Eternal Return

I don't think Nietzsche liked dwarves much. I doubt his real views would be put into the mouth of a dwarf. Thing is, though we look down both the roads, no one ever goes down them. Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it. The image works better without the dwarf's commentary, which is why he is a dwarf. The image is static, there is no coming or going except in the diseased imagination of the dwarf. That is his function in the story, to point out the wrong way to think the wrong conclusion to draw..

Just a brief babble on the side if I may.

If we were to say "time is circular", then what could that mean other than events reoccurring?

Doesn't really seem to be meaningful otherwise, does it?

This then means that there's something other than time (itself) — call them eventees (like objects or whatever) — that taken together arrive at a configuration identical to a prior configuration.

Yet, the phrases "arrive at" and "prior" already presuppose temporality in some sense. (Don't really want to get into concise definitions/semantics/dictionaries.)

Well, a more mathematical approach might have us employ an ordered set (with a metric), so we can speak of before (less than), simultaneously (the same), and after (greater than), which is relational. The metric gives us duration (distance), which is numeric/scalar.

Anyway, the idea was just that something other than time is needed to give meaning to time (with our usual verbiage).

(end babble)

I won’t address the metaphysical issue—and it’s highly debatable in Nietzsche scholarship how significant that issue is—but I thought I’d step in to quote the first appearance of the idea in Nietzsche’s work:

[quote=The Gay Science, §341]What if one day or night a demon came to you in your most solitary solitude and said to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live again, and innumerable times again, and there will be nothing new in it; but rather every pain and joy, every thought and sigh, and all the unutterably trivial or great things in your life will have to happen to you again, with everything in the same series and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke to you thus? Or was there one time when you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: ‘You are a god, and I have never heard anything so divine!’
[/quote]

So here at least it’s a thought experiment to test one’s attitude to life. And in the later work, Zarathustra eventually comes to welcome the prospect of an eternal return—passing the test, so to speak.

Various flavours of nihilism. Ought to inspire one to seek mok?a.

Quoting jorndoe

If we were to say "time is circular", then what could that mean other than events reoccurring?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

Quoting Wayfarer

Ought to inspire one to seek mok?a,

He never had the moxie for moska. I find that much Nietzsche reads like black comedy - possibly apropos given the Dionysian revels from which comedy traditions originally sprang.

Quoting Tom Storm

He never had the moxie for moska.

:rofl: :100:

Quoting Jamal

the first appearance of the idea in Nietzsche’s work:

The Riddle and the Vision restates the problem using the same imagery of the the spider and the moonlight. In both there is the moment, followed by acceptance.

Quoting Jamal

So here at least it’s a thought experiment to test one’s attitude to life.

Describing it as a thought experiment is too detached. It is without the struggle:

Courage also slays dizziness at the abyss; and where do human beings not stand at the abyss? Is seeing itself not – seeing the abyss?

Courage is the best slayer; courage slays even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss, and as deeply as human beings look into life, so deeply too they look into suffering.

time itself is a circle.”

I agree with this. Human experience of time is chronological and linear (memory of the past and anticipation of the future).

Time outside of human experience is nothing more than repetitions, regular patterns, geometries: frequencies, oscillations, cycles, rates of vibration, rhythms, to-and-fro swinging, orbits, etc.

The connection between what we observe and how we form linear chronological accounts (human or personal history) is thus our clocks - our "time measuring devices" or maybe more accurately our "linear time creating and counting devices". Which all work as cycles that are single discrete units for linear counting. Seconds, minutes, hours, seasons, tides, sundials, pendulums, etc.

In essence linear time comes from a). conscious awareness and b). the chaotic changeable interaction of thousands of nature's cycles interacting with eachother: accelerating or decelerating, destroying or creating one another.

Which means the "past" state of affairs is never the same as the "present" or "future one" and adds reason to consider them as linear and progressive, one after the next.

But as far as nature is concerned, there is only the "rate-scape" - different parts of spaces experiencing different rates of change based on energy and matter content/interaction, no simultaneity or no universal "now".

Quoting Fooloso4

Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return?

For me, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard go hand in hand, explaining one another. The eternal return is related, but not identical to Kierkegaard's repetition.

Time is cyclical. Birth, youth, maturity, old age, and death are everywhere. Everything goes through this same circle over and over.

But if this was all, there would be no way to be conscious of it. That consciousness requires a contrast, an opposition. In this case the opposing idea is eternity: the limit of time going forward and backwards. When we see the cyclic nature of time, we have stationed ourselves in eternity. This is all phenomenology. It's not an attempt to do cosmology. The only truth we have about the world at large is metaphors.

Reply to frank

Interesting comparison. For Nietzsche eternity is not an opposing idea. Whether or not the eternal return is cosmology is an open question. A question that keeps returning.

Quoting Fooloso4

Whether or not the eternal return is cosmology is an open question

Seen in the light of his ideas about the nature of truth, it seems unlikely.

Reply to frank

What are his ideas about the nature of truth that makes this seem unlikely?

Quoting Fooloso4

What are his ideas about the nature of truth that makes this seem unlikely?

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you. :grin:

Reply to Wayfarer Quoting Wayfarer

Various flavours of nihilism. Ought to inspire one to seek mok?a

Moksa is a classic form of nihilism in Nietzsche’s sense of the word. “For Nietzsche nihilism is not in any way simply a phenomenon of decay; rather nihilism is, as the fundamental event of Western history, simultaneously and above all the intrinsic law of that history.”(Heidegger, The Word of Nietzsche)

Quoting frank

When we see the cyclic nature of time, we have stationed ourselves in eternity.

:up:

Perhaps philosophy is essentially a leap out of the circle in order to gaze on it from above -- to see it as the gods see it.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away. (Homer)

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. (Ecclesiastes)

Quoting unenlightened

Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it.

This might be one way to interpret 'existence is time.'

Reply to Fooloso4 Quoting Fooloso4

If all that will happen has happened before over and over what is the starting and end point of what happens?

Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return?

It’s interesting that almost all ‘postmodern’ readings of eternal return depict it as the return of the same absolutely new difference, rather than the literal return of the same experience. The return is each time a new throw of the dice.

“When we say that the eternal return is not the return of the Same, or of the Similar or the Equal, we mean that it does not presuppose any identity. On the contrary, it is said of a world without identity, without resemblance or equality. It is said of a world the very ground of which is difference, in which everything rests upon disparities, upon differences of differences which reverberate to infinity (the world of intensity). The eternal return is itself the Identical, the similar and the equal, but it presupposes nothing of itself in that of which it is said. It is said of that which has no identity, no resemblance and no equality. It is the identical which is said of the different, the resemblance which is said of the pure disparate, the equal which is said only of the unequal and the proximity which is said of all distances.” (Deleuze)

There is a return because there is never just this moment in isolation . Simultaneous with the appearance of the ‘now’ is the passing away of the former ‘now’.

Reply to Joshs
Heidegger says something similar in his Lectures on Nietzsche. Both readings are difficult to square with the specificity of Nietzsche's actual words:

The Gay Science, §341:‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live again, and innumerable times again, and there will be nothing new in it; but rather every pain and joy, every thought and sigh, and all the unutterably trivial or great things in your life will have to happen to you again, with everything in the same series and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’

Quoting frank

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you.

That was a contemptuous reply. I sense an underlying animus is underway.

