Folder 20 part 4
From Charles De Koninck Wiki
Lecture 3
The God Dionysus is the translation of the obscure, brutal, and irrational flux of the cosmos toward its transcendent term: it is the translation of this cosmic ecstasy which overthrows all established forms. Apollo, on the contrary, tends toward the possession of self, toward equilibrium, toward the domination of form. He is the god of contemplation: the god of immobility: the god of the plastic arts. Dionysus is the god of music. The plastic draws us from the outside; but music installs itself in us and carries us along: it translates flow, the dynamism of the universe.
Apollo is without doubt the ideal, but the ideal finds itself always beyond the term attained. Dionysus is a transitive phase: but the transition, the path of mobility (le cheminement la mobilite?) is essential to the cosmos: cosmic beings are form and matter: matter is there to make up for the imperfection of form.
The conflict between acquired forms, and the transcendent ideal of the cosmos, inserted in matter, gives birth to this dramatic and tragic character of nature. Nature is tragic, because all generation requires a corruption, a destruction. Tragedy which is dominated by an optimism, since to the destruction of one being corresponds the generation of another. (page 2)
The lion who (lu? hu?) and devours the deer is an image of the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus. the deer is an Apollonian form: it is an acquisition: but this acquisition is provisional. the lion tears it apart: because nature must progress: the deer must be assimilated in a superior form. (Note: "cf Ia q 96, a 1, ad 2nd: All that is natural, and existed in the state of innocence) Nature thus continues toward its term by alternative predominances of the Dionysian and Apollonian elements. Apollo establishes an equilibrium; Dionysus introduces a rupture. Nature advances thus by a series of successive explosions, like a gun (fusil?)
Dionysian excess casts (rejetter?) us into barbarism; Apollonian excess is a sign of decadence. Rousseau is a barbarian; Descartes is a decadent. It is necessary to reconcile the two elements: it is necessary to equilibriate them: it is necessary to establish between them an equilibrium which will be unstable by definition. This equilibrium cannot be maintained except by power, by force (la force). Force maintains us in the right mean which is the summit between the two opposed terms. To dominate them, an excess of force is necessary: a power which transcends them without destroying them: and here is what characterizes the superman: he is at once Apollonian and Dionysian. The common man is one of the two to the exclusion of the other. (page 3)
The Apollonian looks behind himself: he is a praiser of past time. He is presumptuous: he is satisfied with himself. But the angel of God has said: "Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley; flee to the hills, lest you be consumed." And the wife of Lot who looked back became a pillar of salt. The Dionysian says: let us eat, drink and dance, because tomorrow we will be dead. And tomorrow he will be dead.
The great man is the one who flees to the hills. "When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains."
For Nietzsche, there exist in fact two moralities: the morality of the flock which vegetates in the plain: the zoocratic morality; and the morality of the superman who inhabits the mountains: the morality of the aristocrat. Zoocratic morality is rationalizing, or libertine. The morality of the superman, who cultivates force, a morality which elevates us outside ourselves. The zoocrat wants to justify his mediocrity: he is egalitarian. He flees effort, he detests the difficult, and he wants all men to detest it. "Ye higher men," says Zarathustra, "learn THIS from me: On the market-place no one believeth in higher men. But if ye will speak there, very well!" The populace, however, blinketh: "We are all equal."
"Ye higher men,"—so blinketh the populace—"there are no higher men, we are all equal; man is man, before God—we are all equal!" (page 4)
The morality of the populace is a morality of negative humility, and morality of feebleness, a morality of pure pity. The populace has horror of all that makes them quiver, of all that is terrible. It does not avow itself incapable of heroism: it is ignorant of the heroic. Its life is a passive attempt. It seeks rest at its level. It says: "we are a brave people, the good God loves us. It tends to do away with hell by love for mankind. But God did not say: "this poor humanity"; He did not say: "they are all the same a brave people, and I will pardon them."
No, he descended from heaven, he was made man in order to make himself tortured and assassinated by them. They killed him because he was superior, because he was not at their level. The zoocrat wants to be with him in the world, although we are not made to be with him. Vulgar man seeks to reconcile things with himself; he wants to be approved. While the superman seeks to adapt himself to things. (page 5)
The populace defends itself by perverse notions of charity, of prudence, and of justice. Its charity is an indulgence which puts the subject on the level of the object, although it is supposed to raise it. Its prudence is a justification of mediocrity by rationalizing reason. Its right mean is not a summit, it is found on the level of the extremes. Its justice is based on a materialistic conception of order.
In this morality, there is no place for greatness. It can always give reasons for not being magnanimous or magnificent. It is a morality without virtue.
But Zarathrusta says, "man is a thing which must be surmounted, this is why you must love the virtues, - because it is by them that you will perish. I love that which the soul unloads, to the point that it forgets itself . . . ., because thus all things will contribute to his decline." We must kill in ourselves the old man: we must overcome indetermination: "become hard."
Nietzsche, the philologist, aspires to establish this distinction between the morality of slaves and the morality of masters: on philological considerations.
(page 6)
It is necessary to say that there are in German two terms to express the bad: schlecht, and bose (umlaut "o"), which we will translate provisionally by "bad" (mauvais - schlecht), and "evil" (mechant - bose). The term "bad" was attributed by the superior classes to the inferior classes. Originally, this term designated simply the ordinary, the common, and then, vulgar, bad. The inferior classes applied the term "evil" to superior classes: it signified originally "irregular, incalculable, unfamiliar, dangerous, cruel." Inferior classes fear the superior man as a disintegrating force. "The great man," says a Chinese proverb, "is a public disaster."
"Good" has equally two significations: for the masters, it designates the powerful, the courageous, the warrior, the divine. ("gut" = "gott"); in the mouth of the people, "good" signifies "familiar, peaceful, innocent, kind."
