If we are to have any hope whatsoever of understanding Nietzsche, we should not see him as merely another link in a chain of thinkers. We must instead recognize his thought for what it was and still remains: a radical break with the Western intellectual tradition. Which is not to say, of course, that Nietzsche’s thought was not influenced by that of others, for it most certainly was.
The way I see it, Nietzsche’s thought was no more a radical break with the Western intellectual tradition than Machiavelli’s and Plato’s were–or rather, the latter were no less than the former was (and yes, still remains:)–unless it be like Tiresias’… See my “Tutorial in Platonic Political Philosophy” (including what it links to and what that, in turn, links to).
SM - see Ive managed to get you to read something.
But you’ll have to study it every day consistently for at least 10 years to be able to talk about it sensibly. Especially you own chart, as this is the path through which you can understand most profoundly, honestly. (in theory, if you have it in you, which I still don’t think you do)
Like with any science, it requires, um, staying power.
I can’t believe you are as silly to attribute me a lack of staying power - have you noticed that Ive been working daily at developing the same formula for 7 years, and that Ive gathered a whole circumference of discourse around it?
You are most definiely thinking of the wrong “Sign”.
But studying astrology you will find it has only so much to do with the tropical (not Sidereal, as you think) Zodiac, and everything with aspects.
Don’t be a failure like everyone else. Do something. Exert yourself. Prove that you have some depth to you.
Anything less causes boredom and nausea and thus turn acidic responses.
There is nothing Id rather do than pour forth my knowledge. But this is offensive to the structurally ignorant. An ignorant self values in terms of its ignorance, therefore it hates to perform structural studies. The ignorant remains what he is by disregarding consequence, by avoiding consistency. I hope that is not all you have to offer here, Shieldmaiden.
What is an aspect, you ask?
The Fixed Cross is an aspect.
You can look up what it is exactly, I am beginning to feel disinclined to give too much aid to lazy minds.
You are semi-lazy, which is already part of the to 5 or even 2 percent of humans. But the truly active are Id say closer to .000001 percent. Just, very few people even out of the very upper most “successful” seem to know what how to exist so as to endure power without having it corrupt them into becoming a shadow of their own power. It feels significantly better to be active. It sheds all the unconscious resistance against pride and happiness, as you know you are actually making the effort of existing. The cosmos isn’t prior to you anymore, you are parallel to all of its origins. Not as a human being but as a brilliant genius, a star, a source of nuclear power. Thats what it takes to understand your own chart.
It seems that Satyr and Zoot are at it again here: pathos-of-distance.forumotion.co … e-ontology
The ontology of love this time.
Post after post after post of that which can only be deemed relevant [by one of them] to “serious philosophers”.
Go ahead, see if you can recognize your own rendition of love here.
Unless of course it is all just tongue in cheek.
You know, giving them the benefit of the doubt. 
Humans suck
Sometimes though you encounter one that really doesn’t.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34kCSuOvHLw[/youtube]
With respect: Machiavelli does not represent a radical break with traditional ethics. Rather, he simply suggests that the “good prince” should not be bound by them if he is to retain power. Nor does Plato, who (significantly, to be sure) puts the determination of ethical norms beyond the realm of both gods and men. Nietzsche, however, places moral valuations squarely in the hands of men. Not all men, of course, but those very few who are fit for the task (the “Overmen”) - individuals who are, nevertheless, “human, all too human.” A philosophy which holds that men, and men alone, are the sole arbiters of moral valuations must, necessarily, represent a radical and explosive break with traditional philosophical thought. It is Nietzsche, alone, who undermines the entire edifice Western philosophical thought, and dares us to question - nay, shatter - the very concepts which underpin Western civilization. Is not the so-called “death of God” (i.e., our rendering the Judeo-Christian concept of “God” utterly untenable) the essential malady of Western society to this day? Do we not, in the wake of two World Wars, remain morally rudderless as a society? We should take note that Nietzsche himself predicted the coming - the necessity, in fact - of one, perhaps two, wars the likes of which the world had never seen resulting from the loss of a viable moral center of gravity? Is not the “reevaluation of all values hitherto” our most pressing duty?
Thats what I get from The Prince, too, and thats the only thing I know about M. I am therefore curious where Sauwelios and Lampert get these ideas.
Interestingly phrased. And true.
Why I feel doubly justified in loathing the man, by Zeus.
I don’t think there is any way around this.
Do you have any specific suggestions, or powers, in this respect?
