BGE commentary

I am approaching this ominous book for the first time without a mask, finally feeling up to its logic. Having found something of a strategy, I dare to approach the thunderstorm frozen in time of N’s mind, not aiming to challenge it, but to identify with it as a torch the metaphysical framework of our present physical world and its ruling thoughts. My position is necessarily that of one perceived as lacking in standards - I write and think unbound and unanointed.
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1.
The will to truth, which is still going to tempt us to many a daring exploit, that celebrated truthfulness of which all philosophers up to now have spoken with respect, what questions this will to truth has already set down before us! What strange, serious, dubious questions! There is already a long history of that—and yet it seems that this history has scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that at some point we become mistrustful, lose patience and, in our impatience, turn ourselves around, that we learn from this sphinx to ask questions for ourselves? Who is really asking us questions here? What is it in us that really wants “the truth”? In fact, we paused for a long time before the question about the origin of this will—until we finally remained completely and utterly immobile in front of an even more fundamental question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth. Why should we not prefer untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth stepped up before us—or were we the ones who stepped up before the problem? Who among us here is Oedipus? Who is the Sphinx?* It seems to be a tryst between questions and question marks. And could one believe that we are finally the ones to whom it seems as if the problem has never been posed up to now, as if we were the first ones to see it, to fix our eyes on it, and to dare confront it? For there is a risk involved in this—perhaps there is no greater risk.[/size]

My writing is a minefield, a barbaric brew of accusations and incantations, assertions and punishments and generally loud exclamations. My native tongue is better equipped to make such seem inevitable and hence logical. Verexcuseer meneer, ik meende het immers niet zo kwaad!
Beyond Good and Evil: the heretics commentary.

The elimination of all idealistic values in Europe, wishful thinking made impossible on the continent, but lives on in exaggerated form in America which in turn infects Europe. Consequences unforseen by Nietzsche?? Split of moral consciousness, master-slave dialectic emerges between America and Europe, while whole of the Eastern world wallows in pagan feudalism under the banners of impossibility. and The question of life and science was asked by technocratic imposition of blind destruction. Machines as devils - humans as machines - Imposition the objective on human valuation. This objectivity, as it had been established, turned to become the questioner of man. Value a dead object. Man, however continued to exist - confused, but greatly inspired by this freedom as well.

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2.
“How could something arise out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the will to truth out of the will to deception? Or selfless action out of self-seeking? Or the pure sunny look of the wise man out of greed? Origins like these are impossible. Anyone who dreams about them is a fool, in fact, something worse. Things of the highest value must have another origin peculiar to them. They cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, trivial world, from this confusion of madness and desire! Their basis must lie, by contrast, in the womb of being, in the immortal, in hidden gods, in ‘the thing in itself’—their basis must lie there, and nowhere else!” This way of shaping an opinion creates the typical prejudice which enables us to recognize once more the metaphysicians of all ages. This way of establishing value stands behind all their logical procedures. From this “belief” of theirs they wrestle with their “knowledge,” with something which is finally, in all solemnity, christened “the truth.” The fundamental belief of the metaphysicians is the belief in the opposition of values. Even the most careful among them has never had the idea of raising doubts right here on the threshold, where such doubts are surely most essential, even when they promised themselves “de omnibus dubitandum” [one must doubt everything]. For we are entitled to doubt, first, whether such an opposition of values exists at all and, second, whether that popular way of estimating worth and that opposition of values, on which the metaphysicians have imprinted their seal, are perhaps only evaluations made in the foreground, only temporary perspectives, perhaps even a view from a corner, perhaps from underneath, a frog’s viewpoint, as it were, to borrow an expression familiar to painters. For all the value which the true, genuine, unselfish man may be entitled to, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for everything in life must be ascribed to appearance, the will for deception, self-interest, and desire. It might even be possible that whatever creates the value of those fine and respected things exists in such a way that it is, in some duplicitous way, related to, tied to, intertwined with, perhaps even essentially the same as those undesirable, apparently contrasting things. Perhaps!—But who is willing to bother with such a dangerous Perhaps? For that we must really await the arrival of a new style of philosopher, the kind who has some different taste and inclination, the reverse of philosophers so far, in every sense, philosophers of the dangerous Perhaps. And speaking in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers arriving on the scene.[/size]

Opposition of values as a pathological condition: parallel to Freud: repression / idealization.

