Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Cory Duchesne
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Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Kierkegaard's aesthetic, ethical and religious

What is the most evil thing about the aesthetic that you guys can think of? Why criticize the aesthetic to begin with?

I have my own thoughts on this, I'm just curious to hear other perspectives, and maybe we can get a constructive discussion going.
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David Quinn
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

It sends people banal.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Cory Duchesne »

haha, yes fair enough. There is a zen-like economy in your reply, which points the mind into all the right places.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Liberty Sea »

My thought on it corresponding with Buddhist stages to enlightenment.
Aesthetic stage: Grand delusions with grand ego
Ethical stage: Starting to renounce delusions. Subtle delusions with subtle ego.
Religious stage: All delusions and egotism renounced.
Odious, but you see the point.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

David Quinn wrote:It sends people banal.
Look at Nietzsche, for example. In the earlier part of his life both the artistic and spiritual sides of himself were at logger-heads, each trying to dominate the other. As one side grew bigger, the other had to grow as well to match.

This growing war culminated in his masterwork, Zarathustra, his most deeply spiritual work, and also his most artistic. Afterwhich, the spiritual side of himself more or less gave up the ghost, leaving the artistic side to assume control, and he became increasingly banal ever since - with Ecce Homo, his last work, being the very epitome of banality.

And then, casting his pen aside, fully charged with banality, he tries to rescue a horse from being whipped and then promptly sinks into the permanent oblivion of the sick bed.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

Liberty Sea wrote:My thought on it corresponding with Buddhist stages to enlightenment.
Aesthetic stage: Grand delusions with grand ego
Ethical stage: Starting to renounce delusions. Subtle delusions with subtle ego.
Religious stage: All delusions and egotism renounced.
Odious, but you see the point.
That's well set-out. You write very well for a young Vietnamese bloke. Your English is impeccable.

I suppose, if we wanted to be more generous towards the aesthetes, we could qualify your entry on the Aesthetic Stage by adding that the aesthetic approach can enrich the mind, open up new experiences, new horizons, new ways of looking at the world. It can even open the mind to mystical and religious experiences and thereby lay the groundwork for a subsequent push into spiritual territory.

But that is being generous. In most cases, grand delusions with grand ego pretty much covers it.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Sphere70 »

For me Zarathustra is Nietzsches only artistic work (bare in mind that I haven't read Ecce Homo).
The other books I've read of him - from both before and after TSZ ('Birth of Tragedy', 'Beyond Good and Evil', 'The Gay Science' & 'Twilight of the Idol') - is in my view not really artistic at all - it's basically straight philosophy in diary-form. If it's 'spiritual' or not can be argued, though in the sense I define the term then I agree with you, though with exceptions here and there.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Sphere70 »

Cory:

If you're interested in aesthetics relationship to spirituality (or life) I recommend reading Arthur Schopenhauer's 'The World as Will and Idea'. Chapter 4 - or 'Book 4', as he call it - is the main section relating to the arts.

Edit: He actually goes in-depth about aesthetics in 'Book 3' already, but he talks about it on and off through the whole work.
Last edited by Sphere70 on Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Cory Duchesne »

DQ,

You might have studied the nuances of his history better than I, but I think Nietzsche is a complicated case study, having been under strong pressures from his academic career, combined with profound disillusionment in his friendship and women relations, plus he inherited a vulnerability to neurological problems from his father. His was an exceptionally lopsided and unconventional development in personality.

In fact, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard both show a penchant for verbosity and poetry that goes beyond even my blood.

However, yes, I am fully aware that aesthetic indulgences (particularly if it's romantic passion with a women) will eventually decay into borderline catatonic states. I was astonished at how stupid my mind became after the aftermath of my relationship with that lady, but I was equally fascinated by the recovery and the new concepts that came with it.

It could very well be that emotional engagements are like lifting weights. There is a breakdown in rational function, but the healing that follows leaves your heart stronger than before, and then any loyalty you had to reason will only be augmented in potency.

