There aren’t many words there, but precisely as many words as were needed. You are wrong: it was just too complicated for you to follow, even though I spelled it out (hence the “many words”). I’ll try again, though.
Suppose I value a certain food F–for instance the mackerel I just ate. Then we can speak of “my valuing F”. Now like “Saully’s mackerel” (F), we can also write “Saully’s valuing F” (G). My valuing F is itself something different from F, namely G. Now I can also value G, and we can give my valuing G the symbol H. Note that G = B and H = A; I just used different symbols so as not to confuse you.
Now in the previous paragraph, the only member of mankind I’ve spoken of is myself (I), but there are other members–Jakob, for example (J). I may value Jakob’s valuing (K), even if K is itself in turn Jakob’s valuing of my valuing (L) that valuing of his. Note that K = D and L = C.
Lastly, I may value M, where M is precisely my valuing of M. How? Well, VO teaches that all beings are self-valuings. I take this to mean they are other-valuings. I, for example, am a valuing of other beings. These latter beings include my mackerel (F) and Jakob (J). Now obviously, Jakob may in turn value me as well (so may my mackerel, but this is less obvious, as we’re talking about mackerel the food, not mackerel the fish, to adapt a distinction made in The Cleveland Show). When, not if, this is the case, I’m among other things a Jakob-valuing, and Jakob is among other things a Saully-valuing, so I’m also a Saully-valuing-valuing. More precisely, I’m a direct Jakob-valuing, Jakob’s a direct Saully-valuing, so I’m a direct Saully-valuing-valuing and thereby an indirect Saully-valuing myself, i.e., an indirect self-valuing (namely, by being a direct other-valuing).
S - no, that is not actually where I start. I start with being, which I use as a criterium (power) to demonstrate why there is not nothing. That is to say, I don’t perform any miracles of producing (or tracing) something from nothing.
Okay, you start with “something exists”, and then ask “what’s it about that something that makes it keep existing?” Right?
I see where you came from with the other thing though.
But my conception of a valuing which is valuing valuing directly actually relates not to the beginning, but to the end, the triumph of nature. In fact you were the one, a few years back, who successfully focussed on this aspect, the philosopher as the peak of natures accomplishment.
You then tied this to your esoteric understanding of Eros. That was some good stuff.
Can you be a bit more specific about that, so I may be able to dig it up?
The philosopher as the peak has to do with the eros for eros, yes, but especially with the will-to-power to will-to-power. As Strauss writes:
“The will to power takes the place which the eros–the striving for ‘the good in itself’–occupies in Plato’s thought. But the eros is not ‘the pure mind’ (der reine Geist). Whatever may be the relation between the eros and the pure mind according to Plato, in Nietzsche’s thought the will to power takes the place of both eros and the pure mind. Accordingly philosophizing becomes a mode or modification of the will to power: it is the most spiritual (der geistigste) will to power; it consists in prescribing to nature what or how it ought to be (aph. 9); it is not love of the true that is independent of will or decision. Whereas according to Plato, the pure mind grasps the truth, according to Nietzsche the impure mind, or a certain kind of pure mind, is the sole source of truth.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)
Now I have contended that the esoteric Plato did understand that there was (most probably) no pure mind. But this may be why Plato, like Nietzsche, taught the recurrence:
“If the will of an individual human being, say of Nietzsche, is to be the origin of meaning and value, and that will manifestly has a cause, the only way out in order to save his position is to say that this will is the cause of itself: eternal return.” (Strauss, lecture of May 18, 1959.)
This peak is far from being a direct self-valuing: it is the peak precisely because it values itself through ninety zillion years of other valuings:
“If Nietzsche had one teaching, it was his teaching of eternal recurrence. This was the notion that time be a circle, that all that happened had happened before and would happen again an endless amount of times. But this was precisely the teaching that Kylie found hardest to bear: Nietzsche would be born, live, and die again, then there would be ninety years of white noise, and then she herself would be born, live, and die again, followed by ninety zillion more years of white noise, after which Nietzsche would be born again… But wait, did that not give her an opportunity to communicate with him? Could she not speak to him across ninety zillion years, even as he spoke to her across ninety?” (The Cosmic Love of Kylie Springtime, Chapter 1.)