Structuralism and Post-Structuralism in Derrida's Deconstruction

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 10/01/2013

Structuralism


In critical theory, structuralism is a theoretical paradigm positing that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger system or structure as an example signs gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs constituting a system of signs This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between words and the object in the world that they designate.

Ferdinand de Saussure argued that the "sign" was composed of both a signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a "signifier", the perceived sound/visual image, and since different languages have different words to describe the same objects or concepts, there is no intrinsic reason why a specific signifier is used to express a given signified. It is thus "arbitrary". Signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs. As he wrote, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.' As summarized by philosopher John Searle, de Saussure established that 'I understand the sentence "the cat is on the mat" the way I do because I know how it would relate to an indefinite—indeed infinite—set of other sentences, "the dog is on the mat," "the cat is on the couch," etc.'

In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of inter-textual connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs. Structuralism argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that are to be unmasked. And so text has one final meaning. The Signifier can't be a signified.

A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive. An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of West Side Story did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death.

Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only . In the course of his inquiry, Saussure goes as far as to argue that “language and writing are two distinct systems of signs: the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first”. Similar to how tone and stress on a word can change the meaning of a sentence.

Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human experience and thus, behavior, is determined by various structures. So it opposed existentialism.

Post-Structuralism


A post-structuralist critic must be able to use a variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another. It is particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variables, usually involving the identity of the reader (for example: class, racial, or sexual identity). The theme of history in modern Continental thought can be linked to such influences as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. So there is an endless number of interpretations. Foucault argues that everything is interpretation. There is no final meaning for any particular sign, no notion of unitary sense of text, no interpretation can be regarded as superior to any other. A Signifier can be a signified and so on in an endless chain.

Umberto Eco's (1962) The Open Work satisfies the criteria of a post-structuralist work. Eco's thesis is that a work of art, and especially of contemporary art, has an undefined meaning, and that the will of the artist was exactly that of producing such indeterminacy or openness. These "open works" have then to be completed by the interpreter, according to that particular interpreter's knowledge.


Binary Opposition



In critical theory, a binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. It is the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off, up and down, left and right. Each unit is defined in reciprocal determination with another term, as in binary code. It is not a contradictory relation but, a structural, complementary one. An example of this is that one cannot conceive of 'good' if we do not understand 'evil'. In post-structuralism, it is seen as one of several influential characteristics or tendencies of Western and Western-derived thought, and that typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. For example when was adopted by several French feminist theorists as a way of making clearer the deep male bias embedded in the European intellectual tradition.




Deconstruction


Derrida follows Wittgenstein in his linguistic turn, transforming the classic question of what we can know to the question of what we can express. Derrida aimed to show that writing is not simply a reproduction of speech, but that the way in which thoughts are recorded in writing, strongly affects the nature of knowledge.

Deconstruction is, like Destruktion, an historicizing movement that opens texts to the conditions of their production, their context in a very broad sense, including not only the historical circumstances and tradition from which they arose, but also the conventions and nuances of the language in which they were written and the details of their authors’ lives. Deconstruction, is breaking something down into parts to look for meaning, then putting the parts back together to create greater and show the contradictions that undo the texts themselves, because "Language is constantly overflowing with implications, associations, and contradictions of the ideologies of which it is formed". The contextual noumenon, as discovered by the deconstructionist, is relatively more important than the textual content.


For Heidegger, Destruktion of the traditions in that social world can lead us back to a past that can be re-interpreted in ways that reveal the deeper understanding of Being hidden in the earliest texts of the European tradition; it can offer ways to project a different, more authentic future for Dasein based on the new way of seeing the past. Deconstruction differs from Destruktion in that it has no fixed or expected endpoint or map, but is rather a potentially infinite process. Although obviously a critical tool, it also lacks the sense, evident in Heidegger, that the text to be deconstructed is part of how European thought has somehow gone wrong and needs correction. This is because deconstruction rejects both the idea that there is a fixed series of eras (ancient, medieval, modern) in European history that mark a downward path, and the idea that there is some determinate way in which that path might be reversed, by a re-interpretation. Rather, Texts are vital parts of our intellectual world, with a view to revealing their underlying complexities and hidden contradictions. He does not seek to undo Kant, for example, or interpret his writings in ways closer to Derrida’s own vision of what philosophy should be, but rather shows us the ways in which Kant both changes and continues the metaphysical tradition, as well as the ways in which Kant’s texts undo themselves along the same.


