Note to the Witchdoctor

Sauwelios wrote:

abhi-pratapta wrote:desire for painlessness causes the Earth and it's people to perish. It is so because pain is a fact of life.
Deisre for painlessness is a virtue of many modern philosophies, especially the lustful ones of modernity. Where did this virtue come from? When did man begin to scorn pain?

Only decadents want to live without pain. They want "only pleasure"; but without pain, what remains is not pleasure but painlessness.

"[P]leasure counts as being more primeval than pain: pain only as conditioned, as a consequence of the will to pleasure (of the will to become, grow, shape, i.e., to create: in creation, however, destruction is included). A highest state of affirmation of existence is conceived from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragic-Dionysian state."
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 853.]

But why should a healthy man seek to eliminate pain? Again, Nietzsche has the answer:

"Man, the bravest of animals and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far".
[Genealogy of Morals, III, 28.]

So what we need is a meaning of suffering - a meaning of life (for, as Buddha says, "to live is to suffer"). Now Nietzsche continues:

"The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far—and the ascetic ideal offered man meaning! It was the only meaning offered so far".
[ibid.]

But the ascetic ideal was a negative ideal - an antinatural ideal (the ideal of "sainthood", of "pure spirit", of incorporeality (like an angel)). Schopenhauer's ideal was the ascetic ideal: he also regarded "incorporeality" as the meaning of life: namely, death. Death, according to him, was the goal and the meaning of life.

But Nietzsche turned against Schopenhauer; more precisely, he turned against the ascetic ideal:

"I also [as well as other things] want to make asceticism natural [as opposed to antinatural] again: in place of the aim of denial, the aim of strengthening; a gymnastics of the will [the original meaning of the Greek askesis is "exercise"]".
[The Will to Power, section 915.]

I have now arrived at the point where I should introduce Daniel Conway's essay, "Love's labor's lost: the philosopher's Versucherkunst [art of experimentation and seduction]", from the bundle "Nietzsche, philosophy and the arts" (Cambridge 1998).

"It is the business of politics, Nietzsche believes, to oversee the production of those rare, exotic individuals who, by virtue of their übermenschlich [superhuman] beauty, excite in others the stirrings of erôs. Indeed, the production of such individuals is coextensive with the production of culture itself."

However, these individuals are not negative ascetics, although negative ascetics are often mistaken for such individuals:

"Ascetics awaken the erôs of others precisely insofar as they (appear to) squander themselves, for they are (believed to be) possessed of a strength of will that affords them the capacity to swallow even mortal doses of suffering. [...]
Of course, not all ascetic disciplines are capable of arousing erôs, for not all ascetics are genuine squanderers. For those ascetics who cannot afford the requisite expenditure of excess affect, disciplines of self-denial engender a sacrifice rather than a squandering. It is not uncommon, moreover, for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the "will to nothingness," but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. [...] Socrates beguiled the youth of Athens because he appeared to master himself, subjecting his monstrous appetites to the cold, arresting glare of hyper-rationality. [...]
According to Nietzsche, however, the erotic charm of Socrates is attributable to a grand misunderstanding. Socrates was no squanderer, and he died not so much to honor noble ideals as to surrender to his consuming decadence. [...] Other martyrs, including Jesus, have had a similarly erotic - and similarly disastrous - influence on their witnesses, for they too have been mistaken for squanderers [...]. The psychological genius of St. Paul lay in his political appropriation of Christ as a martyr, in order that he might exploit the erotogenic [erôs-arousing] possibilities engendered by the unjust death of a Savior (AC 42)."

This common mistake is taken into consideration by Nietzsche when he writes:

"It is my good fortune that after whole millennia of error and confusion I have rediscovered the way that leads to a Yes and a No.
I teach the No to all that makes weak - that exhausts.
I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that justifies the feeling of strength."
[The Will to Power, section 54, with my emphasis.]

This way is Nietzsche way's out of the labyrinth:

"We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years."
[The Antichristian, section 1.]

The exit is found by pursuing Ariadne's thread by the light of her crown:

"Dionysos converts [Ariadne] into a crown, the very same crown that he gave her when he arrived. The crown, the symbol of necessity, a sign of perfection, is a circle of seduction. To seduce also means to destroy, _phtheriein_. It is the perfection of deceit that circles in on itself, a perfection with an inherent deceit.

"Theseus too had given her a crown obtained from Poseidon when he arrived in Crete, and she gave Theseus a crown of Dionysos. The gestures of man and god repeat each other. Of course, Ariadne betrays the god when she helps Theseus kill the Minotaur, the crown giving off the light that Theseus needed to negotiate the very dark passages of the labyrinth. Ariadne betrays the god and gives his gift to the lover who replaces him. Ariadne is deceived, beause she deceived. The crown is the same crown, over and over again."
[Kalev Pehme, Note on BG&E, graph 15, with my emphasis.]

Seduction - the philosopher's Versucherkunst - and perfection are intimately related:

"It is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promote the production of the philosopher, the artist, and the saint within us and without us and thereby to work at the perfecting of Nature".
[Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, section 5, as quoted by Conway, ibid.]

