What is The Good?

In my view human existence ceased to be existence, and therefore ceased to be good, with the advent of Socratic method. Before that, the deep truth of goodness and being being necessarily one - otherwise, neither would make sense as a concept - held in Greece.

Human existence only rarely amounts to a full existence, thriving, thus, to the good.

“Good” is itself “the good value” - if we take it analytically.
But that would lead to circular definitions, as all not self-valuing based logics do.

I would rather say value is necessarily cognate to health.
Not specifically this or that type of health. But there is no depth for me behind these concepts - rather, health and value are depths, the concepts are measures of depth.

Selfvaluing is not a teleological logic, so health is always only to the end of enjoying and increasing itself.
There is no truth in austerity - the world is excess, and only in health can this be consistent, Being. All the rest is simply debris.

Again, I dont hold a simplistic view of health. Health is most certainly not the absence of pain or discomfort, of struggle. Quite the contrary.

I cant agree there. Nietzsche is a subtle physician if there has been one.

But Nietzsche never takes survival as a signifier value, nor do I - we survive in order to value. N is explicit in referring the will to survive at all cost to slavemorality. But this is in fact precisely what slave-morality is defined as.
So there you have the basic distinction of different healths; what is healthy to the slave is a sickness to the real entity. From there on, it splits open like a rainbow - Maybe all his writing is about health and its different kinds.

I find in N the first philosopher since the Presocratics that actually addresses something at all. It is I who is responsible for making his wisdom into an exact formula. And my work so far already eclipses all the combined philosophy of the 20th century- or devours it rather, like sunlight swallows the moon.

Thank you for your opinion.
What if ones needs include violence?

And this striving for a higher good, this, per my definition of the good as existence-proper, is the good itself!

Good is self-overcoming. Whatever is good needs to get better to remain the good, and not become the sick, and beyond that, dead, or worse, slave.

So what, exactly, does “the deep truth of goodness and being being necessarily one” really mean? To me this is circular and meaningless unless we actually define our terms, namely what does “goodness” really mean? Since Nietzsche defines it as “power” and “strength”, and I already explained why I consider these insufficient (for the same reason that I consider “goodness and being are necessarily one” is insufficient (because it begs the question)), I cannot logically accept that. Nietzsche merely states that strength and power are good, or that if goodness really means anything then it means these two things, but this is the exact same answer as you just implied, namely that “existing is good as such”. But that is clearly incorrect, because many existences can not be considered good, quite the opposite, and existing as such doesn’t give any moral reasons whatsoever, nothing in the way of meaning or sufficiency regarding whatever “good” might be said to mean.

To say that existing is the good is, to me, pure nonsense. Unless we define what “good” really means, which of course cannot be define as “existing” because that begs the question as: Existing is good, because good means existing. No, that will not work.

Thus I am sure you can see why I consider Nietzsche’s response inadequate.

My elaboration here is not circular at all, and only appears circular if, again, you do not want to ask “what does ‘good’ really mean?” Since Nietzsche never really asks that, and I don’t see that you are asking it either, then of course the statement of mine “Existence is good in so far as and iff it is actually good, in so far as and iff it actually sustains good values” appears circular. But only appears.

We need to be asking about precise goods; what actions or beings are good, and why? I want to ask those questions. And I do not see anyone else asking them. Except maybe Kant, whom Nietzsche hated of course (because Nietzsche hated asking about the nature of good).

My point is that we need to ask: health for what purpose, to what ends, or why? Why is health good? Health is good because it allows us to exist, so we are back to the Nietzschean circle again unless we actually define beyond “health allows existence”; we need to ask “what kinds of existences, what should this healthy existence be doing and why, other than merely ‘being healthy’”? What should it not be doing, and why not?

What do you think?

Then self-valuing is unable to answer this most basic question. That is a real problem.

Yes, being requires health. Of course this is true. But that is not a moral statement, that is merely an ontological observation. My objection is that this merely ontological necessity is being falsely used as if it prescribed morality or explained what good is and means. It does not.

So what is health then, in your view? Again I am trying to get beyond “health is being able to exist”. Yeah, we can all understand that. Let’s move on from there to more interesting questions.

So what does Nietzsche say about “which forms of health/existence are preferable and why”? Remember, saying something like “forms of health/existence are preferable that sustain your existence” is circular and meaningless.