The basic strategy is still to follow the trace of a key ambiguity or blind spot through the text to illuminate hierarchical oppositions. "In a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand. To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment". In order to begin the deconstruction, one must break the link between the two opposing concepts. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflicting and subordinating structure of opposition. But, as a second step, Derrida added that one must do what is needed so that the two concepts stay separate and non hierarchical. In order to achieve this, one must intervene in the field effectively, to create new marks, a new concept that no longer is, and never could be included in the previous regime. "To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new concepts, not to synthesize the terms in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay". — "Interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta," in "Positions"


Derrida argues that at the crucial point of observation, that is at the point that a thing becomes identifiable for us, we label it. That is, we think and we observe in words. In a language even. If you open the box, the way you identify your reality is through your binary opposition. This is why the "Zombie" is an undecidable, and you have to enforce its place on one side of the binary opposition. It must be ONLY alive or dead. It has to become a proper corpse or a living being. At that point the familiar concepts of life and death can rule again, untroubled. This is the restoration of conceptual order, like Schrodinger's cat. But it can't be on other side so we need to create a new concept, "Zombie".

Différance

Perhaps Derrida's most famous mark was, from the start, differance, created to deconstruct the opposition between speech and writing. Derrida deconstructs this binary opposition and argues that writing precedes speech rather than being its consequence or effect. Derrida quotes Saussure: “Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first.” Critiquing this relationship between speech and writing, Derrida suggests that written symbols are legitimate signifiers on their own—that they should not be considered as secondary or derivative relative to oral speech. What differentiates différance and différence is inaudible, and this means that distinguishing between them actually requires the written. This problematical efforts like Saussure’s, which as well as attempting to keep speech and writing apart, also suggest that writing is an almost unnecessary addition to speech. In response to such a claim, Derrida can simply point out that there is often, and perhaps even always, this type of ambiguity in the spoken word – différence as compared to différance – that demands reference to the written.

In the essay "Différance" Derrida indicates that différance gestures at a number of heterogeneous features that govern the production of textual meaning.

  1. The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever "deferred" or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. Deferral also comes into play, as the words that occur following "house" or "white" in any expression will revise the meaning of that word, sometimes dramatically so. This is true not only with syntagmatic succession in relation with paradigmatic simultaneity, but also, in a broader sense, between diachronic succession in History related with synchronic simultaneity inside a "system of distinct signs".
  2. The second (relating to difference, sometimes referred to as espacement or "spacing") concerns the force that differentiates elements from one another and, in so doing, engenders binary oppositions and hierarchies that underpin meaning itself. For example, the word "house" derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from "shed", "mansion", "hotel", "building", etc. (Form of Content, that Louis Hjelmslev distinguished from Form of Expression) than how the word "house" may be tied to a certain image of a traditional house (i.e. the relationship between signifier and signified) with each term being established in reciprocal determination with the other terms than by an ostensive description or definition: when can we talk about a "house" or a "mansion" or a "shed"? The same can be said about verbs, in all the languages in the world: when should we stop saying "walk" and start saying "run"? The same happens, of course, with adjectives: when must we stop saying "yellow" and start saying "orange", or exchange "past" for "present? Not only are the topological differences between the words relevant here, but the differentials between what is signified is also covered by différance.
Complete meaning is always "differential" and postponed in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total. A simple example would consist of looking up a given word in a dictionary, then proceeding to look up the words found in that word's definition, etc., also comparing with older dictionaries from different periods in time, and such a process would never end.


Archi-writing refers to a kind of writing that precedes both speech and writing. Derrida argued that Archi-writing is, in a sense, language, in that it is already there before we use it, it is a semi-fixed set-up of different words and syntax. This fixedness is the writing to which Derrida refers, just such a 'writing' can even be seen in cultures that do not employ writing, it could be seen in notches on a rope or barrel, fixed customs, or placements around the living areas.

Deconstruction Examples


As an example of deconstruction here, The Truth in Painting takes its title from a letter in which Paul Cézanne tells Émile Bernard, “I owe you the truth in painting [la verité en peinture] and I will tell it to you.” Derrida points out that the philosophy of language would assert that in writing this, Cézanne must have known what he meant, but in fact the sentence itself has no determinate meaning. “The truth in painting” escapes and exceeds the boundaries philosophy wants to draw with regard to language because it has at least four meanings, none of which is reducible to any of the others: 1) the truth about truth itself to be found in or through a painting or other work of art, such as the truth Heidegger finds in Van Gogh’s painting of the shoes in “Origin of the Work of Art”; 2) the truth of the painting as painting, that is, how “true to life” it is, how well it succeeds in representing what it is meant to represent; 3) the truth about its object that can be found through the painting, such as when a portrait lays bare the character of its subject; and 4) the truth about painting in the sense of what is true in painting as a human enterprise or art form.


