Nietzsche's Stance toward System. An Essay.

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says: “I mistrust all systematisers and I avoid them. The will to system is a lack of integrity.” [1] I think this is a beautiful example of Nietzsche’s aphoristic style. In two short sentences, he fully explains his stance toward system.

Aphorisms are like nuts: they can be hard to crack. This essay is an attempt to crack this particular nut—in other words, to analyse this aphorism. But it does not end with analysis, with cracking: that is only a means.

It is easy to break this nut into two equal halves, as that is its basic structure. We have observed at first glance that it consists of two sentences. The first sentence, in turn, is also easy to break into two equal halves.

The first quarter of the aphorism says that Nietzsche mistrusts all systematisers. The second says that he avoids them. It seems obvious to suppose that the first is the cause whereas the second is the effect. For one thing, the converse makes no sense. But this relation between the two clarifies the first: “mistrust” here cannot reasonably mean that trust is simply lacking on Nietzsche’s part; it must mean that he has good reason to be the opposite of trusting toward systematisers. [2] For if trust was only lacking on his part, he ought to at least give them the benefit of the doubt, that is: he ought not to avoid them yet, he ought first to determine whether they were trustworthy or the opposite.

Apparently Nietzsche has already determined that they are the opposite. But his reason for being the opposite of trusting toward them cannot be found in the first half of the aphorism. Logically, therefore, it must be in the second half.

The second sentence consists of a single statement: “The will to system is a lack of integrity.” Nonetheless, it can be broken in two as easily as the first. The first separates its two halves by the word “and”; the second does so by the word “is”. In mathematical terms, then, the relation between the two halves of the first sentence is additive, that between those of the second sentence, equative. The second sentence consists of the two members of an equation—or rather, of a correspondence.

We will soon see that this correspondence is not simply equative. The two members of the ‘equation’ are “the will to system” and “a lack of integrity”. It is easy to see the formal correspondence between the two: “the” and “a” are both articles; “will” and “lack” are both nouns; “to” and “of” are both prepositions; and “system” and “integrity” are, again, both nouns. Also, there is a reason other than the word order why “will” and “lack”, for instance, more obviously correspond with one another than, for instance, “will” and “integrity”. “Will” and “lack” are both simple words, words a child might use; whereas “system” and “integrity” are both more complex words.

The former are literally simple, and the latter literally complex, because the latter are etymological compounds, whereas the former are not. We will look into the composition of these compounds next; but first, we will compare the non-compounds.

“Will” and “lack” do not mean the same, but there is an obvious causal relation between the two. A will may easily follow from a lack, after all. Our hypothesis, then, will be that the will to system follows from a lack of integrity. But what is a will to system? What, for that matter, is a system?

The word “system” derives from the Greek sustema, which is a compound of sun, “together”, and histanai, “to cause to stand”. A system, then, is basically a group of things that have been caused to stand together. And the will to system is then the will to stand things together.

This will to stand things together, according to our hypothesis, follows from a lack of integrity. But what is integrity?

The word “integrity” is the nominalised form of the word “integer” (adj.), which in turn is cognate with “entire”: both derive from the Latin in-, “not”, and tangere, “to touch”. Something that is integer or entire is something that is ‘untouched’ in the same sense a meal can be said to be untouched: nobody has eaten from it.

Whereas Nietzsche uses the word System, however, he does not use the word Integrität. Instead, he uses the word Rechtschaffenheit. This literally means “rightcreatedness”.

I contend that what is created right, in Nietzsche’s view, is whole, that is, entire. It is not a patchwork of different pieces, but hewn from one stone, so to say.

Now Nietzsche says elsewhere that “[t]he great form of a work of art will appear, if the artist has the great form in his essential nature!” [3] This implies that if the artist is in his essential nature integer, that is, hewn from one stone, his creations will naturally resemble their creator in this respect. And conversely, if the artist has the will to the uniformity of his creation, this betrays that he does not have that form in his essential nature—that is, he himself is not ‘created right’.

The philosopher, too, is an artist. So if a philosopher has the will to system, i.e., seeks to stand together things which naturally stand apart, this betrays that things do not naturally stand together in his own soul. He has not been created right; he is a patchwork, and one which does not have the honesty to admit this. For if he had that honesty, he would not seek to smooth over the patchwork which is his philosophy, but present it as it is, a patchwork. And then he would be integer, in the sense that his creation, like himself, was a patchwork: they would both be integer as patchworks. Moreover, he would be intellectually integer: and intellectual integrity, in Nietzsche’s view, is the supreme kind of integrity. We may even ask if its presence does not prove the essential integrity of the person who has it. This would mean that an integer patchwork was a self-contradiction. But this, in turn, does not mean that an integer being cannot bring forth a patchwork.

