The Tragic Community: Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung

The Tragic Community

Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung

James Luchte

With those two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we link our recognition that in the Greek world there exists a huge contrast, in origins and purposes, between visual (plastic) arts, the Apollonian, and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. Both very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate for themselves the contest of opposites which the common word “Art” only seems to bridge, until they finally, through a marvelous metaphysical act, seem to pair up with each other and, as this pair, produce Attic tragedy, just as much a Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1872

Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end. (II)

By the former we mean that contradiction exists in and runs through all processes from beginning to end; motion, things, processes, thinking — all are contradictions. To deny contradiction is to deny everything. This is a universal truth for all times and all countries, which admits of no exception. (III)

Mao Tse Tung, On Contradiction (1937)

Mao’s Ontology and Early Greek Thought

Contradiction, for Mao, abides at the heart of all things – within each particular being and amidst the universality of the cosmos, or the All. Contradiction is the existence of all things – the birth, life and death of all things, and of the incessant re-birth of all particular kinds of thing, or being. Contradiction consists in, and gains its immense power from, a unity of opposites. Mao describes this disunited, or dialectical, unity of opposites:

The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist. (Mao Tse Tung, On Contradiction, II)

Contradiction is the modus essendi, modus existendi and modus operandi of all things. It is the reality, actuality and existence of all things. The primary axiomatic  significance of the universality of contradiction, a notion to which Hegel and Marx also ascribed, is that change is ubiquitous to all things, and thus, nothing can or will ever remain the same.

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查拉图斯特拉和亚伯拉罕的孩子们 (Zarathustra and the Children of Abraham)

This essay is a translation by Dr Wang Shunning (SHUFE) of ‘Zarathustra and the Children of Abraham’ by James Luchte

查拉图斯特拉和亚伯拉罕的孩子们

J. 鲁赫特著 汪顺宁译

查拉图斯特拉的尼采：从有罪到清白

尽管尼采及其家庭认为他的杰作是不敬神的，并担心来自宗教和政治体制的后座力，但《查拉图斯特拉如是说》[1]从未遭禁，甚而就在尼采崩溃[2]之前它尚未引起多少关注。这本另类著作在我们这个时代似乎陷于它独有的吊诡境地。一方面它众所周知，某些最名闻遐迩的语句常为人引用，如“上帝死了”、“末人”、“超人”、“同一的永恒轮回”等。 另一方面它很少被研究，无论是作为文学的、神学的还是哲学的文本。该论文试图弥补这一忽视，探索尼采反对一神论宗教的虚无主义那引人争议的文本。此聚焦将 允许文学的、神学的和哲学的视角在一个更宽广的意义阐释上的交融，即，将《查拉图斯特拉如是说》视为一个既对传统宗教教条又对激进宗教教义的挑战。

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James Luchte: Philosophy

This site is devoted to philosophical writing, poetry, art & action etc, as expressions and places of thought.

In this light, I will make works in progress and other materials, such as poetry and film, available on this site.

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