The Random Play of Necessity in Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, section 7

by Corry Shores
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Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

7

Previously Nietzsche explained that Heraclitus follows this belief of Anaximander: the world ends periodically. The all-destroying world-fire consumes everything and out of the flames emerges a renewed world: "an end of the world periodically repeating itself and in an ever-renewed emerging of another world out of the all-destroying world-fire." Normally the fire is not there. After it consumes the world, it is satisfied (and exhibits hubris). During its period of satisfaction, it is not destroying the world. But gradually its "demand and need" gathers, and the fire flares-up and rages accordingly.

The period during which the world hastens towards that world-fire and the dissolution into pure fire is characterized by him most strikingly as a demand and a need; the state of being completely swallowed up by the fire as satiety.

But then, according to what principle does the world emerge again?

now to us remains the question as to how he understood and named the newly awakening impulse for world-creation, the pouring-out-of-itself into the forms of plurality.

Heraclitus might hold that the all-destroying fire is guilty of hubris. It consumed the world all to itself and to only its own satisfaction. It is guilty of thinking itself more important than all the many things it consumed. Hence it must be punished, and split back into the multiplicity of things. The many things that become are not guilty of this crime. But they suffer from it.

Is not the whole world process now an act of punishment of the hybris? The plurality the result of a crime? The transformation of the pure into the impure, the consequence of injustice? Is not the guilt now shifted into the essence of the things and indeed, the world of Becoming and of individuals accordingly exonerated from guilt; yet at the same time are they not condemned for ever and ever to bear the consequences of guilt?

So we wonder now in section 7, is there really guilt, injustice, contradiction, and suffering in becoming?

Heraclitus says that there is, but only for the limited human mind. We can just see things as being divergent and not convergent. A contemplative god can see that everything in opposition converges into a unified harmony.

Before his fiery eye no drop of injustice is left in the world poured out around him, and even that cardinal obstacle how pure fire can take up its quarters in forms so impure he masters by means of a sublime simile.

He smiles because he knows that the destruction and restruction of the world is a child's innocent and artistically creative playful game.

Becoming and Passing, a building and destroying, without any moral bias, in perpetual innocence is in this world only the play of the artist and of the child. And similarly, just as the child and the artist play, the eternally living fire plays, builds up and destroys, in innocence—and this game aeons play with themselves. Transforming themselves into water and earth, like a child they pile heaps of sand by the sea, piles up and demolishes; from time to time they recommence the game. A moment of satiety, then again desire seizes them, as desire compels the artist to create. Not wantonness, but the ever newly awakening impulse to play, calls into life other worlds. Children throw away their toys; but soon they start again in an innocent frame of mind. As soon however as children build they connect, join and form lawfully and according to an innate sense of order.

Thus only with an artist's eye may we see the innocence of becoming.

Thus only is the world contemplated by the esthetic human, who has learned from the artist and the genesis of the latter's work, how the struggle of plurality can yet bear within itself law and justice, how the artist stands contemplative above, and working within the work of art, how necessity and play, antagonism and harmony must pair themselves for the procreation of the work of art.

[Also translated as:]

Only aesthetic man can look thus at the world, a man who has experienced in artists and in the birth of art objects how the struggle of the many can yet carry rules and laws inherent in itself, how the artist stands contemplatively above and at the same time actively within his work, how necessity and random play, oppositional tension and harmony, must pair to create a work of art. (Marianne Cowen translation in Nietzche Reader, p211)

Hence we should not develop an ethics of "Thou Shalt" when necessity is paired with indeterminacy.

There is no need to justify such a world.

Heraclitus is not compelled to prove (as Leibniz was) that this world was even the best of all; it was sufficient for him that the world is the beautiful, innocent play of the aeon.

The logic of the Heraclitean world is chance and play.

If however one would ask Heraclitus the question "Why is fire not always fire, why is it now water, now earth?" then he would only just answer: "It is a game, don't take it too pathetically and still less, morally!"

And hence also, the world itself is a work of art in continual creation.

Heraclitus describes only the existing world and has the same contemplative pleasure in it which artists experience when looking at their growing works.

No other person "has ever written clearer and more illuminatingly." But because he writes abruptly, "racing readers" will think he writes obscurely.

why a philosopher should intentionally write obscurely—a thing habitually said about Heraclitus—is absolutely inexplicable; unless he has some cause to hide his thoughts or is sufficiently a rogue to conceal his thoughtlessness underneath words.

Because Heraclitus' statements are brief, a "paltry mind" will not be able to diminish them by translating their meanings into his everyday opinion.

With respect to brevity however Jean Paul [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) German poet] gives a good precept: "On the whole it is right that everything great—of deep meaning to a rare mind—should be uttered with brevity and (therefore) obscurely so that the paltry mind would rather proclaim it to be nonsense than translate it into the realm of his empty-headedness. For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion."

From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

7

That dangerous word, hybris, is indeed the touchstone for every Heraclitean; here he may show whether he has understood or mistaken his master. Is there in this world: guilt, injustice, contradiction, suffering?