These two moralities represent two diametrically opposed currents. Opposed as the current of degradation of energy of physics; and the current going toward forms more and more organized, more and more perfect, of biology. (page 7)
The morality of slaves wants to realize a return to the amorphous indetermination of matter. The morality masters wants to create an armature of habit which elevates us above ourselves: which renders us divine. Hence the emphasis on force.
The morality of slaves is essentially impious. It tends to the destruction of all spontaneity. It codifies. It formalizes. It destroys reason. It tends towards independence: it becomes the categorical imperative. It erects itself above metaphysics. It has a horror of metaphysics, because the latter opens horizons too vast: it gives us vertigo. Vertigo must be ruled by force: but force is terrible; arduous, requires a positive and constructive asceticism. This morality is impious, because it uses God as an instrument. Having exiled reason, having banished metaphysics, it (fouch? bonct?) (thinks? wishes?) that it justifies itself. To do this, it declares all laws divine after having turned them? (le des?) from God toward whom morality should elevate us, after having demolished reason, which is the very essence of morality. Laws become extrinsic constraints which destroy us. They (eisent? crisent?) the destruction of the passions, although the passions are the triumph of nature, and although they are essential to morality. (page 8) They establish feebleness as an ideal.
It is not the populace as such that has invented this morality. Its author is found in the populace, but he is distinguished from his brothers in this that he seeks to legalize the contradictory requirements of the mass. This man is called the Philistine. He affects greatness: he says that he is the friend of men. He claims to have assimilated the wisdom of the ages. He is of an impudence quite discouraging. He is divinized human foolishness. He is the mediocre type who makes himself normal. He wants to realize happiness systematically in platitude. He sees anarchy in everything superior to himself. He is the one who says to the populace: do you see this man? He is the enemy of humanity, because he wants to impose an ideal of pride. He is a disturber of public order. He is an anarchist. And the populace listens to it, it exiles him or kills him. And ten years later the Philistine returns. And he claims to have assimilated the wisdom of the assassinated man. And another great man comes. And he is killed, and thus it goes on. And the Philistine thus always looks to the past, and he vegetates on his skeleton: and he transforms life into a column of salt. (page 8)
In him is manifested the bitterness of the small, which has a horror of greatness, and which wants to take revenge on it. And it is only capable of sadistic joys.
The Scribes and the Pharisees have not disappeared from the face of the earth. They live among us, and they will crucify until the end of time: and the populace will always be his instrument: and he will always be the hero of the populace: because he tells it: you are a brave people, defend yourselves. He says that he believes in God, but he is perversely agnostic: because he does not want God to mingle himself in the life of men: and when God himself comes among us, he killed him in the name of God: because his morality is a morality of the slave. Now God did not come that we might be slaves: but free children.
The good and the evil of the Philistine, the moral norms that he imposes on the mass, norms which the mass accepts from him (de que?), must be exceeded by the superman: they are perverted notions: in reality this easy good is an evil, and this hard evil is a good. Ever since (Des lors), Nietzsche will say, the superman must elevate himself beyond good and evil. (page 10) It is necessary that he become wicked, and terrible, powerful and magnanimous.
This distinction which Nietzsche establishes between the morality of slaves which erects feebleness into supreme right, and the morality of masters which divinizes force, this distinction, is it well founded and justified?
Without a shadow of a doubt. And these two moralities exist today in the interior of Christendom. If we consider them on a very grand scale, we would be able to say that the morality of slaves is represented by Protestantism and Jansenism, to which is opposed the heroic morality of authentic Catholicism, which we recover in authentic Thomism.
Protestant morality, when it is not a proclamation of the rights of feebleness, of which we find today the vestiges, among others, in the criminal limitation of legalized births - and that is quite in its logic: one wants to free humanity from its sufferings by a softening anesthetic - when it is not a proclamation of rights of feebleness of pecca fortiter, it has recourse to extrinsic constraint without virtue, without personal effort, without the real force (page 11) of Puritanism and of Jansenism, which formalizes the law and which imposes on us a perverse doctrine of force.
Nietzsche knew only Protestant and Jansenist Christianity, and this is what it is necessary never to forget. Because all these vociferations against Christianity are in fact directed against decadent Christianity, Christianity which is subject to the law of rhythmic and spiral evolution of history.
Nietzsche set himself up against this morality of feebleness. How was he to do it if not in opposing force to it? And yet it would be necessary to affirm the necessity of force in what it has of the more powerful: in its excess, in its realized greater extension in magnanimity and magnificence which characterize the Aristotelian and Thomistic superman.
In the first lecture, I said that the philosophy which (page 12) will reclimb the slope toward a new summit, the philosophy to which must lead the dialectical current of post-medieval philosophic thought, must be a philosophy of the superman: a philosophy which will be before all a moral philosophy, and which will reintroduce the necessity of force; the force which is essential to all virtue.
Why must this reactionary philosophy come? Because nature is defeatist. Because nature will infallibly attain its term; because Dionysus is immortal; because vengeance is essential to nature. One can abuse it up to a certain limit, but one cannot destroy it. When men become incapable of affirming it, it is affirmed by its very self, and it affirms itself in the strangely absurd system of Nietzsche. Because Nietzsche is not someone: he is a will for power without reason. His affirmation is blind. It manifests itself as a need: it is not the product of modern philosophic reason. (page 13)
It is a revolt against Apollonian rationalism, by opposition to authentic intellectualism. It is equally a revolt against morality without reason: in other terms, an irrational revolt, irrational in relation to us, since it is not in the reason of modern philosophy, against irrational morality. But this revolt, irrational in relation to us, manifests a reason indeed more profound than ours: that which nature works and acts before all human reason.
