just any passion.It is passion directed to self-mastery and self-expression.It embraces suchparticular passions as pride (a “deadly” sin for Christians, but a virtue toN I E T Z S C H E ’ S P A S S I O N Sthe Greeks).It embodies anger and its aggressive kin (another sin for Christians, but again a virtue to the Greeks—Aristotle insisted that only a “dolt”doesn’t get angry when he ought to.) It includes joy, but mainly that ener-getic joy that comes with victory and strength, not the quiet and quietist“bliss” praised by Christians and Buddhists, and, more recently, by Spinoza.As the ultimate value, it embodies rather than opposes rationality, and thepower Nietzsche celebrates should be understood in terms of force of charac-ter and the success of the passions in a larger scheme of human flourishing.Thus happiness (in its usual sense) is not essential to flourishing, nor is“success” in its more mundane sense.Human flourishing, for Nietzsche asfor Aristotle, is living a life worth not only living but celebrating, in whichgreatness and in particular greatness of soul ( megalopsychia) is a much more central consideration than feeling happy and content or achieving successin one’s career.Indeed, Nietzsche would be the first to say that the passion-ate life is rarely conducive to such ordinary well-being, and it is in this that the formulation “the will to power,” though highly misleading, marks hisbasic disagreement with Bentham, Mill, and the other utilitarians.In Nietzsche’s book The Gay Science, the very title indicates a defense of the passionate life, La gaya scienzia, the life of the troubadours, a life of longing ( languor) and love.Nietzsche’s “immoralism,” accordingly, hasoften been taken to rather be akin to aestheticism, that is, the thesis thatethics and ethical judgments reduce to or can be translated into aestheticsand aesthetic judgments. I think that there is a great deal of truth to this, a truth that Nietzsche shares with some ancient Chinese philosophers, inparticular, some of the Taoists.(Even Kant suggests it when he talks aboutcompassion as “beautiful.”) But then I think that Nietzsche’s emphasis onthe passions and, in particular, his vigorous notion of “the will to power”emphasizes not aesthetics but something else, “energy,” “enthusiasm,”“strength,” as well as “self-mastery,” which does not mean the conquestbut rather the cultivation of the passions [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.We LIVING WITH NIETZSCHEshould contrast such a conception of life with ordinary morality and the ethics of “being a good person” as well as the age old philosophical questfor passionless “peace of mind” and “tranquility” ( apatheia and ataraxia).It is a vision of life that burns brilliantly rather than rusts inexorably.A Dionysian temper of life is suggested by dynamic rather than static metaphors,notions of “energy,” “enthusiasm,” “charisma,” even mania. It is also the erotic conception of life suggested by such poets as Homer, Byron and (Allen) Ginsberg, occasionally weighted down with despair and Weltschmerz,perhaps but buoyed by joy and exuberance as well.Throughout philosophy (East and West), there has been staunch resis-tance and loud condemnation of strong, violent emotion—the sort that issaid to “sweep us away”—as at best untoward but more often disastrous,even fatal.Ethics has long been defended (even by Plato) as the employmentof reason in opposition to the unruly passions, and modern ethics (Kant, inparticular) has quite decisively opposed reason to the “inclinations,” butespecially to the passions.And even in Aristotle, it turns out that the virtues are “states of character” and not passions.It is obvious that many if notmost of the virtues involve concern for the emotions, but too often in anegative way.Courage, for example, has much to do with overcoming fear, as Aristotle argued at some length in his ( Nicomachean) Ethics.Phillipa Foot has famously argued that the virtues are “correctives” of emotion, keepingin check the more vulgar, self-interested emotions. Most of the traditional vices (avarice, lust, pride, anger, and perhaps envy, though notably notsloth) are readily defined as excesses of emotion.Too often, however, theabsence of any such emotion is counted as virtue (abstinence, chastity, mod-esty, etc.) Thus Nietzsche warns us (in various places) against identifyingthe “emasculated man” with the good man. It was David Hume, reacting to this long opposition, who famously insisted “reason is and ought to bethe slave of the passions,” thus reversing the long-honored priority of rea-son and sticking it to those who would degrade the passions.But whereHume was content to defend the gentle “moral sentiments” and “calm pas-sions” under this banner, Nietzsche heaps scorn on pity and other senti-ments that he finds wimpy, merely “sentimental,” or worse.Indeed, hetakes them at their worst, shot through with smugness, a bullying superior-ity, and hypocrisy. Nietzsche claims something far more revolutionary (in keeping with his usually unacknowledged romantic background): reason isand ought to be the slave of even what Hume called the “violent” passions,including, perhaps, some of those traditional vices and “deadly sins” thatso much of the tradition has warned us against.But, better, those passionscan and should be cultivated and mastered in their own terms.The pizzazz of the phrase “the will to power” captures this general visionof the passionate life while making clear that it’s not hedonism or ordinaryhappiness that is at issue here.The will to power isn’t just any passion.It is passion directed to self-mastery and self-expression.It embraces suchparticular passions as pride (a “deadly” sin for Christians, but a virtue toN I E T Z S C H E ’ S P A S S I O N Sthe Greeks).It embodies anger and its aggressive kin (another sin for Christians, but again a virtue to the Greeks—Aristotle insisted that only a “dolt”doesn’t get angry when he ought to.) It includes joy, but mainly that ener-getic joy that comes with victory and strength, not the quiet and quietist“bliss” praised by Christians and Buddhists, and, more recently, by Spinoza.As the ultimate value, it embodies rather than opposes rationality, and thepower Nietzsche celebrates should be understood in terms of force of charac-ter and the success of the passions in a larger scheme of human flourishing.Thus happiness (in its usual sense) is not essential to flourishing, nor is“success” in its more mundane sense.Human flourishing, for Nietzsche asfor Aristotle, is living a life worth not only living but celebrating, in whichgreatness and in particular greatness of soul ( megalopsychia) is a much more central consideration than feeling happy and content or achieving successin one’s career.Indeed, Nietzsche would be the first to say that the passion-ate life is rarely conducive to such ordinary well-being, and it is in this that the formulation “the will to power,” though highly misleading, marks hisbasic disagreement with Bentham, Mill, and the other utilitarians.In Nietzsche’s book The Gay Science, the very title indicates a defense of the passionate life, La gaya scienzia, the life of the troubadours, a life of longing ( languor) and love.Nietzsche’s “immoralism,” accordingly, hasoften been taken to rather be akin to aestheticism, that is, the thesis thatethics and ethical judgments reduce to or can be translated into aestheticsand aesthetic judgments. I think that there is a great deal of truth to this, a truth that Nietzsche shares with some ancient Chinese philosophers, inparticular, some of the Taoists.(Even Kant suggests it when he talks aboutcompassion as “beautiful.”) But then I think that Nietzsche’s emphasis onthe passions and, in particular, his vigorous notion of “the will to power”emphasizes not aesthetics but something else, “energy,” “enthusiasm,”“strength,” as well as “self-mastery,” which does not mean the conquestbut rather the cultivation of the passions [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]