Cultivating Oneself
Or how to give style to one's character
Nostalgic Ambition
“The very reason [the Greeks] got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to learn from our neighbors as the Greeks learned from theirs: not for the sake of learned pedantry, but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher, than our neighbor.” - F. Nietzsche (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks)
The Renaissance (c. 14th-17th century) was a very peculiar period in European history. It was fundamentally different from the environment we experience today. To put it in rather simplistic terms, it was both a traditionalist and a progressivist period all at once.
Back then, cultural, artistic, political, and economic movements began to burst out of the (somewhat) barren soil of the Middle Ages. This was particularly true across Italy, a land which still held on to a few live coals hidden amidst the rubble of the fallen Roman Empire; coals it used to kindle a Promethean fire that would light the way out of the Dark Ages.
The result was a historical hectare out of which Da Vinci, Galileo, Machiavelli, Columbus, Cervantes, Michelangelo, Raphael, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Brunelleschi, Copernicus, Alberti, Velázquez, Molière, and Bernini, sprung pretty much at the same time.
Think about that for a second. Compare it to our present predicament. Are we certain we are objectively better as a civilization today? Could it be that, at least in some ways, we have gone backwards—or, rather, astray?
If we are to judge a culture by the people it produces, the Renaissance was a more advanced and sophisticated time than ours, and its genial progenies are challenged only by the very civilizations they drew inspiration from: those of Classical Antiquity.
That is no coincidence!
The defining feature latent in all of these glorious ages is that their people did not settle for a naïve “retvrn” to tradition, just like they did not fall prey to deluded progressivism. Instead, they sought to foster progress through tradition. They looked backwards for inspiration, but forwards with determination. They became the holy offspring of nostalgia and ambition, and aimed not only to emulate but to surpass their most worthy ancestors.
Becoming more than its equal: that is how one makes one’s ideal proud!
Uomo Universale
The term ‘Renaissance’ (rebirth) was, as you can imagine, coined a posteriori. The phrase ‘renaissance of the arts’, often used to describe this radiant cultural revival, over time became simply known as the Renaissance. In other words: the Renaissance was, at its core, an artistic phenomenon—and I reckon its greatest artistic productions were not so much made of marble and bronze but of flesh and bone. What we now call ‘Renaissance Men’ were those audacious individuals who had somehow turned themselves into works of art.
One of the greatest reincarnations of this Classical spirit—the spirit of true progress—was a man who proclaimed he could do all things if he willed. His name was Leon Battista Alberti, and his statement would have been the object of ridicule if he weren’t an accomplished architect, writer, poet, scientist, mathematician, cryptographer, painter, horseman, playwright, hiker, linguist, and philosopher.
It is said of Alberti that he was the quintessential Renaissance Man: a man capable of conceiving, planning, and building entire public spaces that would be cherished for generations; only to write about them so beautifully that the fame of his texts would surpass that of his buildings; and with a Latin so perfect that later scholars would confuse it with original Roman work. He was also known to “excel in all bodily exercises”, could “with feet tied, leap over a standing man” and “amused himself by taming wild horses and climbing mountains”.
Alberti's artistry was such that it cannibalized his life. He began by making art and, soon enough, became art himself. The man arranged his life as a beautiful mosaic filled with richness of experience, and his blood carried the spirit of the Uomo Universale, the Universal Man, one who wielded complete personal development, and had learned to shape his nature into a cosmic whole.1
To understand how Alberti (and others) achieved this, we must dig deep into the nature of genius. I’m convinced Alberti’s feats of self-artistry are ultimately symptoms, consequences, side-effects, which inevitably cascade out of the man who learns to cultivate the highest expression of what is natural in him. Alberti’s highest feat was, in my opinion, becoming a skillful servant to the wisdom of his body, a personal prism to the vital force that aches to emanate among the best of men.
Sacred Soil
In his masterful Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche wrote:
“With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by these credulous minds—namely, that a thought comes when ‘it’ wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think.’” - F. Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil) [Emphasis mine]
This “small, terse fact”—a fact you and I have experienced first-hand—stands quietly beneath the entire edifice of Logic, be it that of the Greeks or of later Rationalists who, despite their best efforts, were also condemned to build their “very towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud”, as Descartes ironically claimed.2
If Nietzsche is right, and we do not so much ‘think’ but are rather ‘thought’, then it could be useful to conceive of our ‘conceptual playground’ like a garden from which thoughts and ideas, like plants, emerge without conscious action. It would mean all thought is afterthought, a posteriori justifications that burst out of the soil of our physiology. For the lovers of Greek mythology among you, it would mean the body is a Promethean force, and consciousness an Epimethean one.3
Without needing to fall into materialistic determinism, this would mean every thought you have ever had—every dream, fear, ambition and hope—echoes every meal your ancestors ate, every disease their bodies suffered, every partner they shared a bed with, every stressor they ever faced.
