The following may serve as an introduction to my OP and its sequels (now four in total)–though it may itself, in turn, require an introduction which I will then supply in due time.
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Below average intelligence need of course not necessarily mean stupid. Relatively stupid, perhaps, but modern humanism considers everyone to have a pretty high intelligence: this is the basis of “universal human dignity”. But if this is not necessarily at hand, it may be wiser to establish a tradition for the upkeep of this intelligence. A foundation of men who are entrusted with versing themselves in the meaning (sense!) of that dignity.
“Intelligence” here does not have the sense as in “Central Intelligence Agency”–mere information. It means understanding, and especially the understanding of understanding. Self-awareness or, as Cahoone formulates it in his lecture on Heidegger’s Being and Time, “letting-oneself-come-toward-oneself in having-been as making-entities-present”. But Picht, in his speech on Nietzsche, argues that Aristotle’s noeseos noesis is really poieseos poiesis, the figmenting of figmenting, thinking thinking itself–that is, making phenomena appear making itself appear. Nietzsche insists that this is a forcing of oneself. But this forcing oneself does not spring from oneself, that is, it does not come from nothing. This tyrannical will is no free will. It is the result of one’s environment in the profound sense that one’s environment as well as one’s self is the result–and never the end result–of a practically unsurveyable process. What metaphysics is is the will to survey that process “in theory”, that is, in the mind’s eye, nay the mind’s senses. This already suggests that it’s a modest kind of person who lets her own history be as short as 6000 human years. She leaves the rest to God–but God is represented by the male, who after all claimed to speak for God. Thus in the Manu Samhita it’s said: “Punishment is (in reality) the king (and) the male”, which is to say ‘compared with him all others are (weak) women.’
“But where Punishment with a black hue and red eyes stalks about, destroying sinners, there the subjects are not disturbed, provided that he who inflicts it discerns well.” (The Laws of Manu, Bühler trans., 7:25; 17.)
Punishment is none other than Agni, Fire:
"But when, great god, thine awful anger glows,
And thou revealest thy destroying force,
All creatures flee before thy furious course,
As hosts are chased by overpowering foes.
“Thou levelest all thou touchest; forests vast
Thou shear’st, like beards which barber’s razor shaves.
Thy wind-driven flames roar loud as ocean’s waves,
And all thy track is black when thou hast past.” (Muir trans.)
What the Nietzschean philosopher aims at is to be the recurrence of that god, Bhairava, the fiercest human form of Shiva known to man. With the oblong object peculiar to him, he warns man to return to his historical duties “or else!” That the object peculiar to him is not the sword should be no surprise. That it’s not the pen–or, in my case, the keyboard, which I wield ineptly enough–may need to be spelled out, however. It’s not an oblong object. It’s not an object at all, but the openness, the vastness, of our minds. That openness now paradoxically turns against modern openness, by going beyond the prevalent limitedness of that openness which is due to spiritual sloth.–
I always question myself, I even question whether I’ve questioned myself enough. But on the other hand, I will question myself for having questioned myself too much–and won’t just question myself. The Democratic movement is still a force to be reckoned with, do not make yourself any illusions. The fact that the Trump-Clinton war is a neck-a-neck race suffices to illustrate this. And yet here I am, writing this because it apparently doesn’t suffice to illustrate this to many. It’s apt that the Democratic side be represented by a woman, and not in the least because it’s such a “manly” woman, such an Islamic or, if one has a nose for such things (as good cynics often have even more than philosophers, those who most follow their noses–which is a cryptic clue), a Byzantine woman… Trump represents the side which supposedly hears the individual, the common man, the little man. But his victory, in turn, will represent the official statement of fact that Western democracy has degenerated into an ochlocracy, a mob rule. Again, the fact that it’s a neck-a-neck race tells us quite clearly that that is imminent. Hillary represents the voice of “democracy in practice”, which the Dutch Nietzschean Menno ter Braak defended against impending Nazism in 1930s Holland: failing and thereby succeeding democracy, democracy with its necessarily arising and arisen elites! For democracy is, in its conception, supposed to be the universal aristocracy, in which everyone is an aristocrat–that