It works the other way as well. Cold intellectual engagements that cause pain to the heart, gradually heal into a robust loyalty to reason, although courage may slowly shrink. Both the heart and mind atrophy with disuse. I believe development occurs along two lines.

As I recovered, I literally felt biological changes in my heart centre, like a warm expanding sensation, and the change seems permanent, but naturally it will decay if I remain too long in isolation.

However, the science of personality development is more peripheral to the pure reasoning that you've been wise to focus on.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

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Cory Duchesne wrote:What is the most evil thing about the aesthetic that you guys can think of? Why criticize the aesthetic to begin with?
There is nothing essentially wrong with the aesthetic approach, so long as you do something philosophical with it. If you can successfully use artistic tools to direct people's attention to their true nature, then fantastic.

On a more introspective level, there are many other philosophic ways to explore art. For example, you can train yourself to love all music equally, no matter what genre it is or how it is played. To fully enjoy each sound that arises without making any judgment upon it. To see it as indistinguishable from the sounds of the surrounding environment, or indeed indistinguishable from any other experience at all. In this way, an appreciation of the All can be engendered and from there it is only a hop, skip and a jump to full enlightenment.

So yes, there is scope for art to be used as a force for good, even though it involves sacrificing it along the way.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

Sphere70 wrote:For me Zarathustra is Nietzsches only artistic work (bare in mind that I haven't read Ecce Homo).
The other books I've read of him - from both before and after TSZ ('Birth of Tragedy', 'Beyond Good and Evil', 'The Gay Science' & 'Twilight of the Idol') - is in my view not really artistic at all - it's basically straight philosophy in diary-form. If it's 'spiritual' or not can be argued, though in the sense I define the term then I agree with you, though with exceptions here and there.
He never did "straight philosophy". That's an insult to the man. He always put a twist into everything he wrote - whether it be a spiritual twist or an artistic one. Zarthustra was clearly his most twisted (in a good way).

But other works - such as The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil - are still very artistic in the way that he constructed his prose and his mischevious reasonings. Bertrand Russell, the very paragon of "straight philosophy", hated him for it.

To my mind, he declined rapidly after Beyond Good and Evil. His latter works were ponderous and lacking inspiration. He became a mere shadow of himself. It suggests that without the cutting spiritual edge of his earlier days, the quality of his art lacked a basis and suffered markedly.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Cory Duchesne »

I actually analyze rock music as scientifically as I can, even reading up on endocrinology, trying to see which part of the body the music exploits. To test my theories, I get to know the personalities of the people who like certain kinds of music.

It's definitely a valid folk science. I also keep in mind some other categories, beyond Kiekegaard's trinity, for instance:
A. The Realms of Desire

The realms of desire are characterized by the presence of a strong wish to better one's circumstances - to escape suffering.

- The Hell realms

These can range from occasional hells to hells of constant torment. The suffering of the hells can be experienced for what seems like a thousand lifetimes. Time drags on without end.

In this state of existence all thought has to be directed towards mere survival; there is no striving for perfection. Serious intellectual thought is impractical for one in such poor mental condition. You cannot speak to a person about lofty ideals while their head is on fire; they are too busy frantically seeking a bucket of water.

- The Preta realms

"Pretas" tend to feel empty, insubstantial, ignored, and barely alive. No matter what beauty surrounds them, they see only ugliness. No matter what gains they may make, satisfaction eludes. For this reason they are known as "Craving ghosts". As in the hell realms, there is no arduous striving for ideals, only a wretched scratching for survival.

- The Animal realms

Those who are termed "animals" do not suffer greatly, for they do not use their brains enough to suffer. They are experts in submission and in the creation of authorities which they proudly worship. They are like sheep, content to follow, and to be led, rather than to think and take control of their own lives. They are beasts of burden, ruled by the whip of duty and guilt. Or they are like cows contentedly grazing in a field, unaware that the cold steel of the abattoir awaits them. Again, there is some desire, but no burning passion for truth and perfection.

