Nietzsche and Modern Mountaineering - Wilfrid Noyce

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Messages 1 - 59 of total 59 in this topic
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Original Post - Jun 27, 2010 - 01:20pm PT
Wilfrid Noyce has long been a thinking man's mountaineer. He authored this engaging and wonderful collection of writings from other similarly minded gentlemen. This chapter on Nietzsche I found to be particularly interesting.












tuolumne_tradster

Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
Jun 27, 2010 - 03:44pm PT
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
Peter Haan

Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
Jun 27, 2010 - 04:08pm PT
Thanks SG. Another great contribution from the Grossman-deGravelle Library!! You are regular salt mill!

This volume was published in 1950, by the way. In the introduction he notes why he has chose these men (Dante, Petrarch, Rousseau, Ferdinand de Saussure, Goethe, Wordsworth, Keats, Ruskin, Leslie Stephen, Nietzsche, Pope Pius XI and Robert Falcon Scott) to write about:

[...] each has made his particular contribution to a certain feeling in us, a feeling which would not be quite the same had these men not lived. Without their example, our appreciation and exertions among hills would be the weaker
Dirka

Trad climber
SF
Jun 27, 2010 - 04:26pm PT
An overlooked area of philosophy. Thanks for posting it up!
Peter Haan

Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
Jun 27, 2010 - 04:28pm PT
Rad! Look! there goes StevieG, off in the stacks to find that volume now! We shall see it posted anon! Some of us may have missed this early peek of Mimi and Steve's new library--- a couple of years back. I was one of the first in there and luckily took a pano series:


M dG and Stevie share this one but Mimi has her own just off the bedroom--- its a bit more Benedictine in design I guess and quite a bit more floral--- those Louisiana French roots of hers:

Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2010 - 04:29pm PT
"First published in Great Britain in MCML..." Classic!
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 27, 2010 - 04:52pm PT
Destined to spend eternity as a truncated voice on a refrigerator magnet...

Even Fred himself would have to be bleaked out by that ignoble twist of modernism! LOL
Mungeclimber

Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
Jun 27, 2010 - 06:07pm PT
Nietzsche was asking for it due to his primarily aphoristic style.




Interesting bit of an article. A little off in that it wasn't Nietzsche that marshalled his later notes for use by Hitler, so the thematic implied that Nietzsche was a cause of german mountaineering I think is flawed.

My WW history is not so good, so I will just ask whether German and Italian control over vast areas of territory lead more to German and Italian nationalistic ascents than any other nations during that time, than did the spirit of the age, if we can even say that Nietzsche had an influence that wide spread at that time.

I think his influence is more profoundly felt in post modern literature and critical theory and history than elsewhere, but FWIW, I'm out of touch with academia these days.


I'd like to hear KLK's thoughts on this.
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 30, 2010 - 05:54pm PT
A curious philosophical bump in the road!
Mighty Hiker

climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Jun 30, 2010 - 06:01pm PT
Noyce's "The Springs of Adventure" is also quite good, or if you like quite noyce. He was quite an interesting man, and very literary. His books are quite readable, which perhaps reflects his education, and his work as headmaster at a distinguished boy's private school. Noyce may be the only person ever to have written a poem at the south col of Chomolungma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Noyce
Thomas

Trad climber
The Tilted World
Jun 30, 2010 - 06:32pm PT
Awesome. Would you be willing to post the Goethe chapter? That might be insightful.

Thanks for sharing. Cheers!
cintune

climber
the Moon and Antarctica
Jun 30, 2010 - 07:38pm PT
Passed this on to a friend and Nietzsche scholar who pointed out that Noyce doesn't mention Aleister Crowley, who was probably the most Nietzschean alpinist of his day.
Thomas

Trad climber
The Tilted World
Jul 1, 2010 - 11:05pm PT
Bump for good reading!
Jaybro

Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
Jul 2, 2010 - 12:43am PT
I can't even recall the number of super climbers who have fondled a horse shortly before loosing it all.....
Jaybro

Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
Jul 2, 2010 - 03:34pm PT
I know, and I just got a big haulbag, too....
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 10, 2010 - 11:25am PT
Big enough to hold all the classics?!?

As requested, Noyce's take on the the Big G, Goethe.












Thomas

Trad climber
The Tilted World
Jul 10, 2010 - 06:14pm PT
Thank you sir!

Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 12, 2010 - 10:41pm PT
I wonder if Noyce knew about his VD?
Steve L

Gym climber
SUR
Jul 16, 2010 - 04:19pm PT
Wow, very cool. Funny, I was cleaning out a bunch of crap from my apartment a couple of days ago and came across a box of old books. It had my hard back copy of Zarathustra in it, which I haven't read in 20 years. That was long before I started climbing. Now I'm motivated to re-read it from a very different perspective. Thanks for posting.
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 24, 2013 - 06:20pm PT
Philosophical bump...
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Mar 24, 2013 - 06:36pm PT

Seeking the source for the romantic interest in mountain climbing as an act of pleasure, really leads to JJ Rousseau.
Also... you really have to hand it to Steve Grossman for creating some of the most interesting threads on this website!
cintune

climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
Mar 24, 2013 - 07:17pm PT
Mungeclimber

Trad climber
the crowd MUST BE MOCKED...Mocked I tell you.
Mar 24, 2013 - 08:09pm PT
Cintune, where did you get that image?
cintune

climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
Mar 24, 2013 - 08:16pm PT
Made it a long time ago, finally found a place to use it. I think the guy with the rope came from an early subscription card from Alpinist, or maybe a membership card from the AAC, or somewhere. The painting is Wanderer in a Sea of Cloud, by Caspar David Friedrich, it was actually painted 25 years before Nietzsche was born.
murcy

Gym climber
sanfrancisco
Mar 24, 2013 - 08:18pm PT
Awesome! Grossman comes through with the content again.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 26, 2013 - 06:00pm PT
Nietzsche Haus at Sils Maria
[Click to View YouTube Video]

"Philosophy:
Living voluntarily among ice and high mountains
seeking out anything strange and questionable in existence
everything so far placed under a ban by morality
The ice is near, the solitude tremendous
but how serenely all things lie in the light,
how freely one breaths,
how much one feels lies beneath oneself"


The Nietzsche News Center: http://www.nietzsche-news.org/index.php?page=/nnc/home

Donini
Yes, it's dense... "dichtung" in German... making dense. I find dichtung admirable and usually I prefer it to the twitterung and facelooking of today. No anger involved though ... it is as it is. And after all I'm primarily a sport climber... Lol...
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 26, 2013 - 06:21pm PT
Dense.......climbing then was so philosophical....now it's mostly physical.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Mar 26, 2013 - 06:56pm PT
Jim, when are you going to come clean about your Faustian bargain?
If it would compromise you in any way then never mind.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Mar 26, 2013 - 07:00pm PT
Hell fire is waiting....would rather be with my friends anyway.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Mar 26, 2013 - 07:01pm PT
Yeah, what ever happened to the philosopher climber? I remember them in the 60s and early 70s and then it seems climbing began to focus so much on athleticism and a more competitive sense of achievment... though, not to be philosophical, that may just be my subjective experience.
McHale's Navy

Trad climber
Panorama City, California & living in Seattle
Mar 27, 2013 - 12:12am PT
Will To Power is an interesting set of words. I'm going to morf it into Will To Action for my own needs. Sometimes we need to activate our will in consistent doses to kickstart action. That can evolve into a sense of power but that goes with the territory.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Dec 1, 2013 - 02:52pm PT

"Freedom and Individualism On The Rocks" by Dane Scott in "Climbing Philosophy For Everyone" on Wiley Blackwell (Editor: Fritz Allhoff)
 the examples used: "The Bachar-Yerian" (Bachar and Yerian), "To Bolt Or Not To Be" (Alan Watts, J-B Tribout) and "The Path" (Sonnie Trotter)
goatboy smellz

climber
लघिमा
Aug 22, 2014 - 11:44am PT
Unpacking some books I haven't seen in 10 years and good old Alan Watts popped up.
Kind of relevant to climbing or maybe something bigger.



All your five senses are differing forms of one basic sense—something like touch. Seeing is highly sensitive touching. The eyes touch, or feel, light waves and so enable us to touch things out of reach of our hands.

Similarly, the ears touch sound waves in the air, and the nose tiny particles of dust and gas. But the complex patterns and chains of neurons which constitute these senses are composed of neuron units which are capable of changing between just two states: on or off.

To the central brain the individual neuron signals either yes or no — that’s all. But, as we know from computers which employ binary arithmetic in which the only figures are 0 and 1, these simple elements can be formed into the most complex and marvelous patterns.

In this respect our nervous system and 0/1 computers are much like everything else, for the physical world is basically vibration. Whether we think of this vibration in terms of waves or of particles, or perhaps wavicles, we never find the crest of a wave without a trough or a particle without an interval, or space, between itself and others.