This revolt breaks out with Nietzsche, but it was already prepared, not by modern philosophers, but by those who are called men of letters. It is in literature that it is necessary to seek its roots; among the a-philosophical moralists and the German poets. Which demonstrates in an experiential manner the role of Dionysian ecstasy in philosophy. (page 14) And after all, the philosophers cannot do without the poets. The historical fact that the poets preceded the philosophers is entirely significant.
Let us speak now of the French influence on Nietzsche. In Nietzsche's own opinion (De l'avis? meme de Nietzsche?) it is the old Montaigne which inspires his critique of the herd spirit which grounds the morality of slaves. "It is believable that there are natural laws, Montaigne said, as they are seen in other cultures; but among us they have perished." "Laws of conscience, which we call born of nature, are born of custum; each, having in internal veneration the opinions and customs approved and received by him, is not able to depend on himself without remorse." "It is necessary to get rid of this violent prejudice of custom." "One senses his judgment all overthrown and (remis pourtant en bien plus sur etat?)" This "overthrown judgment," here is everything that distinguishes the free spirit from the vulgar. "For the vulgar, the laws are maintained in belief not because they are just, but because they are laws. (page 15) No legislation, says Montaigne, when "it (attacherfait?) ten thousand laws, knows "the infinite diversity of human actions. All these laws attached to us make us play a role, "as role of an borrowed personage, and they are causes that most of our vocations are farcical."
Montaigne had reason: because he makes appeal to habit, which furnishes us judgments by connaturality: which permit us to judge in this infinite diversity of human actions; while Puritanism and Jansenism impose on us from without and by constraint this infinity of moral rules, throw us outside of ourselves, and make us play the impersonal role of an borrowed personage. On the contrary, Montaigne sees nothing in the philosophy of pity but an effect of the "facility, affable and indolent." Montaigne wants an education "which changes us into better men." It is necessary to attach it not to the soul, he says, by the surface; it must be in the body.
It is necessary to free man from his state of impotence, not by annihilation, but by an elevation.
It is the philosophers who must liberate humanity from its state of slavery. "Someone," he wrote, "who asked Socrates (Crates?) how long it was necessary to philosophize received this reply: until there are no longer (asniers?) who conduct our armies" Nietzsche had more hope. For political and military tasks, the (aniers?) always suffice; but it is for the philosophers to find the means of conducting, unwittingly (a leur insu?), the (aniers?)"
For Pascal, writes Nietzsche, I almost have affection, because he (mu infiniment inbruit?????): he is therefore the only Christian. And what he loves in Pascal, is his revolt against the philosophy of his time, which by its superficiality and its artificial character, were against nature. It is the courage that he admired in Pascal, and not his Jansenism. (page 17)
The influence of the great poet Goethe is more important. "It is necessary," Goethe had said, "that every perfect thing in its genus surpass this genus; it is necessary that it become something different, incomparable." Everything that is great and intelligent exists only in the minority. Goethe had already spoken with a contemptuous pity of this more prudent and enlightened humanity, but denuded of energy, which is being prepared; and he saw coming the time when God, in disgust, would be obliged to tear the universe in pieces for a new (rejeunie?) creation."
The hero of The Brigands of Schiller is already an imperfect image of the superman of Nietzsche. But he is still too humanitarian, and even too Dionysiac. He suffers too much contempt of the mas. He is not sufficiently fatalistic -- he perishes in vengeance, (page 18) although the work of the superman must be essentially constructive.
But all these influences are purely extrinsic. They never give reasons. They present only aspirations. While Nietzsche wanted to make realities of them. But he did not overtake the will of the superman.
I said just now that the system of Nietzsche is an absurd and fundamentally contradictory system. He creates a superman, but he has absolutely nothing to give him. He must exceed himself indefinitely. This is very well, but to what is this going to lead? Does there exist an ideal? The superman must slowly become a precious stone for the joy of eternity. But what is this eternity that he promises to us? He answers us by the doctrine of eternal recurrence. The universe grows in the Dionysian and Apollonian conflict: it produces the supermen who are the ultimate ends; it arrives at the point of saturation, the whole process (page 19) begins anew, and thus to infinity. We will listen an infinity of times again in this same room. Frightful conception, it must be admitted. And Nietzsche himself admitted it.
How to explain this illogism so brutal and sterile? At the time of Nietzsche there existed nothing of metaphysics. All philosophical systems were essentially and exclusively cosmologies. The metaphysics of which Kant spoke, his notions of substance, of causality, etc., were not metaphysical notions. The philosophy of Hegel never surpassed the first degree of abstraction: he never came to know the implications of the principle of contradiction. His non-being is something of the very real, his non-being is first matter. The universe of Schopenhauer is an exclusively cosmic universe, and his will of the world is again first matter. (20)
Postmedieval philosophy has no metaphysics. Even in Christendom, Molina is an irrefutable proof of it. In order to explain human liberty he is obliged to reverse all of metaphysics: he did it without knowing it, and without admitting it. But he did it all the same. With Suarez, we are present at the solemn inauguration of the supremacy of the imagination in the domain of philosophy. Each time that he abandons St. Thomas, whom he read attentively, he does it by reason of the order of the imagination.
Beginning with Wolfe, philosophy of nature is called metaphysics. And here again an experiential proof of the rhythmic current which rules the history of human thought. In it one was returned to the presocratic state of philosophy. And Nietzsche himself has not surpassed it. He never understood Plato and Aristotle. (page 21) Metaphysics was not in the air. This was fatal. He affirmed the necessity of going beyond the cosmos, but he did not succeed in detaching himself from it. He would, moreover, fall into the void.
