The Philosophers

Optimal for what? A pro-lifer may say: “For Life.” A pro-choicer may say: “For Liberty.” You will see that these are themselves values. The question is then: what, if any, is the ultimate value?

Taken as ultimate, Life is a slave value. A foetus is alive but not at liberty. The pro-life movement is prepared to sacrifice the liberty of the mother for the life of the foetus, whereas the pro-choice movement is prepared to sacrifice the life of the foetus for the liberty of the mother. We see the same thing if we look at euthanasia instead.

Though it’s a higher value than Life, Liberty cannot be the ultimate value. Logically, the ultimate value is Happiness in some sense or another. Yet isn’t happiness ultimately the feeling of freedom, and isn’t this what we mean by “feeling truly alive”?

Okay, you are outside an abortion clinic where there is a gathering folks engaged in a heated debate regarding what is the “ultimate value” at stake here.

Bingo: fiercely entangled conflicting goods.

Indeed, try to imagine their reaction to this “philosophical” contraption of yours.

My point then is this:

To what extent are individual narratives here rooted in dasein or, instead, rooted in one or another “philosophy of life” said to reflect the optimal obligation of all rational human beings.

And once you introduce “happiness”, you are broaching a first person subjunctive frame of mind. That’s the part where reason intertwines with emotion intertwines with instinct intertwines with subconscious/unconscious awareness embedded existentially in any number of combinations of genes and memes.

Out in any particular world understood from any particular point of view.

Are “serious philosophers” then able to pin down the definition/meaning of such things as Values or Liberty or Justice or Happiness here?

All I can do is to invite those who claim to have accomplished this to integrate their technical/theoretical/conceptual assumptions into a context that most here are likely to be familiar with.

Can they impart an epistemologically sound argument true for all of us or, instead, as you do above, impart a “general description” of human interactions encompassed in Capital Letter Words defining and defending other words to impart what I would construe to be a particual political prejudice.

In other words, if you were charged with reconfiguring your “analysis/assessment” above into an actual set of laws in which certain behaviors are prescribed and certain behaviors are proscribed what would that consist of?

Go ahead, try it.

We can then take that to the fiercely entangled folks outside the abortion clinic.

You don’t sound like you relate to Nietzsche.
Freedom from anything is a slave value. The mere wish of a bitch in chains.
Freedom to accomplish certain noble feats can be a master-value.

To be free from ones own progeny is the ugliest slavish value I can think of.

Happiness taken as a value is another slave-value.
Happiness is to be taken as a mere residual side product – of the exertion of strength, which is a masters-value regardless of any results.

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And now for something completely different.
This made me laugh so hard it hurt my ribs.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8_fRO3uGU0[/youtube]

Ah fucking olden days. I love Montreal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBhI67NUzZI[/youtube]

Toxic masculinity.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUq5MrU2A4s[/youtube]

Not bad, not bad. So much Id forgotten.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFYXAY4NQGc[/youtube]

“The first time I felt all sorts of things. Things I didn’t want to feel again. Ill admit that. I didn’t vomit. But its sort of the same thing. Feel, something inside you you wanna get out of there. In this case it wasn’t poison but a kind of a blackness, and emptiness I wanted to puke out. But I didn’t, because I knew I couldn’t, so I just swallowed it. And well surprisingly enough, when I had a good steak dinner afterwards, I remember very clear, the taste of it was almost the best steak I ever had except one time in Argentina.”

“You should be in prison if you’re if you’re a homosexual”

“Worst are pedophiles. You have a lot of people in prison who have fantasy about things you wouldn’t think a man has fantasies about. And they tell you. They insist on telling you. Can you understand that? Can you explain to me why people try to confess their perversion in prison…”
"Yes, its about a sense of normalcy. A man cannot feel he is normal if - "
“He is - he isn’t normal. He shouldn’t be normal. What is it - I don’t feel normal. Im fine with that.”
“No but a man does not need to feel normal but at least he wants to be perceived as abnormal. It is not I a mans ability to feel himself simply separate”

“When I walk into a room, I can smell their opinions. I learned to not care for those things, because you know what, opinions don’t cause what people do.”

“What you should worry about is whether people feel fear about you. Thats not an opinion. If they do, thats important to take note of. And then there is some other stuff that they won’t discuss among themselves, that you can see in peoples movements or in their eyes, if you look at them that are important - things like fear but that I won’t mention.”

It’s paradoxical. What most fundamentally distinguishes a master from a slave is that the former prefers death as a freeman over life as a slave.

To relate to Nietzsche: the terms “freedom from” and “freedom to/for” are not from Nietzsche; they are abstractions from something Zarathustra says:

“Free, dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought would I hear of, and not that thou hast escaped from a yoke.
[…]
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free for what?” (“The Way of the Creating One”, Common trans.)

