Nietzsche's condemnation of the virtues of kindness, Pity and compassion
Nietzsche's attack on the virtues of kindness and compassion seems to me an unfortunate flaw in his thinking. They are fundamental virtues in Buddhism , Christianity as well as other religions and many secular ethical systems. Modern psychology and evolutionary science has shown that over time the human brain evolved this extra capacity for empathy and emotional connection beyond other primates and this capacity for kindness and empathy enabled greater cooperation and building of more sophisticated communities. Nietzsche's psychology is flawed in many aspects as if I'm not mistaken, it's not based on empirical observation or evidence and it's unfortunate that his ideas have acquired almost cult like status and great influence since his death, not least amongst the Nazis and other right wing value systems who shared his contempt for the virtues of pity and compassion regarding them as weaknesses which inhibit the "strong" individual, In Buddhism on the contrary, they're regarded as strengths and Buddhism is based on thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and drawn from the insights and experience of ordinary people in everyday life , not just the utterances of 1 man. I am bewildered by the fact that on many philosophy channels on the internet and YouTube there seems to be more material on Nietzsche than almost any other thinker and he's had an enormous influence also on writers, artists and psychology.
Comments (221)
I think Nietzsche was right. Mercy is a weakness not a virtue. The whole point of mercy religions is to unite people in a blob of misery, giving your consciousness over to others so they can suck you dry. All you have is you. Don't sin, turn back on mistakes, don't be afraid of being cold hearted, and hope for your own salvation. The West has a sickening over emphasis on family and this results from the beast of Christianity. I don't live in the East so I don't know how Buddhism works there, but Christianity is as bad as religions come and that is what Nietzsche was against from first hand knowledge
Nietzsche is bemoaning the fact that pity and compassion are overvalued in the Christian and secular West of his time.
He mentions that pity and compassion are really used as methods to aggrandise oneself over the recipient of pity.
And on this point hes mainly right. Most empathy and charity are just virtue signalling and a means to laud oneself over others.
Family ties are weaker in the "Christian West" than anywhere else in the world, possibly as a result of the catholic church's ban on first cousin marriage.
Huh? Christians families are often very strong but they unite in the bile of "we are all sinners together but Jesus died for us!" It's union of narcissism. Thinking you are special is the core of Western culture
Strong compared to whom? To their less traditional compatriots, yes. Not strong compared to, say, Vietnamese family structures.
Quoting Gregory
Western culture is extremely individualistic, but that makes its family ties weaker, not stronger.
I already said I don't live in the East so I don't have first hand knowledge of it. I do know the West and Christianity. Individual pursuit here is not what Nietzsche spoke of but is self absorption into society and the acting out of a "I'm so special" narcissism. Putin pointed this out about American culture and how Hollywood promotes it in "feel good" movies. Both Christians and secular people here love when an underdog team beats a more powerful adversary in a movie. This "we do it together" is all pervasive thoughout of this culture
The feel good narcissism is a staple of the east and other cultures as well.
I know from experience.
Reference?
He wasn’t wise enough to know that all unhappy people are stupid.
Maybe you should investigate the ideas of some of these writers, artists and psychologists. Let’s
start with Keiji Nishitani, a Japanese philosopher who integrated Buddhist and Western thought.
“Nishitani distinguishes between these two kinds of groundlessness because his fundamental point is that
European thought in its largely successful critique of objectivism has become trapped in nihilism. Here
Nishitani's assessment of our situation actually follows Nietzsche's. As we mentioned in chapter 6, nihilism
arises for Nietzsche when we realize that our most cherished beliefs are untenable and yet we are
incapable of living without them. Nietzsche devoted considerable attention to the manifestation of
nihilism in our discovery that we do not stand on solid ground, that what we take to be an absolute
reference point is really an interpretation foisted on an ever-shifting impersonal process. Nishitani deeply admires Nietzsche's attempt but claims that it actually perpetuates the nihilistic
predicament by not letting go of the grasping mind that lies at the souce of both objectivism and nihlism.
Nishitani's argument is that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the
will-no matter how decentered and impersonal. Nishitani's diagnosis is even more radical than Nietzsche's, for he claims that the real problem with Western nihilism is that it is halfhearted: it does not consistently follow through its own inner logic and motivation and so stops short of transforming its partial realization of groundlessness into the philosophical and experiential possiblities of sunyata.” (The Embodied Mind)
Let me guess, cruelty and violence is a virtue for you.
:up: If common knowledge isn't enough, a comparison of the FBI stats on crimes against family members may point it out.
One reason is that he often wrote and riffed like a stand up comedian and has always been popular with a younger demographic. I find his condemnation of compassion unhelpful. When you consider Nietzsche's physical frailty and lack of success with women, it is hard not to speculate that resentment fueled many of his ideas.
Justice to all, mercy to none, kindness to everyone, love to those who are real
So are you saying that if I feel pity watching my wife dying from cancer and feel compassion for her that's a weakness, it's not good way to feel. What kind of a world would it be if these virtues were held in contempt as Nietzsche would seem to advocate. I think it would be like the law of the jungle or dog eat dog. It's perfectly possible to be a life affirming , free spirited, uninhibited person as Nietzsche upholds and also be a person full of compassion and kindness towards others.
What do you mean by ‘fueled’? As in ‘Einstein’s craving for fame fueled his discovery of relativity’? Or as in ‘I find many of Nietzsche’s ideas to be so superficial and unimpressive that I can reduce them to an arbitrary and simplistic causal motive’?
That's not possible because it bonds people in slavery to each other. Compassion is empathy and kindness but can also mean mercy, which means "karma is bad" and is a Christian invention. If youre so kind you show mercy, that's a weakness
OK,my bad. I wasn't saying all compassion or empathy is bad,of course not!
I'm saying that a lot of what is called compassion and those go around talking about it and signalling its values are hypocrites.
Most compassion that I see in public settings or in politics or even medicine is just a veneer to smooth life over and a form of virtue signalling. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just very rare.
I agree you can be free-spirited and compassionate. But how few actually are or aspire to be.
Nietzsches insight is correct. But his solution as always are rubbish.
Perhaps one reason for Nietzsche's popularity is his very provocative and radical ideas , but that doesn't make him a wise thinker. Some philosophers especially in the English speaking world don't classify him as a philosopher at all , but rather as a writer. His thinking based on a series of aphorisms and metaphors seems to lack a logical rigour of thought. I thought the definition of philosophy was supposed to be logical or rational argument.
Your notion of philosophy is out of date by at least 100 years. So is your notion of empiricism. Philosophy has spent most of the latter half of the 20th century up till now critiquing ideas of truth as logic and rationality.
All nietzsches works are fuelled from resentiment,it's obvious from his writings,especially from zarathustra onwards.
But a lot of his psychological insights are correct.
@Tom Storm @Joshs
In my opinion compassion which is at the heart of Christian and Buddhist ethics is what brings people together, without it the world would be a very cold place. I think when you talk about hypocritical attitudes it's do gooders who think they're very good people but are not really, but the problem is not with the virtue of compassion itself its the weakness within some human beings who cannot live up to the virtues.
Yet the entire critique is still based on the primacy of "rationality". The myth of reason.
And this critique is only from continental philosophy,not analytic.
Compassion would still be in the world without buddhism or Christianity. Sometimes in spite of them.
Any religion is only as good as its followers.
Quoting Gregory
Sounds like something from a hallmark card.
Etymology of Mercy: Read this
Kindness without mercy? Oh ok. And "love" ?....HA!
Again, what does ‘fueled’ mean here? Certainly you don’t mean that all one needs is a feeling of resentment in order to churn out a world-changing new philosophy. Do you mean that Nietzsche experienced an inordinate amount of things to be resentful of in his life, and that’s why the centerpiece of his work is resentment? If that the case , then given Freud’s observation of the uncanny resemblance between Nietzsche’s ideas and his own, would you surmise that Freud also experienced a lot of resentment in his personal dealings?
Here’s an alternative explanation. Readers of Nietzsche’s work like to focus on resentment at the expensive of , and in isolation from , the overall arc of his ideas because they seem more easy to grasp and are more dramatic to read. Nietzsche scholars , on the other hand , see how each aspect of his work fits into and implies the whole. And they understand this whole to be an extraordinarily complex and sophisticated construction that cannot possibly be reduced to , or even anticipated on the basis of , the ordinary everyday notionof resentment.
I mean the former - fueled as in 'helped to bring about'. I don't dismiss his ideas. And he has great one liners that get you thinking.
I wouldn’t say that the trajectory of continental philosophy over the past 100 years has been a matter of leaving traditional concepts of rationality intact and simply qualifying or limiting them. Instead rationality has been thought differently. The very notion of critique as understood by Kant has also been transformed.
Yes,freud was fuelled by resentiment as well,undoubtedly.
This does not mean anybody with resentment can write or thinks like these two. They have a lot of skill and relevant life experiences. They also specialise in writing.
Nietzsche himself used the concept of resentiment extensively in his works.
I don't trust scholars who turn nietzsche into some post modernist or nihilist.(even both of those are highly duplicitous concepts.)
Nietzsche was a political theorist and aristocratic radical.
Just like George brandes gleaned.
But the bottom line is the myth of rationality is still adhered to.
Any philosophers claiming intuition or beliefs are primary yet?
I think that's true but it has little bearing on whether compassion is valuable or not. Fake anything or hypocrisy is bad. Genuine compassion is not bad. Was N talking about fake compassion? I don't think so. Josh's may have an interesting perspective on this.
I can't imagine looking around the world and determining that we need less compassion.
How does one distinguish proper philosophy from just a whole lot of ideas. There must be a right and a wrong way of doing philosophy. A series of Ideas are not the same as philosophy.
Of course real compassion is a tremendous virtue.
Nietzsche was talking about compassion being in reality a form of asserting power over the recipient.
However,he didn't discount a different type of compassion between elites born of strength.
Nietzsches ideas on normal compassion havent had any overall effect in the real world.
Folks will always use it to make the world run smoother and to keep bonds between people.
But genuine compassion is very rare.
Well,academic philosophy sticks to appeals to authority and dialectic reason.
Myself,I think a person's intuition and desire is the criteria.
Husserl made intuition ( the primal impression ) fundamental. Heidegger defined truth as disclosure. What he meant was that what appears in every single
moment of experience is truth. He rejected the idea of truth as correctness
There are many readings of Nietzsche; who knows?
Compassion is not so unusual - the version I prefer is that experienced quietly by ordinary folk as they go about their daily business, never having heard of Nietzsche.
Did they both reject platos justified true belief?
Are you saying that both say truth is subjective?
If so,are there some subjectivities better than others?
In other words,why should I agree with the majority of heideggers or husserls philosophy?
I think nietzsches writings are clear enough to not have the numerous interpretations that academia like to churn out.
I agree partly with your version. I just think it rare for it to be genuine.
Heidegger was saying that we don't see truth with a God eye view. As with treating people, one should go with one's gut in each situation
Here’s a very partial list of philosophers who reject platos justified true belief:
george Kelly
Derrida
Heidegger
Husserl
Gene Gendlin
Merleau-Ponty
Nancy
Zahavi
Gallagher
Ratcliffe
T. Fuchs
Varela
Thompson
Noe
Lyotard
Piaget
Deleuze
Protevi
Massumi
Foucault
William Connolly
Manuel Delanda
Bernard Stiegler
Bennington
Joseph Rouse
John Shotter
Ken Gergen
Jan Slaby
Arthur Fine
Gadamer
Rorty
LaClau
Colombetti
William James
John Dewey
G H Meade
Well the gods eye view has always been nonsense,so of heidegger says that,I agree.
Does heidegger say go with your gut?
OK. But whats their criteria for truth?
They are philosophers so how do they try to explain or argue for their ideas? Or are they just asserting them or?
Any anytical philosophers who reject justified belief?
Quoting Ross Campbell
The empirical observation is parallel to the method of La Rochefoucauld, who noticed that many expressions of selflessness were actually outbreaks of self-love.
Whatever Nietzsche considered the best political system, it was not based upon the nationalistic sense of identity displayed by the forerunners to the Nazis. In later works, the criticism of all things "German" became more pronounced.
So he laughed at the notion of the "good European" in some places and appealed to the idea in other places. He was either nuts or had a sense of humor that delighted in his inconsistencies. Maybe both things were true. I am not writing this as an apology.
What’s the difference between the god’s eye view and justified true belief?
I'm not conversant with those 3. Did they reject?
But the main thing is what's their criteria for truth?
And that's one of my points,half the philosophy world would kick out folks who don't follow plato.
And I'm yet to be shown those continentals explicitly reject reason.
I agree with dewey.
But a lot of those guys still believe in science.
Rory may be an exception
But making a truth out of "no truths" or everything is a narrative is once again epistemic behaviourism.
None of these guys has escaped the bottle of philosophy or has a genuine criterion for truth.
There's no question that this is true. But this unfortunate fact is misused by people constantly to drown out the idea that there may also be (as there should be) genuine compassion or empathy for people who are struggling to survive.
Nonsense. That's your idea of what Christanity gave. An incorrect and prejudicial idea like the one i had commented/corrected here
Now you are introducing another idea, the idea of karma, which is borrowed from Hinduism. Then admit to all the principles of Hinduisim.
Make up your mind. This kind of picking and choosing to build a shoddy blanket isn't a credit to reason or logic.This is not the way of the bear, but that of a weasel.
This is what happens when you deny a system of checks and balances, which one may hypothetically and loosely call God. The denial can occur because of many reasons. But some of the most common is a reaction to life experiences, and the allurement of no accountability. The latter is a very tempting proposition to many. They are now free (at least they think they are) to do as they like, rape, pillage, cruelty, violence etc. Or, if circumstances do not permit the prior then they will attempt to do that in other ways, like economically, socially, in business etc. So the bottom line incentive is an absence of accountability. One knows not many have examined this deeply, but this is so simple even a caveman/woman can see it. This isn't rocket science.
So for such people whose life is based on a lack of accountability, to say they will be self-accountable as in kindness and justice, ts laughable. Just some thoughts in simple language. No response sought or required. carry on with your beleifs.
Rorty says that we know how to justify ideas, we just don't know anything about capital T truth - this being a remnant of Greek philosophy and monotheism. We are clever animals for whom language is a tool to manage our environment. We cannot access The Truth.
But saying we cannot access truth is still positing the myth of the Gods eye view.
How does Rory justify ideas.
Why the allergy to the word truth?
Maybe this will help. Rorty explains why the notion of truth needs to be jettisoned.
http://critica.filosoficas.unam.mx/index.php/critica/article/download/696/668/
With respect joshs. Why can't you explain in your own words.
The word truth is used fine in my life and many others.
We know what we mean in normal language.
Why do Rorty and these kinds of philosophers want to dictate how people speak?
Is the "unfortunate fact" something that is a problem for all discussions of morality?
If so, Nietzsche's approach either brings that factor into view or made a mess of the issue.
Nobody likes a mess.
You need to dig deeper. It is not truth that is the problem - hence Rorty's view that justification is achievable in a range of areas. He is saying The Truth (as in a foundational truth) is a myth. As per God or transcendent purpose. However we can know if an idea works or not and can clarify language.
I am not a Rorty scholar so someone else can take it further if they wish. Rorty often seems to be disliked for his 'postmodern relativism'.
But there are foundational truths as well.
They are axiomatic.
There is a mess.
His word is intuition.
