Contradiction and the Recalcitrant

In the previous post, we conversed mystically about Necessity and what it means to be daring in the face of it. However, paradoxically, we achieved this conversation by means of the thoughts of philosophers. Therefore, it is not unwarranted to ask: "What is a philosopher without necessary truths?". Mystical truths do not suite him, unless he risks danger. It is true, a philosopher today is also part of the death-fearing human and thus they are also party to the enslavement of truth to necessity.

In philosophy, contradiction is taboo. In this way, philosophy is of the people and for the people. However, as they are from the earth, the people is not forever--there is still time to breathe, friend! This is what allows a sigh of relief for the contradictory in philosophy--the recalcitrant philosophers. This is so because this being looks for a fight in all everyday matters of life and philosophy serves as the best disturbance of such matters. So much so, that he would risk virtue out of fight. Contradiction is the fight that philosophy runs from, it is because of the avoidance of such fights that taboo is necessary-- it serves the security of the people. In this way, all matters of everyday life and peoples today are best disturbed by a disruption in the philosophy that precedes it.

Here, we see philosophy invite the recalcitrant into its heart.  It acts strictly and tyrannically about its virtues and taboos and thus betrays exactly where it is weak and vulnerable. Tellingly, we find the daring recalcitrant in philosophy and life risk the taboo of contradiction. What we will converse about in this episode is why the recalcitrant is interested in defying the people and how this is possible, we may find that the objections protested by the people against the efforts of such a dangerous and reckless person is only a superficial fear. Yes, indeed, maybe the recalcitrant's play with taboo is actually best for their spirits!

Contradiction in philosophy presents as the law of God, it is exactly this law that the recalcitrant has grown weary of. It is exactly for this reason that the recalcitrant focuses his aim on the heart of philosophy in his hope for a breath of fresh air. The recalcitrant is a regular fool in the eye of the people. This is because the recalcitrant denies himself heaven, utopia, relief from breathing. The question then becomes, "Why?" Why is the ways of the fathers that brought him his will and love not adequate for his own continuation thereof? What is the reason for the recalcitrant's ingratitude? The recalcitrant has a simple answer but to this day it remains unutterable and inconceivable for his fathers and their children; this answer is: love. The word of the people is quick to condemn this answer, where the recalcitrant claims love, they only see self-love and for good reason! Reason indeed, my dear recalcitrant, what is wrong with it?

Good and evil and joy and sorrow and I and You - I thought them coloured vapour before the creator's eyes. The creator wanted to look away from himself, so he created the world.
                                   Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Of the Afterworldsmen'

"Reason is too slow to uphold the fire of my passion," answers the recalcitrant. Reason observes too much and pays more attention to objects! It is because of this that it creates perfections. The recalcitrant is no longer convinced that perfection and perfect object is in his interest or those of his children--this is why he wills no longer to feed this virtue. Instead, he feeds on the poisons feared by the people. The taboo of contradiction assists reason to do its job of perfection, it is only with the knowledge of perfection that we may weed out imperfection. It is exactly at the realisation of this reasonable solution that causes the recalcitrant to spring into fervorous action. Indeed, it is well time to begin his work!

The recalcitrant wants to feel the affection and attention he received as a child, all persons this child was surrounded with wished to provide it with a home and feelings of the homely. It is exactly this memory that causes his aversion to the lessons of his fathers--they are not homely. His father speaks with a terrible distance, as he is always looking above and afar, the innocence of the child beckons for the father to recognise: the future lays in his hand--no need to look into the distance! It is the recalcitrant's own fault that he cannot appreciate the beauty of the heavenly, his myopia forbids it. His father's obsession with the future has made him tremble at the prospect of it, it is now time to learn the innocence of the future so that we may feel at home again in our present.

The perfect has created a world that has served our fathers well, the recalcitrant approves insofar as his father's past has provided him with his will--but no further... His father's past is his own, the recalcitrant wants his own too--thanks to his father! In this way, the recalcitrant eschews the perfect, the heavenly, the godly as his father's goods--and good they were! But, he wants to be the father to his own children--just like the fathers before him.

How will the recalcitrant will his own? you may ask. This is where contradiction, the taboo of his fathers, serves him well. His humouring of this taboo forces his departure of his fathers knowledge and virtues--in order to have his own. If the father gazes into the heaven, the abyss, the never-here, then his child recalcitrant will gaze into the now, the here, the imperfect--which is just that, which his father's people warns him against! This is what they despise as self-love, "egoism", they shout and condemn: "This is not what got us here--you fool!"