Another example, Ernest Jones’ classic psychoanalytic reading of “Hamlet”, for instance, is deconstructive in that it foregrounds the suppressed patricide in “Julius Caesar” (Shakespeare ignores the fact that Brutus was Caesar’s illegitimate son, thus implying an invariant (beloved-)father/(legitimate-)son pair), and then uses this omission as one key in tracing the Oedipal fault line in the later play. Here deconstruction yields, not a new meaning to “Hamlet”, as one could say Derrida does in his discussion of prefaces in Hegel, but a new richness to our understanding of Shakespeare’s work.


An example for feminist deconstruction, Sarah Kofman’s 1980 book on Freud provides a detailed example of the potential power of this method for feminist thought. One major fault line she examines is the concept of “penis envy”, a phenomenon that is supposedly central to the process that transforms bisexual creatures into women. Kofman notes, however, that this process amounts to transforming into a woman “a little girl who has first been a little boy” because within psychoanalysis pre-Oedipal bisexuality affirms the “original predominance of masculinity (in both sexes)” (EW 111-122). She draws extensively on Freud’s biography, as well as his texts, to make clear how he characterizes women as defined both by lack (their penis envy) and their excess (“her narcissistic self-sufficiency and her indifference” which leaves the male “emptied of this original narcissism in favor of the love object” [EW 52]), another classic deconstructive self-contradiction. Ultimately, she argues that penis envy, Freud’s “idée fixe”, and indeed his whole account of femininity and female sexuality, “allows him to blame nature for the cultural injustice by which man subordinates woman’s sexual desires to his”. She also notes Freud’s surprise that, given all this, women might be hostile to men or frigid (EW 208-209).


Deconstruction retains it critical edge well into the 21st century, even when directed against closely allied texts. For instance, the 2001 address Derrida gave upon receiving the Theodor Adorno Prize turns back on Adorno himself, specifically on his privileging of the German language even as he champions globalism and a united Europe. This deconstruction centers in the familiar manner on the untranslatably ambiguous French word fichu (n. neckerchief; adj., lost or done for). The word appears in French in a letter to Adorno’s wife by Walter Benjamin, who uses it in describing a dream where he speaks of “changing a poem into a fichu” in the first sense (neckerchief or scarf). This fichu is then associated in the dream with the letter “d”, which Derrida suggests might refer to a name Benjamin used in signing letters, or to his sister or his wife, both named Dora. Derrida then goes on to point out that “dora” in Greek can mean scorched or scratched skin, hence linking it to fichu in the second sense, but also to Auschwitz and to 9/11, which was Adorno’s birthdate (PM 164-181). In an excellent example of the deconstruction of a deconstruction, the English translator of this address inserts a footnote here to add that “dor”, meaning gift, is also part of Adorno’s given name, Theodor, “gift of the gods” (PM 203).

Derrida's Aporia



The aporia that surrounds the gift revolves around the paradoxical thought that a genuine gift cannot actually be understood to be a gift. In his text, Given Time, Derrida suggests that the notion of the gift contains an implicit demand that the genuine gift must reside outside of the oppositional demands of giving and taking, and beyond any mere self-interest or calculative reasoning, even a simple ‘thank-you’ for instance, which both acknowledges the presence of a gift and also proposes some form of equivalence with that gift, can be seen to annul the gift. The important point is that, for Derrida, a genuine gift requires an anonymity of the giver, such that there is no accrued benefit in giving. The giver cannot even recognize that they are giving, for that would be to reabsorb their gift to the other person as some kind of testimony to the worth of the self – ie. the kind of self-congratulatory logic that rhetorically poses the question “how wonderful I am to give this person that which they have always desired, and without even letting them know that I am responsible?”. He argues that a genuine gift must involve neither an apprehension of a good deed done, nor the recognition by the other party that they have received, and this seems to render the actuality of any gift an impossibility.


Derrida points out, in writing about one particular cause rather than another, in pursuing one profession over another, in spending time with one’s family rather than at work, one inevitably ignores the “other others” , and this is a condition of any and every existence. He argues that: “I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another, without sacrificing the other other, the other others”. For Derrida, it seems that the Buddhist desire to have attachment to nobody and equal compassion for everybody is an unattainable ideal. Derrida hence implies that responsibility to any particular individual is only possible by being irresponsible to the “other others”, that is, to the other people and possibilities that haunt any and every existence.


Criticism


With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he's so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that's not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn't understand me; you're an idiot.' That's the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes. Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That's very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether.
— John R. Searle

...anyone who reads deconstructive texts with an open mind is likely to be struck by the same phenomena that initially surprised me: the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial.
— John R. Searle

(0) Comments

Foucault in a Nutshell

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 9/30/2013

Genealogy and Power Relations


Genealogy is not the search for origins, and is not the construction of a linear development. Instead it seeks to show the plural and sometimes contradictory past that reveals traces of the influence that power has had on truth through out history.

