Monday, March 25, 2019

Zarathustra, Dionysian, Morality

In 'The Convalescent' section of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra asserts that "Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul, every other soul is an afterworld. . . . For me, how can there be an outside-of-me? . . . But we forget that, when we hear music."  Now these concepts are completely antithetical to the Dionysian principles articulated at the beginning of Birth of Tragedy.  Thus, the passage settles the uncertainty, previously discussed, of whether or not Zarathustra is a non-Dionysian Individualist Moralist defined in The Gay Science #1. Accordingly, even if Naturalistic, cardinal concepts of Zarathustra's doctrine, notably Will to Power and the Overman, are as fictitious as those of his predecessors.  However, an alternative classification of them is available to Nietzsche, though he does not consider it.  For, it is on the basis of the Reality vs. Appearance dichotomy that Nietzsche inherits from Kant and Schopenhauer that he is constrained to consign the elements of an Individualist Morality to the status of fiction.  However, his allusion to the Species as Reality entails the possibility of conceiving an individual member of the species as a Part of a Whole, and, thus, just as Real as the latter.  Furthermore, just as there are parts of an organism, e. g. the proprioceptive part of the brain, that are capable of a holistic function, there can be individual members of the species, e. g. a Moralist, who can grasp Reality, and hence, can articulate a doctrine that is adequate to it.  Finally, freed of Super-Naturalist commitments, the concept of Reality need not be eternally true, so provisional soundness can suffice as a criterion for a doctrine, as the Pragmatists propose.  So, even if Zarathustra himself is a mere Individualist Moralist, his doctrine can have Real value in a different context, e. g. in an Organicist doctrine, such as a variety of Evolutionism.

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