1
" But when a thing is tangibly idiotic, you can be sure that it is very powerful, very dangerous. You see, when we call a thing stupid, we think that we undo it, that we have overcome it somehow. Of course nothing of the sort happens; we have simply made a statement that it is very important, have advertised it, and it appeals to everybody. People think, thank heaven, here is something we can understand, and they eat it. But if we say something is very intelligent, they vanish and won't touch it. "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
3
" Now, the fact that Nietzsche, after the chapter about "Delights and Passions," arrives at the chapter or the stage of "The Pale Criminal" is not abnormal in itself, but perfectly normal; for if one follows the path of passion one will surely come to the place where one's passion becomes abnormal, asocial or criminal, and that is a quality which is in everybody. Therefore, one says, principiis obsta, resist delights and passions, resist in the beginning before it is too late, don't have passions, it is not good taste, it is bad form. The deeper reason is that if one slips too far into such flames, one is sure to land in criminality. But how can you live and have no passion-for then you would escape suffering? Nobody can escape suffering, and to try to escape passion is to try to escape suffering. But as you cannot escape suffering you cannot escape passion; you will suffer from passion either directly or indirectly, and it is much better to suffer directly because indirect suffering has no merit. It is exactly as if nothing has happened. So the indirect suffering in a neurosis has no moral merit. Years lost in neurosis are just lost, without gain. But if you suffer directly and you know for what you suffer, that is never lost. Therefore, Christ said that if you know what you are doing you are blessed, but if you don't know you are cursed.? For then it is a neurosis.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 463-464) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
5
" So the fact that Nietzsche feels that Christ died too early is a general idea only; we really have the need to ask the question: "What would Jesus have taught if he had been a married man, with eight children for instance? How would he have dealt with certain situations in life which only occur when you are in life, when you share it?" Of course he was in his own life but it was a very partial one - he was not really in life as we know it. He would perhaps be a good teacher inasmuch as one is meant to live his particular life, the life of a philosophical tramp who really has the idealistic purpose of teaching a new saving truth, who recognizes no other responsibility. You see, he had no profession and no human connections which were valid to him. He separated himself from his family, was the lord of his disciples, who had to follow him while he had to follow no one, being under no obligations. This is an exceedingly simple situation, tragically simple, which is so rare that one cannot assume that the teaching coming from such a life can be possible or applicable to an entirely different type of life.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 779-780) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
6
" To think of the moral side, that we should improve the criminal, is nonsense. That is all trash, having nothing to do with justice. It is just to put the criminal to death because we are in his crime too; everyone of us contains a criminal who wants to commit crimes though we don't know it. [...] Instead of trying to improve that man, hang him. Our criminal instinct is not satisfied by this damned reasonableness, so we get bitter and poisonous and more and more reasonable, but we are really just waiting for the time when we can take a revolver and kill; we are waiting for an age of revolution, for an age of cruelty. So it would be much better if we could begin at the beginning and put the criminal to death by public execution; it doesn't make us any more cruel than we are already.
Look at the things that happen in the world! The amount of quite open cruelty is incredible. One reads about in in the papers. Yet we still go on believing that we are growing better and better every day and in every way until we shall arrive in heaven. But we are in hell, and I tell you, if in our most reasonable town we had some juicy shooting, people would feel grand. I saw a policeman a while ago in the country, a perfectly harmless fellow, who said. "But just wait till the next time I get at a machine-gun!" He promises himself a marvelous feast. And that is so everywhere.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 466) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
7
" You see, that will start, for instance, with the recognition that what you call good is very bad for other people, or what they call good is very bad for you. So you come to the conclusion that they are human beings too and they must have their point of view as you have yours. And then you are already out of it, already static, already au dessus de la mêlée. Of course you can take such a standpoint illegitimately before you have gone through the turmoil, just in order to avoid the conflict; people sometimes like to play that stunt, but that has no merit and they are tempted all the time to climb down into the turmoil. But if you have gone through the turmoil, if you cannot stand you any more, if the unconscious itself spits you out, then life itself spits you out as old Jonah was spit out by the whale; and then it islegitimate that you contentedly sit on the top of life, having a look at it. Then you can congeal the pairs of opposites in a beautiful static structure.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 1110-1111). Princeton University Press. "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
8