Genealogy deconstructs truth, arguing that truth is, more often than not, discovered by chance, backed by the operation of power or the consideration of interest. All periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth - conditions of discourse - that constituted what was acceptable. Foucault develops the notion of episteme - the historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch- and argues that these conditions have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another. 

For example in the "History of Madness" Foucault identifies four epochs. In Middle Ages, insanity was blessedness and insane treated with respect and honor—models Christians could aspire to. At end of 16th century, insane became thought of as illness, disease. Insane turned from subjects to objects. During enlightenment—the age of reason—no sympathy showed to unreason or madness. In the vaunted “age of reason,” insane locked away with the poor and criminals. At end of 18th and beginning of 19th, shift in attitude toward insane again. Insane became regarded as mentally ill and were separated from the poor and criminals but not because of advancement in theoretically knowledge about mental illness. Rather shift in attitude derived from transformations in society—industrialization demanded larger labor force, which depended on the poor, (thus the poor taken out of hospitals) and the bourgeoisie fear of revolutionary, subversive behavior of criminals, which was a political concern, sent them to jails. Medicine at this time was a political discipline, full of prejudices, brutality, incomprehension, and lack of scientific knowledge. Then came Freud and his psychotherapy, which reflects an interpretive approach to studying man rather than a systematic or scientific one.

A "statement" is an existence function for discursive meaning. The rules which make an expression discursively meaningful. In contrast to structuralists, Foucault demonstrates that the semantic and syntactic structures do not suffice to determine the discursive meaning of an expression. A grammatically correct phrase may lack discursive meaning or, inversely, a grammatically incorrect sentence may be discursively meaningful - even meaningless letters (e.g. "QWERTY") may have discursive meaning. Thus, the meaning of expressions depends on the conditions in which they emerge and exist within a field of discourse; the discursive meaning of an expression is reliant on the succession of statements that precede and follow it. However, "statements" are also 'events', because, like other rules, they appear (or disappear) at some time. The statement is governed by a “system of its functioning,” which Foucault calls the “archive.” Archaeology is now interpreted as the excavation of the archive.

Besides focusing on the meaning of a discourse under analysis, the distinguishing characteristic of this approach is its stress on power relationships as expressed through language, and the relationship between language and power. This method tries to analyze how the social world, expressed through language, is affected by various sources of power, as the researcher tries to understand how our society is being shaped (constructed) by language, which in turn reflects various power relationships. He discusses how power demands obedience through domination, submission and subjugation, and also how power masks its true intentions by disguising itself as beneficial. As an example, he highlights the manner in which the feudal absolute monarchies of historical Europe, themselves a form of power, disguised their intentions by claiming that they were necessary to maintain law, order and peace. As a leftover concept from the days of feudalism, Foucault argues that westerners still view power as emanating from law, but he rejects this, proclaiming that they must "construct an analytics of power that no longer takes law as a model and a code".

What Foucault means by "Power", isn't power as the domination or subjugation exerted on society by the government or the state, but instead remarks that power should be understood "as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate". In this way, he argues, "Power is everywhere... because it comes from everywhere", emanating from all social relationships and being imposed throughout society bottom-up rather than top-down.

Foucault’s point is that we imagine power as being a thing that can be possessed by individuals, as organized pyramidal with one person at the apex, operating via negative sanctions. Foucault argues that power is in fact essentially relational. Power consists primarily not of something a person has, but rather is a matter of what people do, subsisting in our interactions with one another in the first instance. As such, power is completely Present to social networks. Power is "the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate". In this way, he argues, "Power is everywhere... because it comes from everywhere", emanating from all social relationships and being imposed throughout society bottom-up rather than top-down. Power has its own strategic logic, emerging from the actions of people within a network of power relations.

Biopower


Biopower is literally having power over bodies, over a population as a whole. It relates to the practice of modern nation states and their regulation of their subjects through "numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations". Biopower is utilized by an emphasis on the protection of life rather than the threat of death, its ultimate aim to produce surplus population. Which simply means more human resources, larger government, bigger revenues for the state and a better 'scientific' approach to ordering of the state.

Foucault gave numerous examples of biopolitical control when he first mentioned the concept in 1976. These examples include "ratio of births to deaths, the rate of reproduction, the fertility of a population, and so on."He contrasted this method of social control with political power in the Middle Ages. Whereas in the Middle Ages pandemics made death a permanent and perpetual part of life, this has shifted around the end of the 18th century. The development of vaccines and medicines dealing with public hygiene allowed death to be held (and/or withheld) from certain populations.