We have remarked that his theory of art is essentially cosmic: his works of art are always given birth by Dionysus. And he affirms the superiority of music because it is Dionysiac. Nietzsche has seen Greek culture only through Heraclitean glasses: reality is universally becoming. Henceforth, the artistic exteriorization of reality in its most intimate depths will be a dynamic exteriorization, an art which arises in time: a cosmic music as that of the young Wagner: and that of Beethoven may already be. In this music time is essential, as in all romantic music. (page 22)
But there is a music which transcends the cosmic flux. There is the music of a Johan Sebastian Bach, which arises in time, it is true, but here, time is purely accidental even in being necessary. Bach has said things which will be true even when time exists no more. His music is an insinuation of this spiritual immobility which has no need of pursuing existence, which possesses it in an instant. Bach's music is a narration in time of a meta-temporal life.
Nietzsche has an obscure knowledge of the insufficiency of the cosmic in art, of which one can see a preview in his revolt against Wagner. But instead of an appeal to Bach, he turned toward Bizet: an absolutely inexplicable deviation if not by his lack of metaphysics: by his lack of lived spirituality. (page 23)
But this absence of lived spirituality removes nothing of the importance and the historic depth of his philosophy.
Nietzsche said at just the right moment: I want the superman: man must surpass himeslf: I want force. He felt the need of it. He said to us that the morality of masters is not that of slaves: but he did not tell us in what consists this morality of masters.
I say that Nietzsche is, in a certain point of view, the most important of the modern philosophers: I do not say this because it is said (?) - that is to me absolutely indiferent -- it is that I attempt to demonstrate it: and if I attempt it, it is because it is not said. I say it.
And that Nietzsche is of an inestimable importance, this is what is proved by the attacks of which he has been the object (page 24)
(missing line?)
orthodox which are very often synonyms of Philistines.
We want the superman: it is not what there is of the arduous and terrible in Nietzsche which frightens us. If we do not stop at Nietzsche, it is because we want a superman infinitely greater: because we are more demanding than he. Because we required by God.
It is this man that I will attempt to describe in the following lecture.
Translation of 4th lecture:
Nietzsche part 4 (throughout, the word "force" is here taken as "fortitude" - perhaps "strength would be better? Toward the end, CDK calls "force" a "cardinal virtue" DQ)
"A people, says Nietzsche, is the detour of nature to achieve six or seven great men. Yes: and then to leave them by the side of the road." (Read P. Ch. 342-3 ?)
All modern thought since Luther was against Nietzsche, and Nietzsche knew it. In the Gay Science, he defended the Church against Luther. Read pages 357-9.
Also read page 361
Can one thus distribute humanity into two categories? Can one justify Nietzsche? Are we not all equal before God? And is not the Christian religion accordingly an essentially egalitarian religion? Before responding to this very complex question, we will study humanity from the very beginning, from a strictly philosophical point of view. This manner of proceeding is legitimate, for grace does not destroy nature.
What is the absolute origin of humanity, and what is its absolute end? To comprehend this, it is necessary to attend to the very birth of humanity. Man, says St. Thomas, is found at the lower limit of the hierarchy of intellectual beings. The pure spirits constitute a hierarchy of species absolutely distinct, which subsist outside of the entire natural genus. (page 2)
Their essence constitutes a degree of achieved perfection. Each individual realizes a pure species. These species, hierarchised according to their degree of perfection, constitute an ensemble which is so much the more one, in that it is constituted by beings fundamentally different. A hierarchical ensemble, that is to say, composed of heterogeneous parts, constitutes a unity of order, a unity of essential order when the parts are of heterogeneous essences. An ensemble of homogeneous beings, such as men, constitutes only a unity of accidental order. Accordingly, one must say that two angels, which are essentially different, are more one than two men, who however entail the same definition.
With Aristotle and St. Thomas we make a distinction between unity, transcendental property of being, and unity, principle of number. There is a transcendental unity in the measure that there is of being. Therefor, pure spirits A and B, just in being more distant in perfection than B and C, are more one than B and C. A man and dog are more one than two dogs, and so on.
These considerations allow us to comprehend how the cosmic universe of space-time takes birth.
Pure spirits A and B are more distant in perfection than spirits B and C. That is to say, that in descending the scale, spirits resemble each other more and more. If now we descend this scale to the bottom, we finish by finding two spirits which resemble each other indeed (de faite?); two spirits who are essentially equal: two spirits who entail the same definition. But these two spirits themselves will be more than pure spirits. While the pure spirits entail a simple essence, it is necessary here to decompose the essence, since it must be realized in several individuals. This decomposition of essence cannot be realized except by a composition of the individual essences: it is necessary to posit in the interior of the individual essence a principle of opposition, a principle of individuation, that we call first matter. Where there is a multiplicity of individuals in the same species, there are composed essences: composed of matter and (on?) form(s?).
Multiplicity of homogeneous individuals implies homogeneous opposition: the parts of an ensemble, since they are similar, are exterior to one another: they constitute a homogeneous exteriority: they constitute a spatial order. A complex essence calls for a complex existence: it cannot have a simple existential act. It is not able to have a complex simultaneous existence, because the essence, despite its composition, is one. Therefore, it can only have an existential act in a successive manner: it exists successively. And this succession must be continuous, because the essence cannot lose its identity in the succession: it must always be the same being that exists successively. Therefore, a being of complex essence is a being which endures successively and continuously, that is to say, that it is spatio-temporal.
And here is the absolute origin and foundation of this universe of mobility which goes on, which pursues its perfection. Spatio-temporal species cannot be completed in one individual alone. They effect a compensation in multiplication: humanity is a species which enriches itself by multiplication.
And now we are going to understand why I have made these rather abstract reflections: this multiplication cannot be the goal of the human species. The goal of this multiplication is the unity of the species. Not an accidental unity, but an essential unity: essential in the measure possible. The accidental is never the end.