Fool he may be, but his head is not in the clouds: they do not see what he does. Where they see hope and dream, he sees only pity and sleep. They sigh and look away from home, and this is when the recalcitrant's memory of the child that he was rebukes them most, this is how his fire is maintained: by their insolence against his home! If it is not fit for the child that he is, it most certainly is not for the children that he may come to father--his own future! He no longer has time for thought of perfection as paradise, these are hurtful and no longer healthy for the recalcitrant. In this way, the laws of God, the perfections of calculation and the happiness of dreams makes the recalcitrant sick. Nauseating sickness sets in when we long for ground and home, it is for this reason that we find the recalcitrant in a desperate plight for his home-coming. He has grown tired of the sighs of happiness of his father:

They wanted to escape from their misery and the stars were too far for them. Then they sighed: 'Oh if only there were heavenly paths by which to creep into another existence and into happiness!' -- then they contrived for themselves their secret ways and their draughts of blood!
  Now they thought themselves transported from their bodies and from this earth, these ingrates. Yet to what do they owe the convulsion and joy of their transport? To their bodies and to this earth.                                                                                                                                           

                                   Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: 'Of the Afterworldsmen'

Here, we find the new father and his child: they desire innocence in home and love. Leaving the laws of father and God aside, they now have a new way to walk it--a new good, a new virtue to guide them. It is exactly here where the taboo of contradiction offers the recalcitrant a means. They wish for change by defying the taboo of contradiction. Through this defiance they arrive at the virtue of contradiction and the indispensability of the selfish self to achieve it. Through their ego they announce to the world: this is my home, this is my love. It will be my future, my children. The recalcitrant will take his fight to the sun for his love, he fears no obstacle--it is only opportunity for contradiction. Contradicting is his virtue, this is the gift of the fathers of the recalcitrant to him and his children. Here, I appeal to a claim made by the recalcitrance of Nietzsche, that a youthful organism may be matured best by an initial "tyranny" such as the tyranny of the father over the child recalcitrant..., Initially... (The Gay Science: 11)

Every philosophy that ranks peace above war, every ethic with a negative definition of happiness, every metaphysics and physics that knows some finale, some final state of some sort, every predominantly aesthetic or religious craving for some Apart, Beyond, Outside, Above, permits the question whether it was not sickness that inspired the philosopher. The unconscious disguise of physiological needs under the cloaks of the objective, ideal, purely spiritual goes to frightening lengths -and often I have asked myself whether, taking a large view, philosophy has not been merely an interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding the body.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: 3

"Everything must be dared"

What does it mean to dare? Some irrational and unreasonable men can help us understand this question.

In the previous entry of mine, I alluded to many, seemingly, far-reaching things. I, see myself, aligning the agreements of what is "best", and the "laws" it presupposes, equating it with what is considered to be "necessary", "calculable", or, as we know today, what is "human".

These various agreements and qualities may be known under one banner, or name, as it is worshipped today: "Necessity". Necessity carries with him his a house of being. Within this house-hold, he holds lady "Truth", who has no will of her own--it is given to her by the arrogance of men willing to know the law of the Lord. Together with lady Truth, Lord Necessity rules the lives of all of those men who know the laws of the Lord. Today, nobody who calls themselves human and only human (or should I say "All-Too-Human") is spared of this arrogance, this is how Necessity has become the law of man, and we no longer see men of law willing to challenge it, these are the dangerous men, they risk their own law and by that risk virtue. Without this house and marriage, life, as we know it, would be meaningless--or so they think; so they hope!

Here, I commit myself to the dangerous meanderings of the Russian Lev Shestov, a man we most certainly speak of seldomly. Shestov, in his journey of Athens and Jerusalem, asks exactly why philosophers, and the people they have raised to this day, are burdened with a need for agreement of all men with the Lord Necessity.

However, it is the thoughts of such a dangerous man, that it is this Necessity that we can do exactly without. Today, we know, that Necessity is everything restricted; constrained. It is where we meet with the "wall" I speak of in the first entry. Overcoming it, is impossible, or so they hope we, and all men after us, will believe! To state this otherwise: the human needs to believe that this is not possible or even if it is: it should not be conscionable  It is said that only through discovering the embodiments of Necessity can we know at all, it is through this knowing that we come to know what is good. It is learning from the past that we know how to be good in the future. From this what is "best" is born. Without knowing and remembering there is no virtue, they will have us believe! So do not forget, unless you risk danger. In this way Truth, as Necessity demands her, is indispensable to Necessity. Without her, he holds no threat to man. In this way, he will ensure that he keeps her, and only he...