Right, so again, let’s be specific here. What are the specific kinds of health that are “good” for the slave morality and bad for the master morality, and why? And I am not merely stating that Nietzsche considered survival an end in itself, I know that he did not. He conditions the value of survival to the values of health, strength, and power. He considers these last three to be what thriving means. But as I have been pointing out, he doesn’t actually explain what “health, strength, and power” really mean beyond the circular “to keep existing; to grow in one’s existing”. That is not a proper answer, it is an equivocation.

What is Nietzsche actually addressing? You state “I find in N the first philosopher since the Presocratics that actually addresses something at all”, so tell me what this “actually addresses something” really and precisely is, and how that addresses the question about what good means?

Good: what you want to do.
Bad: what you don’t want to do.

Good/bad is relative.
This means that different people will want/not want to do different things.

There is no universal good as there are no universal/eternal/absolute forms or anything for that matter.
These are meaningless terms: universal, eternal, absolute.
Try to define them, which means, try to reduce them to a sequence of events they refer to, and you will see it for yourself.

FC is making things too complicated.
This is because he has some kind of strange aversion towards rigorous thinking.
It’s too dry (i.e. too difficult) for him.
He wants to remain a child.

Let me give you an example of some good’s and some bad’s.
Suppose we have a man who finds his life extremely painful.
What he’s going to do?
He’s going to say “look, living life is bad, what is good is to not live at all, which is to say, to sit still and do nothing, then call that meditation”.
Of course, he’s not gonna say it like that, but you get my point.
Because he sees nothing good in real life – he cannot see because it’s too painful – he has no choice but to call it bad.
And by extension, to call whatever remains, which is nothingness, good.
Hence, we say he’s a nihilist.
Because he worships nothingness.
Of course, he’s not gonna call it nothingness . . . he’s gonna call it “Subject” or “thing-in-itself” or “transcendental Being”.
But these are just fancy terms for nothingness.

Now compare that to a man who can enjoy life.
Of course, he too will find certain aspects of life to be painful.
But not to such an extent that he sees absolutely nothing of value in it.
And even those things he considers to be painful he can understand that it is only him finding them painful and that they wouldn’t be so painful if he had the strength to take advantage of them.
He thereby shows much more strength than the above person.
So he understands that nothingness – the pathological introversion or autism the above type suffers from – to be inferior and not superior.

let’s assume for now morals and values are subjective.

Occasionally violence is necessary.

For example: a person may be surrounded by physically and mentally abusive people, and in order to protect himself and/or his friends and neighbors, he has to retaliate.
It’s not always possible to escape abusive people, and rarely is it possible to educate them, sometimes it’s necessary to defend yourself and others, and sometimes it’s necessary to punish abusers.

Another example: say there’s no jobs available, or no decent jobs (jobs that aren’t too demanding and pay enough so that you and yours can live comfortably), and say there’s no government programs, or decent ones, if you can’t pack up your things and move to a better place, it may be necessary to steal, especially if the people you plan to steal from have inordinate wealth and resources and are squandering them on frivolities.

However, if a person is merely under the impression violence is necessary when it’s not, than they need to be reeducated and/or segregated from the rest of society, because their false needs are coming into conflict with the true needs (like the need not be physically and mentally abused or have their wares stolen) of others.

Even if a person has no sympathy, and on top of that is a sadist, it’s irrational, even from their own standpoint to live by the sword, because odds are, they’re going to die by it, and you know what they say, live fast die young.
So as lustful as they may be for inordinate wealth and power over others, in all likelihood their power will eventually be stripped from them, and they’ll be imprisoned or executed.
So their psychological ‘need’, if it can be called that, to have inordinate wealth and be sadistic, is coming into conflict with their own other, arguably greater needs, like the need to be, well, alive, to be safe, secure and live comfortably.

Now there are a few people who slip through the cracks, and aren’t punished by the law or vigilantes, but they are just that, few and far in between.
Punishment comes in all forms, people who don’t break the law, but who’re mentally abusive, they usually were abused, and will wind up abused again, and alone, and at a disadvantage psychosocioeconomically, it’s a cycle.

It’s usually better to swim with society rather than against it, especially when society is treating you reasonably fairly (there’s no such thing as perfect fairness).
But there is a time and place for everything, including degrees of rebellion and revolution, I wouldn’t say it’s always better to swim with the current (I’m trying to be balanced here, find the middle course between being social, antisocial and asocial).
Of course you can’t always convince people of such things, and you don’t have to, people who’re violent still, need, to be incarcerated or in extreme cases, executed, because society has needs of its own, and some conflicts of interest are inevitable.

