Beauty, Art and Appearance

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"Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.

In the 20th century, Scruton argues, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty, making a cult of ugliness and leading us into a spiritual desert.

Using the thoughts of philosophers from Plato to Kant, and by talking to artists Michael Craig-Martin and Alexander Stoddart, Scruton analyses where art went wrong and presents his own impassioned case for restoring beauty to its traditional position at the center of our civilization.

For Scruton, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, it is an objective truth—a classical notion, but one that is completely revolutionary in today’s art marketplace.
Take for example Sotheby’s recent sale of Mark Rothko’s seminal “No.1 (Royal Red and Blue)” for $75 million. The work consists of little more than a few rectangles of coordinated colors. Anyone who is not told the value of such art would find it difficult to identify it with beauty or beauty with any type of dollar value.
As Scruton narrates in his documentary, Why Beauty Matters, “In the 20th century, beauty stopped being important, art increasingly aimed to disturb and break moral taboos, it was not beauty but originality however achieved.”
The realization among artists and non-artists alike is increasingly that the emperor, in this case the art market, is wearing no clothes. Who can really respect an “emperor” who insists his parading, naked body is cloaked in the finest of garments. To the clearheaded, he’s delusional.
“One day the knowledge that the emperor has no clothes will spread, and the market will crash – but only temporarily,” said Scruton in an email interview.
The true aesthetic value, the beauty, has vanished in modern works that are selling for millions of dollars. In such works, by artists like Rothko, Franz Kline, Damien Hirst, and Tracey Emin, the beauty has been replaced by discourse. The lofty ideals of beauty are replaced by a social essay.
Scruton identifies these prominent trends visible in today’s art market: “I think the most important [trends] are the advantage conferred on people with a plausible sales talk, and the way in which the art establishment can replace spiritual with material values, by propagating art that is primarily to be owned rather than to be looked at.”
As for the undervalued art that predates the 20th century, Scruton said that such works have a lot to offer, including “beauty, humanity, and the care of the soul.”
Some of the artists he picks as the greatest include Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, and Corot.
“Good art appeals to what is best in people, and sets them on the path to self-knowledge,” he said.
As for his other insights, Scruton talked about the unified goal of the arts, whether they be fine arts, performing arts, or literary arts: “They are all attempts to raise their audience from the animal to the spiritual level (except when they attempt the opposite, like the art of desecration today).”
And, if he were endowed with enough funding, he said, “I would establish schools to teach the true disciplines which are needed: life drawing, perspective and the knowledge of light and shade, in the case of visual art; materials, shadows, proportions and the Orders, in the case of architecture; harmony and counterpoint in the case of music; verse forms, rhetorical figures and the wealth of imaginative knowledge in the case of literature.”
Scruton’s simple yet powerful vision is a return to the best of classical arts. Let’s face it, Scruton is right, the emperor looks much better with clothes on."
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Modern art is the perfect reflection of the modern psychology.
A chaotic, jumbled, mess, hinting at a concept it cannot calcify.
A form of self-expression even a child can perform, or an animal, implying equalization, by using perspectivism to justify the idea that the simple can be considered complex, and the ugly can be beautiful.
No symmetry, no order, no clarity, which is what beauty is, only the siblings and blotches of a mind gone insane, trying to detach form reality, lacking talent, aesthetic appreciation, mastery, but pretentious and deluded enough to think it deserves to be heard and seen.  

The majority of modern f-art is the epitome of democratic idealism: the idea(l) that inferior/superior do not exist, and that if you find a dealer, an agent, clever enough to sell, to make you marketable, your "quality" is proven: being sold to the many, popularity, being the modern levelling of what we know as quality.

Modern f-art daring you to contradict the popular, the common, the shared decree, and having "experts" available to defends its all-levelling ugliness for a buck; building careers, livelihoods, on hypocrisy and the manipulation of human need.


Modern f-art not concerned with the real, but the unreal, the implied, the insinuated, the so abstract the observer must find the content where there is none - f-art for the masses. It is whatever you want it to be, because it is nothing; art based on impression, on fame, on personality cults, on hucksterism...the f-artists fame, his public personae being sold, not the f-art itself; being purchased by pretentious, insecure, wannabes, trying to appear as what they are not.        

The equivalent of this is how "philosophy" is being used, in our time, by the common, modern mind-farter.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of mind-farting venues populated by f-artist dedicated to detaching themselves from reality.

Words, language - it being another art form) disconnected, detaching, from the real...from the perceived. Thoughts so abstract they can mean anything to any one, because they have no reference point outside human brains...sold to pretentious, simpletons, desperately wanting to appear as thinkers, when all they are is purchasers, regurgitators, their mental walls full of scriblings, splashes, lines, they cannot explain without an "expert" - some credentialed, authority sanctioned by the institutions - telling them what they mean.

For such minds nothing can be permitted to refer to the aesthetic, cannot be permitted to become ordered, consistent, symmetrical...the democratic idea(l) depends on the perspectivism of turning all into a chaotic mess, so as to then preserve the myth of equality.
Nothing can be judged, can be valued as objectively superior, because all must be levelled down to a personal emotion, or a collective decree based on how well it sells, or how useful it is to the majority - the utility being a creation of the social, economic, cultural milieu.
Nothing must be defined, clarified, because this inhibits the all-inclusive which then produces the marketing gurus who can package and sell anything, any garbage - garbage being valued as the endlessly recyclable.

