I broke up that passage more for the comic effect of the TPN comments than for any real analytical value to my own. I think it suffices to say that N was referring to the Enlightenment in general. Also, in general, with Aquinas, you have the arrival of Platonism (through Aristotle) and it’s he and the Thomists that really dogmatized Christianity - that is, many dogmas had been put forth and fought over before Thomas, but The Catholics had largely gotten their act together through the Doctors, and finally through Aquinas and the Thomists. Aristotle was a big help, but not just with his (faulty) logic. he brought along errors that he inherited from Plato.
Plato’s error was to make abstractions to the point of meaninglessness, which is an easy thing to do, as it happens. What Nietzsche is setting up here is that the error is to begin our inquiry with universals, or even generalizations and work our way “down” to the individual - rather we should reverse this process. Plato began his reasoning, his epistemology/ethics with “perfections”, yes. Forms, The (hypothetical) City-State, Virtue, Justice. Nietzsche is going to show us the better way. Going “beyond good and evil” will turn out to mean ignoring both as a basis of our theory. With Nietzsche, there are no hypotheticals. Or very few at least.
I tend not to get bogged down in too many specifics - N was usually making a specific reference, yes. But it’s a long book.
The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions
ourselves? WHO is it really that puts questions to us here? WHAT really is this “Will to Truth” in us? In fact we made a long halt at the question as to the origin of this Will–until at last we came to an absolute standstill before a yet more fundamental question. We inquired about the VALUE of this Will. Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us–or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? Which of us is the Oedipus here? Which the Sphinx? It would seem to be a rendezvous of questions and notes of interrogation. And could it be believed that it at last seems to us as if the problem had never been propounded before, as if we were the first to discern it, get a sight of it, and RISK RAISING it? For there is risk in raising it, perhaps there is no greater risk.
Faust - As much as we’ve searched for an enduring truth, we haven’t found it, yet, and we’re getting restless. We used to think that God (or something godlike) was the answer - the Eternal Truth, and that His will was to be served. So we stopped asking about why we want to know the truth - the philosophers and theologians have laid that all out for us - God had obviously given it to us, so that we may know Him. Now, with God dead and all, we gotta ask again. But there’s a problem - with Mr Certainty in the Sky dead and gone, how can we justify searching for any certain truth? Is that even possible, now? The thing is, we might not like the answers we get, once we abandon our truth fetish. This might leave a mark. Could be that we did this to ourselves, though.
TPN - God is dead! Who can be God, now? We can be. I am…er…I mean…we are…fuck! - I really mean I am my own God. And if you sniveling Jewesses need any other god, then you are weak, broken, crumpled toys. You want certainty? I’ll give you certainty! You’re nothing! No one! Some day, everyone will realise how special I am, because I am strong! I don’t need God. And I don’t need friends, either. I don’t even care that no one would play with me as a child. Or that women laugh at me. Or…never mind. Mom’s calling me.
The problem with TPNs is that they’re Reactionaries, Liberals. Except not in the political sense, but in the philosophical sense. I’ve met a lot of TPNs. And what they share in common is their destructive nature. They’re negative. They like to tear things down. And N really has torn the whole of western philosophy down. Everything has become reduced to rubble and ashes. But the TPNs are not satisfied. They don’t realize that the west is already Postchristian. They don’t realize that God was dead centuries ago. They’re still digging, and digging, and digging. They haven’t stopped the Reaction, the revolution against enlightenment.
Nihilism has become rampant, philosophically. And so there really is nothing left to do, at this point, because no matter in what direction you turn to, Dogma and Action become reasserted. The reaction to reaction is, inevitably, absolutely, action. In a state of motionless, in a state of infinite regress, there is no direction except to turn away in any direction. You’ve reached the core. You’ve reached the absolute limit. You’ve reached infinite.
Now your “choice”, after removing all choices, is the Finite. It is to return to the living. It is to return to the mundane.
The TPNs talk about “values” and “ontology” as if they understand either. But they don’t. They’ve spent 200 years negating all values. They’ve spent 200 years deleting all virtues. There are no values. There are no virtues.
