/lit/ - Literature

>>7963576
Err... Schopenhauer also thought art was one of the few solaces and methods of transcending the will, albeit temporarily, so their views are less incompatible in that respect than one would think.

Schopenhauer, though, said great art expressed the Universal will, not the particular will. So for him it is means of forgetting oneself rather than asserting oneself.

At some point, as well, if I recall correctly, Schopenhauer outright states that he doesn't really advocate denying the will over indulging it, although he sure as hell seems to champion ascetic self-annihilation over hedonism.

I think if I was going to summarize Nietzsche's project in one sentence that would suffice, but a great work of art is not the apex of the will to power. WTP is a mountain without a summit.

Key difference between him and old Schoppy was that Schop was pessimist while Nietzsche was all about love of fate.

The end of the 19th century gave us the Antichrist, Friedrich Nietzsche. A century later, we behold the Anti-Nietzsche, Michel Houellebecq. Houellebecq is Nietzsche stripped of hope, vigour, nobility and grandeur. For Houellebecq, man is not something that must be overcome, but at best domesticated, ideally put out of its misery. Nietzsche’s gravest nightmare was the spectre of the ‘last man’: democratised, feminised, socialist, contented, slovenly, timid; a herd creature, a couch potato, a pen-pusher. Nietzsche (growing desperate) declared with increasing shrillness that the superman would come, that he must come, to enslave or exterminate the ‘last man’ and inaugurate a heroic new age of cruelty, grandeur, and cheerfulness. Having uttered his prophecies, Nietzsche raged, danced and ranted right into the madhouse, and the brink of the twentieth century. A couple of apocalyptic wars and a sexual revolution later, Houellebecq turned up to announce, with a jaded shrug, that the superman would not, in fact, be coming. Nothing would come. The time for great hopes had passed. All we had now was the global shopping centre (‘the only horizon’), and we might even be glad of it. Our only remaining access to transcendence lay in the nerve endings along our cocks and clitorises. ‘I am the last man,’ said Houellebecq, and blinked. ‘Now leave me alone with my Phuket whore and my modest vices, so I can while away my pointless life. Don’t talk of effort or heroism, or the wicked laughter of Dionysus that will ring out across the earth. Just be quiet. If the tedium of your existence is relieved by a nice blowjob now and then, and there is an efficient police force at hand to keep you safe from thugs and Arabs, count yourself lucky. Don’t neglect to avail of Third World sex tourism, if you can afford it and are ugly enough to need it. That will take the edge off. Less talk of upheaval, progress, and the grand destiny. Stop your bloody nonsense. Be quiet. Better.’ As the Anti-Nietzsche, Houellebecq places himself beyond Nietzschean accusations of unacknowledged ressentiment simply by being wholly truthful, to the point of comic self-abasement, about his own status and motives: he is resentful; he knows himself to be inferior; he will use his spleen and cunning to diminish his hated betters. And why shouldn’t he? After all, life is bitter and meaningless, and Houellebecq is abject, with nothing to lose—why not exert the modicum of power he has, just for the hell of it? Houellebecq’s agenda, then, differs from that of the Christians, anarchists, democrats and socialists who Nietzsche despised, in that Houellebecq is never deluded about what drives him. He is beyond reproof, because he is beyond redemption. This is an infuriating, irresponsible, dangerous position, the literary-ideological equivalent of a suicide bombing. Houellebecq is going out, and his only concern is that he takes as many of us with him as he can.

>>7963576
I think that Nietzsche was giving a remedy to the inevitable pessimism that one sinks into due to Schopenhauer's work.

>>7963652
this

>>7963576
Based off that passage you got there, I think Schope's more interesting. It deals with the one person and its experience whereas Nietzsche's is this huge blob of all lives, all experiences, like a washing machine churning out seemingly endless rags. What I don't like about it is that Nietzsche's will-to-power, the endless progression of overman, will end some day. Some day there will be no humans, everything we've built will be gone, some day there will be no rags to wash. That's why I think Schope's more interesting because with the will-to-live it's a single entity issue, and the issue ends with this one entity.

Further regarding your question on art
>Is this really the gist of Nietzsche's project? Humanity-as-conduit for creative transcendence? A great painting or work of literature or work of architecture or film is really the apex of existential glorification, of will to power?
wouldn't Schope's, again, be the more interesting one here? The lone mind's creation of something larger than man itself, in the case of literature: transcending time and space, for a certain amount of time obviously, it'll be gone at some point. I think art in this context can be thought of as an attempt to share ideas with similarly minded people, and not in the more classic way of beauty or thought-provoking subjects. To try and reach a similar state of mind with others and share through the work of art some kind of inherent human emotion or line of thought. There will always be idiots who have absolutely no interest in anything whatsoever, and these works will pass them by. Since this is the case, what exactly does the will-to-power and the overman mean? Everyone is together, generation after generation, in bringing humanity further and further, but the work, so to say, stemming from 'mankind's creative energy', is not evenly distributed. What it is, is a very select few creating magnificent things by using others as tools for their trade, for their art. Is it then fair to say it's ALL of mankind, overman, continuing some form of creative cycle, generation after generation?
>Mankind as a whole is nothing but a resource for creation, a dissolving slag to be expended in the generation of something more beautiful than itself
Again, most people being used as tools for a very select few individuals who are able to create something more beautiful than what's real, or true, to transcend reality, transcend the will, as Schope talks about. Unless I'm missing something here, I'm not getting into Nietzsche's deal.

>>7963652
Meanwhile Schopenhauer lived a good life and Nietzsche was a poverty stricken despairing diseased rejected lonely drug abusing mess.

Nietzsche himself admitted that at a certain point that he simply could no longer afford to be a pessimist. When you contrast the two of them it does seem as if pessimism is almost a luxury.

Pretty interesting lads to be honest.

I wonder if my barista considers the coffee he makes for me everyday art while thinking about Nietzsche