Because everyone believes in karma, while the biggest Christian denomination in the world (Catholics) say through the mouth of the their Pope that "justice is a servant of mercy" and "mercy is greater than justice". Right their. Check out the encyclical. Belief in God is blanket worship
He was also against the prioritizing of pity and perhaps compassion so it is used when it should not be. When one is abused by someone, there is no reason the focus on feeling pity or even compassion for the other, at least not until one is out from under the thumb of that person.
He disliked, may wild paraphrase, placing guilt and shame on pedestals as if there is something morally good about these and confusing these with, say, love or respect.
There is another discussion of Nietszche's book The Antichrist that touches on this. In that discussion with @frank I try to make the case that Nietszche's work is philosophy, and is not meant as social commentary. His characterization of Christianity is drawn as an example of morality pre-determined with certainty and rules, such as Kant's imperatives and Plato's forms.
Pity and compassion are used analogously. For him they are attitudes we take to ourselves and our perspective on morality. Morality decided in advance and fixed is to remove ourselves (the human) from the equation. Our pity is our sense of lack for what we wish we were (our ideal or ought); our desire for a universal, rational, "normative" moralism is our weakness. Emerson frames it as a quarter he wishes he had the strength to withhold giving to the poor, for they are not his (oh my!) What he is critiquing is Kant's sense of duty, which says: if you just do this, you will be a good person. For Emerson duty is to stand for what I say and do ("I am!"); to be read by it, answerable for it. Our strength is not to take the easy answer that abstract morality provides, contemptuous of our moral self.
So why does Nietszche (and Emerson) court misunderstanding? I'm not sure. Why does Wittgenstein talk out of two sides of his mouth? Why does Heidegger never get around to saying anything? Maybe there are some things that cannot be told, but that we must find for ourselves. You need "new eyes", "new ears"--maybe he wanted to start a fight to set himself as an outrageous example. You're shocked, provoked, antagonized? Is what you think right desecrated? Your sensibilities, your righteousness? Perhaps now you are ready.
(In anticipation of knee-jerk reactions, I'll also say that some take Nietszche to advocate that we are selfish--"pitiless", "dominating", "powerful"--beyond morals (not just beyond good and evil); that he thinks our instinct will make us superior in a zero-sum game (not that my duty could be the same as yours, or better). They take him to propose a new type of human, apart from (above) culture--a morally-naturalistic nightmare. I believe the interpretation comes from a desire not to be subject to society ("free") and the need to feel special, important--an excuse to hold individual (internal) experience paramount.)
The fundamental problem with Nietzsche , as with some other existentialists is that they are too individualistic in their thinking. Aristotle said, "Man is a social animal". It does not make sense to talk about morals and values, in relation to the individual as an separate entity but only in the context of him/her as a SOCIAL being, a part of a community. That's why Aristotle's ethics and his politics are one big interlinked system, not separated from one another. Compassion and kindness are fundamental ways in which humans interact positively with one another. Values and morals are not private issues , as Nietzsche would have it, merely of concern to the individual and chosen or discarded at the whim of an individual, they are social concerns , part of the fabric of society. Compassion is rather like a glue that bonds a community together and creates a more humane and happier society without which it would be a very cold place.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Ya know , you don’t have to stick with only one group of scholars’ interpretation of Nietzsche. I can introduce you to an entirely different Nietzsche than the ‘existentialist’ one.
Are you aware, for instance , that Nietzsche forms the very heart of a huge variety and volume of postmodern, poststructuralist writings which spread from French and German continental writers like Heidegger, Foucault , Deleuze and Lyotard to English speaking countries, and have had a dominating influence on academic discussion of politics, arts and philosophy? Were you further aware that the fundamental basis of their approaches is that the individual subject is a social creation, and they find direct support for this in Nietzsche’s work? In other words, they don’t interpret Nietzsche as an existentialist at all.
Well, if you are interested, I stand ready to clarify, draw something out further, or answer any questions.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Or we can simply continue to see these as his opinions (see Witt. P.I. p. 152). I am arguing this is not a discussion of pity and compassion (better to read Arendt, Foucalt, etc.). In this vein, Nietszche is challenging our habit to think we see and can judge immediately. He is asking for a different reader as much as a different moral culture. I found that if I felt I "got him", especially at first glance, I would be wrong, missing something; maybe this is not an argument, but a call for something, a claim on us? Maybe these are not statements (true/false) about our society, but challenges for a change of our entire picture of morality.
And the idea of our being slaves is, again, an analogy, say, slaves to our desire to give our self (our responsibility) away to our morals. Emerson calls for us to "master" ourselves or someone else will; i.e., our unexamined culture makes us a slave. We are quietly desperate, in chains, etc.--this is not new.
Quoting Ross Campbell
As I said at the bottom of my original post, this is the other side of misunderstanding Nietszche. If I do not give myself away to morals, that does not mean I abandon them--we take them on, examine the context (or lack of it), history, use (misuse)--perhaps each case on its own terms (we become adverse to them, as Emerson phrases it). He is not anti-morality, but simply asking us to inhabit our moral life. All his talk of self does not mean we then become the sole arbitrator of what is right; that we have some right to a private moralism (equal to the moralism we inflict on each other with our public morals). The call for my will to guide me (my whim Emerson says) may be to help others, be a good citizen, go along with everyone else; my duty need not be our downfall, nor different than yours or anyone's. The aspiration to the self is not an abdication of moral responsibility (but a call for it); ironically, irresponsibility comes from the reliance only on unexamined morals.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Nietszche is different from Aristotle, and most traditional philosophers, in that he is not advocating for a particular type of human. He is not explaining or telling us what human nature is. Another way to think of this is that he is not talking about what we ought to be or do (setting our future goal or ideal). His is an open-ended call to aspire to your next self, a revitalized culture. Can we trust each other? or are we bound to pre-judge us all? Can we have our humanity without it appearing we desire an anarchy of no culture, no rules, no language?
What do you mean by "the individual is a social creation"? In most philosophy books I've read about existentialists, Nietzsche is listed amongst them. Post modernism came lond after Nietzsche's death. I've never heard Nietzsche described as a postmodernist. In fact the latter is probably a reaction against thinkers like Nietzsche and other existentialists who regard their ideas as the unique product of the thinker. I think this doesn't disprove my point that values and morals are not matters merely of individual concern but are also social issues. When Nietzsche attacks a time honoured virtue like compassion he is expressing his own personal prejudice against a value he personally doesn't like, but that's irresponsible and flawed philosophy because philosophy as it has been done by many famous thinkers , based on empirical observation, data, evidence, research, and treating the individual in the context of society, not as some purely Nietzschean fantasy of some superman who can rise above the rest of humanity.
Most books that you read about existentialism probably list Nietzsche as an existentialist because , for one thing, his era overlapped Kierkegaard and dostoyevsky, who were among the first to be called existentialists. Another reason is that , at least in English speaking countries , the first interpretations of his work were by writers who were existentialists themselves. Postmodernism may have come long after his death , but many philosophers have had their work ignored or misread for years until a major reinterpretation puts their ideas i to a whole new light. That has happened with the American pragmatists and phenomenology as well. Heidegger wrote extensively ion Nietzsche ( Heidegger is another one whose work has been miscategorized as existentialist), as did Deleuze.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Many post structuralists argue there is no
such thing as the autonomous subject. What we think of as the individual is a construction emerging
social relations. I assure you the originators of postmodernism ( Jean Francois Lyotard coined the term )
we’re enormous fans of Nietzsche.
“Lyotard follows Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in arguing that there is no objective science or forms of knowledge that are not based in a desire or what Nietzsche called a will for power, a point that Lyotard will make by looking at the desire or libido behind the so-called scientific works of the later Marx.”
“Nietzsche is also a precursor for postmodernism in his genealogical analyses of fundamental concepts, especially what he takes to be the core concept of Western metaphysics, the “I”. On Nietzsche's account, the concept of the “I” arises out of a moral imperative to be responsible for our actions. In order to be responsible we must assume that we are the cause of our actions, and this cause must hold over time, retaining its identity, so that rewards and punishments are accepted as consequences for actions deemed beneficial or detrimental to others (Nietzsche 1889, 482-83; 1887, 24-26, 58-60). In this way, the concept of the “I” comes about as a social construction and moral illusion. According to Nietzsche, the moral sense of the “I” as an identical cause is projected onto events in the world, where the identity of things, causes, effects, etc., takes shape in easily communicable representations. Thus logic is born from the demand to adhere to common social norms which shape the human herd into a society of knowing and acting subjects.
For postmodernists, Nietzsche's genealogy of concepts in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (Nietzsche 1873, 77–97) is also an important reference. In this text, Nietzsche puts forward the hypothesis that scientific concepts are chains of metaphors hardened into accepted truths. “
Good observations. They connect to Nietzsche as the philologist, a student of how we came to talk in various ways.
I still think it makes perfect sense to talk about the individual. The term is used widely in public debate, as well as academia. And it makes perfect sense to criticize a thinker or an opinion as being too individualistic. I think this discussion has digressed from my key point and that is that In my opinion Nietzsche is mistaken in his contempt for the time honoured values of compassion and kindness. He doesn't just analyze them and the role they play he has contempt for them which seems a misguided and prejudicial view. It seems absurd that a thinker such as Nietzsche can eschew thousands of years of philosophical wisdom , not just particular philosophers but the whole tradition of philosophy since the ancient Greeks. He attacks it for being otherworldly and life denying. I don't see how Aristotle's ethics which are grounded in empirical evidence and common sense is other wordly. Aristotle also does not , unlike Christianity or Kant , base his ethics on a set of rules, but it's about cultivating a good character.
It actually makes sense once you understand what he's saying.
Humans did develop higher order empathy because it helped unite a “tribe”! This works great on a small tribal basis. The problem is the tribe is now BILLIONS in number - the number is beyond what the tribe model can cover.
Also: the empathy thing has been blown completely out of balance by Abrahamic religion! In Non-Abrahamic religions, you realize there must be a BALANCE between nurturing (feminine) and the competitive force (masculine). We have to all CONTRIBUTE to our tribe (tax, health care damnit!). But we have to limit how long one can stay on the tit! A SMALL Safety Net, but for general purposes every must produce
Getting along with people and contributing is of course necessary. But too many attach themselves to things and other people in a false idea of love. The universe might show mercy to people (who is it hurting?) but an all good God doesn't. Christians proclaim a father figure who wipes people with the blood of his son. Nietzsche knew that Christianity promoted sin and went after it nobly.
I don't see how God figures into it but maybe there is a conception of God that will arise in the future which will work. I don't know. Christianity has soured that stream for the present. Evolution happens and I'm not closed off to possibilities. I don't think anything is known for sure but I am not a skeptic because I think there is much probability to many ideas. Every idea is only probable nonetheless
Nietzsche was primarily concerned with the affect of Christianity throughout the world. If kindness is natural there is no reason even to talk about it much. There is nothing wrong with Aristotle, but remember that it was Plato who N attacked the most. The idea that we really do not live in the true world was a problem for him. Aristotle's idea of man was good imo. "Thus to say that I entered into the world, come to the world, or that there is a world, or that I have a body, is on and the same thing" said Sartre
Quoting Ross Campbell
Of course one can talk about the individual. The question is what is the relation between the individual and culture. There many different philosophical positions on this issue, ranging from Enlightenment rationality to Kantian idealism to Marx and Hegel to postmodernism. It sounds to me like your position is a traditional one. You talk about individual character , and emphasize empiricism in the old fashioned way without seeming to have any acquaintance with the wide range of discourses in both analytic and continental philosophical traditions which deconstruct and problematize the assumptions underlying empiricism and individualistic approaches to personality and ‘character’. You had no idea that Nietzsche is embraced by postmodernists, even though a two second search via the keywords ‘Nietzsche Postmodernism’ would have given you numerous sources verifying this.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Haven’t you heard the news? Multiple generations of philosophers at least since Schopenhauer have eschewed thousands of years of philosophical wisdom on the subject of moral values like kindness and compassion. I would also suggest that each era of philosophy since the Greeks has consisted of eschewing fundamental tenets of previous approaches. You act as if philosophical innovation froze after Kant.
Many, including Freud , have remarked at the similarities between Nietzsche’s psychological model and that of Freud. Do you think Freud ‘eschewed thousands of years of philosophical wisdom’? And what about Darwinian based models of altruism?
Quoting Ross Campbell
I think in order to understand what Nietzsche means by compassion and kindness , and why he is critiquing the traditional metaphysics underlying these values, it is absolutely necessary to see his criticism in the context of his larger philosophy. , which is centered around the Will to Power. You can’t just extract a few concepts , assume
that your definition of them is Nietzsche’s, and then assume that he is dissing them.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Nietzsche may have been the first to recognize that empirical evidence and facts in general only make sense in relation to the larger value systems that define them. Analytic philosophers like Quine , Sellers, Putnam and Davidson refer to this as the untenability of the fact-value distinction. We cannot separate facts from values , and this is what philosophers of science like Kuhn were getting at in showing that scientific theories ( paradigms ) dont mirror or represent the world( the traditional notion of empiricism) , they interact with it. It is necessary to understand these and many other facets of Nietzsche’s approach and see how they all connect up with each other in order to see what he is up to in his treatment of values of compassion and kindness.
I’m not assuming that you will come to embrace Nietzsche’s point of view on ethics, but until
you can produce a coherent summary of his overall project that bears some resemblance to scholarly interpretations then I don’t think you should assume that you are grasping his terms.
I Know quite a lot about Nietzsche. I have studied his philosophy at Degree level and I know for sure that he despised Christianity and all it's values and he also despised nearly all secular ethical systems prior to and during his time. He also attacked science as being motivated by a similar life denying or some other negative impulse. How radical can you get in your thinking. You mentioned Freud. Freud did not attack science. He wanted to make his psychoanalysis scientific. Postmodernism does not in my opinion undermine the basis of empirical science. If we were to follow Nietzsche's value system society would have to abandon compassion and kindness and pity because they're a slave mentality and we wouldn't be able to trust the whole scientific enterprise because he attacks that as well. If it wasn't for science we would be still living in caves. He's also ant- democratic so we would have to abandon democracy as well which is what happened in Nazi Germany for whom Nietzsche was their philosopher. Nietzsche's daughter passed his writings onto the Nazis and Mussolini gave Hitler a copy of Nietzsche's writings.
Now I know Nietzsche wasn't an anti semite or a racist and I agree with his critique of the herd mentality in Christianity and other systems. However human beings by instinct are hard wired to follow a group, for evolutionary reasons it was necessary for survival for humankind to fit in and conform with his tribe throughout the history of homo sapiens. I think Nietzsche's understanding of human psychology is rather amateurish as was most 19th century psychology which was not a rigorous science like it is today.
I'm aware that empirical science has been shown to less reliable than it was previously thought. That's why most scientists would say that their theories are not watertight but are based on the evidence available and are open to being revised.
N was against science as an idol which could "save" us. Post modernism actually frequently talks about science and how culture colors its conclusions. There is some truth to both criticisms
Very True. Mainly because Nietzsche is the only kind of atheist that Peterson wants to popularize. Perversely Nietzsche's framing of atheism is quite useful to Christian apologists.
I think Nietzsche is overrated. There's more videos on him than any other thinker on many channels. Perhaps he's an attractive thinker because he's so provocative and radical but that does not make him wise. I think there's far more wisdom in Buddhism and Eastern philosophy and Stoicism and Epicureanism than there is in Nietzsche who seems to have drove himself insane in his Philosophical project.
Like his dad he had a brain disease. He said truth is not like God but like a woman (and then lists some complaints). His main point is that truth is beautiful on the surface but is really a strange fickle thing
Just curious , and you don’t have to answer this, but do you consider yourself a Christian?