"As [Nietzsche] explains in a remarkable note written in the spring of 1888, the excitation of erôs transfigures the lover, elevating him - if only temporarily - to the lofty station of his beloved:

[size=92]The lover becomes a squanderer [Verschwender]: he is rich enough for it. Now he dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity and innocence; he believes in God again, he believes in virtue, because he believes in love; and on the other hand, this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities, and even the door of art is opened to him.[/size]

[...] The sublime illusions produced in the lover by erôs thus enable nomos (or human design) to perfect and complete physis [nature]. Only when engulfed in the madness of erôs would human beings ever attempt to overcome or transcend their natural limitations."
[Conway, ibid.]

Sauwelios wrote:"It is the business of politics, Nietzsche believes, to oversee the production of those rare, exotic individuals who, by virtue of their übermenschlich [superhuman] beauty, excite in others the stirrings of eros. Indeed, the production of such individuals is coextensive with the production of culture itself."

However, these individuals are not negative ascetics, although negative ascetics are often mistaken for such individuals:

"Ascetics awaken the eros of others precisely insofar as they (appear to) squander themselves, for they are (believed to be) possessed of a strength of will that affords them the capacity to swallow even mortal doses of suffering. [...]
Of course, not all ascetic disciplines are capable of arousing eros, for not all ascetics are genuine squanderers. For those ascetics who cannot afford the requisite expenditure of excess affect, disciplines of self-denial engender a sacrifice rather than a squandering. It is not uncommon, moreover, for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the "will to nothingness," but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. [...] Socrates beguiled the youth of Athens because he appeared to master himself, subjecting his monstrous appetites to the cold, arresting glare of hyper-rationality. [...]
According to Nietzsche, however, the erotic charm of Socrates is attributable to a grand misunderstanding. Socrates was no squanderer, and he died not so much to honor noble ideals as to surrender to his consuming decadence. [...] Other martyrs, including Jesus, have had a similarly erotic - and similarly disastrous - influence on their witnesses, for they too have been mistaken for squanderers [...]. The psychological genius of St. Paul lay in his political appropriation of Christ as a martyr, in order that he might exploit the erotogenic [eros-arousing] possibilities engendered by the unjust death of a Savior (AC 42)."

abhi-pratapta wrote:You have made it clear that squandering is higher than sacrifice. I have pondered this, and think now that the reason for this is the quantity of energy involved in the act, and especially in realtion to the quantity of energy in the actor of the act.
Something is squandereing if one can afford it, something is a sacrifice if one can't.
When we go to war, there are two ways; prepared to sacrifice onself, and prepared to squander oneself.
Squandering does not need justification, one goes to war in order to kill and die. But death is sacrifice if there is a purpose beyond the loss of life or energy.

I constructed this table:

High energy / Low energy
Squandering / Sacrifice
Goal in itself / Goal beyond itself
Seduces / Does not seduce

Sauwelios wrote:I agree with roughly the first half of this passage and disagree with the other. You have understood the difference between squandering and sacrificing oneself. But I don't see why you tie squandering to fighting for the fight's sake and sacrificing to fighting for a cause. I do agree that sacrificing and fighting for the fight's sake do not go together; however, I do think one can squander oneself in one's fight for a cause, even as one can sacrifice oneself for it; the former is good, the latter, bad.

So I agree with the first two polarities of your table, but not with the third; and I do certainly not agree with the fourth. As Conway writes:

"It is not uncommon [...] for a sacrifice to be mistaken for a squandering; most martyrs are portrayed not as decadents desperately embracing the "will to nothingness," but as heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals."

Here we see that a sacrifice can arouse eros in others if it is mistaken for a squandering. We also see that Conway distinguishes decadents desperately embracing the "will to nothingness" from heroes who spend themselves in the tragic service of noble ideals. Those who strive for Supermanhood are such heroes

abhi-pratapta wrote:Alongside of this wondering stands the question of whther or not squandering oneself in war is done for a purpose. I would say yes, indeed, no war is without a purpose, whether it is waged with vast superiority or with a chanceless minority. Never, or hardly ever, is animo found among soldiers for war when there is no end to be attained. But this end is taughjt to be only a mask for the real end; that of the joy of slaying or dying gloriously.

Sauwelios wrote:Yes, that is what the Superman will ultimately do:

"[T]he strong races decimate one another: through war, thirst for power, adventurousness; the strong affects: wastefulness [...].
They are races that squander."
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 864.]

Sauwelios wrote:the idea of the eternal recurrence is the projection into the metaphysical of the idea that the path is itself the goal:

"this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my "beyond good and evil," without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself".
[The Will to Power, section 1067.]

"I also [as well as other things] want to make asceticism natural [as opposed to antinatural] again: in place of the aim of denial, the aim of strengthening; a gymnastics of the will [the original meaning of the Greek askesis is "exercise"]".
[The Will to Power, section 915.]

Mitra-Sauwelios wrote:
"[Camus's] Sisyphus is happy because he finds joy in pushing the boulder up the slope, in exerting his strength; his happiness is a rejoicing in his own strength."

Now, sensible as this may sound, his strength is only equal to a boulder. You may say, "But it's a big boulder!", but that's relative. Does a full glass contain a lot of water, or is it a small glass? Fullness, as I understand it now, is relative, and so is overfullness: not much liquid is needed to make a small glass run over.