In other words, there is no such thing as a half wave, or a particle all by itself without any space around it. There is no on without off, no up without down.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/27/alan-watts-taboo/
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Aug 22, 2014 - 12:02pm PT

The philosopher king

“The problem now is how to lose me..” (Nietzsche, Turin, 4th January 1889)

Here your peregrination ends. No more borders
to cross; no more mountains to scale. The night train
steams through the sleeping Alps, rattling you home.
You chant the Gondola Song; slump under drugs.

In the house of the mad you ramble in French,
eat like a Titan, smash windows, scrawl in the dust.
Every deep spirit wears a mask –
but now the actor’s dead, the mask of insanity
is stuck in your face, a permanent grimace.

Soon your sister will crown you philosopher king,
dress you in white, comb your walrus moustache,
place you in a high chair, powder your skin.

Each morning from the high veranda
you gaze towards Buchenwald and the swastika sun.
The steel light chisels the distant pines.
Your posthumous life has already begun.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Aug 22, 2014 - 05:00pm PT
Wow, awesome bit of film...
cintune

climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
Aug 22, 2014 - 07:16pm PT
Fitting music too.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Todd Eastman

climber
Bellingham, WA
Aug 22, 2014 - 11:13pm PT
Noyce needed an editor...
goatboy smellz

climber
लघिमा
Aug 23, 2014 - 12:40pm PT
^^^ Don't we all.
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Aug 23, 2014 - 12:56pm PT
Extraordinary piece of film---had no idea Nietzsche had ever been captured on film.
Hideous soundtrack on that version however, with absolutely no evocative connection whatsoever with the great German philosopher.
cintune

climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
Aug 23, 2014 - 05:34pm PT
I thought the evocative connection was more in line with the images of the poor syphilitic shell of the great German philosopher. Remarkable that Elspeth allowed anyone to film that, for sure.
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Aug 23, 2014 - 11:18pm PT
To me that piece of film and the music that accompanies it is perfect. The singular pinnacle of Romanticism in the throes of an inevitable madness willed by an ultimately violent, chaotic and mysterious universe assuring the reasoned mind its own perfect nobility... if only Gericault had been alive to paint his portrait.
Peter Haan

Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
Aug 24, 2014 - 11:09am PT
Ojai, that definitely was one of the great paeans of the Romantic era.
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Aug 24, 2014 - 11:22am PT
Spectacular find Marlow!

Plenty of clarity for a climber to appreciate in the mind of Fred.

"The secret of knowing the most fertile experiences and the greatest joys in life is to live dangerously."
goatboy smellz

climber
लघिमा
Aug 28, 2014 - 06:08pm PT
Another good one from Mr. Watts.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Mar 7, 2015 - 01:49pm PT
The bump from within...
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Jun 29, 2015 - 12:18pm PT

The Wanderer

Then, when it was about midnight, Zarathustra went his way over the ridge of the isle, that he might arrive early in the morning at the other coast; because there he meant to embark. For there was a good roadstead there, in which foreign ships also liked to anchor: those ships took many people with them, who wished to cross over from the Happy Isles. So when Zarathustra thus ascended the mountain, he thought on the way of his many solitary wanderings from youth onwards, and how many mountains and ridges and summits he had already climbed.

I am a wanderer and mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long sit still.

And whatever may still overtake me as fate and experience — a wandering will be therein, and a mountain-climbing: in the end one experienceth only oneself.

The time is now past when accidents could befall me; and what COULD now fall to my lot which would not already be mine own!

It returneth only, it cometh home to me at last — mine own Self, and such of it as hath been long abroad, and scattered among things and accidents.

And one thing more do I know: I stand now before my last summit, and before that which hath been longest reserved for me. Ah, my hardest path must I ascend! Ah, I have begun my lonesomest wandering!

He, however, who is of my nature doth not avoid such an hour: the hour that saith unto him: Now only dost thou go the way to thy greatness! Summit and abyss — these are now comprised together!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: now hath it become thy last refuge, what was hitherto thy last danger!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: it must now be thy best courage that there is no longer any path behind thee!

Thou goest the way to thy greatness: here shall no one steal after thee! Thy foot itself hath effaced the path behind thee, and over it standeth written: Impossibility.

And if all ladders henceforth fail thee, then must thou learn to mount upon thine own head: how couldst thou mount upward otherwise?

Upon thine own head, and beyond thine own heart! Now must the gentlest in thee become the hardest.

He who hath always much-indulged himself, sickeneth at last by his much– indulgence. Praises on what maketh hardy! I do not praise the land where butter and honey — flow!

To learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM oneself, is necessary in order to see MANY THINGS:— this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber.

He, however, who is obtrusive with his eyes as a discerner, how can he ever see more of anything than its foreground!

Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 11, 2017 - 07:08pm PT
Philosophical Bump...
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Feb 19, 2017 - 08:25am PT

Beyond Good and Evil

"In the house of pain, we were chained together searching for our truth, beyond good and evil". This quote from Nietzsche inspired Andy Parkin and Mark Twight, the openers of this mixed climbing route, that became a reference. Listed extremely difficult, North oriented, this route was appealing for François Damilano and François Marsigny, the repeaters of the route.
Last winter (2013-14), it was time for the up-and-coming generation, represented by Marion Poitevin and Sébastien Ratel to meet the challenge. Three duos, three experiences, three encounters… echoing the Trilogy alpine series.

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Steve Grossman

Trad climber
Seattle, WA
Topic Author's Reply - Feb 20, 2017 - 10:53am PT
Thanks for sharing that amazing video!

Proud effort by all three parties and some great footage. I wish I spoke French. Twight should have this translated by now.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 29, 2018 - 08:47am PT

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Modern World

[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Feb 27, 2019 - 01:12pm PT

Sils Maria 1906

Sils Maria 1920-50

Silvaplana

Oberengadin with St Moritz, Silvaplana and Sils Maria
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 4, 2019 - 01:37pm PT

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen: Nietzsche in America
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 5, 2019 - 08:45am PT

As Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche says more about Heidegger than about Nietzsche, Another's reading of Heidegger says more about Another than about Heidegger... The political Heidegger was a nazi who wanted to trust a man with hands like Hitler's. Why Another brings with him nude nazis to a Nietzsche thread is beyond my imagination...
capseeboy

Social climber
portland, oregon
Mar 5, 2019 - 10:51am PT
Why Another brings with him nude nazis to a Nietzsche thread is beyond my imagination...

The same imagination that adopted Seven Years in Tibet into a romantic Hollywood screen play?
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 5, 2019 - 01:53pm PT

I will not try to argue you out of your general opinion. I agree with you that Heidegger's philosophy isn't nazi philosophy, it's philosophy, but there's moments in his philosophy that must have eased his way into nazi politics and not only his human all too human opportunism. Two of the ideas are "Das Volk" and "Polemos".
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Mar 5, 2019 - 02:05pm PT

There's books written about his use of the terms. Not my research...
Kalimon

Social climber
Ridgway, CO
Mar 5, 2019 - 08:55pm PT
Great thread here Steve, thank you.
MikeL

Social climber
Southern Arizona
Mar 6, 2019 - 08:25am PT
Todd Eastman: Noyce needed an editor...

I couldn't agree more. The original article the OP posted wanders. It's not easy to see what was being claimed or argued (a little bit of this and a little bit of that). Poetry or philosophy, I guess, as was much writing in those days (as Donini said).

In older times, climbing was almost always connected with a spiritual calling of sorts. Today? Very little I would guess.
tuolumne_tradster

Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
Mar 6, 2019 - 11:59am PT
Definitely one of the best threads on ST right now...

For those who might be interested, John Gray's 2018 book "Seven Types of Atheism" is an interesting read.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/15/seven-types-of-atheism-john-gray-review-richard-harries


One is the idea of automatic progress. For a monotheist, there is a telos, an ultimate purpose in human history, even if it lies beyond time. Without this faith in God, however, history is going nowhere. Yet most recent forms of atheism have substituted faith in humanity for faith in God and assumed that with the aid of science life will get better. So for Gray most of these forms of atheism are a form of repressed religion. There is no such entity as humanity, only the endless variety of human beings with their different trajectories and what we term civilization is as likely to collapse as be improved on; there is certainly no prospect of a utopian political order, an idea that again owes everything to religion

Needless to say, Gray is a pessimist regarding human nature and a critic of modern liberalism. From his Wikipedia page...
Furthermore, he argues that this belief in progress, commonly imagined to be secular and liberal, is in fact derived from an erroneous Christian notion of humans as morally autonomous beings categorically different from other animals. This belief, and the corresponding idea that history makes sense, or is progressing towards something, is in Gray's view merely a Christian prejudice

Here's Grays concluding remarks...
None of these fantastical creatures has been seen by human eyes

Obviously, Gray had not seen "Free Solo" when he wrote that...;-)
Messages 1 - 59 of total 59 in this topic
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