Thus in Mixed Opinions and Maxims, Nietzsche writes: “Against the shortsighted.—So you think it must be piecemeal [or: “patchwork”] because one gives it (and has to give it) in pieces?” [4] And in Thus Spake Zarathustra: “In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.” [5] Nietzsche’s proverbs or maxims [Sprüche] are peaks which are all part of a single mountain range. His “right readers” [6] must not only analyse the individual peaks, but also synthesise the collective in their minds. Nietzsche does have a system: a natural system, consisting of things which have been stood together by nature. Nature created Nietzsche right, that is, whole; and his creation, his philosophy, is in turn also a whole. What his right readers must do is reconstruct that whole.

1. Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, 26, entire.
2. Cf. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, mis- (prefix), 3.
3. Nachgelassene Werke 1881-86.
4. Mixed Opinions and Maxims, 128, entire.
5. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of Reading and Writing.
6. The Antichrist, Preface.

This, of course, puts a whole counter-spin on such projects as “Intelligent Design”, and for that matter, evolutionary psychology (at least as a prescriptive force), insofar as it is designing (taken as a systems approach, at least) that is precisely what must be avoided.

It also reminds me of a Buddhist perspective, if we see Samsara as “system”. …“Oh, what wicked webs we weave,” and all that…

Much better the project of poiesis, where “it-all”, as a whole, is merely “heaped up”.

Nietzsche’s Stance toward Music. Another essay in the literal sense. Parts I and II.

I

Also in the ‘Maxims and Arrows’ section of Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes: “How little is required for happiness! The sound of a bagpipe.—Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.” [1] This aphorism is structured differently from the one on system. For whereas in that aphorism, Nietzsche got to the point immediately, in this one he only gets there in the second half.

The aphorism begins with an exclamation: “How little is required for happiness!”—This is simply an emphatic statement, a claim. Little is required for happiness, according to Nietzsche. And he immediately gives an example: “The sound of a bagpipe.”—The sound (der Ton) is enough! No need of elaborate compositions: only one note (as Ton may also be translated) may have to be played. One ‘tone’ can make one happy.

And this example is not arbitrary. For the first half of the aphorism, before the dash, is only the introduction to the actual statement: “Without music, life would be an error.”—This implies that, whereas one musical note may suffice to make one happy, one cannot be (truly) happy without any music! The last statement serves to confirm this:

“The German imagines even God singing songs.”—It appears Nietzsche is referring to the God-image of the German ‘race’. This German ‘race’ does not consist of the Germans he despised so much—his contemporaries among the Germans: these represent a decline from that race, which was a race of thinkers. And indeed, the verb translated as “to imagine” is sich denken, the reflexive form of denken, “to think”. The most thoughtful race of the modern West, the German, imagined even God singing songs.

Why should God sing songs?—The preceding statements imply two interpretations. The first is that even God would be unhappy without music: He has to sing songs for himself, otherwise His life will be an error (Irrtum), a state of wandering, of aimlessness. And the second is that the vision of God would not make the German happy if God did not make music: the only way it could be a “blessed vision”, to speak with Milton [2]—a beatific vision, a vision making happy—, would be if it was also an ‘audition’, so to say: an audience or hearing before God, but one where the visitor hears the visited—not vice versa.

II

We have seen what Nietzsche is saying with Maxim or Arrow 33. Little is required for happiness, according to Nietzsche: one ‘tone’ of music may suffice. And conversely, without any music life would be aimless. Even God’s life would be incomplete, even the image of God would be incomplete, without Him occupying Himself with music. But what is the relation between aimlessness and the absence of happiness?

Another Maxim or Arrow reads: “If one has one’s own why? of life, one gets along with almost any how?—Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does.” [3] I think we will have to understand this one in order to understand # 33.

We see that the Englishman, i.e., the English ‘race’, is here contrasted with all others. And in Part 8 of Beyond Good and Evil, titled “Peoples and Fatherlands”, Nietzsche begins a new aphorism as follows. “They are no philosophical race—these English: Bacon signifies an attack on the philosophical spirit in general, Hobbes, Hume and Locke a debasement and devaluation of the concept “philosopher” for more than a century. It was against Hume that Kant rose up; it was Locke of whom Schelling had a right to say: “je méprise Locke” [“I despise Locke”]”. [4]

Thus Nietzsche contrasts the English race with the whole human race in general [3], and with the German race in particular [4]. And hear how Nietzsche concludes that aphorism from Peoples and Fatherlands! “But what offends in even the most humane Englishman is, to speak metaphorically (and not metaphorically—), his lack of music: he has in the movements of his soul and body no rhythm and dance, indeed not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for “music”.” [ibid.]

