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September 30, 2004
In chapter two of his Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle entitled, 'The Origin of the Semiotic of Impulses', Klossowski makes reference to Nietzsche working the Stoic ethical tradition without naming that tradition, or its classical Greek heritage.
Klossowski lists a number of quotations from Nietzsche (pp.33-36) to make his point that beyond the cerebral intellect there lies an intellect that is infinitely more vast than the one that merges with our consciousness.
In the second of these quotes (p.34) Nietzsche says:
"Clear out the inner world! There are still many false beings in it. Sensation and thought are enough for me. The 'will' as a third reality is imaginary. Moreover, all the impluses, desire, repulsion, etc., are not 'unities', but apparent 'simple' states."
We have a reference to a therapy of desire that eases their suffering. This quote from Epicurus expresses this tradition well:
"Empty is the philosopher's argument by which no human suffering is therapeutically treated. For just as there is no use in a medical art that does not cast out the sickness of bodies, so too there is no use use in philosophy, unless it too casts out the suffering of the soul."
Philosophy heals suffering caused by false beliefs. It aims to heal the soul in distress.
The Stoics claim (eg., Chrysippus, Seneca, Epictetus) that the philosophical art of soul-healing, when correctly developed and applied, is necessary to live a flourishing life. Stoic therapy as a self-governance of the soul is based on a radical critique of deeply rooted convention and ordinary belief; the acquisition of virtue through practical reason; seeing the passions as forms of false judgement and belief in that they embody ways of interpreting the world, curing us of the ills caused by the passions, and that the passions should be not just be moderated, but extirpated.
In the last quote that Klossowski lists (p.36), Nietzsche says:
"Our strongest feelings, inasmuch as they are feelings, are only something external, outside us, imagistic: similitudes, that's what they are. And what we habitually call the inner world:alas, for the most part it is poor and deceptive and invented and hollow."
Hence we need philosophical therapy, a self-governance of the soul.
This is only in this way that I can understand what Klossowski is doing in Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle.
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