Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Nietzsche and "Temperament"

Our understanding is a surface power; it is superficial. One also calls it "subjective." It understands things by means of concepts; i.e. our thinking is a process of categorizing and naming. Thus thinking is something dependent upon human option and does not touch the thing itself. Man possesses absolute knowledge only while calculating and only in the forms of space; i.e. quantities are the ultimate boundaries of what is knowable. Man does not understand a single quality, but only quantity.

What can be the purpose of such a surface power?

To the concept there corresponds, in the first place, the image. Images are primitive thoughts, i.e. the surfaces of things combined in the mirror of the eye.
The image is one thing; the calculation is another.

Images in the human eye! This governs all human nature; from the eye out! Subject! The ear hears sound; an entirely different and marvelous conception of the same world.

Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.

Similarly in the case of the ear: art depends upon a similar inaccuracy regarding rhythm, temperament, etc. [Philosophy and Truth, Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s, Edited and translted by Daniel Breazeale, Humanity Books, An Imprint of Prometheus Books, 59 John Glen Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197, 1999, pp19-20]

It has to be proven that all constructions of the world are anthropomorphic, indeed, if Kant is right, all sciences. There is, to be sure, a vicious circle here: if the sciences are right, then we are not supported by Kant's foundation; if Kant is right, then the sciences are wrong.

Against Kant, it must always be further objected that, even if we grant all of his propositions, it still remains entire possible that the world is as it appears to us to be. Furthermore, this entire position is useless from a personal point of view; no one can live in this skepticism.

We must get beyond this skepticism; we must forget it! How many things do we not have to forget in this world! (Art, ideal shape, temperament.) [Philosophy and Truth, Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s, Edited and translted by Daniel Breazeale, Humanity Books, An Imprint of Prometheus Books, 59 John Glen Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197, 1999, p32]

Given this fine example of word soup, I'd like to say, like the old jazzman:

Who's this cat, Nietzsche? Who'd he play with?

But instead I'll ask:

Why is it that Nietzsche attracts crackpots like a bug light
attracts bugs, but unfortunately fails to zap them?

Gosh, do you suppose it's because Nietzsche *was* a crackpot? Heavens!

I'll add, just for fun:

Ding an sich
said the
Ding-a-ling:
It's the real thing
Coke, is.

Hegel
makes me feel unwell,
and Nietzsche is
un-mensch-enable.
But Kant, still can't:
Di-arrhea-lectic.

Art depends on...
subsidies.
Philosophy on...
FTEs.
We'll play for you if you pay our fees.--
But this guy is a moron!

Ahem. Uh...sorry: just couldn't resist.

Kant at least deserves better. Kant on music (slightly paraphrased):

1) "Not everybody's gonna like your riffs."

2) "You don't need words to dig the music: it's like birdsong, man."

3) "You keep playing the same thing over and over, you follow too
many rules, and people gonna drowse off."

4) "Them birds, they don't got no rules."

[Bortion, Tina., "The Concept of the Analytic and Synthetic in Kant's
Aesthetic of Jazz" in Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium on
Music as Autoeroticism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.]

Quoted at length (Critique of Judgement, tr. James Creed Meredith)
DANGER--BORING PROSE!--DANGER:

It is not to be assumed that even the quality of the sensations
agrees in all subjects, and we can hardly take it for granted that
the agreeableness of a colour, or of the tone of a musical instrument,
which we judge to be preferable to that of another, is given a like
preference in the estimate of every one.

Assuming vibrations [cause] sound, and, what is most important,
that the mind not alone perceives by sense their effect in stimulating
the organs, but also, by reflection, the regular play of the
impressions (and consequently the form in which different
representations are united)-which I, still, in no way doubt-then
colour and tone would not be mere sensations. They would be nothing
short of formal determinations of the unity of a manifold of
sensations, and in that case could even be ranked as intrinsic
beauties.

Flowers are free beauties of nature. Hardly anyone but a botanist
knows the true nature of a flower, and even he, while recognizing in
the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no attention to
this natural end when using his taste to judge of its beauty....
[these] are self-subsisting beauties which are not appurtenant to any
object defined with respect to its end, but please freely and on their
own account...We may also rank in the same class what in music are
called fantasias (without a theme), and, indeed, all music that is
not set to words.

Bird's song, which we can reduce to no musical rule, seems to have
more freedom in it, and thus to be richer for taste, than the human
voice singing in accordance with all the rules that the art of music
prescribes; for we grow tired much sooner of frequent and lengthy
repetitions of the latter. Yet here most likely our sympathy with the
mirth of a dear little creature is confused with the beauty
of its song, for if exactly imitated by man (as has been sometimes
done with the notes of the nightingale) it would strike our ear as
wholly destitute of taste.

"A chuckle a day keeps pomposity away."

--Mark

Rick Tagawa <ricktagawa@earthlink.net> wrote on Monday, 22 Apr 2002 11:34:
> Subject: [tuning] Nietzsche and "Temperament"
>
> Our understanding is a surface power; it is superficial. One also calls
> it "subjective." It understands things by means of concepts; i.e. our
> thinking is a process of categorizing and naming. Thus thinking is
> something dependent upon human option and does not touch the thing
> itself. Man possesses absolute knowledge only while calculating and
> only in the forms of space; i.e. quantities are the ultimate boundaries
> of what is knowable. Man does not understand a single quality, but only
> quantity.
>
> What can be the purpose of such a surface power?
>
> To the concept there corresponds, in the first place, the image. Images
> are primitive thoughts, i.e. the surfaces of things combined in the
> mirror of the eye.
> The image is one thing; the calculation is another.
>
> Images in the human eye! This governs all human nature; from the eye
> out! Subject! The ear hears sound; an entirely different and
> marvelous conception of the same world.
>
> Art depends upon the inexactitude of sight.
>
> Similarly in the case of the ear: art depends upon a similar inaccuracy
> regarding rhythm, temperament, etc. [Philosophy and Truth, Selections
> from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s, Edited and translted by
> Daniel Breazeale, Humanity Books, An Imprint of Prometheus Books, 59
> John Glen Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197, 1999, pp19-20]
>
> It has to be proven that all constructions of the world are
> anthropomorphic, indeed, if Kant is right, all sciences. There is, to
> be sure, a vicious circle here: if the sciences are right, then we are
> not supported by Kant's foundation; if Kant is right, then the sciences
> are wrong.
>
> Against Kant, it must always be further objected that, even if we grant
> all of his propositions, it still remains entire possible that the world
> is as it appears to us to be. Furthermore, this entire position is
> useless from a personal point of view; no one can live in this skepticism.
>
> We must get beyond this skepticism; we must forget it! How many things
> do we not have to forget in this world! (Art, ideal shape,
> temperament.) [Philosophy and Truth, Selections from Nietzsche's
> Notebooks of the Early 1870s, Edited and translted by Daniel Breazeale,
> Humanity Books, An Imprint of Prometheus Books, 59 John Glen Drive,
> Amherst, NY 14228-2197, 1999, p32]
>

Nietzsche and "Temperament"

🔗Rick Tagawa <ricktagawa@earthlink.net>

🔗Mark G. Ryan <mgryan@cruzio.com>

🔗Rick Tagawa <ricktagawa@earthlink.net>