The Innocence of the Infant Gods Whose Dice Decide Our Fate, Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, section 6

by Corry Shores
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The Innocence of the Infant Gods

Whose Dice Decide Our Fate

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

6

Previously we saw that for Heraclitus, everything is in a state of Becoming. But unlike Anaximander, things are destroyed in their passing not as a punishment. Rather, each determinate thing's passing is a justification of Becoming's goodness. Eternal change is sustained by a continual struggle of opposites. This perpetual instability is its "homogeneous, severe justice bound by eternal laws."

Heraclitus' metaphor of struggling fighters supervised by severe judges does not hold entirely. For, there is no regular principle that governs determinately which fighter will win. Much is left to chance. And also, those fighters themselves by means of extraordinary will are able to determine outcomes even despite deterministic laws standing in their way. So Heraclitus' Justice is of another sort.

Justice is merely the right to fight. And so long as strife holds sway, the becoming of every passing instant is justified.

This one continual becoming is the reason why the many things come and go. Hence, the One is the Many.

The contest of The Many is itself pure justice! And after all: The One is The Many.

But Heraclutus does not posit a duality between an underlying process of becoming and the many things that become. The One and the Many are actually identical. For, every moment is Zeus' game. [In the next section we see that it is Zeus as an innocent child rolling the dice that decide our fate.] So the struggle of becoming is always a game decided largely by chance. It is One, because it is always a game. But it is many, because the rules, players, tables, judges, and outcomes are always changing.

So there is always Becoming. But this does not imply that there is a "world of eternal and essential pluralities." Anaximander's solution was to deny true and essential existence of particulars in favor of the metaphysical "Indefinite." It might seem at first that Heraclitus' solution is similar. It could be that if humans existed for all eternity, they would see that really there is an endless struggle of eternal qualities.

However, because the rules change each instant, we cannot equate anything in one instant with anything in another instant. Nonetheless, all the many things are one, because they are all parts of a game, even though the game is never the same. [See this entry for Deleuze's explanation of Lewis Carroll's Chance Changing Games and see (8) of this entry for Gregory Bateson's account.]

We perceive a variety of qualities around us. But unlike what Anaxagoras would say, they are not eternal entities for Heraclitus. And contrary to Parmenides' claim, they are not illusions. They are real. Now, given the way the rules keep changing, can we say that at the end of the Queen's Croquet game, the hedge-hog balls were really the same as when the game began? Or do they not take-on whole new identities as their functional role in the game keeps changing? A chess piece is defined by its rules of play. Hence any object could represent it. But if the piece's rules-of-play change, then so would the piece's identity. Suppose your pawn reaches the board's opposite side. So you promote it to a queen. But there is no extra queen pieces available. We keep it as the pawn, but let it move and function like a queen. We cannot say that the new 'queen' is the same as the old 'pawn,' even though it is physically the same playing piece. So if the "game" of reality keeps changing like the Queen's Croquet, so too are the many things in the world radically changing, even if it seems there are common properties or "essences" that recur or sustain. Yet, because in each case it is a game that the determines reality, the many are one. But because the game keeps changing, the one is many.

Nietzsche will now explain how fire is the world-shaping force for Heraclitus. To do so, he has us first recall Thales' theory that water is the fundamental substance. Anaximander goes a step further. He says that in order for there to be the Moist, there must first be warm and cold. For, the moist emerges from the Warm and the Cold. But they arise from the primordial "Indefinite." And Becoming begins as soon as they do. Heraclitus now modifies and advances the theory even one step further. He says that the Warm is the fiery element of becoming. When water descends, it becomes earth. When it ascends, it becomes fire. Hence the three "chief aggregate stages" of becoming are Moist (water), Firm (earth), and Warm (fire):

from the sea ascend only the pure vapors which serve as food to the divine fire of the stars, from the earth only the dark, foggy ones, from which the Moist derives its nourishment. The pure vapors are the transitional stage in the passing of sea into fire, the impure the transitional stage in the passing of earth into water. Thus the two paths of metamorphosis of the fire run continuously side by side, upwards and downwards, to and fro, from fire to water, from water to earth, from earth back again to water, from water to fire.

