The Chomsky Hash

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[3. It is a diagnostic method that focuses on the very body of the present - cont'd]

b. In the analysis of provenance, the body appears as

the surface on which events are recorded

the place of dissociation of spiritual units

i. [The body appears as a site of]

forces

struggles

dissimulation

theater

ii. Making the present the theater of ancestral figures.

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[3. It is a diagnostic method that focuses on the very body of the present - cont'd]

[a. Not reconstructing a distance (e.g., to a homeland, to God, to salvation), but what is already nearest: - cont'd]

ii. Genealogy will consist of:

understanding how multiple origins are expressed in the form of instincts and valuations;

understanding how these contradictory elements are in struggle;

understanding how the individual reacts to these struggles which weaken them through a desire for peace, but how for some the effect is the opposite

—because of additional heredity:

the ability to wage war against oneself (instead of wanting to appease oneself);

the capacity to dominate and deceive oneself

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

3. It is a diagnostic method that focuses on the very body of the present.

a. The nearest:

i. in doing so, it is not the distance that we are trying to reconstruct, - but the closest, what is there within us in our body.

—“Physiology” of science.

—Example: The men of dissolution (the end of the (Roman) Republic, the end of the Middle Ages) (Beyond good and evil). These men, we will do their genealogy

not to find where they come from,

but to know what is happening at the level of their gesture, their body, their will and their energy

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[2. It is a weakening tool. In carrying out this search for provenance, it is a question of ironically but severely (with a hammer) undoing the most self-enclosed identities - cont'd]

[c. Underneath the attachment to the truth, a passion to triumph through speech - cont'd]

ii. This provenance of truth

—it has nothing in common with this original soil that Husserl was later to seek among Greek surveyors. What Husserl was looking for was the constitution of this horizon of rationality that mathematics has never ceased to explore in a climate of pure rationality.

—[rather,] it is about breaking this confidence that knowledge can have in itself; to refer it,

not to the essentials of its interior structure,

but to the irregularity of the desire which invests it

with no research into the foundations

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[2. It is a weakening tool. In carrying out this search for provenance, it is a question of ironically but severely (with a hammer) undoing the most self-enclosed identities - cont'd]

c. Underneath the attachment to the truth, a passion to triumph through speech. That of

the sophists

the lawyers

the rhetoricians

i. Discourse as an instrument of power. If it had not been for this, could the meticulous dialectic of truth have seen the light of day?

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[2. It is a weakening tool. In carrying out this search for provenance, it is a question of ironically but severely (with a hammer) undoing the most self-enclosed identities - cont'd]

b. Beneath the objectivity of description and classification, the strange desire to

record

transcribe

preserve

i. There we find

the feeling of distrust

the form of the contract

ii. There we find the desire to establish material charters:

not the pure gaze of perception,

but a whole legal world of institutions

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

2. It is a weakening tool. In carrying out this search for provenance, it is a question

not of restoring and establishing, on an original background, a lost or threatened unit

but on the contrary, it is a question of ironically but severely (with a hammer) undoing the most self-enclosed identities

a. Text:

The Germans (Beyond Good and Evil).

But above all: Le Gai Savoir.

i. Science presents itself as that which is of a purely intellectual nature,

sheltered from all desire and all subjectivity,

developing according to laws which are unique to it.

ii. Hence his feeling of security. But

if we no longer questioned the form or content of science, but the will to know;

if we questioned not science as an entity, but scientists as an individual and historical form of this will;

then what would we find?

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[1. It is first of all an instrument of differentiation. Text on sin (Le Gai Savoir): - cont'd]

d. The search for Herkunft [descent]

i. it tends

—not to rediscover an original community, where the present would find its birthplace

—on the contrary,

to dissociate the present;

to find, below the unitary consciousness that it tries to give itself, the marks of all the heterogeneous elements which are entangled within it

ii. it is

not looking for a constant identity throughout history,

but looking for ruptures, violence, appropriations and disguises

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[1. It is first of all an instrument of differentiation. Text on sin (Le Gai Savoir): - cont'd]

c. In what we call, generally speaking, sin, genealogy reveals distinct elements, foreign to the others: and if they have come together, it is

i. not because they have found a common form,

ii. but is that

they fought against each other

they did violence to each other

they grabbed their masks

they exchanged their disguises

[B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is not at all to fit an individual into a general type, or an event into a spiritual totality. This is not to give it the status of the concept - cont'd]

[1. It is first of all an instrument of differentiation. Text on sin (Le Gai Savoir): - cont'd]

b. However, Nietzsche's text introduces the following distinctions and discontinuities:

i. sin is a Jewish invention: therefore

neither general

nor natural

[rather] it took a force;

ii. Jewish sin

it is characterized as sin against God (and the best proof is that repentance, manifested to God, is enough to erase it)

it is therefore incommensurable with the fault against men

iii. [In contrast to] the Greek break:

which has all the more dignity as it is addressed to the gods (Prometheus)