Quoting Ross Campbell
You’re right, postmodernism doesn’t undermine the bias of empirical science , they make explicit that basis, which is what Nietzsche does. It’s not a question of saying that airplanes can’t fly and our other machines don’t really function. The postmodern , and Nietzsche’s , croute is not of the results of science but of the way that it has traditionallly thought of itself, how it has branded itself. For instance , that empirical proof is a matter of matching our models of nature to the real world. That assumes what Rorty called ‘science as the mirror of nature’. It ask
goes by the name of the correspondence theory of truth.
There are postmodern approaches within psychology now. You can look up enactivism, 4EA( embodied, enactive, extended and affective cognition ) . autopoietic self-organizing systems approaches , and there you’ll find rigorous research ( Shaun Gallagher , Evsn Thompson , Alva Noe, Matthew Ratcliffe ) on autism, schizophrenia, emotions, empathy, depression ,visual perception and language which reject your view of science.
Quoting Ross Campbell
You miss the point . Lamenting science’s lack of reliability implies the classic belief of science as correspondence with nature.
I’m with psychologist George Kelly on science.
“To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”
The classic view of science sees it as a more ‘rigorous ‘ avenue toward ultimate truth than than the humanities of philosophy. It is supposedly superior by virtue of its method as its use of mathematics. But all this has been called into question. What hasn’t been called into question is the usefulness of science, but not because it gets more reliably to a representation of the
‘way things really are’.
Quoting Ross Campbell
We wouldnt need to abandon kindness and compassion
any more than we would need to abandon science. But in both cases it would useful
to abandon our prevailing superstitions about the basis of kindness and compassion and the basis of scientific
truth. We care about others to the extent that they are like ourselves. That is , they share our value system. What we call evil is what is profoundly alien to our way of thinking. This is the basis of compassion and kindness. Nietzsche supports altruism but recognizes that our ability to relate to others is limited by our value systems , and those values are always in flux over longer periods of time. To follow the Christian injunction to locenone another amounts to assuming a single value system locked into place for eternity that we are forced to conform to. I don t mean here that love is a value system. Of course we love what we know , what we relate to , identify with. We don’t need a religious injunction to tell us that . It comes naturally . We don’t need to be told to have compassion, to be kind , to love. We need to understand how our shifting values, paradigms, word views change our ability to relate or others. We need to stop trying to force conformity to one worldview , and to stop labeling deviation from that worldview evil.
Put differently , Jesus’s injunction to love thy neighbor presuppposes that we are making a choice whether to love or hate, to have compassion and kindness or apathy. It explains such social attitudes on the basis of intent and assumes that the world is interpreted in essentially the same way for all of us. Thus we are urged to love each other , and when we don’t our character and intent is blamed. Nietzsche is arguing that choice and intent is not the basis of feelings of compassion or hate. Instead, we live in very different worlds, even within the same community. We love or hate as a result of how our worldview make sense of our social world , not because of personal whim or choice. Urging compassion and kindness is both unctuous and dangerous from this vantage , because it ignores the real basis of social tension and instead blames it on the choice not to be compassionate. This makes a Christian moralism a less kind form of social understanding than Nietzsche. Nietzsche doesn’t blame intent but sympathizes with each person’s situation. That is why his position is beyond good and evil. the ‘evildoer’ lives and loves in a different world from mine , and his values are as justified within his world as mine are within mine.
This is pretty interesting and I have to say I struggle to incorporate these ideas because they seem to be keeping two sets of books - which is hard to do unless you are a Stalinist (or insert bugbear of choice). One can hold the altruism without a foundation?
Quoting Joshs
Does this also apply to the above worldview? I get these points and don't disagree but it seems murky.
I sometimes wonder can anyone but a theorist partake in such exercises? How can it apply to the quotidian?
Well, the altruism would have a foundation , albeit a contingent and local one. This reminds me of Derrida’s response to all those who say that deconstruction is an anything goes philosophy without any basis for norms.
“For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let it be said in passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.”
“Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy. I should thus be able to claim and to demonstrate, without the slightest "pragmatic contradiction," that Searle, for example, as I have already demonstrated, was not on the "right track" toward understanding what I wanted to say, etc. May I henceforth however be granted this: he could have been on the wrong track or may still be on it; I am making considerable pedagogical efforts here to correct his errors and that certainly proves that all the positive values to which I have just referred are contextual, essentially limited, unstable, and endangered. And therefore that the essential and irreducible possibility of misunderstanding or of "infelicity" must be taken into account in the description of those values said to be positive.”
Unfortunately I couldn't understand everything you said. Philosophy is a highly abstract subject!
To answer your question Im not religious. I believe in a secular ethics. You may not have noticed but I said in my previous piece that I think there is a grain of truth in Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity as a slave mentality. I think the notion in it of sin, hell and salvation is ridiculous, unhealthy and was probably used for social control and power , to instill fear in people. But Jesus' teaching about love, forgiveness, compassion, are good values. I don't agree that people are naturally altruistic and don't need value systems, religious or secular. They need a role model like Jesus, or other figures like mother Teresa. It's not easy to be a true christian, no more than it is to be a true Stoic or a true Buddhist or a very good person. These value systems set high standards of virtuous behavior for people to aspire too. Human beings in reality ,as any modern psychologist will tell you, are a mix of good and bad. We all have our dark side, our animal nature and as Jung described our repressed feelings manifest themselves in sinister ways such as a lust for power or scape goating certain groups of people , like the Nazis for the Jews. Why is it that most of us get excited by violence, rape, murder. cruelty, love watching war films, etc? Now these ancient value systems whether it's Stoicism, Christianity or Buddhism are are a call to humanity to aspire to our higher , more human , rational nature , to transcend that wild animal in us and aspire to a more noble and humane way of life. "The Man without ethics is a wild beast." - Albert Camus. Of course it takes great courage, strength of character, to live according to these values and many, arguably most people fail to consistently live up to them. How many times have we all hurt or let down another person ? Of course it's easier to argue like Nietzsche does that all these ethical values upon which the great civilizations were based are part of a slave or herd mentality and dismiss them. It's trendy nowadays in this age of the anti hero and nihilism where many people believe in nothing, or are confused, to attack all traditions , in postmodernism where all value systems are seen as having a hidden agenda, where human nobility and human reason which was valued for thousands of years is not valued any more or downgraded. instead we prefer a Monty Python approach to morality, a debunking of all that is noble and great in the human spirit
Science and the pursuit of knowledge have nothing to do with a will to power. They stem from man's survival instinct to master his environment. Mankind has a natural instinct to understand. "All people desire to know"- Aristotle.
What's this nonsense about science being a wiil to power.
Yes, and understanding takes place relative to a personal construction system , which could also be called a value system. There is no direct knowing of the world. Instead , we construct interpretive frameworks and organize our understanding of the world through those frameworks.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Knowledge is pragmatic. That is, we recognize the meaning of the world as it relates to our interests and goals(our will). Will describes the perspectival nature of knowing. ‘power’ isn’t about dominance but about the fact that we assimilate the world into our schemes. So will to power is the motive of assimilating the world to our value perspective. Isnt that what scientific theorizing does?
The Will to power is only one among several theories which competes with Freud's will to pleasure and Victor Franks Will to meaning. Personally I think The will to meaning is a better description of the human condition. From my own experience I find myself driven by a desire for meaning rather than power or pleasure.
But meaning is also a source of pleasure or joy,is it not?
Power and meaning are interrelated. Being able to influence an exchange requires giving and demanding at the same time. One might not know where the negotiation will lead. We make a lot of mistakes.
It's been have known since Immanuel Kant that we have no direct access to knowing reality. But I don't think that's relevant to my point. I'm not saying that science is completely objective, but it's the best means we have of understanding the NATURAL world. Art and philosophy are ways of exploring the human condition.
It’s the best means we have if you believe that science should strive for complete objectivity ( even if it can never attain the thing in itself). That was Kant’s view, that science asymptotically approaches an objective understanding of the natural world as a limit.
According to the above thinking art can’t progress the way science can, because it only explores the human condition. The philosophers I read disagree. They argue that understanding f the objective world is only possible through understanding the human condition. Put differently ,what we call objectivity is itself an articulation of the human condition because the agreed upon object is constructed through inter subjective consensus and this interaubjective activity is the negotiated product of subjective perspectives.
They argue the only difference between what the arts and humanities, and the sciences do, is a matter of method and way of articulating ideas, but science is inextricably bound up with all other modes of human creativity and they all develop and change from one era to the next in tandom. In fact the cutting edge of philosophy tends to get to new vistas of discovery before the leading edge of the sciences( Kant vs Einstein, Nietzsche vs Freud, Hegel vs Darwin and Marx). The sciences
are just conventionalized versions of philosophical inquiry, defining ‘nature’ in a restrictive way as mathematizable objects rather than in the more comprehensive and fundamental way that philosophy does , and science’s conception of itself changes from era to era in parallel with changes in philosophy and other modalities of culture.
“Knowledge is taken to consist in a faithful mirroring of a mind-independent reality. It is taken to be of a reality which exists independently of that knowledge, and indeed independently of any thought and experience (Williams 2005, 48). If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it.
It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve (Stroud 2000, 30). How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have “in themselves” and the properties which are “projected by us”. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, science captures the objective world, the world as it is in itself. But to think that science can provide us with an absolute description of reality, that is, a description from a view from nowhere; to think that science is the only road to metaphysical truth, and that science simply mirrors the way in which Nature classifies itself, is – according to Putnam – illusory.
It is an illusion to think that the notions of “object” or “reality” or “world” have any sense outside of and independently of our conceptual schemes (Putnam 1992, 120). Putnam is not denying that there are “external facts”; he even thinks that we can say what they are; but as he writes, “what e cannot say – because it makes no sense – is what the facts are independent of all conceptual choices” (Putnam 1987, 33). We cannot hold all our current beliefs about the world up against the world and somehow measure the degree of correspondence between the two. It is, in other words, nonsensical to suggest that we should try to peel our perceptions and beliefs off the world, as it were, in order to compare them in some direct way with what they are about (Stroud 2000, 27). This is not to say that our conceptual schemes create the world, but as Putnam writes, they don't just mirror it either (Putnam 1978, 1). Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned (Putnam 1990, 28, 1981, 54, 1987, 77)
Nietzsche is mostly attacking to the use of all these virtues that people make as to take advantage of others(religion, politics etc) . It's the definition humans give to all these values what triggers Nietzsche's "attack" and not so much the values themselves.
Even if he exaggerates he still points that depending in all these values and how perfect someone should be (generous, have empathy etc) it's like asking from people to do the impossible! It will never happen and so Nietzsche tries to direct that stupid definition that people give to these values. They over-overestimate them and end up enslaved by them.
Though I disagree with Nietzsche's views on other issues i agree totally on this. And everyone has to admit even he doesn't agree that this thought contribution from Nietzsche in philosophy is huge.
Quoting Ross Campbell
That says something don't you think? He had such enormous influence cause Nietzsche is enormous.
I have to disagree Nietzsche does not attack people's use of the values of compassion , love and kindness. He thinks they further the interests of the underdog. It's a classic elitist philosophy, thats why his views had such appeal to the Nazis and fascists in Italy and to right wing movements generally, who hate democracy, trade unions, socialism, all of which Nietzsche would regard as slave morality, herd mentality. Unlimited, unrestrained self assertion, even if it means sweeping away the weak and the unable is Nietzsche's values. It seems to me a complete inversion of Christian ethics and perhaps Buddhism and many ancient value systems. It's more like a philosophy for an elite or chosen few rather than the ordinary man.
Please don't give me the argument of Nazism for Nietzsche. It's not his fault that idiot people would take advantage of him or even misunderstood his words. If Nietzsche was alive he would spit Hitler on his face. He had already predicted it also "I'm terrified from the use of my words that people will do at the future"
Quoting Ross Campbell
But it is indeed an inversion of Christian Ethics. That's exactly what Nietzsche wanted. I disagree a lot with Nietzsche work but I think he achieved the greatest kick to all these overestimated impossible values that people with power take advantage as to manipulate others.And that is not elitist at all. He wants to wake up ordinary people against elite's stupid values. And I insist that Nietzsche wasn't attacking mostly on virtues themselves but to the definition that people give to them. The only thing that isn't ordinary in Nietzsche's philosophy, is the way he express himself and not many(I might haven't get it fully as well) can get his meaning. The way he writes yes I find it kind of elitist indeed but not his philosophy.
Isn't it irresponsible for a thinker like Nietzsche to be writing in such a way that it could be so easily misunderstood and used for evil purposes. I think a writer especially one who has such big influence and writing about morality, ethics and values should take great care - just like David Hume or John Stuart mill did- to write in a way that is clear, lucid and cannot be misconstrued. Why does Nietzsche almost unique among many of the famous thinkers have to write in such a highly ambiguous way. Even he himself was aware of the danger of that, I'm terrified from the use of my words that people will do at the future". I think that's highly irresponsible of someone in his position as a major intellectual of his time. And although I think he's a profound, deep and brilliant writer this aspect dimishes my admiration for him.
If you think his writings had nothing to do with Fascism why don't you watch the interview with J P Stern, a leading scholar of Nietzsche on YouTube. Bryan Magee is interviewing him. And he says that Nietzsche is to a certain extent to blame for the ideas in Fascism.
Nietzsche seemed to have a really weird mind as to think so out of the box. So I guess his writing must have been weird too. I don't think that he cared much about everyone to understand his work or feeling any kind of responsibility as you say. But he seemed to addressing more to people of his own "race".Superior people as he was calling them. One of the reasons that I like Nietzsche though is that weird type of writing. Even if it is exhausting for mind sometimes, still I find it extremely interesting.
But I get what you mean .In general many great thinkers seem to care more as to demonstrate their intellectual superiority using weird, fancy ways to express simple things. They seem to care more about "showing off" than the actual message that they want to deliver! (You can notice it also here to some posts). I don't think though, that Nietzsche had the need to show off. I think it was like trying to express what was going on in his mind as to satisfy his own need. But again that's only my guess and I understand why someone would find that annoying.
Quoting Ross Campbell
I might watch it but still I don't think it will change my mind about Nazism and Nietzsche. Was Nietzsche a racist? Well yeah he was! Especially in issues like women some of his thoughts are really awful!But still Nietzsche's ideas about the world and how it can be reformed had nothing to do with Nazism. Mostly cause of his sister and how she treated with his work as to support Nazis and secondly cause Nietzsche shook so much the values of religious and everything that people knew so far, he ended up the black sheep of philosophy. And they tried to connect him with movements like Nazis as to "spoil" his fame.But Nietzsche's proposal of reforming humanity had nothing to do with that.
I think there is plenty of misunderstanding about Nietzsche’s writings, because he doesn’t approach ‘man is a social animal’ in the same way as Aristotle. He explores man in relation to man within a broader context that includes but is not confined to current social structures, morality, etc as if they were eternal, fixed. The point is to explore the variability of social structure, as determined by how we relate to each other. He follows from Schopenhauer, who effectively imagined a system in which individuals moved in relation to a fixed ‘fabric of society’, and explored the inaccuracies of this, like the movement of heavenly bodies in a geocentric system. Nietzsche then described the system as social entities responding in relation to each other. It’s similar to Rovelli’s restructuring of the universe as consisting of interrelated events, rather than objects moving in spacetime. There is no ‘society’ to which we all move in relation - rather we continually construct and reconstruct it in how we respond to each other.
