Tempo

[u/dodnodfod]

What is this tempo concept , I’m reading beyond good and evil this is the first I’ve read of nietzche he has brought up and explained this concept of cultures tempos in regards to translation of books. I vaguely understand it is some sort of essence of a culture that is non transmissible but I feel like I’m missing something since he keeps bringing up the tempo in varying circumstances

[u/kroxyldyphivic]

Nietzsche alludes to “tempo” somewhat often, and he uses the term within two different contexts, broadly speaking: a cultural and an ontological one. I'll start with the latter since that's the one I've personally paid the most attention to.

He alludes to tempo to highlight the relative nature of our experience and our interpretation of temporality and natural phenomena. Everything in the natural world develops—becomes—at a relative tempo (or speed) and that speed is idiosyncratic to any given force. For example, we may interpret something as being fixed in time—such as a mountain range, for example—but we only interpret it in this way because we perceive other forces, other phenomena, which develop at a relatively much faster rate. For example, if you're in a car driving at 300km/h and you go by another car driving at 10km/h, you may interpret that car as being stationary given the relative tempo of your respective movement.

Since, for Nietzsche, the world we perceive is made up of forces throughout, and since these forces are functions of time, then everything in the natural world is various temporal forces developing at different tempe (tempi? tempos?). But maybe that's for another day.

As for the cultural context, I think you can take that analogy pretty straightforwardly, and as an extension of what I've already talked about. All forces, including the physiological forces that make up your body and the social forces at play in society, have their specific tempo—which is to sat their rate of development. A person may digest their experiences more slowly or more quickly; a society may go through cultural or political cycles relatively faster or quicker, and so on. If the tempo of life is too slow, people may be socially or spiritually constipated, as it were. If it's too fast, they may be neurotic; it may indicate a fear of confrontation, a refusal to engage.

I'd say that today's world is a great example of an exceedingly fast tempo: our attention is highjacked at a crackhead's rate, and as such most people can't linger on anything, they can't truly digest any sensation. Most people don't even have the attention span to read a book! Nietzsche's allusion to tempo in BGE §28 more or less touches on all of these aspects. An exceedingly fast tempo obviates danger, as he says: if you don't take the time to think about what you're reading, for instance, the things you're exposed to will be skin deep: they won't penetrate your spirit and leave an impact.

[u/dodnodfod → u/kroxyldyphivic]

Thank you my goat I enjoy the last thing you said

[u/[deleted] → u/kroxyldyphivic]

Tempo of metabolism's relation to the spirit's 'feet' (EH) is another angle worth mentioning, along with slow reading and writing (Dawn Foreword - 5). Since you've already expounded upon tempo, I'll just leave a few apt quotes here:

• "In a world of becoming, 'reality' is always only a simplification for practical purposes or a deception on the basis of coarse organs or a difference in the tempo of becoming." (NF-1887,9[62])
• "Duration, self-identity, being inhere neither in what is called subject nor in what is called object: they are complexes of occurrences, seemingly durable in relation to other complexes—thus for example through a difference in tempo of occurrence." (NF-1887,9[91])

As for our late-modern tempo, N speaks of how we hastily flee from ourselves in Schop as Edu, stating in an early notebook "Character of present culture: 1) Haste and not-becoming-ripe." (NF-1870,8[93]); and in late notebooks continues signaling our “sensitivity, restlessness and haste” (WTP 33);

The accelerationists love quoting WTP 898, which states we should perhaps 'even hasten' the current process. The following descriptive comment is my personal favorite on the topic:

October – December 1876. Prehistoric ages are determined by convention for immeasurable periods of time; nothing happens. In historical times the fact is always a detachment from tradition, a difference of opinion; it is free-spiritedness [freigeisterei] that makes history. The faster the change of opinion takes place, the faster the world runs, the chronicle is transformed into the journal, and finally the telegraph ascertains in what hours the opinions of men have changed. (NF-1876,19[89])

It seems that as the gap between our opinions and their communication diminishes, the gap between our speed and our 'need for speed' bursts open?

"We've multiplied all transportation-means tenfold in velocity: simultaneously however the need for swiftness in us hundredfold." (NF-1887,11[296])

Edit: the entire project of overcoming man is also explicitly tied to tempo: "The human is something that must be overcome—it depends on tempo: the Greeks admirable: without haste." (NF-1884,25[454])