ILP thread on value-ontology (starting with Nietzsche, WTP)

[Fixed Cross]

It is here that the size of the task becomes somewhat apparent, as an immense jungle of perspectives and conglomerates of perspectives, all intertwining by laws of an entirely hybrid nature, in an untraceable chemical sequencing of different and differentiating moralities, with with Nietzsche means physiologies, which means as much as (electro-)chemistries. But now we have a hand in this chemistries, from an intellectual viewpoint. We know what it is that we may know.

The duality of the Greek versus the tool wielding primate is one I choose, not one of which any claim can be made that it objectively exists, but one that I expect to illuminate what is good and what is less than good, in what "we", i.e. the humans before us, have done, and placed before us.

[Pezerocles]

Indeed.

For example, psychology. It has the value, as an example, of not being purely scientific, being mixed with humanitarianism.

Most of the financial backing that goes into psychology these days is probably theraputic psychology, the psychology that aims to help the individual cope with his own existence. Otherwise, it is the normal scientific mind-set that you have just described, a leveling mind-set, or spirit.

So, how about a psychology that studies us with the scope of the will to power, which I think here applies quite well, as in the art of understanding the will? A psychology that understands itself as a tool, a craft, and not a leveler. In this way, psychological craft, or study, would value itself and its art. Everything that it found would be included in a valuing system instead of a leveling, with many levels.

[Fixed Cross]

So, how about a psychology that studies us with the scope of the will to power, which I think here applies quite well, as in the art of understanding the will? A psychology that understands itself as a tool, a craft, and not a leveler. In this way, psychological craft, or study, would value itself and its art. Everything that it found would be included in a valuing system instead of a leveling, with many levels.

That would be the beginning of honesty, i.e. clearing the "lens" of perspective. In the oriental studies of subjectivity, stupidly understood as "mystical", such an approach has been pursued at length with useful results, such as for example, yoga, which must be understood as far more than a set of stretching postures.

[Fixed Cross]

Sommer 1872 - Anfang 1873

19[24]

"Es handelt sich nicht um eine Vernichtung der Wissenschaft, sondern um eine Beherrschung. Sie hängt nämlich in allen ihren Zielen und Methoden durch und durch ab von philosophischen Ansichten, vergißt dies aber leicht. Die beherrschende Philosophie hat aber auch das Problem zu bedenken, bis zu welchem Grade die Wissenschaft wachsen darf: sie hat den Werth zu bestimmen!"

We are not concerned with a destruction of science, but with controlling it. She is in all here goals and methods through and through dependent on philosophical perspectives, but forgets this easily. The controlling philosophy must concern itself with the problem to which degree science may grow, she must determine the worth.

19[25]

"Nachweis der barbarisirenden Wirkungen der Wissenschaften. Sie verlieren sich leicht in den Dienst der „praktischen Interessen“."

Proof of the barbarizing workings of the sciences. They lose themselves in the service of "practical interests.

[Fixed Cross]

Against the distinction between "logic" and "mysticism":

"Das Unbewußte ist größer als das Nichtwissen des Sokrates."
(the subconscious is greater than the not-knowing of Socrates.)

[Nietzsche, fall 1869]

Socrates was the Hellene who had become too weak to tolerate the unseen as a source of knowledge.
His instincts had turned against him.

"Das Dämonion ist das Unbewußte, das aber nur hindernd dem Bewußten hier und da entgegentritt: das wirkt aber nicht produktiv, sondern nur kritisch. Sonderbarste verkehrte Welt! Sonst ist das Unbewußte immer das Produktive, das Bewußte das Kritische."
(The Daemon is the subconscious, which however only works as a hindrance towards the conscious: it does not work productively, only critically. Most bizarre twisted world! Actually the subconscious is always the productive, and the conscious the critical.)

"Plato’s Austreibung der Künstler und Dichter ist Consequenz."
(Plato banishing the artists and poets is the consequence)

[ibid.]

Consciousness critical towards itself as critic :
"I know nothing, except that I posit what(ever) I posit."

[Fixed Cross]

I realize now that my statement "all too unambitious" may have been interpreted as a sign of giving up. On the contrary, I considered my point sufficiently proven. But it was a stupid exclamation.

You have it wrong. The distortion is the massive 'object', and it is not an object, but affect.

I was just using xkcd's words. And don't you mean "effect"? Or is that your own, Nietzschean addition? For surely the science does not say that it's affect!

What else could it be? It does not matter who coined that term first.

Nor would such a simplistic analysis do away with the usefulness of the model.

One of its uses is that it enables us to imagine time and mass /energy as being the same fabric.