Words can now be given a general definition, but never attached to anything perceived, because this would decrease its abstractive utility.
Sex, itself a very aesthetic, appearance based, phenomenon, is an example of how the word "sex" can be detached from its natural reference point, and turned into a chaotic mess, of an idea, now implying what it cannot define, and daring the observer to contradict it. The word "sex" is what matters...because it implies, and can be connected to an emotion, a feeling, some ambiguous sensation which a reference point in nature would diminish.
The word is mystified, sanctified...which means it is retained in its most abstract form which is only obliged to refer to a book, a text, offering a general outline with multiple possibilities.

Like with the modern f-art piece: a canvas with different shapes, intentionally or accidentally, placed there, alluding to something but not clarifying, because this would inhibit multiple interpretation...perspectives, from using it for their own goals.
The f-art piece must remain democratic...accessible by the sophisticate and the simpleton...useful to both for their own reasons.
The f-artist, having found the perfect salesman, can now indulge in mindless f-arting, knowing that his public personae is being sold, through his f-arts...same as famous "intellectuals".
The f-artist must only remain unclear enough to be useful, accessible, to the many...and then ride his fame towards riches. His every f-art is the work of "genius" once the marketing agencies get done with constructing his social image.

Recently I heard Beyonce, in an interview, refer to her music as "art", and to herself as an artist...I almost gagged.
A dumb chick, who is more of a performer than an artist, becoming famous because her image sells, to ugly, girls who dream of being more.

F-Art is more about performing.
One performs it as one farts.
The right agent can turn that fart into a perfume, bottle it in a pretty, seductive, little bottle, and turn farting into an artistic expression a career can be constructed upon.
The modern f-artist is all about the performance, and not about the content.
The words are his colours, and his linguistic performance is judged by how many find it impressive, or comforting, or seductive, or appealing on an emotional, sensational, level.
And what do the masses find seductive?
That which makes their existence bearable...nothing which challenges them and their comfort zones.

Great deconstruction of modern F-Art.

I remember the now tarnished advertizing guru Charles Saatchi referring to the artist Damien Hirst as a genius, because of his pseudo-philosophical concept-shock F-Art. That was back in the late eighties.

Hirst went round Saatchi's house and refused to leave until the guru agreed to visit his art show. It seems as though fame and notoriety were always Hirst's primary goals, the F-Art was merely a vehicle for achieving it. How pathetic and demeaning that he grovelled enthusiastically at the feet of a wealthy Jew to achieve it.

Many times he seemed like a working class thug from a broken home (his father abandoned the family when he was twelve and he was caught several times for shoplifting), with a knack for the showy and sensational. He was fascinated as a teenager by pathology books and images of disease and injury... already a mind with a nihilistic bent showing its genetic history. It's typical of the modern F-Art that is obsessed with decay and spiritual malaise. Walking through an art college is like walking through a junk yard, filled with members of the self-obsessed middle classes navel gazing and fixating on rusting metal or broken street furniture.

It's like Hirst was at the fore front of this renewed attack on art, which took its energy from a loathing of traditional European culture that had its origins back in the early twentieth century (but with some added need to do violence to it), and the idea that everyone had a right to express themselves, but especially those who were seen as 'oppressed' by cultural Marxists. It was the free market nurtured by Thatcher at the time that really unleashed this tidal wave of reveling in what was base. The more common and coarse the louder it should be trumpeted.

I remember another artist of the time, Tracy Emin, exhibiting a tent with the names of all the people she had slept with stitched inside. I mean, how much more disgustingly narcissistic can you get? I still cannot understand why anyone would want to go and see it.

Liberal art historians describe the art scene prior to Hirst and the YBA's as 'lacklustre'.

Recently, Saatchi has said that,

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Hirst was worth his reputed £100 million fortune "only if you think about art as entertainment".

When Hirst attempted to do some real art the critics laughed at his work, describing it as dull, amateurish and adolescent. I think if there is a place for the absolute in our philosophy it is when judging matters of quality, because Hirst's paintings are absolute shit.

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"In terms of the legacy Hirst leaves, his personality and the brand he's created around himself will really be what's remmebered."

His paintings remind me of using MS-Paint and inverting the colours of pictures.

I think modern art is all a big communal performance act. The secret project name is "The Emperor's New Cloths".

When I was in Art College, they were always telling me not to be "representational". It all had to be as abstract and meaningless as possible.

Just..... flail at the canvas. Make shapes. Emote. Do not symbolize, do not create meaning, do not represent or communicate any feeling, thought or emotion to the viewer.

The worst for this was some middle-aged american woman that they'd imported from New York. She precided over collage instruction where she urged us to cut up fashion magazines and create images from the pieces. She did not care about how crap the results were.

Something Sauwelios said on another forum a while ago:

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"*Woman fulfills, man promises.* -- Through woman, Nature shows what
she [Nature] has brought to completion thus far; through man [der
Mann, "the male human being"] she shows, what she had to overcome on
the way, but also, what *designs* she still has with man [der Mensch,
"the human being"]. The perfect woman of every time is the idleness of
the creator at every seventh day of culture, the reposing of the
artist in his work."
[Mixed Opinions and Maxims, section 274, entire.]

Thus the perfect woman is a higher type of man [Mensch] than the
perfect man, as woman shows the present, whereas man shows the past
and the future. Woman shows what has actually been attained, whereas
man only shows what there was before that attainment, as well as what
is still to be attained. So the perfect woman embodies what has been
attained (per-fected), whereas the perfect man embodies past and
present de-fects. Therefore the perfect woman is a higher type of man
than the perfect man. By "embody" I mean "represent perfectly", by the
way.

