Well, I am a man of 'Grand Unorthodox Inspirations, Interactions, and Integrations'....or at least that is what I would like to be viewed as....Put that on my tombstone when I am dead and gone...and I will rest with some peace....More peace if I can actually found and start a Massive Mult-Dialectic-Integrative Educational-Philosophy-Psychology...Institute that bears Hegel's name.....
Hegel's Hotel ....As a philosophical-psychological-political-spiritual treatise, it will never be finished because it is always evolving....It is my version of the continuation of Hegel's masterpiece, 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' (1807)
Fresh thinkers say, 'Think outside the box.' Well, the wonderful thing about Hegelian Philosophy, Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Logic, and my extended, projected manifestation of Hegel's brilliant work, is that once you develop a Hegelian (Multi-) Dialectic Philosophical Mindset -- you can never 'not think outside the box'. Indeed, you are always thinking outside the box....because you are always integrating different boxes, different concepts from different boxes, different theories from different theorists, different paradigms....Structures and processes -- whether metaphysically conceptualized or physically real -- become interwoven together to form creative new conceptual structures, processes, theories, and paradigms...(See Otto Rank and his viewpoint on creativity...)
Questions like this -- whether consciously or subconsciously formulated -- make up the foundation of my 'Phenomenology of Spirit': How can I integrate Christianity with Nietzsche's (so called 'Anti-Christian') brand of Humanistic-Existentialism? And where did Nietzsche go wrong? Nietzsche went wrong -- or at least partly wrong -- after his first creatively brilliant book (The Birth of Tragedy, or BT for short, 1872) where Nietzsche integrated Hegelian philosophy with a 'balanced view' of his (at that time) humanistic-existentialism which can be referred to as either 'Apollonian-Dionysianism' or 'Dionysian-Apollonianism'. This remarkable little book represented what might be called 'The Hegelian-Nietzschean Phenomenology of Spirit of 1872'.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche abandoned 'his Hegelian Bi-Polar (Dialectically Integrative) Horse of BT' after 1872, never to return to it in this first conceptualized format. A pity, I say, because BT is, in my opinion, Nietzsche's 'healthiest' book, perhaps his best book -- the bridge between Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit' and Freud's Psychoanalysis.
Nietzsche himself looked at 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his masterpiece but the closer I get to this book, the more I fail to see this. It is full of 'Nietzschean hypocrisies', and quite frankly, having lost his 'Apollonian-Dionysian (and Enlightenment-Romantic) Balance', I believe that Nietzsche had become so 'full of himself' that he had become both 'narcissistically and righteously offside'. 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' would need to be ethically and morally 'sanitized' before it could be considered a 'balanced' piece of work -- and, of course, that will never happen except in the editorial reviews of authors like me.
Nietzsche, in Zarathustra, calls all idealists 'cowards' and yet what is Zarathustra other than Nietzsche's ultimate 'idealistic' work. Similarly, Nietzsche confuses 'truth' with 'value' arguing that 'truthfulness is the highest virtue' (and yet what is virtue other than an 'ideal moral or ethical value'?) while at the same time Nietzsche dismisses and demeans all 'morality' -- this was allegedly Zarathustra's most 'calamitous error; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it'...Nietzsche builds an idealistic model of how man should live his life -- through the life of 'The Superman or Overman', through 'The Will to Power', through the process of 'overcoming', through the process of 'truthfulness', through the process of....
... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch (Superman/Overman).
The symbol of the Übermensch also alludes to Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming". (from Wikipedia, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
.................................................................................................................................These values above are all well and good, one could say an anti-Christian Bible of existential values -- unsanitized, or immoralized, in its lack of humanistic (Christian) values of such things as compassion, caring, altruism, love, generosity, empathy, social interest.....the types of values that a 'pathological narcissistic thinker' would not have much, if any, use for...as Nietzsche was, by this time, flying towards his own Abyss -- and perhaps an abysmal 'eternal recurrence'. Which brings us to another Nietzschean hypocrisy -- Nietzsche dismisses and demeans the Christian view of 'The Afterlife' while at the same time 'idealizing' his own mythological creation of 'The Eternal Recurrence'. Similarly....Part of Nietzsche's reactionary thought is also that the creature he most sincerely loathes is the spirit of revolution, and his hatred for the anarchist and rebel.[8]..(Wikipedia, Zarathustra).