That's fine, but in that it's no different from any other space-time model (e.g., block-time). What does the notion of curvedness add to the notion of a space-time continuum, with regard to its imaginability?

It describes something entirely different. It refutes the idea that time would progress independently of conditions. There is no "time", there is only space-time. Just as there is no "will", only will-to-power.
The "speed of time' is 'set' according to the amount of affect its progression involves.

Ah, so you decided to use the word "metaphysical" correctly again for a change. Yes, of course I believe that; so do you! The bond that you propose is the bond of their shared "self-valuing".

No, I don't. This nonsense is precisely what value-ontology does away with. There is no valuing-ness being posited. Self-valuings are not units of a greater, all encompassing meta-thing that gives them their character.

They're all "self-valuings"... You coined the term "will-to-power-ness". I've never claimed that the will to power be an all-encompassing "meta-thing" that gives beings their character!

This is precisely the difference between the WTP and value-thinking. The will to power presupposes both a totality (the world) and individual units. Value-thinking does not assume any "world".

The WTP assumes a totality, which provides for the "will to power-ness", its universality, and imposes this '-ness' on individual units. As if the units are only there by virtue of the totality.

I propose the opposite. Whatever total quantity we may count, establish in a given moment, is always the result of individual self-valuings, which come into being at any time.

I do not believe that existence is a closed system, so I do not believe that the law of conservation of energy applies to it.
And in fact present science corroborates that there seems to be an increase in matter.

Obviously "it's simply there" is not all I say about it! As Heidegger himself says, "will to power" is a Nietzschean answer to the question "What is being [Seiendes]?"...

And that answer is not "it is simply there" at all.

Really?? Does Nietzsche ask, "Why is there will to power and not rather nothing?" or anything like that?? Then tell me where!

You misunderstand me! Nietzsche answered a particular question, i.e. what is _this_ being/world? He did not say "the will to power is all there is, and this also answers the question why it is there".

[Fixed Cross]

Nietzsche speaks of "encroaching units". When asked of what these units are units, one has to answer "of the will to power". When one asks "what are these units?" the answer is also "will to power". So will to power is defined now as: units of the will to power, and "The" will to power is defined as "a collection of units of will to power". We see that this does not bring us any closer to an understanding of what these units are, how they work, what the will to power is.

How can a unit be? What is a unit? How is it defined?

1. An individual, group, structure, or other entity regarded as an elementary structural or functional constituent of a whole.
2. A group regarded as a distinct entity within a larger group.
3.
a. A mechanical part or module.
b. An entire apparatus or the equipment that performs a specific function.
4. A precisely specified quantity in terms of which the magnitudes of other quantities of the same kind can be stated.
5. Medicine The quantity of a vaccine, serum, drug, or other agent necessary to produce a specific effect.
6.
a. A fixed amount of scholastic study used as a basis for calculating academic credits, usually measured in hours of classroom instruction or laboratory work.
b. A section of an academic course focusing on a selected theme: a unit on Native Americans.
7. The number immediately to the left of the decimal point in the Arabic numeral system.
8. Mathematics
a. The lowest positive whole number; one.
b. An element of a ring with a multiplicative inverse.
( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/unit )

I have emphasized what points to what is lacking in Nietzsches definition of existence - the description of a mechanism. For how does a unit will to power? What makes the universe composed of units, instead of a giant blob of nano-goo? How can it be, given the laws of entropy, that there is any activity or structure at all? The will to power does nothing to explain this, it only describes.

What is needed here is the explanation of the relation, the relating, of different encroaching units. The explanation of why units are both the same (will to power, energy, being) and different (not occupying the same space, interacting with each other, exerting force on each other, willing power over each other).

Aleister Crowley said: "Love is the law, love under will." He was on to something, in his romantic way.
Law here means: the way in which will operates - necessity.
Love means: Identification. And only by identifying a unit/being/particle as some-thing, can a unit/being/particle exert any influence on it.
Identification presupposes an identity of the identifier -- a standard to identify with.
How does a standard exist? A standard is set. The existence of a standard is the result of an activity, an activity of the thing which embodies/uses the standard.
This standard-setting is what therefore must be at the core of all encroaching-being. The world is will to power from the outside - a monster of energy, encroaching units of this monster.

From the inside it must be interpreted as a very different principle: in order for a unit to will to power over another unit while retaining its unit-like quality (and not degenerating into a goo on the first interactions) it must hold itself as the primary condition for this interacting. The interacting/ willing to power must be based on what/that it already is - a potential for a (e)valuation-as-potential. Further, because all of existence is activity, and not cold, static object-as-such, this potential must be at root an activity. And since there is nothing "smaller" than this potential for (e)valuation as potential, at root of what we can conceive, there is the setting of itself of a potential for valuation as potential, which means; a standardization of a perspective.