In this way, we find knowledge to be the only source of Truth and Truth to be the anchor of Necessity, and together they rule. However, the dangerous man may be tempted to question this Truth and question her right to Necessity, or maybe Necessity's right to her. Here, we find a paradoxical man, who is willing to let Truth play, to risk all that is virtuous and conscionable. A dangerous man indeed. Here, is a demonstration of a man like Lev Shestov, hell-bent on dishonouring the union between Necessity and Truth.

Life no argument.-- We have fixed up a world for ourselves in which we can live--assuming bodes, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of faith, nobody now would endure life. But that does not mean that they have been proved. Life is no argument; the conditions of life could include error. By Friedrich Nietzsche. From The Gay Science (1882): 121.

Is this what I mean when I say be dared? Is it this challenge, where truth describes the origin of life? Is it the audacity of playing with truth? This can be expressed further by another quote from the same dangerous man:

Sense of truth.-- I think well of all scepticism to which I may reply: "Let us try it." But I no longer want to hear anything of all those things and questions which do not permit experiments. This is the limit of my "sense of truth": for their courage has lost its rights. From The Gay Science: 129.

Truth bound with Necessity is the wall I have spoken of. But, it is not a wall simply, it is a wall that is approached by man. This wall, for the human, is, and must remain, unclimbed.  Insurmountable. It is here that we meet the, perceived, inseparability of the eternal union between Truth and Necessity. It is here that we realise that it is not so without us. Even "God himself cannot exist without wise men", for Nietzsche, the famous Christian, Luther, knew this. However, Nietzsche, being the dangerous man that he is, there is a further truthfulness that Luther obscures here: "God can exist even less without unwise men". Is it us who makes the union of Truth and Necessity the wall which may not be climbed?

Why do we forget that life is not born out of Truth, but it is indeed the other way around. Only with life coursing through his veins does man assist Necessity to shackle Truth: naked forever, truth for her own sake; we say! Whether you call this nudity explanation or revelation--you know it leaves you naked too! It knows no bounds and will stop at nothing, not even life, to have its way. Why do we tolerate its tyrany? When will the desire to desire, the will to will become too much to bear. When will it overwhelm us and break our addiction to the laws of the Lord? when will we demand our Lord and not the one of our fathers?

This is indeed a good question Why these laws and not others? We are, here, offered an idea of truth which does not make her into a tyrant which weights heavy on the shoulder of man. Why do I name it the idea of a "dangerous man", what makes it dangerous? It threatens knowledge and the knowledge of virtue, that is why! If truth is not this tyrant, how will we know what she is at all? How, then, may we agree about what is necessary? Oh, how we clench to her image so! It is for her sake, or is it for ours? No, these waters are too dangerous: take us back to land where we can stand again! I do not think I will float with the fate of the world on my shoulders, this is unconscionable!

But, my friends, we have already set sail: do you not see? Why are you here? What brought you here?: In your hearts you know that in this, old, dominating, light--it is you, too, that is naked, not only lady Truth. What is this nudity? What is this fear of dangerous waters? Why do you scare yourself so?: It is because you look backward. This nudity is being stuck outside without any clothes to be had. It is being stuck, petrified in fear. You feed your consciousness with this looking-backward, beware, you yourself will become backwards. Stale and dead, like history; the past!

We, my friends, are living the legacy of philosophers, we carry the same burden that was carried by the great Socrates, which is: knowledge as virtue. Indeed, we have become strong, wealthy, dominant over the ages and now the free radicals are all-too recognisable in an ocean of only humanness. We have been taught to look back and never look away, the past will guide us we can see Necessity, our Lord, there. Do not look away, they warn! Do not forget it!

"Discourse daily about virtue" Plato has his master, Socrates, say. What is it that happens when we look anywhere other than backwards, to the past? When we venture outside of what we know, why must we always come back to the virtue that we already know? This is what the dangerous man asks, when he looks at himself and his future, he wonders out-loud: is it not, perhaps, best to forget  of the past and make a future which is new?