Pity comes from ‘piety’: a respect for and obedience to the natural order. Pity is a negative affect in our relation to the natural order of suffering in others, and compassion is the response. But Nietzsche challenges us to question why we are compelled to respond, and in what way. Out of guilt? Because suffering is inherently bad? It isn’t. When we remove the assumption that there is an eternal moral fabric - there is only socially potential entities in relation to each other - then we need to be honest about how we feel in perceiving our own potential to act (or not act) in relation to the suffering of others. Should we eliminate any suffering we see, or simply feel bad that our own suffering is less?
Where our relation to the example of Jesus fails to move us to compassion today is why Nietzsche’s approach has merit. The differences between my own socio-cultural context and those of Jesus are vast. It wasn’t his relation to a sky father or his identity as heir to a kingdom that motivated him towards compassion - it was something else. Something his own cultural context proved insufficient to describe.
Why are compassion and kindness understood as fundamentally ‘positive’ human interactions? It isn’t because God told us, or because it earns us ‘brownie points’, because we just agree, or because it’s what our laws are founded on, and it isn’t because they can eliminate suffering as an apparent ‘evil’. There’s no longer any foundation here. If we’re going to call on each other to act with compassion and kindness, then we need to give them better reasons than this. Part of this is understanding what we mean when we use these words, rather than assuming we’re talking about ‘something good’. We need to unpack the value we attribute here.
That's the whole point. The "excuses" that are given for people to follow these values are ridiculous. And make many logical people skeptical. People indeed have to feel and act with compassion in societies but the reasons are mostly egoistic! You have to give people to realize that living in a society and act with compassion is for their very own benefit at the end!
We should stop giving them stupid excuses for religious punishment and endless generous unending Happiness when you act "good" . And silly fairytale like that. People need more logical reasons and things that are doable indeed. Not idealistic nonsense that people can never follow and achieve!
But that’s the issue - there IS no purely logical reason to act with compassion or kindness. To understand their significance, we need to recognise that as humans we don’t act on purely logical reasoning, but on affected methodologies. Hence the word ‘better’.
Quoting dimosthenis9
And to do that, you need to recognise that your understanding of ‘their very own benefit’ is not only culturally assumed but limited by your own affected perspective. Which takes us back to Nietzsche.
Most cultures and religions seem to end up with some variation of The Golden Rule it seems to me. It's sheer ubiquity suggests that self-interested altruism (if that's what it is) is hard wired. Did humans evolve to cooperate and coexist respectfully for the most part? Do we really need something as substantial and potentially transcendent as a 'foundation'.
What seems radical about Christianity is the extension from self-interested altruism into loving your enemy and helping that most loathed of all people e.g., the Samaritan. This is much harder to justify than being 'good' in your own tribe. This seems to echo the Roman poet Terence - "Nothing that is human is alien to me." By extension, all humans are sacred.
It's interesting that Nietzsche singled out this 'compassion' because is seems to me that Christianity did a bloody good job of eviscerating this from their practice all by themselves, even with a putative foundation.
It might be a response to the conclusion that 'an eye for an eye' (the opposite of 'turning the other cheek') essentially turns one into the thing one hates.
We all know Nietzsche's quote about staring into abysses. It seems appropriate here.
I will disagree on this and say that there is indeed pure logical reason acting with these virtues when you live in a society. Being kind for example can make your life easier in many ways (saves you from conflicts, people like you more, yourself even grows bigger, in many practical situations you gain much more etc). The problem with these virtues is the way people react to them. When someone acts with compassion he should do it cause he truly feels it.Cause he just can't do otherwise! He needs to do that as to feel better.Even Nietzsche mentions "the one who gives is the one who gains the most"!
Showing compassion as to point the finger to others and blame them for not acting like you (which is what most people do) is the most hypocritical thing.You shouldn't give a fuck about what others do or else is better not doing it at all. In general I mean that if someone acts with compassion he should do it only for selfish reasons as to feel better! And he has no right to blame others who don't! And if someone doesn't want to act with compassion it's also fine! He shouldn't be characterized as "bad" or "cruel" or whatever stupidity. The other side of the "compassion coin" isn't cruelty!
For me at least, that's what Nietzsche was trying to do with all these virtues. Redefine them and break the chains that someone must do that and this as to be considered "good" person . I don't think Nietzsche imagined that there can be a world ever, actually, without all these virtues. Asking from people to act like angels on earth is beyond their powers and stupid. You can't ask from anyone to be hero and save the world. He should and can only save his own self! And through saving yourself you actually contribute more in saving the world also.
It isn’t so much the need for a substantial foundation as a structure, a methodology for navigating and understanding reality beyond our direct experiences.
The Neo-Darwinian or humanist notion of self-interested altruism seems insufficient, to me. While humans clearly did evolve this capacity, any inclination to act on it cannot be assumed simply on account of being human. There is more to the Golden Rule than evolutionary capacity in terms of behaviour. There’s a shift in dimensional awareness that often gets overlooked in the search for a ‘foundation’. The Samaritan’s role in the parable is that of the helper, not the helped - Jesus’ challenge is to be aware of (and help realise) this neighbourly potential in those who you are supposedly justified to hate or exclude, and in doing so increase awareness of your own potential for compassion and kindness ‘beyond good and evil’ as defined by Law.
Jesus set an example of extension beyond foundations that no longer prove adequate - the Law, traditions and rituals of Judaism - and recognising or aspiring instead to open-ended values such as potential, affirmation (of life), self-deprecating honesty, beautification and self-determination, focusing on ‘God’ as an infinite and personal relation. It was Paul who began to define limits for Christianity, where humanity ends and divinity begins, in much the same way as Moses defined limits and set the foundations for Hebrew culture - which Jesus would then transcend.
I think Nietzsche describes a similar shift - beyond these insufficient doctrines, traditional meanings and interpretations that promote ignorance, isolation and exclusion in the name of Christianity. His criticism, like Jesus’ criticism of Jewish adherence to Law, was not to eviscerate the practice of compassion, but its limitations of meaning - increasing an awareness of values more in line with a broader understanding. Compassion can be viewed as an act of self-interest at minimum, or as a capacity to collaborate in the struggle to realise our shared potential (will to power).
What’s more, compassion and kindness are not confined to human-to-human interactions. Once we reach the threshold of Terence’s statement, and look beyond it, we should realise that the line we draw here between ourselves and animals (even aliens) is experiential, too. By extension, all life is sacred...
Oops - yes, I unthinkingly reversed the story. It should should have read:
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Possibility
Hmmm, not sure I quite get this one but well expressed. The issue with FN is he is subject to as much exegetical interpretation as any scripture.
Quoting Possibility
And presumable there are additional views.
Quoting Possibility
Nicely done.
It isn’t purely logical to act only as you feel. That doesn’t make sense. It sounds like you’re trying to justify emotionally motivated behaviour as ‘logical’. The many exclamation marks in your writing suggest you are strongly affected by this discussion.
But I agree that it isn’t possible to act with compassion unless we feel it. And I want to be clear that, like Nietzsche, I don’t agree with a static morality. But compassion is not a selfish act - it’s a relational one. What you’re describing in terms of putting on a display to elicit guilt in others is not compassion, and Jesus was very clear on this distinction (Christianity, not so much). Rather than directing anger at those ‘trying to make us feel guilty’, Nietzsche asks why we are moved to guilt by perceiving someone else’s actions. Why are we defining these actions as ‘compassion’, and therefore ‘good’?
I agree that Nietzsche was trying to free our ideas of compassion, kindness, etc from their religious definitions. Our capacity for compassion or kindness isn’t limited by external judgements of ‘good and evil’ - whether according to Law, Christianity or a secular, individualist ‘society’. According to Nietzsche, there IS no society determining our judgements - we construct it in our perceived relation to others. And I don’t think he believed that ‘saving yourself’ was any more than an observation of where we might be motivated to draw the line on ‘self’. Nietzsche’s values of will to power (potential), affirmation (of life), art (beautification), and autonomy (self-determination) were often interpreted as selfish, with only truthfulness (honesty) as outwardly directed - but I think this is just another attempt to define limitations. It’s possible to interpret these values as limited only by our capacity or willingness to relate to others, regardless of how we define the ‘self’. In this sense, Nietzsche’s approach is relational.
I agree. It’s the open-ended possibility in his approach that unsettles people. Interpretation gives definition where he didn’t feel the need to limit the meaning of our relation, let alone name it.
I don't say that emotionally motivated behaviour is logical. Of course not. I am just saying that if you want to give people reasons for acting kind and with compassion you can give them plenty of reasonable reasons for that. Not that you will achieve everyone to act like this, but for me it would convince many more people to act like that even if they don't feel like doing it. For sure more than now, that we try to convince them with religious myths and idealistic fairytale.
How many times, for example, you acted with kindness even if you weren't feeling to do so, just because you realized that it is the best way for what you wanted to achieve?Well I will speak for myself, I have done it plenty of times. You find it hypocritical? Well yes, for sure it is! But this kind of necessary hypocrisy, is much more useful if you wanna live among others in organized societies and not on your own like monk. And for sure it brings less mess than the hypocrisy from those who blame others for not following their path.
Quoting Possibility
I get your point. But for me, I have a theory that every act we make is at the very bottom a selfish act. Even compassion and love. I know though it isn't something that many people would agree. So I can understand your protest.
Quoting Possibility
I'm not sure I got your point totally here. If you could explain it a little more.
In general, I don't consider myself as a Nietzsche expert or whatever. Not even close, and I m sure that I haven't fully understood his work either. Not to mention that I think Nietzsche sometimes seemed to confuse his own self also. Some of his writings come to contradiction with others and some of his sayings too. He wasn't a philosopher with a clear "line" to his theory as others. But that's what makes him so interesting to me. That his mind was like a volcano where everything was boiling together over there. I disagree in many things of his theory but I can't recognize that his way of thinking was really radical. And what brought to philosophy also. Maybe the most radical of any other philosopher but that's my personal opinion of course.
I’m curious as to how you might articulate these ‘reasonable reasons’ so that more people will act with kindness. The issue I have is that acting in a way that is best for what I want to achieve is not what I would call ‘kindness’. I think this is a misunderstanding of what ‘kindness’ means. Being able to justify your actions purely in terms of it bringing benefit to someone else is not kindness, and arguably just as hypocritical as being motivated to act solely by the prospect of bringing benefit to yourself. It’s not a case of either/or, but both/and.
Quoting dimosthenis9
I’ll try. You make the argument that every act is selfish, but I don’t think this is always judged ‘at the very bottom’. I think we focus on different aspects or definitions of ‘self’ to find that advantage. Is it a ‘selfish act’ to eat that last helping now, to maintain my long-term health, to discard food I don’t need, or to be potentially valued for my generosity? These acts are not all ‘selfish’ in the same way, and each one also denies aspects of the ‘self’ at some level. So to say that one ‘should only save his own self’ is a misunderstanding of the various ways that we define and transcend this ‘self’. To try and describe compassion or kindness in terms of ‘self’ is problematic.
Nietzsche criticises the religious definitions of compassion and kindness as acts of self-denial, arguing that they are also self-serving at a socio-cultural level. This is not to dismiss them as merely ‘selfish’ acts, but to suggest a broader way to view compassion and kindness in terms of a relational act between social entities. According to Nietzsche, there is no ‘society’ or morality that can define compassion in relation to which all individuals determine or judge themselves and each other.
Compassion (‘suffering with’) is the relation between two people when one of them experiences suffering - it has nothing to do with how society defines a person or act, but with how one social entity perceives their relation to another. Regardless of my social position, I am compassionate when I relate to another as if their suffering was as much my concern as theirs. And I am kind when I relate to another as if their joy was as much mine as theirs.
Genuine compassion transcends common definitions of ‘self’ and ‘society’ without denying them, recognising their high degree of variability. It is an awareness of our capacity to alleviate the suffering of others without destroying either ourselves or society in the process. We live so far within our limitations - each of us can afford to suffer far more than we allow ourselves, and can achieve far more than we expect of ourselves, especially when we connect and collaborate with others.
Nietzsche's condemnation of pity is pretty easy to understand. He was concerned about the psychological effects of pity. If I pity you, I lead you to pity yourself. If this self pity is a rejection of "reality" (as Nietzsche uses the term), then it means you're turning away from life instead of embracing life for better or worse. Nietzsche was right: few people are prepared to do that. We're addicted to our self-righteous outrage.
It’s not a question of whether you misunderstood Nietzsche - you seem to have a negative attitude towards Nietzsche based only on other people’s writings about him, rather than what he actually wrote himself. But I do think that many leading scholars on Nietzsche did misunderstand his writings, mainly by trying to define terms he left deliberately ambiguous. I’m just suggesting that reading Nietzsche’s own writings with an open mind (if you can) might give you a slightly different perspective of his approach.
Social issues are described based on fixed social structures. Nietzsche’s focus was on what relations between social entities look like when you take the structures away. He proposed that we are not ‘hardwired’ to follow an externally imposed set of values, but to relate as social entities in constructing, testing and revising systems and patterns of cooperation. His approach was to look at the relations between people as social entities - rather than the relation between an individual and an imposed social structure - to see how we can develop a more accurate social reality, as these imposed structures are exposed for their hypocrisy and insufficiency.
Jesus was interpreted as counter-cultural, as was Nietzsche. But neither of them were against the current culture as such - rather, they proposed a way for people to relate to each other, regardless of the current culture, which put them at odds in certain respects.
I think it says all about Nietzsche's views over this virtues and how people use them. If I pity you, in fact, I don't help you at all at the end! I just give you more excuses as not to help your own self! So that's why Nietzsche was so critical about compassion and pity. At the end do I help indeed the other person if I pity him??Or I just help this "circle" to go on and on forever?
You hit right on target, for pointing that out.
Right.
Wel yes. They are indeed at least for me. And when I mean selfish, as to be more specific using the term, I mean what comes out of Ego, I use selfish word same as egoism. If that helps to our dialogue.
Quoting Possibility
So you think Nietzsche thought compassion and other virtues, since they can be defined specifically, then shouldn't society follow them? And are useless?
Quoting Possibility
But is that ever possible? Can you actually suffer when you aren't at the same position with the other person? I hear many people say these things and I wonder if I am a bastard that I could never realize that or feel it? For me always seemed to me that other's problem (except family and close friends of course) is just a bite on your dinner plate. The problem comes as thought, you stop a bit, think "oh what a pity. Poor John", and just go on your bite thinking of your own "problems".
If you do that I really wish I was like you. And that's not ironically at all. I feel guilty sometimes for not feeling like that.
The real reason Nietzsche was against pity is because he thought it furthered the interests of the underdog. He was thinking especially of Christianity where pity for the unfortunate is a fundamental value of that religion.
However in everyday life pity is an important value. When my father was dying in a nursing home and I was full of grief. I felt pity for his suffering. This did not lead to him feeling pity , nor was it a "turning away from life" . It was my natural human empathy for seeing a loved one suffering. If I didn't feel any pity or compassion for him I would have been cold and unfeeling towards him and he may have suffered more if I hadn't shown the care I did. The reason I visited him for 6 years several times per week is not out of a sense of duty but because I felt compassion and love and kindness for him, the very virtues , (if Im not mistaken) Nietzsche despised. He had an agenda he wanted to attack the values of Christianity, and all the secular ethical systems which he claimed were based on Christianity. But he fails in my opinion, to understand that these ancient value systems such as Christianity, Buddhism, Stoicism are based on the ordinary everyday real life experiences of ordinary people, not dreamt up inside the head of one academic sitting in his ivory tower who relishes attacking every single tradition of western thought and substituting in it's place some abstract notion of some Will to power and some mythical concept of a superman.