A difference in potential

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When distinction of feature and symmetry of form were added to this charm of youthfulness, the Greeks admitted, as true artists are obliged to do, that the male body displays harmonies of proportion and melodies of outline more comprehensive, more indicative of strength expressed in terms of grace, than that of women. I guard myself against saying--more seductive to the senses, more soft, more delicate, more undulating. The superiority of male beauty does not consist in these attractions, but in the symmetrical development of all the qualities of the human frame, the complete organisation of the body as the supreme instrument of vital energy. In the bloom of
adolescence the elements of feminine grace, suggested rather than expressed, are combined with virility to produce a perfection which is lacking to the mature and adult excellence of either sex. The Greek lover, if I am right in the idea which I have formed of him, sought less to stimulate desire by the contemplation of sensual charms than to attune his spirit with the spectacle of strength at rest in suavity. He admired the chastened lines, the figure slight but sinewy, the limbs well-knit and flexible, the small head set upon broad shoulders, the keen eyes, the austere reins, and the elastic movement of a youth made vigorous by exercise. Physical perfection of this kind suggested to his fancy all that he loved best in moral qualities. Hardihood, self-discipline, alertness of intelligence, health, temperance, indomitable spirit, energy, the joy of active life, plain living and high thinking--these qualities the Greeks idealised, and of these, "the lightning vision of the darling," was the living incarnation. There is plenty in their literature to show that paiderastia obtained sanction from the belief that a soul of this sort would be found within the body of a young man rather than a woman. I need scarcely add that none but a race of artists could be lovers of this sort, just as none but a race of poets were adequate to apprehend the chivalrous enthusiasm for woman as an object of worship.

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The first reflection which must occur to even prejudiced observers is that paiderastia did not corrupt the Greek imagination to any serious extent. The license of Paganism found appropriate expression in female forms, but hardly touched the male; nor would it, I think, be possible to demonstrate that obscene works of painting or of sculpture were provided for paiderastic sensualists similar to those pornographic object's which fill the reserved cabinet of the Neapolitan Museum. Thus, the testimony of Greek art might be used to confirm the asseveration of Greek literature, that among free men, at least, and gentle, this passion tended even to purify feelings which in their lust for women verged on profligacy. For one androgynous statue of Hermaphroditus or Dionysus there are at least a score of luxurious Aphrodites and voluptuous Bacchantes. Erôs; himself, unless he is portrayed, according to the Roman type of Cupid, as a mischievous urchin, is a youth whose modesty is no less noticeable than his beauty. His features are not unfrequently shadowed with melancholy, as appears in the so-called Genius of the Vatican, and in many statues which might pass for genii of silence or of sleep as well as love. It would be difficult to adduce a single wanton Erôs, a single image of this god provocative of sensual desires. There is not one before which we could say--The sculptor of that statue had sold his soul to paiderastic lust. Yet Erôs it may be remembered, was the special patron of paiderastia.

Greek art, like Greek mythology, embodied a finely graduated half-unconscious analysis of human nature. The mystery of procreation was indicated by phalli on the Hermæ. Unbridled appetite found incarnation in Priapus, who, moreover, was never a Greek god, but a Lampsacene adopted from the Asian coast by the Romans. The natural desires were symbolised in Aphrodite Praxis, Kallipugos, or Pandemos. The higher sexual enthusiasm assumed celestial form in Aphrodite Ouranios. Love itself appeared personified in the graceful Erôs of Praxiteles; and how sublimely Pheidias presented this god to the eyes of his worshippers can now only be guessed at from a mutilated fragment among the Elgin marbles. The wild and native instincts, wandering, untutored and untamed, which still connect man with the life of woods and beasts and April hours, received half-human shape in Pan and Silenus, the Satyrs and the Fauns. In this department of semi-bestial instincts we find one solitary instance bearing upon paiderastia. The group of a Satyr tempting a youth at Naples stands alone among numerous

similar compositions which have female or hermaphroditic figures, and which symbolise the violent and comprehensive lust of brutal appetite. Further distinctions between the several degrees of love were drawn by the Greek artists. Himeros, the desire that strikes the spirit through the eyes, and Pothos, the longing of souls in separation from the object of their passion, were carved together with Erôs by Scopas for Aphrodite's temple at Megara. Throughout the whole of this series there is no form set aside for paiderastia, as might have been expected if the fancy of the Greeks had idealised a sensual Asiatic passion. Statues of Ganymede carried to heaven by the eagle are, indeed, common enough in Græco-Roman plastic art; yet even here there is nothing which indicates the preference for a specifically voluptuous type of male beauty

The male form arouses the feeling of temperance itself. It's more concrete, angular and statuesque in appearance. A woman's form seems more deceptive, necessarily, and arouses the most extreme emotions. Everything about a woman's form is meant to draw you in and spit you back out. It can be both the most intoxicating and most abject thing. A man's form is more reflective. A man's form build's to a peak and this is part of its beauty (short-lived as it may be). It would seem nihilistic to divorce philosophy from a love of physical beauty considering European beauty runs side by side with it.

Only an emasculated "male", like Sauwelios, who spent years kissing the master's arse, and idolizing the idol-breaker, would place a female on such a pedestal - these days he's worshipping his rightful masters, through the Jew Strauss.

If "perfect" means a reflective mirror, casting back whatever is most immediate (modern), as unaffected by personal influences as possible, then he has found his perfect human in the passive.

Man can achieve the height or the depth, most often the latter, and this makes him human beyond the animalistic.
An animal is as primal and natural as you can get.
One does not idolize animals nor their purity.

