/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.21063417]

What does /lit/ think of Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle by Pierre Klossowski? Since reading it, my view of Nietzsche went from life affirming self help guru to madman subjected to a dark truth. The thought that our conscious thoughts are nothing more than the refuse of competing impulses is something I find difficult to accept and it gives me a claustrophobic boxed-in feeling. Anyone else read it? Do you have any criticisms or refutations of Klossowski's reading?

[Anonymous No.21063434]

One of the most important books of philosophy I've read, up there with Nietzsche himself.

[OP No.21063449]

>>21063434
HEY Y'ALL - CIRCLES REMIND ME OF BEYBLADES.

[Anonymous No.21063491]

>>21063417
what's the TLDR?

[Anonymous No.21063492]

>>21063434
I can definitely see so much of later continental work in this book so it's importance is undeniable to me. I can't believe people don't talk about this more when they talk about Nick Land because the roots of him are so apparent here. He seems to take the opposite position to Nietzsche, siding with the death drive against the will to power.

[Anonymous No.21063497]

>>21063449
Lit it (the will) RIP!

[Anonymous No.21063512]

>>21063491
It interprets the reason for Nietzsche's madness in light of his first book Daybreak which rarely sees any attention. It introduces an understanding of "drives" that is important for later writers in the Continental tradition. It poses the human person as a linguistic illusion designating a mass of organs and systems of organs. Human action, by Nietzsche's understanding (as interpreted by Klossowski), is driven by the instincts evoked by these organs and systems that often (especially for Nietzsche with his Migraines) contradict each other. Klossowski argues that conscious thought is the surplus of this writhing struggle of impulses fought in the brain and represents a gregarious life denying impulse.

[Anonymous No.21063518]

>>21063512
just a pseud way to say biology and instincts and how these manifest in our daily industrial lives and compared to our natural lifestyles in proto-societies we end up with a rat utopia scenario

[Anonymous No.21063605]

>>21063417
>Klossowski
The term "The vicious circle" describes Hegel and Kant best. They ran laps in their heads.

[Anonymous No.21063613]

>>21063417
>Pierre Klossowski
A very small man coping.

[Anonymous No.21063640]

>>21063518
I hate how this board's default response is 'oh so it's just [cliche they're familiar with]'.

[Anonymous No.21063659]

>>21063640
You are not as profound as you think you are

[Anonymous No.21063673]

>>21063659
That's just a pseud way of saying "no u!"

[Anonymous No.21063705]

>>21063492
What's interesting also is that accelerationism, to the extent it (and Land, Ccru, etc.) refers to D&G's comment in AO on "accelerating the process", derives from Klossowski's book, where Klossowski translates and describes Nietzsche's comment on "accelerating" the mediocritizing of European man to have spring forth therefrom an elite caste of "surplus-men", which Klossowski elaborates into a political conspiracy of the vicious circle. This line however is not taken up too explicitly in continental philosophy, in that it conceives of an elite or aristocracy, even if Klossowski mentions it doesn't last or is parodic: the more leftist and democratic voices it might not appeal to much, while Lyotard rather weakly says stupid shit like the hippies, 68ers, marginals, punks these are the real surplus-men... (and what would a current-day identity-politician say?)

[Anonymous No.21063737]

>>21063705
>surplus-men
There are none.

[Anonymous No.21063742]

>>21063417
>The thought that our conscious thoughts are nothing more than the refuse of competing impulses
I thought N already unveiled this himself in BG&E? The part where he mentions the "not free but not unfree" will surely had some description of the multitude of conflicting drives and impulses and our agency is dictated by the victor of said conflict? I remember it somewhere. Interesting to see an author expand on this concept though, Niets image has been ruined as of late by people treating him as some 21st century self-help "manosphere" podcast grifter that was just born a few generations too early or something.

[Anonymous No.21063746]

>>21063512
>Nietzsche's madness
So it's basically fanfic nonsense? Got it.