I'm afraid I have to disagree that "Jesus and Nietzsche were not against the current culture. Both figures were very radical and they attacked many aspects of their current culture and Jesus was executed for doing so. Nietzsche , and I think I'm correct in this-. attacked the whole edifice and tradition of western thought going back to Socrates. How radical can you get. I'm not anti Nietzsche, I think he was a profound and original thinker and there is a grain of truth in his view of Christianity as a slave morality. But I think his psychological analysis is flawed in certain aspects. He, unlike modern psychologists or even thinkers like Aristotle, did not base his ideas on observation and empirical research, hard evidence. Anyone , in my opinion, who is arguing for or proposing philosophical or psychological ideas without basing them on empirical evidence is not doing proper philosophy. That's why some academics don't regard Nietzsche as a philosopher but as a writer, more akin to a novelist or poet who can express him/herself in an ambiguous way. But in that case then what they're saying is just their opinion. Philosophy in my opinion should not be conducted in this way. It should be based on reasoned argument, evidence and observation.
Then it wasn't what Nietzsche was talking about. But then, it wasn't really a virtue, was it? You felt sorrow for your pending loss, you felt grief because your father was in pain. There's nothing particularly laudable about that. It's just part of being human.
I'm afraid I disagree. Compassion and kindness are not just feelings , they are, as Aristotle would say excellences of Character but only if they are accompanied by kind actions. Then they become virtues. Virtues are as Aristotle says a matter of feeling + action. And cultivating these feelings is done by doing kind actions. And the more one does these the kinder the person becomes. I think most people today if you asked them would like to mix with kind people or friends and avoid unkind people. Anyway as you can probably gather I'm a devotee of Stoic and Buddhist philosophy , without the religious component. For me Nietzsche does not provide any coherent guidelines to live my life by, only thought provoking ideas and critiques of other philosophers.
So you give yourself a big pat on the back for feeling pity for your father? You expect others to? Really?
Quoting Gregory
First of all, "compassion" and "mercy" are two different things. Look them up. Compassion involves "showing concern". Mercy involves "forgiveness".
Anyway, since you brought up "mercy" ... Have you heard about merciless people? They only seek punishment. They have nothing to do with Nietzsche's "superhuman". In fact, the opposite: they are weak. They are coward, resentful, ruthless, unforgiving, even fascists ... People like them are despised in any society.
So, I believe you got it all wrong: Showing mercy (forgiveness) needs strength in most occasions. It indicates sanity and rationality. On the contrary, "ruthlessness" indicates weakness, insanity and irrationality. Nietzsche would never support such human attributes!
I was talking about letting people free when they deserve a punishment. Such is not good for anyone. Concern and kindness is good, but many Christians believe God let's sinners off the hook out of pure mercy. Mercy like that is contrary to justice
Nietzsche thought his contemporary social structures - which defined compassion and other virtues by the Christian notion of self-denial - had lost their foundations, and with them any authority to impose such definitions without question. Without these foundations, ‘compassion’ as defined is no virtue in itself, but a contradiction: an expression of pity toward the suffering of others that merely exploits this negative experience to enhance one’s own social value. His criticism is not against genuine compassion as we understand it now, separate from religious context, but against this Christian notion of pity, derived from the word ‘piety’, which is an obedience that maintains current social structures.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Can you imagine yourself in the same position as the other person? I’m not talking about actual, but potential suffering - a simulation of affect. Our dependence on social structures allows us to draw the line at family and close friends, but it’s an arbitrary line that enables us to consolidate a personal and a public concept of ‘self’ in relation to potential, value and significance. Outside of these family and close friends, your sense of value appears to be determined externally by social and cultural structures. In Nietzsche’s experience, those structures included relations to family and close friends - and they were crumbling, insufficient to account for the reality of social experience. He explored this idea of the individual as a socially variable entity in relation to others, rather than an object in relation to society.
If you look closely at your relations with family and close friends, you may recognise this experience of compassion - of being able to experience potential suffering by imagining yourself in the same position, with a more intimate understanding of this ‘other’ position than you would have with someone outside of your inner circle of ‘me and mine’. The idea of compassion I’m talking about can be accomplished by striving to widen your circle, one person at a time. By questioning your own justification for identifying someone as ‘other’. But eventually this awareness challenges your consolidation of ‘self’ as something you control in relation to ‘society’. Then Nietzsche’s idea - that there is no objective social reality, only socially variable entities who continually construct and reconstruct both ‘self’ and ‘society’ in how they relate to each other at the level of potential, value and significance - starts to make more sense.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not always compassionate or kind. It takes time, effort and attention to include others in our circle, and very often we come up short, especially when we’re focused primarily on ourselves. I don’t think it helps us to feel guilty, though. It helps me to remember that the more I am aware, connected and collaborating with others, the greater my capacity to be more aware, connected and collaborative with others, etc. The more we ignore, isolate and exclude, the less opportunities for others to be compassionate and kind to us when we most need it.
Both demonstrated that aspects of the current culture had already lost its authority to some extent, and pointed to a new way of framing experience that addressed these inaccuracies. This was interpreted as an attack against the culture as a whole.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Fair enough - in my opinion, it often takes someone like Nietzsche to speculate and raise the questions that direct philosophical attention and effort towards new, clearer and more accurate reasoning, evidence and observations. In that sense I consider Nietzsche to present a philosophical approach or process, rather than a philosophy as such. Rephrasing key questions or proposing new, radical viewpoints to stimulate philosophical thought in new directions is still part of doing philosophy, even if it isn’t a philosophy.
I see. But this is not about mercy. It has rather to do with justice. Then of course, one should be punished when he has done harm. This is mainly the task of courts, committees, etc. However, even them consider various factors regarding a person before punishing him: prior honest life, honest repentance, etc.
Again, showing mercy is not a sign of weakness. The one who is weak is the person who asks mercy (instead of accepting the consequences of his actions). Isn't that so?
I wonder would Nietzsche agree with you that he is not presenting a philosophy. He's doing more than just raise questions or proposing new viewpoints. He's propounding various notions such as the Will to power and the Superman. Is he trying to use rational argument and logic or emotional reasoning. Here's a quote from Nietzsche.
"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?”
Now that looks like emotional reasoning to me. His clever use of aphorisms and metaphors makes him , in my opinion , no more than a poet, rather than a serious philosopher. Its provocative and sensational nature also makes it very attractive , hence his cult like status amongst many people. Other existentialists like Sartre conveyed their philosophy in novels and plays, but Sartre in Being and Nothingness uses proper rational argument. But I don't find that anywhere in Nietzsche's thought. Kierkegaard employs irony and narrative techniques in his works, but unlike Nietzsche they are deliberately ambiguous. It's clear what his ideas are. Tell me another famous thinker apart from Nietzsche whose philosophy is full of ambiguity.
Well I doubt about that, but I get your point now.
Quoting Possibility
That's the thing that makes me more skeptical about. It's just potential. When you don't suffer yourself it's always potential...
Quoting Possibility
Imo Nietzsche focused on person as individual and what he personally can do, and not at all in relation to all ready collapsed (in his eyes) societies.
Quoting Possibility
But I think Nietzsche's road to that society transformation comes mostly from personal change and spiritual development. Through that progression you change societies also. You can't change anything to a society if you don't change individuals first. If individuals aren't ready for change, you will never achieve anything.
Quoting Possibility
But that's the thing. Since I don't show much compassion to others (except close friends and family). I expect NO compassion from others either, when I need it most. It's only fair for me. I wouldn't complain about others at all! It's just fine.
Thus Spake Zarathustra is a piece of fiction: a passionate rendering of his philosophical approach, and isn’t written as rational argument, but as expression. As Zarathustra says, “They understand me not. I am not the mouth for these ears.” Its fictional, poetic style is a way around the difficulties of language in relation to logic, and for all its ambiguity, his writing continues to resonate with modern readers in a way that only fiction or religious texts can. It’s an imperfect approach, and unsatisfying for those looking for definitive answers with which to prop up failing social structures. He suggests a way forward, but it isn’t what we’re looking for.
Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is another example of philosophical writing whose deliberate ambiguity enables it to stand the test of time. It is in relating to the text in a particular way that we approach an understanding of the reality it presents. In my view, the TTC does a better job of this as a timeless work, mainly because the Chinese language lends itself to a more logical structure of ideas. It is our English translations that muddy the waters, allowing embedded affect to confuse the structure.
The idea that philosophy must consist of ‘proper rational argument’ is a common myopia that I find surprising, given the ambiguity of human experience. I recognise the merits of logic, but it only gets us so far. Language, at the end of the day, is an abstraction.
I completely agree that logic and rational argument is limited in conveyed the human condition. That's why we have had art, literature , religion , poetry and literary philosophy since Plato's dialogues. But my point is that the ideas presented in these narratives should be clear, just as Plato's ideas in his dialogues are clear, not ambiguous, as are the ideas in Sartre's and Camus,s novels and Shakespeares philosophical plays, and Dostoevskys philosophical novels. What is the point of conveying a set of ideas in ones fiction if the reader doesn't know what to make of, how to interpret them. Therefore in my opinion the likes of Plato and the above mentioned figures are more successful thinkers than Nietzsche. Just because he is popular doesn't mean he is an excellent thinker. The Bible and Marx are amongst the most popular works or figures of the 20th century but many people including myself think they're cloud Cuckooland.
Maybe but Nietzsche has some good points and also his criticism need to be taken with a grain of salt. Mostly I take psychological points from his writing as does Jordan Peterson
Like most putative Christians, Peterson celebrates Nietzsche only because he can be used to support the proposition that atheism leads to Hitler. It's ironic how often Christians have reached for Nietzsche to embolden similar notions - FN's probably done more for the apologist's anti-atheism crusades than any other thinker.
I think if he'd spent more time writing like a normal person instead of a raving maniac, his opponents would have less to work with.
Quoting Gregory
The statement I commented on was "Mercy is a weakness not a virtue". I don't remember Nietzsche's views on morality nor do I intend to study again his work just for that!
Mercy takes justice out of account
Nietzsche writes in a series of aphorisms and metaphors which are often ambiguous. How does one define philosophy. If it is a not a discipline using rational argument or logic or some coherent set of ideas expressed in fiction as in Plato's dialogues then how do you distinguish genuine philosophy from pseudo philosophy. Is Nietzsche's ambiguous style genuine Philosophical thinking?
Quoting Ross Campbell
What is you're point of view in this matter? You criticize Nietzsche's writings for not being philosophically rooted in logic and rationality, but you praise Christianity and Buddhism for just being, without any logic or rationality behind it.
Nietzsche's writings need the context of the full text to reach full understanding. The same goes for any other philosopher who wrote in the same way. Both Satre and Camus can be criticized in the same manner. The problem is that you praise Christianity and Buddhism for using observation of people as a foundation for their teachings. Actually, they don't. They built their virtue's foundation on adjustments to fit the narrative they work under. True observation is what Nietsche and the rest of all prose writing philosophers did in order to deconstruct human behavior.
I think you are stuck with a simplified idea about what Nietsche is really saying, and you use it as a foundation for criticizing the whole of his writing. The Nazis didn't use Nietsche's writings, they used most of the corrupted version of his unfinished work by his Nazi-fangirl zealot sister.
Nietsche is the father of most of 20th-century philosophy, the way we put religion aside and examine human behavior and the universe without the shackles of tradition and institutionalized faith. Not recognizing the importance of his work is a failure to understand the history of philosophy and the key figures of its evolution. It's like saying Einstein isn't important for modern physics.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Arguments are in there. There are ways to deconstruct prose philosophical writing, but people aren't educated enough to do it, so they dismiss it instead.
But that's the point. Nietzsche didn't care everyone to understand him. He didn't have any heroic passion to save the world as other philosophers . He was talking to a specific type of people who could feel him. And that has nothing to do with elitism nonsense, that his opponents accusing him.Nothing at all. With some writers it's better to try mostly to feel them, and not so much to try understand every word.
It's also for some readers (me, anyway), a turgid, often dull book that makes you think of shopping lists, washing the car, clipping the dog's fur - anything to get away from a needy, monomaniacal polemicist. I can take Human, All Too Human and the Gay Science, but not TSZ.
Quoting dimosthenis9
I'm not really one for feeling up writers. If you're saying that FN isn't interested in being understood - that might be accurate and why I don't feel a passion for his work. He's certainly the source of some fantastically vivid aphorisms and quips, but sometimes to me FN just seems to be a Germanic and rather truculent version of Oscar Wilde.
Potential is just the beginning, and it’s a necessary aspect of an intentional act. Perceiving our own potential to suffer, and being aware of the difference between the suffering of another and our present condition, is where compassion starts. How we respond to that awareness is the difference between acts of pity and compassion. To pity is to feel the difference and find ways to justify it, based on social structures or assumptions (‘I/they probably deserve it’). To act with compassion is to feel this difference and find ways that our present condition affords us to share in their suffering - increasing awareness, connection and collaboration.
Nietzsche believes we act with compassion only because we believe that suffering is bad, and he argues that suffering should be recognised instead as part of the human condition. Experiencing suffering is beneficial, even necessary to some extent in order to live. In my view, this perspective renders an act of compassion ‘bad’ (potentially harmful) only when defined by an intention to eliminate suffering.
When the notion of ‘compassion’ is returned to its original etymology (‘suffering with’), and understood in terms of a relation between social entities, then we recognise it as motivated by a natural desire to connect and collaborate, to form social structures. We act with compassion because we acknowledge that suffering, as part of the human condition, is to be shared rather than avoided or eliminated.
It's not a matter of right or wrong. It's just matter of taste. I have heard many people saying the same for Nietzsche as what you mentioned and I can't blame them, just cause I like him.
I m not fan at all of that assumptions. I never say that someone deserves suffering (even if some do indeed).
Quoting Possibility
I agree on that one, but my aspect is that Nietzsche meant people to embrace their own suffering as a part of human nature as you mention . And deal with that.Not so much about helping others with their suffering.
Quoting Possibility
That's what I mean when, at a previous response to you, i mentioned that at the end acting with compassion is at your very own benefit. Cause if you wanna live in organized societies and you want others to feel compassion for you (as you told me also at your previous post), then you have to act like that also. It's only fair. That's why I find compassion's root in Ego. But I understood your different view and your protest on that.
We’ll never have capacity to learn the objective truth in full depth anyways. Despite the fact morality does not exist on the level of nature indeed, Nietzsche failed to understand, and I began to understand that the morality is not social and cultural rather biological phenomenon in case of humans. Every person has a unique connection with transcendental morality without any social or cultural influence. The human race can make difference between good and evil for seventy thousand years at least and the cultures were built on this, sometimes hack this. This is comparable to that fact even the colors don’t exist in the nature, they are all merely illusion. Yet we perceive them, we see colors, moreover we all see particular colors at the same way without influencing each other.
How could it possible, since the colors don’t exist in reality? But they exist FOR US! And this is the key issue. Of course there’s some people who are color blind, who are unable sense colors, as there’s psychopaths, who are unable feel empathy and compassion, or the necessity of being virtuous, but this alone does not override the rule. Even a child has a sense of justice without learning it from others. How could it possible? The same point between the Nietzschean and Stoic views, they both deny the existence of free will. According to it we have no capacity to determine what we believe in, and in some sense they’re right about this indeed. Since the existence is not optional, we didn’t decide about whether we’re gonna be male or female either, we’ll have male or female brain structure.