is, obliged by his freedom to treat everyone in a noble manner. But what is noble about the man in the street who votes for Trump, or Wilders in the Netherlands (see my “Nietzsche Contra Wilders” essay), Brexit in the UK, etc. etc.? It’s supposedly that he dares say it. And in the street, that soon means defending it against people who would beat you up for it–in the first place by an attitude that suggests you’re ready and indeed more than willing to fight people off. I sometimes do that, too. I always have an attitude, except when I feel secure in the vehemence of my attitude, which is most of the time; and then, I adhere to the rules, if not to the unwritten ones, then certainly to many that I’ve unwittingly written myself (I have an innate susceptibility to paranoia). Now the paradox and the irony is that both parties seem to want the same thing: a Democratic Republic. Surely making America great again must mean making it a Democratic Republic again. But what Americans are learning the hard way is that the meanings of “Democracy” and “Republic” change over time. It was only in the twentieth century that “democracy” changed so as to have voting include women. And likewise, it is with continuing immigration that the Public Thing (res publica), “that thing of ours, we the people”, has changed to include non-White Protestants–first Catholics (Irish and Italian, and now Latino), and now even Muslims. To Protestants, every man is his own priest, and this led to modern Humanism where every man decides for himself what religion he practices. But modern Humanism turns into postmodernism–which is no longer Humanism, no longer concerned especially with human beings, or homo sapiens–as it realises that modern Humanism, too, is a religion–a paradoxical, secular religion. It is this secular religion which both parties claim to represent.
In fact, they really only represent it together. Trump represents the logical consequence of the call for the ideal democracy: fascism as tyranny in the literal sense, empowered by an angry mob. Hillary represents the logical consequence of the conservation of imperfect democracy: fascism in the popular sense of the word as bureaucracy and elitism; “corporo-fascism”.
What all this calls for is that philosophers become kings: no longer in the Platonic way, as invisible spiritual rulers who compromise with popular religion; but now as visible, physio-logical rulers who will make no compromise, who start the natural human religion, re-ligio, binding man back to nature.
“Knowing the inevitability of masks, Nietzsche chose to weave his own, the mask of a rash truth teller whose unguarded speech would make him seem an immoralist, a devil, the mask of a super-Machiavelli. That mask, and the vehemence with which its terrible contours would be traced by those who took it to be more than a mask, inevitably assigned a task to his friends, advocates bound by the beauty and rigor of his writings to see eventually that the mask masked its opposite, a new teaching on good and bad by something approaching a god.” (Lampert, Nietzsche’s Task, penultimate page.)
Lampert represents the near-godlike, the noble; I on the other hand feel I need to complement him by representing the mask, manifesting the mask, the mask of Dionysos: it is my ambition to manifest the last Man “against Time”, the avatar Kalki, who is also the first Man “in Time”, the Superman.
“The man ‘in Time’ can have any aim, with the exception of a disinterested one (which would at once raise him ‘above Time’). He himself is always like a blind force of destructive Nature. (That is the reason why so many thoroughly ‘bad’ characters in literature and in the theatre are so attractive, in their forceful evil.) He has no ideology. Or rather, his ideology is himself, separated from the divine Whole–i.e., it is the disintegration of the Whole (of the universe) for the benefit of himself, and, ultimately, the destruction of himself also, although he does not know it or does not care. And that is the case in every instance. But under certain conditions, when his action takes, in human history, the permanent importance that a great geological cataclysm has in the history of the earth, then, as I said, the man ‘in Time’ disappears from our sight, and in his place–but still bearing his features,–appears, in all His dramatic majesty, Mahakala, the eternal Destroyer. It is Him Whom we adore in the great lightning individuals such as Genghis Khan–Him; not them. They are only the clay images inhabited by Him for a few brief years. And just as the clay image hides and suggests the invisible God or Goddess–Power everlasting–so does their selfishness both hide and reveal the impersonal purposefulness of Life; the destructive phase of the divine Play, in which already lies the promise of a new dawn to come.” (Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun, Chapter III.)