Could this be why the Englishman strives for happiness? Before we can answer this question, we must first see what Arrow # 12 points to: “Formula for our happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal…” [5]—This is the last sentence of the passage in which it occurs; and it refers back to the opening sentence of the Preface: for the word “our” refers to the phrase “the fewest” from that opening sentence [6].

In the second sentence of the Preface, Nietzsche says that of these ‘fewest’, “[p]erhaps not one […] is even living yet.” [ibid.] We might rephrase this as “hardly one of them is even living yet”. For one of them was living when he wrote that, and he knew it: it was Nietzsche himself. (Note, however, that he said of himself and his kind that they “are born posthumously” [ibid.; cf. Maxim or Arrow # 15]: Nietzsche was living physically then, but not yet, hardly yet spiritually.)

Nietzsche called himself “the last anti-political German”. [7] Could this mean that he was the last of the Germans, in the sense that the Germans were thinkers? For elsewhere he says: “The Germans of today are no thinkers any longer”. [8] But he himself was a thinker, of course: in fact, in the same passage, he says The Will to Power is “[a] book for thinking, nothing else: it belongs to those for whom thinking is a delight, nothing else”. [ibid.] Compare this with the opening sentence of the Preface to The Antichrist! “This book belongs to the fewest.” [6]

The formula for ‘our’ happiness, then, ‘we last of the Germans’, is a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal. It is a goal, a straight line to that goal, and a yes and a no dependent of that goal: it is the yes to whatever brings us closer to that goal, and the corresponding no. The goal, however, is not happiness: happiness consists in having a goal (“one’s why? of life” [3]), seeing a straight line to that goal, and hearing a yes and a no dependent of that goal.

1. Twilight of the Idols (1888), Maxims and Arrows, 33, entire.
2. Paradise Lost, Book V, verse 613.
3. Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, 12, entire.
4. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism # 252.
5. The Antichrist (1888), section 1.
6. ibid., Preface.
7. Ecce Homo (1888), Why I Am So Wise, section 3, first version.
8. The Will to Power, translation Kaufmann, Editor’s Introduction, 5.

‘I could only believe in a God who dances.’ And perhaps the Germans could only believe in a God who sings?

Remember too his reference to the heavy feet of Englishwomen- it would add a nice touch.

Perfectly put.

Nietzsche’s Stance toward Music, Part III.

III

We still have not answered the following questions. 1) What is the relation between aimlessness and the absence of happiness? 2) Why does the Englishman strive for happiness?—The second half of [3] implies that the first half applies for all men except the English. English ‘philosophy’, however,—modern ideas, like the ideal of ‘happiness’—has infected all the West [9]—i.e., all of “modern man”, except the “fewest”. [5, 6]

Now these ‘fewest’ have “discovered happiness”, “know the way”, “have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years”. [5] That they have discovered happiness means they have found “a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal”. [ibid.] In other words, they have found their own why? of life. [3] Only if one has one’s why? of life, only if one has a goal (and thereby a straight line to that goal, and a yes and a no in relation to that goal)—only then can one be happy regardless of one’s how? of life.

As late as 1888, however, the only people who had attained such happiness were the fewest. The “rest” [6], i.e., all of mankind insofar as it was infected by English ‘philosophy’—in other words, insofar as it was modern—, did not know such happiness; the only kind of happiness they knew was “the happiness of the weakling”: ““resignation” [“Ergebung”]”. [5] Ergebung means an active resigning. ‘Modern man’ is aimless—his life is an error—, and his only happiness lies in resigning to his aimlessness, to his rambling.

The ‘fewest’, on the other hand, do not resign themselves, though they are happy in a different kind of resignation: Ergebenheit, a passive resignedness. When Nietzsche first mentioned his amor fati, he alternated between that term and the term Gottergebenheit, “resignedness to God”. [10] Though ‘modern man’ is unhappy about his fate, he derives at least a modicum of happiness from resigning to it anyway; the ‘fewest’, on the other hand, are happy about their fate, but do not resign themselves: for it is part of their fate to have a strong will. With this will they strive, not for happiness, but for the attainment of their goal. This goal is the realisation of the new ideal: the man who wants the eternal recurrence of the whole chain of fate. [11]

9. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism # 253.
10. Letters of June 1882.
11. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism # 56.

Nietzsche’s Stance toward Music. Intermezzo and Part IV.

