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Invisibledaytripper23
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Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy...
    #11678390 - 12/18/09 11:04 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

At the forefront of Nietzsche's novels "The Birth of Tragedy" and "The Gay Science", is the perplexing theme of intoxication. What does Nietzsche mean by this? What is the following Ecstasy? In the ostensible art of the former text, and science of the latter, by these questions we would seem to address the scopes and bounds of Nietzsche's "metaphysics".

I believe such a pretext (or pretense) is one we are all yet all familiar with. We're aware that we aren't "special" to society, but daily, weekly, monthly, acquire this cumbersome equivalence in our bodies and state. Through Nietzsche, I would speak of intoxication and ecstacy in face of that apparently profound inexpertise...Perhaps not anything metaphysical, but seemingly something underground as in a basement, or maybe up in an attic.

Would anyone be interested in an underground project? I will be reading extensively into one or both of these texts over winter break, and thought maybe a few of you would be interested in collaboration. With the pretense of being "on the same page" in front of us (the texts are free online) by that criteria a close and informed reading might be the sole ideal. 

As a preview of these texts I'll quote the opening passages of both "The Birth of Tragedy", and "The Gay Science" that piqued my own interest.

Quote:


We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics, once we percieve not merely by logical inference, but with the immediate certainty of vision, that the continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollinian and Dionysian duality - just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strive with only periodically intervening reconciliations. The terms Dionysian and Appolinian we borrow from the Greeks, who disclose to the discerning mind the profound mysteries of their view of art, not, to be sure, in concepts, but in the intensely clear figures of their gods. Through Apollo and Dionysus, the two art deities of the Greeks we come to recognize that in the Greek world there existed a tremendous opposition, in origin and aims, between the Apollinian art of sculpture, and the nonimagistic, Dionysian art of music. These two different tendencies run parallel to each other, for the most part openly at variance; and they continually incite each other to new and more powerful births, which perpetuate an antagonism, only superficially reconciled by the common term "art"; till eventually, by a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic "will", they appear coupled with each other, and through this coupling ultimately generate an equally Dionysian and Apollinian form of art - Attic tragedy.

In order to grasp these two tendencies, let us first conceive of them as the separate art worlds of dreams and intoxication. These physiological phenomena present a contrast analogous to that existing between the Apollinian and the Dionysian. It was in dreams says Lucretius, that the glorious divine figures first appeared to the souls of men; in dreams the greater shaper beheld the splendid bodies of superhuman beings; and the Hellenic poet, if questioned about the mysteries of poetic inspiration, would likewise have suggested dreams and he might have given an explanation like that of Hans Sachs in the Meistersinger:

The poet's task is this, my friend,
to read his dreams and comprehend.
The truest human fancy seems
to be revealed to us in dreams:
all poems and versification
are but true dreams interpretation.

The beautiful illusion of the dream worlds, in creation of which every man is truly an artist, is the prerequisite of all plastic art, and as we shall see, of an important part of poetry also. In our dreams we delight in the immediate understanding of figures; all forms speak to us; there is nothing unimportant or superfluous. But even when this dream reality is most intense, we still have, glimmering through it, the sensation that it is mere appearance; at least this is my experience and for its frequency - indeed, normality - I could adduce many proofs, including the sayings of the poets.

Philosophical men have a presentiment that the reality in which we live and have our being is also mere appearance, and that another, quite different reality lies behneath it. Schopenhauer actually indicates as the criterion of philosophical ability the occasional ability to view men and things as mere phantoms or dream images. Thus the aesthetically sensitive man stands in the same relation to the reality of dreams as the philosopher does to the reality of existence; he is a close and willing observer, for these images afford him an interpretation of life, and by reflecting on these precesses he trains himself for life.