[size=90]“[W]e can understand how our most cherished objects -our ideals- stem from the same perceptions and experiences as those we most abhor, and how originally the two differed from each other only by virtue of slight modifications.” [Sigmund Freud, essay on Repression, 1915][/size]

Real value, as we understand it now is not in opposition to anything at all - as we understand now that value can only be positive. And the substance of such real value is irreconcilably far removed from opposing metaphysical values, as it is rather a process than an object. Value after all is in valuation, which is a physiological occurrence.

It is precisely by the attempt at negative valuation that repression occurs, pushing the positive value (truth) of an experience or drive out of the frame of truth as the moral logic is able to construct it. Thereby such negatively valued (made impossible) activity becomes, according to Freud, fixated - the drive (flux) is arrested by representing it as an idea, which can be repressed. Interesting to note: drives canot be repressed without ideation. (explanation of the dream-realm)

However, the energetic substance is not eliminated by its dissociation from the subject: it emerges as displaced, thoroughly irrational emotion. Art as the attempt to reunite emotion with repressed drives (making emotion “rational”, true) via investing libidinal valuation into imagery representing the repressed.

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3.
After examining philosophers between the lines with a sharp eye for a sufficient length of time, I tell myself the following: we must consider even the greatest part of conscious thinking among the instinctual activities. Even in the case of philosophical thinking we must re-learn here, in the same way we re-learned about heredity and what is “innate.” Just as the act of birth merits little consideration in the procedures and processes of heredity, so there’s little point in setting up “consciousness” in any significant sense as something opposite to what is instinctual—the most conscious thinking of a philosopher is led on secretly and forced into particular paths by his instincts. Even behind all logic and its apparent dynamic authority stand evaluations of worth or, putting the matter more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a particular way of life—for example, that what is certain is more valuable than what is uncertain, that appearance is of less value than the “truth.” Evaluations like these could, for all their regulatory importance for us, still be only foreground evaluations, a particular kind of niaiserie [stupidity], necessary for the preservation of beings precisely like us. That’s assuming, of course, that not just man is the “measure of things” . . .[/size]

Highlighted phrase is still the “immoral” point in contemporary philosophy, as physiology pertains to individuality. This is a rarely trodden terrain, as “all are equal” goes, which is to say as much as that the individuality (in all it’s particularities) does not really exist.

What valuation does our physiology, our particularity, demand of us? Hint at answers in general: uncontrollably popularity of drug and alcohol use, uncontrollable exploitation of other intoxicating means such as “entertainment” centered around violence and sex: our particular physiology is addressed by the most universal stimuli. A kind of selection is taking place: who stands up most powerfully to the onslaught on the instincts?

A kind of breeding, or preparation to this, is going on: unclear whether this is conscious activity by “artist tyrants” using “superior means of deception” [Will to Power 960] with a certain purpose, or simply consequences of economics, inevitably resulting in a new, more opportunistic type of man.

Clear is that whatever has control, philosophy as practiced by scholars and respected thinkers stands outside of it, the immorality (the lack of moral aesthetics) of it is cause to physiological reality once again being repressed. This time however what is being repressed may well be the opposite of what was previously repressed: a kind of automatic, neurotically induced reversals of values - without a conscious (re)valuation of values.

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For us, the falsity of a judgment is still no objection to that judgment— that’s where our new way of speaking sounds perhaps most strange. The question is the extent to which it makes demands on life, sustains life, maintains the species, perhaps even creates species. And as a matter of principle we are ready to assert that the falsest judgments (to which a priori synthetic judgments belong) are the most indispensable to us, that without our allowing logical fictions to count, without a way of measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world through numbers, human beings could not live—that if we managed to give up false judgments, it would amount to a renunciation of life, a denial of life. To concede the fictional nature of the conditions of life means, of course, taking a dangerous stand against the customary feelings about value. A philosophy which dares to do that is for this reason alone already standing beyond good and evil.[/size]

Question: Is Nietzsche’s suggestion that to let go of the fiction of numbers means a denial of life justified? Are there no alternative fictions possible, perhaps less ‘untrue’? To assume the contrary seems to be a synthetic a-priori judgment as well. Is logic not perhaps an imperfect, uncompleted method of thinking-the-real? (What is “real” after all if not us, as experiencing and cognitive “faculties” to our “selves”?)

