Hiking with Nietzsche (John Kaag)
* (6) Nietzsche’s /Ubermensch/ and overall philosophy is no mere abstraction. One needs to physically rise, stand up, stretch, and set off
* Transformation occurs in a “sudden sentence and prescience of the future, of near adventures, of seas open once more, and *aims once more permitted and believed in*”
* “Yet the youthful soul look back on life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has drawn your soul aloft?”
* “…to lean one’s present self into something unattained, attainable, yet out of view…*become who you are*.”
* (14) It is only as an aesthetic experience that existence and the world are eternally justified (to perceive, to sense, to feel)
* (21) Philosophy, at its best, was to be learned /by heart/ and enacted in experience
* This most personal of knowledge was meant to give individuals the courage to determine their own lives
* Self Reliance: “There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Do not ask. Go along it.”
* Emerson *initiated the experiential turn in philosophy*
* (22) One could have faith (and experience moments of deep, nearly divine meaning) in the tangible, observable flow of existence
* (24) According to Nietzsche and Emerson, modernity had fallen out of rhythm with life.
* Human animals had “gone soft”
* Life was no longer lived enthusiastically - only deferred
* (29) N: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
* Emerson: “Each soul, walking in its own path walks firmly, to the astonishment of all other souls, who see not its path”
* (42) Schopenhauer: “Marrying means to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find an eel amongst an assembly of snakes”
* (54) [“Last Man” on the airplane]
* (55) The Romantics believed that the point of life was to find oneself in nature, to be inspired by the spirit of the cosmos, to explore the deepest subjective feelings (aesthetic, moral, spiritual) in the face of nature’s universality
* (66) The “revaluation of values” = one of Nietzsche’s greatest contributions to the history of philosophy
* Instead of taking ethical norms at face value, Nietzsche asks “Where did these values come from in the first place?”
* Suggests that ethical life could be otherwise, and the fixity of social norms/mores is unshakably contingent
* (71) [Alps made Nietzsche shudder, laugh aloud, cry tears of exultation]
* (72) Eternal recurrence:
* “This life as you now live and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again.”
* Old —> New —> Old
* Most of us, most of the time, would be crushed by such an idea (to relive the regret, tedium, disappointment of a single life over an indefinite future would be truly hellish)
* *It is a challenge, or question, not to be answered in words, but over the course of a life*
* The question in each and every thing: “Do you want this again and innumerable times again?”
* This would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight
* *The affirmation of the eternal return is possible only if one is willing and able to become well-adjusted to life and to oneself*
* Well adjusted = choose, wholeheartedly, what we think and where we find and create meaning
* *Specter of infinite monotony —> absolute responsibility*
* “Rightness” cannot be affixed by some external moral or religious standard
* Answer can’t be given on behalf of some impersonal institutions - it’s the most personal of an seers, always determined by an individual choice
* (75) Choose anything you want, but don’t pretend to do it because these things have some sort of intrinsic value - they don’t
* Do it solely because you chose them and are willing to own up to them
* In the story of our lives, these choices are ours and ours alone
* This is what gives all things value
* Only when one realizes this are they prepared to face the eternal recurrence without the risk of being crushed
* (80) Nietzsche wanted this: to have the past live in the present and in the future both, to have time again vibrate as lone
* This is the task of the eternal return
* (78) The Waldhaus offered space: “…just space. In our world, one packed with things and possessions, this space is often filled.”
* Space, and only space…is a rare luxury indeed
* (94) In every conversation between three people, one person is superfluous and therefore prevents the depth of the conversation
* (95) Nietzsche wanted a relationship always on his terms
* Relationships involve lying to the ones we love - speaking half-truths that suit our beloved. We measure carefully what we say and don’t
* (97) /Thus Spoke Zarathustra/ = most complicated/contested of N’s writings
* It maps the divided nature of the modern mind
* Danger = companionship can destroy selfhood
* Eternal return is its essence
* Self’s flourishing depends on two things:
* It can choose its own way to the greatest extent possible
* It can embrace the fate that befalls it
* (100) Self-Overcoming occurs in three “metamorphoses”:
* Camel (beast of burden) —> Lion (non-conformist) —> Child (forget and move forward)
* (109) Kant provides “manifest certainty”
* Every human being has incomparable worth owing to his/her rational faculties
* Humans have “incomparable worth” (can’t be used as merely a means)
* Nietzsche = moral values come from fear or existential uncertainty
* Kant’s “will to truth” drove him to develop his morality
* One’s attraction to manifest certainty isn’t the outcome of reasonable argumentation, but rather the outgrowth of primal fear
* (113) [Fuller explanation of Kant]
* If one thinks objective moral value exists, then it must be grounded in our rational capacities
* Ordinary things only have value because someone values them
* Thanks to our mental faculties, humans are valuable even if no one cares about us
* Kant provides a framework/supporting argument for someone who already believes in morality; doesn’t try to sway non-moral people into believing in morals
* (114) Alain de Botton: “Fulfillment is reached by responding wisely to difficulties that could tear one apart.”
