Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[EMTe]

Well, never convert to "visions" based on syntax and semantics. Which roughly translates to "don't spend too much time online and don't read too many books".

Take a breathe of fresh air, meet people, don't philosophise more than necessary, hug the tree, kiss the stone. And never get excited. Excitement is The Devil.

[Rayliikanen]

Emte:

I never get excited. At anything. But I hear the Devil knocking on the door. And the window's open right now letting in fresh air. What's he doing at the door?

[SoylentGreen]

Emte:

I've registered and am now appearing in the disguise of one of my favorite science fiction movies. Rayliikanen no longer exists.

[EMTe]

Oh, I forgot.

Go to bed at 10 pm.

Don't drink. Don't smoke. These come together with overdosed reading.

^^

[SoylentGreen]

Emte:

I like your sense of humor. My wife always gets the better of me. I can never watch movies until after midnight, like I used to as a bachelor. And I never smoked, ever.

And at least eight hour of sleep is mandatory to avoid brain atrophy. I know. I read it in "Beyond Good and Evil." But don't try and find the exact quote.

[Hereandnow]

Nietzsche was not a screwball!! Stop saying that. If you really want to get into the dynamics of the metaphysical issue, you really must read the strongest defense of Descartes, which is from Kant, then on to Husserl's Cartesian Meditations. This latter will blow you so far away that you will never find your way back. N. was before Husserl, true, but H. gives a very powerful argument and is in my mind the countervailing force against the current dominent perspective in the world--which is N's perspective. Husserl and Kant turned my world inside out...LITERALLY! (Then on to Levinas!)


Socially speaking, I should add that Ayn Rand was a great proponent of N., though her anticommunist/prolibertarian rant was not what N had in mind. She believed in the master race, the gifted elite, the natural aristocracy that *should* rise to the top and stay there. This is how nature intended. Today's right wing is driven by Ayn Randian thinking: John Galt, Howard Roark, and so on--all ubermensches. Just look at the conservatives on social and economic issues: These "Christians" are as close to Rand's neoNietzschean take as you can get. Of course, N. was not an atheist....he was THE atheist! It is a wonderful irony: These great defenders of Christendom-- church going, Bible loving, and endlessly moralizing, are the very close social policy descendants of Friedrich Nietzsche, the most infamous atheist the ever lived. HA!

PS Most don't realize how important N is because they live so completely in his shadow.

[Breathing_purple]

I loved the book, though I tend to forget the prose still retaining the main idea. Sometimes we have to read between the lines to understand it. Also, we must consider the state of the writer philosopher mental and physical health when he wrote the book. The book is beautifully written, I loved it and enjoyed reading it.

There are things that trouble me these days, that we are becoming more of a textbook philosophers.

[Hereandnow]

Absolutely! He was always ill. But he anticipated the end of rationalism. As to becomng textbook philosophers, I don't see the problem. A text is another person talking to you and taking her time to get it right. Philosophy texts give us interpretative possibilities; they transfigure the worldif you stick with them.

[Breathing_purple]

Absolutely! He was always ill. But he anticipated the end of rationalism. As to becomng textbook philosophers, I don't see the problem. A text is another person talking to you and taking her time to get it right. Philosophy texts give us interpretative possibilities; they transfigure the worldif you stick with them.

By using the word textbook philosophers I mean learning from the ideas of someone else and forcefully injecting ideas in your head are two different things. I came across certain freethinker closed groups ( Why the hell freethinker group is a closed group ) who claim to be a philosophical rational group try to free the masses from religion, irrationality and mysticism but they act in the same way like the fanatical religious people do.

"Common man doesn't care, while the freethinkers (often belonging to rational religion) and religious groups pushing too hard."

Beyond good and evil is a great book and I love reading it over and over again.

[SoylentGreen]

From my reading, trying to catch up with Nietzsche, I interpret the hammer as saying we need to incorporate into our thinking 'intuition' as much as 'rational' thinking. Where we lose touch with our intuition our rationality loses its way. We need to strike a balance between the intuitive side and the rational side of our reasoning. Despite his attack against Kant, whom he called an idiot, Kant said much the same thing in his critical philosophy, though I won't point out the relevant quotes. Nietzsche is hard on Kant as he is with many others.

Right now I'm reading "Twilight of the Idols," after reading "The Anti-Christ."

Despite the negative depictions in the latter work, I enjoyed reading both of these much more than "Beyond Good and Evil." "Twilight of the Idols," is a superior work to BGE in my estimate, even though it's much shorter. Maybe this brevity explains its superior clarity. At least here, I can definitely see where I take exception to the hammer.