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What’s attractive about looking at all philosophers in part suspiciously and in part mockingly is not that we find again and again how innocent they are—how often and how easily they make mistakes and get lost, in short, how childish and child-like they are—but that they are not honest enough in what they do, while, as a group, they make huge, virtuous noises as soon as the problem of truthfulness is touched on, even remotely. Collectively they take up a position as if they had discovered and arrived at their real opinions through the self-development of a cool, pure, god-like disinterested dialectic (in contrast to the mystics of all ranks, who are more honest than they are and more stupid with their talk of “inspiration”—), while basically they defend with reasons sought out after the fact an assumed principle, an idea, an “inspiration,” for the most part some heart-felt wish which has been abstracted and sifted. They are all advocates who do not want to call themselves that. Indeed, for the most part they are even mischievous pleaders for their judgments, which they baptize as “Truths,”—and very remote from the courage of conscience which would admit this, even this, to itself, very remote from that brave good taste which would concede as much, whether to warn an enemy or friend, or whether to mock themselves as an expression of their own high spirits. That equally stiff and well-behaved Tartufferie [hypocrisy] of old Kant with which he enticed us onto the clandestine path of dialectic leading or, more correctly, seducing us to his “categorical imperative”—this dramatic performance makes us discriminating people laugh, for it amuses us in no small way to keep a sharp eye on the sophisticated scheming of the old moralists and preachers of morality.* Or that sort of mathematical hocus-pocus with which Spinoza presented his philosophy—in the last analysis “the love of his own wisdom,” to use the correct and proper word—as if it were armed in metal and masked, in order in this way to intimidate from the start the courage of an assailant who would dare to cast an eye on this invincible virgin and Pallas Athena—how much of his own shyness and vulnerability is betrayed by this masquerade of a solitary invalid!*[/size]
The opposite of the mathematicians approach, as shown here.

Excerpt: “[The] thinker however ponders the mind like a general scopes the battlefield, keenly observes how it compares to the positions of others, visionaries who have established knowledges and/or are still making paths of their own. When genius strikes, and it always does if one keeps oneself positioned, a possibility for an advancement relative to the other positions makes itself known. An increase of power to incorporate.”

The word “genius” here is the opposite of “inspiration” as Nietzsche uses it. The former refers to detection of a new possibility within a given context, the latter refers to an idea for the incorporation of which a new way of arranging the relevant context has to be devised.

Question: Were Newtons and Einsteins universalizing laws perhaps also conceived as “heart felt wishes” for the world to be one? There is a certain morality to both of their thinkings - “action = reaction” as well as the notion that all things are relative to each other, and that light is the absolute - both seem to connect seamlessly to religious ethics. Could another scientist also have discovered something else to be true, something contradicting our present science? The answer seems to be no. What does this say about the valuation of intuition and divinity, the religious zeal of our most valued pair of thinkers? Moreover, what does this say about our belief in their science?

Science is a double-edged sword, and so far we have only used it to chop… no stab-and-slice combo’s have been learned… except of course in economical circles, morally oblivious masters of markets, the posthumous friends Nietzsche might not have been very happy to have… Relying now on fancy, then on logic - the objective logic of fancy combined with the subjective logic of their own will to power draws the world in motion just as the double edged moon moves the tides and fertilizes, feeds and reaps the market.

Why can science not act like this of itself? Why not take great leaps of faith, and merge with original science of the human soul, the naturalistic healing arts? Why would scientists refuse to study this? There is only one answer - Newton believed in The One God. He was afraid to sin.

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“Gradually I came to learn what every great philosophy has been up to now, namely, the self-confession of its originator and a form of unintentional and unrecorded memoir, and also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy made up the essential living seed from which on every occasion the entire plant has grown. In fact, when we explain how the most remote metaphysical claims in a philosophy really arose, it’s good (and shrewd) for us always to ask first: What moral is it (is he —) aiming at?”[/size]
What moral are we aiming at? Assuming that we would know - what kind of philosophy might be created to be a soil?

(Who is this “we” I speak of? I mean of course in first instance I. I may only pretend to have allies.)