On Genealogy
* (121) “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” -Cicero
* N’s /Genealogy of Morals/ = intellectual archaeology
* “Of necessity, we remain strangers to ourselves…’Each one is the farthest away from himself’…as far as ourselves are concerned we are not ‘knowers’”.
* Master morality vs. slave morality
* (129) Routine of modern life felt so scripted to Nietzsche that he/others began to question the reality of free will altogether
* Used techniques like fasting to develop “self-mastery”
* Nietzsche believed thinking was inextricably tied to eating
* (126) The *ascetic ideal*: Rigorously self-disciplined behavior (self-regulating; ultimately often self-destructive)
* Any strenuous exercise or difficult training reflects the ascetic
* “Humans would rather destroy themselves than embody the passivity of willing nothing at all” (esp. slaves/those beholden to powerful masters)
* Self-denial gives a slave something to do on his own terms/behalf
* (132) Asceticism = persistent force in field of human values
* “Man…desires suffering, even seeks it out, provide he is shown a meaning an purpose for it….the ascetic ideal offered man meaning”
* (133) Buddha, Jesus, Augustine, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emerson, Thoreau, James, Rimbaud - all of them were walkers
* “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” -Thoreau
* (143) N: “Nothing has preoccupied me more profoundly than the problem of decadence.”
* “I am, in questions of decadence, the highest authority on earth.”
* Extravagances of decadence mask sickness and decay
* Ex: decadent music, bombastic and saccharine, is written for ears that have trouble hearing
* Decadence arises out of weakness
* (150) Adorno’s “Critical Theory”:
* Culture itself could be used as a force of oppression
* Popular culture shapes a people’s preferences, delimiting the scope of human activity and desire
* Our consumer culture might give us the semblance of being free to choose, but this liberty amounts to pitifully little if everyone is given the same circumscribed options
* Critical theory meant to “free people from the subtle forces that enslaved them”
* Critical theorists attacked popular culture in all its forms
* Pop culture has “an almost irresistible draw”
* (151) One was of retreating from pop culture is to embrace unabashed elitism
* This (analyzing Bach’s music, Holderlin’s poetry) was culture — exclusive, but not oppressive
* Adorno liked the slow pace of Waldhaus, and the quiet
* *Quiet: the one thing the herd cannot abide*
* Silence, the sound of oneself, enables — even necessitates — thinking
* (158) Nietzsche: “I am no man. I am dynamite.”
* The point of art, according to Adorno, is to bring chaos to order
* (162) Dissonance “between mundane reality and infinite possibility”
* N: “In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.”
* (166) Dread has no particular object or cause, but rather emanates uncomfortably from the very pit of being human
* It’s “the sense of freedom’s possibility” (Kierkegaard)
* Freedom’s infinite possibility: the routine of adulthood usually numbs us to this sort of dread, but children do their best to remind us of its force
* Children remind us, in delightful and painful ways, what it is to be a person
* Becca’s untethered curiosity, naive bravery, and complete lack of shame reminded me that I too, at one distant point, possessed these possibilities
* (191) Beneath the reasonable habits of our lives hides a little inexplicable something that has the ability to opt out, even against our better judgment
* Re: /Bartleby the Scrivener/; parenting
* Difficulty of parenting stems from fear…that comes with being inextricably bound to a little creature who willfully, gleefully can disregard what is obviously in her own best interest
* There remains a life-affirming glee in simply refusing to act on behalf of one’s obvious self-interest
* (200) [On Hesse’s /Demian/] No one succeeds in suppressing this [the other half of the world; the non-sanctioned world outside the church’s teachings] once he has begun to think
* (203) Harry Haller, from /Steppenwolf/: *“A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life.”*
* (206) Middle age greeted Haller (/Steppenwolf/ protagonist) as it does many people, as the dawning of regret.
* “I do not regret the past,” Haller explains. “My regret was for the present day, for all the countless hours and days that I lost in mere passivity and that brought me nothing, not even the shocks of awakening.”
* He likes the contrast between is lonely, loveless, disordered existence and middle-class family life…”there is something in it that touches me despite my hatred for all it stands for.”