[whereas] this Jewish invention, Christianity imposed by force on the world

iv. Christianity,

it is not the self-awareness of all religions

rather, it is their oppression

B. But we must see how Nietzsche makes this belonging work. It is

not at all to fit an individual into a general type,

nor [to fit] an event into a spiritual totality

nor to give it the status of the concept

1. It is first of all an instrument of differentiation. Text on sin (Le Gai Savoir):

a. It is turned against

continuist and generalizing explanations

(an explanation of the following type)

i. what harms men has, in all civilizations, been sanctioned by society;

ii. society, to give rigor to these prohibitions, has made them religious laws;

iii. the Greek gods guaranteed the same morality as the Jewish God,

the latter in a more abstract form

the latter in a more visible form

iv. Christianity as conciliation.

[A. Provenance. At first glance, it is either race or ancestral group membership - cont'd]

2. Band:

a. “The scholar comes in Europe

from the most diverse classes and social backgrounds,

like a plant which does not need this or that particular soil...

b. But... in... the idiosyncrasy of the scholar... , we almost always find, behind, the genesis of this scholar, his family...”

i. [E.g.,] The sons

of clerks (who collate)

of lawyers, who plead for the truth (Le Gai Savoir).

ii. [E.g.,]

Darwinism, born among the small English shopkeepers (struggle for life) (Le Gai Savoir).

Moral differentiations were born among slaves (Beyond good and evil).

A. Provenance. At first glance, it is

either race

or ancestral group membership

1. Breed: For example: “Sin,

as it is considered today wherever Christianity reigns..., is a Jewish sentiment, a Jewish invention... Christianity has in fact sought to Judaize the whole world...

The Greeks, on the other hand, readily admitted that sacrilege could also have a dignity... as with Prometheus...” (Le Gai Savoir).

[C. These four theses (that the origin holds: explanation, law, authenticity, and out task) have the consequences of opening time indefinitely: - cont'd]

4. We could summarize all this by saying:

a. the three notions:

domination

mask

chance

i. they undo the circle of

meaning

truth

history

ii. they make them fall next to each other.

b. [ultimately,]

i. just as linguists were forced to abandon the theme of an original language

which would be directly in contact with things

whose meanings would run through all of history,

ii. in the same way Nietzsche had to get rid of the myth of the original institution of rules and values.

[C. These four theses (that the origin holds: explanation, law, authenticity, and out task) have the consequences of opening time indefinitely: - cont'd]

[3. Undoing these four theses also undoes the connection established by metaphysics between truth, meaning, and history - cont'd]

b. Now, in Nietzsche, these three elements become external to each other:

i. meaning:

it has nothing to do with truth

it is the effect of processes without interpretation

ii. the truth:

it is only a product

it is the effect, through history, of a mask

iii. history: applied to previous forces and states, it is a series of hazards which

modify

transform

disguise

[C. These four theses (that the origin holds: explanation, law, authenticity, and out task) have the consequences of opening time indefinitely: - cont'd]

3. but these four theses [vis., the origin holds

the explanation (not fundamental meaning, but product of history)

the law (not a single line, but numerable crossroads)

the truest (not a privileged moment, but radically arbitrary)

our task (not return, but diagnosis)

] have yet another consequence: it is to undo the connection established by metaphysics between

truth

meaning

history

a. In a classical conception, of which Hegel gave the model, but which we find again well after him, these three elements

[they are not external to one another, as in Nietzsche

rather, they] belong to each other

i. meaning:

it is the way in which truth takes shape in history

it is given in a way that is both visible and hidden

it is the vein of truth that runs through history

ii. but history, in its turn, is an obscure meaning which little by little

moves towards its truth

will arrive there when all the meanings have been elucidated

iii. as for truth,

it is the law of meaning throughout history, it is what controls it from afar

it is what meaning, obscurely, is directed towards

[C. These four theses (that the origin holds: explanation, law, authenticity, and out task) have the consequences of opening time indefinitely: - cont'd]

2. which allows us to understand the Eternal Return;

if time is indefinite

if time holds however numerous the events we imagine

then these events will end up recurring indefinitely

a. Nothing is further from this Nietzschean repetition than the metaphysical theme (so frequent in the 19th and 20th centuries) of a return to the original.

b. Nothing could be further from the theme of a curve of time leading back to an original truth, to a unique and unprecedented event.

c. [In fact,] the return is the effect of the rarity of events in the indefinite opening of time.