- The Human Realms

A "human birth" is exceedingly rare, numbering perhaps only one in every several thousand people. Such a mind has learned to value reason in earnest, and can therefore be reasoned with! This human mind has room for doubt, and for the knowledge that something new is possible, which is the ground for learning. Humans possess ideals and their accompanying passions, which is in sharp contrast to the passionless, content and unchanging animal people.

Reason dilutes pain, so the suffering of humans is not crushing, and therefore does not keep them from deep and penetrating thought. Reason also dilutes joy, preventing the blissful happiness which would make one content with pleasing illusions.
I'd like people to at least be conscious of why they listen to the music they listen to. Doing things, even aesthetically, for reasons is crucial to my philosophy. Nietzsche had a good aphorism: "evil men have no songs. How is it then that the Russian's have songs?".

He may be trying to get across many points, but one of them is that music is not necessarily good, nor does it lead people to the good. It just as easily, as you say, sends people banal.

The most prominent rock musician I've found who writes music with the conscious intent to be philosophical would be John Frusciante. I believe his entire personality and approach is a single species of Apollonian musician, and is perhaps North Americas first Apollonian musician (consciously willing a non-dual philosophy through music), although I doubt he values traditional philosophy enough to even to bother with the Dionysian and Apollonian distinctions, and this is why the best is yet to come.

But if I have things my way, there will eventually be a large diversity of Apollonian musicians, all unique species, which exploit different parts of the human soul, all acting as an attractor, inspiring humanity into non-dual interests. You would have to put the music down and do some cold logic for some years, as the music is just there to get you off the more crude pleasures the world offers.

I'll give you an example of a well written song. It might sound like nothing to most of you, because you must develop the neural connections to appreciate it, and this requires repetition:

Going Inside | John Frusciante

None of his music is angry, and he gets a very clean, pure form of despair or elevation, that makes for very listenable music. By listenable, I mean, it's just hard to get sick of. It's almost like water, very pure, almost nothing.
Great accomplishment seems
imperfect,
Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet cannot be exhausted.
Great straightness seems twisted.
Great intelligence seems stupid.
Great eloquence seems awkward.
Movement overcomes cold.
Stillness overcomes heat.
Stillness and tranquility set things in
order in the universe.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

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David Quinn wrote:
Sphere70 wrote:For me Zarathustra is Nietzsches only artistic work (bare in mind that I haven't read Ecce Homo).
The other books I've read of him - from both before and after TSZ ('Birth of Tragedy', 'Beyond Good and Evil', 'The Gay Science' & 'Twilight of the Idol') - is in my view not really artistic at all - it's basically straight philosophy in diary-form. If it's 'spiritual' or not can be argued, though in the sense I define the term then I agree with you, though with exceptions here and there.
He never did "straight philosophy". That's an insult to the man. He always put a twist into everything he wrote - whether it be a spiritual twist or an artistic one. Zarthustra was clearly his most twisted (in a good way).

But other works - such as The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil - are still very artistic in the way that he constructed his prose and his mischevious reasonings. Bertrand Russell, the very paragon of "straight philosophy", hated him for it.

To my mind, he declined rapidly after Beyond Good and Evil. His latter works were ponderous and lacking inspiration. He became a mere shadow of himself. It suggests that without the cutting spiritual edge of his earlier days, the quality of his art lacked a basis and suffered markedly.

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Yes, true - compared to Bertrand Russel all of Nietzsche endeavors is amazingly artistic :). Though I'm comparing what he did aesthetically in TSZ with what he didn't do, or failed to do, in his other books - he animated the spirit, if you will, of his philosophy with a mood (the aesthetic) which opened the mind in ways which a "straight" use of language usually don't do (b.t.w: It's the same masterful combination we also see with Lao Tzu for example). That is = greater chance for 'satori'-time! ,-)

So yes, of course we can say that all of his writing was artful compared, especially, to philosophical systemizers like, for example, Schopenhauer (though he also had his artistic moments - admittedly rare), but if one were to set the bar higher for the label 'art' and 'good aesthetics' (as the subtle 'dresser' of the spirit) then only Zarathustra does it for me.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