Perhaps you were thinking of the following:

Quoting Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 110, translated by Walter Kaufman

Origin of knowledge.- Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith* which were continually inherited. until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species. include the following: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted; it was only very late that truth emerged-as the weakest form of knowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it: our organism was prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions. sense perception and every kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated since time immemorial. Indeed, even in the realm of knowledge these propositions became the norms according to which "true and "untrue,. were determined down to the most remote regions of logic. Thus the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to be at odds there was never any real fight. but denial and doubt were simply considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, like the Eleatics. who nevertheless posited and clung to the opposites of the natural errors believed that it was possible to live in accordance with these opposites: they invented the sage as the man who was unchangeable and impersonal, the man of the universality of intuition who was One and All at the same time, with a special capacity for his inverted knowledge: they had the faith that their knowledge was also the principle of life. But in order to claim all of this, they had to deceive themselves about their own state: they had to attribute to themselves, fictitiously, impersonality and changeless duration; they had to misapprehend the nature of the knower; they had to deny the role of the impulses in knowledge; and quite generally they had to conceive of reason: as a completely free and spontaneous activity. They shut their eyes to the fact that they. too, had arrived at their propositions through opposition to common sense. or owing to a desire for tranquility, for sole possession. or for dominion. The subtler development of honesty and skepticism eventually made these people. too, impossible; their ways of living and judging were seen to be also dependent upon the primeval impulses and basic errors of all sentient existence.
This subtler honesty and skepticism came into being wherever two contradictory sentences appeared to be applicable to life because both were compatible with the basic errors. and it was therefore possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of utility for life; also wherever new propositions. though not useful for life, were also evidently not harmful to life: in such cases there was room for the expression of an intellectual play impulse, and honest~ and skepticism were imminent and happy like all play. Gradually, the human brain became full of such judgments and convictions. and a ferment, struggle, and 'lust for power' developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took sides in this fight about "truths". The intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified-and eventually knowledge and the striving for the: truths" found their place as a need among other needs. Henceforth not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power; all "evil" instincts were subordinated to knowledge, employed in her service, and acquired the splendor of what is permitted, honored, and useful and eventually even the eye and innocence of the good.
Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power-until eventually knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: two lives, two powers both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation?
That is the question; that is the experiment.

Quoting Fooloso4

Describing it as a thought experiment is too detached. It is without the struggle:

Note that the end of the quoted passage shows that we are the "thought" experiment. Pretty darn attached.

Reply to Paine

Quoting Paine

Heidegger says something similar in his Lectures on Nietzsche. Both readings are difficult to square with the specificity of Nietzsche's actual words

I suppose the following, in which Nietzsche equate eternal return with will to power, is more consistent with the direction of those readings:

And do you know what 'the world' is to me? Shall I show you it in my mirror? This world: a monster of force, without beginning, without end, a fixed, iron quantity of force which grows neither larger nor smaller, which doesn't exhaust but only transforms itself, as a whole unchanging in size, an economy without expenditure and losses, but equally without increase, without income, enclosed by 'nothingness' as by a boundary, not something blurred, squandered, not something infinitely extended; instead, as a determinate force set into a determinate space, and not into a space that is anywhere 'empty' but as force everywhere, as a play of forces and force-waves simultaneously one and 'many', accumulating here while diminishing there, an ocean of forces storming and flooding within themselves, eternally changing, eternally rushing back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and flood of its forms, shooting out from the simplest into the most multifarious, from the stillest, coldest, most rigid into the most fiery, wild, self-contradictory, and then coming home from abundance to simplicity, from the play of contradiction back to the pleasure of harmony, affirming itself even in this sameness of its courses and years, blessing itself as what must eternally return, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no surfeit, no fatigue - this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creating, of eternal self-destroying, this mystery world of dual delights, this my beyond good and evil, without goal, unless there is a goal in the happiness of the circle, without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself - do you want a name for this world? A solution to all its riddles? A light for you too, for you, the most secret, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly? - This world is the will to power - and nothing besides! And you yourselves too are this will to power - and nothing besides!” (Writings from the Late Notebooks, 38[12])

Quoting Paine

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you.
— frank

That was a contemptuous reply. I sense an underlying animus is underway.

Wow, you really misread that. Digging in to discover Nietzsche's theory of truth was fascinating for me.

Quoting frank

Wow, you really misread that

That’s how I read it too. You were asked to justify what you said and instead of answering you assumed a posture of superior knowledge to completely dismiss your interlocutor.

Quoting frank

Digging in to discover Nietzsche's theory of truth was fascinating for me.

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to discuss what you discovered.

Quoting Jamal

That’s how I read it too. You were asked to justify what you said and instead of answering you assumed a posture of superior knowledge to completely dismiss your interlocutor.

I think Nietzsche's view of truth is fundamental to understanding him. It's best taken him from the horse's mouth rather than a snippet from someone who's typing on their phone while at work.

Try to imagine the best in people before you settle on nasty.

Quoting Fooloso4

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to discuss what you discovered.

Understanding Nietzsche's view of truth is fundamental to understanding him in general. I think you'll be very gratified if you look into it. Really.

Quoting frank

Try to imagine the best in people before you settle on nasty.

Try to take my comments about your behaviour seriously. You really haven’t absorbed it at all.

Quoting Jamal

Try to take my comments about your behaviour seriously. You really haven’t absorbed it at all.

I think the best plan would be for me to keep my comments to myself.

Quoting Joshs

Moksa is a classic form of nihilism in Nietzsche’s sense of the word.

At least Schopenhauer had some idea of the meaning of it.

Quoting frank

I think you'll be very gratified if you look into it.

Thanks for the advice, but I am not looking for suggestions about something I have been doing for many years

I am not going to press you on this. If you do not want to or are not prepared or are not able to answer I will leave it there. But you left a window open to the possibility that when you are not at work typing on your phone you might provide a substantive response.

Perhaps it will address Nietzsche's themes of the relation between knowledge, truth, and life, objective truths,"deadly truths", truth and history, and so on.

But I see now that before I have finished writing this you might have closed the window and plan to keep further comments to yourself.

Quoting Fooloso4

Thanks for the advice, but I am not looking for suggestions about something I have been doing for many years

Cool. Immersed as you have been in Nietzsche, how would you describe his attitude to truth?

Reply to frank

You first.

Quoting Fooloso4

You first.

Sure. I'm waiting for a GSW (gun shot wound) to the chest, so I'll make it short. He believed that truths are metaphors. Think about what that implies about the return.

Reply to frank

A one word answer. Doesn't seem like too much to say while on your phone at work. But it does explain why you think it is not likely to be a cosmological claim. I will point out two problems:

First, it fails to distinguish between claims that are or are not metaphorical. Or perhaps you think he held all claims to be metaphorical.

Second, unless all claims are metaphorical and his texts can be cited to support this claim (which is of course metaphorical), what he says about the eternal return does not indicate that he means it to be understood metaphorically.

Third, it closes off an existential interpretation because the claim is metaphorical.

Fourth, what is metaphorical has some meaning. Saying that the truth is metaphorical does not say what it means. Or perhaps you think the truth for Nietzsche is always indeterminate and open to numerous or innumerable meanings.

Reply to Fooloso4
I guess my question would be: do you actually want to discuss this with me? Or did you just want to present your view and be done with it? I'm happy either way.

Quoting frank

I guess my question would be: do you actually want to discuss this with me?

In my world responding to what you said is discussing it with you.

Quoting Fooloso4

In my world responding to what you said is discussing it with you.

Cool. So I guess you were asking of Nietzsche's theory of truth undermines itself. Nietzsche is on Wittgenstein's ladder and I think he was aware of that. When you get to the top, you toss the ladder because you've discovered the limits of language and it's sunk in as to what this means.

If you can think about what I just said there and engage in a friendly way, great. If all you want to do is launch an assault, save it. I'm not interested in that kind of discussion.

Quoting Fooloso4

Fourth, what is metaphorical has some meaning.

Of course. It's probably not cosmological though. I can't imagine how someone would fit that into the rest of Nietzsche's works. If you're among those who look at it that way, I'd be glad to hear how you do it.

