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Mockingbird · Moderator Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Hello everyone!
I just heard about the philosopher Nieztche and I thought why is he so important? Why do people like him? It interest me to read his works....
First of all I want your opinions
Thanks

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

As quickly as I can, off the top of my head, in my own words:

Nietzsche spoke of the UBERMAN or superman. Such thoughts were taken up by the Germans, and the Nazi party, and used for their own purposes during World War II, and in part were used to justify genocide.

Nietzsche suffered from mental illness. His illness affected his writings and thoughts.

Nietzsche spoke through the character of Zarathustra, who was the founder of the Zoroastrians (Parsis)... but what Nietzsche wrote was not a reflection of Zoroastrianism.

Nietzsche was a sort of rebel, and iconoclastic, attacking the values of the ages and cultures with preceeded.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

(... to be continued, as i find time, during the next few hours)

Mockingbird · Moderator Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Thanks for the information, Do you think he was right? Do you agree with him?

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I probably have much more to say,... I was just trying to find some spare minutes to slip in comments, during the day.... I will not have major time to think or respond until evening or weekend.

With advances in genetic engineering, we stand on the brink of the ability to have "designer" humans, much has we now have designer jeans.

Whether we choose to alter basic human genetics will be a monumental choice which will have monumental consequences.

I did want to mention that, several years ago I was browsing in a very large book store which has a very large section on philosophy, and I was surprised to see that one entire shelf was filled with books about Nietzsche. Those books far outnumbered books there on any other philosopher. This demonstrated to me that there is a tremendous interest in Nietzsche among the general reading public.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Nietzsche would seem to be saying that the self-critique of the will to
truth (or science) must ground itself out, if you will, in its own
understanding of itself as forming a "concealed will to death." The stages
are the uncovering of will to truth as: 1) a moral faith, 2) a will to
death, 3) as will to power/will of life.

Alternatively, he might be interpreted as opposing them. That is, the will
to truth _might_ be a concealed will to death, but need not necessarily be
so. The will to truth might just as easily be associated with the will to
life, I suppose. The question would be whether it was expressive of
descending or ascending life, etc. Activity vs. reactivity. Still, I think
that dialectics are necessarily negational, is a subtraction from, rather
than an adding up of a whole. Action is active, in other words. Thought is
always reactive.

The key here, I think, is the notion that there can be no self-standing
perspective (no perspective in itself), but rather that anything that may=
be termed a perspective (or vantage point) can only do so on the basis of its relation to other, presupposed perspectives.

But the world in which we live (of which we are a
part) is an essential ambiguity. Nietzsche, for instance, asserts that all
our values cohere to qualities, not quantities, except in the sense that
quantity, itself, might be said to be a quality. Qualities, however, are
essentially incalculable. The background disappears into the incommensurate, in other words.

i'm not sure that the background disappears into the
incommensurate or into what heid calls Being. but either
way we're talking about the same thing, whether we
describe it as undescribable or as Big B, which is
"the disclosed undisclosing" and so on. and the suggestions
about qualities, quantities and values mystifies me as to
its meaning within the groundlessness of nietzsche's
"background."

Except, once again, the "background" cannot be conceived as existing apart from the foreground. In terms of a multiplicity of perspectives, one
perspective's foreground would be another's background, etc.
Contextualization here is simply the relation of a perspective to other
perspectives, and not to something that is, itself, not a perspective.
Context, however, is ambiguous specifically because it cannot be said to
comprise every perspective, but only those perspectives which are necessary
to (presupposed by) the foreground perspective, so to speak, which would be
different for every perspective, I can only assume.=20

And one should have qualms. That is the will to truth, or skepticism, at
work. But to extend our skepticism to the very grounds for that=
skepticism, that would also be skepticism at work. The circular question here, it seems to me, must come back to the question of morality. As Nietzsche puts it in GS344, "Thus the question "Why science?" leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are 'not moral'?"

Nihilism is the collapse of moral authority, in other words. How might
morality, itself, be revalued, regrounded, in other words?

as you know, this is beyond scepticism, this
is the circularity and perspectival essence of
the horizons of human understanding.

i am not sure about "morality"
but my first reaction is, whoa...

Nietzsche posits "morality" as the _sumum bonum_ of a particular group,
society, people, etc. If morality is to be revalued, in the wake of the
collapse of any kind of absolute authority for morality, it can only be on
the basis of something along the lines of the "enhancement of the human
type," for instance. But no moral code could be said to apply universally to
all types--each type would have its own morality, in other words. On the
higher levels, it seems to me, morality would simply be dissolved into
ethics, while on the lower...

Alternatively, he might be interpreted as opposing them. That is, the will
>to truth _might_ be a concealed will to death, but need not necessarily be
>so. The will to truth might just as easily be associated with the will to
>life, I suppose. The question would be whether it was expressive of
>descending or ascending life, etc. Activity vs. reactivity. Still, I think
>that dialectics are necessarily negational, is a subtraction from, rather
>than an adding up of a whole. Action is active, in other words. Thought is
>always reactive.
>

I would try to put this in more everyday terms: building a house,
hammering, sawing, even chalk-lining, measuring, plumbing, etc.
are activities, and most primordial "perspectives." The "theoretical
thinking" that goes into these activities is the always-already reactive
perspectives (of what heid. calls the abstract "present-at-hand").

for nietzsche to continue to mix these misses something important.
my 'perspective' on this, then, is that neitz. does have a metaphysical
notion of human life and his 'morality' grounds this metaphysics. he
has ascendancies and descendancies. he has a spiritual energy that
urges 'life' over 'death.' whereas, heid. stays within a simple
phenomenological understanding that we are always ultimately
being-towards-death. death is our ultimate and ownmost possibility.
how to live authentically within that alignment is all there is for heid,
and for all perspectives' qualities and quantifications we have. the
background is always a holism of practical activities that are always already
moving us, individually, towards death. further speculations about an
individual's "will to life" or species' "will to life" is metaphysics.