This standardizing is the primal activity, from which all willing and structuring rises. If not for this self-standardizing, there would be no difference/differentiation, no polarity/energy, no being.

What is this self standardization? We all know it, we all do it -- it is in every act that is not an act of self-undoing. It is in every act of interpreting, which means "making ones own". It can only be understood indirectly - as that which is necessary in order to estimate/engage any-thing at all, in order to be a subject towards an object, a being enduring longer than the most fleeting of moments.

[James S Saint]

What is needed here is the explanation of the relation, the relating, of different encroaching units. The explanation of why units are both the same (will to power, energy, being) and different (not occupying the same space, interacting with each other, exerting force on each other, willing power over each other).

And in steps Rational Metaphysics..

An essential element in RM is Definitional Logic, obviously focused on definitions. Throughout this thread, I couldn't help but note that a quintessential word has been left undefined and freely used with both of its common definitions. Such always leads to arguments of course (as intended). That word, is "Truth".

When that word is defined in a specific manner, I can fully support the notion and concept of "Value-Ontology" and can even incontrovertibly prove its validity. But on the other hand, if left loosely defined or undefined, much like the issue of the undefined "God", disbelief and serpent bane is inevitable. And because the word was not defined by the authors of Value-Ontology, I could only support its notion casually and by exception of noting that the word "probably meant a specific thing, although since it was never defined", much like the Bible, it becomes anyone's guess and not worth the political struggle to support whether it was true or not, valuable or not. It loses its value due to its obscurity and vague implications, which in the case of Nietzsche leads directly into serious selfish conflict and disharmony.

Being a little familiar with Fixed Cross, I can surmise what he is intending to say and can confirm, assuming I have guessed properly, that Value-Ontology is in fact valid and valuable as a real and fundamental philosophy of life. Presuming what it really means, I can state that reality itself does in fact work exactly as is being described. Entities respond to all things with respect to their own "self-interest" or they perish, in all cases. Value-Ontology in the interest of its own name, must learn the self-value of fully knowing thyself, and in this case, revealing it in clear text.

But a small bit of advice would be to very quickly establish the proposed means to avoid the train of disharmony quickly approaching by very thoroughly specifying by what means any particulate harmony is to be established under such a value system or thought. That which cannot maintain its "self-interest" harmony (Self-Harmony), WILLs itself to the power of extinction. Homosapian as a species is quickly actualizing that as we idly converse.

[Fixed Cross]

What is needed here is the explanation of the relation, the relating, of different encroaching units. The explanation of why units are both the same (will to power, energy, being) and different (not occupying the same space, interacting with each other, exerting force on each other, willing power over each other).

And in steps Rational Metaphysics..

An essential element in RM is Definitional Logic, obviously focused on definitions. Throughout this thread, I couldn't help but note that a quintessential word has been left undefined and freely used with both of its common definitions. Such always leads to arguments of course (as intended). That word, is "Truth".

Yes. As my philosophical thinking emerges from a Nietzschean context, I am highly distrustful of the term truth. But it is the case that value ontology is essentially a fundamental form of perspectival logic, so the concepts "true" and "false" do seem to belong within its framework. I have not yet attempted to formulate what such truth would be defined as specifically, beyond the general observation that it is a "true-to" and not an objective, meta-truth, such as the will to power.

When that word is defined in a specific manner, I can fully support the notion and concept of "Value-Ontology" and can even incontrovertibly prove its validity. But on the other hand, if left loosely defined or undefined, much like the issue of the undefined "God", disbelief and serpent bane is inevitable. And because the word was not defined by the authors of Value-Ontology, I could only support its notion casually and by exception of noting that the word "probably meant a specific thing, although since it was never defined", much like the Bible, it becomes anyone's guess and not worth the political struggle to support whether it was true or not, valuable or not. It loses its value due to its obscurity and vague implications, which in the case of Nietzsche leads directly into serious selfish conflict and disharmony.

You and I have of course different approaches to Nietzsche -- I would even say that your approach to Nietzsche is the same as Sauwelios' -- in that you both read him as an ontologist, cosmologist, a writer who makes claims to the absolute. Of course the difference is that where Sauwelios affirms this ontology-cosmology, you reject it. I also reject Nietzsches ontology when it makes a claim to a technical definition, as in fact it does not attain to this at all. I agree with you that when the will to power is pursued as if it is a complete logic, it leads to disintegration.

Where I have had use of Nietzsche, more than of any other philosopher, is in his approach to the subject as the standard, and his strong focus on valuing power, of honesty in valuing, on life as art. I have agreed with Nietzsche that all rationalist and logicians approaches to the world have been quite futile in explaining anything about man to himself, they failed in being meaningful. In this light we may perhaps see here that you and I both have come to a similar conclusion as he has; that rationality as it has been practiced so far has in fact been irrational. But Nietzsche did not keep the prudence that must follow from this. He posited his own absolute, his own objective truth, the will to power. I have the impression that this fanaticism has led to his demise.

We now both depart more prudently from the observation that rationality must be rooted in the subjective, not observe with a seeming birds eye view that the subjective is the real. The will only does the latter, it is not itself rooted in what it describes. It is not a logic, it is quite simply what Nietzsche says it is, a portrait of a monster. The theory is perhaps best seen as an object of art. It is certainly not the result of Nietzsches greatest clarity -- I find his most valuable work to be whatever he writes concerning value.

I have taken up the work from this summit of his thinking, before he went downhill in his own will to control all of existence in a single definition. I have picked up his work where there was still fluid enough to forge something out of it that is beyond it, where it has not yet solidified into the material of dogma. Where he had "dug up" the concept of value as a fundamental activity, I have forged a logic out of this by formulating the conditions for this activity. With this, I have arrived at a point where it seems that you have also arrived, by a different path -- of the intellectually conscious scientist. Scientists have so far not had an intellectual conscience -- they have assumed that they stood themselves outside of that which they discovered. It seems that you have not fallen in this trap, refused to think that observations directly point to the truth, but, as I and also Nietzsche in his clearest thinking, looked at the mechanism of observing (and defining, comparing, classifying - using as ground for action) itself as the ground from which an understanding of truth may be established. Truth has always been there, you say - and indeed, if we are operating logically, we can hardly assume that we can do this while rejecting the distinction between true and false.

Being a little familiar with Fixed Cross, I can surmise what he is intending to say and can confirm, assuming I have guessed properly, that Value-Ontology is in fact valid and valuable as a real and fundamental philosophy of life. Presuming what it really means, I can state that reality itself does in fact work exactly as is being described. Entities respond to all things with respect to their own "self-interest" or they perish, in all cases. Value-Ontology in the interest of its own name, must learn the self-value of fully knowing thyself, and in this case, revealing it in clear text.

But a small bit of advice would be to very quickly establish the proposed means to avoid the train of disharmony quickly approaching by very thoroughly specifying by what means any particulate harmony is to be established under such a value system or thought. That which cannot maintain its "self-interest" harmony (Self-Harmony), WILLs itself to the power of extinction. Homosapian as a species is quickly actualizing that as we idly converse.

It is of course extremely difficult to move from the general to the specific. I have several angles but not yet summoned the momentum to take a path from theory to definitions and follow it through to the end of enabling methods. I much appreciate this stimulus and I hope that you will keep revealing bits and pieces of your own findings to facilitate this process.

[James S Saint]

Later in RM, I have to go ahead and detail out the literal formulae concerning life on all levels and thus "value". From the equations, models can be formed that can verify and validate its integrity. I don't see why we couldn't begin that as it seems to be right up your current track. But I'm still recovering from Jack's long surgery and resuscitation, so maybe sloowly..

[Fixed Cross]

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself- he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator.
(Zarathustra - of the Thousand and One Goals)

If, as Zarathustra says, fundamental to mans being is his valuing, then logically this valuing he must do in terms of himself, for it to amount to his consistent being-man. By such consistently specific valuing, man assimilates material and grows as himself. By this valuing in terms of himself he does not, from the moment of his conception disintegrate by the laws of entropy that seem to govern the universe, but grows, from human cell to human emryo to human being. This was already understood, in a rudimentary form, by Nietzsche. But with this understanding a new question arose: how is a consistent valuing possible? The simple answer would be: by being a consistent subject. But this only createa a circular argumen, and leaves open the question: how there can be a valuing, a being? How does a subject maintain its perspectival consistency, its structural integrity, whereby it values in terms of itself? To explain this we must posit a self-valuing, which is to say, a holding-oneself-as-value, whereby this “oneself” is nothing else than this consistent holding-as-value, in engaging the outer world. This consistency of a self-holding standard-value, is what amounts to being, the accomulation of more and more material to feed and sustain a structurally consistent growing, “a becoming”.

With this logical deepening of the concept valuing, we are faced with the problem of identifying technically what this self valuing is. At this point, this holding-oneself-as-consistent in the face of otherness, the outer, to which I will refer as self-valuing, has been inferred as a necessity to the possibility of valuing, which amounts the activity of manifest being, i.e. interacting with “the world” and thereby assimilating materials to grow while maintaining structural integrity. Other than such this inferring, it may not be possible to directly define self-valuing. We may not be able to describe or define it in the terms we are used to, in which we like to acquire knowledge, the terms which are developed to describe the manifest in exact measurements. The collection of these terms and their proper logic, that of mathematics, is what we refer to as exact science.

Observing the manifest world in scientific terms, we use principles such as quantity, causality, energy-tranferring and interacting, motion, temporality. All these are enabled and interconnected by the laws of mathematics, which is the logic of objective equalies. It relies on given and exactly determined values, which can be defined in terms of each other. It is here that the philosophy of value ontology posits a break with the method of science. The philosopher is not satisfied with positing values as if they are unquestionably given, it is his task to investigate why, or more precisely, how they are given. Mathematics can not provide an answer to this, as such would go directly against the axioms of this science, which include always the word “if”. If A is given as A, then A is given as A. It does not posit that A is given as A. Since the root-logic of science must keep from answering the question why or how, the sciences following from this logic must also keep from this. Science can therefore only describe, not explain.

Philosophy wants to venture where mathematics and its children the sciences, can not go. It wants to posit a value not predicated by an if, it wants to posit that A is given as A. The great philosophersof the modern age have attemped such positive statements in various ways, beginning with Descartes, who posited the certainty “I think therefore I am”, or, read properly in context, “I question that anything is, therefore I am”. Nietzsche and others observed that this “I” who questions is not actually given as an exactly understandable unit. What is this “I” who is, and who questions that anything is, and who posits that he is because he questions that anything is? Descartes accomplished bringing himself the logical certainty that he exists. He does not bring the certainty that anything else is, in fact he calls this very much into question. If the only ground for knowledge of what is (ontology) is to cognate in the way Descartes was doing, then only philosophers can be known to exist, and only by themselves. Clearly this is not a useful definition of being. It is also not an exact application of logic, as it assumes the “I” both in I think. And I exist. The terms “I”, “exist” and “think” are not a mathematical terms: “I exist” can not mathematically be inferred from “I think”.

To correct Descartes logic, we must draw back to the meaning of the word “Am” in “I Am”. We must correctly observe the meaning of the verb “To be”. We must logically be satisfied with the given that what we call “being” by definition exists / is –this is the only meaningful and correct way to employ the verb at all. The correct phrase would be: “I am, therefore I am”. By this phrase, “I” is defined, namely, as that which, apparently, is said by itself to exist. What have we come to know by this? Nothing. We must start all over.

It is here that philosophy must break from science, from the pretense to be able to define the terms “I” and “exist” and “cognate” in terms of each other by exact inference. We must simply be honest, and admit that all three of these terms are simply understood by us, to mean precisely – what we understand by them. No further explication is necessary, no more exact explication is possible. The terms were called into being to describe exactly what we mean when we use the terms. They hold no deeper meaning than what they were invented to convey.

But fear not for the sake of philosophy, it will still find a way. What the terms “I” and “think” and “exist” were invented to convey may possibly be explicated further, deeper, more exact than these terms. To see how this is the case, observe that these terms all three of them refer to the very same thing. “I”, “think” and “am” are all words indicating the same, which also includes the things to which other terms refer, such as “eat” or “walk”. As true as “I think, therefore I am” is, is also “I eat, therefore I am”. By the correction of Descartes logic, we see that the “I” is posited as a condition of “think”, as much as “think” is a condition of “I”. Therefore, when I posit that “I eat”, I posit an “I” which, by common interpretation of grammar, means that I posit that (an) “I” exist(s).

We see that “I” simply means “existing” and that this existing can be expressed in the endless variety of verbs that may pertain to a posited I. Now, the question becomes simply, what do all these verbs, by the grace of which the “I” can be explicated, have in common?

I will cut to the chase and propose that they are all functions of the the verb “valuing”. There is no other activity that propoerly explicates an “I” that is not directly the result of this one. Whether I walk, talk, think, eat or pray, I do so because I move towards an aim. In other words, I act because I seek to obtain a value. I seek to obtain a value because I have established this value to myself, in the form of an object (in the sense of “thing” and/or “goal”) And since all that I actively do is predicated by a value I have established to me, and since “I” can only be explicated in terms of such activites, the I is nothing besides this establishing-value-to-me (this “I”).

Furthermore, in all cases wherein this value-establishing to this “I” lead to a continuation of experience as this I, this I must be understood as a constant, which, as it is explained in terms of value establishment, means a standard value, which is constantly re-established with every act of and following from the act of valuing, as itself, which means that its consistency must itself be understood as an activity.