Reply to Joshs
This description of the 'world' does fit better with later thinkers of 'cosmology' concerned with stating the conditions of our existence. How that search for elements relates to personal experience is critical to many of the disputes, Jamal referred to. The "thought experiment" presses the acceptance of the condition to be either a cruel punishment or an unanticipated release. If this is amor fati, there can be no hedging of bets.

This places a tension between attempts to explain the world and questioning what those explanations are. The section 110 from Gay Science I quoted upthread puts the problem in sharp relief. The role of explanation is being explained against a background of circumstances that no Organon of Aristotle could support.

Quoting ibid. 124

In the horizon of the infinite.-- We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now. little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom and there is no longer any "land."

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market.

If the road goes infinitely away from the present moment for the future and past, just do what the mathematicians did with imaginary numbers: Find a way to move up instead of just back and forth.

Quoting RogueAI

If the road goes infinitely away from the present moment for the future and past, just do what the mathematicians did with imaginary numbers: Find a way to move up instead of just back and forth.

How do you move up?

Quoting frank

So I guess you were asking of Nietzsche's theory of truth undermines itself.

I am asking for evidence that his "theory of truth" is that truths are metaphors and how we can make sense of that.

Quoting frank

Nietzsche is on Wittgenstein's ladder and I think he was aware of that.

This is a misunderstanding of both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

Quoting frank

If all you want to do is launch an assault, save it.

It is common philosophical practice to ask for an account and a defense of that account. That is not an assault.

Quoting frank

I can't imagine how someone would fit that into the rest of Nietzsche's works

There is an extensive literature on this.

Reply to Fooloso4

So your turn. What's Nietzsche's theory of truth?

I have to say, I think it's sad that when asked on a philosophy forum what Nietzsche's eternal return means to you, you have nothing to say.

Reply to frank I don't know. How do you move up from the numberline? Invent a way.

Quoting RogueAI

don't know. How do you move up from the numberline? Invent a way.

Don't have to. If you can see the number line, you're already above it. I mentioned this earlier, but my keen insight was ignored. :cry:

Reply to frank Where do you think I got the inspiration?

Reply to Paine

Quoting Paine

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market

Could you elaborate on that point a bit more?

Quoting RogueAI

Where do you think I got the inspiration?

:joke:

Reply to Joshs
I can but it would help if you gave a point of departure from the argument I put forward making the proposition.

Are you saying that what I said is not intelligible as it stands? Or are you saying it makes some kind of sense but you are not sure what?

Reply to frank

He does not have a theory of truth. He rejected fixed, unchanging truths. He does not put a high value on truth in all cases . Truth should serve life and so in some cases, as with Plato, lies are preferable. In On the Use and Disadvantages of History for Life he lists three truths that are deadly:

... the doctrine of the sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all ideas, types, and styles, of the lack of all cardinal differences between man and animal.

In The Will to Power he says:

Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly.

(325)

This is not intended to represent the scope of the problem.

The dwarf is the spirit of gravity. It calls Z. a "stone of wisdom. Hurling himself high but sentenced by himself to fall down.

What is the spirit of gravity? In the chapter "The Spirit of Gravity" he says:

Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of gravity.

He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is my good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: "Good for all, evil for all.

"One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about.

In TSZ. the dwarf is first said to be half mole. Z. is at odds with himself. He travels antithetical paths. He strives for what is high but like a mole digs down into himself. He says to himself:

… being at two in such a way truly makes one lonelier than being at one!

He begins the riddle and vision by saying:

I tell the riddle that I saw – the vision of the loneliest one.

He sees something:

the like of which I had never seen before. A young shepherd I saw; writhing, choking, twitching, his face distorted, with a thick black snake hanging from his mouth.

My hand tore at the snake and tore – in vain! It could not tear the snake from his throat. Then it cried out of me: “Bite down! Bite down!
Bite off the head! Bite down!” –

Z. interrupts his story:

Now guess me this riddle that I saw back then, now interpret me this vision of the loneliest one!
For it was a vision and a foreseeing: what did I see then as a parable? And who is it that must some day come? Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled this way? Who
is the human being into whose throat everything that is heaviest, blackest will crawl?

The shepherd bites the head off.

No longer shepherd, no longer human – a transformed, illuminated, laughing being! Never yet on earth had I heard a human being laugh as he laughed!

He overcomes the spirit of gravity. Transformed by the spirit of levity.

If all that is has been before then how is it that he had never heard a human being laugh as he laughed? He asks if he is dreaming, but wouldn’t it be that even our dreams have been dreamt before?

When his thoughts of eternal return became quieter and quieter he heard the howl of a dog. He asks if he had ever heard a howl like this.

Where now was the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming? Was I waking? I stood all of a sudden among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight.

His thoughts race back to his childhood when he heard such a howl. Childhood is an important theme. The first chapter of the first part of Z. is titled “The Three Metamorphoses”. It too is about transformation. The last transformation is into a child.

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast.

Perhaps Z. forgot that he saw before what he sees now. If the child is innocence such forgetting cannot be a willful forgetting. And yet this may be what is necessary. Every Yea of the spirit in time becomes a Nay. Every creation of new values become old values to be overcome. This cycle repeats again and again. It is deeply troubling to think that what one holds to be of utmost, absolute, permanent, unchanging value is not.

The positive side of this is the idea that one need not carry the burden of imposed values, One can be free of the dwarf and mole who says: "Good for all, evil for all”.

The moment is the gateway of the eternal return. Whether or not this moment has occurred countless times does not matter because it is in this moment that one must decide:

But courage is the best slayer, courage that attacks; it slays even death,
for it says: “Was that life? Well then! One More Time!”

We are always at the moment:

where do human beings not stand at the abyss?

The choice is always there to be made. Do I choose this life? We cannot choose what has been but at this moment we can choose what will be. To choose wisely is to choose as if we are condemned to make the same choice over and over again. Has the choice already been made? It does not matter, for at this moment we can make a choice as to how we wish to live.

Reply to Paine Quoting Paine

Are you saying that what I said is not intelligible as it stands? Or are you saying it makes some kind of sense but you are not sure what?

The second one.

Quoting Fooloso4

He does not have a theory of truth

It was along these lines from On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense:

"The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."

“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished…”

"To be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone… From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as “red,” another as “cold,” and a third as “mute,” there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes.

"As a “rational” being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.

"If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare “look, a mammal” I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be “true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man.

"At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man’s service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.

It is even a difficult thing for [man] to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that “the correct perception” — which would mean “the adequate expression of an object in the subject” — is a contradictory impossibility.


"So far as we can penetrate here — from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths — everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree."

This is an interesting article about it if you happen to have jstor access: here.

Reply to frank

Thanks. An interesting essay, with lots to unpack. I will limit my comments to the problem of the eternal return.

Beginning with the title he has already made two distinctions: between truth and lies, and between the moral and nonmoral sense. All play a role in the question of the eternal return as discussed above, and make it clear why the gnomic "truths are metaphors" is at best inadequate and at worst misleading. But having furnished the essay, (which was like having to extract a tooth) we can move beyond that.

From the essay:

Quoting frank

we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities…

Original entities and what we say about them, our metaphors, are two different things. The entities are not metaphors.

Quoting frank

...whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."

Here we get to the center of the problem. What you say about eternal return as metaphor:

Quoting frank

It's probably not cosmological though

must then be said of the natural world. But Nietzsche does not deny the natural world, only that we do not have epistemological access to it as a "thing in itself". Put differently, the natural world is the human world.

The cosmological question of the eternal return remains open. We know something of the concept (metaphor) but whether or not Nietzsche believed that all that is recurs has not been settled. In either case, like the natural world, it is not something apart from the human world.

Quoting Fooloso4

Thanks. An interesting essay, with lots to unpack

So to clarify, you had not read this particular work by Nietzsche. I think it's pretty important to take his views about truth into consideration while taking in the rest of his ideas.

