Talking Ass wrote:Nietzsche: "But some day, in a stronger age than this decaying, self-doubting present, he must yet come to us, the redeeming man of great love and contempt, the creative spirit whose compelling strength will not let him rest in any aloofness or any beyond, whose isolation is misunderstood by the people as if it were flight from reality--while it is only his absorption, immersion, penetration into reality, so that, when he one day emerges again into the light, he may bring home the redemption of this reality; its redemption from the curse that the hitherto reigning ideal has laid upon it. This man of the future, who will redeem us not only from the hitherto reigning ideal but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, nihilism; this Antichrist and antinihilist, this victor over God and nothingness--he must come one day".
To turn against that 'self-doubt' is to turn
AGAINST the attractive sense of the inevitablity of this nuclear event. Such an event would, I think, pretty much wipe out life as we know it, and would represent such a destruction in our present that, in truth, we might not recover from it. To turn away from the 'decay' Nietzsche writes about would be to come
INTO the present in a new way, as an unencumbered agent, and would mean rejecting such a 'decayed' view as Bob constantly puts forward. Bob in this strict sense articulates precisely the 'decay' Nietzsche struggled against. That decay is a terrible yet deeply attractive cynicism! To 'emerge into the light' must be to come into life in a new way and, possibly, to become unconcerned about the death that always hovers over it, aloof to it. Bringing 'redemption of this reality' would be a rejection of the death-tendencies in that decayed religion, which Bob (with all respects of course) seems
quite invested in! Bob, aren't you the very essence of a 'nihilist'?
Ah, the Ass brays again!
There are some other, less philosophical ways this passage from Nietzsche might be read. Upon close reading one might see this is not philosophy but a cultural-psychological text, like so much of Nietzsche's subject. The death of God (on the cross, in the church, by the priestly type) is the death of
future, the annihilation of
horizons, as in
Horus/Horemakhet. Humanity being often described by the man as
bridge, as something to overcome, to speak of the Ubermensch, of what comes
after, to speak of setting sail to "new horizons": "
although the horizon is not clear, it seems clear enough for our ships to set sail again and venture out towards new perils: the sea of knowledge is re-opening itself to new pioneers; maybe the open sea has never offered so many new promises" (the Gay Science).
This we could call a basic religious element in Nietzsche's
longing, the need he saw for new perils to sail towards to. While the main Christian horizon was always centered around the after-life and the finality of redemption and forgiveness ("now) and being saved ("soon enough"), while helping ones neighbors "in sight", there's a deeper human functioning behind this though: one being in need of a future, a hope, a seductive, deceptive type of expectation to power the engines of heart and mind. It's the real secret of youth of course...
The decay and the nihilism, one century after Nietzsche, appears to have affected also the nature of the horizon. The horizon itself has faded, has become unbearably near to us. The next thing, the next year, the next job. In the up and coming nations one still can see the hope for improvement, economically, in status, through ones offspring. But in the nations where modernity has flourished into achieving "utopia" to some extent, that horizon has lost meaning as well. Only remains of faith, in progress, change, angels or Christ, like conceptual toys, keep drawing us in, becoming less convincing by the minute. Cynicism and atheism are the necessary worms to finish this trembling mirage.
Of course we still have the "spectacle" in the sense of
Guy Debord, and even he appears to see possibilities to counter this "spectacular" alienation, to regain autonomy and sovereignty somehow, which seems to be also the
mission of many preachers around these premises. But the prophet of nihilism will, no,
has to point out this hope is
passé , nothing more than a clinging to some old shadow. Nihilism has now changed fundamentally time itself: the horizon for real and imaginary events. And by changing that base line, everything attached has to shift with it. That way nihilism enables the decline of meaning, the decline of the
ability to signify outside ones private boundaries ("idiocy") unless one grabs and drifts with some of the remains around us. For a short while.