Foucault claims that the previous Greco-Roman, Medieval rule of the emperors,the Divine right of kings and Absolute monarchy model of power and social control over the body was an individualizing mode, all of this was drastically and dramatically altered with the advent of Political power in 18th century Europe. The voting franchise, Liberal democracy and Political parties.

(0) Comments

Nietzsche in a Nutshell

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 9/29/2013

Summary of Nietzsche's Philosophy


At first, Nietzsche attacked the Western world that had followed Socrates and his Apollonian rationalism and had denied the darker, Dionysian, irrational side of man, the tragic side. He claimed that morality, God and judgment in the after-world are an invention of the weak (Slave Morality) (the Christians and the Jews but for him the Jews were more superior because their god reflected their National will and pride into power) to be distractions from the pains of this life and to weaken the strong's will to power in this life (Master Morality). This is unnatural as a sheep convincing the wolf to act like a sheep, priests ruled through the invention of sins. He attacks the idea of god saying that science killed him. Soul, free will, immortality, reason, order and love, all these are "idols", little gods that are dying now that the Big God has died. He then attacks science's god (Truth) saying there is no objective truth, there is only wills, so truth is subjective. He extends his attacks to every Ideology that promotes the idea that "all men are equal" like Liberalism and Socialism because they reteach the Slave Morality in a new way. what he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by intellectual disease from below. Hence comes the Over-man, the Superman is the new god who exercises his will to power to create his own good and evil, his own morality (Master morality) denying a universal morality for all human beings, this idea acts as the opposite of "The Last Man", what the western civilization has set for itself. The lives of the last men are comfortable, they have no great passion or commitment, unable to dream, they merely earn their living. The last men claim to have discovered happiness, but blink every time they say so. Nietzsche values lightness and kindness in a powerful person because such a person is also capable of great solemnity and cruelty. There is no virtue in being kind simply because one hasn't the power to be cruel. But sooner or later all gods die, even the Superman, all history necessarily moved in a cycle, endlessly repeating all past events due to finite amount of matter and infinite amount of time thus every possible combination of elementary particles, every possible world, occur an infinite number of times, given infinite time. The Eternal Return is a must, all will return again to dust, and evolve worm, ape, man and Superman again and again. The Eternal Return is the triumph of "life" over logic, the only meaning is life then is the will to power. Power becomes its own end, not a means. The spirit of Anti-Christ or Dionysus has never received a complete formulation except with Nietzsche, he is Hell's favorite philosopher.

Overview of the Books


The Birth of Tragedy (1872)


Human, All Too Human (1878)

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man’s torments.

Daybreak (1881)

It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly! 

The Gay Science (1882)

Become who you are. 
Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not beforehand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers and wizards, who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?
“What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?.
Preparatory human beings. — I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all! For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day — the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885)

Zarathustra was written in only a few days, in a frenzy, perhaps of literally demon-inspired "automatic writing." No book ever written contains more Jungian archetypes, like a fireworks display of images from the unconscious. Nietzsche chose Zarathustra to speak his words because he "was the first to consider the fight of good and evil. Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it". This book for Nietzsche in his own words, "a lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed upon them., This book, the voice of which speaks out across the ages".
I am not to be a herdsman, I am not to be a grave-digger. Not any more will I discourse unto the people; for the last time have I spoken unto the dead.
But I live in mine own light, I drink again into myself the flames that break forth from me.
The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who can't fly.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity—through him all things fall.
I tell you: one must still have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his own blood.
The most silent words are harbingers of the storm ; thoughts that come on dove's feet lead the world.
When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!"
They devour each other and cannot even digest themselves.

With thee have I wandered about in the remotest, coldest worlds, like a phantom that voluntarily haunteth winter roofs and snows.
With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had no fear of any prohibition.
With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all boundary-stones and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dangerous wishes did I pursue,—verily, beyond every crime did I once go.
With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great names. When the devil casteth his skin, doth not his name also fall away? It is also skin. The devil himself is perhaps—skin.
'Nothing is true, all is permitted': so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab!

Thou thinkest thyself wise, thou proud Zarathustra! Read then the riddle, thou hard nut-cracker,—the riddle that I am! Say then: who am I!"
—When however Zarathustra had heard these words,—what think ye then took place in his soul? PITY OVERCAME HIM; and he sank down all at once, like an oak that hath long withstood many tree-fellers,—heavily, suddenly, to the terror even of those who meant to fell it. But immediately he got up again from the ground, and his countenance became stern.
"I know thee well," said he, with a brazen voice, "THOU ART THE MURDERER OF GOD! Let me go.
You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.
"This—is now MY way,—where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For THE way—it doth not exist!
When power becomes gracious and descends into the visible — such descent I call beauty. And there is nobody from whom I want beauty as much as from you who are powerful: let your kindness be your final self-conquest. Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.
Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves and only when ye have all denied me will I come back unto you.

Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
If you still experience the stars as something "over you," you still don't have the eyes of a knower
A man's stomach is the reason he does not easily take himself for a God 
He enters a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers already inherent in the very act of living, not the least of which is the fact that no one with eyes will see how and where he gets lost and lonely and is torn limb from limb by some cave-Minotaur of conscience. 

On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)


Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
We have already gone beyond whatever we have words for. 

The Antichrist (1888)


The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. 
I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite. 
Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ 
Why I am so Wise - Why I am so Clever - Why I Write such Excellent Books - Why I am a Fatality

The Will To Power (1888)


An anthology of material from Nietzsche's notebooks of the 1880s, edited by his friend Peter Gast, supervised by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche, and misrepresented by her as his unpublished magnum opus. All but 16 of its 1067 fragments can be traced to source texts in the historical-critical edition of Nietzsche's writings, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke, though 204 of the 1067 sections involve patching together paragraphs not originally juxtaposed by Nietzsche, or dividing continuous passages into multiple "aphorisms" and re-arranging their order. Regarding the Anti-Christ, She hints that the text may have been garbled, after the author’s collapse, by some more sinister heretic.

Quotes About Him

His "noble" man—who is himself in day-dreams—is a being wholly devoid of sympathy, ruthless, cunning, cruel, concerned only with his own power. King Lear, on the verge of madness, says: "I will do such things—What they are yet I know not—but they shall be The terror of the earth." This is Nietzsche's philosophy in a nutshell ~ Russell, ibid. p. 767

Arguments against the Eternal Return

Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann has described an argument originally put forward by Georg Simmel, which rebuts the claim that a finite number of states must repeat within an infinite amount of time: Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/p of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.

(0) Comments

The Kaballah

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 9/28/2013

A mystical practice born from Judaism which used to be rooted in magic until the 16th century when it became just symbolic.

Genesis


Kabbalists believe Ein Sof created the world in order to understand itself better. Because it was infinite, Ein Sof was also formless and without purpose—it existed as pure energy. Ein Sof therefore resolved to create something with both form and purpose—human beings. The power of God’s energy was so vast that it prevented anything else from existing in the universe. To make room for the human race and everything else in the universe, Ein Sof’s first action had to be tsimtsum, which means “withdrawal.” In order to make room for creation, Ein Sof had to first create a void inside itself, a space in which to make yesh (something) from ayin (nothing). God created the world with thirty-two secret paths of wisdom. These paths of wisdom are composed of the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Kabbalists believe that God’s creation of the universe was an act of divine self-sacrifice: God gave up its own life to create enough space for every thing and being that would occupy the universe. In withdrawing into itself, God left behind empty vessels to receive its energy in the form of light—Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew word that means “receiving.” But God’s boundless energy shattered the vessels. The breaking of the vessel destroyed the ordered universe that Ein Sof had begun to create. Tiny pieces of the vessel, like shards of glass, scattered and brought chaos to the universe. The masculine and feminine aspects of Ein Sof divided. Even Adam Kadmon split into parts.When the shards of the vessel began to fall, they brought with them sparks of Ein Sof’s light, called netzutzot. Together, the shards and the sparks fell into what would become material reality, or the human world. In place of a harmonious world made from the perfectly balanced ten sefirot, human beings entered a broken world filled with scattered sparks of divine light, which came to be called klippot, meaning “husks.”

Tree of Life


In the Sefer ha-Bahir the sefirot are described as “emanations” or attributes of God representing a particular part of God. The Tree of Life, a visual representation of the ten sefirot. The Tree is intended to symbolize the body of “Adam Kadmon,” also known as “primordial Adam.” Adam Kadmon is not the Adam of “Adam and Eve” that we read about in Genesis, but a kind of mystical template for human beings that God made before creating everything else. Though he never existed in the human world. Listed in order of their appearance and with a literal translation of their Hebrew meaning in parentheses, they are Keter (crown,the most hidden of all hidden things), Binah (understanding), Chochmah (wisdom), Gevurah (strength), Chesed (love), Tiferet (beauty), Hod (splendor), Netzach (endurance), Yesod (foundation), and Shekhinah (kingdom, God's creation). Each sefirah represents many things, including one of God’s qualities, a stage in the creation of the world, a biblical character, and a part of God’s body. Kabbalists portray the ten sefirot on a Tree of Life that serves as a visual map. The location of each sefirah on the Tree of Life represents a variety of qualities, including the sefirah’s gender and position on God’s body.