>As long as we do not mistake this holism for something that is separate from
>the perspectives themselves. It is other perspectives which are presupposed,
>not something that is not, itself, a perspective. This is where Peirce jumps
>into the picture, with his notion of synechism.
>

i believe the holism is separated from the perspectives-an-sich,
because the perspectives are not, never an-sich. the perspectives
are only separable in a step-back, theoretical, analysis which turns
the perspective into a theory. that 'reactive' action removes the
perspective from its shared background authenticity. you then
have to begin making moves such as what you describe in the
following...

>Another problem is that both suppositions (perspectives) and presuppostions
>(also perspectives) are essentially logical in character, or at least the
>relation between them, by means of which they may be said to gain any degree
>of uniqueness or definition, are. The assertion of anything resembling a
>perspective is dependent upon logical grounds. Perspectivism is grounded, in
>other words, in a prior reduction, in the equating of the inequatable. On
>the assertion of identical cases. Prior to such a movement, no such thing as
>a perspective is possible.
>

you have a *formal* holism of perspectives that is ultimately
grounded on logic, or "reason," i.e., some sense-making formal
laws and rules with which you have to "glue" perspectives together.
you have chosen a "formal place" to stand and make a claim about
the holism, clarifying the hermenutical circle, but clinging to a formal
ground. this is what i would call, for wont of better, "cartesian ontology."

from heidigger., the perspectives are a mosaic of cultural practices and skills
that form a practical holism, ungrounded except in that they fit together
for a culture; they are inter-involved dynamically, and change thru time
(what we call "history"). the flow of perspectives is exactly opposite the
one you infer: the perspectives are ultimately learned or "picked-up"
cultural practices that involve little or no formal, logical, or rule-based
cognition; in fact, the more culturally skilled we become, the less formal,
and rule-based we are and the larger the "tacit" understanding becomes.

this view includes the notorious "ontological difference" to wit:
the principle of identity (or non-identity), the ground of logic,
is always being applied "after the fact"-- the practical cultural
practices always first ground the (reactive) formal understanding
of the (current) principle of identity. to ground, as Hegel does
(& presumably Peirce and Neitz. in *different* ways) the perspectives
in logic, is to miss the flow of certainty which is grounded in know-how
(cultural practices/skills) and only then reactively perceived in know-what.

>Except, once again, the "background" cannot be conceived as existing apart
>from the foreground. In terms of a multiplicity of perspectives, one
>perspective's foreground would be another's background, etc.
>Contextualization here is simply the relation of a perspective to other
>perspectives, and not to something that is, itself, not a perspective.
>Context, however, is ambiguous specifically because it cannot be said to
>comprise every perspective, but only those perspectives which are necessary
>to (presupposed by) the foreground perspective, so to speak, which would be
>different for every perspective, I can only assume.
>

so here, you have the linkages being formal, logical ones that relate a
formal logically grounded background to a formally & logically
explainable foreground, and there becomes really no difference
between foreground and background. in this story, the distinctions
are (again) formal, logical, and dependent on the "perspective of the
perspective" as deduced logically so as to ascertain a formal background
from a formal foreground.

from heid, the background very much "exists" apart from the
foreground. the foreground is mostly zen-like activities of attunement
with the environment thru cultural skills and practices that
enable such attuned activities in our historical epoch. we just go about
our business doing what we have to do to cope with and care for
the current epoch's environmental possibilities---what we call our
world. most of us, most of the time, are not aware of the multiple,
micro-changes going on throughout the culture which continually
change the environment, subtly and continuously changing our
given perspectives. the linkages of the perspectives is dynamically
involved with the transformations of the culture. and these
transformations are fashioned practically and not theoretically.

Nietzsche posits "morality" as the _sumum bonum_ of a particular group,
society, people, etc. If morality is to be revalued, in the wake of the
collapse of any kind of absolute authority for morality, it can only be on
the basis of something along the lines of the "enhancement of the human
type," for instance. But no moral code could be said to apply universally to
all types--each type would have its own morality, in other words. On the
higher levels, it seems to me, morality would simply be dissolved into
ethics, while on the lower...

Nietzsche does "posit" morality, because he is still hooked to
the cartesian ontology: he has traditional logic & morality because---
tho he has mostly dispensed with the Subject, transforming
it by his tenet of "will to power"---he still has the subject/object
relationship of cartesian ontology; he still is carried by formal
relationships rather than practical, know-how skillfulness.
this is the formal, logical ground of his perspectivism.

via heidegger, "morality," too, is formalized after the fact,
by theoretical, reactive speculation of the meaningfulness
of certain gathered cultural practices.

for example, one can understand
the ongoing battle about things like "family values" by the
differing theoretical thinking about what counts for, what is
most at issue for, families. different theoretical understandings
flow from the cultural practices of the folks making the theories.
ultimately, one chooses moral affinities according to the practical and
concretely demonstrated evidences that a moral position provides
in being a better interpretation for what counts as most important.