We fear this man. He will take away our shepherd--our Lord Necessity, who will we follow? Why do we want new! Given this threat to the herd, it is this questioning of our Lord, of our virtues, that must be forbidden, must be evil. Now, we know why these men are dangerous: they are targets for execution! Stay clear if you wish to stay here! And although these men allow us our lady Truth, they cannot stifle their laughter at our utterly stifled existence. "They can't even float: that is how burdensome these 'men' are".

Plato, our ancestor, said "Not even the gods fight against Necessity" but he also said that "It is necessary to challenge everything". This is why the dangerous men even bother to speak to us, they know our suffering and they also know the end of it, the end of man. We find our the origins of our existence in the same place as we find the source of its destruction, Truth provides the conditions for its own destruction, this is her grace. She will not die ugly, like our Lord Necessity, she knows too much. This is what we see when we see Nietzsche stumble upon the idea that it may be true that the conditions of life contain errors, untruths. This is a higher truth than all others yet! But, indeed, a dangerous one which should not be fed with resistance; just as with life, it is through starvation that danger cannot grow the environment it flourishes in.

My friends, we are petrified. We resist everything like stone, we have become hard to penetrate, to move. As long as we enslave truth to necessity, as long as we hold them in their dead house we take this prison to be the only source of our own home, our being. We may be in even more danger than these dangerous men! We have no choice, "volition" to use a dangerous man's words, why do we give it away because we fear that we cannot overcome the wall, or float in the sea! We choose to fear let us not deny it! If Lord Necessity leads us to death, and life provides us this desire, then is it true that we may only have death? We may have life, if we do not give it unto death! But, if we choose death, let us do it with grace as Lady Truth does! She may be bitter but she does not die ugly. Let us not be fools like Lord Necessity, a stubborn, unfeeling tyrant!

We have turned our future into the past, and therefore are always looking back. The imagery of the fear-stricken mortal who runs from the Medusa, forgets how to escape her petrification: don't look back--you fool! Now, because of the morality of fools, we are all petrified and the laws dictate that you only look back on pain of  getting lost! But, how good is home when it makes you into stone? Do you not want to move those calcified joints? Stir the evaporated steam? Drive the fire again which once led into this petrified ash.  This is what it means to be human in our world: to stay human and only human! Come, you are already here friend, let us carry on sailing and see where we find ourselves. This is the prospects offered by Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the form of a "new nobility" and thus a new Lord, maybe one which is not tyrannical--for now, to us, and hopefully not for our children!...:

O my brothers, I direct and consecrate you to a new nobility: you shall become begetters and cultivators and sowers of the future - truly, not to a nobility that you could buy like shopkeepers with shopkeepers' gold: for all that has a price is of little value. Let where you are going, not where you come from, henceforth be your honour! You will and your foot that desires to step out beyond you - let them be your new honour![...] O my brothers, your nobility shall not gaze backward, but outward! You shall be fugitives from all fatherlands and fore-fatherlands. You shall love your children's land: let this love be your new nobility - the undiscovered land in the furthest sea! I bid your sails seek it and seek it! You shall make amends to your children for being the children of your fathers: thus you shall redeem all that is past! This new law-table do I put over you. From Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Of Old and New Law-Tables: 12. 

Here, we find the dangerous man in the light, for a moment, as he emerges from a slither of the underworld. He once knew his nudity in-front of his fathers, the Lord. Like us, he clenches the shame of the past to his heart, but now he wills to forget it! He has come out of the dark to tell us it is possible...to forget. It may not be conscionable, that is our will and he cannot change that, but he wishes to discourage us from mistaking our will, our fathers gift, as the only one. He wants his own children and to be his own father: this is why he is dangerous! He threatens everything we believe in and on-top of this he dismisses our Truth as lie--simply because he cannot tolerate it. Is his problem, our problem? Why does he dare question the authority of our Lord?

There is a pause as the dust settles from the impatient stomp of our Lord's soldiers. The dangerous man waits and looks you in the eyes with earnest carelessness, he asks: "Why else are we here if we are not here to dare?..." We respond incredulously: "Dare to what? You mad fool!" To exist in our own right, is there any bigger risk of meaninglessness? Of being disagreed with? To be our own fools and not the same fools as our fathers? I do not think we fear anything higher than this and with good reason. It is unconscionable. Without Necessity, there is no fear.