No one chooses sexual orientation, preferences, even choosing sexual partner is not conscious choice. We can’t determine our intelligence level, which is genetical in seventy percent or even more. We didn’t select our traits and temper. We did neither choose mother tongue nor environment we were raised in. Those markers determine our behaviour and personality, and ironically we can’t decide whether we want to feel a sense of justice or necessity to be virtuous. At this point Nietzsche contradicted himself. On the other hand however, yet we still have choice, in that how we chase the best version of ourselves or remains coward, lazy, betraying our nature. This is a very interesting paradox. In fact it is very difficult if not impossible to imagine free will without considering our ability in making moral judgement and decision.
The nature has no morality indeed, we have by nature.
SP
Yes - it’s not for everyone, and I don’t find it an enjoyable read, myself. Too much like wading through the King James Bible. I prefer ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ - I only mentioned TSZ because it was the source of Ross’s quote.
But that's exactly what the Buddha said 2000 years before Nietzsche, namely that "suffering is your teacher" . It increases your compassion and understanding. Nietzsche is not original in this idea. I think Nietzsche has in mind Utilitarianism which he hated, which argues that pleasure is the highest good and that pain is to be avoided. I would agree with Nietzsche , Utilitarianism which has been hugely influential is a life denying or running alway from reality . For me Stoicism and Buddhism has far more wisdom. Perhaps Nietzsche doesn't realize that Stoicism has had a huge influence on western thought and culture , not only Christianity. Up until the early 20th century latin and Greek authors were a major part of education, like Cicero, Seneca, and others. Shakespeare was immersed in the classical writers of antiquity and hence the philosophy of Stoicism. Nietzsche seems to think that it's only Christianity that has dominated western thought. But Christianity was imbued with ancient philosophy.
I think Nietzsche was a true philosopher but the number of his original ideas are limited. He had a lot to say about each nonetheless
I don't see how aphorisms can be seen as arguments. I disagree that Buddhism and Christianity are not based on everyday experiences. Love, compassion, forgiveness, kindness which they preach are part of the ways human beings relate to each other in a positive way . Ask any modern psychologist and they will tell you that practicing these virtues will enhance a person's happiness and those he/she interacts with. These virtues did not come from some academic textbook like Marx's theories they were developed by many thinkers over centuries, modified, built up and so on. They are drawn from REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE of ORDINARY people in ordinary situations. Let me be the devil's advocate for a moment and I put the question . Where did Nietzsche get his ideas, eg The Will to Power, from reading another academic, Schopenhauer? To what extent has he backed up his ideas by observation of real people in real life?
Religion has always been used as a form of class control. So why have trust in that compared to examining people outside of any religious form?
Quoting Ross Campbell
Sure, but that's a very simplified way of looking at life. What about the complexity of justice, the entire field of moral philosophy? So many examples of complexities that make empty phrases that have no meaning in themselves.
Quoting Ross Campbell
These virtues are the result of complex empathy patterns that are basically built into our psychology. You cannot credit these virtues to religion, that's giving them credit for nothing but observing humans truthfully. Like saying the sky is blue but it was credited to a guy named Steve in the late 1800s so it is his idea that the sky is blue. We just have better tools to examine these behaviors today than before, religion is unnecessary as a factor.
Quoting Ross Campbell
So did many philosophers in thier work, what is your point?
Quoting Ross Campbell
He got them from building on previous philosophical ideas and added his own. Why are you so obsessed with the observation of real people. Do you think Nietzsche didn't do this? How can a person go through life without observing other people? Why is this attributed specifically to religion in your opinion?
Ok let's talk about Buddhism , it is often dismissed by western thinkers who are ignorant of Eastern thought ( which is not normally taught in western education system), or because of western centrism. Buddhism is a PHILOSOPHY as well as a religion. And many people , like myself only take the philosophy component and disregard the religious component. Stoicism is also a philosophy. I recommend you watch the excellent videos on it on YouTube by Einzelganger who relates these two philosophies to contemporary culture. See what he has to say not just me. In my opinion the strength of these philosophies is that they are not just drawn from REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE but also in line with the way nature and reality works. They believe in living according to nature. I would hazard a guess that Nietzsche is selective in where he gets his ideas from, he despises so much of traditional culture and values that he's left with very little to work on.
I know this. Doesn't mean it is better or worse than other philosophies. But you also incorporate Christianity in your argument, which is much less of philosophy and a whole more of controlling mechanisms for a ruling class.
Quoting Ross Campbell
So why even incorporate Christianity in you argument?
Quoting Ross Campbell
So?
Quoting Ross Campbell
As does Nietzche and many other philosophers. Don't see your point.
Quoting Ross Campbell
How much of Nietzche have you even read?
I don't get what point you are trying to make here? You are praising Christianity and Buddhism and try to convince through premises that Nietzche doesn't observe real life or make any valid points because... of what exactly? You don't agree with Nietzche, sure, but your way of criticizing his writings doesn't make any sense or have any philosophical depth. You just say that you don't like him or his writings and then strawman his texts in favor of Christianity and Buddhism because you like them... it's not really enough.
You’re missing a key point - I’m not saying in relation to society (I agree that he saw them as already collapsed), but in relation to other people. He didn’t see the individual as atomic, like a billiard ball, but as variable in relation to other ‘individuals’.
Quoting dimosthenis9
I agree - but the focus shouldn’t be on changing society, but on changing ourselves by how we interact. What makes anyone think they can single-handedly change society? When we perceive ourselves and others as socially variable, and recognise that we construct and reconstruct our notion of ‘society’ through how we relate to each other, then potentially no change to society is beyond us.
Quoting dimosthenis9
That was only one example, and I certainly am not suggesting that you do say it, although your comment implies that you at least think or feel it. I notice you do identify pity - an awareness that John suffers in a way that you do not - without recognising any value, significance or potential in your relation to John more than identifying a difference. It’s a start.
Quoting dimosthenis9
So why do you feel guilty? I see no issues with this. There are plenty of people who manage fine at this level of awareness, connection and collaboration. That I respond to an awareness of potential and you don’t makes little difference to my capacity to act with compassion towards you, if and when I see that you need it. This is where the religious definition of compassion fails. If I expect you or anyone else to edify my ‘compassionate’ action, then I reveal my intentions as lacking genuine compassion. I’m not doing it to share in an experience of suffering, then, but to relieve my own.
Quoting dimosthenis9
I think this is an important point to make: I’m not talking about helping others with their suffering, but sharing in the suffering that makes us human - rather than considering ourselves above that kind of suffering, owing to our particular social position or value. It seems you’re still looking at individuals as consolidated identities, as if my suffering is mine from birth. I don’t agree with this, and I don’t think Nietzsche does either, although a relevant quote escapes me at this late hour.
In what way exactly? Westerners seem more than ever wanting to be told what to think and how to act, and are generally clueless about what may lead to well-being. Our culture values wealth and status far more than meaning and eudaimonia.
I didn't say I don't like Nietzsche. By the way I'm not a Christian, I would be critical also of other philosophers including Plato, for the same reasons Nietzsche attacks him for his denying the reality of this world. Also Marx's theories are not drawn from REAL LIFE but dreamt up from his own prejudices. I also think that the notions of sin , salvation and hell in Christianity are unhealthy and ridiculous Ideas. But few people nowadays believe in them anymore anyway. I'm entitled to my opinion that philosophy should be ONLY based on REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE and in line with NATURE and for me Buddhism, Taoism and Stoicism are good examples of that type of philosophy. Don't misunderstand me I think Nietzsche is a brilliant writer and many of his critiques of religion and some secular philosophys are very thought provoking and penetrating. But his ideas are not necessarily all valid. I think SOME are off the wall. I think there's a grain of truth in what someone else on this blog said "Nietzsche is a bit like a Germanic version of Oscar Wilde" who is another beloved, brilliant and widely quoted writer but I wouldn't go to him for guidance on how to live a virtuous life.
The ‘real’ doesn’t come and slap us on the face. It must be interpreted. There are thousands of ways of interpreting any event depending on our aims and purposes.
“… How about grasping the perfect incontrovertible truth, the frozen ultimate, the knowledge of the way things really really are; would not that end the confusion of having something happen unexectedly, end it once and for all? With such knowledge in our possession nothing could possibly occur unexpectedly and our lives would be lived out perfectly in peaceful contemplation of what was coming next.
This, it seems to me, is like a man teetering on what he thinks is the edge of the universe and daring anyone to push him off. He feels perfectly safe because he thinks he knows what is what and there is obviously no such thing as ever going beyond the limits of reality. Still, occasionally he makes a pretence of looking over the edge, just for laughs, and he says, ‘See, there really isn't anything there - just a lot of nonsense'. Then, out of the corner of his eye he does catch a glimpse of something moving out there in the nothing; at first, perhaps, no more than the shadows of his own imagination. All night long he wonders what is the perfect truth about them, how much further out their limits lie. So he secretly tests these shadows, tries to see if he can make them move. Soon he is working with his hands.
In time, there arise out there in the nowhere whole new cities, built outside the walls against which he once leaned so confidently. Now his world is different. Now his once ‘perfect' truths tell him what he can see is not so, and, faithful as he may try to be, he can offer no more than lip service to them. Now, each time he looks up from his work and peers beyond his latest achievement, he wonders who he is to have imagined such things, and what he is doing, and he shudders to think how much of his life was spent behind the city barriers, or what unseen walls may imprison him now. And then he wonders more; to what destinies has he been false - and why has the evening grown so late?
This tail-spin of thinking starts as all tail-spins do, from the stall that occurs when one tries to stand still in mid-flight. From the moment we assume that truth is a stationary achievement, rather than a stage in a lively quest, it is only a matter of time until things start spinning round and round. Truth is neither reality nor phantasy. It needs to be understood, instead, as a continually emerging relationship between reality and ingenuity, and thus never something that can be skewered by a phrase, a moment, or a place.”
George Kelly
How do you come to this conclusion? He didn't use the facts of the life of the workers' conditions during the industrial revolution?
Quoting Ross Campbell
Opinions don't mean much in philosophy. Why are real-life experience and nature a better foundation for philosophy than any other method or observation? You need to make a proper argument for this opinion, otherwise, you are not doing philosophy.
Quoting Ross Campbell
What are you even arguing for here? You provide nothing for why his ideas aren't valid, only that you prefer "lived experience and nature", which doesn't mean a thing within the context of this discussion. Explain how his ideas are invalid and your line of thinking is correct.
Then, philosophy doesn't necessarily give you answers on how to live, it can also be an observational deconstruction of the status quo, in order to force people into thinking in new ways. This is actually more of a foundation to philosophy than any other clear-cut answers on how to behave or what to think. More often than not, clear "answers" in philosophy tend to become framed "carpe diem" quotes decorated on someone's wall instead of actually being of any academic value. The deconstruct and critique of earlier ideas is how we move forward with philosophy, and Nietzche is one of the key figures in pushing philosophy forward through turning previous ideas on their heads. Philosophy also doesn't have to have any positive messages at all, it is irrelevant in the pursuit of truth. This is why many pseudo-philosophers don't like philosophers who conclude negative standing conclusions about the human condition.
I rarely see anything but biased opinions in fallacy-driven arguments.
And let's also make clear to that point, that we can only talk about our "truth". Human truth. And what is reality according to it.So even truth is a relevant thing.
The absolute Truth and what is actual reality might be very very different than what people can realize with their limited senses. Human Truth is just what we people deal with cause it's what concerns us, but we have to be ready to accept that the absolute Truth (the general picture) most probably won't have nothing to do with our "limited truth".
Explain how his ideas are invalid and your line of thinking is correct.
Ok Here's a Friedrich Nietzsche Quote:
“Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer, than into the dreams of a lustful woman?”
Now explain what kind of validity is in the above statement. It sounds like something you could hear from some street corner guru.
You seem intent on discrediting Nietzsche - you’re throwing everything at him, but I have to say that not much is sticking to his philosophical approach, as such. You’re arguing that Nietzsche ‘hated’ or ‘despised’ one thing or another, that he was selective, unoriginal, didn’t realise, etc. That’s highly likely - he’s a human being, and never claimed to be more than that. Your personal preference for Stoicism or Buddhism is fine - but it seems as if you feel threatened by the very fact that someone like Nietzsche - whose thinking you cannot dismiss - questions aspects of these foundations you hold so dear. You appear unwilling to accept it, as if to say “No, there must be something flawed in his attitude”. It’s a natural response when the foundations your thinking depends on are suitably shaken.
But Nietzsche wasn’t looking for a ready-made philosophy to hang his hat on. He witnessed the fall of Christianity as a foundation for society and philosophical thought, and saw that relying on a tradition of thinking, with all of its assumptions, is a dangerous dependency. There is wisdom in Christianity as well as in Stoicism and Buddhism, sure, but there is no foundation as solid as we once assumed, and we cannot simply discard wisdom that fails to align with a certain tradition. For Nietzsche, this realisation meant that even Buddhism or Stoicism, whose approach to suffering would have made more sense to him than that of Christianity, offered no alternative solid ground on which to set his philosophy.
For Nietzsche, it was no longer about a foundation, but a process. If we were to rebuild our social structures, then simply shifting them to another supposed foundation was not a solution. What rang true in all of these traditions was our relation to each other as human beings. How one human being changed in relation to another. It was a solid place to start.
I’d rather explain the validity in the statement below, which I, along with many philosophers, find to be brilliant.
“During the longest epoch of human history (which is called the prehistoric age) an action's value or lack of value was derived from its consequences; the action itself was taken as little into account as its origin. Instead, the situation was something like that of present-day China, where the honor or dishonor of a child reflects back on the parents. In the same way, it was the retroactive force of success or failure that showed people whether to think of an action as good or bad. We can call this period the pre-moral period of humanity. At that point, the imperative “know thyself !” was still unknown. By contrast, over the course of the last ten millennia, people across a large part of the earth have gradually come far enough to see the origin, not the consequence, as decisive for the value of an action. By and large, this was a great event, a considerable refinement of outlook and criterion, an unconscious after-effect of the dominance of aristocratic values and the belief in “origin,” and the sign of a period that we can signify as moral in a narrow sense. This marks the first attempt at self-knowledge.
Origin rather than consequence: what a reversal of perspective! And, certainly, this reversal was only accomplished after long struggles and fluctuations! Granted: this meant that a disastrous new superstition, a distinctive narrowness of interpretation gained dominance. The origin of the action was interpreted in the most determinate sense possible, as origin out of an intention. People were united in the belief that the value of an action was exhausted by the value of its intention. Intention as the entire origin and prehistory of an action: under this prejudice people have issued moral praise, censure, judgment, and philosophy almost to this day. – But today, thanks to a renewed self-contemplation and deepening of humanity, shouldn't we be facing a renewed necessity to effect a reversal and fundamental displacement of values? Shouldn't we be standing on the threshold of a period that would be designated, negatively at first, as extra-moral?
Today, when we immoralists, at least, suspect that the decisive value is conferred by what is specifically unintentional about an action, and that all its intentionality, everything about it that can be seen, known, or raised to “conscious awareness,” only belongs to its surface and skin – which, like every skin, reveals something but conceals even more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign and symptom that first needs to be interpreted, and that, moreover, it is a sign that means too many things and consequently means almost nothing by itself. We believe that morality in the sense it has had up to now (the morality of intentions) was a prejudice, a precipitousness, perhaps a preliminary, a thing on about the same level as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something that must be overcome. The overcoming of morality – even the self-overcoming of morality, in a certain sense: let this be the name for that long and secret labor which is reserved for the most subtle, genuinely honest, and also the most malicious consciences of the day, who are living touchstones of the soul.”
I don't think we disagree on that. We think different in the way Nietzsche suggested of what individuals should do in relation to each other. But it's fine.I might be wrong.