However, unlike Anaximander, Heraclitus excludes the Cold from these processes. Anaximander claimed that the Moist emerges from two polar opposites, Warm and Cold. But Fire (warm) is the primary process for Heraclitus that is involved even when things become Cold. If coldness were absolutely antithetical to warmth, as it is in Anaximander, then when things become cold, they would cancel Becoming itself. So nothing can be absolutely cold for Heraclitus. Whatever is cold has some measure of warmth in it.

Heraclitus deviates from Anaximander in another way as well. They both believe that the world periodically ends by an all-destroying world-fire, and each time an ever-renewed world emerges from the destruction. But Heraclitus explains the cause for this pattern using this reasoning: the all destroying world-fire hungers for more world to destroy. When it completely swallows up the world, it is satisfied. But the Greeks considered satiety to be a form of hubris. The world-fire is self-satisfied, and it obtained its satisfaction by placing its importance above everything else in the world. As punishment, the world-fire must give-up the world he consumed. So out of the ashes re-emerges the plurality of things in the world. But then, this would mean that all the things which are becoming no longer justify Becoming. They are victims of its hubris, so they suffer from its guilt. They would seem to be condemnations of Becoming's guilt.

In the next section, Nietzsche explains the child-like and artistic innocence of becoming. The destructive events in the world do not result from divine anger or punishment. Rather, they are the products of chance outcomes rolled with innocently-infantile artistic intentions.

From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

6

Whilst the imagination of Heraclitus measured the restlessly moving universe, the "actuality" [Wirklichkeit]with the eye of the happy spectator, who sees innumerable pairs wrestling in joyous combat entrusted to the superintendence of severe umpires, a still higher presentiment seized him; he no longer could contemplate the wrestling pairs and the umpires, separated one from another; the very umpires seemed to fight, and the fighters seemed to be their own judges yea, since at the bottom he conceived only of the one Justice eternally swaying, he dared to exclaim: "The contest of The Many is itself pure justice! And after all: The One is The Many. For what are all those qualities according to their nature? Are they immortal gods? Are they separate beings working for themselves from the beginning and without end? And if the world which we see knows only Becoming and Passing but no Permanence, should perhaps those qualities constitute a differently fashioned metaphysical world, true, not a world of unity asAnaximander sought behind the fluttering veil of plurality, but a world of eternal and essential pluralities?" Is it possible that however violently he had denied such duality, Heraclitus has after all by a round-about way accidentally got into the dual cosmic order, an order with an Olympus of numerous immortal gods and demons, viz., manyrealities, and with a human world, which sees only the dust cloud of the Olympic struggle and the flashing of divine spears, i.e., only a Becoming? Anaximander had fled just from these definite qualities into the lap of the metaphysical "Indefinite"; because the former became and passed, he had denied them a true and essential existence; however should it not seem now as if the Becoming is only the looming into view of a struggle of eternal qualities? When we speak of the Becoming, should not the original cause of this be sought in the peculiar feebleness of human cognition whereas in the nature of things there is perhaps no Becoming, but only a coexisting of many true increase indestructible realities?

These are un-Heraclitean loopholes and labyrinths; he exclaims once again: "The One is the Many." The many perceptible qualities are neither eternal entities, nor phantasmata of our senses (Anaxagoras conceives them later on as the former, Parmenides as the latter), they are neither rigid, sovereign Being nor fleeting appearance hovering in human minds. The third possibility which alone was left to Heraclitus nobody will be able to divine with dialectic sagacity and as it were by calculation, for what he invented here is a rarity even in the realm of mysticincredibilities and unexpected cosmic metaphors. The world is the gameof Zeus, or expressed more physically, the game of fire with itself, the One is only in this sense at the same time the Many. —