The first sefirah that emerged from God lies at the top of the Tree. Then, beginning with Keter, each sefirah arose out of and slightly modified thesefirah (or sefirot) that preceded it. Binah came from Keter. Gevurah came from Keter and Binah, altering both of them. The sefirot on the left side of the Tree (Binah, Gevurah, and Hod) are associated with feminine traits, whereas those on the right side (Chochmah, Chesed, and Netzach) are thought to be more masculine. Those in the center column (Keter, Tiferet, Yesod, and Shekhinah) are neutral. All of the feminine aspects are thought to be the daughters of Binah, who is known as the mother of the ten sefirot.

Kabbalists believe in reincarnation, the rebirth of a soul into a new human body, and transmigration, the movement from one form of life to another.

The Zohar


Moses de Leon (1250–1305) -  A Spanish writer of books on mysticism, Moses De Leon began handing out pamphlets in 1280 that he claimed had been written by Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai in the  second-century. These small books were the beginning of what would later become Sefer ha-Zohar, or the Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah. The Zohar is written in a very unconventional style, which some associate with the technique of “automatic writing.” Automatic writing requires the writer to enter a mystical trance and then immediately transcribe whatever thoughts first come to mind, no matter how scattered or unrelated. Automatic writing could supposedly unveil ideas buried deep in one’s consciousness, and perhaps bring a writer closer to understanding God. Others contend that the Zohar’s bizarre style results not from the automatic writing of one person, but from the contributions of various authors over hundreds of years. The Zohar describes the journey of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and ten companions through Galilee, the northern region of Palestine and, formerly, the kingdom of Israel. Along their journey, the travelers discuss their interpretations of the Torah, and specifically the Torah’s main characters. The characters become a part of the narrative of the Zohar, their lives weaving in and out of those of Yohai and his group. The companions come and go fluidly within their own group—they often turn from one character into another.

(0) Comments

The Anti-Christ

Posted by Ali Reda | Posted in | Posted on 9/28/2013

Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.
Nietzsche starts by defining the concepts of good, bad, and happiness in relation to the will to power.
What is good? -- All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man. What is bad? -- All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? -- The feeling that power increases -- that a resistance is overcome. 
Nietzsche's attacks pity and faith advocating skepticism and the will to power :
Faith moves no mountains but puts mountains where there are none: a quick walk through a madhouse enlightens one sufficiently about this.
Pity persuades men to nothingness! Of course, one does not say 'nothingness.' One says 'the Beyond' or 'God' or ' true life' or 'Nirvana,' 'salvation,' 'redemption,' 'blessedness'. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction;
Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not see what is below them. A mind that aspires to great things, and that wills the means thereto, is necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort of conviction belongs to strength, and to an independent point of view. The believer is not free to answer the question, “true” or “not true,” according to the dictates of his own conscience.
The weak and ill–constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. 
They rule, not because they want to, but because they are; they are not at liberty to play second.
He then shows how Christianity as an absence of will leads to Nihilism. He talks about Pascal who on 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..."
It has depraved the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures by teaching men to feel supreme values of intellectually as sinful, as misleading, as temptations. The most deplorable example: the depraving of Pascal, who believed his reason had been depraved by original sin while it had only been depraved by his Christianity!
Kant supported theological ideals by his discussions of the concepts of "true world" and "morality as the essence of the world." Kant's skeptical procedure was to show that these concepts could not be refuted, even though they could not be proved. Nietzsche was especially critical of Kant's Categorical imperative because its origin from concepts and logic was decadent because it was not a product of life, growth, self–preservation, and pleasure. Kant's practical reason was an attempt to give scientific legitimacy to his lack of intellectual conscience.
A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true world," the concept of morality as the essence of the world (--the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a subtle and wily skepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then at least no longer refutable... Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not go so far. . . Out of reality there had been made "appearance"; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality.
The Christian God reflects Christianity's decadence. If Christians were naturally strong and confident, they would have a God who is destructive as well as good. 
Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, would be contrary to human. 
Meta-physicians have eliminated the attributes of virile virtues, such as strength, bravery, and pride, from the concept of God. As a result, it deteriorated into an insubstantial ideal like Spinoza's God, pure spirit, Absolute, or thing in itself.

Nietzsche believed, Buddhism was the only positive religion because it struggles against actual suffering, Christianity, on the contrary, struggles against sin, while suffering can have a redemptive quality. Nietzsche claimed that Buddhism is "beyond good and evil" because "it puts the self-deception that lies in moral concepts behind it".