Quoting Possibility
Well you know how thoughts are. And I get tons of them. Sometimes you question yourself and your attitude also. So thoughts like that have crossed my mind also. But yes, I don't ask for anything that I m not willing to give. I try to take over my own personal responsibility for my actions and beliefs fully! That's why I hate when I see people complaining all the time. And that's why I see compassion and pity in many cases not helpful at all for the one who suffers.
Quoting Possibility
But it is mine from birth indeed! Despite it might got created in relation with others in society, at the very end I m the only one who will deal with it. Even if all people in the world feeling compassion for me, wouldn't change anything.
Yeah, well. Just as unfortunate is the capacity for suffering and the likelihood of said virtues to be abused resulting in those who live accordingly to be taken advantage of in this world. Which can result in the very concepts (virtues) meant to prevent suffering sometimes creating more. You trust someone to borrow your car or a firearm, they might engage in a killing spree whereas if you did not they would have a knife. You may trust someone who said they broke down to enter your house and use the phone, needless to say what can happen there. It's a sad truth but, sometimes crime and cruelty really does pay. Or does it? What world does that create? An undesirable one in my view. That's where reasonable religion comes in. It teaches you to be just as smart as you are kind. If you actually pay attention.
Quoting Ross Campbell
It's a tough one. The argument and counter-argument are best illustrated through anecdote. If you're a trained fighter and someone much smaller than you runs up, calls you a name, then knocks your hat off or even slaps you in front of someone you try to protect in life, it's easy to shake your head and laugh it off. If the person your with says anything you can just be logical and say hey, what do you want me to break his face open over some nonsense, learn to live and let live, and mosey about your day. Everyone around will think that's kind of awesome right away, and you'll feel awesome. However, in that scenario your biological fears were never tested since you knew you were never in really in danger, the other person was. But for sake of the anecdote let's say you're a highly spiritual pacifist both in this scenario and the following one.
In a different scenario, let's say someone much larger than you comes up and does the same. Now your biological fears are being tested, not the least of which being self-worth by proxy of peer approval. You had no interest in engaging in combat with someone who is lesser than you morally or mentally and so act in a way as to avoid it. Yet it's not the same, even if it really was. Humanity is a vain creature that can succumb to negative emotion at a moment's notice, especially when amplified by others whose approval is sought.
Long story short, people don't like that which they view as a hindrance to one's needs until one needs it themselves. Show me the man who lives adamantly by this about to face execution, and not a quick one either, and nine times out of ten I'll show you a hypocrite. After all, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Nietzsche attacks Christianity for weakening western culture and as not encouraging the strong independent minded , creative genius. But what about The Renaissance in the 14th -16th centuries. This was a period when the Catholic church was a very dominant powerful force in Europe, yet the Renaissance produced one of the most astonishingly creative periods of art and culture and learning in the whole of European history. Scholars argue that the period even surpassed the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. This "Christian" period which Nietzsche despises produced some of the greatest and far sighted geniuses such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. How does Nietzsche explain that then. It doesn't seem to correlate with his theory that Christianity is a degenerative influence.
Is this all a quote from Nietzsche's work. It's certainly very hard to read. I have seen far more elegant and powerful writing of his in other passages. He's famous for his brilliant aphorisms and metaphors and beloved by many writers including WB Yeats from my country Ireland.
I'm wondering how does Nietzsche know what people thought like in prehistoric times . Scientists actually know very little about that, they're are no written records, they don't even know what kind of language they spoke. So how can Nietzsche comment on the ways of thinking of people pre civilization. It's hard enough for us moderns to even grasp how the ancient Greeks or Chinese thought. Again in my opinion Nietzsche is making vast sweeping generalizations which may sound very thought provoking and fascinating, but there's little to no substance or evidence to back up any of these statements. According to JP Stern, Nietszches knowledge of science, anthropology, etc was very scanty. So again his ideas about early human societies and their values would want to be taken with a grain of salt.
Personally I think where Nietszches thought is strongest is in his critique of Christianity and other secular ethical systems , such as Utilitarianism . But the alternative values that he posited to replace them I would again find partially dubious. His ideas about Amor Fati , perspectivism, and the Nihilism of contemporary society are very interesting points and very profound. But I don't think they're entirely original. Amor Fati comes originally from the ancient Stoics and perspectivism looks very similar to ideas in Buddhism or to Aristotle who describe perceiving things from different angles. Perhaps Nietzsche is to a certain extent reviving ideas that had largely disappeared from modern western thought . In Buddhism there is no God, nor is there the notions of Good versus evil, concepts which Nietszche attacks.
How is that in any way an argument for your opinion being correct? Did you deconstruct the entire page where this quote comes from? Like how you actually read philosophical books? Or did you just search for the quotes that sound the most outlandish out of context.
Please provide a proper philosophical argument that pit your opinion against Nietzche's ideas, I have no time for this pseudo stuff.
Foucault has done just this, keeping Nietzsche’s genealogical analysis of history and his depiction of subjectivity as a differential play of forces, but avoiding creating the impression that any previous eras were pathological.
Before you judge its power and elegance , I’d be interested to see if you have the slightest idea of what he’s talking about here. Of course , my reading could be wrong , but I’d like to see if you can make sense of such a reading.
Quoting Ross Campbell
I think his anthropological accuracy is beside the point. I think he would be the first to tell you that he is not attempting an empirical description but rather constructing examples to illustrate a more universal grounding of the basis of moral thinking. By the way, we do know that many of the oldest civilizations we have records of did indeed determine moral guilt on the basis of the action rather than the intent. Whether the act was done on purpose or by accident was irrelevant to the punishment.
Nietzsche’s point about Buddhism is that it upholds what he calls the ascetic ideal in its elevation of a nirvana beyond desire. Nietzsche said that a desire for nothingness is still desire, and there is no way around or beyond will and desire.
Buddhism has been around for thousands of years and has stood the test of time as a philosophy that today 500 million people find brings them peace and happiness. Stoicism is another ancient philosophy of timeless wisdom which is experiencing somewhat of a revival . I don't agree with every precept of Buddhism, such as asceticism and it's religious beliefs. I wonder will Nietszche stand the same test of time. I know he's admired by 10s of millions of people today as one of the most popular thinkers , but Freud and Marx in the early to mid 20th century were also lionized , but who have gone out of vogue today. l wonder how fashionable Nietszche will be in 50 years time.
I'm simply giving you what seems to be a famous quote from Nietzsche and giving you my opinion that it's a rather inane statement also seems a rather misogynistic comment. I'd like to know what women would think about it. As far as I'm aware Nietzsche didn't have a very high opinion of women anyway.
There's absolutely nothing pseudo about selecting a quote from a famous figure. Journalists, academics etc do it all the time. Perhaps Nietzsche should have been more careful about the some of the outlandish statements that he made. It takes away from some of his other very intriguing and thought provoking ideas.
The only way any philosophy stands the test of time is if it is constantly transformed and reinterpreted anew in each era, which is what we see with everyone from Shakespeare to Aristotle and Plato. The Buddhism that has been embraced by Westeners over the past century has more to do with our own Western philosophical heritage than it does with Eastern thought of two thousand years ago. Freud and Marx have ‘gone out of vogue’ not in the sense that their ideas have simply been rejected , but in the sense that their thinking has been a absorbed into and transformed by current neo and post-Marxist and neo and post-Freudian models.
The wokism trends sweeping universities around the world would be impossible without the influence of Freud and Marx.
I am highly amused by your seemingly endless attempts to denigrate or undermine Nietzsche. This last one I have to say is particularly delicious - philosophy as a popularity contest. Please keep them coming.
And there are many religious extremists who keep thousands of years old ideas alive that are destructive to many people. Time is not any evidence for something being "good", it's just time. There's been a lot of things that's been kept alive for thousands of years that are not good for people, so your conclusions are a fallacy.
And neither Nietzsche nor Marx has "gone out of fashion". Just as any other philosophers, through philosophy, they don't go out of fashion, their ideas are blended together with the modern zeitgeist and contemporary thinkers and expanded upon. As a matter of fact, since the witch hunt for communists and the stupidity of pseudo-scholars trying to take a dump on Marx over the 20th century, his philosophical ideas are starting to gain attraction in the midst of awakening to how the pure free-market capitalism isn't all shiny and happy rainbow as the rightwing liberal policies have indoctrinated the herd to believe. So thinking Marx is "out of fashion" is not really seeing which direction political philosophy is moving for the general public. People have less trust in the BS capitalist ideals of wall street and billionaires and are starting to wake up from the sleep that keeps them suppressed.
I'm not sure what the foundation is for your conclusions, but thinking Marx and Nietzsche is "going out of fashion" is not only wrong, it's unsupported in society.
Quoting Ross Campbell
So you prove that you actually don't understand what you are criticizing. You just take things out of context in order to prove he's an asshole who hates life.
Quoting Ross Campbell
It's not about women, try again.
Quoting Ross Campbell
He didn't have a great experience with love, but that's not what the page you quote from is about.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Ehm... yes, it's pseudo-intellectual bullshit to just quote something out of context and try to analyze it without that context. Journalists aren't really people I hold high up on the intellectual scale. There are very few journalists today that actually think on a higher level than the algorithms that are about to take over their jobs.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Or maybe he wrote in a way that is both how people back then culturally wrote, while people reading his texts are required to actually think while reading it and not take things out of context. Maybe he wrote for a higher intellectual reader and not the cancel culture mentality of today. Maybe a hundred years from now, even your own ideas about society is so outdated that people call you out for the same judgement you have of Nietzsche? Most people today who judge others in society based on the ideas you judge Nietzsche for might be guilty of ideas that in a hundred years will be considered on the same level as racism, sexism etc. It's not really viable to judge a person of his time based on the current zeitgeist, that's an intellectual short circuit. Look at the time he lived in, acknowledge how that time was and deconstruct what he meant out of it. If you start judging them on the times they lived in but based on modern cancel culture mentality, you really need to bring out the cancel book, because 98% of people before the modern era were racist, sexist, and all sorts of modern-day trash.
It's impossible to engage in historical thinking and philosophy with that kind of thinking. Do you even know how women have been treated in Buddhist regions of the world? If you are criticizing Nietzsche for being harsh on women, maybe look into the very religion you so wholeheartedly praise.
Firstly I disagree that Nietzsche's comment should be only viewed in the context of his society. John Stuart mill another 19th century thinker who lived during the same patriarchal victorian society as Nietszche had a far more enlightened view of women, attacking his society for the oppression of women. Nietszche in company with Aristotle and Schopenhauer however seemed to have thought women were inferior.
Secondly in relation to your point about extremists and Buddhism here's a quote from Wikipedia
In Buddhism, one should not harm other sentient beings. ... Happily the peaceful live giving up victory and defeat." These elements are used to indicate Buddhism is PACIFISTIC. It's Christianity and Islam which are dogmatic intolerant religions and not philosophies that are responsible for so much historical oppression and extremism.
Here is a passage I found in Wikipedia as follows:-
Nietszche admired Buddhism, writing that: "Buddhism already has - and this distinguishes it profoundly from Christianity - the self-deception of moral concepts behind it - it stands, in my language, Beyond Good and Evil."[23] Nietzsche saw himself as undertaking a similar project to the Buddha. "I could become the Buddha of Europe", he wrote in 1883.
The next line is “though frankly I would be the antipode of the Indian Buddha,” and the rest of the section largely describes how much Nietsz failed to have a good understanding of Buddhism.
Quoting praxis
That’s right, and much more like it.
“…anyone who has ever really looked with an Asiatic and supra-Asiatic eye into and down at the most world-negating of all possible ways of thinking – beyond good and evil, and no longer, like Schopenhauer and the Buddha, under the spell and delusion of morality –(Beyond Good and Evil)
“: think, too, of the whole metaphysics of the clergy, which is antagonistic towards the senses, making men lazy and refined, think, too, of their Fakir-like and
Brahmin-like self-hypnotizing – Brahminism as crystal ball and fixed idea – and the final, all-too-comprehensible general disenchantment with its radical cure, nothingness (or God: – the yearning for a union mystica with God is the Buddhist yearning for nothingness, Nirvâna – and no more…”
(Genealogy of Morality)
Quoting Ross Campbell
This is insipid. Aside from physical harm ( tribal warfare, punishment killings) , there have been throughout the history of buddhist culture , myriad forms of oppression, prejudice, caste stratification, forced ritual that arise from the need to live in this world until one’s soul is taken to Nirvana. In this world there needs to be a guide for making sense out of those who don’t share your ethnic background , language and religion, and buddhist teaching has done no better job of relativizing cultural differences in value systems than Christianity has.
Oh don't worry my friend. Nietzsche was saying "I'm 1000 years ahead my time". So you have to wait muchhhh more till he fades away. And gets out of "fashion".
This is what interests me about your position. You recognise that we are variable entities in relation to others, yet your view is that we should act as if this were not the case - as if we can (and should direct our efforts to) somehow consolidate our value structure, our intentions, against the influence of others. This sense of individualism, based on essentialism, is common in US attitudes towards individual freedom - but it seems to me to undermine, even guard against, what Nietzsche saw as our future potential (beyond the ‘ubermensch’). I do think that, in many respects, Nietzsche’s vision in TSZ went beyond the doors to thinking that he opened - which most rational thinkers (understandably) aren’t game to venture through. The ‘ubermensch’ was a bridge, not a destination: to an awareness of relational structure where language ultimately fails. A logical approach ignores this aspect of experience as irrelevant; Ross’s approach is more affected by it, but with an unpleasant valence.
From the introduction to BGE:
Quoting dimosthenis9
Yes - there is comfort in a reciprocal expectation to human relations. It brings a sense of order and predictability to social interactions. But your frustration at those who don’t behave this way reveals an awareness that this is not a true account of reality - it’s an expectation we’re imposing on the world. If reciprocity was a truth, if there really was a clear delineation between me/mine and you/yours, then everyone would interact the way you say they should. But your perspective of any social exchange (in terms of where ‘I’ ends and ‘other’ begins) is just that: your perspective - bolstered in many cases by social structures that entitle you by law, custom or tradition.
As an example, the culture of Aboriginal people in Australia doesn’t have the same relational structure between individuals, property and objects that we do in Western culture. This difference criminalises the actions of Aboriginal people in incidents of theft, trespassing, property damage, assault and abuse based on intentionality that seems ‘normal’ to us. But this relational structure is not something we can just impose on others as a majority rule, or because our way is better, more civilised/moral, more logical, etc.
What you may see as ‘complaining’ is expressing a difference of perspective. That your perspective may be ‘normal’ - aligned with a shared/imposed sense of social structure - protects it against the potential variability in your own perspective by relating to this different perspective as ‘other’, and by extension varying your relation to ‘society’. If, as Nietzsche says, there is no society but what we construct through our relations with others, and if we too are variable entities in relation to others, then I wonder: on what grounds do you seek to consolidate your current perspective against this potential variability?
Quoting dimosthenis9
ARE you really the only one, though? If you’re suffering, do you think it doesn’t alter your relations with those around you? Do you think your loved ones or co-workers are not impacted by your suffering? They may not understand why, or they might attribute any outbursts to some other cause, but I assure you that you are not the only one who will ‘deal’ with it. People around you adjust to your suffering every day - you just don’t notice, because you’re not recognising these adjustments as ‘compassion’, and you’re not recognising your variability - when you ‘hate’ what others do - as ‘suffering’. From your perspective, the adjustments they make are simply part of who they are, not how they vary in relation to how you vary in relation to them. That you don’t notice can be testament to their compassion, not necessarily to your self-reliance.
