Characters

Aesthetics

13

The sublime state of being is founded upon the imagined will-quality firmness or undauntedness and arises from self-deception. But if a will is really undaunted and firm, then the sublimity, which can here simply be defined as contempt for death, inheres in the thing-in-itself and one talks with right of sublime characters.

I distinguish three kinds of sublime characters:

1. The hero’s

2. The wise

3. The wise hero’s

The hero is completely conscious, that his own life is endangered, and although he loves it, he will, if he has too, leave it. The hero is also a soldier which fired up, has been victorious over the fear of death, and everyone, who puts his life at risk to save another.

The wise knows of the worthlessness of life, and this knowledge has enlightened his will. The last one is a requirement sine que non for the wise, then what we have in eyes, is the actual elevation above life which is the sole criterion for sublimity. The bare recognition, that life is worthless, cannot bring about the fruit of resignation. (TN; the recognition leads to it, but only the recognition is like an unplanted seed)

The most sublime character is the wise hero. He stands on the position of the wise, but doesn’t wait, like him, in resignation the death, but tries to use his life as a useful weapon, to fight for the good of humanity. He dies with the sword in his hand (figuratively or literally), and is every minute of his existence ready, to surrender good and blood for it. The wise hero is the purest manifestation on earth, and solely his view elevates the other humans, while they get trapped in the illusion, that they have, because they are humans too, the same capability to suffer and die for others, like him. He is in possession of the sweetest individuality and lives the real, blissful live.

14

Related to the sublime state of being is the humor. Before we define it we want to sink into the being of the humorist.

We have found above that the real wise are indeed elevated above live, that his will must have enlightened itself through the knowledge of the life’s worthlessness. Is only this knowledge present, without having inhered his inner being, or also: recognizes the will, as mind, that he cannot find in life the satisfaction, which he seeks, embraces however in the next moment full of desire life with thousand arms, then the real wise won’t appear.

In this odd relation between will and mind lies the cause of the humorists. The humorist cannot maintain himself at the clear peak, where the wise stands, permanently.

The normal human gets fully absorbed by life, he doesn’t break himself the head about the world, doesn’t ask himself: where do I come from? Or: where do I go? He keeps his eyes fixed on his earthly goals. The wise, on the other hand, lives in a tight sphere, which he pulled around himself, and has become – through which way is irrelevant – clear about himself and the world. Both of them rest firmly on themselves. But not the humorist. He has tasted the peace of the wise; has experienced the blessedness of the aesthetic state of being; he has been guest at the table of the Gods; he has lived in an ether of transparent clearness. And nevertheless an irresistible violence pulls him back to the mud of the world. He flees him, while he can approve one goal only, striving to the peace of the grave and must reject everything else as folly; but every time and always he gets lured by the sirens back in the whirlpool, and he dances in the sultry saloon, with deep desire for rest and peace in his heart; he could be called the child of an angle and the daughter of a human. He belongs to two worlds, while he lacks the power, to renounce of one them. In the banquet hall of the Gods disturbs him the call from below, does he throw himself in the arms of lust, then the desire to above spoils him the mere pleasure. So his inner being gets thrown between the two and he feels as being torn. The basic mood the humorist is displeasure.

But that which doesn’t yield or budge, which stands firmly, what he has seized and won’t let go, is the recognition, that death should be favored above life, that “the day of death is better, than the day of one’s birth”. He is not a wise, and even less a wise hero, but he is for them the one, who has recognized the greatness of these nobles, the sublimity of their characters fully and completely, and the blissful feeling, which fulfills them, (he) sympathizes/co-feels it. He carries them as an ideal with him and knows, that he, because he is a human, can in himself also achieve this ideal, when – yes when “the sun greets the planets in their course”.

With this and the firm recognition, that death is preferable to life, he focuses away from the displeasure and elevates himself above himself. Now that he is free from displeasure and now he sees, which is very noteworthy, his own state of being which he has escaped, objectively. In it he misses his ideal and he smiles at the stupidity of his halfness: since laughing appears always, when we discover discrepancy, i.e. when we compare something to a mental yardstick and consider it too short or too long. Having entered the brilliant relation in his state of being, he doesn’t lose sight of the fact that he will fall back in the ridiculous folly soon, since he knows the force of his love to the world, and therefore laughs only one eye, and the other one whines, now the mouth jests, and behind the facade of cheerfulness lies deep gravity.

Humor is therefore a very curious and peculiar double movement. Its first part is the displeased fluctuating between two worlds, and in second part a pure contemplative state of being. In the last one also fluctuates the will, between full freedom of the displeasure and tearful melancholia.

The same is the case, when the humorist takes a look at the world. With every appearance he compares his ideal and never does it match it. There he must smile. But straightaway he remembers himself, how strongly life lures him, how impossibly hard it is for him to renounce, since we are all through and through hungry will to live. Now he thinks, speaks or writes about others with likewise mildness, as he judges himself, and with tears in his eyes, smiling, joking with twitching lips, he is fulfilled with compassion for humanity.

