In his famous
text, The Gay Science, Germany’s
celebrated skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche begins breaking down the concept of
morality, which will eventually become the focus of his Genealogy of Morals. By calling into question the foundations and
histories of every societal more that has every been considered by and large
“good” or “virtuous,” and by contrast that which is “bad” or “evil,” he
uncovers the hidden fallacy of an “absolute” or “universal” truth. Every
authorial account of knowledge in history, according to Nietzsche rests on some
faulty premise.In
his critique of modernity, he recounts the story of “The Madman,” who is in
fact, a self-reflection of the author and the mouthpiece of his infamous
pronunciation that “God is dead.” But the madman continues, “and we have killed
him.” Nietzsche’s claim is that by creating the world we presently live in, the
world of consumers, of industry, of technology and science as “empirical truth”
we have created an environment that is so hostile to a the immediacy of the
ancient beliefs in God, that we can no longer accept the idea of God as the
ultimate authority. Those judged as “immoral” are no longer at the mercy of a
God who will smite him with lightning, because science explains the phenomenon
of lighting and as a natural condition of earthly weather, it does not have the
discretion to smite. Even those claiming religion and service to God, Nietzsche
insists instead to be non-believers worshipping a shadow-in-memoriam of the god
who has perished at our hand. He laments the death of God as the loss of the
beautiful delusion that was for so long, the glue of pre-modern society.
Nietzsche
accepts this great loss for humanity, and without nihilism, but instead with a
cheerful optimism, provides a
solution through art. We must become the artists of our own lives, creating
from the raw materials of suffering, joy, pleasure, and pain our own personal
guidebook for living. We must be able to look at our lives in terms of
aesthetics in addition to the terms of rules we live by. In fashioning this
life as artwork, we the artists must be able to step back, palette in hand, and
look at the whole of our lives and see the gestalt of choices made
intentionally by a “single taste.” In this way we become improvisers and transformers
of self.
The way Nietzsche describes this self-authoring is such that we as individuals must be able to live our present lives as if we could live that same life verbatim, with all its vicissitudes, again and again for eternity, like a favorite novel. The way I have described this life philosophy, before ever reading Nietzsche’s words, is that I must never have any regrets. In spite of what many would charge me with as “poor choices,” I have always been able to reflect on my life’s decisions and direction with the honest belief that if I were given the choice over, I would not have already acquired the experiential knowledge of having lived and suffered through the cause and effect of my actions in a given circumstance. I have come to realize that I do not write my own fate, so much as I write my own interpretation.In response Nietzsche provides that “only one thing is needful: to give style to one’s life.” Artistic decisions require knowledge, self-control and luck. The element of luck in cicumstance makes an experimentation a necessity. When one can step back from his creation, tastefully executed, and behold it in all its disharmonies of form as a full composition and an object of beauty, he as a human becomes “tolerable to behold.”
For this reason, we as a society, can never dispense with art. Art is the most powerful metaphor of a meaningful life in modernity. With making and and absorbing objects of art, we practice living.
The way Nietzsche describes this self-authoring is such that we as individuals must be able to live our present lives as if we could live that same life verbatim, with all its vicissitudes, again and again for eternity, like a favorite novel. The way I have described this life philosophy, before ever reading Nietzsche’s words, is that I must never have any regrets. In spite of what many would charge me with as “poor choices,” I have always been able to reflect on my life’s decisions and direction with the honest belief that if I were given the choice over, I would not have already acquired the experiential knowledge of having lived and suffered through the cause and effect of my actions in a given circumstance. I have come to realize that I do not write my own fate, so much as I write my own interpretation.In response Nietzsche provides that “only one thing is needful: to give style to one’s life.” Artistic decisions require knowledge, self-control and luck. The element of luck in cicumstance makes an experimentation a necessity. When one can step back from his creation, tastefully executed, and behold it in all its disharmonies of form as a full composition and an object of beauty, he as a human becomes “tolerable to behold.”
For this reason, we as a society, can never dispense with art. Art is the most powerful metaphor of a meaningful life in modernity. With making and and absorbing objects of art, we practice living.
No comments:
Post a Comment