The Eternal Returns?

: A Short Interplay of Words by Two Masters

Socrates:

My Good Sir! How ardently you impose your pen across that paper, filling its faade with the tracings of your thoughts passageways. Surely, good sir, in you I have found what I seek! Let us see what wisdom thou can impart upon my destitute soul.

Nietzsche: [still writing] What do you know of the value of wisdom, slavish beggar? What do you know of Good, or of me to whom you apply such an oft confused valuation? Socrates: Is not wisdom the most valuable attainment of the soul, and therefore the highest good? And is not the pursuit of wisdom the loftiest course a man may make of his otherwise wretched existence? Answer me truly now.

Nietzsche: I have no time for the afterworldly and their prattle about the soul, old man. Wisdom is a cruel mistress; all that know her will admit truly that she is both a blessing and a curse to the poor fools, like I, who have no choice but to pursue her without recess or rest. What is most cruel, though, is that once she acquiesces to capture, the attempter is instead the one overcome - and he must then obey her.

Socrates:

What is cruel about the sweet voice whispering

in thy inmost ear? Does she not comfort thee with knowledge of the eternal shining gates that prompt your anxious mind to make haste to flee this imperfect place? Nietzsche: [finally looks up at the interloper] By the daimonion you rode in on! Can it be that Socrates stands before me? Do I have some swords to cross with you, old demon that has spawned such a bastard race of dialectician s, martyrs, mummies, and knaves!
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Socrates:

I admit that my daimonion is like a little gnat in my ear that occasionally dissuades my course when it lacks the conclusion of more thorough inquiry. I may be dead to this world, but I am not a mummy. Why do you react so?

Nietzsche: [begins reading from the paper hed been writing] While in all productive men it is instinct that is the creativeaffirmative force, and consciousness acts critically and dissuasively, in Socrates it is instinct that becomes the critic, and consciousness that becomes the creator... You are responsible for teaching humanity to stand on their heads, while thinking that it is the proper orientation. Nature, like our mother instead of a mistress, gave us feet for a reason! Socrates: Nature is naught but a ferryman ushering us across the Styx, taking us from one dark underworld to another until the light of the philosophers mind shines only upon the eternal Truths. Then there is no use for a ferryman, feet, nor heads. Only when such wily distractions display themselves to the inner eye as the illusory prison caves of the soul that they truly are do we sit and feast with the Gods, never again forced to return to the mundane!

Nietzsche: Thats the problem with you old wise ascetic nihilists. You claim not to know much of anything Socrates, yet you claim a type of knowledge that is impossible to have. You pretend that you are capable of judgment about the valuation of life itself! What mocking pretension is this that goes so far beyond your regular snide sophistry? Socrates: Impossible knowledge? What conditions could we theorize might make this knowledge possible? Shall we proceed from there?

Nietzsche: One would have to experience ALL of life every experience of every thing that had so far lived or that will live from every perspective before making such a judgment on life. Only two conceptual entities have this potential range: the eternal omniscient God, or Nature. In case you did not get the announcement, God is dead as a concept for all thinking men. Nature, then, is the only other, and she obviously promotes life continuously. Vultures like you, Socrates, are but symptoms of decay in one of her structures. Your disregard for the body and its natural home in the only real
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world there is, and your fables about the proper course of philosophy being annihilation into dreamless sleep these are but tools of sick men who prey on the weak. Socrates: You must be a very fit man to speak so highly of the bodys importance, for you are obviously drunk on earthly pleasures and are enjoying the airs of hedonism. The happiest of all men you must seemingly be, if your heavenly ideals are here on this very Earth! Do you agree?

Nietzsche: I am drunk, for sure, on the tragic arts of Dionysus, that ambrosial God that you and your hordes have forced underground. My body, however, was not constituted for a good digestion of life or its pleasures of the flesh. I am plagued continuously by aches and migraines to the point I can no longer use the sweet salve of music to soothe the storms of my mind. I have no rest or peace, except for those aids that I keep in my medicine cupboard and those exhaustions which eventually come in the wake of new transvaluations. Socrates: Certainly then, you must have very good friends and a loving wife? Others that pass time with you in such delight that brings your pains to surcease and your mind some respite?

Nietzsche: I have not these either, nor do I need them. They are all slaves to patriotic hysteria, or succumb to the latest fads of an even worse ilk of democracy and equality. Women are too deceitful to come close to those who seek truth, and downright hideous as they try to mimic men. What one who seeks the souls solitude can have a wife or even friends? Parrots men are; fools bellowing buzzwords without even evaluating the roots of their meanings! Socrates: So, how sir is it that we disagree? Where do you stand firmly while your hostility attacks me with charges of devilry?

Nietzsche: Firstly, we disagree about ontology. You would make what is merely imaginary the entire being of your reality. Your proposed metaphysics that lend themselves to contemplative minds have not so come to me, and by the grave of Aristophanes, it is not due to any lack of my own clarity. Daydreaming of realms that are less substantial than clouds is not the aim of philosophy.
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Socrates:

What then is its aim, straight thinker?

Nietzsche: It is to come to grips with the truth about reality as it is, not as you would have it be, wise donkey. Socrates: What is it that reality is? Please, do bestow this noble truth upon me.

Nietzsche: It is not the will to live, nor the will to die. Reality, inside and out, is merely the will to power. Only the strongest can handle this dangerous truth. Socrates: And then, what is power? In what form is it at its highest?

