P.P's Dream part I B #2

[Michael D. Workman]

Nietzsche's "spirit of gravity" should also be mentioned in this context.

http://www.itd.umich.edu/~alexboko/zar/third/third55.html

At 02:19 PM 8/22/99 -0400, you wrote:
>P.P's Dream Part I B #2  (to read part I A--second
>industrial
>revolution, go to archives and type "Mumford") I will refer
>to Part I B #1-Aug.20th and a string of dream quotes from
>Pynchon along the way. 
>
> "And to be honest, I haven't your resistance to this Wind.
>It is driving me insane." Mason, M&D.173
>
>Returning to REALITY, Nietzsche and Freud and Pirate's
>dream.
>
>"Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real
>is illusion?"  (GR.165)
>
>Nietzsche's statement that  "man believed that he was
>discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the
>origin of all metaphysics," is consistent with the reality
>presented by his text. We can say that reality as
>encountered or perceived by us is NOT reality, since our
>encounter or perception of it involves a contribution from
>ourselves as well as from the object. (1)
>Following this view of reality, what is really real is the
>object as it is in itself, apart from its effect on us.
>Primary qualities (those that are really in the object),
>must then be distinguished from secondary qualities (those
>that are nothing in the objects themselves but the power to
>produce effects in us by their primary qualities). In the
>examples I am working with-the texts of Nietzsche and
>Freud-- reality lies NOT in the effect on us (this would be
>an Existential Reality), but in that which has the power to
>produce effects on us. The world as it appears is the
>manifestation of this underlying reality. This is what is
>called a "Material Reality" or what Duns Scotus calls, an
>Entitive Reality, or a Substrative -Gk, hupokeimenon, Lat,
>substratum-reality. Note that Plato denies that appearances
>are themselves the true reality, but Plato, rather than
>treat these appearances as manifestations of an underlying
>or material reality, treats them as intimations of a
>transcendent reality.   
>
>
>So turning to Pirate's Mutual Dream, with Freud and Nietzche
>in mind we can now consider the traditional dichotomy
>between dreams and reality, conscious and unconscious. 
>
>"Franz loved films but this was how he watched them, nodding
>in and out of sleep." (GR.159)
>
>
>What are we to make of Nietzsche's claim about dreams and
>the origin of metaphysics, ghosts, and gods? Nietzsche
>accounts for consciousness by means of the material
>realities that underlie it. In 'The Gay Science,' Nietzsche
>surmises that consciousness has come about or developed from
>the necessity to communicate. He argues that from the
>get-go, communication was useful to humans (particularly
>between those in control and those controlled or ruled) and
>that it developed only in proportion to the degree of this
>need or its utility. For Nietzsche, conscious meanings that
>arise from the need to communicate are superficial. "Man,
>like every living being, thinks continually without knowing
>it, the thinking that arises to consciousness is only the
>smallest part of this-the most superficial and worst
>part-for only this conscious thinking takes the form of
>words, which is to say signs of communication, and this fact
>uncovers the origin of consciousness." So the world of which
>we become conscious is merely a surface-and sign-world. (2)
>Again, in 'Gay Science,' Nietzsche, "Owing to the nature of
>animal consciousness, the world of which we can become
>conscious is only a surface-and sign-world, a world that is
>made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes
>by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general,
>sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great
>and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to
>superficialities, and generalizations."    
>
>
>(1) Reading GR we are familiar with the problem of the
>influence of the observer, as it is concerns various
>scientific and social science theories. 
>(2) Signs, surfaces, and we can add symptoms (see GR.P.
>136-144, Ch.17, Pointsman's  "mutual dream") or the
>effect-existential reality.  
>
>TBC with Nietzsche 'Beyond Good and Evil' -"mere foreground
>estimates" and Freud's interpretations Not of dreams, but as
>he tells us in that famous study, of "thoughts which are
>shown by the work of interpretation to lie behind dreams." 
>
>TF
>
>
Cheers,

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