I would say the Abrahamic religions have the following human meaning. The story of the Fall represents the fact that, when man obtains knowledge of good and evil, he sees there is no eternal good and evil. This scares him so much that he submits to a good and evil that supposedly comes from the Eternal Himself, or the Eternals Themselves. Why did God supposedly create man as male and female if He made him–them–in His own image? But thinking of God as Eternals, as masculine and feminine ones, or a masculine One and a feminine One, would only defer the problem. God must be thought as a He, because He must not be at all like Eve, who first tasted the bitter truth that there is no eternal good and evil. He must not be a philosopher, someone who loves the taste of forbidden fruits. He must not be sinful, sundering the working order of society; he must not be hubristic, overstepping his bounds. He must never lose sight of the Idea of the Good. Because man–that is the problem–is traditionally, nay evolutionarily, the transgressor among the sexes–that is, in relation to woman. He will overstep his bounds in order to save her. It is like woman’s relation to her child:
“[H]ow can we understand the so-called wrathful deities, the focus of so many contemplative practices in Tibetan Buddhism? In essence, their awesome appearance expresses the invincible power of compassion.
Imagine a mother whose child was about to be run over by a car. She would not hesitate, or gently say, ‘Please move away from the road.’ She would immediately grab the child and pull him forcibly to safety. Her act is violent in appearance only. In truth she has saved her child’s life.” (Demonic Divine, Foreword.)
Now what the Nietzschean philosopher is is an Enlighted one, a “Buddha”, who comes down from “Nirvana” out of cruelty rather than out of compassion–not in the least out of cruelty against himself. He will be the synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, of Punishment and Blame, taking the blame on himself for the punishment, the whole responsibility which was formerly thought to fall upon God. He shall be the Caesarian philosopher who emerges out of the actual human achievement of the Christ-soul. His self-crucifixion consists in throwing off the cross he’s been carrying, in taking command, in willing himself, in insisting that the historical process that’s led to him was a good thing, is still a good thing, and may continue to be a good thing. A great thing, in fact. Through Christianity, European man–and the Americas, for example, are really New Europe–has come a long way from traditional societies with their Gods who eclipse their Goddesses. Those Gods usually do so in ways in which their feminine side dims the painfully stark brightness of their masculine side (for instance, in Jewish tradition, the left hand of God covers His right hand). But it’s still a God and not a Goddess. If He did not eclipse Her, She would become Kali. That is, Mother Time would swallow man. Against this, then, Rudra lets himself be danced on by Her, worshipping Her in secret while subduing Her, taking the epithet Shiva or even taking a back seat to a more feminine God, who in turn secretly worships Him. What Europe or the West must show the (Middle) East is that, in straying so far from that tradition, man has not strayed into the depths, but into the heights. This is not possible; at best, he can show that he has strayed into the heights as well as into the depths–because he has strayed into the depths. Western man must show the world how deeply he has punished himself. But also, secretly, enjoyed himself, precisely in his cruelty against himself. The peak achievement of Western culture has turned out to be its supreme pariah–its self-enforced pariah, yea self-legislated pariah. One way of putting this is a title I entertained recently, “Enlightened Nietzsche and his Darkening Thundercloud”. (Perhaps I should change that into “The Enlightened Nietzschean” etc.) The Nietzschean as I conceive him is in a way Europe’s Goddess: thus nearing the time at which I first read Nietzsche, I insisted to myself that it’s not the girls who should be chased by the guys, but rather the other way round. I insisted that the Poet is a greater source of inspiration than the Muse. And yet I’ve always worshipped my inner Goddess, be it in the form of a rather feminine God (a Child-God). I’ve indulged myself in tonal music as no other. But the East is wise in sticking to modal music: for our compassion or self-pity must not impel us to become activists–or even pacifists. The wrath of Shiva must not lose itself in insanity.