I agree with Sebastian's interpretation of the eternal return. When I read his last
question, I couldn't help thinking of Camus' dictum 'Sysphus was a wise man', might this
be close?
Sebastian Gurciullo wrote:
> erik's proposal of commitment based on an aesthetic sensibility seems
> plausible, but I am not sure that the problem of eternal return is so easily
> resolved as unproblematic. Eternal return is not just a cycle of historical
> repetition (or in its most bloated form, a principle of cosmological
> dynamics), it is an existential-experiential problem taking place each
> moment even if there is no direct awareness of it. At some heightened
> moments its full impact is felt, and these are supposed to be affirmative
> moments of transformation but also moments of great risk in which the one
> who undergoes the experience perceives the overwhelming futility of the
> vicious circle. The exact duration of the cycle is not really all that
> important, what counts is that the cycle of fate must be transcended or
> mastered and a transformation must take place if life is not to be in vain.
> The promise of goodwill enacted through an aesthetically informed
> intervention which seeks to inject a measure of beauty, enjoyment or
> aesthetic pleasure (harmony) must also contend with the fact that there is
> no guarantee that will prevent a measure of pain (dissonance) also being
> introduced. Pleasure and pain, good and evil must somehow be both accepted
> for the aesthetic transformation to take place. This is (humanly)
> impossible. The truth of harmony is dissonance. For this reason, I cannot
> help thinking of dissonance (or as Blanchot calls it, unworking -
> "desoeuvrement") whenever Foucault speaks of fashioning one's life like an
> artwork. While Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return diagnoses and enacts
> this predicament, it is questionable whether it truly resolves it, but
> perhaps that is its truth. But where would this leave political commitment
> and the notion of the political?
>
> cheers
>
> Sebastian
question, I couldn't help thinking of Camus' dictum 'Sysphus was a wise man', might this
be close?
Sebastian Gurciullo wrote:
> erik's proposal of commitment based on an aesthetic sensibility seems
> plausible, but I am not sure that the problem of eternal return is so easily
> resolved as unproblematic. Eternal return is not just a cycle of historical
> repetition (or in its most bloated form, a principle of cosmological
> dynamics), it is an existential-experiential problem taking place each
> moment even if there is no direct awareness of it. At some heightened
> moments its full impact is felt, and these are supposed to be affirmative
> moments of transformation but also moments of great risk in which the one
> who undergoes the experience perceives the overwhelming futility of the
> vicious circle. The exact duration of the cycle is not really all that
> important, what counts is that the cycle of fate must be transcended or
> mastered and a transformation must take place if life is not to be in vain.
> The promise of goodwill enacted through an aesthetically informed
> intervention which seeks to inject a measure of beauty, enjoyment or
> aesthetic pleasure (harmony) must also contend with the fact that there is
> no guarantee that will prevent a measure of pain (dissonance) also being
> introduced. Pleasure and pain, good and evil must somehow be both accepted
> for the aesthetic transformation to take place. This is (humanly)
> impossible. The truth of harmony is dissonance. For this reason, I cannot
> help thinking of dissonance (or as Blanchot calls it, unworking -
> "desoeuvrement") whenever Foucault speaks of fashioning one's life like an
> artwork. While Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal return diagnoses and enacts
> this predicament, it is questionable whether it truly resolves it, but
> perhaps that is its truth. But where would this leave political commitment
> and the notion of the political?
>
> cheers
>
> Sebastian