Lovers of Sophia

by Jason Reza Jorjani

This is why, as we have seen, in the Critique of Pure Reason Kant was willing to stake his entire reputation on the existence of humanitas elsewhere in the Cosmos.

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  SERPENT POWER OF THE SUPERMAN

  In The Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche recognizes

  the spirit of Science as the antithesis of the Christian

  mentality. Christianity, in Nietzsche’s view, extols foolish

  ignorance and condemns the “wisdom of this world” as

  sinful. In fact, as Nietzsche recognizes, the Bible begins with the

  story of a jealous god who is terrified at the human attainment of

  knowledge of life, of Nature, as symbolized by the Serpent and by

  the serpentine woman, Eve ( Hava), whose Hebrew name means

  “life.” The advocate of Science strives in the spirit of the Antichrist as the mortal enemy of God:

  A religion like Christianity, which is at no point in contact with

  actuality, which crumbles away as soon as actuality comes into

  its own at any point whatever, must natural y be a mortal enemy

  of the ‘wisdom of the world’, that is to say of science…

  Paul wants to confound the ‘wisdom of the world’: his enemies

  are the good philologists and physicians of the Alexandrian

  school – upon them he makes war. In fact, one is not philologist

  and physician without also being at the same time anti-Christian.

  …Has the famous story which stands at the beginning of the

  Bible real y been understood – the story of God’s mortal terror

  of science? …God had created for himself a rival, science makes

  equal to God… Moral: science is forbidden in itself – it alone is

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  forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sins, original

  sin. This alone constitutes morality. – ‘Thou shalt not know’ –

  the rest follows. …all thoughts are bad thoughts. Man shall not

  think. …Distress does not allow man to think. …And none the

  less! Oh horror! The structure of knowledge towers up, heaven-

  storming, reaching for the divine – what to do! – The old God

  invents war, he divides the peoples, he makes men destroy one

  another… War – among other things a great mischief-maker in

  science! – Incredible! Knowledge, emancipation from the priest,

  increases in spite of wars. – And the old God comes to a final

  decision: ‘Man has become scientific – there is nothing for it, he

  will have to be drowned!’1

  In The Anti-Christ Nietzsche identifies the Jewish mentality as an epitome of the falsification of life that one sees in the conception

  of the Fall as a rightful punishment for the sin of knowledge-

  seeking that was committed in Eden. This is reiterated in The Birth of Tragedy. Given that the Promethea trilogy of Aeschylus was a supreme work of the tragic age of the Greeks that Nietzsche so

  admired, and that becomes the subject of The Birth of Tragedy, it ought to be no surprise that we find his most extended meditation

  on Prometheus there. He contrasts the Prometheus mythos of the

  Āryans with Semitic religiosity in the most striking terms. The

  passages deserve quoting at length:

  Let me now contrast the glory of activity, which il uminates

  Aeschylus’ Prometheus, with the glory of passivity… Man, rising

  to Titanic stature, gains culture by his own efforts and forces

  the gods to enter into an alliance with him because in his very

  own wisdom he holds their existence and their limitations in his

  hands. But what is most wonderful in this Promethean poem,

  which in its basic idea is the veritable hymn of impiety, is the

  profoundly Aeschylean demand for justice. The immeasurable

  suffering of the bold “individual” on the one hand and the divine

  1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols / The Anti-Christ (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), 175–177.

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  predicament and intimation of a twilight of the gods on the

  other…

  In view of the astonishing audacity with which Aeschylus places the

  Olympian world on the scales of his justice, we must call to mind

  that the profound Greek possessed an immovably firm foundation

  for metaphysical thought in his mysteries, and all his skeptical

  moods could be vented against the Olympians. The Greek artist,

  in particular, had an obscure feeling of mutual dependence when

  it came to the gods, and precisely in the Prometheus of Aeschylus

  this feeling is symbolized. In himself the Titanic artist found the

  defiant faith that he had the ability to create men and at least destroy Olympian gods, by means of his superior wisdom which, to be sure,

  he had to atone for with eternal suffering. The splendid “ability” of

  the great genius for which even eternal suffering is a slight price, the stern pride of the artist – that is the content and soul of Aeschylus’

  poem…

  But Aeschylus’ interpretation of the myth does not exhaust the

  astounding depth of its terror. Rather the artist’s delight in what

  becomes, the cheerfulness of artistic creation that defies all

  misfortune, is merely a bright image of clouds and sky mirrored

  in a black lake of sadness. The Prometheus story is an original

  possession of the entire Āryan community of peoples and

  evidences their gift for the profoundly tragic. Indeed, it does

  not seem improbable that this myth has the same characteristic

  significance for the Āryan character which the myth of the

  fall has for the Semitic character, and that these two myths are

  related to each other like brother and sister. The presupposition

  of the Prometheus myth is to be found in the extravagant value

  which a naïve humanity attached to fire as the true pal adium

  of every ascending culture. But that man should freely dispose

  of fire without receiving it as a present from heaven, either as

  a lightning bolt or as the warming rays of the sun, struck these

  reflective primitive men as sacrilege, as a robbery of divine

  nature. Thus the very first philosophical problem immediately

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  produces a painful and irresolvable contradiction between man