In order to elucidate in the first place the introduction of fire as a world-shaping force, I recall how Anaximander had further developed the theory of water as the origin of things. Placing confidence in the essential part of Thales' theory, and strengthening and adding to the latter's observations, Anaximander however was not to be convinced that before the water and, as it were, after the water there was no further stage of quality: no, to him out of the Warm and the Cold the Moist seemed to form itself, and the Warm and the Cold therefore were supposed to be the preliminary stages, the still more original qualities. With their issuing forth from the primordial existence of the "Indefinite," Becoming begins. Heraclitus who as physicist subordinated himself to the importance of Anaximander, explains to himself this Anaximandrian Warm as the respiration, the warm breath, the dry vapors, in short as the fiery element: about this fire he now enunciates the same as Thales and Anaximander had enunciated about the water: that in innumerable metamorphoses it was passing along the path of Becoming, especially in the three chief aggregate stages as something Warm, Moist, and Firm. For water in descending is transformed into earth, in ascending into fire: or as Heraclitus appears to have expressed himself more exactly: from the sea ascend only the pure vapors which serve as food to the divine fire of the stars, from the earth only the dark, foggy ones, from which the Moist derives its nourishment.The pure vapors are the transitional stage in the passing of sea into fire, the impure the transitional stage in the passing of earth into water. Thus the two paths of metamorphosis of the fire run continuously side by side, upwards and downwards, to and fro, from fire to water, from water to earth, from earth back again to water, from water to fire. Whereas Heraclitus is a follower of Anaximander in the most important of these conceptions, e.g., that the fire is kept up by the evaporations, or herein, that out of the water is dissolved partly earth, partly fire; he is on the other hand quite independent and in opposition to Anaximander in excluding the "Cold" from the physical process, whilst Anaximander had put it side by side with the "Warm" as having the same rights, so as to letthe "Moist" originate out of both. To do so, was of course a necessity to Heraclitus, for if everything is to be fire, then, however many possibilities of its transformation might be assumed, nothing can exist that would be the absolute antithesis to fire; he has, therefore, probably interpreted only as a degree of the"Warm" that which is called the "Cold," and he could justify this interpretation without difficulty. Much more important than this deviation from the doctrine of Anaximander is a further agreement; he, like the latter, believes in an end of the world periodically repeating itself and in an ever-renewed emerging of another world out of the all-destroying world-fire. 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; and 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. The Greek proverb seems talcum to our assistance with the thought that "satiety gives birth to crime (the hybris)" and one may indeed ask oneself for a minute whether perhaps Heraclitus has derived that return to plurality out of the hybris. Let us just take this thought seriously: in its light the face of Heraclitus changes before our eyes, the proud gleam of his eyes dies out, a wrinkled expression of painful resignation, of impotence becomes distinct, it seems that we know why later antiquity called him the "weeping philosopher." 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?

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.

The image of Murillo Bartolomé Esteban's Young Boys Playing Dice obtained gratefully from:

http://www.bestpriceart.com/painting/?pid=132588

The Everlasting Fire's Icy Truth, in Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, section 8

by Corry Shores
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The Everlasting Fire's Icy Truth

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

8

Heraclitus had the great pride of a philosopher. He does not need the mass' recognition. Eternally he wanders lonely. For he carries the truth.

Their talents are the most rare, in a certain sense the most unnatural and at the same time exclusive and hostile even toward kindred talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be of diamond, if it is not to be demolished and broken, for everything is in motion against them. Their journey to immortality is more cumbersome and impeded than any other and yet nobody can believe more firmly than philosopher that they will attain the goal by that journey because they do not know where they are to stand if not on the widely spread wings of all time; for the disregard of everything present and momentary lies in the essence of the great philosophic nature. They have truth; the wheel of time may roll whither it pleases, never can it escape from truth.

Other great philosophers who likewise knew their superhuman status felt pity and the unity of all living things, which led them back to serve humanity's welfare and salvation. Not Heraclitus.

No paramount feeling of compassionate agitation, no desire to help, heal and save emanates from him. He is a star without an atmosphere. His eye, directed blazingly inwards, looks outward, for appearance's sake only, extinct and icy. All around him, immediately upon the citadel of his pride beat the waves of folly and perversity: with loathing that turns away from them. But people with a feeling heart would also shun such a Gorgon monster as cast out of brass; within an out-of-the-way sanctuary, among the statues of gods, by the side of cold composedly-sublime architecture such a being may appear more comprehensible.

[See "Upon the Mount of Olives" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra for more on the philosopher's cold.] When Heraclitus observed the play of noisy children, he reflected on "the play of the great world-child, Zeus."