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"Ariadne, ich liebe Dich. Dionysos."
David Quinn wrote: That's well set-out. You write very well for a young Vietnamese bloke. Your English is impeccable.
My genius would not be satisfied with anything less than perfection.:))

I started learning English by myself 3 years ago, by the time I renounced Buddhism to pursue artistic career. I was 17 years old, full of hope and confidence in my talents, in my shining future. My intellectual interest led me to quantum physics, which brought to me a new outlook on my religion. I was eager and ambitious to marry Quantum physics with Buddhism, but soon my realization that Nirvana would be the death of all emotions put me into serious depression. So even though I have fully grasped the concept of causality and interdependent co-arising and many other Buddhist concepts, I was running away from Nirvana, trying to find an escape in art, in the ups and downs of emotional-aesthetic life.

I was as confident and hopeful in aesthetic activities as I was in logic and science, and so did I teach myself basic drawing and writing. But the ever-growing, ever-burning existential angst went on haunting me. 19 years of age and I have endured centuries of mental suffering. 19 years of age and I have tasted the torment of an eon. My genius wrecked my mind, my insight ravaged my being, and as I embraced in my heart all the guilt and sorrow of the human hearts, all the darkness and despair of existence, all the agony and absurdity of worldly life, I realized that all those aesthetic pursuits were utterly pointless, circular, repetitive, and would only lead to a dead end. Uncertainty and Fear were ever impending in front of my eyes. No longer could I find relief in the orgasm of words and letters, no longer could I seek refuge in the mingling of images and symbols. For I could not forgive the selfishness of my indulgence, could not forget the sufferings of numerous souls all over the world, the images of which kept coming to me whenever I closed my eyes, whenever I laid my back. I could raise genuine emotions in the hearts of my readers through my fiction, I could get genuine tears from their eyes with my art, and yet, I felt empty, I felt lost, because I realized I only triggered the desire for happiness, for pleasure that was sub-consciously installed in them, their desire to satisfy their ego. A good artist is bound to be egoistical, for art is egotism illustrated, and all emotions arise from egotism. As one cries for another, one actually cries for oneself. Oh how holy are emotions, all of which are nothing but immediate reactions that are activated when certain 'buttons' are 'pushed', whether by external provoking or by intensified thoughts. How ironic is the claim of those who live in the spontaneity of emotions, believing emotions make them 'human' and not 'robotic'. There is no mystery in the art of man, and I could not bear with my egotism for longer.

And thus, forsaking all the promises and potentials of my future as an artist, the lovely smile and gentle cuddle of my beloved, I chose the spiritual life. I said, "chose", but it was not a choice. I had no choice. It is my destiny. Knowing that the meaning of the universe is not man, for it has been going on without him, and will continue without him, no longer do I fear the extinction of emotions, the complete death of the flame in me. ‎"The Kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead." said Meister Eckhart - and so be it, let everything about me die. Not my bodily activities, but who I was, my identity and individuality, my pride and my shame, my joy and my sorrow, my humility and my vanity, my love and my hatred, my respect and my contempt, my dream and my ambition, my hope and my despair. Let them all die with my ego. And then a new life will be born. Life in eternity.

So were the aesthetic and ethical stages of my development. And now only God awaits me. You see, David, Nature must have willed our confrontation. I was doing research on UG Krishnamurti, whom I got to know through studying Jiddu Krishnamurti, and stumbled upon your critique of UG. Upon reading your works, I finally made the decision to stop flirting with -isms and schools of thought, and got wedded with Reason in the house of Love for Truth. And here I am, posting in this forum.
Hopefully this doesn't stray from the topic.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Sphere70 »

David, is 'Liberty Sea' your Johannes Climacus? :-)
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote:And then, casting his pen aside, fully charged with banality, he tries to rescue a horse from being whipped and then promptly sinks into the permanent oblivion of the sick bed.
When witnessing the horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck and collapsed. One could ponder the possibility that this moment holds the culmination of Nietzsche's view on humanity in terms of everyone being frustrated "coachmen", whipping "lower" nature, drive and instincts in or mostly out of shape combined with Nietzsche's own disregard for his own "horse", his life being a story of whipping himself to great heights going über all the time.

