“尼采曾自诩过他是太阳，光热无穷，只是给予，不想取得，然而尼采究竟不是太阳，他发了疯。”--鲁迅《拿来主义》

    因为鲁迅这一句话，搞得我和身边的很多人认为尼采是疯子，连我爸爸都知道尼采是个疯子。我后来确实也听了不少尼采说的疯话。比如在湖滨宿舍，Jane随便念了几句《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中的话，我们就觉得很神经，其中一句印象最深，大概是说如果想从一座山头跨越到另外一座山头，只需要有足够长的腿。但是谁知道现在他是最合我心意的思想者。鲁迅很有几篇是有尼采fable文风和精髓的，比如《长明灯》、《示众》，实在是相似，仿佛尼采本人用中文写出来的一样。疯癫的放火者，被示众的牺牲者，这些都是最典型的尼采式形象。那本非常接近尼采的《野草》，更让我很是崇拜了一阵子。鲁迅那么认同尼采的“疯癫”，不知道《拿来主义》那句话为什么有些许轻蔑的意味，并且误导了许多人。我对尼采认识的改变，应该是从The Birth of Tragedy,看完中译本后简直崇拜到五体投地，我知道批评Euripides的人不少，但彻底连理性主义的源头Socrates也否定并且对knowledge做整体批判的人，还是让我对其勇气和学识充满敬意，看了他，再看福柯和德里达，心里就明朗很多，知道他们无非是继续解决尼采以前提的几个问题，深化他的几个观点。因此这次Ｇ老师让每个人选个题目作文章时，我就没有犹豫的选了这个题目。不过这次有个意外的收获，就是发现尼采居然和Montaigne在truth的观点十分相似，只不过前者是个pessimist, 而后者则更像个Epicureanist.既然尼采的讨论是古典主义的，那么我的一些想法当然要从Aristotle说起。一些思想片断，暂时记在下面：

Knowledge is man’s particular mode of being, as Foucault says, since man believes that there is the possibility of knowing empirically. According to Foucault and Nietzsche’s observation and reasoning, the knowledge will lead to the dispersion of individual’s being and the disappearance of a grander discourse, or in other words, the end of humanism. This tragic discourse of human existence has been put on the stage of tragedy where recognition and reversal accompany each other, where the knowledge and disillusionment crash, and boundary of truth and falsify is breached.

The question of truth and falsify originates in the discussion about whether the mimetic art could grasp the truth. Aristotle thinks it is possible while Plato denies any possibilities of obtaining truth through imitation. Aristotle articulates why tragedy give pleasure by analyzing imitation, which is the essence and main function of tragedy. All men delight in imitation, for men delight in seeing likenesses because in contemplating them it happens that they are learning and reasoning out what each thing is. There seems to be a possibility of obtaining knowledge through the recognition developed in tragedy. The recognition, which is the fulfillment of human’s desire to know, is a change from ignorance to knowledge. The recognition is most beautiful only when it arises at the same time as reversal, as does the recognition in Oedipus. The reversal, however, is the moment of disillusionment, where the characters find their intellect is purely vain effort, or as Nietzsche said, it is “wretched, shadow-like, transitory, purposeless and fanciful.”Since recognition is accompanied by disillusionment on the stage of tragedy, where the possibility of knowing by human intellect is doubtful and man’s particular mode of being as a seeker of knowledge seems pathetic. Plato points out that people need to be careful with the knowledge they get from mimetic art because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object.It is only a phantom that far removed from the truth although it seems it can produce everything. The mimetic art is inherently tragic since it strives to seek the truth and self-acknowledgement, which is fulfilled by recognition. But the reversal, that accompanies recognition in the best tragedy, makes the seeker’s truth nothing but illusion or denial of the seeker’s self. It is in exposing of the pathetic existence of human’s intellectual effort that tragedy gives pleasure and is endowed with philosophical depth. So it is Nietzsche’s dramatization of truth and falsify. The relationship of truth and falsify in Nietzsche’s discussion is explicitly illustrated by the interaction of recognition and reversal in tragedy.

Nietzsche’s critique of human intellect begins with his dramatization of men’s attempt to preserve themselves by the power of dissimilation, that is, to fix the truth by inventing “a uniformly valid and binding designation of things,” and then invent the law of truth by the legislature of language. Truth, then, is only an “imitation of the relation of time, space and number in the realm of metaphors.” The differentiation of truth and falsify, then, is based on human’s attempt to escape from instable situations, illusion of creating continuity, and the abuse of conventional metaphors. So man’s impulse to truth starts from the error of believing he knows “thing-in-itself” while he only possesses the metaphor, of believing he knows the orderliness of nature while he only know the effects in relation to other laws of nature.  In the incidents during man’s pursuit of truth, man tends to forget that what he has is only illusion in his reasoning. The forgetfulness and ignorance is something that needs to be recognized in the tragedy of human intellect.  

Human intellect is a tragic character. It is man’s fundamental impulse to truth, towards the formation of metaphors, towards the imitation of non-visual object, towards some generalization or abstraction by neglecting individual differences. Man’s fundamental impulse to truth leads to a series of actions and incidents through which the recognition and reversal is accomplished. As Aristotle said, of all forms of recognition the best is that which arises from the incidents themselves. The realization of human intellect as vainglory and deception through man’s wandering actions to know more, then, is among the best tragedies. And the recognition is most tragic for those who already abandon the mask of deception and rational, letting the intuitive to rule over them. The intuitive cannot retreat to the shelter of deceptions: he suffers more frequently since he cannot learn from experience; in suffering he is just as irrational as in happiness.Aristotle claims Euripides appears to be the most tragic of poets probably because the irrational or the intuitive in his plays finds no consolation in the tragedy of human intellect. But Nietzsche claims that the intuitive were intended as the expressions of a sublime happiness, and will attain a continuous in-pouring of enlightenment, enlivenment and redemption, whereas the rational guided by idea and abstraction will become silent and leaves the stage: “when a heavy thundercloud bursts upon him, he wraps himself up in his cloak and with slow and measured step walks away from beneath it.” Here Nietzsche seems to dramatize the disappearance of a human discourse, not that of the intuitive, but that of the rational. The differentiation of truth and falsify vanishes as the main character—human intellect left the stage.