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#Post#: 65--------------------------------------------------
Is existence truly sensuous? (Nietzsche's The Gay Science)
By: StircrazyReality Date: September 16, 2017, 9:29 pm
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Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science.
373
'Science' as prejudice. - It follows from the laws that govern
rank ordering
(Rangordnung) that scholars, insofar as they belong to the
intellectual middle class, are not even allowed to catch sight
of the truly
great problems and question marks; moreover, their courage and
eyes
simply don't reach that far - and above all, the need that makes
them
scholars, their inner expectations and wish that things might be
such and
such, their fear and hope, too soon find rest and satisfaction.
What
makes, for instance, the pedantic Englishman Herbert Spencer
rave in
his own way and makes him draw a line of hope, a horizon which
defines what is desirable; that definitive reconciliation of
'egoism and
altruism' about which he spins fables - this almost nauseates
the likes of
us: a human race that adopts as its ultimate perspective such a
Spencerian perspective would strike us as deserving of contempt,
of
annihilation! But that he had to view as his highest hope what
to others
counts and should count only as a disgusting possibility is a
question
mark that Spencer would have been unable to foresee. So, too, it
is with
the faith with which so many materialistic natural scientists
rest
content: the faith in a world that is supposed to have its
equivalent and
measure in human thought, in human valuations - a 'world of
truth'
that can be grasped entirely with the help of our four-cornered
little
human reason - What? Do we really want to demote existence in
this
way to an exercise in arithmetic and an indoor diversion for
mathematicians?
Above all, one shouldn't want to strip it of its ambiguous
character: that, gentlemen, is what good taste demands - above
all, the
taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon!
That the
only rightful interpretation of the world should be one to which
you
have a right; one by which one can do research and go on
scientifically
in your sense of the term (you really mean mechanistically?) -
one that
permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, grasping, and
nothing
else - that is a crudity and naivete, assuming it is not a
mental illness, an
idiocy. Would it not be quite probable, conversely, that
precisely the
most superficial and external aspect of existence - what is most
apparent; its skin and its sensualization - would be grasped
first and
might even be the only thing that let itself be grasped? Thus, a
'scientific' interpretation of the world, as you understand it,
might still
be one of the stupidest of all possible interpretations of the
world, i.e. one
of those most lacking in significance. This to the ear and
conscience of
Mr Mechanic, who nowadays likes to pass as a philosopher and
insists
that mechanics is the doctrine of the first and final laws on
which
existence may be built, as on a ground floor. But an essentially
mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world!
Suppose
one judged the value of a piece of music according to how much
of it
could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas - how
absurd
such a 'scientific' evaluation of music would be What would one
have
comprehended, understood, recognized? Nothing, really nothing of
what is 'music' in it!
#Post#: 70--------------------------------------------------
Re: Is existence truly sensuous? (Nietzsche's The Gay Science)
By: pdrsn Date: September 19, 2017, 8:46 pm
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The world compared to music.
When I read the above, I think that there is something that we
are missing in our life in our relationship with the world and
that this fundamentally changes things, what that change is I
don't know.
When we listen to music we interact with it in a few ways, just
the surface sensuousness but also the 'mechanical' theoretical
side (if we have learnt music theory).
How would we live and think if we treated life as if it were
music?
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