It would mean your entire genetic lineage had a say in what you decided to eat for dinner last night—and, conversely, that what you decided to eat for dinner last night will have a say in the genetic make-up of your offspring.
Genetics may set the rules of our existence, but even the rules themselves bend left and right to the weight of our environment. Our epigenetic condition4 is therefore just as important—and, for all practical purposes, even more important—than the hereditary hand the heavens have dealt us.
In this sense, I personally find it useful to think of my body as a Dionysian entity that melts with its environment. At any moment, I am an assembly of cells and the messages they share between them, but also the room that I find myself in, the air that feeds my lungs, the light that reflects on my skin, the food that touches my tongue, and the people whose eyes I land on.
“I am myself and my circumstances”, said Ortega y Gasset—and he was right! But we must still dig deeper.
Divine Emanation
“Retaining only the smallest remnant of superstition one can still hardly reject the idea of being a mere incarnation, a mere mouthpiece, a mere medium. […] Everything happens involuntarily in the highest degree, yet in a tempestuous feeling of freedom, of being unconditioned, of power, of divinity.” - F. Nietzsche (Ecce Homo) [Emphasis mine]
There was a word in Ancient Greece used to describe those who, like the famous Oracle of Delphi, were thought to be possessed by a god: entheos. From it we get the word ‘enthusiasm’.
Although its original meaning has slowly been corrupted, to be ‘enthusiastic’ about something originally meant much more than being happy or excited; rather, it meant having your body be completely infused by it, as if hijacked by a divine parasite in search of a vehicle to unleash its powers.
Nietzsche knew this enthusiasm very well.
When talking of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his most personal and transcendental work, he described how Zarathustra first “came over him” during his hikes; and that the first part of the book “was conceived in the course of strenuous hiking” with “absolute certainty, as if every sentence were being called out” to him. As a result, in aggregate the whole book was put together in little more than a month.5 He wrote:
“In the summer [of 1833], having returned to the sacred place [Sils-Maria] where the first lightning of the Zarathustra thought had struck me, I found the second part of Zarathustra. Ten days were sufficient; in no case, neither with the first nor with the third and last part, did I need longer.” - F. Nietzsche (Ecce Homo) [Emphasis mine]
The fact that Nietzsche “found” Zarathustra, or that Zarathustra “struck him”, is not an idiosyncratic occurrence. Da Vinci famously said that he didn’t turn blocks of marble into statues, but that the statues were always hidden within them, and his job was that of setting them free. Even outside the realm of the arts, it is well known Isaac Newton seemed to be completely possessed when writing Principia Mathematica, the work in which he put forth his law of universal gravitation.
Instances of such divine emanation are plentiful, and their consequences are terrifying and sublime in equal measure. Could it be that the greatest works in history have not so much been created as they have been discovered? Or, better yet: that it was the works themselves who found their geniuses and used them to come to life, so that its artists were nothing but “a mere incarnation, a mere mouthpiece, a mere medium”—a mere necessity?
Men of Culture
“To ‘give style’ to one’s character—a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.” - F. Nietzsche (The Gay Science) [Emphasis mine]
Let us now return to a simple fact, hopefully with a new set of eyes: namely, that becoming a Renaissance Man means becoming a man of culture.
By ‘culture’ I don’t merely mean being ‘knowledgeable’ of the arts and literature. No, I mean culture in its original sense: as the timeless practice of tending, caring, preparing, cultivating the right conditions for the ways of nature to blossom.
Orchid seeds need no instruction manual: once they are put in the right place, at the right time, under the right circumstances, they cannot help but explode with life. I believe you are no different! You must think of yourself as one of nature’s circuitous ways to unleash its powers through higher and higher specimens. You must become one of those specimens! You must destroy the dam holding back the wisdom of your blood.
To carry out this mission, I believe in setting one’s sights in what we call ‘Renaissance Men’, as they are the highest expression of humanity—the most human of men—and a powerful antidote to the lassitude of the Last Man that now plagues modernity. Men like Alberti, Da Vinci and Montaigne are great examples of it; they are men of power who overflowed with life and did many great things, but we must not limit ourselves to them! There are many other examples throughout history, and we cannot let our innate taxonophilia get in the way of their teachings.
I reckon the first example of a true Renaissance Man lived two thousand years before the Renaissance even happened. Odysseus—whom Homer described as a polytropos, meaning, a “man of many ways”—embodied the differentiation, complexity and self-artistry of higher men. Odysseus was an explorer, a soldier, a craftsman, a sailor, a hunter, an athlete, an adventurer… in short, a complete human being; one who had squeezed every drop of potential his nature had to offer.