"positing" morality avails ideological justifications (which, in my
humble opinion, are best left ignored on lists like this one).
and this means that already the notion of "higher" and "lower"
is a problematic understanding brought on by "positing" formal
morality. a christian's higher is a darwinian's lower, and a
"nietzschean" could side with either depending on the context
of the coultural practices involved. and that means that "positing"
morality is insignificant.

my approach, from heid., is to speculate concerning the cultural
practices in concrete ways to see which interpretations (perspectives)
best provide descriptions of what is most at issue. what is moral
and ethical gets dictated through the cultural practices and not the
opposite. one takes a stand on what appears to be the
"better" interpretations (perspectives) that really get at the most
crucial aspects of a gathering of cultural practices (eg, health services,
education, work, etc.) and answers the most crucial issues of those
gathered practices.

"The ripe fruit wants to fall." Sorry, I don't have my finger on exactly
where this is from, maybe Zarathustra (anybody know?). Ascendancy and
descendancy, in other words, belong to a coherent whole, as coequal
potentials. Rising and falling. Living and dying. It is, in other words, not
on the basis that things rise or fall that a value may be ascribed. Rising
and falling are not values, but the twin potentialities (coming to be and
passing away) that underly any being.

Nietzsche's point about will to truth is, I think, much further along this
line of thought. It is essentially that the affirmation of becoming--coming
to be and passing away, or life as birth_and_ death (or growth and
decay)--requires a strength that is other than what is normatively human.
Oedipus eyes and Odysseus ears are required, as he put it. Resoluteness in
the face of death (the nether side of life) is bravery. This is, in other
words, the Nietzschean ground on which Heidegger puts forward his notion of
authenticity. Along this line of thought, will to truth may be thought of as
possessing the twin potentialities of authenticity and inauthenticity. As
authentic, it is the eyes of Oedipus, the ears of Odysseus. As inauthentic,
it is the three monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The human
norm, however, is inauthenticiy. The authentic is the exception.

The affirmation of the eternal return of the same is simply the affirmation
of becoming as coming to be and passing away. Resoluteness is tragic wisdom.

It was Nietzsche's insight that our values provide windows by means of which
we might be able to see into our essential relation to life as birth and
death (growth and decay), as being affirmative or negational.=20

"Will to life" was, of course, Schopenhauer's phrase, which Nietzsche
continues as the "will of life," or will to power. Nietzsche, however, it
seems to me, is not hypothesizing this as some kind of causative force that
is determinative of beings, if you will, but rather as a pathos or affect,
the "feeling of power." It is not the doer behind the deed, in other words,
but the deed itself. Not the cause underlying the effect, but the
self-representative affect. It would perhaps not be far wrong to assert that
it is affectivity, as such, and which composes the subject (the subject as a
multiplicity of affects).

Roughly put, synechism might be said to be the doctrine of truth as
continuity. Truth forms a continuum, but relative to which no one point
(truth) may be said to form a ground. The truth of logic, however, is
postulated as a "habit," that is, as not something that is true in itself
(pure reason), but as possessing an entirely practical ground.

The best collection of his writings I've seen is _Philosophical Writings of
Peirce_, a 1955 Dover reprint (of _The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected
Writings_, originally published in 1940 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.).
There is also a web site that has quite a few of his writings available,
Arisbe at http://nothing.com/peirce/Arisbe.html. The essay, "The Fixation of
Belief," available at the site, I believe, is particularly good.

>i believe the holism is separated from the perspectives-an-sich,
>because the perspectives are not, never an-sich. the perspectives
>are only separable in a step-back, theoretical, analysis which turns
>the perspective into a theory. that 'reactive' action removes the
>perspective from its shared background authenticity. you then=20
>have to begin making moves such as what you describe in the=20
>following...

This holism would be, simply put, Peircean synechism, or the continuum of truth.

It seems to be that you are asserting that the foreground belongs to the
background, and must first be separated (focused, if you will), before it
can be said to form a discrete appearance (phenomenon). Prior to such a
separation (or focusing), neither foreground nor background could be said to
be phenomenologically distinct. This would seem to fit with Nietzsche's
notion of a prior reduction (the equating of the inequatable) which must
occur prior to any perspective (stand-point) coming to be. It is, in other
words, only in relation to a perspective that a foreground and a background
may be said to be, but prior to the arrisal of any perspective, something
must already have been fashioned from which a foreground and background
might then be resolved. This is very much implicit, I think, in Nietzsche's
thinking, and is what distinguishes his thinking from a mere positivism, for
instance.

>you have a *formal* holism of perspectives that is ultimately
>grounded on logic, or "reason," i.e., some sense-making formal
>laws and rules with which you have to "glue" perspectives together.
>you have chosen a "formal place" to stand and make a claim about
>the holism, clarifying the hermenutical circle, but clinging to a formal
>ground. this is what i would call, for wont of better, "cartesian=
ontology."

Except that Nietzsche, it seems to me, denies the distinction between pure
and practical reason. Pure reason is, itself, practical, in other words. To
assert otherwise would be to assert, ala Kant, etc., that the value of a
perspective might be adjudged by its reason. This is what Nietzsche
specifically denies. Reason and logic afford us no means to adjudge the
truth of reason or logic, in other words. Knowledge cannot know itself. The
question of the ground of reason comes down to two alternatives: 1) divine fiat and 2) natural development (or evolution). Nietzsche opts for the latter on the grounds of it simply being more "reasonable," if you will. Or why resort to a fantastical explanation (divine fiat), when a perfectly
rational, if not entirely exhaustive, explanation is available. Shit
happens, in other words.