It is not only the agreeable and friendly images that he experiences as something universally intelligible. the serious, the troubled, the sad, the gloomy, the sudden restraints, the tricks of accident, anxious expectations, in short, the whole divine comedy of life, including the inferno, also pass before him, not like mere shadows on a wall - for he lives and suffers with these scenes - and yet not without that fleeting sensation of illusion. And perhaps many will, like myself, recall how amid the dangers and terrors of dreams that have occasionally said to themselves in self-encouragement, and not without success: "It is a dream! I will dream on!" I have likewise heard of people who were able to continue one and the same dream for three and even more successive nights - facts which indicate clearly how our innermost being, our common ground, experiences dreams with profound delight and a joyous necessity. 

This joyous necessity of the drdeam eperience has been embodied by the Greeks in their Apollo: Apollo, the god of all plastic energies, is at the same time the soothsaying god. He, who (as the etymology of the name indicates) is the "shining one," the deity of light, is also ruler over the beautiful illusion of the inner world of fantasy. The higher truth, the perfection of these states in contrast to the incompletely intelligible everyday world, this deep consciousness of nature, healing and helping in sleep and dreams, is at the same time the symbolical analogue of the soothsaying faculty and of the arts generally, which make life possible and worth living. But we must also include in our image of Apollo that delicate boundary which the dream image must not overstep lest it have a pathological effect (in which case mere appearance would decieve us as if it were crude reality). We must keep in mind that measured restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm of the sculptor god. His eye must be "sunlike," as befits his origin; even when it is angry and distempered it is still hallowed by beautiful illusion. And so, in one sense, we might apply to Apollo the words of Schopenhauer when he speaks of the man wrapped in the veil of maya (Welt als Wille und Vortsellung, I p. 416): " Just as in a stormy sea that, unbounded in all directions, raises and drops mountainous waves, howling, a sailor sits in a boat and trusts in his frail bark: so in the midst of the world of torments the individual human being sits quietly, supported by and trusting in the principium individuationis (Principal of Individuation)." In fact, we might say of Apollo that in him the unshaken faith in this principium and the calm repose of the man wrapped up in it receive their most sublime expression; and we might call Apollo himself the glorious divine image of the principium individuationis, through whose gestures and eyes all the joy and wisdom of "illusion," together with its beauty, speak to us.

In the same work Schopenhauer has depicted for us the tremendous terror which seizes man when he is suddenly dumfounded by the cognitive form of phenomena because the principle of sufficient reason, in some one of its manifestations, seems to suffer an exception. If we add to this terror the blissful ecstasy that wells from the innermost depths of man, indeed of nature, at this collapse of the principium individuationis, we steal a limpse into the nature of the Dionysian, which is brought home to us most intimately by tha analogy of intoxication.

Either under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which the songs of all primative men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature with joy, these dionysian emotions awake, and as the grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness. In the German Middle Ages, too, singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing in number, whirled themselves from place to place under this same Dionysian impulse. In these dancers of St. John and St. Vitus, we rediscover the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks with their prehistory in Asia Minor, as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. There are some who, from obtuseness or lack of experience, turn away from such phenomena as from "folk diseases", with contempt or pity born of the consciousness of their own "healthy-mindedness." But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called "Healthy-mindedness" looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them.

Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but nature which has become alienated, hostile, or subjegated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost son, man. Freely, earth proffers her gifts, and peacefully the beasts of prey of the rocks and desert approach. The chariot of Dionysus is covered with flowers and garlands; panthers and tigers walk under its yoke. Transform Beethoven's "Hymn to Joy" into a painting; let your imagination conveive the multitudes bowing to the dust awestruck - then you will approach the Dionysian. Now the slave is a free man; now all the rigid, hostile barriers that necessity, caprice, or "impudent convention" have fixed between man and man are broken. Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and fused with his neighbor, but as one with him, as if the veil of maya had been torn aside and were now merely fluttering in tatters before the mysterious primordial unity.

In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying into the air, dancing. His very gestures express enchangtment. Just as the animals now talk and the earth yields milk and honey, supernatural sounds emanate from him too: he feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy, like the gods he saw walking in his dreams. He is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the primordial unity. The noblest clay, the most costly marble, man is here kneaded and cut, and to the sound of the chisel strokes of the Dionysian world-artist rings out the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries: "Do you prostrate yourselfs millions? Do you sense your Maker, world?" (Quotation from Schiller's hymn)




(click)

Nietzsche's preface to "The Gay Science":



Edited by daytripper23 (12/18/09 11:26 PM)

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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11678442 - 12/18/09 11:16 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

By the way, if you want to just chime in by saying you're interested to read without generating any thoughts yet, that's fine.