Intermezzo

These essays are essays in the literal sense in that they are attempts. This is especially evident in the case of my essay on ‘music’. By inquiring into the connection between aimlessness and the absence of happiness, I entered much deeper waters than I thought.

As an apropos(?): the man whom Nietzsche presents as an example of “[w]hat is lacking and has always been lacking in England” [4], Carlyle, was a Scot, not an Englishman—and bagpipes are most commonly associated with Scotland, of course. I have no idea as to the relevance of these facts in this context.

I also do not know yet how I will return to the topic of music.—

IV

Though English ‘philosophy’ has corrupted all the West [9], the Englishman is “stronger-willed” than the German. [4] Thus the happiness of the Englishman should not lie in resigning, but in having a goal. Because the Englishman does not have a goal, however, he thinks the natural goal of mankind is happiness. [3]

Because he has no why? of life, he thinks his why? of life must be to ‘improve’ his how? of life, so as to be able to answer that question with: “happily!”. If he had a why? of life, however, he would hardly care whether that answer be “happily” or “unhappily”: for he would then derive his happiness from his why?, not from his how?.

The paradox is easy to see. The goal of happiness, of being able to answer “how?” with “happily”, is a goal—an answer to the question “why?”. Thus the Englishman, in striving for happiness, is already happy: he hardly cares whether the answer to the question “how?” be “happily” or “unhappily”! This paradox is of a kind with the paradox George Morgan discerns:

[size=95]Nietzsche charges that liberalism defeats its own end. As long as liberal institutions are still being fought for, real freedom is indeed obtained:

[/size][size=85]Looked at more exactly, war produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as war, makes the illiberal instincts endure. And war educates to freedom. For what is freedom? … becoming more indifferent to hardship, severity, deprivation, even to life; readiness to sacrifice men for one’s cause, oneself not excepted.[/size][size=95]

As soon as liberal institutions are won they become the worst enemies of freedom, undermining will to power, levelling, trivializing—“they make men petty, cowardly and self-indulgent—with them the herd-animal triumphs every time.”[/size] [12]

12. What Nietzsche Means, page 355, quoting from Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, aphorism # 38.

Nietzsche’s Stance toward Music. Part V.

V

The aphorism from which Morgan quotes is highly instructive. For among other things, what it says there is this: “Freedom means that the manly instincts, which delight in war and victory, dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of “happiness”. The human being who has become free […] spurns the despicable kind of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen, and other democrats.” [13]

Do we not here discern the Nietzschean tactic of appealing to one’s readers’ pride in order to win them over? [14] I am talking about the mention of Englishmen, and their place in the list.—So far the second sentence. And as for the first: does it not explain [3]? Is not having a goal etc. the formula for ‘our’ happiness because it means having a cause for which to wage war? And is not the “delight” mentioned above, the ground of the “happiness” mentioned in [5]?

The Englishman, then, in waging war for a happy how? of life, discovers the happiness of having a why? of life. “Ye say it is the good cause which halloweth even war? I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause.” [15] But the problem is that, once this war is victorious, it defeats its own end, as Morgan says. For if the cause hallows the war rather than vice versa, the ‘end’ is the means, and the ‘means’ is the true end. Thus even if only for the sake of the good war, the cause ought not to be peace, contentedness, moral virtue, etc. But it cannot be the opposite, either! For then it would cancel itself out: by waging a war for war, for instance, one immediately attains one’s end. The result would be an infinite series of infinitely short wars… No, the ‘end’ cannot be the true end. One cannot fight a war for war.

This now seems to dawn on me as a great problem. I am reminded—

What do I care about the form!—This is not about writing a nice little essay, but about getting to the bottom of things!

In [4], Nietzsche does not just call the Englishman “stronger-willed” than the German, but also “gloomier” (düsterer). And this same word, düster, is what he uses to describe himself and his kind: “We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatum—the abundance, the tension, the damming of strength.” [5] Strong-willed and gloomy—do Nietzsche and his kind not sound like Englishmen?

13. Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, aphorism # 38.
14. Cf. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue, section 5.
    15 Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of War and Warriors.
15. The Will to Power, section 1022, entire.

Part I contains a flaw. Sich denken is not the reflexive form of denken (which would mean “to think oneself”), but means “to think to oneself”, in the original sense of “to think”, i.e., “to cause to appear”.

VI

This essay has become hopelessly long and profuse, quickly after part I (which was supposed to be the entire essay, at first). This second ‘essay’, then, may now be considered a thinking aloud on my part.