If one wants to honor such a passionate, brave thinker the possibility is there to let Nietzsche understand the situation to its deepest level right there, right then. Compassion, hopefully not just pity took over but also evaporated the controls he had put on his own mind, his own drive. The tower collapses, the stars, moon and sun rejoice and the world is found.

And the damage done before will take its toll - this is perhaps the real problem with banalities. Much like smoking for deeper breathing.
  • 5. Turin, January 3, 1889: Letter to Cosima Wagner

    To Princess Ariadne, My Beloved.

    It is a prejudice that I am a human being. Yet I have often enough dwelled among human beings and I know everything that human beings can experience, from the lowest to the highest. Among the Hindus I was Buddha, in Greece Dionysus-Alexander and Caesar were incarnations of me, as well as the poet of Shakespeare, Lord Bacon. Most recently I was Voltaire and Napoleon, perhaps also Richard Wagner ... This time I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the Earth into a festival ... Not that I have much time ... The heavens rejoice about my stay ... I also hung on the cross ...
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

Sphere70 wrote:David, is 'Liberty Sea' your Johannes Climacus? :-)
Didn't you come here by way of that UG article as well? It's turned out to be a very useful article....

Anyway, welcome aboard, Liberty. Hope you stick around for awhile. Don't let the natives here upset you too much. They are often restless and like to shoot anything that moves.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
David Quinn wrote:And then, casting his pen aside, fully charged with banality, he tries to rescue a horse from being whipped and then promptly sinks into the permanent oblivion of the sick bed.
When witnessing the horse being whipped by a coachman at the Piazza Carlo Alberto, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck and collapsed. One could ponder the possibility that this moment holds the culmination of Nietzsche's view on humanity in terms of everyone being frustrated "coachmen", whipping "lower" nature, drive and instincts in or mostly out of shape combined with Nietzsche's own disregard for his own "horse", his life being a story of whipping himself to great heights going über all the time.

Or perhaps the horse in that moment expressed his higher nature, his more pure nature, and the whipping expressed the general crassness of humanity, a crassness that he himself was subjected to in his daily life - for example, the way the Wagners sneeringly dismissed Human, All Too Human, his second book, as the work of someone who masturbated too much.

He was a sensitive soul. The constant fight against crassness just became too much, hence his surrender and breakdown.

On the other hand, there was evidently something inside him which sought to cultivate that crass reaction, as evidenced by the quote you posted:
  • 5. Turin, January 3, 1889: Letter to Cosima Wagner

    To Princess Ariadne, My Beloved.

    It is a prejudice that I am a human being. Yet I have often enough dwelled among human beings and I know everything that human beings can experience, from the lowest to the highest. Among the Hindus I was Buddha, in Greece Dionysus-Alexander and Caesar were incarnations of me, as well as the poet of Shakespeare, Lord Bacon. Most recently I was Voltaire and Napoleon, perhaps also Richard Wagner ... This time I come as the victorious Dionysus, who will turn the Earth into a festival ... Not that I have much time ... The heavens rejoice about my stay ... I also hung on the cross ...
It's as though his constant battle against crassness led him to become increasingly more crass himself. In other words, he secretly willed his own breakdown to happen. And the catalyst for all this was his artistic side, the side of him that desires applause.

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by jupiviv »

Weininger says this about Nietzsche in "On last things":

"The person who hated himself the most had to be Nietzsche. His hatred of Wagner and of asceticism, and his wish to switch allegiance to Bizet and Gottfried Keller, was merely a hatred of the Wagnerian, the ascetic and totally non-idyllic person that he was himself. Self-hate is certainly morally superior to self-love. Thus the insincerity is bad, with which Nietzsche pretended to have achieved the transition (the “recovery” from Wagner, from his “illness”.)