Im asking this in all seriousness - for if it is not us who instigates this revaluation, who will it be?
Understanding this matter is rare enough, as to understand it is frightening enough - let alone resolving it.
My gift to mankind is the power to value his own valuing directly, without requiring a pre-existing object of valuing, a value. The objects are functions of the valuing, they are valued into existence.
And by this virtue, the world becomes divine.
I provided you with several references and a video in the thread I linked Number 6 to.
Here’s the central paragraph of Strauss’s “Niccolo Machiavelli” essay from his final work:
“In the proem to [Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy] I, Machiavelli lets us know that he has discovered new modes and orders, that he has taken a road that was never trodden by anyone before. He compares his achievement to the discovery of unknown waters and lands: he presents himself as the Columbus of the moral-political world. What prompted him was the natural desire that he always had, to do those things that in his opinion bring about the common benefit of each. Therefore he bravely faces the dangers that he knows lie in wait for him. What are those dangers? In the case of the discovery of unknown seas and lands, the danger consists in seeking them; once you have found the unknown lands and have returned home, you are safe. In the case of the discovery of new modes and orders, however, the danger consists in finding them, that is, in making them publicly known. For, as we have heard from Machiavelli, it is dangerous to make oneself the head of something new which affects many.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, page 219.)
This already suffices to explain why Machiavelli apparently does not represent a radical break with traditional ethics. (Thus Strauss starts his next paragraph thus: “To our great surprise, Machiavelli identifies immediately afterwards the new modes and orders with those of antiquity: his discovery is only a rediscovery.”) Machiavelli wrote in a time and place very different from ours: consider Strauss’ book title Persecution and the Art of Writing. Machiavelli wrote at the end of the High Renaissance, and could therefore excuse his anti-theological ire (only) by appealing to classical antiquity. (The movement Machiavelli started, the modern democratic movement, was “the movement to crush Christianity’s spiritual tyranny” (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 144).)
What are these “new modes and orders”? You nor Strauss do not say.
Machiavelli, from my readings of The Prince, is basically just saying, “rulership will always place pragmatism over moralism, and you should understand this fact if you want to understand what rulership is and means.” Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe that was some kind of earth-shattering insight on par with discovering a new continent, but then again he did write back in the 1500s… yeah.
And one ought to read Machiavelli side by side with Luther, and not only because they happened to exist at the same moment in time.
I am reminded of the central tenet of Mao’s cadre concept: “Effective action is the sole criteria of truth.”
Well, it’s a quite different ballgame when you move from ridership to Ontology. Failure to understand this is among the errors that have led us to this “postmodern” cultural neomarxist hell we currently inhabit.
Just for the record, allow me to reconfigure Satyr’s narrative into my own.
Most ideologies [rooted in one or another God or deontology or objectivist philosophy or political dogma or a scripture regarding Nature] revolve around the assumption that there is only one optimal frame of mind to be had if one wishes to be thought of as “one of us”.
Of course this is all “theoretical”. It is encompassed in one or another “general description” of human interactions up in the didactic clouds.
Really, I challenge someone here to note instances where Satyr has brought his intellectual contraptions down to earth and situated them out in particular contexts that we might be familiar with.
And for those who are familiar with my own frame of mind, I do not argue that all value judgments are “equally meaningless”. I speculate only that they are situated existentially in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
And trust me: If you do not concur entirely with Satyr regarding “how phenomena inter-relate” – interrelate “naturally” – then you become “one of them”.
And here, if he were running the show, you would rather quickly be dumped into whatever the equivalent of the “dungeon” might be.
This sounds quite ignorant. Then again, I think you do that on purpose.
All the way back in the 1500s… when America had only just been discovered by the Graeco-Roman world… But wait, what about Thucydides?
A quick Google search yields this result:
“Mansfield argues that Machiavelli’s new modes and orders were intended to undermine the classical and Christian foundations of political philosophy and establish a new foundation not only for modern political philosophy, but for modern politics as well.” https://www.amazon.com/Machiavellis-New-Modes-Orders-Discourses/dp/0226503704
Also see the references I gave in my Tutorial thread.
I also just found this video, though I guess I have to watch it myself before I recommend it to anyone:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FANdhTDyI[/youtube]
P.S. I’ve just watched 9 minutes and it’s already very promising. Try starting at 07:29 if you can’t be bothered with the very beginning.
And of what am I ignorant? Mysteriously you do not say.
What are you even talking about, how does this relate to what I said? Are you high right now?
Ah… yes of course, I should not expect you to actually explain what you mean when you say something, I should of course just know that you mean for me to do a “google search” rather than expect you to actually… know what the fuck you mean when you say something.
Again, not answering the question I asked you.
No thanks, I am not in your Misdirection and Getting High while Performing Acts of Pseudophilosophy 101 course. I don’t need to do any fucking homework assigned by you, all I wanted was you to actually explain what you meant when you said something.
Guess that’s too much to ask.
Great, you found a video that you have not watched yet. And this is somehow more relevant than just telling us what you meant when you said “new modes and orders”.
Ok.
I didn’t say you were ignorant, I said you sounded ignorant. Of what?
- That Machiavelli wrote considerably more than just The Prince;
- that even The Prince alone cannot be reduced to a simple formula, at least not on the basis of face-value readings;
- that insights which are earth-shattering now aren’t necessarily more so than insights that were earth-shattering in the 1500s.
Nope, I wasn’t, nor am I now. I was referring to point 3 above. And the thing about Thucydides meant: wait, didn’t Machiavelli live at the end of the High Renaissance? and wasn’t the Renaissance the rebirth of classical antiquity? and wasn’t Thucydides a major ancient Greek historian, and very much a realist in the “Machiavellian” sense? More on this below.
And I shouldn’t expect you to do any work yourself; you want me to present you with a simple formula, which in my case however must naturally be the result of time-consuming study, not of some face-value readings…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSv818d1Rk[/youtube] The Office David Brent If You Don’t Know Me By Now
[Note: the previous video was 10. New Modes and Orders: Machiavelli’s The Prince (chaps. 1-12)]
You mean, when I quoted something. Here’s Strauss’s own explanation:
“To our great surprise, Machiavelli identifies immediately afterwards the new modes and orders with those of antiquity: his discovery is only a rediscovery. He refers to the contemporary concern with fragments of ancient statues, which are held in high honor and used as models by contemporary sculptors. It is all the more surprising that no one thinks of imitating the most virtuous actions of ancient kingdoms and republics, with the deplorable result that no trace of ancient virtue remains. The present-day lawyers learn their craft from the ancient lawyers. The present-day physicians base their judgments on the experience of the ancient physicians. It is therefore all the more surprising that in political and military matters the present-day princes and republics do not have recourse to the examples of the ancients. This results not so much from the weakness into which the present-day religion has led the world or from the evil that ambitious leisure has done to many Christian countries and cities, as from insufficient understanding of the histories and especially that of Livy. As a consequence, Machiavelli’s contemporaries believe that the imitation of the ancients is not only difficult but impossible. Yet this is plainly absurd: the natural order, including the nature of man, is the same as in antiquity.
We understand now why the discovery of new modes and orders, which is only the rediscovery of the ancient modes and orders, is dangerous. That rediscovery which leads up to the demands that the virtue of the ancients be imitated by present-day men, runs counter to the present-day religion: it is that religion which teaches that the imitation of ancient virtue is impossible, that it is morally impossible, for the virtues of the pagans are only resplendent vices. What Machiavelli will have to achieve in the Discourses is not merely the presentation, but the re-habilitation, of ancient virtue against the Christian critique. This does not dispose us of the difficulty that the discovery of new modes and orders is only the re-discovery of the ancient modes and orders.
[… S]hortly before the end of Book One, he openly questions the opinion of all writers, including Livy, on a matter of the greatest importance. He thus leads us step by step to the realization of why the old modes and orders which he has rediscovered, are new: 1) The modes and orders of ancient Rome were established under the pressure of circumstances, by trial and error, without a coherent plan, without understanding of their reasons; Machiavelli supplies the reasons and is therefore able to correct some of the old modes and orders. 2) The spirit that animated the old modes and orders was veneration for tradition, for authority, the spirit of piety, while Machiavelli is animated by an altogether different spirit.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, pp. 219-20 and 221.)
Compare:
“[T]hose moralists who, like the followers of Socrates, recommend self-control and sobriety to the individual as his greatest possible advantage and the key to his greatest personal happiness, are exceptions–and if we ourselves do not think so, this is simply due to our having been brought up under their influence. They all take a new path, and thereby bring down upon themselves the utmost disapproval of all the representatives of the morality of custom. They sever their connection with the community, as immoralists, and are, in the fullest sense of the word, evil ones. In the same way, every Christian who ‘sought, above all things, his own salvation’, must have seemed evil to a virtuous Roman of the old school.” (Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, aph. 9, trans. Kennedy.)