>from heid., the perspectives are a mosaic of cultural practices and skills
>that form a practical holism, ungrounded except in that they fit together
>for a culture; they are inter-involved dynamically, and change thru time
>(what we call "history"). the flow of perspectives is exactly opposite the
>one you infer: the perspectives are ultimately learned or "picked-up"=20
>cultural practices that involve little or no formal, logical, or rule-based=
=20
>cognition; in fact, the more culturally skilled we become, the less formal,=
=20
>and rule-based we are and the larger the "tacit" understanding becomes.

And these cultures are, for Nietzsche, perspectives. They are the
perspectives themselves, and cannot be said to be what underwrites the
perspectives vis-a-vis each other. A perspective exists prior to our coming
to know and elaborate what it is, in that it is the result of a development
relative to which knowledge only comes late. A perspective is a growth (or
will to power). The "tacit" understandings form the body of the perspective,
but a body which remains primarily removed from view and which we only come
to know second or third hand, as "affects" (wills) and "projections"
(representations) for instance. Peirce here speaks of reality as being
triune, as being composed coequally of action (firstness), feeling
(secondness), and thought (thirdness), a notion he traces back to Hegel.

The question here would be whether culture, as a general phenomenon, might
be said to provide a ground. Still, that would only provide a ground that
might be said to be true for us, a "species perspective," as I've put it. It
would compose what is absolutely true for us, but could not be said to be
what is absolutely true as such (although, we can't say positively that it
isn't the absolutely true as such). The first thing that would have to be
excluded, however, would be morality. There is no general agreement as to
morality that runs across all cultures. Each culture possesses its own
"good," in other words.

However, even a species perspective, it seems to me, must be highly
speculative. Not something ever known in any final sense, in other words. At
most, it seems to me, it implies that there is an infinite multiplicity of
perspectives, of which ours is only one.

>this view includes the notorious "ontological difference" to wit: =20
>the principle of identity (or non-identity), the ground of logic,=20
>is always being applied "after the fact"-- the practical cultural
>practices always first ground the (reactive) formal understanding
>of the (current) principle of identity. to ground, as Hegel does
>(& presumably Peirce and Neitz. in *different* ways) the perspectives
>in logic, is to miss the flow of certainty which is grounded in know-how
>(cultural practices/skills) and only then reactively perceived in=
know-what.

Except neither Nietzsche and Peirce are doing what you suggest. My
suggestion, rather, is that the underground agreements between Heidegger,
Nietzsche, and Peirce are more abundant than what might appear at first
sight. Both Nietzsche and Peirce assign a practical ground to reason and
logic that is, itself, something other than necessarily logical or
reasonable. Peirce refers to logic, for instance, as a "habit." Nietzsche
refers it to a _pathos_ or "affect." The three are in agreement here, it
seems to me. Know-how, in other words, is an already existent "affect," a
state of pathos that always already animates us in relation to the object of
that pathos (the world of things).

>so here, you have the linkages being formal, logical ones that relate a=20
>formal logically grounded background to a formally & logically
>explainable foreground, and there becomes really no difference
>between foreground and background. in this story, the distinctions
>are (again) formal, logical, and dependent on the "perspective of the
>perspective" as deduced logically so as to ascertain a formal background
>from a formal foreground.

This is simply how we may come to know a perspective as being the
perspective that it is (or a culture as the culture that it is, etc.).
Knowledge of the perspective is, however, after the fact of the perspective,
even inseparable from the perspective, in that knowledge itself forms a
perspectivity. The knowledge of perspectivity is, in other words, a
latecomer, even an unwelcome guest. Prior to such an arrisal, all
perspectives (cultures?) naively assume that they are the only perspective,
relative to which all other perspectives might be judged. It is only that
perspective (will to truth?) that comes to know itself as a perspective that
can come to know that it is not the only perspective. So, knowledge, it
seems to me, is playing a more dynamic role here than you would seem to wish
to assign to it.

>from heid, the background very much "exists" apart from the
>foreground. the foreground is mostly zen-like activities of attunement
>with the environment thru cultural skills and practices that
>enable such attuned activities in our historical epoch.

I note the quotes around "exists," which I assume means that it exists in
relation to some focal point of reference (or standpoint, perspective,
etc.). If you are saying that it exists in itself, then I've got a problem,
in that I don't see how that could be distinguished from Platonism, simply
asserting the background as the real, and the foreground as mere appearance,
etc. The foreground, in other words, would simply be the shadows cast upon
the wall of our brain (our cave), the reality being the light in the
projector, if you will.

>we just go about
>our business doing what we have to do to cope with and care for
>the current epoch's environmental possibilities---what we call our
>world. most of us, most of the time, are not aware of the multiple,
>micro-changes going on throughout the culture which continually
>change the environment, subtly and continuously changing our
>given perspectives. the linkages of the perspectives is dynamically
>involved with the transformations of the culture. and these=20
>transformations are fashioned practically and not theoretically.

Yes, and I can see the Heideggerian critique of technology lurking here in
the background. But how, in the future, might such a critique be truly
implemented other than by the technologically liberated, if you will, by a
new elite, a leisure class that due to the economic benefits of technology
has the leisure for such a critique? (Here Thorstein Veblen jumps into the
fray, as well!) By the Nietzschean "masters of the earth," in other words?

>Hen:
>nietzsche does "posit" morality, because he is still hooked to=20
>the cartesian ontology: he has traditional logic & morality because---
>tho he has mostly dispensed with the Subject, transforming=20
>it by his tenet of "will to power"---he still has the subject/object
>relationship of cartesian ontology; he still is carried by formal
>relationships rather than practical, know-how skillfulness.
>this is the formal, logical ground of his perspectivism.

