timelets

146. He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.

150. Around the hero everything becomes a tragedy; around the demigod everything becomes a satyr-play; and around God everything becomes—what? perhaps a "world"?

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

Our deepest insights must—and should—appear as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes, when they come unauthorizedly to the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them.

--- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.

“The Greek word which designates the Sage belongs etymologically to sapio, I taste, sapiens, the tasting one, sisyphos, the man of the most delicate taste;
...
Science without thus selecting, without such delicate taste, pounces upon everything knowable, in the blind covetousness to know all at any price; philosophical thinking however is always on the track of the things worth knowing, on the track of the great and most important discernments. ”
...
"That is great," she says, and therewith she raises man above the blind, untamed covetousness of his thirst for knowledge.”

--- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. “Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays / Collected Works, Volume Two.”

Sin"—for that is the name of the new priestly version of the animal "bad-conscience" (the inverted cruelty)—has up to the present been the greatest event in the history of the diseased soul: in "sin" we find the most perilous and fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons—reasons bring relief—in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting one, who knows even the occult—and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his first hint on the "cause" of his trouble: he must search for it in himself, in his guiltiness, in a piece of the past, he must understand his very suffering as a state of punishment.
...
The sick man has been turned into "the sinner"—and now for a few thousand years we never get away from the sight of this new invalid, of "a sinner"—shall we ever get away from it?—wherever we just look, everywhere the hypnotic gaze of the sinner always moving in one direction (in the direction of guilt, the only cause of suffering); everywhere the evil conscience.

--- F. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. Third Essay, 20.

...the active forgetfulness, which is a very sentinel and nurse of psychic order, repose, etiquette; and this shows at once why it is that there can exist no happiness, no gladness, no hope, no pride, no real present, without forgetfulness. The man in whom this preventative apparatus is damaged and discarded, is to be compared to a dyspeptic, and it is something more than a comparison—he can "get rid of" nothing.

But this very animal who finds it necessary to be forgetful, in whom, in fact, forgetfulness represents a force and a form of robust health, has reared for himself an opposition-power, a memory, with whose help forgetfulness is, in certain instances, kept in check—in the cases, namely, where promises have to be made;—so that it is by no means a mere passive inability to get rid of a once indented impression, not merely the indigestion occasioned by a once pledged word, which one cannot dispose of, but an active refusal to get rid of it, a continuing and a wish to continue what has once been willed, an actual memory of the will; so that between the original "I will," "I shall do," and the actual discharge of the will, its act, we can easily interpose a world of new strange phenomena, circumstances, veritable volitions, without the snapping of this long chain of the will.

--- F. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. Second Essay, 1.

At any rate, so as to give some idea of the uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental material.
—Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of further injury.
—Punishment, as compensation for the injury sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including the form of sentimental compensation).
—Punishment, as an isolation of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further spreading of the disturbance.
—Punishment as a means of inspiring fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.
—Punishment as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a slave in the mines).
—Punishment, as the elimination of an element of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese laws, consequently as a means to the purification[Pg 95] of the race, or the preservation of a social type).
—-Punishment as a festival, as the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last been subdued.
—Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers the punishment—the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of its administration.
---Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of revenge.
—Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed as a privilege by the stronger races.
—Punishment as a declaration and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a breaker of the peace.

14.

This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment is overloaded with utilities of all kinds.

--- F. Nietzsche, Geneaology of Morals.

“Picasso and Schoenberg earlier, as founders of contemporary art who are fundamentally attuned to Nietzsche. If you look at these paintings or listen to this music, you will see that it too delivers us up to a world that is destructured, chaotic, fragmented, alogical, deprived of the ‘beautiful unity’ which perspective and the rules of harmony conferred upon works of art in the past.”


“Nietzsche was to distinguish between two quite distinct types of force – or, as he was to say, two ‘drives” “or ‘instincts’; on the one hand, ‘reactive’, and, on the other, ‘active’.”


“Reactive forces: those forces which can only deploy themselves in the world and achieve their full effect by repressing, annihilating or distorting other forces. In simpler terms, they succeed only by opposing; they belong to the realm of ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’, of ‘against’ rather than ‘for’. The model here is the classical search for truth, since this always triumphs more or less negatively, by setting itself to refute errors, illusions, false opinions. This applies as much in philosophy as in the positivist sciences.”


“Philosophy and science are only able to function in effect by opposing ‘the intelligible world’ to the ‘physical world’ in such a manner that the second is always devalued in relation to the first. ”


“Contrary to all that is reactive, the active forces take effect in the world and do their work without needing to disfigure or repress other energies. It is in art, and not in philosophy and science, that these forces find their natural home. ”


“Contrary to the ‘theoretical man’ – the philosopher or scientist of whom we have been speaking – the artist is the figure who, above all others, imposes values without discussion, opens up perspectives and invents worlds without needing to demonstrate the legitimacy of his propositions, still less to prove them by a refutation of those works which preceded his own.”


“On the one side sits the Socratic and reactive model, which seeks the truth through debate and dialogue, and in order to get there, takes its stand against the various faces of ignorance, stupidity or bad faith. On the other side sits the model of the Sophists, which makes no attempt to seek the truth, but seeks merely to seduce, to persuade, to effect an audience with almost physical intensity, and win over by the power of words alone. ”


--- Luc Ferry. “A Brief History of Thought.”