Of animals as monsters

Long before I even set off for Southeast Asia, I dealt with the topic of “wild animals.” It was unclear which secluded areas, jungles and swamps we would dive into. So I was concerned with the question of how best to fight a crocodile, what to do in the event of a snake bite, or which would be the most dangerous animal on our journey. According to my research, to my own astonishment, the elephant was high up. This sluggish pachyderm with melancholy eyes and dark circles, which remind me of long awake nights, can mutate into a monster in the appropriate mood. This mood in male elephants is triggered by a testosterone surge, which initiates the reproductive phase known as musth. Musth is derived from the Persian mass (fattening), means something like “under drugs” or “in intoxication” and describes the behavior of the elephant during this period of several months. He is so aggressive that he not only attacks male rivals, but also mammals or innocent objects. So it's no wonder that the thought of suddenly facing a fat elephant on a winding jungle trail with a black secretion running down its temples (a clear sign of the Musth phase) made me shiver. Nevertheless, this knowledge did not deter me from working my way further into the strange thicket of detailed articles.

Good conversation

I plunged into a realm of incredible stories, most dangerous encounters, deadliest poisons, and unusual rescues. And soon after, I had an interesting experience. Rarely has my newly acquired knowledge been as popular in society as it was at that time. For years I had battered my environment with philosophical ideas, tried to get them excited about the difference between “transcendental” and “transcendental,” for the synthetic unity of apperception as a condition of knowledge, or for the secrets of ontological difference. And I would have simply had to tell them something about animals in order to cast a spell on them.

Besides, I have no excuse that it took me so long to learn this. Numerous philosophers complained about this suffering in their works, others complained to their audience. Nietzsche did not remain silent on this topic either. In aphorism 41 of Morgenröthe He even sides with the audience. He writes that philosophers, like religious natures, have always tried “to make life difficult for practical people and possibly to spoil them: darken the sky, extinguish the sun, suspect joy, devalue hopes, paralyze the working hand.”¹. In addition, like artists, philosophers have a bad character and are “mostly indiscriminate, moody, envious, violent, unpeaceful” (ibid.). As if all that wasn't enough, the philosophers also had a third bad quality, and that was the joy of “dialectical [s], the desire to demonstrate,” with which they would have “bored many people” (ibid.).

Nietzsche — we know it — wasn't read enough either, at least not before he fell prey to spiritual abduction, as we Nietzsche researchers say reverently. But he did everything right: he has numerous animals, tigers, snakes, flying animals, camels, lions, cats, eagles, just to name a few.

Tigers

Perhaps, at the beginning of Birth of Tragedy There isn't really much talk about, say, tigers. Tigers and panthers are the Dionysian companion animals during the parade.² But little by little, the tiger gains a character in Nietzsche's philosophy. The tiger is the animal whose center is a great will: tension under pressure, always ready to jump, fight, reach the goal. The tiger, a loner, a predator, cruel and violent.

Despite Nietzsche's preference for the amoral, the tiger doesn't always get off well. Zarathustra, in any case, explains that he doesn't like tiger souls: “He still stands there like a tiger that wants to jump; but I don't like these tense souls, my taste for all of them withdrawn is fiend. ”³

And who, like a tiger, is waiting for the big goal, everything for which Save an act, he runs the risk that he will not succeed in exactly this act. The higher people, whom Zarathustra has been advising for a while, take themselves too seriously in exactly this way. They think that one attempt is everything: “Shy, ashamed, clumsy, like a tiger who failed to jump: well, you higher humans, I often saw you sneaking aside. A throw failed you. ”⁴

There are now only a few tigers left in Southeast Asia. They have already died out in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. The only glimmer of hope is Thailand. But luckily we won't meet anyone. And the only clue to elephants is occasional road signs warning motorists about pachyderms crossing the road. One day, the local population in a village terrified us: We were just about to get dinner when they urgently warned us not to drive through the streets at dusk anymore. The radio reported that a horde of wild elephants is currently roaming the area. Foolhardy (and hunger) nonetheless drives us to search, but after we still haven't found a food stand ten minutes later with a queasy feeling and increasingly anxious looks at the cracking jungle on the right and left of the road, we hurry back to the hostel and comfort our empty stomachs with instant noodles. Fortunately, the danger of dangers remains a phantom for me even this evening.

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Unexpected danger

Much more dominant, as we know after a few days, is a far less exotic animal: the dog. There are numerous dogs in Thailand. They are our absolute favorite pet. There are also a number of wild barkers as well as small and large packs. Thailand's roads (just like Vietnam and Cambodia) rarely have a sidewalk. Life takes place on the streets. Early in the morning, we meet the dogs when they go out patrolling with their legs apart on the side strips that are still empty as masters of the trail. At noon, they lie snoozing in narrow shade. The only things that can get them out of their slumber and into a short, intense sprint are: cyclists. In the afternoon, the Klaeff concerts announce our arrival to the respective hostel owners. Your barking is our constant companion.