Woman is passive enough to become a willing means to a creative mind's ends.
a male can be noble or he can tumble to the depths of nihilistic despair, and a woman will always be present to serve and service his ideals.
As a representation of nature, which is what a female is, she is a yay-sayer to life, as Ludovici said, but she has no clue how or why...she feels and intuits everything, because nature is also unconscious.
Man gives focus, and clarity to everything he does, including his own degradation. He must justify it, and not only feel it in his bones and boners.

Satyr wrote:

Only an emasculated "male", like Sauwelios, who spent years kissing the master's arse, and idolizing the idol-breaker, would place a female on such a pedestal - these days he's worshipping his rightful masters, through the Jew Strauss.

Well, he's interpreting a quote from Nietzsche there. Sauwelios doesn't idolize Nietzsche. I think it's important to recognize the different pace people have in appropriating material before disregarding.

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Woman is passive enough to become a willing means to a creative mind's ends.
a male can be noble or he can tumble to the depths of nihilistic despair, and a woman will always be present to serve and service his ideals.
As a representation of nature, which is what a female is, she is a yay-sayer to life, as Ludovici said, but she has no clue how or why...she feels and intuits everything, because nature is also unconscious.

Generally yes, but there are women who can intellectualize their feelings very well, so the difference becomes something much more subtle between a man and woman... or it has to or else there would be no more gender differentiation.

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''The modernist thirst for originality makes the mediocre artist believe that the secret of originality consists simply in being different.''

“Whoever does not move among works of art as if among dangerous animals does not know among what he moves.”

— Nicolás Gómez Dávila

"Thirst" for originality is found amongst those who feel the most unoriginal.
The wish to be noticed is part of the herd psychology.

In uniformity cultures it is a way of standing-out while, at the same time, believing in uniformity.
This forces the individual to go to extremes or to go towards the abstract, alluding to what, in reality, he cannot be.
To be different would actually contradict his own ideals which are about oneness, sameness, being one and the same.

The modern mind must make the different something superficial, or something extreme, vulgar, unattractive.

Satyr wrote:

"Thirst" for originality is found amongst those who feel the most unoriginal.
The wish to be noticed is part of the herd psychology.

In uniformity cultures it is a way of standing-out while, at the same time, believing in uniformity.
This forces the individual to go to extremes or to go towards the abstract, alluding to what, in reality, he cannot be.
To be different would actually contradict his own ideals which are about oneness, sameness, being one and the same.

The modern mind must make the different something superficial, or something extreme, vulgar, unattractive.    

Sounds like the majority of students!

perpetualburn wrote:

Something Sauwelios said on another forum a while ago:

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"*Woman fulfills, man promises.* -- Through woman, Nature shows what
she [Nature] has brought to completion thus far; through man [der
Mann, "the male human being"] she shows, what she had to overcome on
the way, but also, what *designs* she still has with man [der Mensch,
"the human being"]. The perfect woman of every time is the idleness of
the creator at every seventh day of culture, the reposing of the
artist in his work."
[Mixed Opinions and Maxims, section 274, entire.]

Thus the perfect woman is a higher type of man [Mensch] than the
perfect man, as woman shows the present, whereas man shows the past
and the future. Woman shows what has actually been attained, whereas
man only shows what there was before that attainment, as well as what
is still to be attained. So the perfect woman embodies what has been
attained (per-fected), whereas the perfect man embodies past and
present de-fects. Therefore the perfect woman is a higher type of man
than the perfect man. By "embody" I mean "represent perfectly", by the
way.

Where is Sauwelios saying that?

I recall him saying the exact same thing, word to word, three years ago...

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A difference in potential

To me, that quote reads as N. saying The Woman always reveals the current state of A culture. She reveals the man-Become 'so far'. And Man is always a becoming.

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The male form arouses the feeling of temperance itself.  It's more concrete, angular and statuesque in appearance.  A woman's form seems more deceptive, necessarily, and arouses the most extreme emotions.  Everything about a woman's form is meant to draw you in and spit you back out.  It can be both the most intoxicating and most abject thing.  A man's form is more reflective.  A man's form build's to a peak and this is part of its beauty (short-lived as it may be).  It would seem nihilistic to divorce philosophy from a love of physical beauty considering European beauty runs side by side with it.

Have you also read Winckelmann by any chance? Maybe his writings would interest you; he was both pro-homoagape and a homo-erotic;

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The erotic obsession permeating Winckelmann’s writings was not apparent in the eyes of his contemporaries, nor to his immediate posterity—or at any rate, it was not discussed.[61] It was only the generations absorbing the influence of Nietzsche—who thoroughly transformed the image of antiquity, opposing Dionysos to Winckelmann’s Apollo—that could discern the Dionysian element in Winckelmann’s works. „The fixed, static character of Winckelmann’s aesthetic ideal lies, essentially, in the transposition into terms of art of an erotic substratum such as his, where an immense sum of energy was employed in a hallucinatory idolization of the beloved object…” – writes Mario Praz.[62] Alex Potts, one of his most recent monographers, notes that in Winckelmann’s works, the connection between the nakedness of the Greeks and the ideal of subjective and political freedom is stronger than in the works of any of his contemporaries, even though he saw the dark, violent, conflicted and lethal—with some exaggeration one might say Sadeian—aspect of absolute freedom.[63] Yet such knowledge had to be concealed, if for no other reason because of its homoerotic associations. Thus the emphasis was placed not on the esoteric-erotic implications of his teachings but on its exoteric-heroic content: on noble simplicity and tranquil greatness, on the harnessing of passion and suffering, on dignity, discipline, sublimity, and immaterial beauty. A two-fold ideal appears, the beautiful and the sublime, whose duality corresponds to Winckelmann’s historical division between the epoch of the „high” (strong) style of Phidias, Polyclitus, Scopas, Myron, and Alcamenes, and the epoch of the „beautiful” style of Praxiteles, Lysippus, Apelles. Its theoretical framework can be found in the distinction between two sorts of grace (high and beautiful), between the celestial and the earthly, whose alternation can take place within the description of the same work.[64]  
In its erotic and heroic[65]—beautiful and sublime—form, as well as in its mixed form, Greek nakedness is the principal symbol of liberty for Winckelmann. Although the connection between nakedness and liberty was not fixed in a system of allegorical or iconographic symbols, nakedness, charged with ancient associations, had been linked to modern notions of liberty since the Renaissance. For the contemporaries, Michelangelo’s David was a symbol for liberty.