...It was precisely in Nietzsche that hatred of oneself sprang from the most intense will to affirm. That is why in him this hatred could become creative and tragic. Creative – because it called him to seek for what he missed in Schopenhauer, and it forced him to turn away from him who had not taught him Kant. Tragic – because he was not great enough to struggle independently, with his own pure strength, through to Kant, whom he had never read. That is why he never arrived at religion; when he affirmed life most passionately, life denied him – that is, the life which resists untruthfulness. Nietzsche's decline is to be explained by his lack of religion. A person can perish from nothing other than a lack of religion. The genius shows this most horribly, for the man of genius is the most devoted man, and when devotion leaves him, his genius has left him. It was not without deep reason that the “unscrupulousness of the mind” became a problem for Nietzsche; the “unscrupulousness of the mind” is the “clever” man, and the “clever” man was the fate that menaced Nietzsche, and the abyss that finally dragged him down. Would he otherwise have considered it necessary to stress explicitly when he meant something seriously, and really wanted to be taken seriously? What Nietzsche lacked was mercy, but without mercy, loneliness, even Zarathustra's, is not bearable. Thus logic was not a uniquely valuable good for him, but an external constraint (for he felt too weak not to scent danger everywhere). However, he who negates logic has already been abandoned by it, he is on the road to insanity."
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

David Quinn wrote:
Diebert van Rhijn wrote: One could ponder the possibility that this moment holds the culmination of Nietzsche's view on humanity in terms of everyone being frustrated "coachmen", whipping "lower" nature, drive and instincts in or mostly out of shape combined with Nietzsche's own disregard for his own "horse", his life being a story of whipping himself to great heights going über all the time.

Or perhaps the horse in that moment expressed his higher nature, his more pure nature, and the whipping expressed the general crassness of humanity, a crassness that he himself was subjected to in his daily life - for example, the way the Wagners sneeringly dismissed Human, All Too Human, his second book, as the work of someone who masturbated too much.
Certainly Nietzsche was interested in a rectified definition of intuition and instinct, a wisdom of the depth of being, not denying anything from body or mind - but their misinterpretations. Nature becoming only "lower" because of the coachman's own insanity. And this has still not been resolved by modernity which just teaches us to be more like this flocked horse, while barely allowing any re-evaluation of the whole animal.

Crassness he described pretty (!) well in the preface of "The gay science" (phrase meaning: the art of poetry).
  • How repulsive pleasure is now, that crude, musty, brown pleasure as it is understood by those who like pleasure, our "educated" people, our rich people, and our rulers! How maliciously we listen now to the big country-fair boom-boom with which the "educated" person and city dweller today permits art, books, and music to rape him and provide "spiritual pleasures"—with the aid of spirituous liquors! How the theatrical scream of passion now hurts our ears, how strange to our taste the whole romantic uproar and tumult of the senses have become, which the educated mob loves, and all its aspirations after the elevated, inflated, and exaggerated! No, if we convalescents still need art, it is another kind of art—a mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks into unclouded skies. Above all, an art for artists, for artists only! We know better afterward what above all is needed for this: cheerfulness, any cheerfulness, my friends—also as artists: let me prove it. There are a few things we now know too well, we knowing ones: oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good at not knowing, as artists!
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Liberty Sea »

It is Kant in your avatar, right, Jupivix?

Many a woman tries to endow the rational thinking man with their sensational romanticism. "Under this rigidity of logic is a tragic love-story!", "Behind this cold, harsh mask is a deeply wounded bird!" - think they, and try to find, or make up, some non-existent ulterior motive under every critical move he makes.
Woman, all too woman.
Fortunately, I am not a Nietzsche 2.0, as I had the opportunity to become more logical than him. I know him far too well to repeat his failures, his disastrous romantic life and his descend into insanity.
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

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Liberty Sea wrote:Woman, all too woman.
Haha, excellent! That would make a great title for a book.

