You look up when you desire to be exalted; and I look down, because I am exalted. Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted?
He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.
(Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, ‘Of Reading and Writing’)
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192. Even on the very mountain peak a reptile laughs maliciously, and the fascinating beauty leans with grief against rocky slopes.
In the tragic performance the sublime man prefers standing below to comprehend beauty with grief, not be like a reptile to which has been given the pleasure by crawling on the peak to laugh.
193. Victory is not jollification, victory is beauty. (Zura Shiolashvili, The Art of Aphorism and Nietzsche's Blind Passion, 'Nietzsche's Metaphorical Swindle')
All Nietzsche's philosophy starts with lust and ends with illusion. In the dissatisfaction of his carnal art Nietzsche must march on with a will to power (master morality) that is nothing but a monster's voice within him. What could the art of his philosophy be about after all? Merging the animalistic caprice with beauty? But is not the spirit of beauty itself with the longing for its ideal mightier than the will to power? Nietzsche's phenomenon is rather another testimony of evil, dwelling in the free-will of human naturalism, implicitly acknowledging the language of truth in the Christian religion.
In Nietzsche's moral psychology, suspended between the human and not-human, there exists only an animalistic disposition - for this is how Nietzsche uses a debauched aesthetics to mock Christianity. In his fallen state of consciousness, Nietzsche attempts to apply conditional logic to feelings, relying on the instinctive willingness of human nature to be deluded by empirical science.
For Nietzsche, carnal depravity represents not psychological degradation, but rather the truth of the free spirit. Hence, in Nietzsche's mind, spiritual virtue lies in the animal nature of a man. But the reality is that, despite all his philosophical finery, Nietzsche ends up by resembling more a clever idiot than - as he imagines - a knight in shining armour with the task of saving all mankind.
What the sacred does not plant in the soul will be washed away by vanity.
If Nietzsche had known that he would be laid bare and made a laughing stock, he would have fallen on bended knees and begun to pray...
Zura Shiolashvili is a Georgian Philosopher. Most of his life has been devoted to researching the Christian idea of nature. His central concern is to represent the true face of art in the science of the soul.
He has been Aesthetics editor of the journal The Philosopher (London) since 2004.