Romans? Lend me your ears: or, Nietzsche: The Neo-Con Flâneur

Marble sarcophagus with the Triumph of Dionysus and the Seasons; Roman, circa 260-270 CE; Metropolitan Museum, New York [Public domain] via Wikimedia.

Twilight of the Idols/The Antichrist/Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first interesting thing I discovered about Nietzsche is something I suspected when I read Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche "learnt much from La Rochefoucauld" (p. viii). And to start off with first principles, Nietzsche makes an interesting observation: morality is "a misrepresentation of certain phenomena, for there are no moral facts whatever (p. xi). I have now come to terms with the idea of Dionysian "chaos" versus the Apollonian "order". Interestingly, this struck me last night at the Canberra Symphony Orchestra's performances of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 16 (with acclaimed Australian pianist Tamara-Anna Cislowska as the soloist), and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9 in E flat major, op. 70. My friend and colleague, a sociologist, who invited us to the concert, has often spoken of these two opposing approaches. But until now, I have been ignorant to the depth of meaning that is so readily missed when one's antennae are not properly directed. And so, Nietzsche sees art as "Dionysian. It is amoral". "Christian art" is an oxymoron, yet Islam is "a virile religion, a religion for men". Nietzsche sees Christianity and alcohol as "the two great means of corruption" (p. 160). A central message (one of too many!) is that, "where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in" (p. 97). Nietzsche blames Saint Paul for destroying Rome, and Luther for destroying the Renaissance. Well I never! Kant perpetuated some of the decay, but Goethe, the antipodes of Kant, "disciplined himself into a harmonious whole, he created himself" (p. 81). Further, and while Nietzsche may well have predicted the World Wars, he may also have predicted the decay of our current institutions. Nietzsche argued that we have forgotten the purpose of our institutions (something that would seem apparent in my understanding of theories of institutional change), in effect, institutions require:

...a sort of will, instinct, imperative, which cannot be otherwise than antiliberal to the point of wickedness: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to solidarity in long family lines forwards and backwards in infinitum. If this will is present, something is founded which resembles the imperium Romanum: or Russia, the only great nation today that has some lasting grit in her.

In speaking of first principles, Nietzsche appears as a Neo-Con Flâneur (p. 72); yet he does not mince words:

First principle: a man must need to be strong, otherwise he will never attain it. - those great forcing-houses of the strong, of the strongest kind of men that have ever existed on earth, the aristocratic communities like those of Rome and Venice, understood freedom precisely as I understand the word: as something that one has and one has not, as something that one will have and that one seizes by force.

I can't pretend to know everything about Nietzsche, and I doubt I can commit to further study beyond a once-reading of the majority of his work. But something has changed in me as a result. I will blog about Ecce Homo in a subsequent post, as I am reading it in a separate book with an easier-to-read type-font, but from Nietzsche's autobiography, he arose from illness (and, paradoxically, to return to it soon after) to suffer no longer from "'ill-luck' nor 'guilt'". He "is strong enough to make everything turn to his own advantage" (p. 176). In this way, Nietzsche is much like Marcus Aurelius: Amor Fati. And no longer can my response be "merely" academic: I feel a weight of centuries lifting, I see why our institutions are crumbling, I fear the solution will not be forthcoming until the next major crisis disrupts human society yet again; I know that this will all be forgotten by future generations. And so time will march on. But Nietzsche does not leave me pessimistic, nor does he leave me disturbed as Viktor Frankl does. He leaves me free. Is this too dramatic? Read what I have read and tell me. I am all ears.

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Ask not "What is the Meaning of Life?": The question is being asked of you!

Still-Life with a Skull (vanitas painting) by Philippe de Champaigne, circa 1671. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I mistakenly read Frankl's sequel to this book back in December 2016. In Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning, Frankl focused on the "existential vacuum" and psychological concepts in some detail. I barely recall this work and when I looked at it just now, the lack of pencil markings in the book means I cannot recall the parts that resonated, or the ideas I wrote about in my (rather short) review of the sequel, I also discovered that the key concepts relating to logotherapy were outlined, but I had no recollection of logotherapy, Frankl's "Austrian School" of psychology. Man's Search for Meaning is in two parts. The first part outlines Frankl's experience as a prisoner at Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War II. He does not go into the detail of the horrors there, but focuses on how people coped or didn't cope with suffering. The word "suffering" is important in that, if one has no choice but to suffer, then suffering can give purpose to life. In the second part, Frankl outlines his logotherapy in some detail. How does logotherapy fit in with Freud and Adler? Freud focused on man's (sic) will to pleasure; Adler focused on man's (sic) will to power (obviously drawing on Nietzsche); whereas Frankl draws on man's (sic) will to meaning as a central element of human behaviour, happiness, and self-actualisation (somewhat in the Maslow sense of the word, but Abraham Maslow is not mentioned). Some quotes are worth noting:

...unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic (p. 148). 

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted wrongly the first time as you are about to act now (p. 151). 

...happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue (p. 140). 

...man (sic) is ultimately self-determining... [He] has [good and bad] potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions (p. 135). 

Nietzsche: ""He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" (p. 109). 

...suffering may well be a human achievement (p. 108). 

...only the men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influences (p. 78).

I found this book disturbing: enlightening, enraging, sad, hopeful, empty, full, academic, spiritual, contradictory, confronting, conservative, even judgemental. But it made me think deeper than I may have thought before. And there are techniques, too, for dealing with "anticipatory anxiety" - "hyper-intention" and "hyper-reflection". (Put simply, the paradox that the harder we try to make something work, the more we psych ourselves out. In certain cases, one can use this paradox to have a positive effect. Frankl gives the example of a man who sweats profusely, and the more self-conscious he is, the more he sweats. Frankl has the man say to himself "I will show them how much I can sweat!" and paradoxically, he doesn't sweat at all.) This paradox serves another purpose in the pursuit of meaning:

What is called self-actualization is not attainable at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he (sic) would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is only possible as a side-effect of self-transcendence (p. 114).

This leads to what I think is Frankl's most important lesson:

Ultimately, man (sic) should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked (p. 113).

From what I can gather, in Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl outlines how his experience in the concentration camps helped him refine his concept of logotherapy, something he had written about and was writing about before he was taken prisoner. He mentions modern problems concerning the "existential vacuum", in particular, "boredom". But it is not until Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning that this is covered in more detail. I say as far as I can work out because there is a lot to comprehend in these two books, and the disturbing nature of the original (now classic) work continues to haunt my sleep, let alone coming to grips with the details of logotherapy that I was quite able to overlook through my ignorance and poor reading technique the first time around. As Epictetus said: if you would learn, be prepared to look the fool. A key lesson learnt from this experience is in comparing my current reading technique to what I was doing back in 2016; the improvement is palpable. Mortimer Adler was right and I am glad I overcame my resistance to marking and taking notes in my books. Another lesson is that a single reading of a book may not be enough, especially when subject matter that is new to me is readily over-looked. Yet, much like asking myself "What is the meaning of my life?", I need to ask myself "What is the point of my reading?". The answer is rather simple: it is to learn. Maybe I can draw on the hyper-intention paradox technique: I can tell myself that my life has no meaning and wait for meaning to appear. Or better yet, I can live the rest of my days as if it really were a second chance, and let my learning allow happiness to ensue. The real paradox is that it has been happening already without me even trying. And while I doubt I can understand Frankl until I have finished reading Nietzsche and made a start on Wittgenstein, there is enough in this book (in particular, the quotes outlined above), to keep me going for some time.

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The Critic as Philosopher: Ruskin's Polemic for the Common Man

Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares by Yevgeny Vuchetich, donated to the United Nations by the Soviet Union in 1959. Photo taken by Pharos from UN grounds showing sculpture in front of the East River, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia.