We can see that this does indeed describe physical reality accurately if we look at the periodic table, at what makes for a consistency of an elements. We may consider the most consistent to be those which are least influenced by other elements or energies. Thse are the “noble elements”, in case of the metals, platinum, gold, silver. What make as an element “noble” is that all of its electron rings are filled. It holds little potential for change, for interaction, but in itself it holds the greatest potential relative to the “atomic infrastructure”. Gold is, considered as itself, relatively extremely active, in that it holds in its structure the maximum amount “activities”. By this maximization of activity within a given structure, amounts to a maximal consistency.

Contemplate now the correspondence between activity, "noble elements", consistency, and value.

[Cezar]

1. Christianity is anti-master morality.
2. The Enlightenment movement was against "superstition", but it could not create new gods or create new values and a new class to stand behind those new values.
3. The Enlightenment has so opened the door for the atheist form of Christianity - socialism.

Today we suffer from crazy women who think they are the measure of all things (because women are socialists) and from infertile intellectuals who are unable to beat that socialism and create new values.

[James S Saint]

1. Christianity is anti-master morality.
2. The Enlightenment movement was against "superstition", but it could not create new gods or create new values and a new class to stand behind those new values.
3. The Enlightenment has so opened the door for the atheist form of Christianity - socialism.

Today we suffer from crazy women who think they are the measure of all things (because women are socialists) and from infertile intellectuals who are unable to beat that socialism and create new values.

Largely true, but answer why #2 was/is true.

[Cezar]

The answer lays maybe somewhere in France 17. century. It seems that each time it was the Germans who have made a counter-movement (Sturm und Drang) which has suppressed every attempt to turn toward classicism. I've started with Descartes, but it could take me a decade to finish it all.

The answer could be simple: for each revaluation Christianity must be devaluated. Nobody did ever an attempt to do that. It was always equal with becoming god.

Now, after Nietzsche, I would dare to assume that a New valuation should win the final weight over everything Christian and German.

[Fixed Cross]

The Enlightenment movement was against "superstition", but it could not create new gods or create new values and a new class to stand behind those new values.

The destruction of idols, the abandonment of superstition, is also the destruction and abandonment of values. But new values were in fact created in the enlightenment, it's just that to Nietzsche they seemed "lowly" - the values belonging to the modern individual. Man had become too concerned with "brotherly love" to attain to classical values, to self-value in the ruthless and uncompromising ways of the Greeks. Man had come to believe in himself as part of a whole, an organized cosmos. Man as a function of a greater entity. The Greeks never saw themselves in this way - this utilitarian view of man, wherein each individual has and is defined by certain rights granted by the state. The state never reached that level of sophistication of control in the classical era, not until the Catholic church and its Jesuit orders took hold of Europe, when the art of spying on citizens and controlling their convictions became an issue. Athens was far too pragmatic and Earthly for this sort of thing, it was simply a band of people, a tribe in favorable conditions, with the good fortune of having a noble narrative (Homer) to serve as a binding super-value (as opposed to super-ego). All these conditions were real, and the values produced from them were therefore natural (to their creators) and solid.

Modern man has learned to define himself in abstract terms, as "a human", instead of for example "A Greek", which meant a specific type of human, with a lot of ethical and aesthetic attributes. By introducing the common denominator "human" as both the basic and the supreme meaning of any individual (indeed a result of Christianity), the space for specific human values has been reduced, sterilized. Nationalism was an attempt to break this sterility, but the modern nation state, this cold beast, does in no way guarantee the sort of ground for values that the Greek polis represented. Nazism was an extreme attempt to derive this ground from the will to have it, but as Nietzsche noted beforehand, the Germans were absolutely not ready for such a thing, they entirely lacked depth of being, health, subtlety, culture. Now, with the intermixing of all types, the ground is being laid for what Nietzsche called a new aristocracy - not defined by national borders, but by the capacity to value and produce values, to be value. The infrastructure used to build such an aristocracy is entirely natural, that is to say affect-based, humanity is currently being broken down into types by exposing it to extreme stimuli, and can be reorganized into a new pyramid by understanding these types and finding a proper use and context for them.

The lowest type will not be "Untermensch" but simply "dumb and numb". The highest type the philosopher-artist, or "artist-tyrant", who is capable of producing vision and attracting resources and builders to enact that vision. As is always the case, capital flows toward the ideal. Since the enlightenment, the ideal has been "liberty". Liberty from the church and the tyrannical God - but liberty for what? As this question remains unanswered by anything other than in general "the fulfillment of passions", capital flows towards all sources of pleasure. The "artist-tyrant" is he who conceives of higher pleasures, capable of inspiring greater forces than the attraction of sex and violence, and from such power may flow a healthy super-national capitalist state, naturally ranked, layered in terms of capacity to value and attain to higher values. Of course capacity to value is physiologically defined, so there will have to be, as part of such a meta-states establishment and maintenance, a tradition of physical, physiological and psychological discipline, a "yoga" whereby strong willed humans are enabled to ascend and educate their children.