Quoting Fooloso4

Beginning with the title he has already made two distinctions: between truth and lies, and between the moral and nonmoral sense.

That's in the title, yes.

Quoting Fooloso4

All play a role in the question of the eternal return as discussed above, and make it clear why the gnomic "truths are metaphors" is at best inadequate and at worst misleading.

These are his own words:

"Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.”

Quoting Fooloso4

But having furnished the essay, (which was like having to extract a tooth) we can move beyond that.

So you come back to this issue again, so let me explain. At first, I was sure you hadn't looked into Nietzsche very far since you didn't know about his views of truth. Then you said you'd studied him for years, so I assumed you had read this essay. Now I find that you studied Nietzsche for years without understanding that he was a Kantian.

I also explained to you that I work in an emergency room and I was waiting for a trauma at the time I was discussing Nietzsche with you. I explained that this is why I was brief. So maybe you could see your way clear to cutting me some slack.

Quoting Fooloso4

From the essay:

we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities…
— frank

Original entities and what we say about them, our metaphors, are two different things. The entities are not metaphors.

No one has ever claimed that the "thing in itself" is a metaphor. No one. Ever.

Quoting Fooloso4

. Put differently, the natural world is the human world.

This is not contrary to my point. As Nietzsche explains, science forgets its limits. He is not trying to do science. The Eternal Return is not cosmology. The Big Bang is cosmology. The Eternal Return is not. Nietzche's view of truth and science should make this abundantly clear.

Quoting Fooloso4

The cosmological question of the eternal return remains open.

Ok. Argue for it in the light of his Kantian views. Make it fit. You said there is literature that addresses that. Feel free to quote a little something from one of them.

Quoting Fooloso4

In either case, like the natural world, it is not something apart from the human world.

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not.

The interpreters of Nietzsche that I am allied with argue that he offered a critique of the assumptions guiding Western science , the main one he formulated in terms of will to truth, which is a subordinate to will to power and exemplifies the ascetic ideal. This critique turns against realism and the Kantian split between noumenon and phenomenon. Nietzsche does not propound a metaphysics of the world as thing in itself.

“Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation – I have already explained –; that is to say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies, – so that, if they must be fought, they can only be fought and called into question together. A depreciation of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings about a depreciation of the value of science…”

Nietzsche aimed to include the so-called natural
world within the will to power, and given the inseparable relation between will to power and eternal return, the latter must encompass any cosmological view of time.

“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect…”

Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else. –

“Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation – I have already explained –; that is to say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies, – so that, if they must be fought, they can only be fought and called into question together. A depreciation of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings about a depreciation of the value of science…”

He's saying that Christianity and science rise and fall together because they have the same basic attitude to truth. It's a fascinating idea. :cheer:

Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect…”

See, I would say that his description of the mechanistic world as contiguous with our own desires and passions is exactly what Schopenhauer was saying. Am I wrong?

Quoting Paine

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market.

It seems to me that Nietzsche is a skeptic in the Socratic sense of knowledge of ignorance. The metaphor of the ship, having left terra firma, and an infinite horizon, echoes the metaphor of the problem of navigating the ship in the Phaedo. The eternal return too is a matter of life and death, of the unknown, of the abyss.

I think I understand what you are getting at when @Joshs you say "more land". I take it to mean they talk as if we are still on terra firma, that things are more settled than they are, and that treating all this as a theoretical problem is to have, so to speak, missed the boat.

Reply to frank Quoting frank

See, I would say that his description of the mechanistic world as contiguous with our own desires and passions is exactly what Schopenhauer was saying. Am I wrong?

I guess you’re right in the general sense that both assimilate the being of the mechanistic world to the will. Of course the devil is in the details. Nietzsche deconstructs the metaphysical presuppositions underlying Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will.

Deleuze has an interesting take on cosmology and eternal return.

“First Aspect of the Eternal Return: as cosmological and physical doctrine:

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible.”

Quoting Joshs

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible.”

I'll have to ponder that for a while

Quoting frank

Now I find that you studied Nietzsche for years without understanding that he was a Kantian.

It is because I have studied him for years that I know he is not a Kantian. To raise the problem of the concept of a thing in itself does not make one a Kantian. He is not a Kantian for the simple reason that he rejects the concept of noumenon. That we do not know the world as it is in distinction from how we are does not mean that he accepts the notion of a noumenal world.

Quoting frank

No one has ever claimed that the "thing in itself" is a metaphor. No one. Ever.

The point is, the claim that the concept of eternal return is metaphorical, like the concepts of original entities (which are not for Nietzsche things in themselves), does not mean that there is no eternal return in the same way it does not mean that there are no objects.

Quoting frank

This is not contrary to my point.

Your point is, as you said:

Quoting frank

Seen in the light of his ideas about the nature of truth, it seems unlikely.

Accordingly, the natural world seen in light of his ideas about the nature of truth, seems unlikely.

Quoting frank

The Eternal Return is not cosmology.

This begs the question of whether it is cosmological. Repeating it does not make it true.

Quoting frank

Argue for it in the light of his Kantian views. Make it fit.

Trying to make it fit your erroneous Kantian assumptions is part of the problem. It creates an unrecognizable distortion.

Quoting frank

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not.

There is a difference between a cosmological view and a scientific cosmological view. The idea of eternal return is an ancient cosmological opinion. It is simply wrong to assume that if Nietzsche held a cosmological view it would be "as a feature of a scientific view".

With regard to a scientific view, cosmology is highly speculative. There are in contemporary cosmology cyclical models

Reply to Fooloso4
Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment. Thanks.

Quoting frank

Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment.

I suppose that being shown that you are wrong about his "theory of truth", being a Kantian, and the eternal return does not inspire comment.

A significant part of the problem is, as you should be aware, given that you quoted it:

They won't remember what you said, they won't remember what you did, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel.

Although you were addressing me, it was others who said your response as "contemptuous" and commented o your behavior. I was willing to give you the opportunity to explain, but more of the same.

It was only after dismissively suggesting more than once that I read Nietzsche that you mentioned that you were "waiting for a gunshot wound to the chest". Without mentioning that you work in an ER, this can mean something quite different. More along the lines of, I need that like I need a hole in my head.

The fact is, despite your claim:

Quoting frank

I also explained to you that I work in an emergency room and I was waiting for a trauma at the time I was discussing Nietzsche with you. I explained that this is why I was brief. So maybe you could see your way clear to cutting me some slack.

you did not explain that you work in an ER at any point and did not explain that this is why you were so brief, in the prior exchanges. A simple explanation would have gone a long way.

When you then go on to say:

Quoting frank

engage in a friendly way, great. If all you want to do is launch an assault, save it. I'm not interested in that kind of discussion.

I think that those reading along would think you should have been talking to and listening to yourself.

Next:

Quoting frank

I have to say, I think it's sad that when asked on a philosophy forum what Nietzsche's eternal return means to you, you have nothing to say.

I had already said quite a bit in the post I started the thread with. In addition, the fact that I had not yet posted something that I spent a good part of the day working on does not mean I have nothing to say. Contrary to your plea that you be cut some slack, you accuse me of having nothing to say. Is that your idea of engaging in a friendly way?

Reply to Joshs
Nietzsche directly addresses what science is when he asks these questions in The Gay Science:

ibid. 109:Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we ever be done with our caution and care? When will these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to "naturalize" humanity in terms of a pure. newly discovered, newly redeemed nature?

This brings a fundamental tension into the investigation because a ground is not being invoked where the two uses of science are clearly distinguished. That tension is evident in the next section where the human condition is put forward as the combination of two errors:

Quoting Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 110, translated by Walter Kaufman

Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power-until eventually knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: two lives, two powers both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference:

The "life-preserving power", through which these conditions are introduced, cannot be called upon to settle the case here because what is to be counted as a fact is under investigation. In regard to the recent discussion about truth upthread, these set of conditions Nietzsche puts forward has 'truth' as a component of the creature in question.