On Art and Life by John Ruskin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book consists of two sections, "The Nature of Gothic" from Vol. 2 of The Stones of Venice (1853), and "The Work of Iron", originally given as a lecture at Tunbridge Wells, and later published in The Two Paths (1859). I learnt of the importance of Ruskin's influence only recently when watching the movie Mr Turner (2014), starring one of my favourite actors, Timothy Spall, in the lead role. Ruskin was a supporter of the work of J.M.W. Turner and apparently played a role in elevating landscape painting as a major genre. I enjoy Turner's work immensely, and this encouraged me to read some of Ruskin's work. I have not been disappointed and I have discovered other works that I intend to read, which coincide with a particular publisher's series. I find the Dover Thrift Editions of great works easy to read in terms of size of print and page, and Dover also has a series on architecture (I have read the work of Le Corbusier from this series). Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture is presented in the Dover series, so this will be a welcome addition to my library. I find architecture fascinating, and while I recently designed and built my own chook pen, I stand in awe of the great architectural and engineering miracles we use every day, often without giving a thought for the magnificence of the outcome of thought and practice. There is something about architecture that stirs the soul. I am reminded of Lord Kenneth Clark's 1960s book and BBC TV series, Civilisation, where Clark tells the audience that his personal view of the history of civilisation focuses on art and architecture, and he does not care whether others should think him a fuddy-duddy or not. I went off in search of the precise words, and was struck that Clark's first words are Ruskin's! "Ruskin said":

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last.

The introductory episode is available on YouTube at the moment:

However, in this book, Ruskin first focuses on the nature of Gothic architecture, and presents an interesting view of workmanship and the worker: if one wants a consistent product, much like a machine would produce, then the man becomes a tool - if one wants a creative man, then the outcome will be inconsistent, but of a finer nature. As the subtitle reads:

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.

Ruskin uses the example of Venetian glass and its artisanal qualities compared with the precisely uniform production glass of his time. I am pleased to learn that my own thoughts on the standardisation of education echo Ruskin's. Ruskin's idea of truth is:

...that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing over and over again... Yet... this is... only hidden from us... by false teaching. Nothing is a great work of art, for the production of which rules or models can be given.

I have the same argument against marking rubrics for essays - if it were possible to produce a perfect marking rubric, there would be no need to teach essay writing; yet marking rubrics are somehow seen as "fairer"! More likely, as Lord Kenneth Clark said, the ancient civilisations ended because they were "exhausted". And the next time I hear someone mention coining a phrase like "change fatigue", my scepticism will know no bounds! Ruskin (p. 36) basically outlines all we need to know about change, and more eloquently than any recent airport-read management guru book. The trouble with reading classic texts is one realises how much written today is a rip-off of the past, but presents itself as something new, without a hint of an acknowledgement. And this is not because it is plagiarised, but that the contemporary author has simply not done her or his homework, and has independently thought up something that had already been thought before. Imagine how much further we might advance if we did not have to reinvent the wheel every time we began to apply our thought-forces to a problem? Hence the literature review. But what if one could be original. Being original is more difficult than one might think. In the second section of the book, Ruskin discusses the importance of iron in its many forms. Here I learn more about geography, and the chalybeate spring (a natural mineral spring containing iron salts) at Tunbridge Wells, and the importance of this site to so many great artists. Ruskin was addressing a general audience and arriving at turning "swords into ploughshares" (Isaiah 2:4) from a mineral spring is a fascinating journey that is captivating, if a little bewildering, as if caught up in some 1960s psychological experiment. There are several messages in this book. But most prominent is the belief that forcing labourers to work as machines, in order to reduce the price of goods, is STEALING (capitalised in the original) from the workers. (Ruskin believed that "the architect [should] work in the mason's yard with his men", p. 25) Moreover, love of order (or the standardisation aesthetic, as I would call it) is useful in "practical matters":

...but love of order has no more to do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of punctuality with the appreciation of an opera.

I daresay that Ruskin, if he were writing today, would be regarded as "discursive". But I like his style. There is so much that underpins his work, a depth of reading that is obvious, yet creates the scaffolding for his originality; political, yet not radical; radical, yet not revolutionary; revolutionary, yet not wanting to overthrow the status quo; accepting of change, or more importantly for my own thinking, of the punctuated equilibrium of living and civilisation, but all moving toward an end where men (sic) no longer wage war, having learnt to live peacefully (much like the literal truth-speaking "long-livers" in George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah). I must admit that the portrayal of John Ruskin in Mr Turner corrupted my imagination, and I pictured a lisping flatterer who was socially-tolerated, yet privately thought a fop. But now having read Ruskin "in the flesh", I am inspired, and, in addition to finding another guide to so many things I enjoy (landscape painting, Clark's Civilisation, Turner's art, etc), I have developed a new appreciation for the role of the critic.

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