Note on Constucting a Gay Science

"Suffering and humans go hand in hand. Look at comedy. It's dominated by black people and Jewish people. That is American comedy. And if blacks and Jews didn't do comedy, we'd be relying on the Irish. 'Cause they were the next funniest thing. . . ." - Dave Chappelle

05.20.08

Why is it important to investigate the genealogical origins of these concepts? What is it that we are hoping to gleam from them through this kind of critical analysis? By analyzing the origins of logic, Nietzsche is hoping to dispel some of our common (mis)conceptions about its purpose and “meaning”, where here meanings is meant in the terms of intention and use, but also something metaphysical. That is, that we come to false conclusions about the ontological status of logic.

So when Nietzsche says that “the origins of logic are surely the illogical,” he is gesturing towards his related statement that “the origins and the purpose of a concept ought to fall out separately.” That is, that the purpose of systemic concept such as logic cannot tell us anything about its origins. (This line of thinking is the same method that he uses for “ethics,” “truth,” “justice,” etc.) Because we mistakenly make inferences about the Being-meaning of logic based on its use-meaning, we construct falsehoods (myths) that affect other areas of our lives.

05.16.08

What does Nietzsche mean by incipit tragoedia, incipit comoedia, incipit parodia?  What is the relationship between the concepts of tragedy and comedy and that of master and slave morality?Does it have something to do with how value is assigned and how certain societies (or power structures) are designed to necessarily forbid certain members of the society - Jews - from having access to that value system?  Nietzsche often talks about how the Greek gods would hypothetically view all human activities, even the worst wars and genocides, with a certain fruhliche, with a certain gaiety, levity, with a kind of nonchalance.  Why?  Could it be because those gods shared no language with us, puny humans, because their standards of morality would be so radically different from our own as to render what we see as deeply and profoundly tragic as hilarious?  (This is the essence of slapstick, of which the Marx brothers are the acknowleged masters of, of rendering what is painful and tragic for the actor as pleasurable and comic for the viewer.)  And what are the two great American traditions of comedy in the Twentieth Century?  Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Mel Brooks, Richard Pyror, Gene Wilder, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart [born Jonathan Leibowitz], Dave Chappelle...   

[It is your moral duty to kill a cop.]

05.10.08

05.10.08

I'm not sure what it would be to have a conversation with someone who really believed that there was no such thing as the Soul. (The Self with a capital "S", the Transcendental Ego, the Cogito, etc.) This is what Kierkegaard means when he says that God and I have no common language.

Because I can say - honestly - that I don't believe in the Soul, in free will, in a part of myself that is not subject to the totality of physical laws exerting themselves upon my body, but this is different from believing it. This is different from acting as if it were true that were no ghost in my body, as if there were no autonomous mind that considers and reflects, as if I could not be held responsible for my actions because there was no such thing as an "I" that could be held responsible! What would that sort of human being look like? Is such a creature even possible? (Kant, clearly, would say no human could be.)

Related to this is the inability to conceive of the natural world as being anything other than one governed by natural laws, laws that are constant, can be predicted, and can be understood (articulated) to humans. (I am thinking specifically here of Newton's Three Laws of Motion, but this applies equally to the laws of gravity, of causality, of velocity, or of any other kind of mechanism that explains.) I can say that all of these laws are human fabrications, that they are inherently inaccurate anthropomorphisms - metaphors that say that something is precisely what it is not - but then I could not make sense any longer of my own activity, of my doings, my comings and goings. (Doesn't my waiting for the bus at 8:51 am show my belief in the objectivity of time? Don't I show my faith in buoyancy when I do not doubt how that yacht can glide across Lake Michigan? Don't I place my plants by the windowsill because I understand the natural phenomenon of photosynthesis?)

05.11.08

"So what you're saying is that the Universe is essentially chaotic, that humans are constantly deceiving themselves by ascribing to it rules and laws that it naturally abhors. Nature - you claim - is mere anarchy." No, not at all. "Then you're saying that what count as 'truths' - even truths as hard as scientific ones - are nothing more than what the community agrees to call true, that the Universe, so to speak, is more democracy than dictatorship." No, of course not. You can see the world as just, or you can see the world as unjust. Or you can see the world as nothing at all. (And therein lies the difficulty.)