Passing from one kind of nature to another will be tricky. Nietzsche speaks differently (sometimes contradictorily) of how one is going away from the old or toward the new in different contexts. The preference for a genealogy of ancestors over a chain of causes can be seen in this light. As The Gay Science nears the end, the "combination" of errors in 110 is explained in a different way:

Quoting ibid. halfway through 354

My idea is, as you see, that consciousness does not really belong to man's individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature; that, as follows from this, it has developed subtlety only insofar as this is required by social or herd utility. Consequently, given the best will in the world to understand ourselves as individually as possible, "to know ourselves," each of us will always succeed in becoming conscious only of what is not individual but "'average." Our thoughts themselves are continually governed by the character of consciousness, by the "genius of the species" that commands it--and translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally, all our actions are altogether incomparably personal, unique. and infinitely individual; there is no doubt of that. But as soon as we translate them into consciousness they no longer seem to be.

This is the essence of phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand them: Owing to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is only a surface and sign world, a world that is made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities. and generalization. Ultimately, the growth of consciousness becomes a danger; and anyone who lives among the most conscious Europeans even knows that it is a disease.

You will guess that it is not the opposition of subject and object that concerns me here: This distinction I leave to the epistemologists who have become entangled in the snares of grammar (the metaphysics of the people). It is even less the opposition of "thing-in-itself" and appearance; for we do not "know" nearly enough to be entitled to any such distinction. We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for "truth": we "know" (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called "utility" is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary, and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we shall perish some day.

The question about science asked in 109 is no longer a tug-of-war between motivations but has its benefits and defects collected together:

ibid. half of 355:Even the most cautious among them suppose that what is familiar is at least more easily knowable than what is strange, and that, for example, sound method demands that we start from the "inner world, from the "facts of consciousness"... because this world is more familiar to us. Error of errors! What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to "know" - that is. to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as "outside us." The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the critique of the elements of consciousness-one might almost say, with the unnatural sciences - is due precisely to the fact that they choose for their object what is strange, while it is almost contradictory and absurd to even try to choose for an object what is not-strange.

The passengers on the little boat are not only seasick but cold and hungry too. If this is the primary condition, what happened to the perspective of the individual and the choices they make? The difference
Nietzsche sees in embracing the return for the benefit of becoming who one is happens where the elements favor a different outcome. That is why I ask:

Are "metaphysicians" such as Heidegger and Deleuze providing a ground that Nietzsche does not?

Pardon me if that was more elaboration than you were asking for.

Reply to Paine Quoting Paine

Are "metaphysicians" such as Heidegger and Deleuze providing a ground that Nietzsche does not?

I’m not seeing what Heidegger and Deleuze are providing as constituting a metaphysical ground. I agree that the above authors are forming a whole out of Nietzsche’s fragments, but I read his fragments as constituting the outline of a system that is consistent with their interpetation of it, at least with regard to Eternal return. For me it boils down to the fact that Nietzsche, contrary to the claims of Brian Leiter and other ‘existentialist’ interpreters, is neither a realist nor an anti-realist.

In any discussion of a philosopher’s work, what is just as important as what they ‘actually’ said is what we would like them to mean. I wouldn’t like Nietzsche to be a realist in the mold of Leiter. That would make him profoundly uninteresting to me.

Reply to Joshs
Heidegger specifically claimed that Nietzsche "closed the circle of Western metaphysics but did not think beyond it. What is at issue is to what degree Nietzsche intended the system others filled out for him.

Quoting Joshs

In any discussion of a philosopher’s work, what is just as important as what they ‘actually’ said is what we would like them to mean.

How is my presentation not an effort in that regard? I was not arguing about how to classify Nietzsche in relation to other thinkers but to wrestle with what is meant by the author. Every reader has to decide what is being said for themselves. "Liking them to mean" something has to be tied to more than a wish for it to mean something.

Quoting Joshs

In any discussion of a philosopher’s work, what is just as important as what they ‘actually’ said is what we would like them to mean.

Here we see a fundamental hermeneutical difference. On the one hand, the attempt to understand an author on his own terms, on the other, the attempt to find one's own interests in an author. The former requires a kind of humility and the idea that certain authors are worthy of being read because they have something to teach us that is not easy to understand. The latter, the superiority of the reader. But not every reader is superior to the writer, and if one picks carefully, very few if any are.

Reply to Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4

Here we see a fundamental hermeneutical difference. On the one hand, the attempt to understand an author on his own terms, on the other, the attempt to find one's own interests in an author. The former requires a kind of humility and the idea that certain authors are worthy of being read because they have something to teach us that is not easy to understand

The former requires a trick of hememeutic acrobatics that runs counter to the historically perspectival nature of authorial interpretation. The only way to truly understand the author on their own terms is to be that author, and even then , ‘their’ own terms change from writing to writing. We have to make do with filtering the author’s ‘own’ terms through our own times and our own philosophical frame of reference. If our philosophical framework is postmodernist , we are likely to recognize Nietzsche’s work as postmodern, but if we don’t grasp postmodern concepts, we will
never see these ideas in his work no matter how closely we try to hew to the author’s own terms. This is what I meant by the relevance to interpretation of what we would like to read an author as saying. The reader’s perspective isn’t superior to the author’s , but it is inextricable from how an author’s work comes across to us.

Reply to Joshs
:up: :up: :up:

Quoting Joshs

If our philosophical framework is postmodernist , we are likely to recognize Nietzsche’s work as postmodern, but if we don’t grasp postmodern concepts, we will
never see these ideas in his work no matter how closely we try to hew to the author’s own terms.

If the only tool in the toolbox is a hammer ...

Although I accept the idea that we are historically situated, I do not think it necessary to impose postmodernist theories on Nietzsche. But if your claim is that he is postmodern then the framework and concepts of his work itself, in its own situatedness, should be essential and sufficient in our attempt to understand him, but essential.

Quoting Joshs

The reader’s perspective isn’t superior to the author’s , but it is inextricable from how an author’s work comes across to us.

I see this as the condition and starting point, not the jumping off point. How an author comes across to me, my perspective, is not fixed, it can change as I learn from him, and must change if I am to learn from him.

Reply to Fooloso4 Quoting Fooloso4

I see this as the condition and starting point, not the jumping off point. How an author comes across to me, my perspective, is not fixed, it can change as I learn from him, and must change if I am to learn from him

But you are not just learning from him. The reason you have a perspective in the first place is that your thinking is situated within an intersubjective matrix that delimits and informs what is relevant for you and how it is relevant. It is in this way that authors go in and out of fashion. Your nietzsche is filtered through your perspective, which is itself a discursive element of a larger cultural perspective. There is continuous change in these dynamics , but also a robustness that relativizes what we learn , and how we change, to our partially shared cultural perspectives. The framework and concepts of his work itself, in its own situatedness, is also inextricable from Nietzsche’s situstedness within his own discursive milieu. We glimpse that milieu from within the terms of our own milieu.

Reply to Joshs

In simplest terms, we need to look beyond ourselves. We can and do change our perspective. We can broaden it. We can change the direction we are looking in. We can consider concerns that are not our own and may find compelling reasons to make them our own.

In doing so we still do not see things as an author's contemporaries might, but we may come to understand an author better than his contemporaries did. Philosophers, using the term in a way, as Nietzsche did, that is reserved for only a few, do not simply think within their time but against it. Do we have a better understanding of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Heidegger than we did a hundred years ago or just a different understanding? Are we not able to answer the question because we are delimited and informed within an intersubjective matrix?