I’d seen videos from the same course before, so I already knew the guy was a Mansfieldian-Straussian. Anyway, this is precisely what I meant by your sounding ignorant, and my thinking you do that on purpose. On your primary forum you call yourself Thrasymachus, after all;
“On three different occasions, Strauss noted what Alfarabi held to be fundamental in Plato’s correction of the way of Socrates: Plato added ‘the way of Thrasymachus’ to the way of Socrates (‘Farabi’s Plato’ 382-84; PAW 16-17; WPP 153). […] Thrasymachus is an actor; his initial anger at Socrates is calculated, he plays at anger to create anger, to anger others against the object of his own feigned anger–Socrates. […]
By play-acting anger at Socrates, Thrasymachus exhibits the city’s real anger at Socrates (78). […]
Thrasymachus’ art is ‘concerned with both arousing and appeasing the angry passions of the multitude.’ […]
How can the philosopher rule Thrasymachus? By showing that his advantage is best served by making his art ministerial to philosophy.” (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, pp. 146, 147, 148, and 151.)
Even with your sarcasm–the lowest form of wit–, you present yourself as what your feminists would call a troglodyte. [At this point I did vapourise, and decided to keep both my drafts of what was to immediately follow–even though they were written in reverse order, and the second was supposed to supplant the quote.] Yet apparently, all this is ministerial to Value Philosophy.
“[T]he political action of the philosophers on behalf of philosophy has achieved full success. One sometimes wonders whether it has not been too successful.” (Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, page 127.)
Homer, Plato and Machiavelli were ultimately too successful, which was the reason Plato, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, respectively, had to step in.
“Founding is continuous: that great Machiavellian lesson is carried forward by Strauss. Defense of what was well founded requires subsequent foundings, introductions of great novelties in the service of the original founding.
And how does the continuous founding now display its necessities?” (Lampert, op.cit., pp. 144-45.)
Is my task indeed to be Knight Sauwelios?
“Nietzsche distinguishes our Vornehmheit from Greek Vornehmheit: modern, post-Christian virtue is superior to ancient Greek virtue, Nietzsche argues, precisely of what our particular ‘extraction, origin, birth’ bequeathed to us, namely what our religion, the tyranny and discipline of our religion, bred into us.” (op.cit., page 113.)
This goes for our Machiavellian religion as well as for our Platonic religion.
“Knowing the inevitability of masks, Nietzsche chose to weave his own, the mask of a rash truth teller whose unguarded speech would make him seem an immoralist, a devil, the mask of a super-Machiavelli. That mask, and the vehemence with which its terrible contours would be traced by those who took it to be more than a mask, inevitably assigned a task to his friends, advocates bound by the beauty and rigor of his writings to see eventually that the mask masked its opposite, a new teaching on good and bad by something approaching a god.” (Lampert, Nietzsche’s task, pp. 301-02.)
Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Plato and Homer were all such noblemen. But I suppose the question, in this context, shall be: is Fixed Cross? The way I understand it, his self-valuing logic of being is most elegant; but I thought it was superior to my “rational value of valuation” precisely because it’s about self-valuing through other-valuing; yet on the same page of this thread as I’m responding to, Fixed Cross wrote:
A direct self-valuing is illogical, irrational. This may not be a problem, but it does mean there is no meaningful difference between the non-being which cannot enforce itself (see e.g. http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2684189#p2684189) and the self-valuing. As I wrote recently:
"In the beginning there was nothing,
And it didn’t like itself,
So it started dreaming up this Other
Most unlike itself.
“The nothing as self-disvaluing One? The Other then indeed as self-valuing–many. Logically.” (http://pathos-of-distance.forumotion.com/t17p50-what-is-the-will-to-power#346)
Likewise, Crowley writes:
“Love may best be defined as the passion of Hatred inflamed to the point of madness, when it takes refuge in Self-destruction.” (Little Essays toward Truth, “Love”.)
The self-valuing logic of being is itself valued into being by the self-valuing logician. How does it take this into account? Will Philosophy does so through and in the willing of eternal recurrence.
I propose a circle with an infinite diameter.
What, pray tell, is a “direct self valuing”?
I surely disagree that “in the beginning there was nothing”.
In the beginning there at least must have been a beginning, logically speaking that is, not thus per “direct self-valuing”, whatever that is. Logically, there never could have been nothing. But illogically speaking I suppose I can say “nothing exists” and well, make illogical sense.
Am I warm?