Heidegger

> michaelP wrote:
>
>> Ant:
>>> I agree, imbecilic rampages … but what about *daring* ones? The
>>> parallel in Heidegger: not a mechanized holocaust … but what about an
>>> *authentic* one? So I think your nuance may be accurate and yet
>>> superficial, since even if the two murderers had one component of
>>> ressentiment, wasn’t there also an authentically Nietzschian recognition
>>> by both of them? Or is it an utter coincidence that both received from
>>> him their inspiration?

mp:
>> Anthony, so many have employed/exploited Nietzsche (and Marx, Jesus, and
>> Heidegger {e.g., those also imbecilic neo-nazi skins who are quoted with
>> utter reverence in their references by one of our very own listers}, etc)
>> for their rabid inspiration (although the Fin did also say that no-one
>> should blame his actions on what he read), but given the (yawn yawn
>> ubiquitous) imbecilic violence of their expirations, why should anyone take
>> their words for anything?

Ant:
> because when taking their words, one should not choose selectively. For
> example, if we select only the words, “I killed because People like me
> are mistreated every day… I am malicious because I am miserable,” then
> of course, mere ressentiment. But if included are the words, “murder is
> not weak and slow-witted; murder is gutsy and daring,” then we have more
> than mere ressentiment; rather, a recognition that the derogatory
> connotations of “murder” (for example) are mere convention and custom -
> a genuinely Nietzschian recognition:
>
> “Custom represents the experiences of men of earlier times as to what
> they supposed useful and harmful - but the sense for custom (morality)
> applies, not to these experiences as such, but to the age, the sanctity,
> the indiscussability of the custom. And so this feeling is a hindrance
> to the acquisition of new experiences and the correction of customs:
> that is to say, morality is a hindrance to the development of new and
> better customs: it makes stupid.” (Daybreak)

Again, OK, but murderous rampages like that of the Fin do not offer a
non-”hindrance to the development of new and better customs”, it’s just
murder. Surely Nietzsche was speaking of the installations of new tablets
and not the moronic disobeying of the old ones?

> “Whoever has overthrown an existing law of custom has always first been
> accounted a bad man: but when, as did happen, the law could not
> afterwards be reinstated and this fact was accepted, the predicate
> gradually changed; - history treats almost exclusively of these bad men
> who subsequently became good men!” (Daybreak)

Once again, the Fin was not finishing [sic] or overthrowing an “existing law
of custom”, just being a criminal (an exceedingly conventional and customary
figure who entirely belongs to the old order).

> One therefore cannot ignore that this conventionalizing and reversal of
> morality is both genuinely Nietzschian and directly germane to the minds
> of both these murderers, and that this component was *not* a
> misunderstanding of Nietzsche.

As above, not at all a reversal of morality (the Fin {and we} knew it was
criminal, he suicided {we bemoaned the senseless deaths}) merely being ‘bad’
(a part of the same morality), and not at all Nietzschean… e.g., being
“daring” could just as easily been made a virtue by a mountaineer or even a
participant in the current BBC UK TV show ‘Strictly Come Dancing’.

> With Marx, too, I can show you his very honest and direct historical
> relativization of morality, in light of which it made perfect
> philosophical sense to treat tens of millions dead as mere eggs broken
> on the way to an omelet, regardless of what Marx himself would have
> *personally* felt about that.

Again, Ant, a sober reading of Marx in the light of both political
revolution and philosophic head-standing would be preferred to quoting those
who quote Marx to back up their violence.

> Now, Jesus…?

Yes?

The supreme irony for me with respect (meant literally) to precisely Marx,
Nietzsche and Heidegger, is that these thinkers have (along with Freud)
taught us how to read (philosophically amidst all the ideologies, the
fashions, the sound-bites, the markets…). Is it a proper (philosophical)
response to these teachers to lend a serious and literal-minded naive ear to
the ideologues, fashionistas, media-fascistis and market-men? Especially
when they quote the thinkers as if it were so easy, so sound-bitingly
obvious, so snappy, so…?

regards

michaelP

> > Of course, Nietzsche might now be grinning wryly
>> at the self-predicted irony of his own self-prediction of his words being
>> fundamentally misunderstood; but even then he supposed (correctly) that it
>> would be intellectuals who would promulgate the misunderstandings and not
>> (also) the likes of murderous Finnish imbeciles or murderous Nazi imbeciles
>> (etc). It’s so fucking easy to quote Nietzsche without an inkling of what is
>> actually said; that they (Nietzschean soundbites) have become so many
>> cliches is part of the irony that surrounds this ludicrous framing of
>> Nietzsche; worse still is the credence that is asserted of violent (and
>> deeply disturbed, sad) morons, that they say something (rather than looking
>> again at what Nietzsche was saying).

Posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
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