The Nietzsche Family Circus. We realized this earlier today while celebrating birthdays and I completely realize I’m way too nerdy with this kind of thing.
Not only is his over-all tendency like mine—making knowledge the most powerful affect—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world order, the unegoistic, and evil
from Nietzsche’s postcard to Overbeck, written July 30, 1881 in Sils Maria, from The Portable Nietzsche.
This book makes me question everything I do. From this blog to the files and folders and notebooks in my filing cabinet and how all of this stuff could be assembled into a portable edition that encapsulates my entire career. That’s quite a thing to contemplate considering my sizable fucking forehead and how it is arepresentation of my ego, I shudder at having these thoughts. What kind of person thinks this way? That anyone does anything worth being assembled into something like a portable edition?
Though it is interesting to think. What would be in something like this if someone compiled all the random postcards, letters, notes, drafts of books, blog posts, and other work into an edition that encapsulates your life’s work? What would be in such a text?
I’m sorry, I can’t help myself, but this was brought up during our planning meeting. Blame Samir.
Source: fernandomaiscal
To make a perfectly unified character out of all that one has done, as Nietzsche wants may involve us in a vicious effort: we may have to be writing our autobiography as we are living our life, and we would also have to be writing about writing that autobiography, and to be writing in turn about that, and so and so on without end.
What struck me about this, in our final faculty study group discussing this book, was not the occasionally blatantly obvious thought, but how my very actions have exemplified this. The original mission of The Worst Writer Ever (TWWE) was to, well, not so much be about the very worst things of myself and be an egotistical prick, but be about who I would be ten years from now if certain things didn’t happen the way they did happen in my reality. On the surface level, you know, saying enough is enough and being the asshole I always held inside and never let out. Letting the things in my younger days get to me, which turned me into this alternate version of myself. Like I said, Earth-2 Dave.
However, what is very wisely put by Nehamas here is the idea that in order to find oneself you have to write about your own internal motivations and shortcomings, so I like to think that (TWWE) has been worth it as an exercise in that spirit.
Also, this sentiment kind of predicts bloggers. The life-blogging that people do might bring a smile to Nietzsche’s face now even though a lot of it is downright revolting and shallow. I’m definitely as guilty as any other blogger. (I mean just look at this fucking post; Jesus). This book made me consider the idea that even though some of the ideas expressed come off extremely obvious to me, I don’t think it’s because these ideas are essential and nothing special. Even though I never read Nehamas and Nietzsche before this study group, I now think the concepts discussed have been sewn into the fabric of basically every aspect of my reality so as a result they come off obvious and that speaks to the power of these ideas. Their writing has become a part of the lives of people who have never read them, so when one does discover them, people are un-shocked by some of the ideas expressed and find a way of understanding themselves, but also to stop writing about writing and just write about life.
The self creation Nietzsche has in mind involves accepting everything that we have done and, in the ideal case, blending it into a perfectly coherent whole. Becoming brave is becoming able to avoid all the cowardly action in which I may have previously engaged and to pursue a new kind of action instead. But I need not alter my behavior just because I realize that all my actions are my own. What, if anything, will change depends on the patterns that have characterized my behavior so far and on the new sorts of actions, if any, in which I may now want to engage.
This unchangeable character is influenced in its expressions by its environment and education—not in its essence.
One of the most exciting things for me since starting to read Nietzsche for faculty study group was this line and leaving the little note that: Holy shit, I’ve been saying this since high school. Not to blow up my own philosophical presumptions about how fucking smart I am or not at all, but I think that is probably why Nietzsche is as popular as he is—his thoughts are things that we have thought about on a subconscious level.
I’ve always been really fascinated by this idea. The idea that it isn’t our family, or our friends, but a combination of all of these things that influences us. If you take one of these things away we lose a little bit of ourselves that may have elevated us to the level we desire, and the most frustrating thing is that we may never know what that thing is.
What for Nietzsche was a necessary but consistently overlooked feature in all philosophy became in his own case, through a lifetime of effort, a self-conscious achievement: he showed that writing is perhaps the most important part of thinking. And since he also believed that thinking “is an action”, we might with some appropriateness attribute to him the hyperbolic view which this book aims to investigate, that writing is also the most important part of living.
