Leftovers, Petals V

Mostly from the vaults.

Whosoever is truly individual will soon transcend mere individuality—which is the idiosyncatic—in favour of super-individuality: archetypicality, ideal-typicality. Goethe puts it simply in his botanical writings: Everything that is perfect in its kind [or species] reaches beyond its kind•

In the midst of our contemporary lamentations about a supposedly rampant individualism, egoism, even amoralism—one wonders: Where are all those dangerous individuals?—It seems that in all this chatter about individualism we have lost our individuals. Even all so-called egoism, selfishness today is trivial—little violations of customs, forms, and expectations that have long become questionable, baseless, if not outright ignorable. Selfishness on a grand scale is almost unheard of these days•

It is much harder to be actually self-centered, egotistic than it is to be altruistic, for promises made to ourselves are more easily abandoned than promises made to others•

Is it not ironic that true egoism, as a philosophical stance, could only arise in an epoch of heightened sociability: the 18th century, parts of the 19th century?—We might no longer be social enough to even provoke meaningful asociality. Our asocials, soi-disant, are not even asocial men, but merely animals•

Men of the 18th century “invented” commercial journalism and public opinion to better sell slave plantation sugar, and in turn created, almost by accident, the conditions that birthed modernity—and somehow people alive right now have the audacity (the only one they will allow themselves to have) to speak of their dallying as “entrepreneurship”, or to consider themselves “selfish”•

There is a sentence by Angelus Silesius: that one ought not love man, but in man only mankind. This—allow me to disagree with the great poet—is the complete opposite of the view now necessary: that mankind is nothing, that man is everything; that the many are nothing, that singular and solitary man is everything•

Everything we do we do for ourselves; and the things we think we do for others are usually the worst things we do•

The merits of “heroism” are manifold, but it should be understood that you can only sacrifice yourself for yourself•

Stendhal, the soldier, having just returned from the Grande Armée’s disastrous retreat from Russia, sitting in a Milanese coffeehouse, writes in his diary: The only thing worth an effort in this life is the self. The good thing about this view is that so a retreat from Russia is no more meaningful than a sip of lemonade•

What are millions of dead people against a minute of Furtwängler’s Beethoven? Almost nothing•

The tens of thousands of Portuguese who died in the Lisbon Earthquake prompted Voltaire to write his Candide, a great work; and Candide, having required for its creation the death of tens of thousands of Portuguese, then justified the death of tens of thousands of Portuguese. Therein lies the coherence of creation•

It has been said that the history of any great man is a history of atrocity, treachery, and sin. If it were so, this would serve as a defense of atrocity, treachery, and sin•

Aristotle remarks upon Plato's Republic that to maintain the five thousand warriors Plato wants for his state, freed from labour, one would need a state the size of the Babylonian Empire so that they could live properly, with enough resources and land for each. Now consider how crammed together our modern men, even the “richest”, dwell, and how impoverished. It has been said: the rich have never been so poor•

The real use of money is now quite limited. One only has to go to any average store to learn of all the things one neither needs nor wants•

The great advantage of the Greeks was not having to spend a lot of time in their youths learning ancient and dead languages.—To think: that the Greeks didn’t have to learn Greek—an almost unassailable lead. The Romans already had to learn Greek•

European man has always known more about the world—about other peoples, cultures, customs—than the world has known about him. European man—the unveiler of mysteries, the disenchanter—is himself the world’s mystery•

European man is someone who asks: What was the average annual air pressure in the Garden of Eden?•

The constitutive, defining element of a garden—is the fence•

A central motion of civilization is the increase in “social silence”: interactions become so internalised and intersubjective that communication is no longer needed, is implied, resulting in a social automatism.—Barbarians chatter because nothing is clear: everything is a haggle•

In Inoue’s novel 本覺坊遺文, the suicide of the teamaster Rikyu, the central mystery, is unveiled as a formal problem: If the best tea-ceremony is the one with the least amount of participants—and Rikyo’s final ceremonies were performed alone—then the most perfect tea-ceremony has no participants at all. The perfect tea-style is achieved through the master’s absence, and the master’s absence through death•

Man’s ability to deem important little things—has created many great things•

Every instance of culture (the building of infrastructure, the setting up of logistics, the making-habitable of land) is a critique of the (natural) order of the world. It is an imposition of a superior order.—Man is who critiques nature, straightens it, clears it, clarifies it•

Canalizing a river, building a harbour terminal, planting an orchard, transforming a state, killing your enemies. These are all instances of fruitful criticism•

There is in Fichte the sentence: that the philosophy a man finds appealing depends entirely on who that man is; from which follows that not every thought, philosophy, insight is available to all men; that there are thoughts available only to a few•

Language declines when the things that language is used to speak of, to give a name to, decline. The quality of things, that is: of matter, materials, influences the quality of language: Plastic words for a plastic world.—Can there be poetry in an age of particleboard furniture?—Imagine the indignity of having to describe clothing sold by Chinese drop shipping companies in a novel•

It is important to return from all travels unchanged•

The philistine wants art opulent but life ascetic; the reverse, however, is better•

All men are “partial” and quite justified in being so; even impartiality is partial, partisan—: The impartial man is a member of the “Impartial Party”•

The glory and superiority of Christianity lies precisely in the fact that it is the only religion that could have brought forth a meaningful Atheism—while also being the only religion that could have incorporated this Atheism into itself without falling to self-denial•

Every great aphorist, historically, has always-already been contradicting himself in his aphorisms.—The aphorism flows from superior style, not coherence of thought•