But, this does not mean it is not possible. The realisation of this mere possibility is what it means to dare. It is to take a step outside of your father's house and a step towards home. Is it worth it?: it is worth all virtue, to be sure, says the new Lord.

Come, my friends, I beckon you to start a new home with me, one where we may mourn the loss of our fathers and honour their memory by building something new, as they did, something to lose; forget--all over again. Do you dare to carry on with life? This is what it means to dare. And why, again, do we love our fathers? Is it not their will to dare, to live with life instead of living with the burden of life? Well, then, how do we love ourselves if we are willing to deprive ourselves of this creation of law? Let us love and be loved, then!

The Journey Begins

This blog crept up to you from the vast echelons of the collective we like to call the internet. This is how it starts. They ask me to give you descriptions of what it is that is happening here, but who am I to try? I can't, wait...No, it has nothing to do with what I believe I am capable of: I won't, I will it not. However, I am not so stupid as to believe that this entry will evade being forced to represent the greater whole it forms part of, so I will allow that and maybe even embrace it, a little, for a while.

Great men are seldom spoken of and I do not wish to change that truth. In fact, what you will find offered here is always, probably, mystifying and sometimes maybe even disenchanting. This disenchantment will not be my fault, as you will see: here, I indulge in the moral frivolity of guilt not because I wish to apologise but rather because I would like to allude to, what I believe right now, is imminent.

I, here, believe that the words found in this entry will be demanded of to represent what is and what will be. I don't actually care if it does or does not. I cannot express this better than a man we are best to be cautious of, if we trust what they say is best, but as you will see, I believe, I have little regard for what they say must be considered "best".

What I am saying here is this: the reader of my blog is expecting a wall which does not want to be climbed to be constructed here. This is what we expect from any being which takes itself to be an authority or, in other words, human. They tell you that you are ruled by what they call nature and its "laws". You must accept these laws to live well, live good. You must not fret at the insurmountable walls posed by its laws, there is no point in this, you are better off accepting it. Just accept it. Just accept that you are descended from apes and are ruled by the same, normal, natural, desires. Accept that two times two is four, it is the law of mathematics, do not bother challenging it.

But, we may ask, and here we encounter one of the men I would like to speak of against all good reason, what if...what if "I don't happen to like those laws and that twice twice two is four?" Here, we encounter the "lazy devil" and he is not the laughing kind. A brooding, miserable, being who has very little consideration for what is "best" for him. We will encounter more of these men here, you can be sure, one may even say that this organisation you are, here, encountered with aspires to the heights of these type of men (and be sure that I, as do they, shed no regard for the "gender" here). However, caution to those who trust my words: what do I know? Indeed, I have caught myself listening to Nietzsche's, another man we are best not to speak of, "malicious bird" who twitters: "What do you matter? What do you matter?". Now, I hope you see, this wall does not care if you will to climb it or not, whether you will to believe that you may or not. If you will: do, be dared!

Now you know why I do not apologise and why I do not, here or anywhere, matter. I do not wish to place upon you the curse of law. This you may question, this you may vehemently disagree with: you demand this curse! "Well, so much the better".Here, you are presented with an entry as a disgusting agreement with the man who wishes to dismiss nature and its laws as becoming "too human" becoming a calculable, necessary, path. We will find nothing as light as what they consider to be "best" here, we will not find humanity here. Instead, we will find wanderers such as the great Zarathustra who knew that: "There are a thousand paths that have never yet been trodden—a thousand healths and hidden isles of life. Even now, man and man's earth are unexhausted and undiscovered." Then, there is walking to do, then: let us walk!

I commit myself to the inhumanity of these dangerous men and in this you witness my siding with the promises of lovers. Here, you find me straying from The Path. Come one, come all, this is a sight appreciable to anyone: if you dare. This my journey from the underworld to the next! I start my journey with a parable, read it...my friends. Will love and be willed love:


"Wake and listen, you that are lonely! From the future come winds with secret wing-beats; and good tidings are proclaimed to delicate ears. You that are lonely today, you that are withdrawing, you shall one day be the people: out of you, who have chosen yourselves, there shall grow a chosen people and out of them, the overman. Verily, the earth shall yet become a site of recovery. And even now a new fragrance surrounds it, bringing salvation—and a new hope." By: Friedrich Nietzsche. From: Thus Spoke Zarathustra: On The Gift-Giving Virtue: 2.