So anything is a virtue. Any action can become misconstrued as “good beyond evil”. Gay sex is Good. Having sex with animals is Good. Abandoning children is Good. Divorcing is Good. Betraying people is Good. Holocausting Jews is Good. Self flagellation is Good. Being confused is Good. Being a child is Good. Remaining a child is Better. Suicide is Best. Killing yourself is Good.
All is Good, even Evil is Good.
The TPNs really don’t care much about N. Rather, after all this negativity and deconstructionism, rather the lost and misguided souls need a Justification for their narcissism and solipsism. N provides this for them. You want to drink yourself to death with alcohol? Fine, nobody’s stopping you. The “universe doesn’t care” is their argument. But it is a very, very false argument. Presuming that nobody “cares” for each other, then does not a mother love her son? Does not a daughter love her father? Does not a Husband love his Wife? N destroyed all these things too. Love is impossible. Care is impossible. Suicide is the best option, to the TPN.
No values, no reflection, no meditation, no thought. A purely “Dionysian” existence, as those small headed Nietzscheans would say.
No Reason.
And although the TPNs are hypocrites, because N justifies their existence, and they seek N out for that reason alone: Justice, it is not true that Justice itself has ever become abandoned. Because it never was, has been, is, or will become abandoned. People still require reasons, purpose, meaning, and justice in life.
This is why the dogmatist cannot die, at least, not under the attack of TPNs. Rather, TPNs most fall into love with the Dogmatists, because they are most in need of one. TPNs make themselves most in need of “God” by traveling so far away from Him. The 20th century, and even the 21st century, really are nothing more than the “most rebellious” point between Man and God. And although many fear speaking The Word of God, it becomes inevitable as the focal point of the TPNs, falls upon any and all definitions of justice, for any coherent validity.
But it doesn’t really matter, because all TPNs really want, is a “fun” time. They want to justify their hedonism. And that is to become expected of them.
I hope this has something to do with your OP, and is not too off topic. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your flow here.
Excellent point.
This is what gets my goat about the post-modern deconstructionists. They relentlessly destroy or ‘deconstruct’ anything in their path, not because it may lead to any positive outcome, or for any philosophical reason, rather, they just destroy because it’s hip and trendy to castigate anything to do with the Western world. Don’t get me wrong, it was obvious after Nietzsche that the deconstructionists were going to take a section of his thought to the extreme, just like other readers have taken other sections of his thought to extreme, but to turn it into a whole movement, to turn philosophy itself into just a tool to destroy things, then, well, this is a sickness that needs to be cured. It has a usefulness to an extent that we can ‘deconstruct’ things to see how they are constituted, but when taken to an extreme like they do, then something has to be done.
This is why I actually admire the conservatives. The conservatives, although a little bit dumb sometimes, at least have pride in themselves and their history. They look at what works or what holds society together and value it. For me, the conservatives and sections of the business world are really the last bastion of hope for the West to lay down some maxims and live by them. The only other option I can see is for the West to create a clear enemy. By defining an enemy we can define what is the good.
Let’s talk about dogmatized christianity, and religion in general.
I consider all religion to firstly be “Traditionalism”.
This is based on trusting old and distant men. These men were supposedto to have
successful lives, and as such, we would want to copy them very precisely in order
to personally succeed. Dogmatism is a bit different than trying to perfectly copy an
old lineage of men, but it is the demonic shadow of traditionalism.
Dogmatism is the enforcing of trust.
Meanwhile, traditionalism is an old and popular gamble which appeals to many.
People with excessive and extreme trust wish to spread that trust to everyone
else around them. That is how preaching starts. It hinges on a minority of
extremists whom have little self and fill this empty space with mimetics.
