The gods spend their time drinking a drink reserved exclusively for them. We find the sense [of this] in try- ing to live a symbol. The immortal gods spend their time drinking. There are initially two groups of superhumans who struggle to become gods. At stake in the struggle is the drink which renders immortal. So the gods are immortal because they drink. It is the transformation of the natural end, drinking, into an infinite task. If the gods would stop drinking, they would no longer be immortal. The purpose which infinite tasks serve is that only they allow the human being to realize natural ends in a way that will no longer simply be direct. This is why cynicism is anti-philosophi- cal. The cynic must be taken at his word. What allows for the trap? The detour that the cynic sees. It is precisely that the cynic denies the transformation of natural ends into infinite ends. But natural ends are not yet ends of reason. They are values, sentiments which are felt and lived. Then what will we have to call reason? If, for their part, natu- ral ends present themselves for realization, this time it will be infinite tasks which demand to be realized. They will become the proper end of reason. This is what happens when thought commits itself to realizing itself.
Kant and Hegel say that the will contemplates itself or rises to the absolute when it is the will to freedom. In this will to freedom there is the activity of being reasonable, which consists in realizing the infinite task. For Hegel this realization takes place in a history. The grounder is then the one who poses and proposes an infinite task. How does he propose it, and in what order? To ground is to raise nature to the level of history and of spirit. All who pro- pose values to us appeal to a ground.
The ground itself must be grounded.
Taken literally, to ground is to appeal to a ground.
For example: Moses is a grounder, because he brings a religion while claiming it is grounded. It will have to be asked what this bizarre being who appeals to a ground is. Whence the expressions âwell-groundedâ and âill-groundedâ? A new investigation begins: when do we appeal to a ground? When one no longer relates oneâs ac- tivity to himself as an agent.
Values have an extremely ambiguous character. It always seems as if there is a sort of mystification in them (cf. the philosophy of values). The notion of value has been cre- ated by Nietzsche in The will to power. For him there is no truth, there are only evaluations.
Bad temper appeals to a right.
The ground is thus that which will or will not give us the right. It will present itself as the third.
The ground is the third, because it is neither the claim- ant, nor to what he lays claim to, but the instance which will make the claimed yield to the claimant.
As arbiter we use the father who is the third, the ground. But the father can say: complete a test, slay the dragon. What grounds is then the test. Confront- ing the ground is not without danger. The claimants have neither Penelope, nor power.
How to explain that Nature submits to human nature? Hume had thought about this and says: âit is because there is a harmony between the principles of Nature and human natureâ
Whence an amazing formula: âcognition only begins with experience, but it [cognition] does not derive from it [experience]â.16
The ground limits. It imposes a limit on knowledge. If I claim something a priori, without experience, I there- by go beyond the limits of knowledge. And when does one make such a claim? When I do metaphysics.
The enemy of cognition is not just error. It is threatened from within by a tendency, an illusion according to Kant, to go beyond its own limits.
âall consciousness is consciousness of some-thingâ - husserl
âWe claim that there are two ways to appeal to ânecessary destructionsâ: that of the poet, who speaks in the name of a creative power, capable of overturning all orders and representations in order to affirm Difference in the state of permanent revolution which characterizes eternal return; and that of the politician, who is above all concerned to deny that which âdiffers,â so as to conserve or prolong an established historical orderâ (53).
âReal revolutions have the atmosphere of fĂȘtes. Contradiction is not the weapon of the proletariat but, rather, the manner in which the bourgeoisie defends and preserves itself, the shadow behind which it maintains its claim to decide what the problems areâ (268).
âThe more our daily life appears standardised, stereotyped, and subject to an accelerated reproduction of objects of consumption, the more art must be injected into it in order to extract from it that little difference which plays simultaneously between other levels of repetition, and even in order to make the two extremes resonateânamely, the habitual series of consumption and the instinctual series of destruction and deathâ (293).