For good and ill

Different life, different problem. Plotinus, Hesiod, Nietzsche, Spinoza.

Any philosophy that posits an absolute is faced with this question: “Why is there anything but this absolute?” Why did God have to create anything, if he was already perfect? Why did anything have to flow out of the One? Why are there beings when Being was already there? All philosophy is eventually forced to take up the question of the absolute. Ask any question at all, and eventually, you have to ask the question of the All. But once there, this different question presents itself. Why all of this, when the why of the absolute is already answered by itself? 

Platonism, through the mind of Plotinus, gives a unique answer: “It [Intellect] truly coheres with itself, without articulating itself, since it comes immediately after the One, having dared (τόλμα) to depart somehow from the One.”(VI.9.5.) And likewise, it is said that in this way Soul dared to depart from Intellect. A progressive daring to go further away from home, to see what else is out there. Everything was already perfect, but overflowing with power, Being dared to see what else it out there. Why? Well, why not.

And in no half sense, Being is this daring. What this could mean is that, seen from the absolute, Being is not given at all, it had to first dare to come into being. And this daring is the true and original reality of Being. Daring: this is what prevents being from being a sterile and immobile nothing, and what gives it its being as an active movement in which we all share.

“Daring,” a word commonly attributed to great men, now the essential attribute of reality itself. No longer just a name for a certain human characteristic, but the name for ontology. Driven by this daring to see what else is out there, —knowing full well that everything is already perfect as it is—, being expands itself. Yet conversely, living down here as we are, it takes great daring to revert back to the One. 

In daring, one shares in the movement of the divine. It is what connects the contemplative spirit of Plotinus to the spirit of Homeric nobility. It is also a movement that some have evolved to see as evil. Do not dare to look beyond, know your place under the stars, and so on. You know the drill. Sure, this daring, it is for both good and ill. But the ultimate cause of what is bad is not bad in itself. Great capacity for evil is not evil.

Why all this evil? Or at least, why all this which commonly goes by the name of evil? Well, because being dared to depart from the One. Do you understand? Nothing ever happens, nothing new is ever explored, without ill. If one explores the sea, people get sick and are thrown overboard. If one experiments with new ways of healing, people suffer and die. And if one wills any goal whatsoever into existence, it goes along with willing the hardship needed to achieve the goal. If one truly wants what is good, and not just what goes by its name, one has to will the ill too. And with Plotinus, we read that this will, just this will, and nothing else, is your essence. Nothing else; not your body, not your land, not your ideas, and nothing else. I share again a passage from Nietzsche recently quoted: 

“It was the noble races which left the concept of ‘barbarian’ in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it (for example, when Pericles, in that famous funeral oration, tells his Athenians: ‘Our daring has forced a path to every land and sea, erecting timeless memorials to itself everywhere for good and ill’). This ‘daring’ of the noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in the way it manifests itself, the unpredictability and even the improbability of their undertakings — Pericles singles out the rhatmumia of the Athenians for praise — their unconcern and scorn for safety, body, life, comfort, their shocking cheerfulness and depth of delight in all destruction, in all the debauches of victory and cruelty.” (Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality, I, §11)

This daring can perhaps not be called a virtue in the usual sense, and it has little to do with morality. But it is at the root of an ethos. An ethos which is really, in no accidental sense, the ethos of being. 

Yet it happens to be the case that not all beings love being, or life for that matter. Some just prefer “to stuff themselves like cattle”, and some pervert values to such a degree that your very will comes to be seen as evil. Often after seeing one too many idiots act overly audacious and reckless. The sight is not pretty to see, and to make sure no further accidents happen, we silence the will itself. 

When Being steps out of the One, it does so with daring. This stepping out is a daring. A daring which requires great carelessness, an absence of worry about what might happen. Like the desire of an innocent young boy running off into the woods to see what is out there, to explore, despite his parents’ telling him not to. And why would he not explore? We are here to see, and see is what we shall do. In order to prevent anything dangerous from happening, one would rather kill the boy. Or kill his spirit, to start. This ritual killing one calls divine law, or today, management. But it has nothing to do with the good, the right, or the beautiful. This daring itself is the divine movement par excellence. And it is why the Iliad can properly be called a divine work, an increasingly risky display of daring, men in contest, daring to take on even the gods, who dares more, “who would trust his own venturous spirit?” The purpose is in part an imparting of this spirit of daring through the power of voice and repetition. Power is contagious, and so is weakness.