[size=90]"Consequently, I don’t believe that a “drive to knowledge” is the father of philosophy but that knowledge (and misunderstanding) have functioned only as a tool for another drive, here as elsewhere. But whoever explores the basic drives of human beings, in order to see in this very place how far they may have carried their game as inspiring geniuses (or demons and goblins), will find that all drives have already practised philosophy at some time or another — and that every single one of them has all too gladly liked to present itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives."[/size]
Is this true? All drives have had their day in the sun? It would be useful to concisely list such drives and the philosophies derived from them.

[size=90]“For every drive seeks mastery and, as such , tries to practise philosophy. Of course, with scholars, men of real scientific knowledge, things may be different —“better” if you will — where there may really be something like a drive for knowledge, some small independent clock mechanism or other which, when well wound up, bravely goes on working, without all the other drives of the scholar playing any essential role. The essential “interests” of scholars thus commonly lie entirely elsewhere, for example, in the family or in earning a living or in politics.”[/size]
But then, the scholar isn’t the scientist who discloses laws.
Such a law-discloser is typically obsessive and personally involved in his thinking as a philosopher. Let’s propose that we see Newton, Darwin and Freud as philosophers willing a certain type of morality, or at least ethics of thought, just as philosophers do. The scientist much be included into an understanding of willing-thinking by philosophy, otherwise philosophy is powerless towards science.

[size=90]“Indeed, it is almost a matter of indifference whether his small machine is placed on this or on that point in science and whether the “promising” young worker makes a good philologist or expert in fungus or chemist — whether he becomes this or that does not define who he is. By contrast, with a philosopher nothing is at all impersonal. And his morality, in particular, bears a decisive and crucial witness to who he is — that is, to the rank ordering in which the innermost drives of his nature are placed relative to each other.”[/size]
And which drive is on top of the pyramid in the scientific genius? Many have said it is wonder. As opposed to the scholar who is, if to be designated in such terms at all, a camel, the scientific genius may be classified under the child-archetype.

will to power -
will to truth
will to pleasure
will to peace
will to nothingness
will to technology
will to forget oneself

will to hunt
will to explore the seas
will to dance
will to restrict, to conserve
will to combine impressions into conceptions

will to die
will to love
will to own
will to give

is that last one even possible?
Isn’t willing precisely the same as giving?

all cultures give something to the men in their wings. Sometimes these men are grateful, sometimes they are fed up. Gratitude leads to perpetuation, fedup-ness to cancelletion. Cancellatiomn generates (loosenes) a lot of energy - delightful destructive energy, Shivaic, Dionysus. Dance is rooted in generation but culminates in expense - the art of the finalization, the fatality!

jake—some people like to give because it gives the giver PLEASURE…

He is taking on an admirable challenge, to think as another so as to understand the other more completely, to reconcile what was said with what one can conceivably accept.

No.

Do you see this as contradicting something I wrote? If so what?

Yes. And since I consider Nietzsche of all thinkers I know to be the most thorough one, I expect to learn a lot from identifying those junctures at which I must part from his ways.

Why not?

As you questioned, “All Drives” have not already been practiced.
Why they haven’t could only be homo sapien being a little slow on the uptake.
But if you are trying to think like Nietzsche, you certainly don’t want to start thinking like me.

BGE 3 is one of Nietzsche’s most important, but yet neglected, aphorisms. The reduction of philosophies to physiological demands to preserve a cetain way of life is a most fundamental point, one that has not been seriously debated in political or philosophical circles. It is directly related to BGE 6 when we states, Gradually I came to learn what every great philosophy has been up to now, namely, the self-confession of its originator and a form of unintentional and unrecorded memoir, and also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy made up the essential living seed from which on every occasion the entire plant has grown. In fact, when we explain how the most remote metaphysical claims in a philosophy really arose, it’s good (and shrewd) for us always to ask first: What moral is it (is he —) aiming at? The morality aimed at is a direct manifestation of the physiological demands of the philosopher. Our democratic order preserves the physiological demands of the mob. The illusion of free will, equal rights, and utilitarianism suits the demands of the mob because the belief of being ruled over by a higher authority (God, politicians) is too much for them to bear; the feeling that “they are their own master” is all they can tolerate.