Reply to Fooloso4 Quoting Fooloso4

What would it mean to approach the past from the future? If the past extends infinitely can the road turn back? Can the long lane backward be the opposite of the long lane forward if they form a circle?

If all that will happen has happened before over and over what is the starting and end point of what happens?

Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return?

@Joshs

The figurative style of “The vision and the riddle” allows us to avoid literal and direct approaches to the problem of time. Nietzsche creates paradoxes and dramatizes a series of characters, scientific models, and narrative dynamics. But he does not assert a comprehensive unity, an eternity with an ontological status of a transcendent external Reality, or a universal and unequivocal model of truth or time. “’See this moment!’ I continued. “From this gateway Moment a long eternal lane stretches backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before? And if everything has already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway too not already – have been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore – itself as well?” Here, Zarathustra-Nietzsche utilizes various arguments in favor of the
Eternal Return of the same. Yet, he immediately contests this fragment as a mirage: “I stood all of a sudden among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight. But there lay a human being! And truly, I saw something the like of which I had never seen before.” Something ultimately new appears,
despite repeating the previous scene of the combat. The accelerating unfolding of the plurality of events constitutes the Nietzschean becoming and causes the disclosure of a circle of simple repetitions. Zarathustra and his doubles, their insights and mental states do not affirm any stable and firm identity, experience, or selfhood. There is no return of the author’s ego or the agent of action. Instead, there is the return of the work itself, ensuing the dimension of subjectivity. The Eternal Return undoes the paradoxes of the past and future. What really matters and generates the effects of time is the intensive recurrent motion, spreading itself out along the entire circumference of the circle of metamorphosis.

Reply to Joshs A specific example:

Christianity and Latin terminology stood between us and Plato and Aristotle. But that need no longer be the case. We can now stand closer to them than we could in the past. We can understand their terms in a way that is much closer to their use than was possible ever since they were translated into Latin. We can strip away Christian imposition.

Quoting Number2018

The figurative style of “The vision and the riddle” allows us to avoid literal and direct approaches to the problem of time.

As a work of literature we enter this world and from within this world attend to what we find in it, as what is literal within this world. The dwarf says all that is straight lies, that all truth is crooked, and concludes that time is a circle. Is this the crooked truth? Does it become a lie if we attempt to straighten it out? But straight and circle are not the only alternatives. The fact that the dwarf says this, and not Nietzsche and not Z. should be taken literally because it prompts us to identify the dwarf and the problem of the spirit of gravity. What is at issue is not the question of time in abstraction but Z.'s struggle with life in time.

Quoting Number2018

But he does not assert a comprehensive unity, an eternity with an ontological status of a transcendent external Reality, or a universal and unequivocal model of truth or time.

Nietzsche, like Plato, wears a mask. Just as Plato never speaks in the dialogue, Nietzsche does not appear in TSZ. What he might have believed about the eternal return is something he keeps from us. But if we take the infinity of roads literally it does not seem possible that anyone can know that there is an eternal return because we cannot traverse an infinite distance in the finite time of our existence.

Quoting Number2018

Here, Zarathustra-Nietzsche utilizes various arguments in favor of the
Eternal Return of the same.

From the moment, the gateway, we have a limited view of the past and no view of the future. This is why Z. calls it an abyss. But there is an argument which has been made independently of Nietzsche and the eternal return that in an infinite amount of time everything that can happen has happened. I don't know if Nietzsche accepts this but Z. accepted something like it, and is deeply troubled. Nietzsche on the other hand, as @Paine quoted him says:

Quoting ibid. 124

there is nothing more awesome than infinity.

Quoting Number2018

Yet, he immediately contests this fragment as a mirage

He says:

Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? ‘Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.

Rather than contest, he questions himself and what he had seen and what he is now seeing. Was the discussion of eternal return a dream he had awakened from or was it seeing the man the dream that he has awakened? We are told that after biting off the head of the snake the man is transfigured. Is this part of Z's own transfiguration? Had he awakened to laughter, to levity?

O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.

My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—

Quoting Number2018

Something ultimately new appears ...

This too is part of the riddle. How can there be something new if everything has happened before? I discuss this and some of the other things you touched on above.

Quoting Joshs

We glimpse that milieu from within the terms of our own milieu.

This brings into question what the 'historical' view provides against the background of what does not change (or not at the same rate or for unrelated reasons). When Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example, present how ancient people thought and felt differently than 'we' do, the idea is not presented as an independently experienced fact because that is impossible. The past and present people share a condition that places them in contrast to each other. The proposal can only be interesting if it introduces a new way to look at what is being experienced presently.

That dynamic is missing in a world where our "situatedness" is a horizon that never lets us know what other people thought. That could be the basis for cancelling the 'historical' as a category. Accepting that limit as self-evident also cancels the history of why the contrast became interesting.

Apart from arguments about what is 'metaphysics' any longer, it is fruitful to read 354 and 355 of The Gay Science because it directly addresses what is often discussed in "post modernism."

My observation does require accepting a common language capable of such a comparison.

Reply to Joshs Reply to Fooloso4 Naïve question: in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER? What is the point of it? I can grasp its introductory use as a kind of thought experiment, but what else is there to this idea?

Quoting Joshs

The only way to truly understand the author on their own terms is to be that author, and even then , ‘their’ own terms change from writing to writing. We have to make do with filtering the author’s ‘own’ terms through our own times and our own philosophical frame of reference.

:up:

I agree with@Fooloso4's emphasis on the importance of humility, but is it not somehow questionable to kneel and crawl before those who themselves refused to kneel and crawl ? The strong poet does violence to his precursors, and it's fight for his life as a distinct voice. We must do as they do and for just that reason avoid saying as they say. Only the heroic idiot can hope to understand the depth of another heroic idiot. Historians are useful, but the temptation is something like a transference. We hide behind the authorial avatar. A frankly violent and shameless interpretation has the virtue of honesty. It's not the gossip about the matter that's primary but rather the matter itself --even if that matter can only be approach in terms of sifting through the gossip about it, because we are that gossip. We begin precisely as that undifferentiated gossip. The birth of his distinct voice is the birth of the writer. The vision of the world is simultaneously a vision of the hero who grasps it that way.

Reply to Tom Storm

If I can jump in, it's at least a test. Let's say a demon comes to you tomorrow and brings your death and a choice. You can be gone forever or come back again, for the same exact world and life, over and over forever, except you never get the choice again. In all but the first time (this is a nice touch), the demon who brings death reminds you of your choice and wipes your memory and sets you down again for next run.

What does your choice say about you ?

Quoting green flag

is it not somehow questionable to kneel and crawl before those who themselves refused to kneel and crawl ?

It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend.

Quoting green flag

The strong poet does violence to his precursors, and it's fight for his life as a distinct voice. We must do as they do and for just that reason avoid saying as they say.

Why must we do as they do? How many distinct voices are there that are worth hearing in place of the philosophers, and here again I use the term philosophy in Nietzsche's sense of an exclusive club with very few members. By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead.

Quoting green flag

We hide behind the authorial avatar.

Perhaps some do, but reading need not passive. It is a way of thinking. A way of engaging with an author. An opportunity to be guided by and learn from them.

Quoting green flag

A frankly violent and shameless interpretation has the virtue of honesty.

.

I don't think so. As I see it, we would benefit more from being honest with ourselves and admit that there are those who have far more interesting and important things to say than we do. But perhaps I am wrong and there will be books and seminars and classes devoted to studying green flag.

Quoting green flag

It's not the gossip about the matter ...

Gossip? Is this an example of frankly violent and shameless interpretation?

Reply to green flag Thanks, yes, I kind of got this from the initial thought experiment. Not sure I'd do it all again. Let alone for ever. You?

Quoting Tom Storm

Naïve question: in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER? What is the point of it? I can grasp its introductory use as a kind of thought experiment, but what else is there to this idea?

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati.