[Hereandnow]

Breathing_purple wrote

philosophical rational group try to free the masses from religion, irrationality and mysticism but they act in the same way like the fanatical religious people do.

I do tend to agree with the intolerant free thinkers, though I would leave mysticism off the list. But I am different from them in this: Religion needs to overcome because it stands in the way of people seeing clearly into the real religious human condition. Yes,we have one, but if the bible is all you read, you will never deconstruct your beliefs and never be free of their influence. Nietzsche hated Christianity with great intensity. See his The AntiChrist. Of course, Beyond Good and Evil is a refutation of biblical (and philosophical) moral authority.


SoylentGreen wrote

I interpret the hammer as saying we need to incorporate into our thinking 'intuition' as much as 'rational' thinking. Where we lose touch with our intuition our rationality loses its way.

It is more about style and charisma than about intuition. Intution is a term reserved for direct cognitive apprehension. But you, know, Nietzsche was a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist, who was very intuitive. In fact, he is considered a moral intuitionist. Nietzsche liked his Self Reliance and the flare of his rhetorical prose, but certainly not his religious bent. Just goes to show you, it is not the ideas so much. Like Aristotle, it is the man himself that made for respect and honor.

[Breathing_purple]

It is more about style and charisma than about intuition. Intution is a term reserved for direct cognitive apprehension. But you, know, Nietzsche was a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist, who was very intuitive. In fact, he is considered a moral intuitionist. Nietzsche liked his Self Reliance and the flare of his rhetorical prose, but certainly not his religious bent. Just goes to show you, it is not the ideas so much. Like Aristotle, it is the man himself that made for respect and honor.

So, Is intuition really important for the individual and what is the significance of intuition in the society.?

[Hereandnow]

For Emerson we intuit God through our own radical amazement in nautre and we intuit right and wrong through conscience, which is a feeling that something is wrong, not so much a thought process. Of coursre, conscince is important for society as well as the thoughtful constuction of arguments. Anyway, see Emerson's little book called "Nature" (not the essay of that name). It's available online. Al;so, see his Address to the divinity school at Harvard. Online, too.

[Anathematized_one]

As with all his writing, I love a few key aspects which were probably due to an influence from Schopenhauer: - Short, concise and directly to the point.

I feel that Beyond Good and Evil is best read/accompanied with On the Genealogy of Morals and with Kierkegaard's Either/Or for a contrasting view (more to contrast "On the Genealogy" than "BGE").

The overall idea is sort of a reevaluation of Aristotelian ethics to me and somewhat a commentary on the subjective view of moral determinations based soley on the action, the motivation or the result of any situation. Example, one may say murder (as in purposeful killing of another) is always immoral, yet the circumstances are different. Is it in self-defence? Is it in retribution? Is the result the loss of a horrible person to all of man or a good person?

Essentially that to say a given action, motivation or outcome alone is "good" or "evil" is highly subjective and an entirely human concept. If you purposely murder an animal for food, is it immoral? Same action, different circumstances. What of a person who alone is a blight on society as a whole? Does it matter if the murder of that person is motivated by anger, retribution or an altruistic "greater good" idea?

The critique being that no action, motivation or result is inherently good or evil, both subjective concepts found only in mankind and that moral determinations are also subjective and purely human. There is no "murder" in "nature", it is in "nature's" nature to have no morality. Morality only exists in mankind and it is due to our need to regulate ourselves as "nature" regulates itself. Because we cannot live beyond subjective "good" and "evil" behaviour, we must have a subjective morality which constantly changes based on our subjective views of good and evil (such as in "Genealogy of" where Christianity, to Nietzsche, takes what was once a good thing of industriousness and saving for your family and turns it to an evil of greed because they were oppressed by those with and they were without).

[Hereandnow]

Well said O Anathematized_one. Nietzsche tries to get away with an appeal to the world, to nature which gives rise the select few, and we, as Aristotle, should accept that some are bound to servitude. The so-called "ought" of the "is/ought" problem is a metaphysical contrivance. Two issues come to mind: Thasymachus' claim that justice lies with the advantage of the stronger is the same as Socrates' claim of a tripartite soul and society in which philosophers rule. The latter ushers in rationalism, which Nietzsche despised, the former anticipates existentialism, a freedom from rationalism. It does seem that Niezsche is not free of a metaphysical bias: why not Socrates than Thrasymachus? Nature is no more bound to Niezsche's naturalist interpretation than it is rationalism. It is beyond all of this. Nature favors what works. Hence , the one true view: Pragmatism, though I think Rorty and his ilk (not many of these) to much ignore things that do not give themselves easily to language and its conditions for truth and falisity. One should not sideline Emanuell Levinas and others who pay attention to what is intimated. Forget the other issue. For now, at any rate.