On the other hand these are the opening passages though, so you can always start here.

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InvisibleLakefingers
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... *DELETED* [Re: daytripper23]
    #11680137 - 12/19/09 11:03 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Post deleted by Lakefingers

Reason for deletion: Reason enough.

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InvisibleMnboardin
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: Lakefingers]
    #11680765 - 12/19/09 01:17 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

I am very interested as well.

THe Birth of Tragedy is a favorite of mine.


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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: Mnboardin]
    #11681004 - 12/19/09 02:05 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Glad to hear it guys, this way I won't be delving in with only a speculative mind.

Lakefingers, I was hoping you'd be on board.

Mnboardin, Welcome.

And yea, anyone's welcome, the formal introduction was just to assure for clarities sake that we are all on the same page.

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Offlineandrewss
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11681424 - 12/19/09 03:14 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

That excerpt from "The Birth of Tragedy" was pretty interesting, I haven't read that yet, will get to it here someday soon.

I will def pay attention to this thread


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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: andrewss]
    #11681519 - 12/19/09 03:31 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

:bongload:

be back in a little while

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InvisibleLakefingers
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... *DELETED* [Re: daytripper23]
    #11681552 - 12/19/09 03:36 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

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Offlineaghorrorag
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: Lakefingers]
    #11682888 - 12/19/09 07:49 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

im actually reading birth of tragedy right now.


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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: aghorrorag]
    #11683513 - 12/19/09 09:57 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)


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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: Freedom]
    #11684032 - 12/20/09 12:08 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

Freedom said:





  You owe me a burger, I just vomited my dinner.


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My entire Life is defined by this link. I beg of you to read: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tsafir-kamel/a-compassionate-message-for-jews-and-christians/10150614597334779

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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: aghorrorag]
    #11684106 - 12/20/09 12:39 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

:bonghit:


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InvisibleLakefingers
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: andrewss]
    #11684516 - 12/20/09 04:40 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

I think bongs are ugly pieces of shit. I'm not sure which is worse: porcelain, smiling cats on a living room table, or a fluorescent bong.

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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: Lakefingers]
    #11685993 - 12/20/09 12:23 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

not all bongs are equal dammit

granted I dont have a bong anymore... just a lil triple chamber bubbler...... yeahhhhh


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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: andrewss]
    #11686863 - 12/20/09 02:54 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

bongs are functional...

you can use them as a vase.

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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11687043 - 12/20/09 03:28 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Ok well, I am not quite ready to cut off this pretext -

How about we hear it from Nietzsche himself, from his "self criticism"?

Quote:

Let me say again: today for me it is an impossible book—I call it something poorly written, ponderous, embarrassing, with fantastic and confused imagery, sentimental, here and there so saccharine it is effeminate, uneven in tempo, without any impulse for logical clarity, extremely self-confident and thus dispensing with evidence, even distrustful of the relevance of evidence, like a book for the initiated, like “Music” for those baptized into music, those who are bound together from the start in secret and esoteric aesthetic experiences as a secret sign recognized among blood relations in artibus [in the arts]—an arrogant and rhapsodic book, which right from the start hermetically sealed itself off from the profanum vulgus [profane rabble] of the “educated,” even more than from the “people,” but a book which, as its effect proved and continues to prove, must also understand this issue well enough to search out its fellow rhapsodists and to tempt them to new secret pathways and dancing grounds.


 

And yet, we still listen...If anything, listen closer!