I believe this is what Nietzsche meant when he wrote mankind must be “overcome”. We will not overcome it by looking elsewhere; we must look straight in the eyes of its highest specimens and try to emulate and surpass them! Only by becoming most human can humanity ever be overcome. Do you understand this? Only classical aristocracy can lead the way.6
Self-Artistry
“Only in so far as the genius, in the act of artistic production coalesces with the primordial artist of the world does he get a glimpse of the eternal essence of art; for in this state he is in a marvelous manner like the weird picture in the fairy-tale, which can at will turn its eyes and behold itself; he is now simultaneously subject and object, poet, actor, and spectator…” - F. Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy) [Emphasis mine]
Ultimately, what Nietzsche is trying to teach us here is twofold.
First, that only in so far as you become not just an artist but a work of art will your existence be eternally justified. You must think of yourself as the main actor of a cosmic play. You must know you have been tasked with delivering the most beautiful performance; with making every word and every gesture worthy of endless encores; with letting both harmony and dissonance delight in their rightful place.
Second, that we are to our works of art what nature is to us. This is, as he puts it, both a humiliation and an exaltation. Our body of work, genial as it may seem, falls flat when compared to the works of nature; and in so far as we may have achieved stunning artistic creations it’s because we have allowed the “primordial artist” to flow through us, from our restless feet and onto our canvas. In other words: because we have experienced a careful balance between getting out of the way and being the way.
To bring my point home: I reckon to best dispose ourselves to (1) become powerful prisms to this élan vital and (2) justify our existence as an aesthetic phenomenon in which all—virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses—fit into an artistic whole, it is best to think of our highest task as that of cultivating oneself. Only by learning how to cultivate the highest expression of what is natural in us can we get a chance to experience true vitalist enthusiasm and sail with the winds of a storm that feels our own but is the gods’.
The consequence of that—the inevitable consequence for the willing among the few—is becoming a Renaissance Man. A well-gardened self cannot do otherwise.
If you have followed Impero for a while you know my humble attempt at promoting self-artistry involves the practice of what I call “Nurturing Nature.” It involves the development of four key areas:
Vitality: One’s relationship to the body (the physical). Preparing one’s body for war through rigorous training, nutrition, and rest. Becoming the sculpture and the sculptor—the marble and the chisel.
Sovereignty: One’s relationship to oneself (the psychological). Building character, insight, discipline and resilience. Getting to know one’s deepest motivations and structuring one’s life around them.
Wisdom: One’s relationship to knowledge (the intellectual). Incorporating the timeless wisdom of history, philosophy, literature and art. Living a deeply educated and sophisticated life.
Influence: One’s relationship to others (the social). Speaking one’s mind clearly and persuasively to foster valuable, genuine, and exciting relationships with likeminded people.
These virtues represent our very own quadrivium. My idea is to turn it into an actionable framework, a necessary evil that you can use in your day-to-day life to create an environment most conducive to waking up your inner Renaissance Man.
I want Impero to be a ‘No!’ to the hyper-specialized demands of the modern world, and a loud ‘Yes!’ to the eager polytropos that lives within you. As time goes on—and if you seem receptive to it—I will expand on each of the branches with added content.
If you have made it this far: thank you. I hope these ideas, unclear as they may still be, have made you feel a warmth inside of you you thought extinguished. If it is so, my friend, let it fill you… and fear not getting burned! Within you live embers aching to bring death and life. Together we will set up camp on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius!
Note that the Greek term for ‘cosmos’ (kosmos), besides referring to the vast firmament, implies an inherent beauty and order. After all, it is the same root of the word ‘cosmetics’.
“We really ought to free ourselves from the misleading significance of words! The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: ‘When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I KNOW what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps 'willing' or 'feeling'? In short, the assertion 'I think,' assumes that I COMPARE my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; on account of this retrospective connection with further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for me.’" - F. Nietzsche (Beyond Good & Evil)
Prometheus is the genius god of foresight (a fore-thinker), whereas his dumb brother, Epimetheus, is the god of hindsight (an after-thinker).
Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can change the way your genes manifest themselves.
With this I don’t mean to say anyone can be a vehicle for divine inspiration. Each of Zarathustra’s parts may have been completed in less than ten days, but the whole book is “an explosion of forces that have been accumulating for decades.”
The word ‘aristocracy’ comes from the Greek aristoi, meaning ‘the best’. They were also called kalokagathos, meaning ‘the beautiful and virtuous’. When I speak of aristocracy here I do not mean mere men de l’épée; I mean it in the classical sense: I speak of gifted warriors, of “the fewest”, as Nietzsche called them, of those who confuse reality with perfection and see the burdens that would crush others as recreation.
Beautifully written. Great advices, and wonderful passages.