The biggest danger is that they come straight at someone shot unseen, as they were previously in the shade. The shock tempts you to turn the handlebars around and make a daring turn into expressway traffic. The second risk: being bitten by them. In fact, the dogs barely seem to know what to do with us once they've caught up with us or even overtaken us. Other motorised two-wheelers simply do not give them such victorious experiences. Her barking becomes more subdued, a raised hand makes her jump away as if from a blow. Only at a safe distance do they announce the claim to power of their local gang again. And then finally, after two or three more loud barks, they troll themselves: “We've shown it to them,” the leader of his gang whispers on their way back.

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A dog's life

Not only in Southeast Asia is the dog much more common than the tiger, but also among Nietzsche. The proverbial life of dogs is miserable and pathetic and, by the way, is quite similar to the lives of many dogs in Thailand. In turn, Nietzsche is concerned with dog life in a figurative sense, because, as we have already guessed with tigers, animals in Nietzsche are more often people, more precisely, types of people.

So who is the type of person who lives a dog's life? Is he perhaps even a philosophical character who, as we have seen, is sometimes not well received in human society? A lonely person, a contemplative spirit who “carelessly lets his talent shoot the reins.”⁵, according to Nietzsche, it can easily happen to him “that he perishes as a human being and lives a ghost life almost exclusively in 'pure science. '” (ibid.) Anyone who suffers from the dialectical tendency already mentioned above to “seek out the pros and cons in things” (ibid.) runs the risk of becoming “crazy about the truth at all” (ibid.), so that he “has to live without courage and confidence” (ibid.) and finally exclaimed: “No dog wants to live that longer! “(ibid.)

Nietzsche nevertheless recommends that a person who is misunderstood and excluded by society remain selectively polite when interacting with others, because “[d] he cynicism in traffic is a sign that in solitude a person himself as a dog treated. ”⁶

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The dog owner

However, it is far more common than you are others who treat you as a dog. And given some quotes from Nietzsche, one could ask whether people not buy a dog primarily in order to be able to treat him as such. The dog owner as a prime example of a person who needs to live out his anger at someone who won't fight back:

For me, these are proud companions who, in order to establish a sense of their dignity and importance, always need others who can dominate and rape them: namely those whose impotence and cowardice allow someone to make sublime and angry gestures before them with impunity! — so that they need the wretchedness of those around them to raise themselves above their own wretchedness for a moment! — This requires some a dog, another a friend, a third a wife, a fourth a party and a very rare person an entire age.⁷

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The dog character

The lonely dog — possibly a philosopher — is now someone completely different from the dog character. Both may have in common that you can insult them with impunity. But the dog character is one who needs his master. Of course, Nietzsche cannot approve such a desire for subordination; no, he is truly not to be counted among dog lovers:

For the sight of an unfree person would deny me my greatest joys; the best would be disgusting to me if someone shared it with me Should, — I don't want to know slaves about me. That's why I don't like the dog either, the lazy, sweat-wagging parasite, who only became “doggy” as a servant of people and of whom they even accuse of being loyal to the Lord and following him like his [shadow] [.]⁸

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Nephila pilipes

Just as Nietzsche, as a hiker, prefers his shadow as a companion and wanders solitary across the Sils Maria forest trails, so we leave our dog companions behind us in the wildly mountainous area of Khao Hua Chang for now. In return, we make acquaintance with another animal, which although not unknown, is an extraordinarily remarkable species of this size — a spider species, in our case the Nephila pilipes or more imaginative in English: Giant Golden Orb-Weaver Spider. The more than palm-sized copy that guards the entrance to our bungalow has a net of over square meters stretched directly above our heads. These nets are so strong that smaller birds are even caught in them and eaten by spiders, while the larger ones, after they have set off, have to go through an extensive cleaning process to remove the remnants of the web that stuck to them. Flying animals should definitely stay away from Nephila's traps.

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The tarantula

The largest spider that Nietzsche could have encountered would probably come from the wolf spider family, such as the Lycosa tarantula (Real tarantula). Although this was and is not native to Engadin, it is native to the Mediterranean region, e.g. in southern Italy and southern France and thus in one of Nietzsches preferred climate zones, as proven by numerous stays. The tarantulas, which in Nietzsche's philosophy include in Zarathustra Occurrence stands for those who preach morality but act out of resentment and envy: “Tarantula! Black sits on your back, your triangle and landmark; and I also know what is in your soul. Revenge is in your soul: wherever you bite, black scurf grows; with vengeance, your poison makes the soul spin! ”⁹ Nietzsche describes them as poisoned beings who consider themselves fair but in reality act out of dark instincts. The inclined Nietzsche reader may associate right and left-wing intellectual reading of any color with tarantulas.