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"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art. To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because its supreme beauty is rather male than female." [Winckelmann]


"The power of love in its extreme form must be expressed in all possible ways

I thee both as Man and Woman prize
For a perfect love implies
Love in all capacities.
                                       Cowley

and that is the foundation on which the undying friendships of the ancient world, those of Theseus and Pirithous, of Achilles and Patroclus, were built. Friendship without love is only acquaintance. The other, however, is heroic and sublime above all else; it humiliates the willing friend till he grovels in the dust and it drives him to the day of his death. All virtue is in some measure weakened by other proclivities and in some measure capable of false pretences; a friendship that extends to the outer limits of humanity bursts forth with violence and is the highest virtue now unknown to mortals, and is thus also the greatest good they can possess. Christian morality does not teach this; the heathens, however, prayed to it, and the greatest deeds of antiquity were accomplished through it." [Winckelmann]

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Sauwelios doesn't idolize Nietzsche.

You don't know his history.

Lyssa wrote:

Where is Sauwelios saying that?

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To me, that quote reads as N. saying The Woman always reveals the current state of A culture. She reveals the man-Become 'so far'. And Man is always a becoming.

That's an accurate way of putting it yet.  How might a woman reveal the current state of a culture?  Or what about her reveals this?


   "*Woman fulfills, man promises.* -- Through woman, Nature shows what
   she [Nature] has brought to completion thus far; through man [der
   Mann, "the male human being"] she shows, what she had to overcome on
   the way, but also, what *designs* she still has with man [der Mensch,
   "the human being"]. The perfect woman of every time is the idleness of
   the creator at every seventh day of culture, the reposing of the
   artist in his work."

How woman act as a metaphor for Nietzsche is really interesting.  

Trying to dig up more analysis for that quote lead to here: unfortunately the google preview cuts off at the juicy part... but still,

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We see each other and ourselves as something: as selves, as whole, as women, as men, as citizens, as a number concept-metaphors that delimit us and our roles.  By contrast, we do not see ourselves as chains of nerve impulses, or if we do (as Nietzsche thinks Hamlet did [ BT 7], we fall prey to vertigo and cannot function.  As metaphors, and by using metaphors, we forget ourselves as “eternal imperfection,” and perhaps even carry a goddess or two across the river.

“A complete thing” or a perfect” thing is often metaphorized as woman in Nietzsche’s texts, and sometimes as divine woman; “poetry,” for instance, is a goddess.  An aphorism in volume 2 of Human, All Too Human establishes the gendered complete/incomplete contrast.  Its title is “Woman fulfills…

The metaphor of carrying a goddess across the river of becoming conveys an intuition about the experience of creativity, and, self-reflexively, it demonstrates how a good “new” metaphor works in breaking down conceptual barriers.  Goddess and human male, two separate categories, have been fused in one – or rather, the barriers, those prison walls confining the two in separate quarters, have fallen.  In this instance Nietzsche has most certainly “appropriated” the feminine  as metaphor to describe the male artist’s creative pride and joy in his work.  By doing so, he has taken the ready-made “woman” and given her a new setting, a new context.  Since she is a goddess, his models for this undertaking are the ancient epics of Homer and Virgil, where goddesses ( Athena, especially ) simply take over a hero’s body during a crucial time in order to “inspire” him.  Through the creative process, the aphorism implies, an artist is thus taken over – and yet he remains in charge; he is carrying the goddess, not the reverse.  The obvious analogy here is to woman’s role as child bearer

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Have you also read Winckelmann by any chance? Maybe his writings would interest you; he was both pro-homoagape and a homo-erotic;

Well, now I'm very interested.

In all seriousness, I think there are rare cases of homosexuality that give individuals incredible charge, an element of immense pride in asserting male beauty beyond embellishment and not as some shallow, grossed out rejection of female sexuality either.  These individuals definitely add positively to culture...but Nietzsche is something else.

Nietzsche's intensity( and intensity is what really attracts men to men), his moving beyond simple divisions of gender seems like it could bring out potentials in man and woman and a more natural type of people where maybe male beauty has an elevated place but not quite where the Greeks had it... I dunno..

I'll have to research the place of beauty in Germanic cultures too because we have a mishmash of cultures now and a mishmash of temperaments.

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   Sauwelios doesn't idolize Nietzsche.


You don't know his history.

I know enough.  I know Satyr won't elaborate on why he thinks Sauwrlios idolizes Nietzsche, but maybe you can?  You seem to know Nietzsche very well.  Do you share Saytr's opinion.  To call Sauwelios an idolizer without qualifying the label with a more accurate interpretation of Nietzsche, seems dishonest.

What would you like me to elaborate/

Sauwelios spent half a decade - as long as I've known about him - quoting, deferring, referring, regurgitating endlessly the "sacred texts".
Nietzsche, the idol breaker, suffers from the same fate as Jesus did - he becomes the representative of all he opposed.  

