The Diss of Nietzsche
Hey beautiful people,
We had Gregg Henriques and Justin Murphy come on the Stoa today. It was amazing. Love those guys.
Also, my buddy at Rebel Wisdom, David Fuller invited me to have a chat with him to discuss how to do journalism in this crazy-ass liminal war we are entering. It was a fun conversation and you can check it out here.
Tomorrow’s events:
The Psychotechnology Playground w/ Bonnitta Roy Every Friday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck. Every Friday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Socratic Speed Dating w/ Raven Connolly Every Friday @ 7:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Dark Stoa w/ Pat Ryan. Every Friday @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
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May 14, 2020
This is Nietzsche on the Stoics:
You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.
I felt misunderstood, but yes, his self-tyranny diss gave me a meta-boner. I am fairly well-read in Stoic literature, but not that well-read in it. I am not the type of Stoic who talks about Stoicism in a propositional way, nor do I proselytize it. I do not think I am egoically attached to the meme either. I listen to Epictetus: Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it. Besides, I am good at making the bait and switch at the last moment these days, and I am interested in reinventing Stoicism, not defending it. I am also ready for it to die, in the right way.
It also seems Nietzsche is talking about a certain Stoicism that annoys me as well. These disembodied men, who removed all vitality in their voice, and speak as if they are already dead. These Stoics cultivate constant composure, egoically signal soundness of reason by performing reason in an obvious way, and attempt to gaslight reality in the process. I am a man of reason too, but I am also a man of emotion.
If you have been reading these journals with a careful heart, or have met me in person during my dark moments, or fun moments, or moments where I want to own each inch of your body, then you’ll quickly see that I have a Dionysian side. I obviously have an Apollonian side as well, and I do not see them in competition, but in negotiation. I do not care which side thinks they have the upper-hand, that is a metagame I am not interested in. All I care about is that they get into right relationship with each other.
I like how Nietzsche took shots at the axiomic principle of Stoicism: live in accordance with nature. I am more sympathetic to that phrase than he is, as I am constantly applying the rule omega. I do not like the word nature though, because it seems too antiquated and can easily be misunderstood in this metamodern world. I like to repurpose Jordan Hall's philosophical foundation: be in the right relationship with reality, and make that the bedrock of the Stoicism I am attempting to embody.
And yeah, all the disembodied nerds masturbating to abstraction will surely double-click on the word right, probably to signal how philosophically clever they are. And they would be right, and in the right, to challenge that word. I will have a response at the ready, and I am skilled at the infinite regress defense as well, in order to combat the bad faith interlocutors. But please, I am not interested in this stuff. I am a philosopher of the world, and I am here to do what the daemon is telling me what to do, not to debate you.
I am not interested in a cute philosophy, or a toy philosophy, or a philosophy that signals how smart you are. I am interested in a philosophy that changes the world, and in order to change the world you need to change yourself. I am interested in a philosophy that takes a risk. I am interested in philosophy as a sexy thing.
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