  and god and moves it before the gate of every culture, like a huge

  boulder. The best and highest possession mankind can acquire

  is obtained by sacrilege and must be paid for with consequences

  which involve the whole flood of sufferings and sorrows with

  which the offended divinities have to afflict the nobly aspiring

  race of men. This is a harsh idea which, by the dignity it confers

  on sacrilege, contrasts strangely with the Semitic myth of the

  fall in which curiosity, mendacious deception, susceptibility to

  seduction, lust – in short, a series of pre-eminently feminine

  affects was considered the origin of evil. What distinguishes

  the Āryan notion is the sublime view of active sin as the

  characteristical y Promethean virtue. With that, the ethical

  basis for pessimistic tragedy has been found: the justification of

  human evil, meaning both human guilt and the human suffering

  it entails.

  …Whoever understands this innermost kernel of the Prometheus

  story – namely, the necessity of sacrilege imposed u
pon the

  titanical y striving individual… [who, like] the swelling… tide…

  takes the separate little wave-mountains of individuals on its

  back, even as Prometheus’ brother, the Titan Atlas, does with the

  earth. This Titanic impulse to become, as it were, the Atlas for all

  individuals, carrying them on a broad back, higher and higher,

  farther and farther, is what the Promethean and the Dionysian

  have in common.2

  Returning to The Anti-Christ, there Nietzsche observes how the Church links the Christian embrace of ignorance as bliss with an

  affirmation of submissive weakness. As a world-historical force,

  Christianity has made war on the rare and higher type of person who

  seeks knowledge and worldly wisdom above all else. Nietzsche, who

  was by profession a classicist, sees the classical world as having, after 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Random House, 2000), 71–73.

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  centuries of struggle, established a foundation for the flourishing of this type in Alexandrian Rome.3 Here all of the key elements of the

  scientific orientation towards life were already developed.

  Of course, this was in the context of an aristocratic society more

  closely aligned with the natural distinction between three types of

  ‘human’ being: 1) a miniscule elite who lives for knowledge; 2) a

  small but significant minority who are the guardians of knowledge

  insofar as they recognize the superiority of the first type and have

  the physical strength and spiritual discipline to serve them as a

  knightly class; 3) the vast mediocre majority who, unless they are

  riled up by rabble rousers that instill false expectations in them, are ready, willing, and able to function as “intelligent machines.” With

  respect to the first two of these castes, Nietzsche observes that Jesus as “the redeemer” is the antithesis of the type of the genius and hero.

  In Nietzsche’s view these three castes of soul ought to be arranged in a pyramidal structure.

  While this was not exactly the case in the actual society of the

  classical world, the ideal of a scientific society – as most famously

  exemplified by Plato’s Republic – was at least recognized by many

  of the thinkers of the classical world, going all the way back to

  the Pythagorean Order. These men and women were amassing

  institutional power in cities such as Alexandria.

  Since the destruction of the classical academies, scientific

  geniuses and heroic spirits have been viciously persecuted and

  inquisitorial y tortured as something intolerably lower than what the

  Hindus call Chandala – those that they tolerate as “untouchables.”

  The harbingers of the Superman have been associated with

  everything Evil. In Nietzsche’s view, it is now time for a reversal of this grotesque Christian inversion of a rightful ethical order wherein those with the strength to boldly seek wisdom and knowledge

  are recognized as sovereign. He intends for the true Chandala to

  retake their rightful place as robots that build a broad foundation

  for the self-directed evolution of the intellectual elite beyond the

  merely ‘human’ and into a superhuman condition. Whoever said

  3 Nietzsche,

  The Anti-Christ, 175.

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  that interdependence entailed equality had no sense of relations in

  nature or the evolutionary force of life.

