artisticsolution wrote:SpheresOfBalance wrote:Here you go AS, this is the Preface, and contains what you keep quoting, from the wikipedia page. I want you to pay particular attention to the blue & red below:
Nietzsche wrote:This book belongs to the very few. Perhaps none of them are even alive yet. Maybe they are the ones who will understand my Zarathustra. There are ears to hear some people — but how could I ever think there were ears to hear me? - My day won’t come until the day after tomorrow. Some people are born posthumously.
The conditions required to understand me, and which in turn require me to be understood, — I know them only too well. When it comes to spiritual matters, you need to be honest to the point of hardness just to be able to tolerate my seriousness, my passion. You need to be used to living on mountains — to seeing the miserable, ephemeral little gossip of politics and national self-interest beneath you. You need to have become indifferent, you need never to ask whether truth does any good, whether it will be our undoing . . . The sort of predilection strength has for questions that require more courage than anyone possesses today; a courage for the forbidden; a predestination for the labyrinth. An experience from out of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most distant things. A new conscience for truths that have kept silent until now. And the will to the economy of the great style: holding together its strength, its enthusiasm . . . Respect for yourself; love for yourself; an unconditional freedom over yourself. . .
Well then! These are my only readers, my true readers, my predestined readers: and who cares about the rest of them? The rest are just humanity. You need to be far above humanity in strength, in elevation of soul, - in contempt . . .
--Friedrich Nietzsche--
Can you tell me what that Blue sentence means?
Oh Goodie! A question I can actually answer! Huh go figure...reading books does have a purpose! LOL I can say this because all of my life I have hated reading...It is only recently that I started to read...because of K. I figured since I liked fear and trembling so much, it might be that I was reading the wrong books before and now I have switched to philosophy books...they are much better than romance novels!
Anywho....in the antichrist N talks about this further...he speaks of how philosophers are always trying to prove certain "truths"...He examines Kant and others and finds them lacking in one thing....That they always seem to start from the axiom that Christianity has set forth. Of course the "truth" would be biased! It's coming from a starting point that is biased!
IN the highlighted sentence above...notice how he says you need to BECOME indifferent (in order to read him) He does NOT say you have to BE indifferent forever. I think our christian axioms make us hear things that are not there.
Second, when he says "you need to ask whether 'truth' does us any good"....obviously, ( at least from my reading of the part where he questions philosophers up til this time basing all of their 'truths" on the axioms present in society --he does make a few exceptions though) He is asking us to examine the "truth" and what it means. WHo's "truth"? How can we know it is true? He is asking us to question absolute morality as a truth and let our minds wander to the forbidden reality society keeps hidden from us. Things we can't ask in "polite company." So basically he is asking us to question, "how do you know you aren't following evil?" He speaks of how Jesus was the only true christian and how Christianity does not follow his teachings. So see...he does not put down all christian. He actually says nice things about Jesus...it's his follows he doesn't think got the same memo.
Third, he wants to know if any 'truth' will be 'good' ...he doesn't mention a certain truth...he could just as well mean his 'truth' as kants. He is coming from a place of indifference...remember. He might return to non indifference throughout his discussion...but that need not matter as long as he stays focused on questioning certain axioms. His personality will shine here....and it is certainly polemic....but it is the same as being polemic in the opposite way...in the way that Christians are polemic...in the way that you say "As far as I'm concerned, as soon as he wrote those words highlighted in red above, his life was instantly null and void, such that anything after, he could not speak, because he had helped himself to perish." Same same....yet N took time to listen to the other side is the only difference between you and he. He read the whole kit and kaboodle of christianity and other religions he did not believe in. Quite a feet of indifference if you ask me. It would be like Chaz reading every book on Christianity he could get his hands on! Can you imagine! LOL
Just because a guy doesn't know A doesn't mean he doesn't know B. Or more precisely because N doesn't know morality in the way Christians believe is truth...doesn't mean he doesn't know 'true' morality. He is asking us to question whether we can even know 'truth'. And if we can't...isn't it a lie to say we can? When in fact, N is not claiming to know what is moral...he is just bringing to our attention we are hypocrites to think we know morality but then break our own moral code right and left and still consider ourselves to be more moral than him...or any other person that break the mold of what society has taught us to believe.