* Haller was drawn by, and to, this divided reality — pulled to it like a man tied to a horse on the way to the gallows
* This is what bothered me [Kaag] about Haller: How could a princely life still, after all is said and done, lead one to renunciation and bitterness?
* As I’d come to enjoy adulthood, this worry had only intensified
* Privilege and leisure did nothing to mitigate the effects of existential crisis, but rather heightened the sense that despite one’s best attempts, life was still largely unfulfilling
* *Most of modern life is geared toward achieving material success, but only after it is attained is its hollowness painfully apparent*
* (208) Nietzsche: “What we sometimes neither know nor feel during our waking hours…in dreams we understand absolutely, unequivocally.”
* (213) Herman Hesse: “If you’re in pain, if you’re afraid, and have a foreboding danger…why not put the question in a different way? Why not ask whether the source of your pain might be inside you yourselves?”
* Examine what ails you and try to determine its source
* Hardest part of eternal return = owning up to the tortures we create for ourselves and those we create for others
* Owning up: to recollect, regret, be responsible, ultimately to forgive and love
* “What makes me Zarathustra is that I have come to know Zarathustra’s destiny. I have lived his life. Few men know their destiny. Few men live their lives. Learn to live your lives.”
* (213) Haller’s punishment is to live, and to learn to laugh
* Seems so simple, but it’s infinitely difficult in the madhouse of his mind
* This may be the sentence that all human beings face
* (214) Eventually, he not only accepts, but genuinely embraces the disasters of life (/amor fati/, the love of fate)
* “One day I would be better at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh”
* Laughter: that was the key to /amor fati/
* The tortures of life’s game would endure. Resisting or denying these tensions and strivings would only intensify their force
* The sense of life wasn’t to “get a grip”, but to loosen one’s hold just enough to get a fleeting sense of relief
* “Some of us think that holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go”
* Genuine laughter = long in coming, but it remains the goal
* (218) Nietzsche may have experienced something of enlightenment
* Hesse: “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed. A little distorted. A little foolish.”
* Words reify something experienced in motion, attempting to capture the forever unruly
* (220) To “become who you are” isn’t about finding a “who” you’ve always been looking for. It’s not about separating “you” off from everything else, and it’s not about existing as you truly “are” for all time
* The self doesn’t lie passively in wait for us to discover it
* Selfhood is made in the active, ongoing process, in the German verb “to become”.
* The enduring nature of being human is to turn into something else, which shouldn’t be confused with going somewhere else
* /What/ one is, essentially, is this active transformation, nothing more, nothing less
* In becoming what one is, a person turns back, into, gathers something of the past, and carries it forward
* It’s genealogy compressed under high pressure
* *The present, as such, is but a placeholder where the past and future meet, a fleeting moment where becoming takes place*
* (221) Nietzsche:
* “You are /not/ really all that which you do, think, and desire now.”
* “To become what one is , one must not have the faintest idea of what one is.”
* Nietzsche’s point: *The process of self-discovery requires an undoing of the self-knowledge that you assume you already have. Becoming is the ongoing process of losing and finding yourself*
* (224) I do my best to become rather than to obsessively seek and control
* Modern life, however, isn’t entirely amenable to becoming who one is; it is designed to distract and deaden in all the ways that Nietzsche suggests
* To see the sacred in the prosaic - this might be the objective of life, but I continued to miss the point
* *“…watching people waste what is most valuable.”*
* (227) There is something beautiful, indeed sacred, about the “loss of self-recognition” that the god of wine and dance grants
* (228) There’s another way to interpret the /Ubermensch/ that has little to do with perfectionism and self-styling
* Nietzsche would like us to die, to get out of the way, to get out of our own way, so something else can take our place. So that we can become what we are.
* (229) The Titans ate Dionysus. Zeus brought him back to life and obliterated the Titans in a storm of lightning bolts. Nothing remained of the giants, just a wet soot: titanic and earthly, but with a hint, a mere fragrance, of something divine
* A haunting admixture: the shame of ingratitude, tempered with the faint possibility of creativity and redemption
* Zeus combined this soot with clay to fashion small imperfect figures — humans
* Our body is Dionysian…we are part of him, since we sprang from the soot of the Titans who ate his flesh
* (229) All great festivals are based on a cycle of death and rebirth (Easter, Halloween, Ramadan, Diwali, Saturnalia, /Mogranstreich/)
* They all have a similar flavor — things must suffer, go dark, perish before they live again
* This isn’t an escape or respite from life but rather its realization: in the end, to burn up and out, as Zarathustra does, “like a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains”