Hangt ervan af hoeveel moeite het je kost. Ik maak er wel gebruik van, maar kan de tekst ook elders vinden.TheGreatOldOne schreef:1. Vind je het fijn als ik de Duitse tekst ook online zet, of zal ik het achterwege laten?
Seung schrijft:2. Wat is jouw mening over het volgende stuk, "over de bleke misdadiger?" Ik weet namelijk niet goed wat Nietzsche hiermee wil zeggen. Over het "Ik" heeft hij het al gehad in "Over de verachters van het lijf", hoewel hij het nu breder trekt door niet alleen de verachters van het lijf maar ook anderen, zoals rechters en de misdadigers, te betrekken in zijn mening dat het "Ik" door niemand/weinigen nog begrepen wordt. Maar rechtvaardigt dit een aparte paragraaf? Of zit er meer in dit stuk dat ik niet zie?
De laatste zin in dat stuk is trouwens zo mooi! "Ik ben een leuning in de stroom: grijp mij, wie mij grijpen kan! Uw kruk ben ik echter niet. –" Wel jammer dat het lijkt dat ik hem niet begrijp in dit stuk...
- "'On the Pale Criminal' is well known for its difficulty of interpretation. Stanley Rosen calls this section the most difficult section of Zarathustra and gives an elaborate interpretation that runs thirteen pages. He sums up his complicated exegesis in two points: (1) the production of disciples is a flat contradiction of the doctrine of the superman and (2) the prophet must perish in order to enter the promised land (The Mask of Enlightenment, 98). Laurence Lampert says that this section deals with criminal justice (Nietzsche's Teaching, 43 [om precies te zijn ziet Lampert redes 3-7 als uitwerkingen van wat Zarathustra in paragraaf 3 van de Voorrede achtereenvolgend over geluk, rede, deugd, rechtvaardigheid en medelijden zegt]). Greg Whitlock says that the pale criminal represents a lion, which fails to become a child and reverts to a camel (Returning to Sils-Maria, 73). Robert Gooding-Williams says that the pale criminal is the victim of a Christian-Platonic reason and morality (Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism, 133. Alan White construes this section as a battle between the pale criminal's soul and body (Within Nietzsche's Labyrinth, 77-80). The divergence of these conflicting views clearly shows that it is hard to determine the central theme of this section.
This section discusses the battle of passions. Since this was the theme of the preceding section, I propose, it is further developed in this section. In the preceding section, Zarathustra said that every human being is a battlefield of unruly passions, which he called the wild dogs. The pale criminal is a victim of those wild dogs. He became a criminal because he could not control his passions. His crime involved two acts, a murder and a robbery, and his motive has become an important point of dispute. The judge says that he killed in order to rob. But Zarathustra says that the judge did not fathom the criminal's soul deep enough to understand his true motive. According to him, the murder was the primary motive; the criminal was driven by his uncontrollable impulse to kill. Since this impulse makes no sense to his poor reason, he commits the robbery to make his behavior appear rational. He followed his poor reason because he did not want to be ashamed of his madness. This is the madness before the crime, that is, the sheer madness to kill. But his deed has produced another madness, the lead of guilt upon his soul. This is the madness after the crime.
After naming the criminal's madness before and after the crime, Zarathustra raises the momentous question, 'What is this man?' He gives two descriptions of this man. First, he is a heap of diseases, 'which, through his spirit, reach out into the world: there they want to catch their prey' (Z, 39). Second, he is a ball of wild snakes, 'which rarely enjoy rest from each other: so they go forth singly and seek prey in the world' (Z, 39). 'A ball of wild snakes' stands for the bundle of unruly passions, which can rarely enjoy peace because they are engaged in a perpetual fight against one another. This perpetual fight in the soul was introduced as the battle of wild dogs in the preceding section. This violent battle drives the passions to seek their prey outside in the world. This was the madness before the criminal deed. It is the healthy madness of strong passions. But the 'poor reason' tries to control the wild passions with rational constraints and arguments. This rational enterprise produces guilt by defining right and wrong, and the resulting guilt turns his passions into a heap of diseases. Hence the man can be described as a ball of snakes and as a heap of diseases.
Under either of the two descriptions, it is the poor body that suffers because it has to house those battling passions. Zarathustra says that the poor soul of the criminal interpreted the suffering of his body as murderous lust and greed for the bliss of the knife. He believes that the perpetual strife of passions in the body is the ultimate sickness for producing all sins and crimes in every age, although sins and crimes may take on different forms in different ages. In the olden days, the sick became heretics or witches; in our days, they become robbers or murderers. This is the cultural difference. In our totally secularized world, violent passions cannot be expressed in the religious crimes of heresy and witchcraft. Zarathustra is giving a pathological account of crimes, and his pathology is based on physiology. Because of his pathological view of crimes, he says that a criminal should be called sick but not a scoundrel, a fool but not a sinner. The sick want to inflict suffering on others because they suffer from their own passions. Because they are driven to find an outlet for their warring passions, they seek their prey in the world. This is Zarathustra's criminal pathology.
His pathology is meant not only for the criminals, but for all human beings. Even the pale criminal knows this. Hence he has no respect either for himself or for any other human being. He says, 'My ego is to me the great contempt of man' (Z, 38). Zarathustra says that even the judge would be just another filthy and poisonous worm if he were to disclose what is going on in his thought. But the vitality of primitive passions and instincts is exactly what is required for generating the strong and creative will and eventually breeding the superman. For this reason, Zarathustra links the pale criminal's death to the superman. It is not sufficient for the judges to be reconciled with their killing of the criminal. He says, 'May their sorrow be love for the superman.' The sorrow over the death of the criminal can be seen from two different perspectives. His death is a sad event because it is the misfortune of another human being, or it is another failure of transforming the warring passions into a creative will for the superman. The former perspective is not important for Zarathustra because no human beings can be the meaning of the earth. For this reason, it is not sufficient for the judges to be reconciled with the death of the criminal. He is taking the latter perspective because only the superman can justify human existence.
The creative will, however, cannot be formed by simply letting primitive instincts run wild. They have to be overcome by sublimation, as Zarathustra taught in the preceding section. Even the eyes of the criminal say, 'My ego is something that shall be overcome ((Z, 37.) He can see the need to overcome himself because he feels contempt for his present self as a member of humanity. The sense of contempt is the necessary step for self-overcoming. So he adds, 'my ego is to me the great contempt of man.' Zarathustra says that the pale criminal's judgment on himself is his highest moment because it indicates his noble desire to overcome his base self. Zarathustra urges him not to let the sublime return to his baseness. There is no redemption for those who relapse to their baseness by abandoning their aspiration. The moment of sublime contempt in the heart of the pale criminal is what links him to the hope for overcoming humanity and advancing toward the superman.
Zarathustra notes that his pathological account of crimes is not palatable to the ears of the good people because the sickness of the criminals is not their evil. In his view, the madness of the pale criminal is much more honorable than their wretched contentment. 'The wretched contentment' is the expression he used in describing the spiritual condition of the last man, whose pristine passions and instincts have been totally denatured and domesticated. In contrast, the criminal's madness attests to the vitality of his untamed passions and instincts. So Zarathustra says, 'Indeed, I wish they [the good people] had a madness of which they might perish like the pale criminal' (Z, 39). The life of wild instincts is indeed a perilous path [een toespeling op "The Argument" van William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell?] as demonstrated by the fate of the pale criminal, but Zarathustra regards it as the path of truth, loyalty, and justice because it is true, loyal, and just to one's own instincts. Unlike the pale criminal, the good people are already dead because they have been untrue to their natural instincts. But he warns that his respect for the criminal and his pathological view of crimes should not be taken as a crutch or an excuse for criminal behavior." (Seung, Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, 25-28.)
Ik ben overigens al begonnen met het nalopen van je vertaling van rede 5, maar wilde eerst deze passage posten. Nu kun jij misschien ook weer verder!