Now, essential unity cannot be realized except by heterogeneous parts. Therefore, humanity tends to constitute itself in a hierarchical ensemble. This ensemble cannot be composed of different essences, but this does not prevent that in reason of the infinite plasticity of matter, men can differ substantially, because substance is the root of accidents in which we can establish a difference between men. (page 5)
This hierarchical unity of humanity is constituted by the different degrees of perfection of its individuals. There will be the superior men, and the inferior men. Humanity imitates in its own manner, in the interior of the same species, the angelic hierarchy. Egalitarianism is manifestly based on a materialist conception of unity: on a confusion of transcendental unity with the unity which is the principle of number: unity which implies an homogeneous matter, and which is of an infra-spiritual order. One sees also how the abandonment of metaphysics entails equally the abandonment of transcendental unity, for which will be substituted unity by confusion and shapelessness (amorphe?) of first matter. Monism will be a logical outcome of this materialist conception of the one and the many.(page 6)
Although for a Thomist, the universe is, in its great variety, infinitely more une than the universe of the monists. The Thomist universe is so profoundly one that it blossoms (eclot?) in specific and substantial differences. The unity of hierarchical humanity is infinitely more profound than the unity of an egalitarian humanity.
Up to this point, we are in agreement with Nietzsche. But Nietzsche says equally that the mass is in function of the great man. That a people exists in order to produce some rare superman. In Thomism, we make a distinction. As persons, intellectual beings are directly subordinated only to God. But no finite intellectual being is "pure person." By (?) their degree of perfection, they are hierarchically subordinated: and in this measure, every inferior is in function of the superior (translation help?) And if this idea is essential to Thomist (surgeology? sounds like a pretty cool study, eh?) it is it to the advantage of the individuals of a species (help!!!!!!!??????) If men are persons, they are far from being substantial species: they are only parts of the human species. But men are not purely functional (useful?) in the manner of the infra-human species, of which man is the entire reason for being. (page 7) Egalitarianism is therefore a divinisation of man.
I said the other day that the theory of eternal recurrence of Nietzsche is the image of the bankruptcy of his system. He has established a hierarchy in the interior of each historical cycle, in its path toward the superman. But the cycles are in their turn equal. He thus seeks for the achievement of things in their pure multiplicity. He falls, on this superior plan into the error which he condemned concerning the structure of individual cycles. And that is understood. He did not have metaphysics. He cried out for metaphysics, but he did not find it. We have seen that he only knew dramatic and comic art. This art is true: it is, in the domain of the music Beethoven and Wagner (?). But this art, as this philosophy is not able to end. It can be only a phase - I do not say a phase an exclusively historical phase, because there is something of the eternal in the truth of the cosmos -- ; it is a phase of the life of the individual himself: it is necessary to surpass these men. But it cannot close itself, it cannot complete itself: this art cannot close up on itself. There is nothing more profoundly sad than the IXth symphony of Beethoven, which is (page 8)an ode to joy. And the triumph of the Vth only conducts us to the end of the symphony.
We also, we have a doctrine of recurrence: but our recurrence is not homogeneous and linear: it is spiroidal. The historic rhythm follows an ascensional movement: that is to say that the summet of each cycle is more and more elevated. This rhythm is essential to nature, one finds it again in the doctrine of generation and corruption. There are generation and corruption in the concrete life of human culture. And grace does not destroy this rhythm. This rhythm serves the integral order. It attains even the theologians.
Most christians have a monstrous idea of history. The summit of history would be in the past, and the world would be henceforth in a state of degeneracy. We descend henceforth to hell. But the mass of the old have said this since the beginning of humanity. This lazy idea, defeatist and morbid, is, for a Thomist, Manichean and subtly blasphemous. Corruptions are for generation, and when there are no more generations, there will be no more corruption. And this world here below will be assumed in the resurrection.(page 9) The world only achieves itself at the summit, and its achievement will be an assumption.
The superman of Nietzsche is characterized by his will for power. Nietzsche makes appeal to fortitude, and even to an excess of fortitude. In the last lecture we traced the degeneracy of the idea of habit. Man took revenge on the effort that was required of him: and Nietzsche took revenge on this vengeance. By his appeals, he wanted to reinstall habit. His cry had an impact, and the Thomist is able to recognize it.
In Thomist ethics, the word fortitude can have two senses. (II II q. 123 /a.2) Following the first, fortitude is nothing but a certain firmness of soul; thus understood, it is a general virtue, or to say it better, a condition of all virtue, since, as Aristotle says, it is essential to virtue to act in a firm and unshakable manner. Following the second, fortitude is a 'firmness,' whose unique function is to support and push these assaults, these extreme perils in which it is most difficult to stand firm. "Fortitudo est circa terribilia." It is in this sense that (page 10) fortitude is called a special virtue, provided that it has a determinate matter.
But fortitude is needed by all men. How is it able to be characteristic of the supermen? And if all men are called to fortitude, it is that all men are called to be supermen, which destroys the idea of the superman, as we have presented (exposee) it.
Yes, but the particular virtue of fortitude includes several parts, of which two are explicitly reserved for great souls, for those who are naturally great, who are born great: magnanimity and magnificence: "actus magnanimitatis non competit cuilibet virtuoso, sed solum magnis." (q. 29, a 3, 2nd) The act of magnanimity is therefore not given to all, but reserved to great souls. And the fact that these virtues need an innate greatness, and (qui tient a?) physical complexion of the individual - nobilitas animae sequitur bonam complexionem corporis -, this innate greatness which is just a disposition, does not impede magnanimity being a virtue: "Nec tamen est contra rationem virtutis quod ex naturali complexione aliquis habeat naturalem inclinationem ad virtutem." q 123, 1, 3rd. (page 11)
Before treating of these virtues, we will speak first of their subject, and of the presupposed natural disposition: because one can be a great man, without being magnanimous, since magnanimity designates the virtue, the habit grafted onto the disposition. This subject is a necessity of nature. It is this subject who is the superman in the Nietzschean sense. He is an angel, but it is not decided if he will be white or black: it is habit that will give him his color.