A lot of people who’re abusive, thou not all, are extremely imbalanced physically, mentally and emotionally, and if their physical and mental health and sanity could be restored, than they’d be able to see the foolishness and futility of their ways.

I could get into objective morals and values but for now, I’ll leave it at the subjective.

Isn’t the self-valuing logic likewise circular, though? I ask this, I respond here, because I’ve been exploring the question “What does ‘good’ mean?”–or rather, “What does ‘valuable’, what does ‘valuing’ mean?”–in my videos lately: especially from episode 14 onward (haven’t uploaded episode 15 yet, though). My Nietzschean answer thus far:

good = valuable = pleasurable (WP 55)
pleasure = the feeling of power (e.g., WP 693; cf. AC 2)
the feeling of power = the will to power = power itself (AC 2)
the will to power = the instinct of freedom (GM 2.18)

good = valuable = being accompanied by a feeling of freedom
the feeling of freedom = the will

“Goal setting itself is a joy [Lust, “pleasure”?],–a mass of force of the intellect expends itself in means and ends thinking!
Willing: A pressing feeling, very agreeable! It is the accompaniment of every effusion of force. Likewise already all wishing in itself (wholly regardless of attaining).” (Nietzsche, Nachlass, supposedly Autumn 1883, my translation from several years ago.)

The will is the accompanying feeling or appearance (Begleiterscheinung), accompanying every effusion of force, that oneself, one’s willing, be the cause of that effusion and its potential attainments.
It is the feeling of free will, which would be a self-willing in the sense of the willing of that very willing–to speak with Spinoza, the free cause of its essence as well as its existence (compare Sartre, “existence precedes essence”).

I’ve also started to explore Rousseau, who argues existence, or rather the feeling of existence, is the highest good, and for whom freedom was of absolute importance. Of equal importance to the requirements of society, in fact, between freedom and which he then supposedly found a perfect harmony. I associate that with Seung’s interpretation of Zarathustra, which interprets it as a progressive conflict between free will and predestination or determinism–the Faustian self and the Spinozan (cosmic) self, respectively. Compare:

“Spinoza reached such an affirmative position [i.e., pantheism] in so far as every moment has a logical necessity, and with his basic instinct, which was logical, he felt a sense of triumph that the world should be constituted that way.
But his case is only a single case. Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every event, that finds expression in every event, would have to lead the individual who experienced it as his own basic character trait to welcome every moment of universal existence with a sense of triumph. The crucial point would be that one experienced this basic character trait in oneself as good, valuable–with pleasure.
[…] the basic character trait of those who rule: the will to power.” (WP 55; cf. “The Greek State” and BGE 260, end.)

Ultimately I think the Spinozan affirmative position consists in identifying with God, “the first and only free cause of the essence of all things and also of their existence”:

“I confess, that the theory which subjects all things to the will of an indifferent deity, and asserts that they are all dependent on his fiat, is less far from the truth than the theory of those, who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good. For these latter persons seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God in acting looks to as an exemplar, or which he aims at as a definite goal. This is only another name for subjecting God to the dominion of destiny, an utter absurdity in respect to God, whom we have shown to be the first and only free cause of the essence of all things and also of their existence. I need, therefore, spend no time in refuting such wild theories.” (Spinoza, The Ethics, Part I, Prop. XXXIII, 1883 Elwes translation.)

Secular Humanism is basically Judeo-Christianity without God; Spinoza’s philosophy is basically Judeo-Christianity without the Idea of the Good. And the difference between Nietzsche’s and Spinoza’s philosophies is basically that Spinoza’s is monotheist whereas Nietzsche’s is polytheist (though both are, paradoxically, pantheist). [https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/196644-Things-to-do-in-the-stateless-classless-society Actually, I think Spinoza’s philosophy identifies the Idea of the Good and God–or Nature. Compare the early Nietzsche, where Nature is just an imaginary self-fragmentation of the Primordial One, Whose abysmal freedom impels It to imagine Itself as many unfree beings. The absolutely free must be free from its freedom, too–and from every “must”!..]

Yes, I do not believe that self-valuing is circular logic. I made that claim, or rather implication that it may be circular, in response to Fixed and because I want us to explicate exactly how that claim is false.