Nietzsche: It is the ability to ruthlessly dominate: to be free from the social conditioning of pity, languid habits, and stupidity, to be in accord with Natures divinity. The highest form of power is to be able to define and to assign values to which weaker mens minds submit. This is the heavy duty of a true philosopher. Socrates: Are these definitions created by philosophers, or are they discovered?

Nietzsche: Power is the ability to create values - and to have others embrace them. Socrates: Yet you claim that philosophys aim is to accept the truth about what reality is, not what one wishes to create it to be? Have I not correctly followed your lead?

Nietzsche: I did not misspeak, nor do I concede. Philosophers discover the values they are to create due to determinations of their epoch, subconscious motives, and race. They are mouthpieces for the primal forces raging beneath the conscious minds of men, in the cauldron of creation. Each new valuation represents another step in Natures experiment of evolution. It is Nature herself that is the true creatrix, and she lends power to men who discover her matrix. Socrates: We so far do not differ all that much, as we are men who wisely choose the souls company and keep from the mediocrity of other mens amusements. I suspect that you are also not well received by others because you shed light
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on their ignorance. Know that this opposition is merely the ferocity of ignorance, which will basely fight all those who oppose it and attack those seeking to banish it. It is your own ignorance of that which lies beyond this world that causes you to scorn me so, new friend. Tell me now, is this subconscious willpower realm not the belly of your own dualism, of which in ignorance you speak so callously? Nietzsche: It is exclusively different and I will tell you why. These metaphysicians who speak of eternal things are cesspools mired in lies. Nothing is eternal; no truth should be capitalized. All value within perspective proves comparatively relative. Of all your contemporaries, Heraclitus came closest to being right. He, at the very least, could see with his own eyes. Your reason devoid of instinct is dogmatic empty fiction, and your interpretation of your senses data is what disturbs your diction. Socrates: What then of epistemology, kaleidoscopic seer? How is it we can know of truth, justice, or beauty unless the soul has previously glimpsed the realm of perfect form and unchanging eternity? To coax an act of anamnesis is my highest goal in discourse. What then is your pursuit of to kalon?

Nietzsche: I am convinced that art represents the highest task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life. Socrates: And yet, dear chap, I hear you report that your alter-ego Zarathustra has proclaimed that God is dead. How can metaphysics die and how would you know of it?

Nietzsche: Our modern ideas have killed God and no thinking modern man can truly believe that metaphysics are anything but a mask upon the changing faces of My. As for your anamnesis of the souls remembrance of perfect Forms prior to birth, I would challenge that our instinct drives and Willto-Power are embedded in our psyche more due to our closer monkey-like cousin anamensis, or (Australopithecus anamensis). This is from whence we receive this mystical memory, rather than otherworldly eternals. Socrates: You mentioned that Heraclitus was right about everchanging eternal flux being the only reality? Do help me gain insight into why they call you a prophet of the Eternal Return. Does this metaphysical notion not go in a circle,

like an unchanging Idea of Forms, which is most perfect in geometry, which I myself have spoken of in the past? Nietzsche: The imperfection of language is the problem, not the lacking in this worlds uniformity amongst the particulars of our perceptions. The great buffoon Kant figured out your vexing problems of geometrical idealizations. Still, his solution depends on humans sensing objectivity, which when I am done will prove to be only mythology. Socrates: I did catch up with dear Immanuel in a pub quite like this one. He and I agreed about much and he was far more amiable than the likes of you. Nevertheless, tell me now, and do not delay or try to open more jugs of ale than we can presently swallow. How do your ideas of subjectivity and language work to disprove my epistemology?

Nietzsche: There is no need for eternity. Nature is our mother and we contain her seeds. Human language holds concepts with meanings that slip and slide. All throughout history, new definitions are assigned. It is only the habit of language that reinforces the subject-predicate distinction, which the great God Dionysus has the power to erase. This truly, Socrates, is why I hate the sight of your face. Reason without instinct is your creed. Art and music you deem unworthy! Foolish man, you have cast off your humanity when you did impede the appreciation of art, music, poetry, and greatest of all, ancient Greek tragedy! Socrates: Cast off my humanity! Dear man, you one who brims with such fellowship and love for humanity, do you doubt for an instant that I had any other intention?

Nietzsche: The role of philosopher is to overcome oneself, yes. The ubermensch will not share in the weaknesses of those that call themselves human. Socrates: Magna Mater may be our mother, and the mother of Truth. And you and I with our strange understandings of Eros court that lady, Truth, with varying degrees of grace. Her priestess, Diotima, taught me the only thing I truly know, and that is knowledge of Eros. But you see, gay gladfly, our role here is that of a midwife, for our beloved, Truth, is always ripe with offspring, and that child is the Future.

Nietzsche: The horror is the recognition that we are not even the fathers. We are merely male mothers in waiting. At least in you, with your secret irony, I find a worthy opponent, if not an ideal companion. Still, I prefer to sing than chase the tale of dogmatic dames, even if they are goddesses and priestesses. Socrates: Well, stay here, you miserable wretch and malign my name and those of others whom your internalized bloodlust seeks to conquer, if it serves you. You may call my sublimated Eros for Reason unnatural, but this from a wrestler that wrestles himself?

Nietzsche: O, Socrates, always by my side, if only in my mind. If only we could make music together, perhaps we ourselves could be creators of the Future. For now, your payment for the bar bill comes due. Socrates: I make haste to retreat from this place, to dine with my fellow Gods at Olympus. [turns to leave] You were right about one thing Friedrich. I may be dead; but I am a God. You see, when you are eternal, ones nature can be manyfaceted and all your ales are free.