Fixed Cross: Powers? Who am I, Stan Lee? Let’s give it ago…
S - no, that is not actually where I start. I start with being, which I use as a criterium (power) to demonstrate why there is not nothing. That is to say, I don’t perform any miracles of producing (or tracing) something from nothing.
I see where you came from with the other thing though.
But my conception of a valuing which is valuing valuing directly actually relates not to the beginning, but to the end, the triumph of nature. In fact you were the one, a few years back, who successfully focussed on this aspect, the philosopher as the peak of natures accomplishment.
You then tied this to your esoteric understanding of Eros. That was some good stuff.
Number 6 - Believe it or not, but value ontology actually feels like a “superpower”. It places me beyond the existing human orders of power.
And I think such new, superhuman power is required to even deal with the death of god.
Meaning Im one of the very few who are actually coping with reality. Reality sans God requires superheroism.
If God is dead he must be resurrected , and resurrection is merely the effect of selective - pan-psychic focus, by minimum of two participants.
1 man is merely stranded on an island of his own construction , where only a mirror of the other can be seen, which he mistakes for another. Friday may be only a wishful appearance.a phantom and a mirage.
Not that he may eventually not come around,
Say the sceptics and the doubters, and those filled with the fear of transmutation.
To live without the consolation of “God” and, thereby, the possibility of redemption is not for everyone, to be sure. I stand with Ivan Karamazov: If I must accept a child’s tears as part of “His” divine plan, then the price of the “eternal salvation of the soul” is much too great. To play devil’s advocate (no pun intended): If an infinite being such as “God” actually exists, I would assume that both “He” and, by extension, “His” divine plan are well beyond the grasp of our finite minds. Perhaps, if our minds were not so constituted, “His” plan would make perfect sense and appear perfectly logical. I am reminded of Descartes’ argument: If the knowledge of God is in our finite minds, then God must have placed it there (how else could it have gotten there?) - thus, God exists. This is certainly clever, and not without a certain charm (much to Descartes credit)…but no. The study of history, or just a quick look around, tells me all I need to know. One pays a price for being an atheist. If this were not so, there would be far more them.
Meno, my friend: God is dead, and we must nail his coffin shut. He had his chance…and he blew it.
He?
You seem to be a bit skeptical about the dead part. Otherwise, why the nails in the coffin?
Agreed.
And where this is not the case, it is illogical to assume there is such a plan.
Not to say that all illogical beliefs are unjustified.
But “eternal salvation” seems a cheat, a cop-out, a disappointment, a “doozy”, far from divine.
Divine is Dionysos, the very opposite of eternity; the escape from time, the revelation of the true moment. That is, the moment as violent rapture, not as blissful stretching void. I think the Buddhist void is what served as a template for the fantasy of heaven.
As many have pointed out, Descartes’ quoon (a new word I just designed for this sort of thing) is also an argument for the validity of our knowledge of the Purple Wombat, the Unicorn, the 88-armed elephant, etc -
Descartes had his moments, but this wasn’t one of them.
Cute, Meno. He, she, it, nails, no nails - it’s all the same…a monkey could have done a better job.
Cross: Don’t forget Spiny Norman.
How ever:
Ok Christ was merely a man, albeit a smart one, and for him to counter with,
: Blessed are those who can believe without seeing - to say that in the time , when there was no knowledge of the difference between seeing and understanding, ergo to see ,may have been coincidental to understanding, seems incontravertible and frankly almost impossible.
May be, that too simplistic formulae, which got him into trouble in the first place.
How did Faust trick the devil ? Single handedly, unending of any advocate? This main fissure in the pan psychic tapestry of humanity , does have mysterious signs written all over it.
Karamazov’s doubt ,his no repudiation in this respect, is based mainly on the very slim degree of differentiation available. Saint Ansolm is still reconsidered , and I don’t know the source , and is probably equally a thoroughly drastic upward slope.
"It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.” Sounds like a repudiation to me. Anyway, a bold statement, nevertheless. Shows a bit of dash.
Re Christ: If he existed, he’d be utterly appalled. “The last Christian died on the cross.”
Mitra-Sauwelios
Why so many words here and what are you actually saying? I may be wrong but it seems as though nothing concrete has been said with the above. It is like a dog chasing his own tail.
Perhaps man valuing his own value directly, simply put, is having the confidence and the faith to know what is real and true to him and following that with, according to him, is right action.