”I’m gripped by all of Mankind’s misery.” (Goethe)

Since the humor can appear in every character, every temperament, it will always be of individual color. I recall the sentimental Sterne, the torn Heine, the arid Shakespeare, the warm-hearted Jean Paul and the chivalric Cervantes.

It is clear that the humorist is more suitable than any other mortal, to become a true wise. If one time the unlosable recognition enlightens one form of his willing, then the jesting flies away from the smiling lips and both eyes become earnest. Then the humorist moves, like the hero, the wise and the wise hero, from aesthetic area into ethical area.

Ethics

26

Although the hero’s basic mood is deep peacefulness, also pure happiness, fulfilled with overwhelming delight he is seldom, mostly in great moments only; since life is a hard struggle for everyone, and for he who is still firmly rooted in the world - also when his eyes are completely drunk of the light of the ideal state – he will not be free from need, pain, and heartache. The pure permanent peace of heart of the Christian saints has no hero. Should it then, without faith, really be impossible to achieve? –

The movement of humanity to the ideal state is a fact; little reflection is required to see that life of the whole can as little as single lives enter in a still stand. The movement must be a restless one until there, where cannot be spoken of life at all. Therefore would humanity be in the ideal state, there can be no rest. But where should it move to? There is only one movement left for it: the movement to complete annihilation, the movement from being into non-being. And humanity (i.e. all single then living humans), will execute this movement, in irresistible desire to the rest of absolute death.

The movement of humanity to the ideal state will also follow the other, from being into non-being: the movement of humanity is after all the movement from being into non-being. If we separate the two movements, then from the first one appears the rule of full dedication to the common good, the latter the rule of celibacy, which admittedly isn’t required by the Christian religion, but is recommend as the highest and most perfect virtue; because although the movement will be fulfilled despite the bestial sexual impulse and lust, it is seriously demanded to every individual to be chaste, so that movement can reach its goal more quickly.

For this demand righteous and unrighteous, merciful and hard-hearted, hero’s and criminals, all shy away, and with exception of the few, who, as Christ calls them, are born as eunuchs, can no human fulfill it with pleasure, without having experienced a complete reversal of his own will. All reversals, enlightenments of wills, which we have seen up to this point, were reversals of wills, who still wanted life, and the hero, just like the Christian saint, sacrificed it only, i.e. he has contempt for death, while a better life is obtained. Now however the will should not only merely have contempt for death, but he should love it, because chastity is love to death. Unheard demand! The will to live wants to live and exist, being and life. He wants to exist for all eternity and while he can only stay in it through procreation, so concentrates his fundamental willing in sexual instinct, which is the most full affirmation of the will to live and overrules all other urges and desires in intensity and power significantly.

Now how can a human fulfill the demand, how can he overcome the sexual urge, which presents itself to every honest observer of nature as insurmountable? Only the fear of great punishment in combination with an all advantages outweighing advantage, can give human the force to conquer it, i.e. the will must enlighten itself at a clear and a completely certain recognition. It is the already above mentioned recognition, that non-existence is better than existence or as the recognition, that life is the hell, and the still night of death is the annihilation of hell.

And the human, who has clearly and unmistakably recognized it, that all life is suffering, that it is, in whatever form it appears, essentially unhappy and painful (also in the ideal state), so that he, like the Christ Child in the arms of the Sistine Madonna, can only look with appalled eyes into the world, and then considers the deep rest, the inexpressible felicity of the aesthetic contemplation and that, in contrast to the awake state, the trough reflection found happiness of the stateless sleep, whose elevation into eternity is absolute death, -such a human must enlighten himself at the presented advantage- he has no choice. The thought: to be reborn, i.e. to be dragged back by unhappy children, peace and restlessly on the thorny and stone streets of existence, is for him the most horrible and despairing, he can have, on the other side the thought: to be able to break off the long chain of development, where he had to go forward with always bleeding feet, pushed, tormented and tortured, desperately wishing for rest, the sweetest and most refreshing. And if he is on the right way, with every step he gets less disturbed by sexual urges, with every step his heart becomes lighter, until his inside enters the same joy, blissful serenity and complete immobility, like the true christian saints. He feels himself in accordance with the movement of humanity from existence into non-existence, from the torment of life into absolute death, he enters this movement of the whole gladly, he acts eminently ethical, and his reward is undisturbed peace of heart, “the perfect calm of spirit”, the peace which is higher than all reason. And all this can be accomplished without having to believe in a unity in, above or behind the world, without fear for a hell or hope of heaven after death, without mystical intellectual contemplation, without inexplicable work of grace, without contradiction with nature and our own consciousness of ourselves: the only sources, with which we can build with certitude, - merely the result of an unbiased, pure, cold recognition of our reason “Man’s highest power”.