Nietzsche

[Mephistopheles]

I am kindof surprised he's not listed. I think he deserves his own spot in the 19th century philosophers section. I didn't notice Bertrand Russell either but I could be mistaken about Russell being missing.

[boagie]

Originally Posted by Mephistopheles

I am kindof surprised he's not listed. I think he deserves his own spot in the 19th century philosophers section. I didn't notice Bertrand Russell either but I could be mistaken about Russell being missing.

Mephistopheles,

Do you feel up to doing an intro to a Nietzsche section?
There is a thread on Nietzsche, but we could use a refreshed approach.

Bertie is an excellent choice to be introduced.

[Mephistopheles]

Originally Posted by boagie

Mephistopheles,

Do you feel up to doing an intro to a Nietzsche section?
There is a thread on Nietzsche, but we could use a refreshed approach.

Bertie is an excellent choice to be introduced.

Wow Boagie... I just told Ling that you invited me to do this, her response: "Do Nieztsche proud. "

I'm very honored. Nietzsche was and is my first and favorite philosopher I read. If you create the subforum I'll post an introduction immediately. It's an essay/research paper I wrote on my interpretation of Nietzsche (I provide plenty of links to off-site sources so people can interpret for themselves, too).

Thank you very much Boagie.

[Didymos Thomas]

Cool.

Nietzsche is always a great read, and Bertrand, too. Bad boys of philosophy.

[Mephistopheles]

Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas

Cool.

Nietzsche is always a great read, and Bertrand, too. Bad boys of philosophy.

Yeah, I always did like Nietzsche.

Bertrand I haven't read that much of, but he is a refreshing source of rationalism.

[de_budding]

I look forward to reading it Mephistopheles,I am getting ready to start reading some Nietzsche (Beyond good and evil and twilight of the idols) so I could use an introduction of sorts.
Dan.

[Mephistopheles]

Originally Posted by de_budding

I look forward to reading it Mephistopheles,I am getting ready to start reading some Nietzsche (Beyond good and evil and twilight of the idols) so I could use an introduction of sorts.
Dan.

Okay here it is. It's rather big but it's very comprehensive.

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Nietzsche 101

Introduction

Nietzsche: the name can conjure up thoughts of philosophical genius, or moral racism. I think he's a highly misunderstood sort of man. I could start this out with a myriad Wikipedia equotes, but I won't. I'll save them for later. Much of the following quotes are self-explanatory thus there's no real need for my commentary unless I feel like it's confusing. If people want me to comment on quotes I have not commented on yet, I have no problem doing so, or perhaps someone else could submit to me some commentary I can add to my post.

A Few Questions

That nonsense beyond me, what is nihilism? To answer that question, I should probably explain some basics of nihilism so people understand what I accept and reject about Nietzschean nihilism, which I shall do in the next section. Since Nietzsche is basically the Master of nihilism, both its prophet and virtually its founding member despite some earlier writers and philosophers describing similar views. Nihilism primarily and greatly concerns morality, and thus, leaves alone politics and economics unless both fields somehow conflict with ideas of morality put forward by nihilism.

The Basics of Nietzschean Nihilism

Let's start with the Master first.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, born on October the fifteenth in 1844, was a German philosopher who wrote books, critiques, and essays on all manners of topics, such as morality, religion, epistemology, psychology, ontology, and social criticism. According to Wikipedia, "[he] displayed a fondness for aphorism". Nietzsche's philosophies generated great contemporary (to his times) and post-contemporary secondary literature based on his ideas and writings.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche

...His key ideas include interpreting tragedy as an affirmation of life, an eternal recurrence that has fallen into numerous interpretations, and a reversal of Platonism. Reversed Platonism for Nietzsche means "appearance as goal" i.e., appearance is higher than reality instead of lower.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche

Nietzsche began his career as a philologist before turning to philosophy. At the age of 24 he became Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems, which would plague him for most of his life. In 1889 he exhibited symptoms of a serious mental illness, living out his remaining years in the care of his mother and sister until his death in 1900.

Now we can discuss his philosophies and nihilism.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche

Nietzsche himself left no systematic exposition of his philosophy, and so it remains the subject of intense scholarly dispute and interpretation. Because of Nietzsche's evocative style and often outrageous claims, his philosophy generates strong reactions of passionate love and disgust, and amateurs of all stripes are also heavily involved in the project of interpretation. Nietzsche noted in his autobiographical Ecce Homo that his philosophy developed over time, so interpreters have found it difficult to relate concepts central to one work to those central to another (e.g., the thought of the eternal recurrence features heavily in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but is almost entirely absent from his next book, Beyond Good and Evil). Added to this challenge is the fact that Nietzsche did not seem concerned to develop his thought into a system, even going so far as to disparage the attempt in Beyond Good and Evil.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche

Common themes in his thought can, however, be identified and discussed. His earliest work emphasized the opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in art, and the figure of Dionysus continued to play a role in his subsequent thought. Other major currents include the will to power, the claim that God is "dead", the distinction between master and slave moralities, and radical perspectivism. Other concepts appear rarely, or are confined to one or two major works, yet are considered centerpieces of Nietzschean philosophy, e.g., the Übermensch and the thought of eternal recurrence. His later works involved a sustained attack on Christianity and Christian morality, and he seemed to be working toward what he called the transvaluation of all values (Umwertung aller Werte). While Nietzsche is often associated in the public mind with fatalism and nihilism, Nietzsche himself viewed his project as the attempt to overcome the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Apollonian and Dionysian impulses are at odds, and contrast each other with great clarity. While Apollionian impulses represent the dream state, plastic (visual) arts, beauty, clarity, stint to formed boundaries, individuality, critical reason, celebration of appearance/illusion, human beings as artists (or media of art's manifestation), self-control, perfection, exhaustion of possibilities, creation, Dionysian impulses represent intoxication, celebration of nature, instinctual, intuitive, pertaining to the sensation of pleasure or pain, individuality dissolved and hence destroyed, wholeness of existence, orgiastic passion, dissolution of all boundaries, excess, human being(s) as the work and glorification of art, destruction. These are clearly at odds with each other. Nietzsche stated that a fusion of Dionysian and Apollonian "Kunsttriebe" (artistic impulses) is dramatic art's (tragedy's) main prerequisite and that this has essentially not been achieved since ancient Greek tragedy. Nietzsche emphasizes that the works of Aeschylus, above all, and also Sophocles represent the summit of artistic creation, the true realization of tragedy; it is with Euripides, he states, that tragedy begins its "Untergang" (literally "going under," meaning decline, deterioration, downfall, death). Nietzsche objects to Euripides' utilization of Socratic rationalism in his tragedies, claiming that the infusion of ethics and reason in tragedy robs it of its foundation, namely the fragile balance of the Dionysian and Apollonian.

"I do not speak to the weak: they want to obey and generally lapse into slavery quickly. In the face of merciless nature, let us still feel ourselves as merciless nature! But I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.) The powerful natures dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury themselves in a garden house!" - Friedrich Nietzsche

That best sums up what what the will to power means.

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?" - Friedrich Nietzsche

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead#Explanation

"God is dead" is not meant literally, as in "God is now physically dead"; rather, it is Nietzsche's way of saying that the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for existing moral considerations, because "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident.... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."[1] This is why in "The Madman", the madman addresses not believers, but atheists — the problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine order.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead#Explanation

The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is what Nietzsche worked to find a solution for by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than the Christian values beyond which he felt most Christians refuse to look.

Nietzsche believed that the majority of people did not recognize (or refused to acknowledge) this death out of the deepest-seated fear or angst. Therefore, when the death did begin to become widely acknowledged, people would despair and nihilism would become rampant, as well as the relativistic belief that human will is a law unto itself—anything goes and all is permitted. This is partly why Nietzsche saw Christianity as nihilistic. To Nietzsche, nihilism is the consequence of any idealistic philosophical system, because all idealisms suffer from the same weakness as Christian morality—that there is no "foundation" to build on. He therefore describes himself as "a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels and mines and undermines."

The concept of nihilism in Nietzsche's various works has spawned more than one inspirational philosophe, and political movement. His concept of nihilism is a bit misunderstood, since if he were truly nihilistic, he wouldn't need to mention "ubermensch" as a form of collective hope for the continuation of human intellect and the race itself. I believe that his concept of nihilism meant the seeming absence of a god. Without such, Man loses his will to purpose. Nietzsche realized this, and philosophized of "ubermensch" and the "will to power".