My responses above are, I think, sufficient commentary here. The
formal/practical opposition is one that Nietzsche diffuses, not one he=
endorses.

>via heidegger, "morality," too, is formalized after the fact,=20
>by theoretical, reactive speculation of the meaningfulness=20
>of certain gathered cultural practices.

As is the case with Nietzsche. Because cultures differ, moralities differ,
even radically. Even within cultures, more than one morality competes.

>for example, one can understand=20
>the ongoing battle about things like "family values" by the=20
>differing theoretical thinking about what counts for, what is
>most at issue for, families.

It could also be counted as pure drivel, as, like patriotism, a prime refuge
for scoundrels. In order to save the family we had to destroy it.

>different theoretical understandings
>flow from the cultural practices of the folks making the theories.
>ultimately, one chooses moral affinities according to the practical and
>concretely demonstrated evidences that a moral position provides
>in being a better interpretation for what counts as most important.

Except that these are, in fact, one and the same. That, it seems to me, is,
ultimately, the Nietzschean position. Ultimately, one does not choose one's
morality--one is one's morality. Right follows virtue, in other words, not
virtue right. (Note Nietsche's opposition of "virtue" and _virt=FA_,=
however.)

>"positing" morality avails ideological justifications (which, in my
>humble opinion, are best left ignored on lists like this one). =20
>and this means that already the notion of "higher" and "lower"=20
>is a problematic understanding brought on by "positing" formal
>morality. a christian's higher is a darwinian's lower, and a=20
>"nietzschean" could side with either depending on the context=20
>of the coultural practices involved. and that means that "positing"
>morality is insignificant.

Except, the notions of "higher" and "lower," even the notions of
"individual" and "herd," for instance, are not themselves expressive of some
kind of absolute ground existent apart from what is being distinguished
here, anymore than the pairs of strong/weak, healthy/sick, etc., in
Nietzsche's thinking form valuations. Rather, he is being ironically
descriptive, it seems to me, playing off of our tendencies to see these
pairs as values that possess some kind of ground outside of themselves. For
instance, somewhere, I forget where, he refers to the human being as "the
sick animal _par excellance_" (anybody know where?). Weakness, sickness,
inauthenticity, irresoluteness, etc., form the human norm, in other words,
the virtues of the herd. Strength, health, authenticity, resoluteness are
entirely exceptional. In this sense, inauthenticity is the authenticity of
the inauthentic. Does this mean that the exceptional is "better" than the
norm, that the rare is necessarily worth more than the common? No. Just less
numerous. (And, as such, more threatened, in more danger.)

>my approach, from heid., is to speculate concerning the cultural
>practices in concrete ways to see which interpretations (perspectives)
>best provide descriptions of what is most at issue. what is moral=20
>and ethical gets dictated through the cultural practices and not the=20
>opposite.

Except, Hen, how are these "cultural practices" themselves to be adjudged?
Only on the basis of those cultural practices, themselves, or more
specifically, on the basis of the cultural practices of the one doing the
adjudging. This, it seems to me is the weak point of your argument. Because
you simply take them for what they are, or as _you_ find them, in other
words. Ultimately, it seems to me, that your position here can only result
in your asserting your own cultural practice as supreme. How can you
_dictate the ethical_, Hen, other than from the perspective of your own
superiority? From the perspective of the superiority of your own perspective
(your own cultural practices)? As long as these "cultural practices"
themselves are not critiqued, then I don't see how one can avoid being the
dictator of one's own biases, in other words. Ultimately it has to come down
to "my culture is stronger than your culture," so "phooey to you." He only
dictates who can, in other words.

>one takes a stand on what appears to be the=20
>"better" interpretations (perspectives) that really get at the most
>crucial aspects of a gathering of cultural practices (eg, health services,
>education, work, etc.) and answers the most crucial issues of those
>gathered practices.

One interprets the reality in the name of the ideal. Is that it? Or are we
speaking about actually delving into what "cultural practices" are in their
actuality, even if they should contradict, even offend, our ideal notions?
(I, also, make note here, Hen, of the quotes around "better"--in other words
a perspective can only be adjudged "better" or "worse" from some perspective
or other, there being no absolute _better_.) But to posit one set of
practices as general to all cultures, then use that set of practices as the
ground for adjudging which culture is best, that seems to me to be entirely
blind to the fact that no such positing can occur other than as the product
of the study of culture, as such. We return to the question of knowledge
(the question of science), in other words.

American Christian Socialists persecute and torture man for 12 years.

Yes, anti-spammers, the thing you've been fighting (freedom of speech)
is finally occurring!

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picked out and tortured with a weapon that can influence his neural
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Because many of the body's functions can be controlled with the brain,
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This individual has endured a constant screaming by US defence
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It is implemented in space, using satellites that can create an
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The man is attempting to sell a book he has written on a new
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revolution in the humanities comparable to the Copernican revolution
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applies to ethics and psychology).

The British government, who was asked for help by the man who sent a
letter to then Prime Minister Thatcher, has aided the man at risk to
their own lives for the twelve year period. This letter is brought to
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Know that not all creatures are free to enjoy that beautiful silence
of mind.

>Roughly put, synechism might be said to be the doctrine of truth as
>continuity. Truth forms a continuum, but relative to which no one point
>(truth) may be said to form a ground. The truth of logic, however, is
>postulated as a "habit," that is, as not something that is true in itself
>(pure reason), but as possessing an entirely practical ground.
>
>The best collection of his writings I've seen is _Philosophical Writings of
>Peirce_, a 1955 Dover reprint (of _The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected
>Writings_, originally published in 1940 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.).
>There is also a web site that has quite a few of his writings available,
>Arisbe at http://nothing.com/peirce/Arisbe.html. The essay, "The Fixation
of
>Belief," available at the site, I believe, is particularly good.

This is simply too much. I was astounded when Peirce used gas theory
as a basis for understanding the origin of species. Darwin, who was in
the Geological Society as secretary with Charles Lyell and used Lyell's
theory of the gradual evolution of sedimentary rock as the basis for
the gradual evolution of species has found a true complement here.
Inanimate gas theory as a basis for the origin of species...it simple
beggers description. And to top it off, Pierce goes on to compare religious
faith with an ostrich with his head in the sand...talk about the pot calling
the
kettle black! Darwinism, with its total lack of mathematics, with its total
lack of a working hypothesis and its total lack of verifiable, repeatable
experimentation held up as the epitome of scientific thought...in reality
its nothing more than an attack on science just as Peirce's aping of
English thought is a co-attack on philosophy.

Is there any comparison whatsoever between Peirce's mundane tripe
and Nietzsche's powerful thought?

>"The ripe fruit wants to fall." Sorry, I don't have my finger on exactly
>where this is from, maybe Zarathustra (anybody know?). Ascendancy and
>descendancy, in other words, belong to a coherent whole, as coequal
>potentials. Rising and falling. Living and dying. It is, in other words, not
>on the basis that things rise or fall that a value may be ascribed. Rising
>and falling are not values, but the twin potentialities (coming to be and
>passing away) that underly any being.

Heidegger --with the distinction between
Being & beings-- would say that things get
disclosed & forgotten, uncovered and
covered back up. But what gets disclosed
is disclosed (to us) not from theory but
from our cultural practices & our developed
skills. there is in this primordial disclosure
a zen-like quality of being attunded to things
and knowing those things in those primordial
(primary) ways. i call it zen-like because in the
west we usually don't pay attention to our attunements
to things unless they breakdown.

>Nietzsche's point about will to truth is, I think, much further along this
>line of thought. It is essentially that the affirmation of becoming--coming
>to be and passing away, or life as birth_and_ death (or growth and
>decay)--requires a strength that is other than what is normatively human.
>Oedipus eyes and Odysseus ears are required, as he put it. Resoluteness in
>the face of death (the nether side of life) is bravery. This is, in other
>words, the Nietzschean ground on which Heidegger puts forward his notion of
>authenticity. Along this line of thought, will to truth may be thought of as
>possessing the twin potentialities of authenticity and inauthenticity. As
>authentic, it is the eyes of Oedipus, the ears of Odysseus. As inauthentic,
>it is the three monkeys, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The human
>norm, however, is inauthenticiy. The authentic is the exception.

(parenthetically, this is a kind of moralism
tucked away in an ontology--& i note yer
specifically naming _b&t_ authenticity:
"anticipatory resoluteness." but, i'm
one of those heideggerians who think
that heidegger had real difficulties with this
after _b&t_ -- if he didn't reject it all together.)

Ontologically here, nietz still has language which
is essentially intentional, & therefore
"subject/object." Intentionality, and
descriptions formalizing that intentionality,
is another parting of the ways for heid with nietz.

>It seems to be that you are asserting that the foreground belongs to the
>background, and must first be separated (focused, if you will), before it
>can be said to form a discrete appearance (phenomenon). Prior to such a
>separation (or focusing), neither foreground nor background could be said to
>be phenomenologically distinct. This would seem to fit with Nietzsche's
>notion of a prior reduction (the equating of the inequatable) which must
>occur prior to any perspective (stand-point) coming to be. It is, in other
>words, only in relation to a perspective that a foreground and a background
>may be said to be, but prior to the arrisal of any perspective, something
>must already have been fashioned from which a foreground and background
>might then be resolved. This is very much implicit, I think, in Nietzsche's
>thinking, and is what distinguishes his thinking from a mere positivism, for
>instance.

i'm not saying there is an essential separate
distinction of "foreground" and "background."
i don't even understand "foreground."
i think there is always dynamic connection between
everything that we can describe as a perspective,
which i prefer to call a cultural practice, and the
background of all practices, skills, and more.

first, there is no isolated appearance ever,
especially because there is no isolated
perceiver ever. one gains one's 'perspectives'
because one is skillful within the pracitces
and customs of a culture that enables one
such "perspectives."

all of these perspectives (well, not all,
'theoretically' they are infinite) are
'grounded' by the background which
is for one thing, all of the other
unconsciously assumed perspectives
that are interdependently linked to
'the perspective" and also the background
is more just these other perspectives
(cultural practices).

I think "the background" is both
"all the cultural practices" but it
is also "the work" of history, that is,
it is the very fluidity of change that
gores on around us constantly, disclosing
as well as covering up things as our
skills and practices change, ie, we
forget old skills and pick up new ones.
the distinction between the background
ad a bunch of skills, and the background as
this dynamism of historical change is crucial.
and, once agin, it denotes the ontological difference,
the notorious ontological difference.