Then, after all those years of idolizing his mentor, Sauwelios realizes his true nature, through Strauss, and he admits to being a liberal democrat.

He has the spirit of a female: cooing, and worshipping, and surrendering with a passion.

For him I'm a Schopenhaurean because like Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, the negative essence of existence is what I repeat, in a world full of delusional children, full of positive fairy-tales.
Nietzsche was not anti-Schopenhauer....he was against his old mentor's solution to what both saw as being real.

For Sauwelios, because reality must be told to women and children with a positive twist, I am negative...yet, unlike both his forgotten mentor and Schopenhauer, and him, no less, I've chosen to reaffirm life, and to accept the costs, by having a child.

He is clueless.
Anyone who cannot see the ironic contradiction is worshipping and parroting Nietzsche for a decade, only to fall into the arms of the Jews, must be a bit feminine in his awareness.
Reminds me of Paul, the Apostle.

Did not Nietzsche, himself, say that his words would be misunderstood and that he was talking over the heads of those who would not understand, and that his own kind would do damage to him?
Can't go to the quoting because I left Nietzsche behind eight years ago, choosing to honour him through my absorption of what he taught me, as this combined with what many others taught me, including Heidegger, his student, and Schopenhauer, most notably, his teacher.

Luckily for me I read the three in the appropriate order.

I'll respectfully disagree with your assessment. Refer to Beyond Good and Evil section 211.

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But the real philosophers are commanders and lawgivers: they say "That is how it should be!" They determine first the "Where to?" and the "What for?" of human beings, and, as they do this, they have at their disposal the preliminary work of all philosophical labourers, all those who have overpowered the past - they reach with their creative hands to grasp the future. In that process, everything which is and has been becomes a means for them, an instrument, a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating; their creating is establishing laws; their will to truth is - will to power.

That's something so rare... Just because someone else labors for knowledge and understands his rank, doesn't make him "emasculated."

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The task of these researchers is to make everything that has happened and which has been valued up to now clear, easy to imagine, intelligible, and manageable, to shorten everything lengthy, even "time" itself, and to overpower the entire past, a huge and marvellous task, in whose service every sophisticated pride and every tough will can certainly find satisfaction

Now if your contention is with the quality of his "work,"(or if you even consider it to be "work" as understand in that passage), or its usefulness for the philosopher, that's a different matter.

Unlike you, him, and many others, quoting text, his text, is not an argument.

Knowing is creating, in the sense that the brain abstracts reality...it interprets it.
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To remain a boy, a student, and feel pride in this, exposes your spirit.
What is a stunted man, if into a female, a boy?
Children and women are the purest representations of nature, because they have no understanding to inhibit, question, and trying to overcome.

But you missed the last part: He is now a self-confessed liberal democrat.
Now, I ask you, is Nietzsche advocating liberalism?
Did he disagree with Schopenhauer's assessment of reality, or only with his response, his method of coping?
Was he seeking followers, fawning men-children who could not utter a phrase without his words coming out?

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But you missed the last part: He is now a self-confessed liberal democrat.
Now, I ask you, is Nietzsche advocating liberalism?
Did he disagree with Schopenhauer's assessment of reality, or only with his response, his method of coping?

Can you point me to that thread on ILP... I'll search for it tomorrow anyways... Nietzsche isn't concerned with being political I don't think, there is no normative political theory in his philosophy... philosophy rules above it. I'll eventually get around to reading Strauss's "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil" and Laurence Lampert's study of Strauss.

From Twilight of the Idols:

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Schopenhauer. — Schopenhauer, the last German worthy of consideration (who represents a European event like Goethe, like Hegel, like Heinrich Heine, and not merely a local event, a "national" one), is for a psychologist a first- rate case: namely, as a maliciously ingenious attempt to adduce in favor of a nihilistic total depreciation of life precisely the counter-instances, the great self-affirmations of the "will to life," life's forms of exuberance. He has interpreted art, heroism, genius, beauty, great sympathy, knowledge, the will to truth, and tragedy, in turn, as consequences of "negation" or of the "will's" need to negate — the greatest psychological counterfeit in all history, not counting Christianity. On closer inspection, he is at this point merely the heir of the Christian interpretation: only he knew how to approve that which Christianity had repudiated, the great cultural facts of humanity — albeit in a Christian, that is, nihilistic, manner (namely, as ways of "redemption," as anticipations of "redemption," as stimuli of the need for "redemption").

22 I take a single case. Schopenhauer speaks of beauty with a melancholy fervor. Why? Because he sees in it a bridge on which one will go farther, or develop a thirst to go farther. Beauty is for him a momentary redemption from the "will" — a lure to eternal redemption. Particularly, he praises beauty as the redeemer from "the focal point of the will," from sexuality — in beauty he sees the negation of the drive toward procreation. Queer saint! Somebody seems to be contradicting you; I fear it is nature. To what end is there any such thing as beauty in tone, color, fragrance, or rhythmic movement in nature? What is it that beauty evokes? Fortunately, a philosopher contradicts him too. No lesser authority than that of the divine Plato (so Schopenhauer himself calls him) maintains a different proposition: that all beauty incites procreation, that just this is the proprium of its effect, from the most sensual up to the most spiritual.

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Was he seeking followers, fawning men-children who could not utter a phrase without his words coming out?

No, but that's not what Sauwelios is doing.

perpetualburn wrote:

Lyssa wrote:

Where is Sauwelios saying that?

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Thanks. Mr.Moore is a kind man.

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To me, that quote reads as N. saying The Woman always reveals the current state of A culture. She reveals the man-Become 'so far'. And Man is always a becoming.