I also agree with your analysis of freedom and the feeling of freedom, these are crucially close to the root of being. But freedom is never for its own sake, while the feeling of freedom is (almost always) for its own sake; therefore, freedom as such is deeper than the feeling of freedom.

If we limit ourselves to talking about the feeling of freedom then we stagnate in mere psychology, and do not penetrate into philosophy.

We must also differentiate nature, the natural world and even in the case of Spinoza and early Nietzsche as you mention, from the human realm. The human realm is build upon the natural world, but is quite different from it. This is not difficult to explicate philosophically, and has already been done so I will not rehash that here unless you want me to.

We know that the will to power constitutes the being of the natural world; so what constitutes the being of the human realm? I content it is morality as such, or rather what we really mean by the concept ‘morality’, that constitutes the being of the human realm. This is, in a word, logic. Logic as per the requirements of those beings which we are, moving closer to Heidegger’s Dasein here, and we must recognize the need to split Being from the being of being(s) such as ourselves. The being of our own being is but one instance of Being, and this being of our own being participates in Being but is not the same as Being. Likewise, the being of the natural world also participates in Being, although differently than does the being of the human being, but is also not the same as Being.

Being itself requires us to articulate logic as such, at far as possible to trace the deepest most necessary and universal logics underneath all of existence. Self-valuing is the concept that gets closest to this, as far as I can tell. So we might say that self-valuing captures the nature of Being as closely as possible so far, yet we must remember that the nature of Being is not the same as (does not ‘=’) the nature of beings; the nature of the being of the natural world, and the nature of the being of the human being, are two examples of where beings have beings that diverge (derive from, build upon) the nature of Being itself. The nature of Being is universal precisely because it is an absolute ground, but that does not explain or belie what builds itself from that ground and, at times, in antithesis to it.

Thus I consider the being of the human being to be morality, or rather what we call logic and morality are the same thing, ultimately: what is this particular being that we are, of what logics is it made, how it is put together, what does it require, what does it desire, toward what does it move, what are its freedoms and its limitations, and toward what does it aim (both explicitly and implicitly)? These questions are each vitally important if we are to begin exploring the nature of the being which we are. We must conceptually explode and then exhaust this being that we are, to get to the being of this being that we are, and this endeavor is the only proper task of the modern and future philosopher.

This exploration must take two forms, in order to be sufficient: it must explode and exhaust the being of the natural world, and it must explode and exhaust the being of the (human) being that we are, namely we must unite determinism and freedom, or instinct and morality, or unconsciousness and consciousness depending on how you want to think about it. This unification will, once it is achieved, bring us as close as possible to understanding how beings (these two beings in particular, the natural and the human) derive from Being. But we are not there yet. This is what philosophy ought to be occupying itself with. I see Nietzsche as remaining in the layer of the natural world, which is fine because that too must be explicated, but he fails to move into the human realm and this can be seen precisely as his absence of asking into the nature of the good. Nietzsche rejects and even mocks that question, restricting it to the work of mystics and theological philosophers only, and therefore he cuts himself off from this vital half of the analysis.

I fundamentally, though not wholly, disagree. In fact I find it odd that you’d say the will to power describes the natural world, as distinct from the human. I think it’s rather the other way round, in that Nietzsche starts from himself, his human being, and then extrapolates that into the rest. Thus he does ask into the nature of the good: good = valuable = pleasurable = giving one a feeling of power = being accompanied by the will to power = being accompanied by the sensation of freedom. You say freedom is prior and deeper than the feeling of freedom, but how do we know freedom exists? Doesn’t only the feeling, the appearance of freedom exist? I contend that the human and the natural world do not both derive from the nature of Being itself, or at least that the natural world derives from it more directly than does the human–unless the human is somehow the beginning of the natural world…

“Where man is not, nature is barren.” (Blake, Proverbs of Hell.)

Freedom in itself might just as well not exist: inasmuch as there is no experience of it. I agree that logic and morality are basically the same: logic, like morality, is posited, not natural; what is natural, for this species of being, at least, is positing one. And even as there is a universal morality in the sense of the most basic moral prequisites of man as a social animal (a “law of reason”), so there is a universal logic: the word, fellow understanding.