Quoting Fooloso4

It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend.

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. I'm just using vivid language to draw out the situation. What is the correct attitude ? To read passionately is already a form of humility, for one is reading rather than talking or writing.

Quoting frank

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati.

That works. Thanks.

Reply to Tom Storm :up:

Quoting Fooloso4

Why must we do as they do?

We of course don't need to take our hemlock and follow Socrates. And most don't. What kind of fool aspires to philosophical greatness ? Probably everyone who ever obtained it, along with the multitude that did not. I think philosophy and art are close indeed, both of them creative interpretations of the world against a background of other such interpretations. What kind of fool thinks he can add something that isn't just noise or distraction from something better ? On the other hand, what kind of fool thinks he can understand that kind of fool without being that kind of fool ?

What role does death play for the young Heidegger ? This question in its depths is about the role death plays for me and whether I will have the courage to face reality in the specificity of my little passing moment down here. Personally I think we are footnotes to Shakespeare. The most that I hope for is a joke or two worth remembering, or maybe I can add a worthy metaphor to the pile, even if I expect to heat death to erase everything and everyone. As I see it, no one makes a dent that lasts on this machine that seems to be eating itself.

Reply to Tom Storm

I will need a bit more time to answer this. For now I will say that I think there is more to it than a test. I don't think he would have introduced this ancient belief simply as the backdrop for a test.

Reply to Fooloso4 That sounds tantalizing. I'll look forward to it.

Quoting Paine

This brings into question what the 'historical' view provides against the background of what does not change (or not at the same rate or for unrelated reasons). When Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example, present how ancient people thought and felt differently than 'we' do, the idea is not presented as an independently experienced fact because that is impossible. The past and present people share a condition that places them in contrast to each other. The proposal can only be interesting if it introduces a new way to look at what is being experienced presently.

That dynamic is missing in a world where our "situatedness" is a horizon that never lets us know what other people thought. That could be the basis for cancelling the 'historical' as a category. Accepting that limit as self-evident also cancels the history of why the contrast became interesting.

Is this problematic of cultural history not also that of natural history? When scientists delve into the earliest and oldest origins of life or of physical or chemical history, don’t we understand the earliest and oldest via the latest and most empirical models? Doesn’t that mean that our past is always ahead of us? When we spin out a history , we are creating and then following a trajectory leading into fresh territory of thinking, going back and forth between our new rendering of the ancient past and the way this revisionism alters our vantage on the present. It is from this new vista that we make our comparisons between what was , what is and what may be. We always know what previous cultures thought. But the purpose of our knowing, just as in the case of our knowledge of empirical past of nature, is forward looking. We know the past only by producing a new pragmatic set of relations with others in our present.

It is not history that is cancelled in this way of thinking , it is historicism , the metaphysical assumption that a history is a causal chain on a timeline. It is historicism that conceals the actual dynamics of history.

Quoting Fooloso4

By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead.

Of course. But these cautionary platitudes are only appropriate if your hearers are consciously taking an artistic risk. Are these cautionary platitudes themselves worth saying ? Is this how you'll make your mark ? Warning others away from the risk of creativity ? Hinting that you find them boring ? But are you not just as concerned about such a role itself being boring ? Could not a bot be assigned to this task ?

Here's Emerson's version of idle talk and its opposite.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.

The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and
creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
...
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Self-Reliance.pdf

This is one of those books that looks good on a shelf but is not to be believed and acted upon, for that would not be respectable, not nearly as respectable as the safely dead and famous name. What is it to 'restore force to the elementary words'?

Quoting Tom Storm

Thanks, yes, I kind of got this from the initial thought experiment. Not sure I'd do it all again. Let alone for ever. You?

I don't know. I might be stupid enough to say yes. Saying no means no more girls' eyes.

Quoting Fooloso4

As I see it, we would benefit more from being honest with ourselves and admit that there are those who have far more interesting and important things to say than we do. But perhaps I am wrong and there will be books and seminars and classes devoted to studying green flag.

You made me laugh. I really don't know. I might have a cute grimy little novel in me, along the lines of Nausea. But it'd be a fun, nasty little book. Did you ever read Steppenwolf ? What Hesse and Kundera and others do is great.

I will very much jump on your self-honesty bandwagon. I think it's hard as fuck to do something worthy. The self, in my estimation, is largely an illusion. There is only one philosopher, and you and I are little pieces of this software, which runs on a cloud of human brains networked by language and so on. You can call our egoism the cunning of reason. Why would such a program benefit from an adversarial distribution ? Perhaps because each 'self' (local version) is a candidate tribe ego. That pugnacious self-esteem and self-assertion should prevail is to be expected in both genetic and memetic competition.

When they talk about the great green flag, they'll really being talking about themselves, and we their past will be the given which they transcend and include and (to some degree, for the most part) forget.

Quoting green flag

When they talk about the great green flag, they'll really being talking about themselves.

As long as you get the money and the girls, what will it matter? :cool:

Quoting Fooloso4

Gossip? Is this an example of frankly violent and shameless interpretation?

I'm referring to Heidegger's notion of chatter. Our 'given' is the sediment of decisions made before our arrival. This layer of 'interpretedness' is why ontology requires de(-con-)struction. The past leaps ahead as prejudices we do not know they have. These prejudices are revealed along with that which is interpreted. The same process that brings the object to light makes us visible to ourselves as historical beings who, after all, were not just starting and staring without presuppositions.

Quoting green flag

Warning others away from the risk of creativity ?

Not at all.

Quoting green flag

But are you not just as concerned about such a role itself being boring ?

Some might find it boring, I do not.

Quoting green flag

Could not a bot be assigned to this task ?

Not very well, but that may change. But even if it could, for me careful reading and interpretation is a way of thinking, and requires creativity to do well.

Quoting green flag

Here's Emerson's version of idle talk and its opposite.

Why are you reading Emerson? Do you equate interpretation with idle talk?

Quoting green flag

This is one of those books that looks good on a shelf but is not to be believed and acted upon, for that would not be respectable, not nearly as respectable as the safely dead and famous name.

I hope it does not come as a shock to you but Emerson is safely dead and his too is a famous name.

Reply to Fooloso4
Wow. I hope you're just sleepy. You speak of 'careful reading,' but here's a reminder of our conversation.


I quoted 'Self Reliance' by Emerson and then say "this is one of those books that looks good on a shelf but is not to be believed and acted upon, for that would not be respectable, not nearly as respectable as the safely dead and famous name."

You tell me that "Emerson is safely dead and his too is a famous name."

How could you miss that the point was the contrast between fetishizing from a safe distance and actually 'ingesting' a great spirit ? That he is safely dead is alluded to intentionally, obviously, for what's insinuated is that a living nonconformist, the kind that Emerson encourages, would be cautioned or cancelled by the same mediocrities who think they value Emerson the spirit yet mostly value the respectable stink of his name. This is not aimed at anyone in particular but at idle talk that dares not face its reflection. The Anyone has in idle talk its true form of being. In case it's not obvious from context, Heidegger is no authority. He points out a phenomenon that others can grasp themselves. Clearly Heidegger and Emerson are saying similar things here. It takes guts to be a someone in this bucket full of crabs. It's only a someone who can genuinely die, perhaps because only they are completely alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

Quoting Fooloso4

Do you equate interpretation with idle talk?

To me that's a strange question indeed, unless you are referring not to interpretation but rather to interpretedness. This term is used in the Farin/Skinner translation of the 'Dilthey draft' (the ~100 page The Concept of Time). The idle talk of one generation can thought of as the inherited 'sediment' of interpretations decided by previous generations. On page 27, we read "we are now in a position to understand idle talk as the way interpretation is preserved. In idle talk interpretation becomes free-floating; it belongs to everyone and comes from nobody. In idle talk interpretation hardens into interpretedness. [Ausgelegtheit]. Dasein...grows up in and grows into such interpretedness." It might be said that idle talk is in the way of genuine interpretation. Or we might say that philosophy is idle talk trying to climb out of itself. "History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake. " But we 'are' that history, trying for more light, more awareness, more what ?