I discern two principal causes to wage war for: 1) ‘peace’, and 2) expansion. I put “peace” within quotation marks because those who ‘fight for peace’ do not tend to just want peace: for then they would not fight, they would be pacifists like Jesus, not resisting those who seek to take advantage of them. Those who fight for ‘peace’, or ‘freedom’, want power:

[size=95]The will to power appears
a. among the oppressed, among slaves of all kinds, as will to “freedom”: merely getting free seems to be the goal[.]
[WP 776.][/size]

But there is a difference between the will to expansion and the will to ‘freedom’ or ‘peace’. For those who fight for ‘peace’ want to have a modicum of power which they will then defend—for which they will then wage defensive war, if pushed to it. It is a case of wanting “contentedness”, “peace, generally”, “virtue” (cf. TSZ, Of the Virtuous, for a list of examples of this kind of ‘virtue’), etc. Nietzsche places the will to expansion in sharp distinction to such will to ‘peace’ etc.:

[size=95]Not contentedness, but more power; not peace, generally, but war; not virtue, but fitness (virtue in the Renaissance-style, virtù, moraline-free virtue)
[AC 2.][/size]

The difference is essentially a difference between waging aggressive or only defensive war for one’s cause: the cause of ‘peace’, ‘freedom’, ‘happiness’, and whatever other catch-words may be used to euphemise the liberal-democratic goal—which is at bottom the survival and flourishing of the mediocre, the average—even the down-right botched—at the cost of the flourishing and the survival of the best human specimens—this cause demands that the war one wages for it be only a means, a necessary ‘evil’.

Nietzsche already clearly saw the truth of the liberal (and, farther to the ‘Left’, the socialist and communist) movement in the very beginning of his philosophical career: in his early essay, The Greek State, he advocates “aggressive war” to counteract “the deviation of the State tendency” from its natural and “proper aim”—“the Olympian existence and ever-renewed procreation and preparation of the genius” (1872).

Sauwelios’ attempts to disclose Nietzsche’s stances are among the best.

Sauwelios, I was wondering what you think of Nietzsche’s use of Schopenhauer’s view of music (music is a copy of the will’s essence and the plastic arts are representations of the Ideas) and how it would fit into your above essays. As you might be aware, in The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche’s position is that being is musical in nature; the Apollonian and Dionysian are both musical forces. The former being the will to delimit boundaries, form etc. the latter the will to collapse the principium individuationis.

Well, Nietzsche later came back from his Schopenhauerian view that in music, the Will could be apprehended directly. But I do think that I should separate the first part of my second essay from its other parts, and write an alternative second part focusing on what Nietzsche says in BGE:

[size=95]By means of music the passions enjoy themselves.
[BGE 106, entire.][/size]

Then I could perhaps rewrite the rest of my second essay as a new, third essay, explaining just the aphorism about the why? and the how? of life.

What does BGE 106 mean? Why shouldn’t I make an ‘attempt’ to fathom it here and now? (By the way: Nothingness, thanks for the compliment.) My attempt must again take an etymological approach. I have to get into the literal or etymological meanings of the words translated as “by means of” and “passion”. First “passion”:

The word translated as “passion” is Leidenschaft, which indeed means “passion”. It literally means “sufferingship” (cf. “hardship”), or rather “to-suffership”. There is thus a play on leiden, “to suffer”, and geniessen, “to enjoy”. One is reminded of Zarathustra’s speech On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions (in the Parkes translation), Von den Freuden- und Leidenschaften, “Of the Joys- and Sufferingsships” (Freudenschaft is actually a faulty coinage, taking the Leiden in Leidenschaft to be the plural of Leid, “suffering, sorrow”. With words like Wissenschaft, “to-knowship”, i.e., “science”, Nietzsche could have known better).

The word translated as “means” is vermöge, a preposition. I must admit I do not know if it derives from the noun Vermögen or directly from the verb vermögen. In any case, the noun is simply the verb nominalised. But I suspect it derives from the noun. The verb means “to be able” (cognate with “may” and “might”), and the preposition is followed by a genitive case, which is usually translated with “of”, so “by means of” is a pretty accurate translation. We may want to compare “by virtue of”, for “virtue” derives, by way of the Latin vir, “man, male human being”, from the Greek [w]is, “muscle” and, hence, “strength”. This of course comes very close to the English “might”, and thus to the German Macht (“power”, as in “the will to power”).

