Zarathustra is the figure the 9th chapter of Being and Learning is organized around. His descent figures as the central leitmotif of the over two months of meditations that were collected as chapter nine, and this leitmotif itself is defined by at least three principal characteristics: the excess of wisdom (Zarathustra is like a bee that has collected to much wisdom), speech making (his excess will spill over like the overflowing cup), compassionate listening (his evocative speech-making, his excessive music, is an offering that calls others to listening; Zarathustra is a hermeneut, a prophetic messenger speaking to the future).
11/23/04
picks up the engagement with Zarathustra’s speech “On the Love of the
Neighbor,” which was the focus on 11/22/04.
Yesterday’s commentary noted some possible ways of reading Nietzsche
with and against Paul on the love of the (thy) neighbor, and did so via
Guiterrez on koinonia. 11/23/04 allows me to write some promissory
notes on the love of the (thy) neighbor as the necessary precondition for the
love of friendship, which I have described using ἀγάπη (agápē)
[nb: while they are not necessarily
mutually informative nor mutually exclusive, a comparative discussion of eros and agape is called for,
Rocha is first amongst those with whom I intend to undertake this discussion.] In the wake of the notes made on Guiterrez and
the Eucharistic celebration, it is important to note today that amongst the
generic definitions that have been handed down to us, such as the 17th
century ‘selfless love.’ ἀγάπη
(agápē) also denotes for the early communities a common meal of charity that closely resembles the Eucharistic celebration, especially with the use of sacramental wine and bread. This common meal is mentioned by Paul in his first Corinthians letter. The image above is a fresco depicting an agape meal, from a tomb in the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Lbicana, Rome.
Zarathustra’s
critique of the love of the neighbor gives way on 11/23/04 to the love of the
friend. With this we encounter ἀγάπη
(agápē),
although this is not the term used by Nietzsche. Nor is this what I use on 11/23/04. I use instead philia, which is generically defined as the affection between
friends, or between equals. Here I was
under the influence of Arendt who take Aristotle’s definition of the highest
form of friendship as the only one
that truly matters, because it is the one between equals. Philia
stands for the love between equals, or the love that doesn’t so much
gather, but, rather is the result of being gathered in the fellowship of koinonia. Agápē
is the excessive force of a love that spills over and
joins or gathers together. For the
Pauline congregation this is the love of the Holy Spirit that is always already
present; a love whose gathering force is activated when it is witnessed; it’s
possible to say that the witnessing of agápē happens or is
disclosed with philia, and koinonia is the gathering where these two forces of
love are dynamically interacting. But
what is important here is to note the specificity of the love shared by friends
is distinct from the love offered to the (thy) neighbor.
The
conclusion of 11/23/04 ends, in part, with the citation from Zarathustra’s
speech that includes “love of the neighbor I do not recommend to you: I
recommend to you love of the farthest.”(BL
284) This recommendation only makes
sense within the context of Zarathustra’s instruction regarding philia, which I read as indicating the
making of soul-music, or dialogue as the excessive spilling over from one heart
to another, “an improvisational performance…the artistry performed by the
arrival of the new.”(BL 283) Philia is disclosed when Zarathustra
says “I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart,” because “we see him
point us toward…the compassion emerging with the appearance of the heart.”(BL 283)
For me what is most significant in this instruction is not only that the
friend (as opposed to the neighbor) is the one with the overflowing heart, thus
the one whom is ecstatic, but that the excess is disclosed as artistry, or technē. Indeed, when Zarathustra makes his teaching
of the friend he describes the overflowing heart as a ‘bowl of goodness’ and
‘completed world’, which I hear as work of art.