" I once saw a striking contrast in the use made of material in Florence. I saw first in the Boboli gardens the two wonderful figures of the barbarians-you remember perhaps those antique stone statues. They are made of stone, consist of stone, represent the spirit of stone: you feel that stone has had the word! Then I went to the tombs of the Medici and saw what Michelangelo did to stone; there the stone has been brought to a super-life. It makes gestures which stone never would make; it is hysterical and exaggerated. The difference was amazing. Or go further to a man like Houdon and you see that the stone becomes absolutely acrobatic. There is the same difference between the Norman and Gothic styles. In the Gothic frame of mind stone behaves like a plant, not like a normal stone, while the Norman style is completely suggested by the stone. The stone speaks. Also an antique Egyptian temple is a most marvelous example of what stone can say; the Greek temple already plays tricks with stone, but the Egyptian temple is made of stone. It grows out of stone — the temple of Abu Simbel, for example, is amazing in that respect. Then in those cave temples in India one sees again the thing man brings into stone. He takes it into his hands and makes it jump, fills it with an uncanny sort of life which destroys the peculiar spirit of the stone. And in my opinion it is always to the detriment of art when matter has no say in the game of the artist. The quality of the matter is exceedingly important — it is all-important. For instance, I think it makes a tremendous difference whether one paints with chemical colors or with so-called natural colors. All that fuss medieval painters made about the preparation of their backgrounds or the making and mixing of their colors had a great advantage. No modern artist has ever brought out anything like the colors which those old masters produced. If one studies an old picture, one feels directly that the color speaks, the color has its own life, but with a modern artist it is most questionable whether the color has a life of its own. It is all made by man, made in Germany or anywhere else, and one feels it. So the projection into matter is not only a very important but an indispensable quality of art.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 948-949) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
10
" You know, he (Nietzsche) belongs to the people living east of the Rhine where there is no anima psychology yet; masculine psychology, the Puer Eternus psychology, prevails there on account of the youth of those tribes. In the older civilization west of the Rhine the anima problem comes up, but east of the Rhine there is generally the problem of the relationship between man and the subordinate principle — an idea or an enthusiasm, for instance, or a big enterprise. It is entirely the psychology of the youth who is entering life where the world consists mainly of men. There are female appendages who serve a certain purpose, for the propagation of the tribe or for the romantic feelings, but there is no other use for them. Therefore, you actually see the idea spreading again that a woman belongs in the kitchen and is only useful to produce children — that she has no psychological problem, andno potentiality for soul-development. "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
11
" Now on account of this collective attitude and the utter ignorance of what the self might be-the self meaning the reality of the psyche-people have a very strong collective conscience which makes them quite ill if they try to follow their own way, to be with themselves and to work on themselves. That may amount to a real affliction, an ailment, a neurosis. But if the case is already a neurosis, then any doctor who really understands about these matters would be forced to say, "If the patient wants to be cured he must follow the way of his neurosis"-just the thing everybody is speaking against. People say; "If you have a neurosis keep away from it, travel to India or anywhere else where there is no neurosis, leave your neurosis in Europe, bury it there." But I should say, "Follow the way of your neurosis; it is the best thing you ever produced, your real value."
And that is very much what Nietzsche means here. But he questions whether one has the right to choose that way or not, and that is of course one of the major problems. It is by no means sure that one has either the power or the right to go to one's self, because this is a very great and difficult enterprise. As, for instance, the Catholic church may be in doubt whether somebody has the power, the right, or the faculty to be a priest, to live like a priest or a nun. And the way to one's self, the way to one's own affliction, is the hardest, the most difficult way. We really can question, "Has one really the power, the energy, the patience to do it? And also, has one the right to do it?" For you might do it from a wrong motive; you might be really selfish-for example, if you are going to yourself in order to indulge in yourself and not to work.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 707) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
14
" And of course if you ill-treat the body, it can throw you out of the house entirely, out of your body. It is like ill-treating objects. You know, objects are inanimate things; they lie about heavily, have no legs or wings, and people are often quite impatient with them. For instance, this book would like it very much better, I am sure, if it were lying near the center of the table where it is safe, but I have put it on the edge. It is an awkward position for that poor creature of a book. It may fall down and get injured. If I am impatient, if I touch them in an awkward way, it is a lamentable plight for the poor objects. Then they take their revenge on me. Because I illtreat them they turn against me and become contradictory in a peculiar way. I say, "Oh, these damned objects, dead things, despicable!"- and instantly they take on life. They begin to behave as if they were animated living things. You will then observe what the German philosopher tells about the die Tücke des Objekts. And the more you curse them, the more you use speech figures which insinuate life into them. For instance, "Where has that book hidden itself now? It has walked off and concealed itself somewhere." Or, "The devil is in that watch, where has it gone ?"Objects really take on dangerous qualities with people who are particularly impatient with them: they jump into your eyes, they bite your legs, they creep onto a chair and stick up a point upon which you sit-such things.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 351-352) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
15
" It looks here as if Nietzsche shared the belief of his time, a materialistic conviction that other worlds-metaphysical matters-have no existence except in the imagination of man. He is paying a tribute to his age, not seeing what the imagination of man really means. When anybody says a thing is merely imagination, he is really saying something quite formidable; for whatever our imagination may be, that is our world, unfortunately. [...] For any imagination is a potentiality. The chair upon which I am sitting and the house in which I am, have once been the imagination of a builder; first he made a drawing of it and then he built this house, and if it comes down on my head I shall be crushed. There is nothing in our civilized world which has not been imagination. So imaginations are potential realities, exactly like a loaded revolver, a shot that has not gone off yet; but some ass might pull the trigger and I would be dead.