while at the same time it is not hard at all to view Nietzsche as one of the ultimate 'rebel, anarchist philosophers' in all of Western history....Did Nietzsche really know himself as much as many scholars seem to think he did? To what extent did Nietzsche find 'truth within himself'? There seems to me to be a lot of polar parts of Nietzsche's character that Nietzsche was trying to bury in his own private closet -- and yet which were being projected into his work (sublimation) in an unrecognized way. His writing hypocrisies are many -- he fails to see his own idealism, his own 'ethical or moral virtues',his own view of the 'afterlife', the highly rebellious nature of his philosophy, he trumpets the sensory virtues of Dionysus, suppresses the righteous, truth-seeking virtues of Apollo -- and yet it is easy to see Nietzsche as much more of a 'righteous-narcissistic Apollonian philosopher' than a 'Dionysian one'. What is 'Dionysianism' other than man's 'uncultivated animality'....and yet Nietzsche sees... a man traversing a rope stationed above an abyss, moving away from his uncultivated animality and towards the Übermensch.. .
This, to me, sounds like a movement away from Dionysianism and towards an Apollonian Superman (and wasn't this, in effect, what Nietzsche was doing -- while at the same time trumpeting Dionysianism and suppressing/repressing his own Apollonianism? An Apollonianism based on existential virtues -- but lacking in humanistic compassion -- and we know where this ultimately led Germany to.....and I am generalizing to one point in time.....a crystallized cultural 'herd-crowd' of 'righteous-narcissistic-arrogant Nazi national supremists lacking in human compassion, empathy, and decency....until everything came crashing down....like Nietzsche's life....You can say what you want to about Nietzsche condemning German 'herd thinking' but the essence of the 'herd-thinking' was based on the type of 'Social Darwinian Extremism' that Nietzsche trumpeted through all of his later philosophy....We need someone to synthesize and synergize Nietzsche's radical brand of extremist existentialism with the Christian virtues of humanism meaning: compassion, empathy, caring, generosity, altruism...all of which was radically missing in Nietzsche's later philosophy. That is one of the things that I am trying to accomplish here in Hegel's Hotel...And that is why I view 'BT as a 'healthier' book than Zarathustra....Zarathustra, in effect, lacks Christian -- and any humanistic religious -- BALANCE....Combine Nietzsche's Self-Assertion with Christian Caring About Others...and you have Adler's idea of a balance between 'self and social interest'. Self-assertion is the 'yang' of life; while 'compassion and caring about others' is the 'yin' of life....
.Here below is Nietzsche expressing his animosity towards all 'morality' except his own one-sided brand of 'Existentialism Without Compassionate Humanism'...
[F]or what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work. [...] Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. [...] His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the opposite of the cowardice of the "idealist” who flees from reality [...]—Am I understood?—The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth.
— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny", §3, trans. Walter Kaufmann
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The ultimate of ironies was Nietzsche's most 'Christian' act -- or at least so the story goes -- just before he went insane -- when he saw a horse rider about to whip his horse and Nietzsche ran across the street to shield the horse from the impending whip....There in that one special moment -- just before he went insane -- Nietzsche integrated his brand of 'Existentialism Without Huamism' with his own very 'Christian-Humanistic Deed'.
For the most part, I believe in the idea of 'Cosmic Balance and Justice' -- which is not to say that we don't need 'civil laws and applied justice'....
But read Anaximander's and Heraclitus' philosophy in quick succession, and you will find the foundation of Western Dialectic Philosophy....before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle....which coincidentally or non-coincidentally merges very well with the Ancient beginnings of Chinese and Eastern Philosophy....with their polar concepts of 'yin' and 'yang'...and also similar mythological philosophical implications involving 'air/wind', 'water', 'earth', and 'fire'...
'Humanistic-Existential Balance' is 'The Path'....as I move to converge elements of Ancient Western and Eastern Dialectic Philosophy, Christianity, Daoism, Heraclitus-Spinozian Pantheism, Enlightenment Deism, Agnosticism, Atheism...
They all can be connected if they share the underlying foundation of Humanistic-Existentialism, Self Assertion, Healthy Narcissism, Self-Overcoming, and Self-Actualization with Social Empathy, Caring, and Altruism...
This is the philosophical foundation of Hegel's Hotel....
It underpins all my theoretical ideas on the concept of 'Multi-Dialectic-Humanistic-Existential Psychoanalysis'.
Let us move in the next part of this paper into the manifestations of these ideas in the form of DGB Personality and Transference Theory...
-- dgb, Nov. 17th, 2012,
-- David Gordon Bain...
-- Dialectic Gap Inspirations, Creations, Interactions, Negotiations, and Integrations...
-- Are Still in Process...