Weininger was right. Nietzsche was far too clever for his own good and nowhere near religious enough (i.e. not conscious enough of his own illusoriness).

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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by ForbidenRea »

Cory Duchesne wrote:Kierkegaard's aesthetic, ethical and religious

What is the most evil thing about the aesthetic that you guys can think of? Why criticize the aesthetic to begin with?

I have my own thoughts on this, I'm just curious to hear other perspectives, and maybe we can get a constructive discussion going.
The austhetics is born out of nothing...
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by Liberty Sea »

David Quinn wrote:
Liberty Sea wrote:Woman, all too woman.
Haha, excellent! That would make a great title for a book. -
It was just a crossing idea. But your comment makes an interesting suggestion. Maybe I will employ that title for the book on woman I plan to write.

A conversation related to the topic:
Man: Society has corrupted women. Society creates the IDEA of WOMAN, and women form themselves according to this idea. Society associates women with beauty. Superficial appearance that is. It is not even a virtue. This is one of the reasons why women are generally more drawn toward luxury, wealth and an easy life than men. Preservation of beauty is always a luxury.
When a man exerts his greatness and masculinity, whether it is strength, courage or sagacity, there are often two kinds of reaction from others toward him: wonder and envy. This kind of envy is found more common in men than in women, yet as bad as envy is, men are often superior to women for this precise reason. Women prefer to adore, or to serve, or to follow, or to be loved, to be protected by the strong instead of becoming the Strong themselves. Women too envy each other, but for pettier reasons like a new dress, a new hairstyle. Unfortunately the youths today have become too petty and decadent, so that this kind of petty envy become more and more common in both male and female.

Woman: Why are we saying this crap like all women are the same? I am not at all worried about material things and luxury. I care about people on the inside and today it seems you are very sexist and judgmental.

Man: Not all women are the same, but it is rare to find a woman who doesn't try to dress prettily when she has the opportunity too. You know, dear, women always say they don't want to be sexualized, yet they try to make their appearance as physically attractive as possible.
Many men are not better, but you get the point.

Woman: Mmmm... okay, I agree that women feel a lot of pressure from society to be more sexualized... However taking care of one's appearance and being "sexy" are two different things. It all started as a survival instinct when the human animal was trying to find a mate. There were limited numbers of mates... so humans (like other animals) try to do what they can to get the attention of the mate and appear a better option then the other women (or men!). As for the comment about women needing a man to take care of them, that too is suvival instinct. It is a biological fact men are physicaly stronger. Also, it is an economic fact that men make more money and have more employment opportunities.

Man: It is good that you are aware of it. So, would you like to lead a more dignified life than the majority of women?

Woman: I already lead a dignified life and I think you are being unfair to women as you have made yourself the judge of half the human population.

Man: I judge anyone who dresses prettily to attract attention, not just women. It is not a matter of preference or bias.

Woman: And you have never tried to dress nice?

Man: Never. My mother did try to dress me nice. But I rejected any decoration.

Woman: So you would rid the world of art, poetry, music? These things are not nessasary either. Some people express themselves through the way they dress. We do not all need to be grey blobs.

Man: Art, poetry and music can be used to entertain or to convey Truth. They can be deep or shallow. And I don't care about entertainment.
Fear of boredom stems from a restless mind. A mature intellect loves Truth and Truth only. Furthermore, only people who lack confidence in their inner value, which is the only thing that is of any real worth, try to express themselves through the way they dress.
----

(This is a real discussion between me and my female friend. It is not a very deep discussion, because to carry out a deep discussion in that particular circumstance is almost impossible, so I wonder if it is worth being in a book.)
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David Quinn
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Re: Aesthetic, Ethical & Religious

Post by David Quinn »

It would be great to see that sort of thing in a book. It is still very rare, even these days, to see a proper analysis of women from the spiritual perspective. And your Vietnamese take on the whole thing would add extra fascination - although judging by your dialogue above it doesn't seem all that different from my Western perspective. Some things are indeed universal. :)

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