[...] I am certain, for instance, that the primitives live in an entirely different world from ours; we assume that it is the same, but that is by no means true. They have different impressions, different imaginations about it; it functions in an entirely different way.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 341) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
16
" That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us the plainest parable.
How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones. —
This is a clear description of the Gothic cathedral where you really feel that life itself has become congealed-one could say it was congealed life. It is often compared to a wood or to the branches of a tree; all sorts of animals run up and down those columns and spires. It is wood that has become stone, or spirit that has become incorruptible matter, and the architecture symbolizes the struggle from which it arose. One sees the struggle itself represented in Norman art, in those manifold representations of the fight between man and monsters, particularly. In the Gothic cathedral this conflict is fully developed and fully represented in the enormous height and depth, in the light and the shadow, and in the extraordinary complication of all those architectural forms melting into each other, or fighting one another. It is also expressed in the peculiar arches built outside the church to support the walls inside; it gives one the idea of tremendous tension, of a thing that is almost bursting. When you look, for instance, in Notre Dame in Paris, at the tension of the walls inside supported by the arches, you realize how daring the whole enterprise was-to catch so much spirit in matterand what they had to do in order to secure it. There is no such thing in the Norman cathedrals; they are really made of stone, while in the Gothic cathedrals one begins to doubt the weight of the stone. And a little later one sees the same peculiarity in sculpture. In the cinquecento sculpture of Michelangelo and the later men, they seemed to deny the immobility of the stone; up to that time, stone had been practically immovable, even Greek sculpture, but with Michelangelo, the stone began to move with a surplus of life which is hardly believable. It seems as if it either were not stone or as if something wrong had happened. There is too much life, the stone seems to walk away. It begins to move till the whole thing falls asunder. You see, that is what Nietzsche is describing here. He calls them the divinely striving ones that are no longer striving; they have congealed, they have come to rest.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 1109-1110) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
19
" It is necessary to have metaphysical ideas-we cannot do without them-but it is also necessary to submit them very seriously to the test whether they agree with the human being: a good metaphysical idea does not spoil one's stomach. For instance, if I hold a metaphysical conviction that we live on after death for fifty thousand years instead of fifty million-if that is a solution-! try what it means if I believe in fifty thousand years only; perhaps that is good for my digestion-or bad. You see, I have no other criterion. Of course, it sounds funny, but I start from the conviction that man has also a living body and if something is true for one side, it must be true for the other. For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body. So it is really one and the same thing. Therefore, a good truth must be true for the whole system, not only for half of it. According to my imagination, something seems to be good-it f-its in with my imagination-but it proves to be entirely wrong for my body. And something might apparently be quite nice for the body, but it is very bad for the experience of the soul, and in that case I have a metaphysical enteritis. So I must be careful to bring the two systems together; the only criterion is that both are balanced. When life flows, then I can say it is probably all right, but if I get upset I know something must be wrong, out of order at least.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 355). "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
20
" The deeper the worry, the greater the tragedy becomes, the more he loses himself in the enthusiasm of the divine mania. And that is prepared here. To a man like Nietzsche, gripped by an extraordinary suffering, it is a real consolation when somebody says: "All that terrible trouble which burns you now with the tortures of hell, will come to an end; you will go to sleep and not know what is happening to your body." If you have ever experienced such a state of oblivion in your life, where only your body lives, then you know all the bliss of the Dionysian revelation. And Nietzsche had that revelation.
Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 144) "
― C.G. Jung , Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939 C.G. Jung