Concepts such as "God", "moral world–order", "sinner", "Redeemer", "free will", "beyond", "Last Judgment", and "immortal soul" are consciously employed in order to provide power to the church and its priests. Sinners are dependent on their priests for salvation, redemption, and forgiveness.
The priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be “sinning”.... Prime axiom: “God forgiveth him that repenteth”—in plain English, him that submitteth to the priest.
Israel's Yahweh was the expression of the Jewish's consciousness of power, of their pride and their national will, but later due to the Assyrian, their concept of God was falsified into a form similar to the Christian god and the concept of morality was falsified. Morality is no longer an expression of life and growth.
The public notion of this god now becomes merely a  weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for “sin”: that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a “moral order of the world” is set up.

For Nietzsche, Jesus was a peaceful rebel against the established order
Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: “Who put him to death? who was his natural enemy?”—this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt against the established order.
Jesus did not want to redeem anyone. He wanted to show how to live. His legacy was his bearing and behavior. His legacy was his life not his death.
This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil.... Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not to lay blames.... On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him....
Thereafter, the opposite kind of life was called Christian. Belief in redemption through Christ is not originally Christian. Genuine, original, primitive Christianity is not a faith. It is state of being". 
There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross....Only Christian practice, a life such as he lived who died on the cross, is Christian... 
Jesus' wanted his death on the cross to be an example of how a person can be free from resentment, revenge, and rebellion. 
"And if someone goes through fire for his doctrine — what does that prove?" 
The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
 The disciples, however, wanted revenge against the Jewish ruling class and high priests who had delivered him to Pilate. They elevated Jesus into being the Messiah and Son of God and promised future judgment and punishment in the kingdom of God. This was in opposition to Jesus' doctrine that everyone could be a child of God and experience Heaven in their present lives by acting in a gentle, loving manner.

Paul made immortality the main point when he said "...If Christ did not rise from the dead, then all our faith is in vain!." Paul used the promise of life after death as a way to seize tyrannical power over the masses of lower-class people. This changed Christianity from a peace movement that achieves actual happiness into a religion whose final judgment offers possible resurrection and eternal life.
Hard upon the heels of the “glad tidings” came the worst imaginable: those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated the very opposite of the “bearer of glad tidings”; he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses. Surely not reality; surely not historical truth!
Paul falsified the history of Christianity, the history of Israel, and the history of mankind by making them all seem to be a preparation for the crucifixion. The meaning of the God on the Cross is that everything that suffers is divine.
The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the “risen” Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something more.
Again I remind you of Paul’s priceless saying: “And God hath chosen the weak things of the world, the foolish things of the world, the base things of the world, and things which are despised”: this was the formula; in hoc signo the décadence triumphed.—God on the cross—is man always to miss the frightful inner significance of this symbol?—Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is divine.... We all hang on the cross, consequently we are divine.... We alone are divine.... Christianity was thus a victory: a nobler attitude of mind was destroyed by it—Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity
This sickness of Christianity came to halt during the church's reign in the renaissance but continued again due to the reformations by Luther which took the power from the pope and returned Christianity to its sickness
I see before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and spectacle:—it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of a fine and delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so infernally divine, that one might search in vain for thousands of years for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance and at the same time so wonderfully full of paradox that it should arouse all the gods on Olympus to immortal laughter—Cæsar Borgia as pope!... Am I understood?... Well then, that would have been the sort of triumph that I alone am longing for today—: by it Christianity would have been swept away!
Luther saw only the depravity of the papacy at the very moment when the oppo site was becoming apparent: the old corruption, the peccatum originale, Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life! Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther restored the church: he attacked it.... The Renaissance—an event without meaning, a great futility!
Unlike the Jewish/Christian Bible, the Hindu Law–Book of Manu lies for a good purpose. It accepts life and gives power to masters. For example it says "there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden." opposing the bible which says for example "to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; ... it is better to marry than to burn"
it differs fundamentally from every kind of Bible: by means of it the nobles, the philosophers and the warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All the things on which Christianity vents its fathomless vulgarity—for example, procreation, women and marriage—are here handled earnestly, with reverence and with love and confidence.
Why did Christianity trample down the culture of Islam? For Nietzsche Islam accepted life and showed the will to power, even although the Crusades was a demonstration of the will to power, it was an ill will for Nietzsche, it was a will of a thief.
Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, wastrampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!... The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust—a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very “senile.”—What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich.... Let us put  aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more!
The church even ranges itself against cleanliness (—the first Christian order after the banishment of the Moors closed the public baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova alone).
Nietzsche then attacks other ideologies that make all people "equal" so teaching them slave morality.
Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights
For Nietzsche, science is the replacement of god but both are wrong, because science worships truth and declares it to be objective and for Nietzsche nothing is objective because the only truth is the will to power and the will is subjective.
Science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific.
In accordance with his revaluation of all values, Nietzsche suggested that time be calculated from the date of this book, instead of from the date of Christ's birth. Year One would begin, then, on September 30, 1888.
And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—The transvaluation of all values!...

(0) Comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)