Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)

[Dekalb_Blues]

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Q: What do you think Nietzsche meant by "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. 
And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." (Beyond Good and Evil,  Leipzig: 1886)? What kind of monster? 
What does it mean to look into an abyss?

A: This is one of the aspects of Nietzsche that is easily overlooked by people who want to see him as simply nihilistic and destructive.

For Nietzsche, the construction of the self is not a religious act, an obligation, or an act of submission to nature, as variously seen 
by 'moralities' -- it is an art form. In The Joyful Science (Leipzig: 1882) he says something to the order of 'One must make of one's Self a 
work of art, carving away something here, growing something there, repurposing some mass of unavoidable ugliness elsewhere to present 
a more pleasant view from the distance...' (I do not have a copy here, and I cannot find it online, if someone can give me the words...)

A monster is one whose 'self' lacks 'art'.

Power may be the medium of morality, and its goal, but tasteless use of power is like tasteless use of any other medium. To see his 
aesthetic, you can look at his own artistic process, which he displayed over and over again by choosing mythological or poetic 
representations, or you can look at his critiques of other's work. Particularly, I think it is why he bothered to publish Nietzsche contra Wagner
(Leipzig: 1889). He accuses Wagner's music of being an assault on the audience, brandishing its scale in a way that shocks the senses and 
bruises the organs, and of having too little consistency and comprehensibility -- winding an endless melody, rather than a theme.

In this context, I think the quote about monsters indicates there are aesthetic choices that we should restrain ourselves from making 
even though they would be effective. We should choose scale, elegance and consistency. If others' use of power lacks art, we should 
not simply confront them with more power, if that involves less art. We should restrain ourselves.

In particular, I think 'an abyss' is a sort of monster, the monster of complete cynicism and true nihilism -- the completely empty man 
that early 'beatnik' post-modernism seems to favor. There is always power to be uncovered by renunciation of boundaries, but pursuing 
an utter lack of restraining form leaves one 'powerfully empty', and perhaps incapable of recovering one's artistic nature.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/que...-the-abyss



https://www.pinterest.co.uk/caitlinmaet/come-on-try-it/






Cover from Yves Naud, U.F.O.s and Extraterrestrials in History, 4 vols. (Geneva: Ferni Publishers, 1978)






Salvador Dali, Argus (1963).  
For a chance to own Matisse's vibrant minimalist linocut Space-Octopus Ascendant (1944), see
http://clarkfineart.com/artists/20th-cen...ariant-vi/