[Anonymous No.21063757]

>>21063417
I can't say the best because I didn't understand fully - but it sure is the most creative interpretation of nietzsche. Quite solid too

[Anonymous No.21063766]

>>21063613

[Anonymous No.21063772]

>>21063417
This book is infamous for complexity. However one master-degree subway employee explained it well on /lit/ before.
From old post >>18749179

The baseline are the impulses, the drives, which are completely singular, subindividual forces that cannot be evaluated except at the level of intensity. Basically, high intensity is "good" - it's fast, plastic, rich, wasteful, plural etc.; it is an endless stream of Chaos. Against this, there is culture, intention, which steadies all singularity and high intensity of the impulses into rigid forms: institutions, language, Logos/Spirit, stable identity, the reality principle, and even the unified organism where the plurality of impulses are subordinated to the hierarchy and control of the brain (Bataille: importance of the head and uprightness; one can also see how this influenced Deleuze, and Lyotard in Libidinal Economy). This creates furthermore everything that is herdlike: a levelling of difference into a clear need to communicate, a belief in science, the restricted economy concerned with production, conservation, and the security of the human species. Now Nietzsche, Klossowski claims, could not work like this (in the university), and could not live like this: taking the form of a combat against culture, and ultimately against his own brain (illness, migraines, ultimate madness); N. thus takes the side of the plural body.
Impulses can furthermore take on an obsessive image: the phantasm. This is part of K.'s "semiotics of the impulses," one of the more difficult parts, that also returns in his other work. For K. himself this idée fixe was the image of Roberte, the subject of his novels and drawings; for N. supposedly it is the experience of the eternal return/vicious circle. So on the one hand, eternal return is not a scientific, objective theory (but not merely ethical either), but a singular image, and yet it is his highest truth. Because through it, he realizes that, against 'culture', the return and the death of God are always of difference, one forgets one's identity and remembers the state of intensive flux, and so the 'same' one returns to is always a different state of impulses, another identity, etc. In the 'phantasm' of the vicious circle this also comprises a large chain, a samsaric world soul, that endlessly passes through different states at high intensity. Though whether this is reality is never really clear.
Nevertheless, it is something to grab onto. Phantasms can furthermore be willfully reproduced into simulacra, into plastic images, works of art, and things of science. K. contends that normal science and all institutions are also based on simulacra, instead of objective truth, and thus also on the impulses, except that these are merely low-intensity, herdlike impulses. The current world order is ruled by all this, by 'culture', by a conspiracy.

[Anonymous No.21063775]

>>21063772
Against this, K. imagines that N. wanted to set up his own conspiracy, with the return/vicious circle as its main idea, to take power of the earth.
Strictly speaking, it would not be a lasting regime of power, as it would return to a chaos of intensive flux, with the new masters of the earth as (Bataillean) self-expending sovereigns. Still, in the meantime, this would imply a movement of passing through the simulacra of science and art and using it for the ends of a small elite of singular individuals; passing through the institutions and the economy. N. spoke of a planetary movement of levelling (which ought to be pushed even farther, the "accelerationist" quote referred to by Deleuze&Guattari), that would create a huge European/global base of mediocre consoomer-slaves, but would also clearly present the group that doesn't coincide with this (distance, selection), who may stand upon, rule, and shape this formless base. K.'s point, however, is that this is not the existing elite ("false masters"), of political and economic leaders - rather a more eccentric type. (Compare this also to "The Philosopher Villain" in Sade My Neighbor.) However, how viable is this? To infiltrate institutions and take hold of economic management, one cannot remain simply an artist, for example. For the rest of the book, N. sinks more into his madness (a state of "euphoria"), where the importance lies more with mythological figures like Dionysus and his love for Cosima Wagner. Thereby, K. says, N. abandons the plans of a political conspiracy. However, he implies that a parody of that conspiracy has already carried itself out in the new industrial society, which isn't strictly the 'culture' N. was against. This is the subject of K.'s next book, Living Currency, where ultimately all bodies can be exchanged, and, while the point is that the modern industrial-consumer society is already shot through with libidinal impulses, there isn't really the possibility of a redemptive change (much like Lyotard).
Very interesting stuff anyway, and seems very relevant today.