This brings me to K and fear and trembling...there is a part in that book where k talks about this preacher on the pulpit giving a sermon about Abraham and Issac that I think you would really like. He says the preacher goes on and on about how pious Abraham was...how obedient to God and how much God loved him for it. The preacher tells his congregation how God wanted all of them to be as obedient as Abraham. Then k says something like...but what a fool the preacher is to be preaching a story that he doesn't even understand...because if anyone could understand the severity of the story...surely they would not only forgive the insane member in their congregation for the same act but they would hold him in as much reverence as they do the story of Abraham. But if truth be told...and a member came to the preacher and told him that God had told him to kill his son...the preacher would surely recoil in horror. There would be an arrest...surely the preacher would NOT get up on the pulpit and give the same speech he gave about Abraham....and yet he has the nerve to speak of such obedience as if it was the epitome of morality!
And last of all, "whether it will be our undoing"...Is he wrong here? How many "truths" have we learned that might be our undoing. Nuclear science for one....not that N is questioning that...but rather...his line of thinking makes us more creative in our understanding in order to branch out in our understanding. Instead of hearing what societies axioms have 'taught' us to hear he makes it possible for us to take pause and think. Will 'truth' be our undoing? Very apt question if you ask me. It might possibly be....there is nothing that says "truth" will be our saving grace. It might not be...especially, if one uses the 'truth' of science to destroy the world.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts thrown out there. I am glad we can discuss.
Thanks for the long winded reply, I really appreciate your time.
Note that I've used colors in my words that denote the portion of 'N's' and 'your' words to which I refer, except for the
definition.
Did you realize that I did not ask the question, so as to seek an answer as to what N meant, so as I could know, but rather I asked, so as to uncover, what it is, that you believe N actually conveyed; what you believe you know of this section of The Anti-Christ, this, the PREFACE of The Anti-Christ.
You speak, as if this is other than a part of The Anti-Christ. You are incorrect, it is N, him self's, introduction of The Anti-Christ!
preface [pref-is]
pref·ace /ˈprɛfɪs/ [pref-is] noun, verb, pref·aced, pref·ac·ing.
noun
1. a preliminary statement in a book by the book's author or editor, setting forth its purpose and scope, expressing acknowledgment of assistance from others, etc.
2. an introductory part, as of a speech.
3. something preliminary or introductory.
You seem to be incapable of focusing on the words that lie before your very eyes. You dart all over the place, we are not talking about the rest of the book. We are analyzing the words in this text, quoted above, so as to understand what it is that he actually conveyed, despite (potentially) what he actually meant to convey, which we can never actually know, with 100% certainty.
No, that sentence is all about
truth, and that you have to not care one way or the other, whether truth is good for us or whether truth is bad for us.
I find this interesting in light of the fact that he then eludes to
his being capable of illuminating new, never before understood, truths. So then I have to ask, in his words, what difference does it make whether his, so called, new truths are good for us or bad for us?
As a matter of fact I see that truths are 'all' that matters as to any understanding, such that if we are to believe his assertion, there is no point in reading his book, because in his own words, it doesn't matter one way or the other, assuming that truths are actually contained within it's pages.
One might want to say then, that he made an error, that he did not mean what he has conveyed, which both is my point as to intended meaning versus actual conveyed meaning, and thus that he's not as smart, as that of an overman, that he professes, and thus also that of the unintelligent readers that believes the same of their selves, as with N's inference, due to their acceptance of N's words. Which is in fact, a smart way to try and sell something, regardless of it's viability. It appears to me that he should have used different words to convey that he was referring to the, already established, truths of the day, if in fact that's what he's referring too, and not truth in and of itself, which is in fact how it reads. So am I to read into his words, that which I believe he means? See what I mean?
In addition, in fact
Honesty stems from truth (First entry in the thesaurus I referenced, on Honesty.) So I see that his introduction contains a few flaws.
So in summation, peoples reading comprehension is not always what it's cracked up to be, and meaning cannot necessarily be discerned in the reading, as meaning and conveyance are not necessarily mutually inclusive, both in terms of the reader and the writer.