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True women artists

While the wolf spider is one of the spiders that hunt cleverly without a web, ours is Nephila an artist in the art of weaving. Although her structures make a somewhat desolately chaotic impression, she has arrived in the modern age just like us humans and can also enjoy artistic freedom because of me. As we drive through the deserted hilly landscape at dawn, the networks of Nephila Palm trees like power poles on the right and left. Thousands and thousands of spiders and spider webs that catch the light.

According to Nietzsche, we humans are all entangled in our own spider webs. Through our human senses and our human powers of thought, we are locked in a way of perception that only ever makes a part of the world visible and comprehensible to us. We ourselves are the spider whose web can only catch a certain type of prey and we are blind to everything else. This is how we live in our man-made world and have no idea what it actually is beyond human perception:

The habits of our senses have woven us into lies and deceit of perception: these in turn are the basis of all our judgments and “findings” — there is absolutely no escape, no hiding and creeping paths into the real world! We are in our web, we spiders, and whatever we catch in it, we can't catch anything but what is just in our Catch nets.¹⁰

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Captive and free

Our ideas and values and ideals can also be understood as spider webs. As their thinkers and disseminators, we contribute to the networks ourselves, just as we, as people of a culture and a specific period of time, are also the “victims” of existing ones.

By letting Zarathustra recognize the homemade nature of all spider webs, of all ideas — including God — he feels liberated from them. There may still be networks, but instead of a single network from which everything can receive its meaning at all, there may be as many as on the road from Khao Hua Chang to Sichon District: “Oh heaven above me, pure! Higher! That is now your purity for me, that there is no eternal reason spider and spider webs.”¹¹.

In view of the existence of so many webs, Zarathustra believes it is appropriate to clean up thoroughly from time to time, dust off ideals and remove the old spider webs. While Zarathustra diligently cleanses his soul: “Oh my soul, I redeemed you from every angle, I turned dust, spiders and twilight away from you”¹², after we arrive exhausted in our next room, I go to spring cleaning in a very prosaic way.

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Chrysopelea ornata

But what would a trip be without at least a real fright of an animal? In Angkor Wat, I met a snake that disappeared into its hole so quickly that I don't even remember its color. The second snake makes a more casual impression. The bright pattern, which stands out clearly from the bush, makes my gaze linger a little longer on the hose, which has become entangled in the foliage. A pretty, slender snake of yellow-green color, as my razor-sharp eye can tell after a short moment. We stand or hang across from each other, looking at each other before I retreat slowly backwards.

That a priestly enemy like Zarathustra likes snakes probably comes as no surprise. In addition to his eagle, the snake is one of Zarathustra's two symbolic companion animals. It stands for wisdom and science, for the Second Coming and the Devil. Zarathustra often seems to prefer the company of his two animals over human beings, and even in comparison with higher humans, the snake has a more pleasant smell.¹³

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Life-hostile truth

But it would probably not be a Nietzsche book if it were so clear about the snake. There are black, fat snakes that hide in the Valley of Death to die and whose entire mode of existence is linked to a form of life-hostile wisdom. In a nightmarish vision, Zarathustra sees a black snake “in the throat” of a shepherd¹⁴ Crawl to get stuck there. The shepherd threatens to choke on the truth, which the snake symbolizes. The only way to survive is to bite off the snake's venomous head. Devour the truth that threatens to kill you is an appeal that is easier to implement in symbolic images than in reality, I'm afraid.

As I sit on warm stone steps in the evening and look out into the night, I wonder what character my snake might have had. In any case, the bright, hopeful green makes me optimistic. The sighted snake is the Chrysopelea ornata, in English: golden snake. If that's the name for it, it's even more the fact that it's a flightable — alright, sailable — snake that can easily overcome 30 meters by air. A flying snake is almost a dragon, I think to myself and take it as a good omen.

A thinker might accuse me of a tiny bit of superstitious spider web, I must have forgotten when I was mucking out.

The pictures for this article are photographs by the author.

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Footnotes

1: Morgenröthe, Aph 41.

2: Cf. Birth of Tragedy, Paragraph 1 & 20.

3; So Zarathustra spoke, From the exalted.

4: So Zarathustra spoke, From the higher person, 14.

5: Schopenhauer as an educator, paragraph 3.

6: Human, all-too-human II, Mixed opinions and sayings, Aph 256.

7: Morgenröthe, Aph 369.

8: Human, all-too-human II, The Wanderer and His Shadow, Final dialog.

9: So Zarathustra spoke, Of the tarantulas.

10: Morgenröthe, Aph 117.

11: So Zarathustra spoke, Before sunrise.

12: So Zarathustra spoke, Von der große Sehnsucht.

13: Cf. So Zarathustra spoke, The song of melancholy, 1.

14: So Zarathustra spoke, Von Gesicht und Räthsel, 2.