>
>Day Brown wrote to Mark Bloss about Wille und Welle
 MB> [and] thus live we who will... Carry on as you like, roaring with  
 MB> overweening pleasure and malice- or dive again...  
 MB> [end quote] 
 MB>  
 MB> Can anyone tell me _why_ the above is NOT a classic Homeric metaphor? 
 DB> What is a classic Homeric metaphor Mark? I see a huge difference 
 DB> between Neitzsche & Homer in that the latter saw the motives of 
 DB> men clearly, but did not wonder *why* the motives were what they 
 DB> obviously were, whereas Friedrich probes the culture and times to 
 DB> try to see *why* men do as they do. 
 A classic Homeric metaphor is the "perfect resemblance of two relations
 between totally dissimilar things".  It has nothing at all to do with the
 difference between Neitzsche and Homer.  It has to do with the _apparent_
 Homeric metaphor that Neitzche draws between the Wave and the Will.
 
 The answer is not in drawing a conclusion about the differences in the
 person, Homer, and the person, Neitzsche.  You are missing the point
 entirely when you focus on the persons.
 DB> In that wondering, he suggested to me that the *will* is usually 
 DB> a poorly understood instrument, and that the tide of the times is 
 DB> all most folks used to delineate theirs.  As Aristotle said, most 
 DB> men were slaves to passion.  The difference between most men and 
 DB> the Ubermench is not a lack of passion, but the *harnessing* of 
 DB> that power to some well thought out end. 
 
 Perhaps, yet Neitzsche is not here referring to an outward Ubermench -
 but the all too human concourse of the will itself.  The key to the
 answer (why this comparison between the Will and the Wave is NOT a
 classic metaphor) is the the Will and Wave are not dissimilar things -
 but rather are precisely the SAME THING.  This is supported clearly
 when Neitzsche writes "I know you and your secret.  I know your kind!
 You and I - are we not of one kind? - You and I- do we not have one 
 secret?"  Thereby, Neitzsche is not comparing resemblances between
 two dissimilar things - but concluding that a wave in the sea is
 PRECISELY THE SAME THING as the will in the soul of a human.  In
 other words, the appearances of the world have become a mere symbol
 for inward experiences, with the consequence that the _metaphor_
 (originally designed to bridge the gap between the thinking - or
 willing - ego, and the world of appearances) collapses!
 
 If anything, it displays a dichotomy between the person, Homer, and
 the person, Neitzsche; but this is a by-product of the observation,
 and not the thrust.
 
 Neitzsche was quite fond of using fundamental anthropomorphisms.  For
 example: "All the presuppositions of mechanistic theory - matter, pressure
 and stress, are not 'facts-in-themselves' but interpretations with the aid
 of physical fictions."  As Lewis Mumford wrote "astrophysicists... must
 reckon with... the possibility that their outer world is only our inner
 world turned inside out."
 
 
... My computer has EMS... Wont you help?
--- GEcho 1.11++TAG 2.7c
---------------