Zarathustra Contra Zarathustra by Cauchi Francesca;

Author:Cauchi, Francesca; [Cauchi, Francesca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138063150
Publisher: TaylorFrancis
Published: 2017-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Fear of ‘the beast within’ and the loneliness of those who inquire and seek after a scientific framework within which to cage the conquered instinctual beast, bind the ‘dreamy wanderer’ to the ‘sleeping dog […] lying in the sun’. Whether, as in the latter case, one blinds oneself to the glaring truth – ‘the blindness of the blind man and his seeking and groping shall yet bear witness to the power of the sun into which he gazed’ (Z.II.8) – or, as in the former, averts one’s gaze and dreams of distant things, one is dealing in the same counterfeit currency of idealism (GM.III.26).

Wissenschaft (science) and gewissenhaft (conscientious) share more than a merely formal resemblance; etymologically, they are rooted in the same infernal element – wissen (to know). Scholastic, scientific, and philosophical seekers after knowledge – ‘the conscientious of spirit’ – are alike constrained by an ‘unconditional will to truth’ (GM.III.24): ‘It is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science – and we enlightened men of today, we godless men and anti-metaphysicians, we, too, still take our flame from the fire ignited by a millennia-old faith, the Christian faith, which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth, that truth is divine’ (ibid.). But what is the precise nature of this “truth” after which the conscientious of spirit thirst? If we take the method of ‘backward inference’ one step further – that is, ‘from the ideal to those who need it’ (GS.V.370) – we will find that a ‘metaphysical faith’ arises out of a need for ‘metaphysical comfort’ (BT.7). In other words, the “truth” which the conscientious of spirit need is a ‘picturesque’ (A.13) one: they need absolute reassurance that ‘despite all changes of appearance, life is at bottom indestructibly powerful and joyful’ (BT.7). But, as Zarathustra teaches, ‘all deep knowledge flows cold’, and the ice-cold, ‘innermost wells of the spirit’ (Z.II.8) extinguish all too soon the metaphysical fire. Once it is discovered that the indestructibly powerful source of life is will to power (‘The world is will to power – and nothing besides’ KSA.11.611), and that endless flux is the distressing manifestation of this will (Z.III.12.8), the value of truth is immediately called into question. ‘A life-threatening, destructive principle […] ‘will to truth’ […] that could be a concealed will to death’ (GS.V.344), compels one to ask: at what price truth? In a bid for survival, the conscientious of spirit begin to turn truth on its head, and an inexorable will to truth gradually and paradoxically mutates into an equally compelling will to artifice, illusion, and fraudulent idealism.195 ‘Freez[ing] to death on the ice of knowledge’ (Z.III.6), the conscientious of spirit are those most in need of anæsthetizing idealism: this ‘fieriest water of the spirit’ (UM.III.26) is the nihilistic but life-preserving intoxicant to which those benighted by enlightenment and frozen by fire are addicted.

‘All great things’, writes Nietzsche, ‘bring about their own destruction through an act of self-transcendence (Selbstaufhebung)’ (GM.III.27), and just as doctrinaire Christianity destroyed itself by its own moral dogmatism (ibid.

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