But this man is already a superman in relation to the mass. And the superman is already here in his absolute sense: that is to say, as truly opposed to the mass. Because the requirements of magnanimity are so transcendent, that they cannot be realized but by exceptional men.
If we take the qualifying (qualificatif?) superman in this sense, then men of great genius, whether they be virtuous or vicious, fit into this category. These men are great in life (vie?) or in virtue. And the bad men can have an enormous destructive power: the bad habit will correspond (page 12) to the natural disposition.
We have returned, therefore, to a question of definition. This definition is however very demanding. If we define the superman by his capacity of magnanimity: the capacity will correspond to the requirements of the virtue of magnanimity. And by this very fact, the one-sided genius could not return into this category. But if one wants to call any genius whatever a superman, as Schopenhauer meant it, - that is a question of definition. One can be a physicist of genius without being an integral superman. In many cases, a certain distance can be very helpful in certain domains. Thus, no metaphysician has been a good physicist (I would like to have been able to say the contrary!). This example is typical. Because if the metaphysician contributes nothing to physics, he knows how to assimilate the work of others, while the physicist can be ignorant of the existence of metaphysics without damage for his science to himself -- and history teaches us that the metaphysics of physicists has delayed the progress of this science. (page 13)
Henceforth, we must leave the superman of Nietzsche, in order to surpass him - in order to construct a greater superman. That is not to say that we deny the historic meaning of the Nietzschean supermen who are of all colors. Because even the bad geniuses play an essential role in history. "Etiam mala peccatorum in bonum justorum cedunt." (Rom. Comm. p 120.) They serve, without willing it, the just ones
The philosophy of Nietzsche is an anthropocentric philosophy, while Thomist philosophy is theocentric. The Thomist philosophy is not a philosophy of the superman. For it, the question of the superman is a question of applied philosophy. But that is not to say that man is less great than in an anthropocentric philosophy. Just the contrary. An anthropocentric philosophy sins by exclusion. The man of the anthropocentric philosophy is not very great. In a sense, man is too small to occupy the center of the universe; and if he occupied it, the universe would be in its turn too small: and if we want an infinitely more vast universe, we want implicitly a man infinitely more vast. (page 14)
It is especially this last point that we must accentuate when we argue ad hominem. Absolutely speaking, it is false to say that the romantic philosophers have divinized man too much. No, their manner of divinizing him is not only a lowering of the idea of divinity, but equally a lowering of man. They did not known how to divinize him except by imposing limits which are contrary to his nature: because man is by his nature capacity for God: that is to say that he is naturally capable of a gratuitous elevation (surelivation) which makes him participate in the intimate life of the most pure absolute.
It is completely (tout?) the Thomist system that we oppose to the philosophy of Nietzsche. And it is completely (tout) the metaphysical and Christian ideal that we oppose to the limited and undefined ideal of the superman of Nietzsche.
Because, in sum, Nietzsche has left us only a description of the exterior signs of the psychological character of the superman: his ideal and his historic role are without doubt infinitely superior to those of the mass, which tends always toward disintegration, but this ideal has not been defined by him. (page 15)
And this ideal wasn't even definable, since he had no metaphysics, necessarily this ideal was blurred, and if he had not given as solution his theory of eternal recurrence, he would have found (bored? trouer?) at the level of the cosmos only another theory equally despairing and amorphous.
But Nietzsche has left us a phenomenal description of the superman, of his observable greatness. And it is this that will permit us to establish a strict comparison between the superman that Aristotle and St. Thomas have equally described in this manner. And this comparison I will here make for ourselves, so that we do not (sangons?) too impressed (? empresse? engresse?) to despise the psychological type of the superman of Nietzsche.
The approach (demarche?) of the IVth Book of the Nichomachean Ethics, which treats of fortitude, is an extremely difficult approach (demarche). Aristotle in it defends a superior human type which is accused by the mass of prodigality, of pride, of idleness, of irony, of disdain for the mass, of cruelty, of indifference, of indelicacy, etc. . . . in one word, the "bose" (German?) - villain.
(pages "a" and "b" - inserted between 15 and 16)
There was much debris fallen along the way. Christian life advances itself by necessary explosions: and each explosion of Christian culture entails its waste. The waste purifies the Christian world, the mystical body of Christ in state of growth. But do not forget that this waste has arisen from the bosom of the Church. That protestantism and calvinism were prepared, not by the Church, but in the Christendom adhering to the Church. Each of us carries in himself a little protestant or a little calvinist, a little puritan. We live in danger: we are wayfarers.
Jansenism, this pestilential doctrine so little different from puritanism, which was for centuries in the very bosom of the Church of Catholic Christendom, and which is far from being extinct, is our nearest danger.
Christendom must progress, and it, like mutations, proceeds by bounds. It brings about the new. This new, brought about by circumstances, and realized at the outset in certain superior types, dazes the very faithful mass. Remember what a revolutionary St. Thomas was, and how the most sincere of the faithful attacked him as a destroyer of tradition, and a man who worked for the destruction of the Church.
The ascendant movement is characterized by a certain intoxication: a disquieting intoxication for all those who don't know it: it is the intoxication of the genius, and of the Saint.
I would like to end by dwelling on two great virtues, two virtues integral to the cardinal virtue of fortitude: magnanimity and magnificence. Two virtues of which theologians, even Catholic ones, have not spoken for centuries.
Aristotle, in the 4th book of the Nicomachean Ethics, and St. Thomas in the Summa Theologica q. 129 & 134 of the IIa IIae, defend a superior human type who is accused by the mass of prodigality, of pride, of idleness, of irony, of disdain for the mass, of cruelty, of indifference, of indelicacy, of brutality -- etc. etc. . .