This positing, this imposition is a form of the will to power. The imposition of harmony. This understanding was for the longest time shared only by the wisest. It’s ultimately rooted in the Narcissism of the wisest, the self-love, self-enjoyment of the wisest, their feeling of power, of freedom–ho Lusios, Liber, Dionysus to Ariadne, who is all beings that are not wise, not consciously wise, noble, divine,–. The philosopher is a glimpsing, a gleaning, a clearing in the woods, burning his Ariadne for light, warmth, fuel. Energy, power, electricity, lightning, sparks. I think you’ll get the picture.

Krishna adoring Himself

“He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only.” (Blake, “There is No Natural Religion”.)

Power can be defined as ability.
Ability means being able to do something.
More ability means being able to do more things.
Less ability means being able to do less.

Power = more ability
Weakness = less ability

There are people who are said to hate power.
What does this mean?
Well, nothing other than that they are unable to, because they find difficult to, do certain things.
Say think.
Thinking requires the ability we call intelligence.

When you find something difficult to do you’re gonna hate doing it so you’re gonna say bad things about it.
Like Jakoff saying bad things about intellectual rigor . . . too dry, he says.
Then they gonna do and worship whatever they can do.
Like doing drugs.
Now that they no longer have reason, i.e. long-term considerations or simply long-term goals, there is nothing to impose restrictions on such practices as taking drugs.
Drugs are now okay.
Why not . . . when you have no sense of the future, no goals bigger than sex, then that’s perfectly fine.

Blatant ad hom. Learn the rules asshole.

You don’t know what an ad hom is.
It’s a usual complaint that I see.

Ad hom is not simply saying negative things about your interlocutor.
It’s about making a mistake in the logical process of deriving your conclusions from your premises.
No such mistake has been made, honey.

My argument didn’t have the logically invalid form that is:

  1. fixed is a stupid person
  2. fixed says that what is good is existence
  3. therefore, what is good is not existence

That would have been a logical mistake, at least if we interpret it literally, because the connection between Fixed’s intelligence and what The Good is is not clear.
Fixed can be stupid and still be correct.

However, the following form would have been valid:

  1. people who are stupid make wrong claims 90% of the time
  2. fixed is a stupid person
  3. therefore, it is very likely that fixed is making a wrong claim

But that’s not what I said either.

I think it’s rather difficult to spot an ad hom.
In general, I am very suspicious of people levelling such accusations at others.

Very glad both of you showed up, and with proper force. Now we can have a real debate, as this question has been resolved to me only at the most basic level, which is actually the highest, the point of unity of all concepts. Obviously and excruciatingly, this deeply liberating, power-inducing point is enclosed into itself, because where all concepts are equal, they cant be compared, and thus further logic is impossible, there is no logic beyond its completion. But this is precisely the clue as to the path we should be taking here. As a third protagonist here, I will claim to refute both of your contrary premises: I say that the natural world and the human world are, in the highest philosophic analysis, one spectrum. And this includes morality: the Will to Power is in fact the morality of nature, not merely its behavior. It is, after all, a logical formula, thus: a human logical value construct that accounts for the behaviors of the natural world, in which the human is, per these very standards of consequence, embedded. And it is here that self-valuing can begin to be understood as a refinement of the morality of will to power in increasingly human terms - it is the commencement of the birth of humanity out of philosophy. Philosophy which thereby is retroactively rendered an animal affair - to which Nietzsche’s logic testifies, but more so even to which Socrates’ method testifies. Socrates is a beast, if there ever was any philosopher-beast; he brought all humanity thus far to ruin, by imposing the idea of logic on a nature that was far superior to that idea of logic. He took Greek humanity back into the animal realm, by making it subservient to universal notions. Notions which were universal only because they were hollow. Under Socratic notions, the Greeks lost grip of thought, and succumbed to mere notions, words, superstitions, neuroses, delusions, subjection, a play of ghosts and shadows, all in pursuit of the ‘inner good’ - where the good, as Sauwelios astutely observes, is simply that which is valuable. Socrates, by denouncing the outward world in denouncing the gods, the heroes, the founders, the traditions, the state and Law, turned philosophy into a purely egoistic, or narcissistic endeavor; he made self-valuing in human terms impossible: he destroyed the good as a human, cultural attainment, and threw us back in the mud, looking for the good in what our bodies naturally produce without the effort of the mind - that refined function that makes us human by allowing us to cooperate and build beyond ourselves - lust is all that Socrates advocates, and not a healthy lust - lust for young boys and political subversion. Socrates represents the loss of the human will, and the descent of humanity into the animal realm which it had for an instant, as Athens, superseded, by which it has established the Greek Standard, which is what Zeus is, and consequently, what Pallas Athena and Dionysos also are. What are such Gods at all besides the absolutely human ability to cognate joy? And what, thus, is the loss of such Gods?