[Cezar]

So, you claim nationalism and "Nazism" are in deed reactions upon something, as if there were an action behind that?

Until now I have seen the occurrence of nationalism as a typical English product which had no root in any action or reaction upon Enlightenment.

Like I have said once:

Nationalism - a lie that all people who speak the same language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors and aristocracy)
"Nazism" (national-socialism) - a lie that people who speak the similar language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors, aristocracy and oligarchy)
Socialism - a lie that all people are equal, i.e. belong to the same "Human race". (a Christian lie against W, A, O and everybody who is able to affirm life which is not suffering)

There is and was no connection between them and the Greeks. Who claims the opposite he works for Christianity.

Liberty from the church and the tyrannical God - but liberty for what? As this question remains unanswered by anything other than in general "the fulfillment of passions", capital flows towards all sources of pleasure. The "artist-tyrant" is he who conceives of higher pleasures, capable of inspiring greater forces than the attraction of sex and violence, and from such power may flow a healthy super-national capitalist state, naturally ranked, layered in terms of capacity to value and attain to higher values. Of course capacity to value is physiologically defined, so there will have to be, as part of such a meta-states establishment and maintenance, a tradition of physical, physiological and psychological discipline, a "yoga" whereby strong willed humans are enabled to ascend and educate their children.

You approve all the lies mentioned above!

And this is pure decadence. It doesn't matter how many drives you take under observation as long as there is no rule of the reason. "Pleasure" means to lose control over yourself and to ignore a higher happiness, a victory or a higher body! In fact, without the reason, higher drives can not exist. Higher drives are lived inside of the works of art, but which arts do you have available in out modern times? And which classes are present? Thus this all is eliminated and drugs and sex become wings.

The future depends on the forces which are capable for a revaluation-based new aristocratization.

[Fixed Cross]

So, you claim nationalism and "Nazism" are in deed reactions upon something, as if there were an action behind that?

There was only the ideal, a wishful thinking about a "master race", not any ground.

Until now I have seen the occurrence of nationalism as a typical English product which had no root in any action or reaction upon Enlightenment.

You may want to look into the advent of nationalism in relation to France.

Like I have said once:

Nationalism - a lie that all people who speak the same language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors and aristocracy)
"Nazism" (national-socialism) - a lie that people who speak the similar language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors, aristocracy and oligarchy)

Indeed. "Germans" do not share the same physiology, type. The unity is a lie, not a reality.
I believe I made all this clear.

Socialism - a lie that all people are equal, i.e. belong to the same "Human race". (a Christian lie against W, A, O and everybody who is able to affirm life which is not suffering)

There is and was no connection between them and the Greeks. Who claims the opposite he works for Christianity.

I don't know why you think that you are disagreeing. I meant to make it clear that such ideological bonds are an unreal surrogate for the real unity a Greeks polis formed.

Liberty from the church and the tyrannical God - but liberty for what? As this question remains unanswered by anything other than in general "the fulfillment of passions", capital flows towards all sources of pleasure. The "artist-tyrant" is he who conceives of higher pleasures, capable of inspiring greater forces than the attraction of sex and violence, and from such power may flow a healthy super-national capitalist state, naturally ranked, layered in terms of capacity to value and attain to higher values. Of course capacity to value is physiologically defined, so there will have to be, as part of such a meta-states establishment and maintenance, a tradition of physical, physiological and psychological discipline, a "yoga" whereby strong willed humans are enabled to ascend and educate their children.

You approve all the lies mentioned above!

And this is pure decadence. It doesn't matter how many drives you take under observation as long as there is no rule of the reason. "Pleasure" means to lose control over yourself and to ignore a higher happiness, a victory or a higher body! In fact, without the reason, higher drives can not exist. Higher drives are lived inside of the works of art, but which arts do you have available in out modern times? And which classes are present? Thus this all is eliminated and drugs and sex become wings.

I have no idea what lies you think that I agree with. Read closer. "Pleasure" is the feeling of power. It can exist in lower and higher, greater and smaller, cruder and finer forms. There is no pleasure without consciousness, and there is no healthy mind without of a healthy body.

The mind can take control over the body only by knowing the body. Why do you think that athletics were so important in Athens?

The future depends on the forces which are capable for a revaluation-based new aristocratization.