(page 16)
The liberal man is accused of prodigality, which the mass considers as a very grave vice, while parsimony would be a virtue. And when he is praised by the mass, it is always because of his utility. (Ethics 665.) But the liberal man does not give for utility. He gives in order to give. It is this which is found unreasonable. He gives, he makes sacrifices without pain. And he does not want to receive from others, and when he receives, he is embarrassed. "Ad liberalem pertinet ut vehementer superabundet in datione." He gives to the point of having too little for himself. And the most liberal man, says Aristotle, is the one who receives his fortune as an inheritance, because the man who earned it by work is separated from it with difficulty: and all men love their own works immoderately: "parentes filios, poetae sua poemata." Since they have not known need, they disperse all the more easily. And when he has exaggerated, he is not sad: and he does not believe in the maxim of Simonides.
But then, how does this man differ from the prodigal? The liberal man does not waste. He gives with measure. But is it not simply just to give with measure? (page 17) And if he is virtuous, why does he give more than is necessary? But, the liberal man does not want to stop at the necessary: he wants what he gives to be a gift, and not a debt. And thus he is an extremist. But he is in the mean in this, that he does not waste: he does not throw pearls before the swine, as the prodigal.
The prodigal does not lack manliness, but measure. The parsimonious man stops at the useful, he only gives what he must, he stops at the necessary. And the parsimonious consider their parsimony as a virtue. And that explains, says Aristotle, why the believe that liberality is vicious: while parsimony is more vicious than prodigality: "prodigum multo meliorem illiberali," translated St. Thomas. Because, parsimony is incurable, while prodigality "de facile curatur." With a little exercise and reflection, the prodigal can attain the mean, while giving excessively. The parsimonious man, on the contrary, cannot ever give without being certain of a return. Not that the parsimonious man always desires the fortune of others: and he does not except gifts without hesitation (page 18); because he thinks that the one who seems to give has ulterior motives, and he fears for the security of his property. And in certain cases, he adds, the parsimonious men have a fear of fortune.
The parsimonious man is incurable. He finds himself in a vicious circle: and the one who climbs out (up? gravi?), is the one who (? c'est qu'il) is able always to make appeal to prudence. Read Ethics. p. 237 n. 697-8
The liberal man is therefore not natural, if by natural we intend what happens in the majority of cases. And nature, thus defined, tendit in defectum. The mass tends toward the defective.
This distinction remarked by St. Thomas is extremely important. Because the mass, by the very fact that it establishes parsimony as a virtue, and that it is forced to justify itself, already makes the morality of slaves.
The liberal man is an exceptional man, but the magnificent man is more so. If the magnificent man is necessarily liberal, the liberal man is not necessarily magnificent. Magnificence superadds greatness to liberality, quaedam magnitudo. (page 19)
Magnificence concerns enormous expenses in view of great honorable works, that is to say, disinterested ones, by opposition to useful works. It supposed an aesthetic taste, and is opposed thus to vulgar profusion, e.g. that of the musical comedies of Hollywood, in which there is no proportion between the expense and the intrinsic value of the work. In giving this example, I remain faithful to the taste of Aristotle, because he gave as examples the comedies of Megara, in which the actors appeared in purple in the first act.
In magnificence, there is all the same a certain disproportion between the expenses and the work, in this that the expenses are greater than the work, but that does not harm the work. On great works he spends largely and with joy. If he calculated his expenses too much, he would be stingy: "Quod aliquis sit multum diligens in computatione expensorum, pertinet ad parvificentiam:" the vice opposed to magnificence.
As example of magnificent works, Aristotle always cites works of art, temples, monuments, (boeuss?), music, etc.
(note on reverse page)
Why does God, perfect, create? Not having any need of the creature? A liberal man can understand it. He wants to communicate without (sans?) having any need of profit. A stingy man cannot comprehend it.
The same for parents. Many of whom are parents by accident. They do not comprehend how on can choose to have children while knowing that these children will give us pain, and that their existence calls for sacrifices.
(page 20)
A gift to the poor is not a gesture of magnificence, but of justice or liberality. In the eyes of the mass, magnificence is a waste, because it is not useful. And in the ethics of slaves, pure liberality, and magnificence, while they do not deny their idealistic value, are always inopportune. There was much poverty in Palestine at the time of Our Lord. But let us recall the passage of St. Mark the Evangelist: 14 X
What magnificence aims at are great disinterested works, and cultural: works of the spirit. And what is characteristic here, is the overflowing, the superabundance: the spiritual richness gratuitously communicated. And this gratuitous overflowing is essential to the spiritual. There is a gratuitous diffusion of self, in the measure one has goodness, and there is goodness in the measure that there is being. The more a being is superior and spiritual, the more its communication outside is gratuitous. In the angelic order, the more the angels are superior, the more their communication of their knowledge and their love to their inferiors becomes gratuitous. And every gift of God is absolutely gratuitous: creation and elevation above (surelevation).
Magnificence is a true triumph of pure spirituality over (page 21) the parsimonious poverty and stinginess of nature.
While magnificence essentially concerns diffusion outside, magnanimity specially concerns the subject considered in itself: it concerns above all a title of nobility which has no need of exterior goods to be exercised. The poor man cannot make (poser) acts of magnificence; but he can be magnanimous.
As magnificence, magnanimity seeks the honorable (l'honnete), the disinterested, as opposed to the useful. It has as objects honors. And there is a strange thing about virtue (Et voila une drole de vertu): cf. II II 129? c. (p. 116)
But, magnanimity, is it truly a virtue? And here are the objections of the morality of the slaves: ibid. a 3 (p 124- 131)
All that (mein?) us very far from this purely negative humility that Nietzsche disdained so in the Christianity of his time. For St. Thomas, humility is imperfect in the measure that it excludes magnanimity. And there is one of the difficult points about magnanimity: One borders always on the ridicule of pride and of vanity.(page 22)
It doesn't suffice to be what is called reasonable: it is necessary to have a judgment by connaturality; and this connaturality which judges spontaneously, supposes a natural greatness of soul.