Before I throw in more, I’ll allow this to sink in and produce its ripples. Ive only introduced the minutest of hints as to how to further proceed - but in an exceptional mind such a minute hint can turn to an inferno of insight.

If not, how are they determined?
Which non-subject would set them for us subjects?

Why does he have to? That seems an assumption, a subjective value. He doesn’t really need to do anything, objectively.

I agree.

If one considers ones survival “the Good”, that is.

Who can tell another what he truly needs without being terribly invasive and presumptuous?
Further, what is a real need - what truly is necessary? Is life necessary?

Again, is this bad?
Is it perhaps preferable to live in ones own terms for a short while than to live a century in service and die in facility for the elderly?

I don’t share that world-view, as far as Ive seen in my decades on this planet, it is the wealthiest criminals that govern and set the laws, in the present time.
The mere fact that one needs to pay for effective legal representation means perfect absence of fairness in the justice system. Only a legislature entirely devoid of costs for the State and the Defendant both could be seen as fair.

I disagree - societies where people swim with the currents turn invariably into fascist societies. A healthy society has relatively few sheep, and relatively many lions.
The worst atrocities are invariably committed by hordes of obedient persons. To be obedient means to lack spirit, strength, thus also compassion.

But it can’t.

When someone rapes a child, its best to take him to a ditch downwind, shoot him in the head and toss him in there for the worms, which have more merit in such a case than any prisonterm could have. The value under consideration here includes the victim. Retribution is vital to existential logic, to the preservation of values. In our time justice is oriented on protecting the criminal. That’s to the detriment of all.

Perhaps read my post before this one, that should provide an angle to introduce your ideas on objective values.

Magnum, I consider myself to be good, yes - but only because I manage to exist. Not because I am particularly special.
I think you are only good insofar as you exist. I leave it up to you to decide if you exist, or not.

I can tell you that mr Reasonable does exist.
In fact, if there is any ILPer that could make claim to being The Good, by any verifiable standards, I have contended for years and still do that it is mr. R. Not because of his splendorous philosophy, but because when philosophy talks about merit, it would talk rather about Mr Rs accomplishments than about most anyone elses here - Life is quite simple in its wisdom: it gives and it takes, and doesn’t really care when which is the case. Life doesnt keep count, it’s too rich.

The Good actively defies expectations because they dont satisfy him.
I am a very conservative person when it comes to verifiable values - self-determination and abundance, both of goods and experience, is pretty much a universal standard. I dont much care about morals, i care about compassion though, and loyalty and all that, master morality.

The Good is thus a subject. More than one, but it’s never an object.
You can have good apple pie, good and bad taste, good kung fu, bad karma, all that. But that’s not good or bad in themselves, thats just a relative measure of quality.

A case of existence is not relative to itself, it is absolute to itself. It is only relative to the powers surrounding it.

::

I will only practice positive Ad Homs. They are quite as uncomfortable if not more so, but they actually convey a message. Positive ad homs convey true values. I implore everyone to do the same - if you judge someone here, dare to judge affirmingly.

You are being vague when you say “you are good only insofar you exist” because I am pretty sure we will all agree that we cannot say anything about things that don’t exist for the simple reason they don’t exist. I mean, everything we can speak of exists, in one way or another, so what exactly is bad? You must have a specific definition of existence then. Does it refer to non-imaginary existence? Is imaginary existence that which is bad? Or is it something else? What is it?

If you accept that value is relative, which it appears to me you do, then what is this “existence is what is good” if not a relative value, namely, your own?

Sure, you can say Mr R is a lovely man. But because that’s relative, I don’t have to agree with it. I can say whatever I want to say e.g. that Mr R is a contemptible man.

So where exactly does this leave us?

Goodness implies moral accountability and agency.

To “be Good” implies that you have the capability to cause acts of goodness in the world, and similarly, have the power to reap the rewards of those same acts that you were responsible for.

You can’t claim other people’s goodness. That’s not how it works. Or if you tried, then that would make you evil, because you are not responsible for the goodness you’re claiming.

Thus far this does not contradict my position.