That's an accurate way of putting it yet.  How might a woman reveal the current state of a culture?  Or what about her reveals this?

See the extensive passage on The Greek Woman;

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"From the State the individual has to receive everything in order to return everything to the State. Woman accordingly means to the State, what sleep does to man.  In her nature lies the healing power, which replaces that which has been used up, the beneficial rest in which everything immoderate confines itself, the eternal Same, by which the excessive and the surplus regulate themselves.  In her the future generation dreams.  Woman is more closely related to Nature than man and in all her essentials she remains ever herself. Culture is with her always something external, a something which does not touch the kernel that is eternally faithful to Nature, therefore the culture of woman might well appear to the Athenian as something indifferent, yea-if one only wanted to conjure it up in one's mind, as something ridiculous.  He who at once feels himself compelled from that to infer the position of women among the Greeks as unworthy and all too cruel, should not indeed take as his criterion the " culture " of modern woman and her claims, against which it is sufficient just to point out the Olympian women together with Penelope, Antigone, Elektra.  Of course it is true that these are ideal figures, but who would be able to create such ideals out of the present world?-Further indeed is to be considered what sons these women have borne, and what women they must have been to have given birth to such sons!  The Hellenic woman as mother had to live in obscurity, because the political instinct together with its highest aim demanded it.  She had to vegetate like a plant, in the narrow circle, as a symbol of the Epicurean wisdom (living unseen, unknown).  

Home-education considers itself so to speak as the only natural one and suffers State-education only as a questionable infringement upon the right of home-education : all this is right as far as the modern State only is concerned.-With that the nature of woman withal remains unaltered, but herpower is, according to the position which the State takes up with regard to women, a different one.  Women have indeed really the power to make good to a certain extent the deficiencies of the State-ever faithful to their nature, which I have compared to sleep.  In Greek antiquity they held that position, which the most supreme will of the State assigned to them: for that reason they have been glorified as never since.  The goddesses of Greek mythology are their images: the Pythia and the Sibyl, as well as the Socratic Diotima are the priestesses out of whom divine wisdom speaks.  Now one understands why the proud resignation of the Spartan woman at the news of her son's death in battle can be no fable.  Woman in relation to the State felt herself in her proper position, therefore she had more dignity than woman has ever had since.  

As long as the State is still in an embryonic condition woman as mother preponderates and determines the grade and the manifestations of Culture: in the same way as woman is destined to complement the disorganised State.  What Tacitus says of German women: inesse quin etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec aut consilia earum aspernantur aut responsa neglegunt, applies on the whole to all nations not yet arrived at the real State.  In such stages one feels only the more strongly that which at all times becomes again manifest, that the instincts of woman as the bulwark of the future generation are invincible and that in her care for the preservation of the species Nature speaks out of these instincts very distinctly.  

How far this divining power reaches is determined, it seems, by the greater or lesser consolidation of the State: in disorderly and more arbitrary conditions, where the whim or the passion of the individual man carries along with itself whole tribes, then woman suddenly comes forward as the warning prophetess.  But in Greece too there was a never slumbering care that the terribly overcharged political instinct might splinter into dust and atoms the little political organisms before they attained their goals in any way.  Here the Hellenic Will created for itself ever new implements by means of which it spoke, adjusting, moderating, warning: above all it is in the Pythia, that the power of woman to compensate the State manifested itself so clearly, as it has never done since.  That a people split up thus into small tribes and municipalities, was yet at bottom whole and was performing the task of its nature within its faction, was assured by that wonderful phenomenon the Pythia and the Delphian oracle: for always, as long as Hellenism created its great works of art, it spoke out of one mouth and as one Pythia.  
We cannot hold back the portentous discernment that to the Will individuation means much suffering, and that in order to reach those individuals It needs an enormous step-ladder of individuals.  It is true our brains reel with the consideration whether the Will in order to arrive at Art, has perhaps effused Itself out into these worlds, stars, bodies, and atoms: at least it ought to become clear to us then, that Art is not necessary for the individuals, but for the Will itself..."

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The 'she ever remains herself' - that Being-ness and man as the constant Be-coming, as the art form itself disposed off by the Will is echoed by Georg Simmel in his work 'On women, love and sexuality', where he contrasts the feminine fidelity owing to an undifferentiated psyche with masculine infidelity owing to his differentiating psyche [pgs.74-80].

Also, consider the next observation, tying her with the grade of A culture;

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"They wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" STRONG by culture: as if history did not teach in the most emphatic manner that the "cultivating" of mankind and his weakening--that is to say, the weakening, dissipating, and languishing of his FORCE OF WILL--have always kept pace with one another, and that the most powerful and influential women in the world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just to thank their force of will--and not their schoolmasters--for their power and ascendancy over men. That which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear also, is her NATURE, which is more "natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the glove, her NAIVETE in egoism, her untrainableness and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues.
That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy for the dangerous and beautiful cat, "woman," is that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more necessitous of love, and more condemned to disillusionment than any other creature. Fear and sympathy it is with these feelings that man has hitherto stood in the presence of woman, always with one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it delights--What? And all that is now to be at an end? And the DISENCHANTMENT of woman is in progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know the horned animal which was always most attractive to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening thee! Thy old fable might once more become "history"--an immense stupidity might once again overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no God concealed beneath it--no! only an "idea," a "modern idea"!" [BGE, 239]

You could also compare her [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] nature to your earlier comment,

Perpetual wrote:

The male form arouses the feeling of temperance itself. It's more concrete, angular and statuesque in appearance. A woman's form seems more deceptive, necessarily, and arouses the most extreme emotions. Everything about a woman's form is meant to draw you in and spit you back out. It can be both the most intoxicating and most abject thing. A man's form is more reflective. A man's form build's to a peak and this is part of its beauty (short-lived as it may be). It would seem nihilistic to divorce philosophy from a love of physical beauty considering European beauty runs side by side with it.

perpetual wrote:

How woman act as a metaphor for Nietzsche is really interesting.