The “artist tyrants” ruling over the mob are only manifestations of their own unconscious, physiological demands. The artist tyrant too preserves his way of life; that of imposing rule over the many. His instinct to command is as unconscious as the instincts of the mob to obey. Only the slave imposes guilt on the ruler for ruling. Contrary to the slave’s view, there is no “doer behind the deed”, no “neutral substratum” waiting to choose how one should act, rather a “quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of drive, will, effect - nothing more” (GM I, 13). By placing a neutral “doer behind the deed”, the slave can then impose guilt because he believes the strong “could have acted otherwise”. The invention of free will was devised by the slave type to impose guilt on the strong type. Imposing guilt is the fate of the slave as it is physiologically innate, just as ruling with a good conscience is physiologically innate for the noble.

I think you mean that because Nietzsche thought strictly in terms of logic and givens, he was unable to identify the drives that escape such thinking.

I can certainly see the truth in this, but I think Nietzsche, a the supreme deducer that he was, was wise to restrict himself to what he could know. He deconstructed a lot of nonsense and opened up a lot of space, for types like us, inducers, architects of meaning. He recognized that he was not the final thinker, that he did not solve the riddle of the world, that this task would be on the shoulders of future thinkers.

That said, Nietzsche thoroughly exhausted the deductive type of logic as it pertains to philosophy, exposed it completely in its ultimate consequences. Now since belief in such logic is dominant today as in Nietzsches time, but in much weaker, satisfied form, I find it useful to expose this logic in its purest expression to the light of my own values, to see where precisely I have to step beyond Nietzsche for more clarity.

A concrete question then, where do you object to Nietzsches thinking?

I see contradiction.

I haven’t studied Nietzsche. I see only the fruits and leaves of his tree. From that, I cannot and do not judge the man, but from such fruits I can see no need to plant his seeds. If you continue and do as you suggest, I suspect you will conclude such a perspective yourself. And if not, perhaps at least you can save me the trouble of having to sort him all out myself.

And yet in order to have this mastership, they have to be told what they are! The irony approaches genius. "You are such and such a composition of such and such blocks, technically (that means to you, my puppet - I mean master of yourself - objectively ) worth nothing, and equal to all others who are technically (objectively, absolutely) worth nothing. And you are not just equal because you are equally worthless, but also because - we have decided this, you have a “human value” which actually means the exact opposite of what we said before - but never mind. You are your own master, that is all you need to think - uhh - I mean know!

Nietzsche then asks: which type of physiology comes into command? On that everything depends. That is why it is important to disrobe philosophers - so that as they stand naked - as we see their drives beneath their world models, their moralities - we may value them more wisely, as we are more informed as to what they are.

Socrates was aiming to disguise his deformity and the decadence of his drives. His philosophy, his entire method, was aimed at hiding the truth of himself - and succeeded in obscuring all meaning that lies in appearance - which is what nature had relied on thus far to keep itself vital.

I am forced to question if one could indicate where, physically, such guilt-imposition rises in a physiology. It is not enough to assume a psychological duality of master/slave - at one point we have to ask after the physiological differences that crucially determine this difference. This questioning challenges the supposition that either morality is not only innate, but impossible to transform.

I don’t - I believe that swearing by deductive logic places limits on clarity.
Clarity has to be created, envisioned - in philosophy just as in diamond-cutting.
“deductive diamond cutting” to continue with this metaphor, would leave us with a pile of splinters. Envisioning of possible forms gives deducing a function, subservient to imagined/envisioned/created meaning.

I have already concluded that Nietzsche is not the alpha and omega, but also that he is the only thinker who has said anything sensible about some of the subjects I am interested in, such as greatness, value and experience.

Which things in the world do you consider to be fruits of the Nietzscean tree?

Envisioning IS deductive as is Clarity… but only when fully exercised.
Deduce what “could be” from “how it all works” + “what you can influence”, and you have envisioned the path of your will to your destiny.

Gauging merely from his worshipers and the few things they quote from their bible (some of which are worthy, as with all bibles), I see a tree that branches into the cleverness of treachery, but not the wisdom of harmony. I see elucidation, Lucifer, who’s clever enough to see how to obtain his desire, but not enlightened enough to realize what to desire; one who allows his “self” and “will” to be the purpose of his deeds, rather than allowing his self and will to be the product of his deeds. I see the clever Hue-man who challenges the enlightened Man for the rights to Heaven.

But as I said, I haven’t bothered to actually prod the source for true intent which is always different than deed. Even the seed that grows a sour fruit might have a seed of worth merely in need of a sweetening additive to bring the joy of harmony.

=D>