Late-night Nietzsche bits

I will throw you from your lofty horse of ideals and ask that you see things as they are, you decadent fool! (he didn't really say that, but hey, it fits)

So back to where I was sometime around Easter, after having spent the occasion reading F. Nietzsche's clearly written definition of polemic, The Antichrist. Just about any biographical information you'll find on this fellow, Nietzsche, will begin as such:

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote many fine works as a philosopher, professor of philology, psychologist and ultra-mega master of language games. Then one day he suddenly collapsed on the street, remaining listless and catatonic for the final decade of his life.

The Antichrist was written during his final lucid years, before he 'collapsed'. In lieu of my recent Nietzsche binge, I am sceptical about what happened during those last years-- I'm wondering if he just decided one day that he was done with his work, that his time was up--his amor fati had become an accepted reality in his own mind, and this amor fati of his told him to remain quiet for the remainder of his life. I know this doesn't rule out the great possibility that he did progress into a full-fledged insane person, but it does add something to the issue other than, "He went nuts, end of story". Add to this all the speculation over whether he was victim to the later stages of syphilis, a venereal disease that apparently leads to many of the same physiological and psychological health problems he suffered during the last twenty years of his existence. Some have suggested that he had brain cancer. Even so, we shan't rule out the idea that his own philosophy, rich and seemingly ambiguous as it was, very well may have spun his brain into a slimy ball of silence. A neurological shutdown. A burnt match that flamed furiously for years but eventually lost its oxygen.

Nietzsche's later works (e.g. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Antichrist, Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, etc) carry a noticeably heavier, aphoristic and poetic, but no less philosophical-- depending on the perspective, probably more philosophical-- tone than many of his earlier works (e.g. The Birth of Tragedy Human, All Too Human, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, etc). Ecce Homo was finished in the months preceding his lapse into quietude, and consequently ended as a pinnacle to his entire project, carrying chapter titles like Why I am so wise, Why I am so clever and Why I write such good books. As he criticizes his own writing one gets the impression that he is reflecting on where he is with his writing and, perhaps, where he felt it should (or could) go from there. There is a thick employment of sarcasm/irony and cockiness apparent in all of his later works, and percieved through this lens, a chapter heading like Why I am so clever is merely a play on language; fodder for the "unenlightened." Some will attribute his late poetic-philosophical-cryptic style to his dawning insanity, and while I do think it would be beneficial to the curious individual to read his earlier, more 'sane' writings, I am also of the opinion that his later works are his best works, primarily due to their rich, multiple-meaning layered employment of language.

Without being entirely comprehensive, here are a few concepts that I've interpreted his philosophy to be especially forward about:

• **Morality
• Decadence, or Degeneration
• Affirmation of life - he would most certainly insist that we say YES to life
• Rejection of organized religion (Christianity in particular) insofar as it leads to decadence and/or the confining of oneself to narrow institutional boundaries.
• Amor Fati, or 'love of fate'-- accepting one's place in life, not wishing for a different fate insofar as doing so would lead to the degeneration of will. Nietzsche would probably say that a degeneration of will naturally leads to the degeneration of everything in a person.
• Realizing potential, not only in ourselves, but in everything - just as everything around us creates and recreates in nature, we are also creators.
• Creativity
• Interpretation/exegesis
• Ancient Greek thought and socio-moral-'spiritual'-political structure, with particular focus on the Greek god Dionysus
  

All of these concepts are intertwined and touched upon in most (if not all) of his later works. As such, removing one of them from the list would shake up the web that binds the whole -- it's hard to consider any main aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy by itself because doing so will almost inevitably lead to serious misunderstandings/misinterpretations of 'the big picture'.

In any case, commentary related to the above items are forthcoming (I may take my time doing this, but I WILL follow through, damnitt! *the blog weeps, having been neglected so often in the past), but for now I leave you with a bit from the Preface of Nietzsche's Geneaology of Morals:

If this book is incomprehensible to anyone and jars on his ears, the fault, it seems to me, is not necessarily mine. It is clear enough, assuming, as I do assume, that one has first read my earlier writings and has not spared some trouble in doing so: for they are, indeed, not easy to penetrate. Regarding my Zarathustra, for example, I do not allow that anyone knows that book who has not at some time been profoundly wounded and at some time profoundly delighted by every word in it; for only then may he enjoy the privilege of reverentially sharing in the halcyon element out of which that book was born and in its sunlight clarity, remoteness, breadth, and certainty. In other cases, people find difficulty with the aphoristic form: this arises from the fact that today this form is not taken seriously enough. An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather, one has then to begin its exegesis, for which is required an art of exegesis. . . . To be sure, one thing is necessary above all if one is to practice reading as an art in this way, something that has been unlearned most thoroughly nowadays--and therefore it will be some time before my writings are "readable"-- something for which one has almost to be a cow and in any case not a "modern [hu]man": rumination. -Nietzsche, Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine, July 1887