The phrase "God is dead" is just as misunderstood as his position on nihilism. Some actually think that he thought god actually existed, and then died either of boredom or of lost hope for the human race. What Nietzsche meant was that we have to live our lives free from the collective boogeyman, i.e. god. Institutionalized worship is a means of breeding stupidity.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-Slave_Morality

Nietzsche defined master morality as the morality of the strong-willed. For these men the 'good' is the noble, strong and powerful, while the 'bad' is the weak, cowardly, timid and petty. Other qualities that are often valued in master moralities are open-mindedness, courage, truthfulness, trust and a sense of self-worth. Master morality begins in the 'noble man' with a spontaneous idea of the good, then the idea of bad develops in opposition to it. (On the Genealogy of Morality, First Essay, Section 11) He said: "The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honour to things; it is value-creating." In this sense, the master morality is the full recognition that oneself is the measure of all things. (Beyond Good and Evil). While the masters can be thought of as the creators, it can be said that the slaves merely react to the conditions created by others.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-Slave_Morality

Slave morality begins in those people who are weak, uncertain of themselves, oppressed and abused. Understandably, characteristics of those who fall under the slave morality often include being pessimistic, distrustful and skeptical. They are particularly wary of the things that their oppressors value as "good". The essence of slave morality is utility: the good is what is most useful for the community as a whole. Since the powerful are few in number compared to the masses of the weak, the weak gain power vis-a-vis the strong by treating those qualities that are valued by the powerful (the things that cause their own unsatisfactory condition) as "evil," and those qualities that enable sufferers to endure their lot or improve their condition as "good."

In a sense, I agree with the concept of Master/slave mentality. The Roman Empire indeed was a conglomoration of "will-to-power" ideals and tempered Roman steel. Christianity in turn taught that submission and meekness were virtues. I can see why Nietzsche hated Christianity. But when he describes the Master mentality as being possessed only by the strong, and the slave mentality as being possessed only by the weak, I disagree. I know people who are naturally submissive, and realize this and act on it. They are not weak people. To categorize "slaves" as weak people is an inaccurate stereotype. And as for "Masters", not all are benevolent or strong. Some are sadistic monsters, and some are weak people with overactive egos.

But Nietzsche was right about the mentality change from Roman paganism to Roman Catholicism. One philosophy of "might is right" was replaced by "turn the other cheek", in concept. Of course, no one ever fully adheres completely to any ideology, but in effect, the Roman Empire was dulled with what Nietzsche would call a slave mentality. The Roman people were no longer, in concept, as cruel or oppressive as they once were. Not to say that Darwinist brutality is right, but that in the perspective of continuity, the Romans didn't have the spirit to fight the coming barbarians. Slave mentalities tend to glorify weakness and submission, and submission is the last thing you need to do when facing a barbarian invasion.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche#.C3.9Cbermensch

Zarathustra contends that a man can become an Übermensch (homo superior; the common equivalent English translation might be 'super-human'; see below) through the following steps:

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche#.C3.9Cbermensch

• By his will to power, manifested destructively in the rejection of, and rebellion against, societal ideals and moral codes.
• By his will to power, manifested creatively in overcoming nihilism and re-evaluating old ideals or creating new ones.
• By a continual process of self-overcoming.

Nietzsche contrasted the Übermensch with the exemplar of the Last Man, who is the antithesis of the Übermensch. Whereas Nietzsche considered there to be no examples of an Übermensch in his time, he (via the "mouthpiece" of Zarathustra) declared that there were many examples of Last Men. Zarathustra assigns to the civilization of his time the task of preparing the venue of the Übermensch. In the understanding of this concept, however, one has to recall Nietzsche's ontological critique of the individual subject whom he claimed is a "grammatical fiction". Nietzsche thus criticized both the concepts of soul, personal consciousness and the "ego". Therefore, the Übermensch has also been interpreted as a temporary state of the multiple wills to power composing this individual "fiction". Following this interpretation, the Übermensch is neither an individual nor a substance, but something more like the process of overcoming oneself and nihilism. Adding to the interpretive difficulty surrounding the notion of the Übermensch is the matter of the relationship between the views of Zarathustra, the character in the work, and the views of Nietzsche himself.

From my own reading of Nietzsche, I feel that the "ubermensch" is his conceptual idea of a highly individual human being, free from ideology, and free to shape his life into whatever form he wishes. In effect, the ubermenschen would rule the untermensch, because from his perspective, power is for the responsible, and is the natural order of things. If we examine Satanic writings, we find that Anton LaVey was perhaps greatly inspired by one individual, our Nietzsche. Then again, since Nietzsche never did specify what an ubermensch is exactly, it's purely based in our own subjective perspectives what the definition means.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Man

The Last Man (German: der letzte Mensch) was a term used by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other works, to describe the antithesis of the imagined superior being, the "Übermensch", whose imminent appearance is heralded by Zarathustra. This 'Over Man' may be contrasted to a weak-willed individual, one who is tired of life, takes no risks, seeks only comfort and security: the Last Man.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Man

Nietzsche saw that nothing great is possible for the Last Man, and it is Nietzsche's contention that Western civilization (Europe) is moving in the direction of the last man, an apathetic creature, who has no great passion or commitment, who is unable to dream, who merely earns his living and keeps warm.

One of Nietzsche's greatest fears was creeping mediocrity. If the "Übermensch" represented his ideal -- the ideal of a being strong enough to create his own values, strong enough to live without the consolation of traditional morality, and strong enough to recognize and embrace the notion of change as the ultimate reality -- then Nietzsche’s so called 'last man' is the exact opposite. He clings to tradition and morality to comfort himself because he is afraid to embrace the reality of change, and exhibiting above all else not a will to power, but a will to preservation.

The last man, Nietzsche predicted, would be one response to nihilism. But the full implications of the death of God had yet to unfold. As he said:

"The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of having arrived as yet."

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche

Nietzsche encountered the idea of the Eternal Recurrence in the works of Heinrich Heine, who speculated that one day a person would be born with the same thought-processes as himself, and that the same applied to every other individual. Nietzsche expanded on this thought to form his theory, which he put forth in The Gay Science and developed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Schopenhauer directly influenced this theory[7]. Schopenhauer postulated that a person who unconditionally affirms life would do so even if everything that has happened were to happen again repeatedly. On a few occasions in his notebooks, Nietzsche discusses the possibility of Eternal Recurrence as a cosmological truth (see Arthur Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher for a detailed analysis of these efforts), but in the works he prepared for publication, he treats it more as a means of life-affirmation. He conceived of it as an hypothesis, or thought experiment.

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Friedrich_Nietzsche

According to Nietzsche, it would require a sincere Amor Fati (Love of Fate), not simply to endure, but to wish for the eternal recurrence of all events exactly as they occurred — all of the pain and joy, the embarrassment and glory. Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing", and also characterizes the burden of this idea as the "heaviest weight" imaginable (das schwerste Gewicht). The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life.

My Interpretation and Take

I am no expert on Nietzsche and do not claim to be. The man is confusing and leads off on strange tangents, and some of his works, notably The Will to Power, have been doctored in part. Therefore, be prepared to disagree. I shall start off by order in which I presented his philosophical points.

I view his contrast between the Apollonian and Dionysian struggle as representative of the fight between "good" and "evil", between love and hate, between order and chaos, between creation and destruction, and between comedy and tragedy, even though he claimed both create tragedy best. History is a history of war, and cycles of war and peace have created human civilization --- at all its triumphs and peaks and at all its woes and despairs.

The will to power, to me, is a will to avoid power. It is a will to rule by example, not through force. It is a will to rule through culture and ideas, not through politics and fundamentalist ideologies. This is an idea perverted by Nazis to mean rule for power.

The idea that "God is dead" is something that has been oft miscontrued in some perversion or another. The idea that God is dead means that we, who reject the major religion of our Western world, can no longer hold true to the Christian slave morality, and thus must seek some other form of morality.

I believe that the master morality is a morality of the strong-willed as Nietzsche suggests, that master moralists think in terms of good and bad, making them subjectivists in terms of morality. They see the good as being noble and fair, while the bad as being weak and small-minded. Slave morality is a morality of the weak-willed proles who think in terms of good and evil, believing in what their pastor or ruler tells them.

The Over Man to me is a creative artist of the soul. He creates and destroys when appropriate, and he overcomes nihilism in the form of acceptance and rejoice in regards to eternal recurrance. He overcomes his shortfallings He lives. The Last Man simply endures.

Eternal recurrance to me is the idea that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in the exact same self-similar form an incomprehensible and unfathomable number of times. The basic premise is that the universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of matter, while time is viewed as being infinite. The universe has no starting or ending state, while the matter comprising it is constantly changing its state. The number of possible changes is finite, and so sooner or later the same state will recur.

By embracing eternal recurrance, we overcome nihilism and take one small step towards overcoming our naturalistic Last Man and become artificially Over Man.

I believe in nurturing the ego as opposed to Nietzsche's opposition to the ego, as claimed in his Wikipedia writings. Since it's Wikipedia, I may be wrong about this, but I do remember seeing him oppose the ego on some level. I believe that Nietzsche did not fully reject Christian morality and still thought on some level that the ego should not be nurtured constructively the way I do. I could be wrong, so please comment if I am.

Taken from my thread "Murder is not Wrong":

"Let it not be said I advocate or condone murder. I believe it is wrong. I just recognize the fact I cannot justify why murder is wrong. I just feel it's wrong. This brings us to another point: are morals natural or are they learned? If we observe the behavior of feral children, adolescents, and adults, we realize they possess no moral values unless they learn new ones, or retain some from their infancy, and act largely upon instinct. Many attempts to re-educate feral humans to become productive citizens have, in the large majority of cases, been unsuccessful. We are not born with morals, but rather, learn them from our guardians and from society.

"Morals are a set of behavioral codes designed to maximize the benefits of life, liberty, and property, in the liberal sense. Some moral values have no bearing on benefiting life, on benefiting liberty, or benefiting liberty, but largely, most accepted modern moral values have some sort of beneficial power. It is considered immoral to cause a deficit in life, liberty, or property, but again, we run into more contradictions. The murder of an individual in retribution for a killing is legalized in the form of execution. True to a Newspeak concept, execution is a legal form of revenge, and is considered by the majority of American society to be a moral value of benefit for the family and friends of the one killed by the individual about to be killed in turn for the killing.

"An argument on this forum against the reasoning that morals are not natural is that there are universal morals imposed upon us by a creator. The flaw with this argument is the observation of feral humans, and the fact that people can "get away with" criminal behavior and are not divinely punished in, at least, this life. Another argument against environmental morality as opposed to naturalistic morality is that if the universe came into being without the help of a creator and is thus a result of random (or logical) chance, how did morality, which is not random, come into being? Well, the problem here is that the person who put this forth, namely Batonfromage, is that he did not take into account logic and rationality. If murder were acceptable as if one blew a nose, human society would be largely destroyed. Obviously, this is unacceptable, and rules against killing were put into place. Some killing remained, such as through war, through execution, and through sacrifice/ritual killings. A social contract benefits everyone.

"In conclusion, there are no moral values except the ones put into law. There are no universal rights or wrongs, and there is nothing wrong with anything or right with anything unless society or the individual who owns themself determines it to be so."

In Conclusion

Despite this largely being an affirmation of Nietzschean nihilism and morality, I do have a unique (to my knowledge; please correct me if I am wrong in this humble claim) stance involving war as a vehicle of change, a Satanist perspective on the ego (Nietzsche opposed the ego), and a rejection of objective morality in any form.

I also posit that you cannot overcome nihilism because there is no obective truth or purpose even if you will yourself into accepting eternal recurrance; eternal recurrance provides no truth or purpose of its own nature.

I hope you enjoyed this quasi-essay/compendium as much as I enjoyed writing it.

[boagie]

Mephistopheles,

Is not the essence or seed of nihilism the realization that the physcial world is utterly without meaning in the absence of a subject.

[Mephistopheles]

Originally Posted by boagie

Mephistopheles,

Is not the essence or seed of nihilism the realization that the physcial world is utterly without meaning in the absence of a subject.

Um... I don't believe I ever said it was...? I think in my quasi-essay-compendium I listed various other facets of nihilism... like lack of objective morality, the "death of God" concept, the idea of social differences, non-altruism...

It sounds to me like you just assumed I thought nihilism meant a single thing or something, because anyone who will read my 101 will know that's not true.

[boagie]

Mephistopheles,

I think it would help in the understanding of Nietzsche's transevaluation of values, if you realize that all meaning is in the power of the subject, there is no reason that subject cannot change the established values already in place. The subject you might say, is the mortar holding the stone in place.