Yes, exclaims Heraclitus, but only for the limited human being, who sees divergently and notconvergently, not for the contuitive god; to him everything opposing converges into one harmony, invisible it is true to the common human eye, yet comprehensible to him who like Heraclitus resembles the contemplative god. Before his fiery eye no drop of injustice is left in the world poured out around him, and even that cardinal obstacle how pure fire can take up its quarters in forms so impure he masters by means of a sublime simile. Becoming and Passing, a building and destroying, without any moral bias, in perpetual innocence is in this world only the play of the artist and of the child. And similarly, just as the child and the artist play, the eternally living fire plays, builds up and destroys, in innocence—and this game aeons play with themselves. Transforming themselves into water and earth, like a child they pile heaps of sand by the sea, piles up and demolishes; from time to time they recommence the game. A moment of satiety, then again desire seizes them, as desire compels the artist to create. Not wantonness, but the ever newly awakening impulse to play, calls into life other worlds. Children throw away their toys; but soon they start again in an innocent frame of mind. As soon however as children build they connect, join and form lawfully and according to an innate sense of order.

Thus only is the world contemplated by the esthetic human, who has learned from the artist and the genesis of the latter's work, how the struggle of plurality can yet bear within itself law and justice, how the artist stands contemplative above, and working within the work of art, how necessity and play, antagonism and harmony must pair themselves for the procreation of the work of art.

Who now will still demand from such a philosophy a system of ethics with the necessary imperatives Thou Shalt, or even reproach Heraclitus with such a deficiency! Humans down to their last fiber are necessity and absolutely "unfree"—if by freedom one understands the foolish claim to be able to change at will one's essentia like a garment, a claim, which up to the present every serious philosophy has rejected with due scorn. That so few human beings live with consciousness in the logos and in accordance with the all-overlooking artist's eye, originates from their souls being wet and from the fact that people's eyes and ears, their intellect in general is a bad witness when "moist ooze fills their souls." Why that is so, is not questioned any more than why fire becomes water and earth. Heraclitus is not compelled to prove (as Leibniz was) that this world was even the best of all; it was sufficient for him that the world is the beautiful, innocent play of the aeon. Humans on the whole are to him even irrational beings, with which the fact that in all their essence the law of all-ruling reason is fulfilled does not clash. Humans do not occupy a specially favored position in nature, whose highest phenomenon is not simpleminded human, but fire, for instance, as stars. In so far as humans have through necessity received a share of fire, they are a little more rational; as far as they consist of earth and water it stands badly with their reason. They are not compelled to take cognizance of thelogos simply because they are human beings. Why is there water, why earth? This to Heraclitus is a much more serious problem than to ask, why humans are so stupid and bad. In the highest and the most perverted humans the same inherent lawfulness and justice manifest themselves. If however one would ask Heraclitus the question "Why is fire not always fire, why is it now water, now earth?" then he would only just answer: "It is a game, don't take it too pathetically and still less, morally!" Heraclitus describes only the existing world and has the same contemplative pleasure in it which artists experience when looking at their growing works. Only those who have cause to be discontented with the natural history of humans find them gloomy, melancholy, tearful, somber, atrabilious, pessimistic and altogether hateful. He however would take these discontented people, together with their antipathies and sympathies, their hatred and their love, as negligible and perhaps answer them with some such comment as: "Dogs bark at anything they do not know," or, "To the ass chaff is preferable to gold."

With such discontented persons also originate the numerous complaints as to the obscurity of the Heraclitean style; probably no person has ever written clearer and more illuminatingly; of course, very abruptly, and therefore naturally obscure to the racing readers. But why a philosopher should intentionally write obscurely—a thing habitually said about Heraclitus—is absolutely inexplicable; unless he has some cause to hide his thoughts or is sufficiently a rogue to conceal his thoughtlessness underneath words. One is, as Schopenhauer says, indeed compelled by lucid expression to prevent misunderstandings even in affairs of practical everyday life, how then should one be allowed to express oneself indistinctly, indeed puzzlingly in the most difficult, most abstruse, scarcely attainable object of thinking, the tasks of philosophy? With respect to brevity however Jean Paul [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) German poet] gives a good precept: "On the whole it is right that everything great—of deep meaning to a rare mind—should be uttered with brevity and (therefore) obscurely so that the paltry mind would rather proclaim it to be nonsense than translate it into the realm of his empty-headedness. For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion." Moreover and in spite of it Heraclitus has not escaped the "paltry minds"; already the Stoics have "re-expounded" him into the shallow and dragged down his æsthetic fundamental perception as to the play of the world to the miserable level of the common regard for the practical ends of the world and more explicitly for the advantages of humans, so that out of his physics has arisen in those heads a crude optimism, with the continual invitation to Tom, Dick, and Harry, plaudite amici.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ptra.htm

PDF of Maximilian A. Mügge translation available at

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021569151

It is found on page 71 of the above book.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Keith Ansell-Pearson, & Duncan Large. "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks." Transl. Marianne Cowen (originally published Regnery Publishing 1962) in The Nietzsche Reader. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

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http://books.google.be/books?id=QmOXQ0rZm34C&dq=philosophy+tragic+age+greeks&hl=en&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0