Stuart France – Writer

Stuart France writes at:https://franceandvincent.com/

Pieces of Nietzsche…

*

ON PHILOSOPHY

It is clear that every ‘great philosophy’ is, no more and no less than, the confession of its author.

To explain how a philosophy’s highest flung claims have been derived, therefore,

we need only ask, ‘what really makes its author tick?’

The desire to know, is not, then, the Mother of Philosophy.

For, look, here one desire, and now there, another, has put knowledge

to use as a means to, shamelessly, further its own ends…

The fundamental desires of Man have always been ‘philosophers’.

And each of them is only too happy to present itself

as the be all and end all of existence!

As master of the others.

All Man’s desires are tyrannical.

And for the philosopher, everything is personal.

His ideas, inevitably, bear testimony to the hierarchy of his secret desires.

*

Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophical and psychological genius of the nineteenth century, in his book, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, presaged the breakdown of the Western Aristocratic ruling elite and the irresistible forces that led to two catastrophic world wars. This new poetic interpretation of his master work teases out still relevant lines of thought for the reappraisal of our rapidly disintegrating current world order.

The question of value goes to the heart of who we are, what we are and why we think we are here… A tendency to make certain assumptions about our environment appears to be intrinsic to our nature, yet the meaningful existence we crave can only ever be granted by a ‘higher power’ which we now seem loathe to recognise outside of ourselves… We have always looked to those best qualified to answer our most fervent questions but what if they too have fallen foul of the ‘Auction-House of Things’… And what of the Beyond?

Pieces of Nietzsche: A Thinker’s Bias

available from Amazon UK, Amazon.com and worldwide.

Amnesiac…

*

Spontaneous Internal Combustion.

You may have heard of the phenomenon?

It can now be regarded as the final death-knell for the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

It is hardly likely that any ‘new species’ would simultaneously errupt on the face of the planet like so many hot flushes.

Yet, once a memory is framed, and accepted, it can be true at all times and all places without ‘compunction’.

It also means, that we are born into a past that never happened,

and pass-on into a future that is real.

 

Bestings…

*

There is no better than…

Just be the best you can.

…Jack…

A Vice Called Cant…

*

‘Use every man after his desert and who shall ‘scape whipping…’

Hamlet, Act2 Scene 2

*

Hail, eternal plodders, hail!

Stretch-out, stretch-out the tedious tale…

Ignored, that wayward Talking Cricket,

Dull, of humour not a trace…

Pedestrian, turgid, commonplace,

Without genius and without spirit.

 

Cycles of Life…

*

Does the religious life require leisure,

or the idleness of the leisured class?

Certainly, those classes have always held work to be degrading.

*

It is easy to see why.

Modern labour, predominantly indoors and sedentary can educate one into disbelief.

The past two-hundred years have shown us how work in heavy industry

is wont to render refinements of the soul redundant.

*

A generation or two after any revolution of this sort

and the very term ‘religion’ elicits only a dull, uncomprehending stare.

*

But could there be a correlation between religious sentiment and the natural life?

Most traditional deities slot seamlessly into the seasonal round.

And work in this realm serves to remind one of the greater cycles that govern existence.

One of which, it may be argued, is… religion.

 

 

 

Rather, a Neanderthal?…

*

If it were true

that we had evolved

and progressed

and were still continuing to do so…

then a thousand times, yes, to modern man.

*

Unfortunately, it is not…

and we have not, and are not.

Count Jack Black

Threat of the New…

*

The man who has plotted the course of science

will have discovered in its development

the key which unlocks the doors to knowledge and understanding.

Both portals have fictitious hinges and hypothetical handles.

By stepping beyond their frame our senses become subtle.

The eye reacts to ‘the new’ by immediately reproducing ‘the familiar’ as if in counter-point…

In this way can that which is ‘alien’ move secretly amongst us.

…The novel sound initially causes so much pain to the ear

that we even seek to model a foreign tongue

on our own meanings…

“Wie spate ist es?”

for

“What is the time?”

As if time were a mere matter of counting.

Yet, how many hours have come and gone

since the ‘beginning’ of time?

Precisely none!

…To be involved in exceptional experiences, therefore,

is to become, in part, their inventor.

In this our art knows no bounds.

Game of Bones…

*

With what gusto the horizons of our world expand.

Our enthusiasm grasps at each new enigma like a child its toy.

Perhaps one day the most solemn problems of the past

will appear as mere playthings to us…

The plight of the poor.

Souless wealth.

Our treatment of animal species.

Man’s inhumanity to man.

Perhaps ‘Old Man’ will then look for new problems to amuse himself.

Distance…

 

*

If we want a yardstick,

for how far we have travelled from our Gods…

We need only consider the once widespread custom

of sacrificing a first-born child…

It hardly seems credible from this vantage,

irrespective of its counter productivity in an era of high infant-mortality.

What can these religions have been thinking?

That God was greater than mankind?

Heaven forbid!