He did not question other people to obtain knowledge. He instead found the truth within himself. He learned immortal wisdom from his own inner oracle. And the world needs his truth always. But he does not need fame's immortalization. In the greater picture of the eternal fire, his fame among mortals is nothing.

For the world needs truth eternally, therefore she needs also Heraclitus eternally: although he has no need of her. What does his fame matter to him? Fame with "mortals ever flowing on!" as he exclaims scornfully. His fame is of concern to humans, not to himself; the immortality of mankind needs him, not he the immortality of the man Heraclitus. That which he beheld, the doctrine of the Law in Becoming, and of the Play in Necessity, must henceforth be beheld eternally: he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage-play. (emphasis mine)

From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

8

Heraclitus was proud; and if it comes to pride with a philosopher then it is a great pride. His work never refers him to a "public," the applause of the masses and the hailing chorus of contemporaries. To wander lonely along one's path belongs to the nature of the philosopher. Their talents are the most rare, in a certain sense the most unnatural and at the same time exclusive and hostile even toward kindred talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be of diamond, if it is not to be demolished and broken, for everything is in motion against them. Their journey to immortality is more cumbersome and impeded than any other and yet nobody can believe more firmly than philosopher that they will attain the goal by that journey because they do not know where they are to stand if not on the widely spread wings of all time; for the disregard of everything present and momentary lies in the essence of the great philosophic nature. They have truth; the wheel of time may roll whither it pleases, never can it escape from truth. It is important to hear that such humans have lived. Never for example would one be able to imagine the pride of Heraclitus as an idle possibility. In itself every endeavor after knowledge seems by its nature to be eternally unsatisfied and unsatisfactory. Therefore nobody unless instructed by history will like to believe in such a royal self-esteem and conviction of being the only wooer of truth. Such people live in their own solar systems one has to look for them there. A Pythagoras, an Empedocles treated themselves too with a superhuman esteem, yea, with almost religious awe; but the tie of sympathy united with the great conviction of the metempsychosis and the unity of everything living, led them back to other humans, for their welfare and salvation. Of that feeling of solitude, however, which permeated the Ephesian recluse of the Artemis Temple, one can only divine something, when growing benumbed in the wildest mountain desert. No paramount feeling of compassionate agitation, no desire to help, heal and save emanates from him. He is a star without an atmosphere. His eye, directed blazingly inwards, looks outward, for appearance's sake only, extinct and icy. All around him, immediately upon the citadel of his pride beat the waves of folly and perversity: with loathing that turns away from them. But people with a feeling heart would also shun such a Gorgon monster as cast out of brass; within an out-of-the-way sanctuary, among the statues of gods, by the side of cold composedly-sublime architecture such a being may appear more comprehensible. As human among humans Heraclitus was incredible; and though he was seen paying attention to the play of noisy children, even then he was reflecting upon what never humans thought of on such an occasion: the play of the great world-child, Zeus. He had no need of people, not even for his discernments. He was not interested in all that which one might perhaps ascertain from them, and in what the other sages before him had been endeavoring to ascertain. He spoke with disdain of such questioning, collecting, in short "historic" humans. "I sought and investigated myself," he said, with a word by which one designates the investigation of an oracle; as if he and no one else were the true fulfiller and achiever of the Delphic precept: "Know thyself."

What he learned from this oracle, he deemed immortal wisdom, and eternally worthy of explanation, of unlimited effect even in the distance, after the model of the prophetic speeches of the Sibyl. It is sufficient for the latest mankind: let the latter have that expounded to her, as oracular sayings, which he like the Delphic god " neither enunciates nor conceals." Although it is proclaimed by him, "without smiles, finery and the scent of ointments," but rather as with "foaming mouth," it must forceits way through the millenniums of the future. For the world needs truth eternally, therefore she needs also Heraclitus eternally: although he has no need of her. What does his fame matter to him? Fame with "mortals ever flowing on!" as he exclaims scornfully. His fame is of concern to humans, not to himself; the immortality of mankind needs him, not he the immortality of the man Heraclitus. That which he beheld, the doctrine of the Law in Becoming, and of the Play in Necessity, must henceforth be beheld eternally: he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage-play.

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.

Image obtained gratefully from:

http://webtheory.sns.it/astroparticle.html

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