“HOW COULD anything originate out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? or the Will to Truth out of the will to deception? or the generous deed out of selfishness? or the pure sun-bright vision of the wise man out of covetousness? Such genesis is impossible; whoever dreams of it is a fool, nay, worse than a fool; things of the highest value must have a different origin, an origin of THEIR own–in this transitory, seductive, illusory, paltry world, in this turmoil of delusion and cupidity, they cannot have their source. But rather in the lap of Being, in the intransitory, in the concealed God, in the 'Thing-in-itself–THERE must be their source, and nowhere else!”–This mode of reasoning discloses the typical prejudice by which metaphysicians of all times can be recognized, this mode of valuation is at the back of all their logical procedure; through this “belief” of theirs, they exert themselves for their “knowledge,” for something that
is in the end solemnly christened “the Truth.” The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is THE BELIEF IN ANTITHESES OF VALUES. It never occurred even to the wariest of them to doubt here on the very threshold (where doubt, however, was most necessary); though they had made a solemn vow, “DE OMNIBUS DUBITANDUM.” For it may be doubted, firstly, whether antitheses exist at all; and secondly, whether the popular valuations and antitheses of value upon which metaphysicians have set their seal, are not perhaps merely superficial estimates, merely provisional perspectives, besides being probably made from some corner, perhaps from below–“frog perspectives,” as it were, to borrow an expression current among painters. In spite of all the value which may belong to the true, the positive, and the unselfish, it might be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life generally should be assigned to pretence, to the will to delusion, to selfishness, and cupidity. It might even be possible that WHAT constitutes the value of those good and respected things, consists precisely in their being insidiously related, knotted, and crocheted to these evil and apparently opposed things–perhaps even in being essentially identical with them. Perhaps! But who wishes to concern himself with such dangerous “Perhapses”! For that investigation one must await the advent of a new order of
philosophers, such as will have other tastes and inclinations, the reverse of those hitherto prevalent–philosophers of the dangerous “Perhaps” in every sense of the term. And to speak in all seriousness, I see such new philosophers beginning to appear.
Faust - This is actually one of the most valuable passages in Western philosophy. It was to me, anyway, when I first read it. In short - paired opposites are just a trick of the metaphysician. This is one of Nietzsche’s most lucid and accessible passages, and needs no real explanation. But it’s one of the most valuable to a philosopher. This is because (and especially so in the message board world) metaphysicians so very often are just plain sneaky - they do not want to show their hand - I’ve seen it time and again, where they will try to gain agreement on some snippet of argument - and then…“Aha! Then you admit that God must exist!”. This is often humorous. This is a way to sniff them out. Here, N reminds us that “everything is relative”…there are no absolutes, and nothing about their purported absoluteness makes them the opposite of anything - it’s just a relation. Simple point? Yes. It escapes the vast majority of philosophers. Time and again.
TPN - Even if you’re right - I am still not wrong! I have no time for you’re paltry opposites! Only women and the Jew believe in opposites!
I was thinking on posting a comment about my understanding of neitzsche.
I believe his main message is that if we develop a hightened sensativity to details, we notice that the holy and righteous things held by society as good were in fact founded by nasty assholes. He offers a few alternatives also, but he’s mainly trying to alert people of details they may normally overlook.
That’s my simple summary of neitszchean philosophy.
If i’m wrong do tell why.
That’s my consistent view, as well. I believe even the ‘holiest’ of people need a certain degree of “ruthlessness” to impose morality, at least, over other people.
I don’t believe that people are “naturally good” or “naturally bad” or “naturally evil”. But, I also believe it doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters, I believe, are promises, and the consequences of broken promises, in terms of morality.
Well, Dan~, you get by. I think it’s really all about the kind of stuff that qualifies as holy and righteous. It has to be seen as enduring, eternal - in a world that is all in flux. It almost has to be a lie.
I don’t know if it was an accident or just a bad habit, but to elivate things that people felt were important, they either made it into a religion or made it into some sort of metaphysical absolute thing.
A flexible holy can still exist if we change our expectations a bit.
Seems to me like people kindof poison themselves with expectations.
Mo - Truth is something changing, ephemeral, like Fritz thinks the nature of a woman is. (But he’s not asking you to be a monk, or gay. Truth is not a notch less important or less real because of this). A woman is likely to be won by the stronger, healthier, more resourceful person. What does that tell you about women—that they like what works? And Truth… isn’t that also just what works?
LANR (Lazy Ass Nietzsche Reader) - Truth is a dime a dozen, just like cheap whores… which are also technically female. Everybody can have one.
