Coul you recommend some works? The most relevant book I’ve read is the Closing of the American Mind, which contains much astute insight but overall speaks a moral contradiction; the philosophical ethics eroticized contradicts the authors true moral nature. I prefer the clean cut Sloterdijk so far, who has no moral stance save a sly German naturalness to power-lusting. He brings up a great new meaning of the thymos, the rage principle, he considers to be the monad of existence, where eros is the resulting dyad.
VO: self-valuing is thymos, valuing is eros. The former applies to the singularity, the irreducible, the latter to the cosmos; harmony, will to power, ordering-in-time, fractal-flux. The mapping of reality is impossible. It mirrors itself falsely from the beginning, and keeps mirrorring. Nothing is quite exact, everything is askew. What is because everything is always in motion, and it is in motion because it was askew from the beginning. That is why rage is the only thing that sets things right; it does so from one perspective.
But this Relativity Theory, and we were engaging the social sciences. But this is the beauty to me, the place where they meet. And I believe it’s the only way to understand either is to understand both; Einstein was a very clever psychologist, that is why he managed to stay alive in those days - his real counterpart was Bernays. That is the social scientist of our age, and we are by no means rid of him by recognizing that. I fear or - I think that he will come to rule the next two thousand years. Or his method, the new crucifixion. Now man is crucified for real; we have now let the state of Rome, Spain, Germany, America complicit in our innermost secrets; there is no more devil; hwe is fully exteriorized. Now we will feel what it is like to be a Christ. The world will be forced into war. The elites will crus the populace so hard that it must divide into two qualities, like a piece of burnt wood kicked along the tail splits open in two spinning parts, spin and counter spin; and this will be the birth of the Higher Man, the New Knight.
This has already come to pass, the eleventh of september, the splitting open of consciousness into two parts; self-valuing blindness and self-valuing martyrdom. Man had collectively been forced into primitive religion. Only the philosophers stand out; but even they are marked by their time; their assertion is of crisis, of the absence of power in man; and only the first glimmerings of honesty are crystallizing out of the Abyss - damnation is a blessing in disguise; but the robe of the magician is the leopards hide and the skin of the dragon, the patterns of our fractal. The best itself; this is the monad. In so far as there is a beast behind the web, blood under the skin, this is rageful. But be alarmed, rage is good. Rage contained in the heart is lie a crispy hearth, rage is always only for one thing alone, and that is liberty. Nietzsche called it power but I see liberty; the two can be equals but power can refer to charge, and the will to charge is impossible; liberty signifies release but not dissolution.
Quite starkly a enters vision now; In Nietzsche release is not possible; every overcoming is again an enslavement to a newer greater will. Will to power to will to powee to will - it is cycle of drives without crystalizing. Much that has willed to power now wills to stability and perhaps a slow decline into a more subtle form.
Alright I will grant this is of course of course always reducible to will to power, if one wishes to interpret will to power in such a way - but the will to be more subtle; yes indeed this is also the will to power. But subtlety itself? There is the crux, here Heidegger has begun building the bridge - from two sides, as is natural; thinking, building, dwelling; but dwelling is also a thinking and building is also a dwelling. And mostly thinking is a dwelling, and a building. Is this not most pleasant of being human - being able to build, and cultivate? And second best is burning down, or at least to our fellow humans in time.
But some ancient groves have not burned and stand. There is a very good reason for that. The gods never left the shrubbery; and small they are, gods; they come at night and whisper; but osme gods are large, and they have never even appeared to have vanished.
I find it most useful to talk of gods than of political parties. They are both signifiers for processes and protagonists, but gods are more subtle in type, and they are always represented. The god of wings and word, the goddess of fairness and fortitude, the father of reckless splendor and truth, the wife of jealousy, the surf-born principle of lust, the hoarding king on his throne of time, and the always angry ocean. These are metaphors for things that always play a part in all of our lives. And they are revered; by me, as I am a Hellenist - I revere Zeus because I am awe inspired by the lightning and the sunset and this is the name our people gave to that power, the promise, hope, reason for awesomeness in man.
Did you ever think that perhaps we are all, animals and man and tree alike, so awesome because of the sunrise?
What we value is our self-valuing; we are children of the sun;
it is only in the deepest principle; the possibility of being itself, are we not children blind to our bliss, but true beings, suns -
and this bestowing bliss is not rare, either. Most philosophically inspired people have so become because of having felt the plasmatic nature of happiness, and find only in the limits thew amalgamate of yes and no which becomes “hell yes” - to put it in a phrase -
this ‘will to’ - yes to what indeed?
That is the question of our time;
what can we inflict, without contradicting our instincts and spirit?
I find this Straussian vision of Plato most interesting; if I am not mistaken it has led Sauwelios, who is an expert on Strauss, to the belief in four ages, a Homeric, a Platonic, a Machiavellian and a Nietzschean age. Have you heard of this?
As you notice I find it more convenient now to be poetic than to be political’ I pretend to be prophetic but I present a possibility and use it to say a few words about what I think is worthy of them. But Let us now consider Politics; is the nature of politics not that it is always hidden? Is politics not a euphemism for a kind of phantom-acting? Is this not why war is said to be the continuation of politics by other means – all of it is one thing; maneuvering.
But this is too cynical because there are of course aims, and statements, and perhaps principle and philosophy and expression of what one has learned about oneself and wants to change in the world is the beginning of politics. But what it comes down, to, always - the method; but precisely that which remains consistent in von Clausewitz is what lives both in politics and in war; and I say it is maneuvering. It is willing to power in a certain compliance with the laws in the world. Fidel Castro is a politician. He says one thing and does another; but in a way that they do not bite. This is what seems to be the art, what really drives men who become politicians.
And might we not say with a pun “there are no politics, only politicians”? Hm. That is very questionable.
What I am trying to raise as a point is that Strauss is playing that maneuvering game. He is dangerous. He leans here and there, and leaves what those who have ears to these same eavesdroppers; those energetic opportunists that know how to make a word into a profile.
“All things are born of war”.
But of what is war born?
Of things that are born of war.
I mean this; world-peace is never in sight and never a goal of a single person. The only thing in this world that can ever be attained is the goals of single minds.
The magnetism of the thymotic minds singularity breaks into the pure realm of possibility and invents truth; this power attracts mates and students. It is not a ‘good will’ - it is the will to truth that inspires. Or rather the truth itself. And ‘good will’ is not the truth.
The thing with politics is that playing it and identifying it are two perfectly separate issues. Sometimes we express our play, but that is only when we have already won.