Quote:


At any rate, here a strange voice spoke—people admitted that with as much curiosity as aversion—the disciple of an as yet “unknown God,” who momentarily hid himself under the hood of a learned man, under the gravity and dialectical solemnity of the German man, even under the bad manners of a follower of Wagner. Here was a spirit with alien, even nameless, needs, a memory crammed with questions, experiences, secret places, beside which the name Dionysus was written like one more question mark. Here spoke—so people said to themselves suspiciously—something like a mystic and an almost maenad-like soul, which stammered with difficulty and arbitrarily, in a foreign language, as it were, almost uncertain whether it wanted to communicate something or hide itself.* This “new soul” should have sung, not spoken! What a shame that I did not dare to utter as a poet what I had to say at that time; perhaps I might have been able to do that! Or at least as a philologist —even today in this area almost everything is still there for philologists to discover and dig up! Above all, the issue that there is a problem  right here—and that the Greeks will continue to remain, as before, entirely unknown and unknowable as long as we have no answer to the question, “What is Dionysian?” . . .





Beautiful words, in retrospect. So then, perhaps a few of you may begin to wonder what the meaning of this extended and suggestive pre-text is?

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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11693199 - 12/21/09 03:50 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

"Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?"

All I can do is lay a pretext. I've got problems with Nietzsche, and to that extent, they've revealed problems with my study of Heidegger. Maybe this has been a word of warning, if you have been steeped in Heidegger for 3 months at a time, don't jump into Nietzsche unless you want to go off like a bottle rocked.

For me, this drama has only unfolded so much as to "lay the ground" of problems with occidental Hermeneutics. This German obsession with a establishing a circle of interpretation; of human, nation, family, brotherhood, and (if none of those EGO...What an ego!) - are all founded in case of their ecstatic eruption.

Drama for its own sake? So it was with Nietzsche. But this was an interesting drama, if I can say so myself (No). There was insight, all mistaken. It works - it fails! Then, I saw the violence at the heart of it, spiraling from animal violence to the many shades of temporal human. There is an interplay between the two that Nietzsche and Heidegger touch on with both insight and violence.

I also saw my own German heritage (my Dad's side) in all its patriarchal exploitation - that has been oppressing but I cannot see from within. That is, I saw my own violence in concurrence to this heritage. These circles are karmic.

There's a lot that I specifically disagree with, but in doing so I would be "speaking Nietzsche" at best. It's the way the text is laid out, I think.

My impression of the Greeks according to Nietzsche:


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Offlineandrewss
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11697759 - 12/22/09 09:28 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

daytripper23 said:

Drama for its own sake? So it was with Nietzsche. But this was an interesting drama, if I can say so myself (No). There was insight, all mistaken. It works - it fails! Then, I saw the violence at the heart of it, spiraling from animal violence to the many shades of temporal human. There is an interplay between the two that Nietzsche and Heidegger touch on with both insight and violence.

I also saw my own German heritage (my Dad's side) in all its patriarchal exploitation - that has been oppressing but I cannot see from within. That is, I saw my own violence in concurrence to this heritage. These circles are karmic.

There's a lot that I specifically disagree with, but in doing so I would be "speaking Nietzsche" at best. It's the way the text is laid out, I think.





Eh? Explain yo seff


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Invisibledaytripper23
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: andrewss]
    #11698306 - 12/22/09 11:28 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

His genealogy of the Dionysian is blurred and imprecise: "Intoxication with fog", so he says himself in "self-criticism".

But that to me is the heart of the matter, not merely a detail. He works from there, and what he lacks in lucidity becomes the heart of his art and philosophy. His birth of tragedy from egotism - a real soliloquy, so called "Drama in itself". He stumbles into nihilism in bitter, drunken buffoonery.

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Offlineandrewss
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Re: Winter reading: Nietzsche; intoxication, ecstacy... [Re: daytripper23]
    #11699034 - 12/22/09 01:32 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

He stumbles into nihilism? A lot of his philosophy is an attempt to be honest but yet do battle with nihilism...

Is it because he himself was apparently "making" drama with his own misgivings directed at his his own ascetic like life style - that you say he was committing drunken buffoonery? His sort of back and forth critique probably reveal some insatiable drive in the psyche, perhaps further related to his sometimes "brutal" psychological observations though they contrasted to what we know about his domesticated life.


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