“By the power of music, the passions enjoy themselves.” We need not find another word for “passion”, as that word is wholly analogous with Leidenschaft. For it derives from the Latin pati, “to suffer” (itself a deponens, a word with a passive form but an active meaning). Now if it is only by the power of music that the passions can enjoy themselves, then we can understand why life would be an error without music. For whereas Nietzsche does not say, like Buddha or Schopenhauer, that all is suffering, he does say that all is passion. For he says that this world—the only world there is—is the will to power, and nothing besides; and in section 635 of The Will to Power, he says the will to power is a pathos—the Greek word analogous with the Latin passio (stem passion-), from paskhein, “to suffer”. And in BGE 36, he reduces all our desires, passions, drives, affects, or however you like to call them, to the will to power. In music, the Will may no longer be immediately intuited according to the mature Nietzsche, but even more importantly, the rationally or scientific-methodically apprehended fact that the world is the will to power and nothing besides can only be transfigured by its power! The will to power, the great Pan, cannot be conceived of as divine without his flute!

Interesting response.
In regards to 106 BGE, I believe it is a quote or paraphrase of Plato, (according to kaufmann). Which is right, the Greeks did see a direct affinity between music and the soul (Aristotle The Politics VIII). Schopenhauer didn’t reference this in his remarkable musical thesis.

So you are saying that music does lie beneath the will to power; the force that wills new transfigurations is underlying musical tones in Nietzsche’s mature philosophy?

One is hard pressed to find quotes or aphorisms that see Nietzsche embracing Schopenhauer’s’ musical thesis in his later years. Yet there are hints of it in Twilight- Expeditions of an Untimely Man. He alludes to music being the “original Dionysian condition” that has a direct effect on the muscles (the exact aphorism number escapes me at the moment as I my texts are not within my immediate vicinity). It seems to me that Dionysus becomes more associated with the eternal recurrence and procreation, as the very last aphorism of TI insinuates. However, do you think that the eternal recurrence and the “mysteries of sexuality” are a “type of music”; kind of like underlying tones of the world Nietzsche believes he has tapped in to?

Interesting. Can you tell more about it when you have access to the book again please?

Well, no, music does not lie beneath the will to power; nothing does. Music is a mode of the will to power.

[size=95]the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity
[http://m-w.com/dictionary/music 1 a.][/size]

Ordering.

Being a musical layman, I think I first have to read this before I say more: http://www.essortment.com/all/elementsmusic_rllc.htm.

[size=95]I have seen, high above Wagner, the tragedy with music—and heard, high above Schopenhauer, the music in the tragedy of existence.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass.][/size]

Existence, i.e., the world as will-to-power, is a tragedy. According to Nietzsche, there is music in it. Does this not mean there is a certain order in it? Melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics? And do not the passions enjoy themselves in being ordered like that—in ordering themselves like that? Is that not how they build power structures? Like soldiers in a column, for instance? Is the music in the tragedy of existence not the war dance of wills-to-power?

[size=95]An erotic war dance is a perfect image for a realization of the will to power, which creates out of a sort of passionate overfullness, but which also has to turn against that which it births and loves and destroy it in order to create and overcome continuously.
[Claudia Crawford, Nietzsche’s Dionysian arts (essay).][/size]

Complete clarity concerning Music (used in a more genral sense here than what is usually understood by that term) is of necessity an important common prerequisite in our beloved Invisible College, and this since very ancient and venerable times!

Today, the bookshelves are full of wild and wacky produce by various modern scientists, seemingly covering the very subject. But do they? Those so inclined can spend time discovering for themselves; but if one wished to go directly to the destination without that fruitless detour, then know that hidden inside the public libraries of Western universities are usually two old, gem-like books, which at first glance no one would think to turn to for the needed instruction. They are:

“On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music”, by Helmholtz (1863!)- a classic and entirely readable scientific tome of what today would be called the experimental psychophysiology of sound, the ear, etc.;
“The Sense of Music”, by V. Zuckerkandl - an ingenious little book, modestly positioning itself as a musicological guide for laymen about how to see and understand the “class” in classical music, while in practice introducing generalizable philosophical ideas and ways-of-seeing that take one far beyond any national or notional nook.

These half-forgotten books, read side by side and properly thought over, will equip the reader. By “equip” I mean that persons who formerly pontificated to us willy-nilly about music (especially musicians), will now be forced to recoil from us in disgust, as one always recoils from those who know as opposed to posing about knowledge; similar to how propaganda boys have to stay well out of the way of filthy front-line soldiers, etc.

We have said that complete clarity concerning music is very much indispensable, and have now given the immediate means to obtain it in practice. What follows is a personal digression about Music which can be safely skipped by anyone not yet inclined to delve “head on” into its details.