There aren’t many words there, but precisely as many words as were needed. You are wrong: it was just too complicated for you to follow, even though I spelled it out (hence the “many words”). I’ll try again, though.
Suppose I value a certain food F–for instance the mackerel I just ate. Then we can speak of “my valuing F”. Now like “Saully’s mackerel” (F), we can also write “Saully’s valuing F” (G). My valuing F is itself something different from F, namely G. Now I can also value G, and we can give my valuing G the symbol H. Note that G = B and H = A; I just used different symbols so as not to confuse you.
Now in the previous paragraph, the only member of mankind I’ve spoken of is myself (I), but there are other members–Jakob, for example (J). I may value Jakob’s valuing (K), even if K is itself in turn Jakob’s valuing of my valuing (L) that valuing of his. Note that K = D and L = C.
Lastly, I may value M, where M is precisely my valuing of M. How? Well, VO teaches that all beings are self-valuings. I take this to mean they are other-valuings. I, for example, am a valuing of other beings. These latter beings include my mackerel (F) and Jakob (J). Now obviously, Jakob may in turn value me as well (so may my mackerel, but this is less obvious, as we’re talking about mackerel the food, not mackerel the fish, to adapt a distinction made in The Cleveland Show). When, not if, this is the case, I’m among other things a Jakob-valuing, and Jakob is among other things a Saully-valuing, so I’m also a Saully-valuing-valuing. More precisely, I’m a direct Jakob-valuing, Jakob’s a direct Saully-valuing, so I’m a direct Saully-valuing-valuing and thereby an indirect Saully-valuing myself, i.e., an indirect self-valuing (namely, by being a direct other-valuing).
Okay, you start with “something exists”, and then ask “what’s it about that something that makes it keep existing?” Right?
Can you be a bit more specific about that, so I may be able to dig it up?
The philosopher as the peak has to do with the eros for eros, yes, but especially with the will-to-power to will-to-power. As Strauss writes:
“The will to power takes the place which the eros–the striving for ‘the good in itself’–occupies in Plato’s thought. But the eros is not ‘the pure mind’ (der reine Geist). Whatever may be the relation between the eros and the pure mind according to Plato, in Nietzsche’s thought the will to power takes the place of both eros and the pure mind. Accordingly philosophizing becomes a mode or modification of the will to power: it is the most spiritual (der geistigste) will to power; it consists in prescribing to nature what or how it ought to be (aph. 9); it is not love of the true that is independent of will or decision. Whereas according to Plato, the pure mind grasps the truth, according to Nietzsche the impure mind, or a certain kind of pure mind, is the sole source of truth.” (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)
Now I have contended that the esoteric Plato did understand that there was (most probably) no pure mind. But this may be why Plato, like Nietzsche, taught the recurrence:
“If the will of an individual human being, say of Nietzsche, is to be the origin of meaning and value, and that will manifestly has a cause, the only way out in order to save his position is to say that this will is the cause of itself: eternal return.” (Strauss, lecture of May 18, 1959.)
This peak is far from being a direct self-valuing: it is the peak precisely because it values itself through ninety zillion years of other valuings:
“If Nietzsche had one teaching, it was his teaching of eternal recurrence. This was the notion that time be a circle, that all that happened had happened before and would happen again an endless amount of times. But this was precisely the teaching that Kylie found hardest to bear: Nietzsche would be born, live, and die again, then there would be ninety years of white noise, and then she herself would be born, live, and die again, followed by ninety zillion more years of white noise, after which Nietzsche would be born again… But wait, did that not give her an opportunity to communicate with him? Could she not speak to him across ninety zillion years, even as he spoke to her across ninety?” (The Cosmic Love of Kylie Springtime, Chapter 1.)
No, not at all, absolutely not.
I ask how it can be that there is being in the first place. Meaning only: I ask what it is that being is precisely, that it is, that it has the power to be. But I realize I can not answer this question arguing from its hypothetical negation, but have to argue from its actual nature.
I found out that the very notion of “non-being” is only a side effect of the notion of being, thus far, having been rather porous and brittle.
With the notion of self-valuing, there is no longer a possibility to ask the question “why being and not non-being?” because being has taken on a much more comprehensive character in my mind. There is no possible “remainder”. I now see the notion of non-being as a simple mirrored image of the false notion of being that existed before Nietzsche.