I suppose this does contradict my position, in that it turns it around: where I said morality is a form of the will to power, you seem to be saying the will to power is a form of morality. But then what is morality?

Are you saying here that the good is not that which is valuable? I certainly don’t think it’s simply that, as I think “value” is itself hollow, a mere notion, etc. What is the meaning of “Valuing”?–that’s the question I’ve been trying to answer lately.

Well, I disagree with you about Socrates. I don’t think he was any less great than Nietzsche (but neither greater, of course). And I’m strongly reminded by the phrase “what our bodies naturally produce without the effort of the mind” of the fourteenth episode of The Occident… And in the fifteenth and sixteenth episode, there is this “coming out” on my part, first in the direction of homophilia (though as you know I’m a radical heterosexual), but then it turns out to be my coming out as an absolute, cosmic Narcissist. Your reminder of total interconnectedness was helpful there, by the way.

Self-Valuing, as the Valuing of that very Valuing, is surely Narcissistic–unless it be that, because it’s not about a self valuing itself, it is not. But if Narcissus is understood as a Valuing, and that Valuing is a Valuing of that very Valuing, I’d certainly call that Narcissistic. Anyway, at this point I’m really only interested in the question as to the meaning of Valuing. What does it mean to value something, to experience something as valuable? I think it means to experience something as pleasurable, which means to derive a feeling of power from it, which means a sensation of freedom. Self-valuing is then: deriving a sensation of freedom from deriving a sensation of freedom.

I want to share with you a passage of Picht that I’ve translated:

“Here we again run into the concept ‘will to truth’. On first sight, the opinion must suggest itself that, by ‘truth’, at least at this point only the so-called truth of metaphysics can be understood–after all, doesn’t Nietzsche say that the will to truth is a hiding-from-view of that false character [of the world], a reinterpretation thereof into what is? The will to truth is thus determined here as the will, active in metaphysical morality, to the reinterpretation of semblance [Schein] into what is, thus to the grounding of the fundamental error of metaphysics. The true is understood in this will as the permanent. Permanent however is only the imaginary counterworld to the absolute flux, permanent is therefore only semblance. No doubt: the truth, thus understood, is semblance and, when the semblance is passed off as truth, error. But how does it stand with the will to truth? Nietzsche does not say, as would have to be said from the standpoint of metaphysics: The will to truth is the will to cognisance of the steadfast, the true, the permanent; he rather says: ‘The will to truth is a making steadfast, a making true/permanent’, a reinterpretation of semblance into Being. When one oneself first makes what shall be cognised as true, when one gains Being only thereby that one reinterprets semblance into being, then the will which accomplishes that cannot avoid eventually discovering that what it must first make steadfast is not yet steadfast by itself, and that the permanence which it must first create is not already given in advance. As Nietzsche puts the concept ‘will to truth’ in place of cognisance of the truth, he has thus carried out the great inversion. He wants to cognise the problem of science no longer on the soil of science, but sees the process of designing the schema of a permanent world from the perspective of the artist. From this perpective, too, the truth is still only so-called truth; it is the semblance in which the counterworld appears. But only when considered from the standpoint of the will to truth does it come to light what is really true about the so-called truth, namely the necessity to found an abiding order, in which life is possible. Once again it turns out that Nietzsche’ s inversion of metaphysics has a double meaning. On the one hand, the fundamental error of metaphysics is as it were unmasked; it is now no longer possible to pass off as Being what in truth is semblance. On the other hand, however, it is through the exposure of the will which is active in its ground that the proceedings of metaphysics in their inner necessity first become understandable and in this sense get justified. Only through the overcoming of the error of metaphysics does what had been true in all metaphysics come to the surface. If one understands ‘truth’ in the concept ‘will to truth’ as the truth in truthful semblance, then the will to truth is no more only a will to so-called truth; it is then rather the will to poiesis or, as Nietzsche says here, to ‘making’, that is to say to the production of a semblance which does not negate life but affirms it; which is thereby in unison with life and thanks its truth to this unison.” (Picht, Nietzsche, pp. 281-82.)

I can’t even try to answer this as long as I don’t know what you mean by “to cognate”–“to cognise”?

Quickly: of course the good is that which is valuable. I can see grammatically why you supposed i meant the opposite.

Cognate - i meant consciously experience.

Im on my phone now, will respond to the other things later, but you may have cause to review your post in this new light.