One thing that becomes clear at once to a more or less intrepid investigator, is that it will be impossible to obtain any of the wanted clarity via so-called “musical education”, even of the highest level, because the latter has virtuosity as its object, and almost never concerns itself with knowledge, or musical RAdiance. The entire idea of having clarity and understanding in this area has long been taboo: we have been encouraged to instead always speak in meaningless flowery ways of “musical genius”, or “ineffable emotive power”, etc. - and leave it at that. Musicians produced by this crude factory (of useless yet precise and fine objects, much like mechanical golden watches) will pride themselves on virtuosic skills in performance or hearing - such as Absolute Pitch, the ability to tell very exactly whether or not a certain tone is “perfect” or out of tune. Meanwhile, the majority of them are unaware and apathetic of the fact that the 12-tone Equal Tempered instruments on which they usually train their remarkable ability in no case allow even a single perfect tone relationship to occur, always inserting deliberate detunings. Therefore they train to misidentify sonorous facts with given convention, and then dogmatically call this precisely delineated error - the truth, while the truth itself inevitably becomes for them something awkward and “out of tune”. When the most intuitive fundamentals are compromised to such an unthinkable degree, is it any wonder that the musical pundits that surround the performing virtuoso-product are given to freely confusing rhythm and meter, musical tone and auditory pitch, tempo and rhythm, etc. - as happens to be convenient at any given moment? We must object to this tendency, by instead holding our terms to mean certain well-understood things and those things only; this way we accomplish the first steps towards an unknown and RAdical musicology, as is demanded by our decidedly anti-virtuosic, anti-circus, anti-vulgar tasks.

This is why, despite a very long and involved history in both theory and practice, it would still be a grave mistake for one of us today to approach the subject of music proper with the idea that it is something “known” by its apparent experts, for example as one would with a particular mathematical theory or the roadmap of a given city. Music proper (especially in the original sense that began and inspired this message throughout) is an aspect of philosophy - it stands waiting as an undiscovered and infinite field that permits the formation of original perspectives, insights in accordance with our own goals. Music is exemplary as a practical area where the Nietzschean anti-systematist approach becomes directly applicable, indeed - unavoidable, with its critical recognition that to systematize certain things in a logical manner is akin to poking one’s own eyes out, yet the thing must still be investigated, by other means and other faculties at our disposal. Thus, we may move mountains in spirit, without any apparent “system of movement”, and reach our goal without any apparent “system of goals”…

We are used to these ancient Egyptian depictions, thought to be some of the oldest, showing paired seated men, most often one is shown with a flute and the other, facing the first, holds on to no object, instead oddly covering one of his ears and simultaneously displaying what looks like a hand-sign invoking concentration, purity. Not being especially versed in Egyptology, I treated this as an arbitrary curiosity, until one day I discovered a (contemporary) video recording, showing an ordinary pair of South Indian Brahmins, taking up the exact same “Egyptian” configuration to recite sections from the Holy Vedas! I am certain that these men would be as surprised as I was, had someone told them that what they practiced was in fact an ancient Egyptian past-time. Jokes aside, what I then heard coming out of their mouths (the Vedas are recited in a striking, rythmically complex unison manner) changed what I hitherto understood as music and its purpose. In that moment of discovery, it newly held the potential for indescribable, inhuman majesty.

[I was able to find this example, comparable to what I described, via you-tube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tZv9utp-oc[/youtube]

The “Greek” tragic chorus, too, was not only an interesting “but now outdated” dramatic device, as it’s sometimes made out to be. The lucky and persistent will comprehend what the original meaning of that holy unison was, by discovering (among other things) its still-surviving contemporary counterparts, and my prophetic prediction is that they will be found in the most “unlikely” places, to match and supercede my quaint “Egyptian Brahmins”.

How is this fundamentally divisive form of artistry possible (in the sense of dividing nations and individuals both, by degree of their comprehension or incomprehension), and indeed to speak scientifically, what is the basic mechanism behind these seemingly magical practices? The answer is quite accessible for the philosophically-minded and it’s held suspended, like the yolk inside the egg, in the generalized concept of ratio, that is: the perceptible exact pattern of relation between things, and not things in themselves. Hence, where some have metaphysics, we have metaphor, and where others have names, we might have metonyms (thinking of Nietzsche’s Appollo and Dionysus here would be wholly appropriate). In music, absolute pitches are of little to no consequence to us, as we understand them without fixation upon absolutes, to mean arbitrary starting points from which THEN elaborate and exacting patterns are made. If the absolute pitch shifts for any reason, we will by means of our mysterious science reconstruct the pattern anew, using completely different, perhaps even entirely inaudible pitches, causing sound to become light, or vice-versa - slowing it down to tactile vibration; or we might transpose ourselves into the realm of geometries of the plane, causing harmonic tesselations there and weaving our meaning into a carpet to be casually walked upon; we may make good use of the sensation of touch, taste, sequence (as in cinematic montage) or impress the same patterns upon timeless megaliths, arranged to structure space covertly or overtly into a labyrinth and self-observatory.