Re-valuation of values is not enough. A revaluation of valuation is required.

[Cezar]

I thought you were talking about nationalism as reaction against the idea of the brotherly love.

But pleasure shall not be mistaken with happiness.

Someone who is able to have sex still doesn't need to affirm life.

Someone who can differ happiness from sex can surely affirm life.

Sex is a humiliation to the degree of lower types of organisms. That is why it is made secretly.
Also work is a humiliation to the degree of an animal, because it serves only to gain food.

Who is humiliated, he can surely not affirm life.
Therefore, if we are decadents a half of a life, I would not allow someone who is over 30 (or maybe over 25) to mix up pleasure and happiness.

[Fixed Cross]

I thought you were talking about nationalism as reaction against the idea of the brotherly love.

I dont consider nationalism to be a direct reaction against Christianity, but a reaction to the sterility that resulted from a conception of "mankind" as uniform, undifferentiated. But in so far as it was aimed at producing lasting values, it has mostly been failed attempts, as the connection between citizens of a nation was not a positive, active type of (self-)valuing, but a passive undergoing of the fate of falling under the same language and law. There are exceptions - France and pre-WWII Japan are examples of slightly more active, involved nationalism, where the nation actually stands (or stood) for certain spiritual (geistige) values that are both positive and considered to be exclusive to the nation. Characteristic to such value-bearing cultures is that they do not attempt to venture outside of their own realm. As Nietzsche notes somewhere, the French, like the Greeks, do/did not learn to speak other languages, as that would be a degeneration.

But pleasure shall not be mistaken with happiness.

Physical pleasure is simply a very short lived and therefore insubstantial, "low" form of happiness.

Someone who is able to have sex still doesn't need to affirm life.

Someone who can differ happiness from sex can surely affirm life.

Sex is a humiliation to the degree of lower types of organisms. That is why it is made secretly.
Also work is a humiliation to the degree of an animal, because it serves only to gain food.

Who is humiliated, he can surely not affirm life.
Therefore, if we are decadents a half of a life, I would not allow someone who is over 30 (or maybe over 25) to mix up pleasure and happiness.

Was the secrecy of the sexual act not encouraged by its vilification by the church? I am not sure that what you say here holds water, but I am not sure that it doesn't either. I certainly disagree that work is always humiliating if it serves to bring food. Stay true to the Earth. Work is humiliating only if one is being forced to do it, if it is done as a slave(-wager) or if the work has no value corresponding with ones own valuing. Philosophy is also work, so is the life of the artist. The ideal form of work is play, which is the most serious and dedicated type of work.

[Cezar]

No it was not. The ancient Greeks have not done it in public. Only barbarians like Scythians did. But barbarians are weak and cowardly.

In contrary to your opinion, I see the roots of nationalism in the English parliamentarism. And the brotherly love can be only a Christian reaction to that.

We have the French revolution and brotherhood as an ideal coming after the American revolution.

Frenchmen were "the soldiers of the English ideas" - N, consequently the orders came from England.

I suspect a low origin behind your nickname.

[Fixed Cross]

I must, to my regret, say that it has never occurred to me to wonder what is behind your mask and nickname. Still such curiosity has not taken hold of me.

[Fixed Cross]

To your opinions on sexuality and nationalism:

- There are no indications that the sexual act was kept "secret" in either Greece or Rome, nor that it was considered a humiliation. That it was not done out in the open has nothing to do with secrecy. Keeping an activity private does not mean that one is ashamed of engaging in it or that one wants to keep this activity from ones fellows. Rather the opposite - it has is in general been a reason for shame (and self-loathing) to not be sexually active, for the simple reason that it suggests weakness. I do not mean that to abstain from sex deliberately means to be weak - not at all - but it is certainly untrue that to be sexually active was a source of shame in the classical world.

- There is no reason to connect nationalism to the proletarian movements. The sense of an shared identity of a people has in many cases taken on the form of identification with the state. In other cases, propaganda to identify with the state has been a way to artificially forge an identification where there was no physiological ground for this - no developed taste. I can not make any statements about the English as being or not being 'a people' - I doubt that Nietzsche should be blindly taken as an authority on such matters - but I know that the French certainly have characteristics of a type in the sense of taste, as do the Japanese. The Germans do not, although they can perhaps be described as lacking in taste. Going by the food they produce, perhaps the same can indeed be said of the English.

[Cezar]

I wonder if you know a single thing about the Greek position of shame and what is bad. Except that from Nietzsche.

[Fixed Cross]

As long as you don't think that you are considered an authority on such matters, wonder away.

[Cezar]

Coz you need to bow down in front of the authoritey, no fixey?