[Anonymous No.21063794]

>>21063772
>>21063775
Sounds like like a sperg justifying a worthless diploma by quoting authors he never read.

[Anonymous No.21064156]

>>21063772
Nice, I wrote that.

[Anonymous No.21064208]

>>21063417
>our conscious thoughts are nothing more than the refuse of competing impulses
Where does this BS come from ? And why would Evolution select for it ? Unless consciousness is just a fluke, a side-effect of survival-targeted pattern processing.

[Anonymous No.21064247]

>>21063417
>madman subjected to a dark truth.
atheists dont have access to truth
and truth is never dark. any darkness result from failing to see the end

[Anonymous No.21064265]

>>21064247
>atheists dont have access to truth
Can you grant it to them and demonstrate your theist "truth"? Should be fairly straightforward since you've access to it.

[Anonymous No.21064273]

>>21064208
>>21063417
>our conscious thoughts are nothing more than the refuse of competing impulses
Nietzsche said that a unified will is a strong will, the manifold impulses, each contradicting one another in diverse directions, needs a unification in order to strenghten a direction, a force, so to speak, hence the need for a particular stability. Consciousness could be seen as a way for that or a kind of reflection of such a process. Anthropologically it is very telling that man began, formed himself, from the notion of divinity, and this notion was always deeply connected with a notion of power. The problem is that consciousness will also be shaped by specific commands, most of the times external. I think this points to Nietzsche's appeal to our work within us to shape ourselves our own unified will. That's why I think consciousness is not solely a problem.

[Anonymous No.21064283]

>>21063766
based klossowski wearing zoomer pants

[Anonymous No.21064307]

>>21064247
>>21064265
Christcucks are so lost. It's bleak.

[Anonymous No.21064377]

>>21063434
>One of the most important books of philosophy
You crazy or something?

[Anonymous No.21064418]

>>21064377
he's just echoing foucault and deleuze

[Anonymous No.21064661]

What would be the required readings before getting into it?

[Anonymous No.21064948]

>>21064661
Nietzsche
Bataille, "Notion of Expenditure"
Klossowski, "Nietzsche, Polytheism, and Parody"

[Anonymous No.21065114]

>>21064418
Who?

[Anonymous No.21065136]

>>21063746
/thread

[Anonymous No.21065642]

>>21063512
Sounds similar to Klages position on the mind (geist) being life-denying.

[Anonymous No.21065649]

>>21063417
Deleuze's Nietzsche book was a follow up on it.

[Anonymous No.21065724]

>>21063417
some zoomer friend of mine (I'm older) said I should read it, but the price tag is enormous.

[Anonymous No.21065728]

>>21064208
>And why would Evolution select for it
Evolution doesn't "select." It's a description of an ongoing process. Life is only will to power—an individual is a multiplicity of ever-growing drives, each one's growth resulting in a competition with the others, the inevitable domination of one over the others, and the inevitable striving of the dominant drive to dominate the individual's environment. That striving in total inadvertently creates the process we call evolution.

[Anonymous No.21065734]

>>21065724
If only there were a way to get it at a cheaper price hmmmmmmmmmm >>17557914

[Anonymous No.21065783]

>>21065724
https://monoskop.org/images/4/48/Klossowski_Pierre_Nietzsche_and_the_Vicious_Circle.pdf

You're welcome.

[Anonymous No.21065808]

>>21064273
>Consciousness could be seen as a way for that or a kind of reflection of such a process.
The appollonian vindicated

[Anonymous No.21065864]

>>21063512
>>21063518
Impulses from out internal organs definitely drive us, pain and pleasure impulses and signals stored in the brain are what makes do anything, really.
Thoughts are simulations of things that bring pleasure or pain.

[Anonymous No.21065886]

>>21065642
It doesn't make sense for anything in life to be life-denying.

[Anonymous No.21066725]

>>21065864
>Thoughts are simulations of things that bring pleasure or pain.
That doesn't mean anything. Stop posting and go be a mindless monkey.

[Anonymous No.21066749]

>>21066725
>go be a mindless monkey
if only it was that easy