Nietzsche has him saying “the friend in whom the world stands completed”
– and this indicates yet another way of describing the diminishment of the
‘self’ into the work, the artist becoming the art work which I explored in my
“Feeling the Funk” paper. The love of
the friend is expressed in the overflowing heart – singing, or saying something
musically – the bowl of goodness; this love is disclosed by “ ‘the creating
friend who always has a completed world to give away’…to whom one is enjoined
in the dialogue that bears the fruit of the new…”(BL 283)
3.0 (Saturday, Portland, ME). Yesterday I selected some key fragments from "LEARN" that are echoes of the OPM and 2.0 writing. One of those fragments including the statement regarding Zarathustra seeking friends. In light of the OPM/2.0 writing on Zarathustra, here is an important from the end of "LEARN," chapter 2: Writing - "“We are conducting an experiment with truth,” (N, v. 2, 37) Nietzsche wrote when glossing over the plan for Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The experiment he undertook cannot be replicated, but it can be remembered, re-collected in the study and discussion of his Zarathustra, which is composed of parables. Indeed, the recollection of his experiment in the form of a précis invites “riddling on this riddle.” (N, v. 2, 38) And this is what philosophical learning entails for students, both during the study session and discussion: “to experience the fact that as a riddle it cannot be brushed aside.” (N, v. 2, 38) The riddle demands that they receive the open text as an enigma, as text that speaks to them while also remaining silent, and in doing so enables them to join with others and surmise possible interpretations. Together, the three moments of philosophical learning enact what Nietzsche describes as a “profound aversion to reposing once and for all any sort of totalized view of the world. The magic of the opposite kind of thinking: not letting oneself be deprived of the stimulation in all that is enigmatic (WM, 470; from the years 1885-86).” (N, v. 2, 38)
ReplyDelete3.0b - AND: "Nietzsche calls Zarathustra -- the one who makes speeches that Nietzsche records and shares with his readers -- “the Riddler.” Nietzsche writes riddles. And each riddle yields a possible solution, which is to say, does not yield a single solution. The open text invites a seemingly infinite number of interpretations, its fecundity arriving through the chaos that discloses the riddle of meaning aletheialogically. Such is the enigma of the gateway that Zarathustra encounters at the peak of the mountain. The gateway is inscribed with a single word: “Moment” (Augenblick). Zarathustra’s speech includes the remark, which amplifies Nietzsche’s novel and experimental philosophical writing, “Everything straight deceives…All truth is curved; time itself is a circle.” With his reading of the speech Heidegger surmises what is fundamental to the dialectic of a philosophical education: the repetition of the cycle of study (reading, writing, discussion). “Everything moves in a circle.”(N, v. 2, 43) And in support of his conjecture Heidegger cites Goethe who wrote, “The more one knows and the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.”(N, v. 2, 42) While this phenomenological work stops well short of making any grand conjectures about the nature of “everything,” it is inspired by these fragments, which have called out to me as descriptions of the circularity of philosophical learning." AND "Finally, we should remember that the “riddle” is encountered by Zarathustra when he arrives at the summit of a mountain. He ascends alone, and his solitude calls out to Heidegger, who notes that Nietzsche describes Zarathustra’s encounter with the Moment “‘the vision of the loneliest one.’” Heidegger adds that “the riddle becomes visible only ‘in our loneliest loneliness.’” (N, v. 2, 37) Put otherwise, Zarathustra’s epiphany happens when he has reached that location that Kafka’s “He” could only dream of, that summit above past and future, an ascent into the ‘loneliest loneliness’ where one encounters the essential solitude. The ‘loneliest loneliness’ describes the solitary modality of philosophical learning, when the student is alone with the significant object of study, which can now be described as an instance of the “riddle” of the Moment, when the presence of the present is felt and perceived intensely with the originality of the book. “It is a matter of that particular riddle with which Zarathustra comes face to face.” (N, v. 2, 37, my emphasis) The essential solitude of the book mediates an encounter with the “riddle” of the Moment, an experience that offers the provecho de estar solo with the conservation of the student’s natality, their revolutionary potential to undertake something new, something unforeseen. The ‘loneliest loneliness’ is not the dejection of being alone, but an effacement with solitude, with singularity. But like Zarathustra who sought the company of others, friendship, the insufficiency of solitude is dialectically negated when the student is gathered into the dialogic learning community."
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