Hmm, I had expected that this woud trigger an avalanche of references and memories in you. I think you were occupied with this in 2013 and 2014, and a lot. I think if you look back into your posts of these years you’ll run into it.
Well, exactly.
Exactly right. Moreover, all self-valuing is indirect, that is enclosed in its definition of being a circuitry. It goes through a world, time, and comes back to itself. All those talking about self-valuing as the isolating valuing of a self have simply misread. One absolute implication of self-valuing is plurality.
Self-valuing is namely a consistent outward valuing that happens to be of such a nature that the object of its valuing feeds back into the capacity to exist, i.e. to perpetuale tis specific valuing.
A philosopher who is able to value himself through valuing the entire world (all of what is known to and suspected by him), he is a pure self-valuing. And thus, the capacity to affirm the ER is indeed a criterium for purity of self-valuing.
Back to the first theme: the ground(ing) question, “why being and not rather non-being?”, I have finally interpreted as meaning only and precisely: “what is being, that we can speak of it?” or; “how to speak being accurately to being, so as not to end up in its negation?”
VO speaks being in as far as speech can pertain directly to its own ground.
Now I know this is all highly esoteric and may require multiple readings. I must probably keep repeating that VO truly requires a rewiring of the mind, an abandoning of all passive premises, abandoning the idea that truth can be comprehended without embodying it in action.
And this, in turn, is why it is a majestic, a royal theory. Either it will rule, or the humanity will perish, be reduced back to ape hood.
Ollie, lets say the logic is a way of thinking that disallows this questions emerging.
Being is so explained that it is self-evident.
Not obvious, though - evidences rarely are.
Ok so, being as evidence of itself. That’s what I’m talking about.
“A self-valuing” is self-evidencing being. Its terms are required to be consistent and predictive of its behaviour for it to categorically exist. It is what makes being predictable.
Seeking to establish the motive as the form of the crime against the path of the least resistance, the forensic work I tried to do on the mind using the WtP was gravely impeded by the doctrine not evidencing itself in categorizable terms, it did not allow comparing of one quantum WtP to another via categorical and exact paths of thought. It did not yet compute with the world of knowledge in a scientific way. It did not yet have human, only divine power. VO is, I guess, Zarathustras so manieth attempt at going down. Book Five. Makes sense, with the Pentad and all.
So the grounding question: why does being take the path of very great resistance, and not the path of least resistance, which would be not to be, so as for there to be no resistance at all?
Why does being resist its own undoing?
How was there resistance in the first place?
Because there is something more subtle, finer than the brutal fact of resistance; the possibility of the worth of a resistance, this is what Nietzsche identifies in Dionysos, who is none other than the WtP in the perfect conditions, like “c in vacuum” but at the very end of the spectrum of comprehension, in fullness rather than in void.
All this grounding to arrive finally at the building question; “How am I supposed to go about my day, armed with this knowledge?”
So you were at half-right, in your summary. The other half is intuitively accessible; perhaps for good reason, surely by reasonable cause.
How does a being resist not-being even before it exists? Only by its possibility, which is included in there being no forced impossibilities. Nor are there forced possibilities, nor forced possibilities, so out of all possible cases, existence is likely to be one.
Psychologically this suggests that we are being more led by the future than by the past.
Scientifically it implies that what we know is only the extent to which we are ignorant; the more science we have the less we are aware of knowing, the less we can conclude. Scientists are the most ocean-eyed persons because all they see is the vastness of what they do not know through the lens of what they perceive. Their neutral state is wonder, certainty is an exhilarating and unexpected event triggered by a collision of horizons which the soaring heart forever approaches, creating a point of focus that is equally wonderful, as wonder is neutral, but more consequential. Because the world is at heart nothing but bias, the consequence of neutrality is the greatest of all.
James once said that evolution can only work if it’s resisted. I thought that was profoundly insightful.
Maybe it doesn’t.
Maybe there was no first place.
Not-being is the opposite state of being and therefore one implies the other. Not-being is not nothing, but is similar to “off” on a light switch. “Off” implies the potential to be “on”, so it’s not simply a state of nothingness, but a state of potential. There never could have been a state of nothing because there is nothing in nothing to make something.
The conundrum is this: there must be an All because clearly we can categorize all things as All, but there cannot be an All because there is nothing outside of the All to be what the All is not since the All contains all things; therefore the All is a container that has an inside, but no outside, which seems very much impossible.