  In The Gay Science and The Will to Power, Nietzsche elaborates on this interdependence of the “last man” and the Promethean “masters

  of the earth.” There he sees the transformation of the teeming rabble

  into a machine as a platform on which a new nobility of renaissance

  men erect a new world order unifying Science, Art, and Politics:

  So many things have to come together for scientific thinking to

  originate... Their effect was that of poisons... Many hecatombs of

  human beings were sacrificed before these impulses learned to

  comprehend their coexistence and to feel they were all functions

  of one organizing force... artistic energies and the practical

  wisdom of life will join with scientific thinking to form a higher

  organic system in relation to which scholars, physicians, artists,

  and legislators – as we know them at present – would have to

  look like paltry relics of ancient times.4

  …Inexorably, hesitantly, terrible as fate, the great task and

  question is approaching: how shall the earth as a whole be

  governed? And to what end shall “man” as a whole – and no

  longer as a people, a race – be raised and trained?5

  ...as the consumption of man and mankind becomes more

  and more economical and the “machinery” of interests and

  services is integrated ever more intricately, a counter-movement

  is inevitable... the production of a synthetic, summarizing,

  justifying man for whose existence this transformation of

  mankind into a machine is a precondition, as a base on which

  he can invent... this higher form of aristocracy… that of the

  future… a hothouse for strange and choice plants.6

  Despite the brilliant insight and evocative imagery of such passages,

  4 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 173.

  5 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Random House, 1968), 501.

  6 Ibid., 463–464, 478.

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  Nietzsche fails to live up to his own-most insights regarding the

  primacy of the dynamic force of becoming. The doctrine of eternal

  recurrence, if interpreted ontological y as Nietzsche himself

  interprets it when he occasional y denies free will despite the

  essential thrust of his thinking, is a doctrine developed under the

  influence of Spinoza – one wherein it is still possible to take a view sub specie aeternitatis in light of which what appears as a becoming driven by desire is real y a bounded nexus of possibilities always already inherent in Being and, consequently, one that is fated to

  repeat itself in its actualization within the frame of finite Time.

  The north Indian Tantric understanding of Shakti or “Power”, if taken radical y and without compromise with traditional forms of

  Hindu thought, is more Nietzschean than Nietzsche in the sense

  that it adheres to his insight that ‘Reality’ is perspectival through

  and through so that it is impossible to gain a vantage-point on the

  creative force of becoming. We are presented with a view of the

  world as the will to power or of Reality as Wirklichkeit – in just the sense that Nietzsche meant this: that power is not a positive state

  but a dynamic relationship defined in terms of otherness and self-

  transcending desire, and that the “truth” is what works within this deferent and differentiating play of forces.7 For Tantric devotees of

  Shakti, just as for Nietzsche, the human condition is something to be

  overcome – it is a transitional state between the bestial and a form of life beyond the gods who no longer deserve to be set up as something

  above ourselves.8 Yet, even in terms of this convergence, the Tantric

  conception of the Superman is more faithful to Nietzsche’s deepest

  insights than he is.

  Nietzsche goes on at great length, especial y in The Will to Pow
er, regarding the undemocratic and radical y aristocratic character of

  the Supermen and their coming world order. He sees technological

  development as transforming the majority of mere humanity into a

  machinery whose productive power will serve as a foundation upon

  which those artist-philosophers who have cultivated themselves in

  7 Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way, 20, 22.

  8 Ibid., 16.

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  lovers of sophia

  a superior fashion will be able to erect a higher culture devoted to

  bold exploration and discovery.9 Nietzsche no doubt sees Eugenics

  as a means of discipline and breeding that has a different effect

  from merely instrumental leveling technologies, but is this – when

  taken together with the cultivation of intellect, valor, and taste –

  sufficient to define a class of beings that act as a countercurrent to the historical unfolding of nihilism at its culmination?

  Modern technology, based as it is on a mechanistic metaphysics

  of Nature grasped in terms of equations that equalize all things as

  variables, is inherently democratic: anyone can use a telephone or

  ride a train in order to col apse distances and the medium or the

  conveyance is neutral with respect to what is being conveyed.10

  Even Eugenics could be used by a so-called Social Democracy to

  ‘enhance’ an entire population. As Julius Evola recognizes in The

  Yoga of Power, the same cannot be said of the siddhis or superpowers cultivated by the Tantric practitioner. Materialistic modern science

  prides itself on the power of the mechanistic technology supposedly

  engineered on the basis of its theoretical discoveries, and takes these feats of engineering to be the ultimate validation of its theoretical

  models – to such an extent that these are viewed as a mirror of

  structures inherent in Nature.11 However, if modern man were to be

  stripped of his technology on account of some natural catastrophe

  – or perhaps through a catastrophe attendant to his own supposed

  technological empowerment, for example, a nuclear war – he would

  be reduced to a condition more desperate, feeble, and helpless than

  that of any of the great predators in the wilderness.12

  From this it can be gleaned that machine technology has

  atrophied the human being rather than catalyzed an overcoming of

  the merely human condition. But there is a techne – a craft, technique, or technology (in the classical sense) – that can place any mechanical 9 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Random House, 1968), 463–