Quoting Tom Storm

As long as you get the money and the girls, what will it matter? :cool:

That made me laugh. If I recall correctly, Mencken laughed at his typewriter, cigar in his mouth, and Joyce annoyed his wife by laughing at his work on FW in the middle of the night. Naked willing females wallowing on piles of cash is a sufficient but not strictly necessary reward. Probably safer to be a married guy who drinks too much coffee and is glad to find each morning that they haven't run out of bananas and peanutbutter yet.

Reply to green flag Dickens also used to laugh as he wrote, and he even did all the voices of his characters out loud as he penned their dialogue. I would give anything to hear that... I imagine Shakespeare doing similarly - smart actors make great writers.

I love how we can go from Heidegger's notions of chatter to putative supplies of bananas and peanutbutter in the same thread...

Quoting Tom Storm

I love how we can go from Heidegger's notions of chatter to putative supplies of bananas and peanutbutter in the same thread...

Me too. Existentialism done right. Desolation Angels is one of my favorite works. Sort of the same idea.

Quoting Tom Storm

Dickens also used to laugh as he wrote, and he even did all the voices of his characters out loud as he penned their dialogue. I would give anything to hear that...

Me too. Last one I read was Bleak House. Powerful stuff. Brings tears to my eyes. I'd love to hear Dickens switch from one great character to another.

Quoting Tom Storm

I imagine Shakespeare doing similarly - smart actors make great writers.

Yes. The whole shebang is theatre. In case you might like it (or someone else), I found this killer performance of The Iceman Cometh recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etEFM_B9YS0
Apparently O'Neill thought like a composer. This play felt like an apocalypse to me.

Reply to green flag

I will leave it there. I am going to return to the eternal return.

Quoting Tom Storm

... in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER?

I don't think that he hopes that there is anything in essence the reader will gain. In the section of TSZ entitled "Reading and Writing" he says:

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader.

He leaves his readers to their own devices. There are different kinds of readers. What they get is up to them.

Zarathustra is another name for Zoroaster. In Zoroastrianism there is a constant battle between the forces of good and evil that will come to an end with the victory of the force of good over evil. In Christianity there is also the final victory of good over evil with the kingdom of God or Heaven on earth.

There is an ancient opposing idea, the eternal return.

Rather than being opposite poles there is a continual overcoming and reversal of what is held to be good or evil throughout history. There is no fixed nature, including no fixed human nature. In the Uses and Abuses of History for Life Nietzsche says:

...first nature was at one time or another once a second nature and that every victorious second nature becomes a first nature.

A cycle but not, as the dwarf would have it, a circle.

In the section of The Gay Science entitled “What I Owe the Ancients” Nietzsche says:

For only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian condition, does the fundamental fact of the Hellenic instinct express itself—its “will to life.” What did the Hellene procure in these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal recurrence of life; the future promised and made sacred in the past; the triumphant yes to life beyond death and change; true life as collective survival through reproduction, through the mysteries of sexuality. (90)

...

And thus I touch again upon the spot from which I first set out—The Birth of Tragedy was my first revaluation of all values: thus I take my stand again upon the ground from which grows my willing, my being able—I, the final follower of the philosopher Dionysus—I, the teacher of the eternal recurrence . . . (91)

Dionysus, the god who philosophizes. What is the significance of this? According to Socrates the gods are wise. The philosopher desires wisdom but remains ignorant. He questions but does not have answers to his questions. There is no final word as to why things are as they or to what will be. The same holds true of a god who philosophizes. We all, men and gods, remain ignorant.

In an endnote to his introduction to Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols Tracy Strong points out:

15. Nietzsche in fact projected a major work to be called “The Eternal Return of the Same,” the divisions of which would be examinations of various aspects of embodiment (Einverleibung). WKG V2 p. 392.

In TSZ the battle between good and evil occurs on the human scale. The question of whether it occurs on the cosmological scale raises the question of the connection between what is human and life itself. In Dionysus' teaching, a teaching that has returned once again, the modern objective scientific separation of knower and known does not hold. The cosmology of eternal return is not about something that is apart from us. But it is not limited to us. Quite the opposite, it is about the infinite unknown.

Reply to Fooloso4 Thank you for taking the trouble to do this. Do you personally find the idea of eternal recurrence compelling? I think translator Walter Kauffman might have been on to something about Nietzsche's work being "easier to read but harder to understand than those of almost any other thinker.” I had a go at the new translation of On the Genealogy of Morality by Clark and Swensen but just find it turgid and dull, even with those flashes of mordant humour.

Quoting Tom Storm

Do you personally find the idea of eternal recurrence compelling?

I don't.

One thing that may not have been made clear is that with Christianity's self-overcoming,
the eternal return, with its philosopher-god Dionysus, is to serve as the new earth bound and philosophically grounded religion. There is an ancient contest between philosophy and religion. Christian theologians regard philosophy as the handmaid of religion. Nietzsche reverses that order, which is to say returns to an older order. He intends for religion to serve as the handmaid of a philosophy in the service of life.

Quoting Tom Storm

"easier to read but harder to understand than those of almost any other thinker.”

I think his writing is deliberately and deceptively easy to read. This should give you some sense why.

Quoting Fooloso4

This should give you some sense why.

Hmmm... I find the histrionic narcissism repellant. 'I... I... I... me... me... me... blood... courage... goblins...

Reply to Tom Storm

I can understand that. What kind of philosopher talks this way? How many will read this and toss the book aside? It is as if he wants to antagonize the reader. As if he does not want to be read. But why?

Z. says he does not want idle readers, but as Kaufman noted, he is easy to read. Nothing here of the formidable language of Kant or Hegel. Socrates says he does not write because if he did then anyone and everyone could read what he said, and by not speaking directly with them there is no chance to clear up misunderstandings. Plato developed a way of writing that attempts to minimize that problem. It was not until quite recently that it became unacceptable for philosophers to guard their words from the general public.

Nietzsche, like Dionysus, wears masks. His bombastic style is a mask. What we see is not Nietzsche but the masks he chooses to wear.

Reply to Joshs
I think Nietzsche is saying that the problem with recounting cultural history is entangled with the problem of accepting 'natural' science as proceeding from a given ground. The question of cause and effect is raised in the context of what is past and present in all events. These passages are a small sample of an often repeated theme:

ibid, The Gay Science.:205
Need.- Need is considered the cause why something came to be; but in truth it is often merely an effect of what has come to be.

217
Cause and effect.- Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does afterward.

As you note, Nietzsche wants to cancel the teleological framework through which events are described. Nonetheless, he also wants to relate a record of the past that can be accepted as such. This is why he approaches it as a work of genealogy; What has come about may be a compilation of accidents and 'errors' but the sequence of events places us here, in the moment.

The 'will to power' perspective lets us gather evidence in a different way but is it a replacement for what it cancels? The question asked back at 109 about whether one view of nature has been brought to an end and another has begun still lingers after other matters have been decided.

I am confused by your use of the term 'historicism". It is used by the detractors of Nietzsche and Heidegger to object to the idea we are a collection of circumstances without any sort of inherent nature shaping outcomes in our experience.

Quoting Tom Storm

I find the histrionic narcissism repellant. 'I... I... I... me... me... me... blood... courage... goblins...

He gave Wagner hell for what they had in common perhaps, for being an actor, a drama queen. I recall Socrates asking the poets where they got their stuff from and not liking their answers. Nietzsche is like some prank the gods pull. One body was stuffed with both a mad poet and a mercilessly ironic analyst.