The thing is, it’s the same freedom to and fro. One is free from certain things so one is free for other things. Strauss speaks of “freedom from” and “freedom for” in the context of Rousseau: if I remember correctly, he speaks of a freedom that is not a freedom for anything but only a freedom from (in Natural Right and History, “The Crisis of Modern Natural right”), meaning Rousseau advocated freedom without determining in advance what that freedom was to be used for. Strauss then adds that Rousseau was aware of this but considered it so much the better, because it meant complete freedom, without being already confined to certain uses. Still, Strauss suggests that Rousseau was also aware of the rightness of Nietzsche’s and Strauss’s criticism of this, longing back as he did for Plutarch’s heroes.

As for happiness, I was careful to add “in some sense or another”. Happiness in the sense I understand it is the feeling of freedom, and this feeling is indeed only a negative feeling–the feeling of an absence–without a “for”. Freedom is power, the feeling of freedom is the will¹, and both are indeed nothing without a “to”: the will to power (or might: Macht), and the strength to its own exertion or effusion:

“Willing: A pressing feeling, very agreeable! It is the accompaniment of every effusion of force [or strength: Kraft].” (Nietzsche, Nachlass Frühjahr-Sommer 1883 7 [225], my translation.)

I think our disagreement here again comes down to the consciousness question. I can see how VO can work without consciousness, but I can’t see how there can be value without it. I mean, might a VO-system without consciousness not just as well not exist?

[size=95]¹ Or at least the essence of will, the affect of command.[/size]

Ahahahahaa

Omfgggggggz

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kSZ8HVXcYI[/youtube]

This Chekov improvisation method is the best thing ever.

[code]EXT. PERPENDICULAR STREET - SNOWDOWN

             Ambulances pull up. A corpse is being dragged onto a
             stretcher and men in white masks wheel it in. Smoke
             billows over the scene. Lights flash.



             Some distance to the ambulance and the smoke is a man,
             pacing around impatiently. He wears a beret, blond hair,
             blue eyes and a cigar between his jaws. His is HARPER,
             40.

                                    HARPER
                       The fuck are they... 



             He swallows the rest, chewing on his cigar. A younger
             black man in a grey camouflage uniform appears by his
             side, sunk through his knees, operating some wire close
             to the ground. This is EDLEE, 28.

                                    EDLEE
                       Sir. 



             Harper looks down and observes.

                                    HARPER
                       Edlee, make the trucks ready to
                       pull in. 

                                    EDLEE
                       Yes sir.



             He disappears. Harper goes back to staring over the
             scene. He checks his watch. He punched a few buttons and
             an EXPLOSION goes off in the distance. 



             CHAOS --- the scene in the smoke and the ambulance pull
             off as men scrimmage around to collect instruments and
             rush off to another vehicle.



             OVER SHOULDER Harper, who has seen enough and waves with
             three fingers. Three DARK HUMMERS pull up and Harper gets
             in the middle one. Slowly they drive in the direction of
             the smoke. 

                                    HARPER
                       Wait. 



             The caravan stops. A shot of the three cars as seen from
             the smokey scene. 

                                    HARPER
                       Lights. 



             The lights of the cars go out.



             Harper steps out of the vehicle and approaches the
             smoking object, which appears to be a car. Two armed men
             in uniform get out of the third hummer and stealthily
             take his flanks while the one from Harpers vehicle takes
             his back. 



             Harper walks into the smoke. A moment of suspense on the
             face of one of the drivers. 

                                    DRIVER
                       Shit.



             We see his POV, to the left of the smoking scene, police
             cars are approaching. About half a mile to go. 



             The driver presses his ear and starts talking.

                                    DRIVER
                       Law enforcement vehicles engaging,
                       three, strike, four in number,
                       north northwest, approximately...
                       75 seconds out. Confirm copy.



             We cut to the face of one of the men backing Harper,
             CURT. He calls out.

                                    CURT
                       Chief!



             No response. 

                                    CURT
                       The fuck. 
                            (hesitant)
                       Moving in. Repeat moving in. 

                                    DRIVER
                       Engage.



             The three men move forward into the smoke and wheels come
             into motion on the dirt as the Hummers start rolling
             towards the scene. Their lights flash back on and we cut
             to the smoke.



             The smoke is dazzling, it moves very quickly as in lots
             of turbulence, a disrupted magnetic field of sorts,
             something is awry. Curt comes closer.

                                    CURT
                       Chief!



             Suddenly, Harper appears. His face is sweaty and radiant
             and he has what seems to be an animal in his hand. 

                                    CURT
                       What the - 

                                    HARPER
                       Hahahahahaaaaaa!!!!



             Curts face, bewildered.



             Cut to Harper, who is jumping up and down in glee, with a
             rabbit in his hand.[/code]

I do think I posted that before.

What is the most esoteric philosophical text of all time?

I’m thinking… something old. :-k

Esoteric… I think it must be some of my own.

At least, something posted on BTL, by me, Parodites or Capable.

But excluding ourselves, I find “The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz” a good contenter.

He thus seeks to embody the truth.

Reminder

Reading back, I realize I owe Pezer a public apology, as I realize I did actually slander him here.
Not my finest moments. I should know how to handle his stings of disappointment a lot better.

Well this will have to do.

By Zeus, Sagittarius has no patience and does not compromise.