-WL

Nietzsche ties the Egyptian with extreme Apollinianism:

[size=95][L]est the Apollinian tendency freeze all form into Egyptian rigidity, and in attempting to prescribe its orbit to each particular wave inhibit the movement of the lake, the Dionysian flood tide periodically destroys all the little circles in which the Apollinian will would confine Hellenism.
[BT 9 (1872).][/size]

Methinks the chants posted by WL are highly Apollinian. The Apollinian and the Dionysian are no antitheses:

[size=95]In the Dionysian intoxication there is sexuality and voluptuousness: it is [i.e., they are] not lacking in the Apollinian. There must also be a difference in tempo in the two conditions… The extreme calm in certain sensations of intoxication (more strictly: the retardation of the feelings of time and space) likes to be reflected in a vision of the calmest gestures and types of soul. The classical style is essentially a representation of this calm, simplification, abbreviation, concentration—the highest feeling of power is concentrated in the classical type. To react slowly: a great consciousness: no feeling of struggle.
[WP 799 (1888), entire, trans. Kaufmann, with my corrections.][/size]

Formerly I was puzzled by the word “also” in this passage: for it implies said difference is not the first difference indicated in the passage. But there is only one sentence preceding this explicit indication, and the only relation between the Apollinian and the Dionysian indicated in it is a similarity, not a difference… The solution is of course that similarity is always relative (otherwise it is sameness): and the first difference indicated is implied by the negative way of phrasing the similarity: “not lacking”. I am reminded of the Latin nonnullus: literally “not none”, and hence “some” (as opposed to “much”). Even in the Apollinian intoxication (i.e., contrary to how it may seem), there is some sexuality and voluptuousness.

---------------S&V—tempo
Apollinian—some—low
Dionysian—much—high

I have spent the last few weeks searching for the reference but cannot find it. Maybe I confused it without another Kaufmann footnote. Or maybe it was in a non-Kaufmann translation of BGE. I’ll keep looking for it.

After further research, I am now inclined to agree. Nietzsche makes no bones about dispelling an ontology of music in GM III:5 with his ridicule of Wagner.

With regard to the original topic I came across an interesting passage in Genealogy of Morals that you might want to check out and connect with this thread. It’s in section 2 of the preface. Nietzsche is writing about the development of his ideas from Human, All-Too Human. He writes that his ideas became more intertwined leading him to believe that they were not the result of arbitrariness but from a fundamental will of knowledge.

Nietzsche futher goes on to say that a philosopher has

. (kaufmann’s translation).

Yes, thank you, that’s precisely what I meant.

I was just looking through some notes I took that I remember were relevant to this subject. The question of Nietzsche’s view on system is really interesting to me because I always hear/read that he was anti-systematic and against systems, but yet, I come across passages that seem to contradict those assertions.

Some claim that Nietzsche’s views changed over time, which is possible, though I seem to sense a unity to his early and latter thought in many essentials. Others say that he is contradictory and that is fine because of his anti-systematic stance. I don’t wholly buy this either. Your orginal post was really enlightening for me. It does not seem to be the case that Nietzsche’s stance toward system is as simple as people commonly assume.

I think one can find some interesting connections between Nietzsche’s stance toward system, his view on the personal in philosophical systems, views on origins, and views on culture. I bring up culture because Nietzsche mentions unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people, which instantly brought to mind your analysis of integer. Barbarism or non-culture? has no inner unity. It’s a mix of pieces, usually from other cultures. Did Nietzsche choose barbarism to denote his concept here because of the meaning of βάρβαρος in Greek?

Later on Nietzsche spoke of the phenomenon of decadence quite often, and I think it’s also related to his early concept of barbarism. Anyway, I have nothing worked out here. If you pursued this question futher these are just some things you might want to check out.

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
-philosophical systems are wholly true for their founders only
-whoever rejoices in great human beings will also rejoice in philosophical systems, even if completely erroneous
-these systems will always have one incontrovertible point: personal mood, color
-origins are barbaric - always find the crude, empty, ugly
-an unrestrained thirst for knowledge barbarizes men just as much as hatred of knowledge
Untimely Meditations: (David Strauss)
-culture is, above all, unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people
-barbarism is lack of style or a chaotic jumble of all styles