One cannot be magnanimous without being humble: but humility is a part of temperance, and "materia temperantiae non habet de se aliquam magnitudinem," as fortitude (force). One sees it, temperance is not erected here into the supreme cardinal virtue, as it is in morality without metaphysics. And it is completely remarkable do see how these two parts of fortitude have gradually disappeared from treatises on theology after St. Thomas. With Duns Scotus, if I (puis mu frir?) to the texts that I have in hand, "patientia est nobilissima fortitudo," while for St. Thomas, "patientia non est potissima virtutum, sed deficit non solum a virtutibus theologicis, et prudentia, et justitia, quae directe statuunt hominem in bono; sed etiam a fortitudine et termperantia, quae retrahunt a maioribus impedimentis." (II II 136 a2, c)
And I have sought in vain in moral theological treatises. A rare author would mention these virtues in a general division, but (page 23) without commenting. It was only in recent years that dominican theologians have reintroduced them into their moral treatises.
And this fact is extremely significant. If these virtues have disappeared from the treatises, it is because they have not raised any interest, and that is serious; and one can even ask oneself if they were not suspect!
These virtues are little practiced: quantum difficilis, say Aristotle and St. Thomas, as if they despaired, these great men.
But that does not prevent them from being the crowning achievement of what is greatest in humanity. "Magnanimitas est ornatus quidam omnium virtutum. Quia per magnanimitatem omnes virtutes efficiuntur majores, eo quod ad magnanimitatem pertinet operare magnum in omnibus virtutibus. Et iterum non fit magnanimitas sine aliis virtutibus . . . . Unde difficile est hominem magnanimum esse." (749)
Theologians have (can it be peut-etre?) seen the danger of vanity in magnanimity. And, as they have always more fear of vanity than of pusillanimity, one understands their preference. But that is still not thomistic. Because for St. Thomas (page 24) vanity is less grave than pusillanimity, however the vulgaris multitudo things about it. "Pusillanimitas deterior est . . . Vitium quod magis accidit propter majorem inclinationem naturae humanae in ipsum, magis opponitur virtuti, . . . manifestum est autem, quod magis accidit aliquod esse pusillanimos . . . Et sic patet pusillanimitatem magis opponitur virtuti." (790)
Pusillanimity, says Aristotle, is not considered as a vice, but simply as a defect.
After these considerations, it is difficult to see what Nietzsche has brought to the idea of the superman from the doctrinal point of view. It is necessary even to add that his idea remained very inferior to that one. But from the historical point of view, Nietzsche constituted, so to say, a dialectical moment in the evolution of cultural life. He reacted against egalitarianism which was and which still is in fact: egalitarianism which was achieved in communism: egalitarianism pushed up to the destruction of personality, to lose oneself in an ensemble one with the unity of first matter. (page 25)
In reacting, Nietzsche has implicitly affirmed the rights of spirituality, spirituality which has a horror of uniformity, of what men call order. He has demonstrated the historical bankruptcy of the morality of slaves. And in doing this he has served us.
Theology must continue the study of this subject, but that surpasses my competence. I would like all the same to make allusion to certain points that the theologian would be able to expose.
It is true to say that all men are equal before the grace of God. That is to say that nature, although it be its degree of perfection, cannot posit any demand with respect to grace, nor impose a measure: God gives it gratuitously, and in the measure that He wills. And thus, a man very inferior is able to be uplifted above the greatest genius.
But that is not to say that grace reverses the natural order. It does all that without doing violence to nature: -- all that is realized suaviter. And it does not belong to us to pass judgment on the totally-new which results from the uplifting. But hierarchy must be maintained. (page 26)
The mystical body of Christ which embraces the angelic hierarchies and the human hierarchy is essentially hierarchical in its turn, and that without violence to the natural hierarchies. One understands why this idea is so little supported, -- the idea of absolute egalitarianism being so easy, and simplifying. It is so easy to say that, with the supernatural order given, nature no longer has any value. But that is not so easy - it is a heresy.
One can yet add to this, that the saint is not necessarily a superman such as we have described. He is a superman, without doubt, but in a sense infinitely more transcendent. And here is a very important distinction. Because every man is called to sanctity, although not all men are the stuff of genius.
And now a final reflection to conclude this series of lectures.
(un-numbered page)
We have studied the idea of hierarchy in the entire creation: the entire universe is essentially hierarchical: it is its way of imitating the Holy Trinity. But we have not stopped at the natural structure which philosophy can detect. Without doubt, this natural hierarchy was not troubled, nor reversed -- however, elevation to the supernatural order has assumed this universal hierarchy into a new hierarchy that one does not know how to measure with natures: a hierarchy which shows in a fashion absolutely hidden for us that the Spirit of God is so suberabundant that he breathes without measure and where he will.
Because it was not the first of the angels, nor some flashy human genius -- but a simple woman, a mother, a virgin who led a life so hidden, and of whom the angel said that she was full of grace and that the Lord was with here: it is she who has been elevated, not only to the summit of the human hierarchy, but to the summit of the universal hierarchy: -- the one we invoke as "the queen of the angels."
(page 27)
We have presented the superman in a manner a little flashy. We have paused a great deal on humanly manifest signs of greatness. And without doubt we have always had in mind (en devant l'esprit?) un homme, while a simple woman, a mother, of whom the angel said that she was full of grace, and that the Lord was with her, a virgin who led a life very hidden, has been (qui ete) elevated to the summit of the human and angelic hierarchy: the queen of the angels.