>Except that Nietzsche, it seems to me, denies the distinction between pure
>and practical reason. Pure reason is, itself, practical, in other words. To
>assert otherwise would be to assert, ala Kant, etc., that the value of a
>perspective might be adjudged by its reason. This is what Nietzsche
>specifically denies. Reason and logic afford us no means to adjudge the
>truth of reason or logic, in other words. Knowledge cannot know itself. The
>question of the ground of reason comes down to two alternatives: 1) divine
>fiat and 2) natural development (or evolution). Nietzsche opts for the
>latter on the grounds of it simply being more "reasonable," if you will. Or
>why resort to a fantastical explanation (divine fiat), when a perfectly
>rational, if not entirely exhaustive, explanation is available. Shit
>happens, in other words.

none of the "reasons" is of primordial
importance, the pure, the practical, the
logical, the green one, the autumn one--
reason is not associated essentially to
our most primary knowledge. our primary
knowledge is bodily and culturally developed
skills and practices that enable coping with and
caring for our 'world.'

you are (still) arguing logic and reason here.
you are still presenting apologetics for
a formal holism. i am saying the
holism involves driving cars, tuning
a radio station, hammering a nail, etc,
not distinctions between pure and
practical reason. (i know not nor do
i care whether reason and logic adjudge
the truth of reason and logic or whether
knowledge can know itself. i don't think
any of that makes any sense except perhaps
in terms of numerical calculation.
nonetheless, it is not at all what i am
talking about; it is not the same level
of description as safely taking a freeway
exit off the interstate.)

>And these cultures are, for Nietzsche, perspectives. They are the
>perspectives themselves, and cannot be said to be what underwrites the
>perspectives vis-a-vis each other. A perspective exists prior to our coming
>to know and elaborate what it is, in that it is the result of a development
>relative to which knowledge only comes late. A perspective is a growth (or
>will to power). The "tacit" understandings form the body of the perspective,
>but a body which remains primarily removed from view and which we only come
>to know second or third hand, as "affects" (wills) and "projections"
>(representations) for instance. Peirce here speaks of reality as being
>triune, as being composed coequally of action (firstness), feeling
>(secondness), and thought (thirdness), a notion he traces back to Hegel.

you are into the formal holism deep now, Steve,
you are tracing the actual existence of thoughts
and perspectives as though they were things.
i know you are assuming a "formal" stance with
this language, but that only means you are
metaphorically claiming the existence of these
mental states. that's one of the things worng
with formal holism.

>The question here would be whether culture, as a general phenomenon, might
>be said to provide a ground. Still, that would only provide a ground that
>might be said to be true for us, a "species perspective," as I've put it. It
>would compose what is absolutely true for us, but could not be said to be
>what is absolutely true as such (although, we can't say positively that it
>isn't the absolutely true as such). The first thing that would have to be
>excluded, however, would be morality. There is no general agreement as to
>morality that runs across all cultures. Each culture possesses its own
>"good," in other words.
>
>However, even a species perspective, it seems to me, must be highly
>speculative. Not something ever known in any final sense, in other words. At
>most, it seems to me, it implies that there is an infinite multiplicity of
>perspectives, of which ours is only one.

still using your formal language,
you are approaching what i mean
by background as you approach that
(formal) "infinte multiplicity of of
perspectives."

>
>Except neither Nietzsche and Peirce are doing what you suggest. My
>suggestion, rather, is that the underground agreements between Heidegger,
>Nietzsche, and Peirce are more abundant than what might appear at first
>sight. Both Nietzsche and Peirce assign a practical ground to reason and
>logic that is, itself, something other than necessarily logical or
>reasonable. Peirce refers to logic, for instance, as a "habit." Nietzsche
>refers it to a _pathos_ or "affect." The three are in agreement here, it
>seems to me. Know-how, in other words, is an already existent "affect," a
>state of pathos that always already animates us in relation to the object of
>that pathos (the world of things).

this is said in cartesian language:
"...relates us to the object of that pathos..."

no matter how many words for it there are,
"pathos" affect" "feeling" even "will to power"--
the framework for this is still subject/object ontology,
a formal, logical stance.

this is as far as i could take it the last few days.

i know i'm not satisfied with my attempts
at clarity, so i'm sure it is frustrating to you
as well--for which i apologize. i will try another
tact, perhaps. thanks for directions to Peirce,
perhaps that will help.

Couldn't resist posting this quote from Ecce Homo, Untimely Essays 2:

"...The after-effect of this essay has been downright inestimable in
my life. Up to now no one has sought to quarrel with me. One keeps
silent, one treats me in Germany with a gloomy caution: I have
for years employed an unconditional freedom of speach for which
no one today, least of all in Germany, has his hand sufficently
free. My paradise is 'beneath the shadow of my sword'...What I
really did was put in practice a maxim of Stendhal's: he advised one
to make ones entry into society with a duel. And how well I had
chosen my opponent! the foremost German freethinker!...In fact
it was a quite new kind of freethinking which therewith first found
expression: to the present day there is nothing more foreign or
unrelated to me than the entire European and American species of
'libres penseur's'. I even feel myself more deeply divided from these
incorrigible shallow-pates and buffons of 'modern ideas' then I do
from any of their opponents. They too want in their own way to
'improve' mankind, after their image, they would wage an implacable
war against what I am, what I want, if they understood it-they one
and all still believe in the 'ideal'...I am the first immoralist-"

"Caesar's legions are returning to conciousness." - Oswald Spengler=20

First of all, glad to see this list is still alive and kicking...

======

15
RUST

You need some rust; sharpness does not suffice:
Else you will seem to young and too precise:

======

Or how about 279, in Book Four:
It's titled *Star Friendship********
Hmmmm.....................
And the description isn't exactly romantic, is it? Or is it?