Are you writing a comprehensive paper on this? Are you into Nietzschean philosophy or gender sociology more?

One such functional metaphor to Nietzsche is Distance;

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An interesting parallel between N. and Weininger;

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"Women and their Effect in the Distance. Have I still ears? Am I only ear, and nothing else besides? Here I stand in the midst of the surging of the breakers, whose white flames fork up to my feet; from all sides there is howling, threatening, crying, and screaming at me, while in the lowest depths the old earth-shaker sings his aria hollow like a roaring bull; he beats such an earth-shaker’s measure thereto, that even the hearts of these weathered rock-monsters tremble at the sound. Then, suddenly, as if born out of nothingness, there appears before the portal of this hellish labyrinth, only a few fathoms distant, a great sailing-ship gliding silently along like a ghost. Oh, this ghostly beauty! With what enchantment it seizes me! What? Has all the repose and silence in the world embarked here? Does my happiness itself sit in this quiet place, my happier ego, my second immortalised self? Still not dead, but also no longer living? As a ghost-like, calm, gazing, gliding, sweeping, neutral being? Similar to the ship, which, with its white sails, like an immense butterfly, passes over the dark sea! Yes! Passing over existence! That is it! That would be it! —— It seems that the noise here has made me a visionary? All great noise causes one to place happiness in the calm and the distance. When a man is in the midst of his hubbub, in the midst of the breakers of his plots and plans, he there sees perhaps calm, enchanting beings glide past him, for whose happiness and retirement he longs they are women. He almost thinks that there with the women dwells his better self; that in these calm places even the loudest breakers become still as death, and life itself a dream of life. But still! but still! my noble enthusiast, there is also in the most beautiful sailing-ship so much noise and bustling, and alas, so much petty, piti able bustling! The enchantment and the most powerful effect of women is, to use the language of philosophers, an effect at a distance, an actio in distans; there belongs thereto, however, primarily and above all, distance!" [N., JW, 60]

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"On the other hand, the high esteem in which virginity is held originally came from men, and still does so where there are any men left: it is Man’s projection of his own immanent ideal of immaculate purity on the object of his love.
Man demands chastity both from himself and from others, and he demands it most from the being that he loves.
Beauty itself is a projection, or emanation, of the desire to love. Therefore, the beauty of Woman is not something different from love, not an object to which love is directed. The beauty of Woman is the love of Man. Love and beauty are not two different facts, but one and the same. Just as ugliness derives from hate, beauty derives from love. The fact that beauty has as little to do with the sexual drive as love, and that both love and beauty are alien to desire, expresses the same thing. Beauty is something untouchable, inviolable, which cannot be mixed with other things. It can only be seen as if it were near from a long distance, and it retreats before any approach. The sensual drive, which seeks union with Woman, destroys her beauty. A woman who has been handled and possessed is no longer worshipped by anybody for her beauty." [Weininger, Sex and Character]

You could say Distance provides that sense of Being, of a Culture - which woman represents,,, while a closer approach exposes the Turmoil of Becoming, the ugliness, the transition, the impurity, the volatility of Nature...
At a distance, Woman is the Apollonian illusion, perfection of a steadfast grade of a culture; she IS the veil hiding the dionysian transitions of man's be-coming. Woman:Culture = Man:Art/Artist

Perpetual wrote:

Trying to dig up more analysis for that quote lead to here: unfortunately the google preview cuts off at the juicy part... but still,

Yes, even I'd tried before and I couldn't find a complete pdf. version of it. Nice passage.

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I'll have to research the place of beauty in Germanic cultures too because we have a mishmash of cultures now and a mishmash of temperaments.

That'll be interesting, share it when you're done. Only Spengler and Rosenberg come to mind immediately.

Perpetual wrote:

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   Sauwelios doesn't idolize Nietzsche.


You don't know his history.

I know enough.  I know Satyr won't elaborate on why he thinks Sauwrlios idolizes Nietzsche, but maybe you can?  You seem to know Nietzsche very well.  Do you share Saytr's opinion.  To call Sauwelios an idolizer without qualifying the label with a more accurate interpretation of Nietzsche, seems dishonest.

Given the fact that you just stated below that you think N. was Apolitical tells me you are on another current with Sauwelios, that I do not share. For me, N. is deadly political when he redefines Phil. as Maximal Politics, art of legislating, etc.

Reg. Sauwelios, its just three weeks ago, he claimed on ILP he is the best disciple and interpreter of N. so far - In his own words. This is a fashioning after N. who called himself the real disciple of the 'god' Dionysos. Sauwelios in mirroring with N., makes a god of N. This kind of congruity is an error.
Not only that, blatant is his agenda of Straussianizing Nietzsche, given, Strauss was an outspoken proponent of the validity of Revelations, and importing this straussianism [primordial god as will to power] As N.'s early metaphysics which is ridiculous if you read even Sloterdijk's Thinker on Stage' written from the perspective of a critique of N.
Elsewhere on this forum, I have already clarified N.'s usage of "the Primordial One" in Birth of Tragedy; I'll link it here when I can recall where I posted it here.

In any case, here's his version. Assess yourself.

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