Eventually, one gets lost and has to find a way home. But is the eventual getting lost ever an argument against the adventure? Never.

It is what connects Homer to Plato, what Plotinus saw in mystical intuition, and it is what connects these men to Descartes and all the rest of modern philosophy. You can try your best to find it anywhere else, and you will, but only at the founding, at the roots, where everything —however corrupt and ugly— is connected to the divine anyways. That is, where it is still just a question of great individuals and divine intuition. 

The story of the prodigal son tells us that it is not wise to stray too far from home, (from our own Selves, for the spiritually inclined), but what it should say is that we cannot get far away enough. Go further, dare more, risk more, this is the only way home. The movement of the divine is not a returning, it is a flowing outward. And the further it gets away from itself, the more it gets to know itself, as contrary is known by contrary. Or did you really think that you could effectively flee from being? No worries; you can’t escape, it will chase you down, and it will find you.

Hesiod characterizes the age of Iron as an age in which men recklessly depart from home, their fathers, and so on, lacking respect for ancestry. Evil times. 

“Men work and grieve unceasingly; by night, 

They waste away and die. The gods will give Harsh burdens, 

But will mingle in some good; 

Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men, 

When babies shall be born with greying hair. 

Father will have no common bond with son, 

Neither will guest with host, nor friend with friend; 

The brother-love of past days will be gone. 

Men will dishonour parents, who grow old

Too quickly, and will blame and critize with cruel words. 

Wretched and godless, they 

Refusing to repay their bringing up, 

Will cheat their aged parents of their due.”

(Hesiod, Works and Days, 64)

But, to whom is he speaking? He is speaking to the race of Iron. The ill-constituted, the liars, the toilers, the sad and downtrodden.

Compare this to Hesiod’s description of the heroic race; 

“A godlike race of heroes, who are called the demi-gods —the race before our own. […] Homes apart from mortals, at Earth’s edge. And there they live a carefree life.” 

(Hesiod, Works and Days, 63-64)

Whereas the race of Iron does not know its place as mere mortals, the heroic race is precisely characterized by its daring to become like gods, and its succeeding in doing so. In all, a different type of man requires a different type of ethos. Some can not be daring enough, can not become god-like enough. Others would do well to shut up and till the land at home. 

Here is what Nietzsche says on the matter: 

“In the fable of the ages of mankind, Hesiod has depicted the same age, that of the Homeric heroes, twice and made two ages out of one: from the point of view of those who had to suffer the terrible iron oppression of these adventurous Gewaltmenschen, or had heard of it from their forefathers, it appeared evil: but the posterity of this knightly generation revered it as the good old happy times. In these circumstances, the poet had no other recourse than to do as he did — for he no doubt had around him auditors of both races!”

(Nietzsche, Daybreak, III, §189)

Different lives, different problems. Would you have a different type of life tell you what problems you should and shouldn’t struggle with? Would you have it tell you what is allowed and what isn’t? What food to take in? What thoughts to think? What lands to see? It does not know your constitution. What would make it sick might make you better. As Spinoza interprets it; God tells Adam not to eat from the fruit, and Adam interprets it as divine law. But really, Spinoza speculates, God might have merely been saying that the fruit is not that healthy for Adam, and that it might even poison him because the fruit does not fit his constitution. He can’t metabolize the apple, and a mad hunt ensues where everyone is forbidden from eating apples, just because a sickly man listened to his girl and got a little sick. To be sure, it is not a question of good and evil, it is merely a question of differences, and how certain things just don’t fit together, and others do. 

“For we all admire in animals qualities which we regard with dislike and aversion in men, such as the pugnacity of bees, the jealousy of doves; these in human beings are despised, but are nevertheless considered to enhance the value of animals.”

(Spinoza, to Blyenbergh, XXXII.)

For some, God has to take the trouble of coming up with a book of laws to save them from disaster. Stay close to me, lest you run off and get hurt. But to take this as the entire truth of divinity is to cover one’s ears for how God reveals himself to others, and perhaps to themselves at other times: run with me, off into the distance, divinely inspired, intuition being all you need. 

When Plotinus says that the age of Kronos is within, it tells us all we need to know. Do not just take these things in a temporal manner, as historical periods. Before this, the Ages are designations of modes of life. Life driven on by youthful vigour, and life in decline.