======

Where did Richard Wagner go wrong? Try 99 of Book Two, where he warns that
Wagner made a few mistakes. One was in misinterpreting the characters that
he had created, and in misunderstanding his *own* philosophy in art! The
other was that he let himself be "led astray" by Hegel. (William James
warned against this!) And........

======

Book Two, 92, has some interesting things to say about "prose and poetry"...

======

Here's a good one in Book Three:

207
THE ENVIOUS.
He is envious; let us hope that he will not have children, for he would
envy them because he cannot be a child anymore.

======

Or 370, in Book Five, "What is romanticism?"

Here he at least lists Hume Kant, Condillac, and the "sensualists" of the
eighteenth century, although not really saying if he loved them,
explicitly... how he reinterpreted German music to have it "signify" (any
old Semioticians out there?) "a Dionysian power of the German soul"
(although, of course, we know that Fred was very ANTI-nationalistic...)

======

MOB paranoia from Fred: 116-17, Book Three, "Herd instinct" and "Herd remorse".

115 also is good on "the four errors":

1) seeing ourselves incompletely
2) endowing ourselves with fictitious attributes
3) placing ourselves above animals and nature
4) inventing "ever new tables of goods and always accepted them for a time
as eternal and unconditional..."

Removing the effects of these four errors, however, is... disastrous, too!

I've been re-reading "Birth of Tragedy" the last few days. And always keep
_Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ and _A Nietzsche Reader_ on my primary bookshelf.
But there's something so *clear* about _The Gay Science_...

By the way, does anyone know where Nietzsche, at least at one point of his
life, said that Emerson was one of only four authors of the 19th century
that he admired? I saw it somewhere, thumbing through a bookstore a year or
two ago, but can't find it again. Wish everything were on CD-ROM for
Hypertext at times like this!

Twilight of the Idols, 10:

"If one needs to make a tyrant of reason, as Socrates did, then
there must exist no little danger of something else playing the
tyrant. Rationality was at that time divined as a saviour; neither
Socrates nor his 'invalids' were free to be rational or not, as
they wished- it was de rigueur, it was their last expedient. The
fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws
itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency; one was in
peril, one had only one choice: either to perish or - be absurdly
rational... The moralism of the Greek philosophers from
Plato downwards is pathologically conditioned: likewise their
estimation of dialectics. Reason =3D virtue =3D happiness means
merely: one must imitate Socrates and counter dark desires
by producing a permanent daylight - the daylight of reason.
One must be prudent, clear, bright at any cost: every yielding
to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downwards..."

I wonder if Nietzsche is not criticising here the entire European
"Enlightenment", including Darwin and Marx among others?
With the Imperium, philosophy, as such, disappears.

You ask:
>I wonder if Nietzsche is not criticising here the entire European
>"Enlightenment", including Darwin and Marx among others?
>With the Imperium, philosophy, as such, disappears.

And I would have to say "yes and no". Let's see if I can deconstruct the
text and see if what I see is what you see, or if it sheds a different
light, or... what.

>Twilight of the Idols, 10:
>
>"If one needs to make a tyrant of reason, as Socrates did, then...

He is using Socrates as a symbol, of course. Socrates is more than just a
"tyrant of reason". Marx thought he had summed up who was doing what to whom, and how to stop it. Darwin was much more open-ended, and people like William James, and Nietzsche, probably, realized this. The, as what James
calls, here:

" ....Things are 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes
everything, or dominates over everything. The word 'and' trails along after
every sentence. Something always escapes. 'Ever not quite' has to be said
of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining
all-inclusiveness...."
---William James, from _A Pluralistic Universe_

The "ever so much, but escaping" effect of searching for knowledge. James, too, by the way, bashes Socrates. Here:

"I saw that philosophy had been on a false scent ever since the
days of Socrates and Plato, that an _intellectual_ answer to the
intellectualist's difficulty will never come, and that the real way out of
them, far from consisting in the discovery of such an answer, consists in
simply closing one's ears to the question. When conceptualism summons life to justify itself in conceptual terms, it is like a challenge addressed in
a foreign language to some one who is absorbed in his own business; it is
irrelevant to him altogether-- he may let it lie unnoticed...."
---William James, from _A Pluralistic Universe_

And for the same reason that Nietzsche does, as early as "The Birth of
Tragedy". That LIFE is not the same thing as an intellectual response, or
what Blake called Aristotle's "skeleton". That there's *mystery*, hence
James's fascination in what is now called parapsychology.

there must exist no little danger of something else playing the
tyrant. Rationality was at that time divined as a saviour;

And of course PASSION is very much a part of our lives, too. Jesus, Blakes tells us, operated on sheer impulse. Sounds Dionysian, doesn't it?
(Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

neither
Socrates nor his 'invalids' were free to be rational or not, as
they wished- it was de rigueur, it was their last expedient.

The fanaticism with which the whole of Greek thought throws
itself at rationality betrays a state of emergency;

As it was, also, during Nietzsche's time, was it not? And when Lenin's
Revolution happened, some came back and said, "I have seen the future and it works!" But it wasn't as simple as that, was it! And neither can one
disclaim how much Mao HELPED China, even as he did other really bad things, or that the literacy rate in Cuba is highest in the Caribbean, even as free press there is only on paper!

Mockingbird · Moderator Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 5

Thankyou very much for the information but you have not answered that do you agree with what he says?
Which philosopher do you like the most and why? I will be thankful if you reply Sitaram!

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

So I shall have some time this weekend, I hope, to give you a proper answer

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