You cannot argue against the fact that almost every thinker since Socrates was a person of the times they lived. Just because Stuart Mill criticized society in that way doesn't render the ideas of other thinkers irrelevant because they don't fit the mold of a modern person. It's absolutely an intellectual downfall to demand such a thing. As I was saying, you may have ideas today that in a hundred years will be considered unwanted. This kind if historic cancel culture is fucking stupid. Especially when you don't even fully understand the quote you chose but rather attributed your own judgment to the interpretation instead of reading it with philosophical eyes. Women had their revolution at the start of the 20th century... the start. It was only during the consequent hundred years that they gained equality and even today we have so many structural problems with inequality that is a direct result of how deep such cultural opinions about women were before the 20th century. The number of people who didn't agree with the general idea about women before modern times was an extremely small amount and they were usually culturally shunned if they spoke too openly about it. We haven't seen equality on a global scale as we have today at any time in history, so judging philosophers for their cultural opinions during their lifetime and historic era is just plain stupid. You would have to dismiss the majority of philosophers throughout history. If you cannot accept that people throughout history can both be individually bad and still have valid, logical, and good philosophical ideas to contribute, then I don't think philosophy is something for you. If that is the filter you cannot see past, you are unable to actually conduct philosophy because you would dismiss the majority of philosophical ideas throughout history based on it.
Quoting Ross Campbell
You mean that there hasn't been any discrimination of women within Buddhist history because a wiki article points out that Buddhism is focused on pacifism. Are you for real? It's like reading the bible and point out that Christianity is also about pacifism, turn the other cheek, and so on, "and that's why there were no religious wars in the name of Christianity". Seriously. Go and look into the actual history of Buddhism. Check out papers like this https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/3516 or maybe this https://qz.com/india/586192/theres-a-misogynist-aspect-of-buddhism-that-nobody-talks-about/ this https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=75673 and so on...
Using a wiki text about what Buddhism is supposed to be might be the laziest effort available and it's blatantly obvious that you just want to whitewash Buddhism's historic sexism but condemn it in other historical figures that you don't want to agree with. This is a pure bias and an extremely non-philosophical way of addressing the actual ideas. It's just basic cancel culture on a historical scale.
Here's an example of a quote that is eerily similar to the ones you criticize other historical philosophical thinkers for:
Yes more or less that's what I believe.
Quoting Possibility
Hmm. Sure about that? Nietszche in TSZ refers many times that Human is the bridge as to pass to the Ubermensch. I think Nietzsche was thinking of Ubermensch as the next evolution step that humanity should chase.A spiritual evolution that will lead to the new human "version",that his Spirit would break all the chains of the past. I think Nietzsche strongly believed in the power of human spirit and how it can lead humanity forward to its next evolution step,Ubermensch. For me I see Ubermensch as the highest spiritual potential that humans can reach, and we might be surprised of how high this potential actual can be.
Don't know as to be honest what BGE stands for. But I couldn't agree more with the above statement.
Quoting Possibility
When i mentioned complaining to my previous post. I meant that if for example don't show compassion and then when I suffer I expect compassion from others and complaining about not acting like that. Well yes I would hate that to myself!
Don't get me wrong. I don't disregard compassion and thinking that shouldn't exist. Not at all. I just strongly question how people understand compassion and how they "practicing" it. Compassion and similar virtues are necessary when you live in societies. Cause exactly as you mention we are social entities who interact.And even sharing suffering, as you mentioned previously, is at our very own benefit at the end. Living in Society makes these virtues necessary but for different reasons.
Quoting Possibility
Of course we are social entities who react to each other and society create many of our beliefs, I can't deny that. But we have to lift ourselves above all these social structures that gave to us since our birth (at the level that is possible of course).Like creating our own path inside societies and trying to keep it as "clean" as possible from society's stereotype nonsense. Acknowledging at the same time though, that we are part of the society and our acts affect others and we are affected by other's acts. It's like doing your "social" duty but with your own way!
In that way I think we contribute more as to change societies. Piece by piece. Making others to see our actions and start to doubt about their beliefs. Giving a living example that we can act differently as social members.
"The victory over ourselves,it DOES matter, cause that way we prepare the road for Ubermensch" TSZ
Quoting Possibility
But I do recognize them. And they might adjust indeed. All I say is that this won't make any difference to me at all at the end. When the door closes I m the one who will give the "fight". And it's just fine.I don't say it as to "blame" their compassion. I just say that in some cases compassion doesn't make any difference at all.
I seem to have ruffled a few feathers on this blog just because I took a quote from Nietzsche and described it as a rather outlandish remark. Nietszche was not living in the middle ages when people used to have such highly superstitious, dogmatic, misogynistic ideas. He was living during the 19th century in a modern , industrialized country. I don't know of many other of his contemporary philosophers, apart perhaps from Schopenhauer who were in the habit of making inane statements like the one I quoted. Maybe he was trying to be provocative or controversial which is a great way, nowadays to draw attention to your writing or ideas. It seems to especially the rage in the modern media and maybe in academia too.
You took a quote out of context of the entire text, provided no insight into understanding the meaning of that text, and used it as a means to criticize him in favor of Buddhism by pointing out how his ideas are negative compared to the positive of Buddhism, without providing any real philosophical argument that was asked for. You are on a philosophy forum, act like it, or you are just a Buddhist evangelist, which isn't allowed on this forum. Here, you need to argue with much more "quality" than in other forms of discussion. If you provide a thesis, you need to back that up with a proper argument, or we can just conclude you are wrong because you haven't provided any proper argument to the contrary.
Nietzsche was living in an era that was still treating women as second-class citizens. They didn't even have the right to vote and the suffragettes hadn't even truly begun their activism. You don't seem to have much insight into how the 19th century was really like. Finding a feminist guy or some white dude speaking up for the black population was extremely rare if not almost impossible to find. I don't really know where you get the notion that the 19th century was "modern" in the sense we use it today. Just because the enlightenment pushed critical thinking to dismiss the church as part of the state and academic philosophy started to push knowledge forward, doesn't mean they went into moral enlightenment that shifted the world overnight into what we see today. And we still to this day have structural problems with inequality both for women and people with other ethnicities than being white. We're not even close to pure equality yet and you think people were educated about these things over 120 years ago? That's just a ridicoulus conclusion that has no valid premises.
And you still haven't addressed the quote I provided. How does that fit into your argument about Nietzsche vs Buddhism?
Ok. They are interesting , thought provoking points you make. I note your point that on a philosophy blog proper arguments need to be made. I have been studying philosophy since I was 16 and my Degree from university is in Philosophy. I've been teaching it in schools part time for 11 years. Now Im not trying to be a know all and much of my knowledge of Nietszche is from secondary sources. Actually he used to be one of my favourite philosophers. I still think he's a profound thinker. I'm not comparing him unfavorably with Buddhism .
Look I think the discussion has digressed completely away from my original post about a week ago where I made the SUGGESTION that Nietszche hates the virtues of Love, compassion and kindness and pity which are fundamental ancient virtues of Buddhism. Now that's not a bias or a misunderstanding of Nietszche. I'm merely making a statement of fact. And it seems on this blog that SOME people have taken umbrage at that remark. Im not a Buddhist evangelist. It's not fair to label me as such. I just think that these above virtues in my opinion, which HAPPEN TO BE part of Buddhist philosophy are good ones. As I said before I think Nietszches critique of Christianity as a slave morality has a grain of truth. But I disagree with his attack on the virtues of love , etc. He somehow seems to think that these virtues encourage the weak and a slave morality. But I disagree. I think I'm entitled to have that opinion. I'm sure there are millions of others who would share that opinion. I don't think I need to back up my view about the merit of these virtues with Philosophical argument. And if Christian and Buddhist or Islamic extremists have abused certain ideas or beliefs for power that's a reflection on those evil individuals , it's nothing to do with the virtues themselves.
No, I’m not - so I’m happy to stand corrected on that one...
Quoting dimosthenis9
Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’
Quoting Ross Campbell
I wasn’t going to bite on this one - it didn’t seem worth the effort. As a woman, I’m aware of expectations that I should be offended by the many derogatory statements that Nietzsche appears to make regarding women. And taking each one out of context, that’s easy enough to do. While in most cases I think he was rendering as caricature the cultural view of women by men, there is one quote that always makes me smile, from the preface to ‘Beyond Good and Evil’:
I think Nietzsche acknowledges that the men of his time, himself included, were entirely mystified by women in general, and made little attempt to understand them as anything more than social constructs. He certainly makes no claim to experience or knowledge himself - it’s all very obviously based on cultural assumptions. That’s enough for me to dismiss the apparent misogyny as simple ignorance. His ‘understanding’ of women was limited to imposed cultural views, caricatured beyond any relation to empirical reality. I think anyone who takes Nietzsche’s statements about women seriously as his personal or intellectual opinion doesn’t really understand his philosophical approach, or women for that matter. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a very high opinion of women, but that he didn’t have a clue, and he made that abundantly clear - to me, anyway.
That's an interesting point and the quote from Nietszche is interesting. He seems to be a hard philosopher to pin down because of his highly metaphorical style. What do you mean he didn't have a clue about women? Even Plato 2000 years ago who was living in a much more patriarchal society, a society where women weren't even allowed to perform any public role, did not go to school or did not even learn to read and write. Yet Plato, compared to Nietszche was enlightened enough about women to advocate that they should receive the same education and opportunities as men. And here we have Nietszche, one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century saying that he would prefer to fall into the hands of a murderer than a lustful woman. That sounds like an attack on the secular Enlightenment and progressive philosophy which was trying to usher in a more Enlightened culture free from the Catholic misogynistic culture of the old older in Europe.
I'm not sure what he means exactly by 'slave morality' but all religions are rather the same in this regard, and Buddhism is in no way an exception.
You’re confusing side issues with the main issue, which I see as the following: what are Nietzsche’s supporters claiming as his main thesis, and how is it original with respect to 19th (and much of 20th and 21at century) philosophy. If you decide that his central ideas are
not original and/or unproductive, then it will
appear to you that his comments on women are derivations of this unproductive philosophy. If however you embrace his ideas as ahead of their time and in some
ways still so , then you will be able to forgive his less than clear, quirky or irritating aspects , because we can dig up dirt on all great philosophers.
I think the focus here should be on those ideas that a consensus has developed around. These are concepts that one can find in the postmodern writings of French philosophers like Deleuze and Foucault , in social constructionism and even in phenomenology.
They deal with the relative bias of value systems, the shaping of individual views by participation in larger normative communities , and the impossibility of nailing down the meaning of goodness and badness outside of those normative communities.
If we remove Nietzsche from the discussion for a moment, what is your response to current day critiques of enlightenment liberalism and progressivism?
Everything you’ve written suggests strongly to me that you are wedded to enlightenment rationalism. If that’s the case, the. it’s not just Nietzsche that you likely object to but an entire era of of post-enlightenment thinking.
If you’re not a fan of current activism on campuses then you’re not going to be a fan of Nietzsche
Am I wedded to Enlightenment rationalism. The answer is no. I think there are SOME good aspects to it. The 18th century Enlightenment was primarily a reaction against the dogmatism, religious and political intolerance, superstition of the preceding age which had torn Europe apart in religious wars and persecution. Thinkers like, David Hume, Kant, Locke and Voltaire hoped to usher in a new age of freedom, liberty and democracy. While I think they are profound and great thinkers their belief in rationalism and utopian ideals about a society based on human Reason are naive and even led to the horrors and barbarism of The French Revolution and Napoleonic imperialism. Human beings are not rational creatures. Their psychology was amateurish.
No, I am more wedded to Stoicism and Buddhism. and Existentialism. I also am very interested in Ancient Greek philosophy. For me they provide my source of values for living and a treasure trove of wisdom. By the way Nietszche was an admirer of Buddhism.
My view is that too many western philosophers are ignorant of Eastern philosophy. They have a too west centric perspective. It's after I made some Chinese and Indian friends that it opened up my eyes to another culture. Eastern philosophy wasn't included at all on my Degree in philosophy unfortunately. I wish I had discovered it when I was a young lad back in college, It might have changed my life!
Quoting Ross Campbell
Quoting Ross Campbell
Well, I’m confused...which one is it that you’re presenting: a suggestion, a statement of fact, or an opinion?
What he approved was perhaps, morality based on autonomy of each person? Because he believed that people are born good, and have the ability to do good without the forced morality on them?
The virtues from compassion, kindness and pity are the typical morality stemmed from the traditional morality.
With all due respect, the way you conduct a philosophical discussion here does not reflect this type of foundational knowledge. You don't consolidate Nietzsche's writing into argument form and you don't pit that against why Buddhism is better, and you don't really explain your criticism against Nietzsche past cherry-picked quotes out of context based on a fallacy of extreme in order to paint it in a negative light. It might work on uneducated people with no sense of historical context, but if you want to make a point you have to actually do a proper argument.
If all people ever do is post opinions it only goes two ways: either a brawl of opinions leading nowhere, or people posting opinions and no one really reading them since why would anyone care to just read opinions and not have a discussion? Proper arguments are there to actually drive the discussion forward.
Quoting Ross Campbell
You are. You take quotes out of context and provide no argument in the matter. I also picked a quote by the actual Buddha himself which has the same kind of misogynic viewpoint as any other male figure throughout history, because it is impossible to view historical figures outside of the historical context they lived in. Doing that is trying to deify them into some superhuman form with a morality and stoic balance that transcends time and space. To only view historical people and thinkers as "valid" if they were morally perfect and had a viewpoint that was disconnected from the world around them at the time of their life is impossible because there are no such people, even proved by the Buddha quote.
This kind of historical cancel culture behavior is downright anti-intellectual. The key is not to find thinkers that were perfect, the key to understanding what these thinkers were actually talking about is to understand the times they lived in and even use that as a tool to decipher the meaning behind their writing. What did Nietzsche really mean by the chastity segment?
It is written through Zarathustra as a character that breaks down chastity in the eye of Christianity. He talks with poetry about how Christianity made sexuality a "moral sin" and how that kind of viewpoint and detachment from love creates beasts of man. The actual quote you cherry-picked comes from this segment:
So what does the quote really mean in the context of chastity? Isn't it a description on how Christianity formed a notion that it is better to be a murderous person than to feel sexual lust? That when you stigmatize sexuality and lust to be a form of sin while speaking of killing and murder almost as a lesser sin, it robs man of sexuality as a form of love. That those choosing chastity shouldn't be forced to it, but that they themselves choose it for as long as they feel it is good for them.
He speaks of how Christianity suppressed sexuality down to a sin worse than murder and how the form of chastity they conduct within the church only pushed the beast behavior further by suppressing people's urges. He speaks of a balance where choosing your own chastity, but not be bound to it, makes you a balanced person capable of not giving in to be beast of lust nor the suppression of irrational religious belief.
How is this in any way the same as a literal interpretation of the cherry-picked quote you chose? This is why I think that for someone who points out having a degree in philosophy, but not knowing how to read and decipher Nietzsche, it is irrelevant how many years you've been involved with philosophy and I'm a bit concerned that you actually teach philosophy. Is such a literal interpretation of a cherry-picked quote from Nietzsche's writing something you teach your students? Because that is pretty far from philosophy.
Quoting Ross Campbell
The interpretation of the very text you took the quote from argues against your conclusion here. The quote from Buddha also argues against it by actually being misogynic. The only thing you have left is your opinion. Nietzsche didn't hate love, compassion, and kindness, he was only concerned of getting rid of Christian values without having a balanced viewpoint taking place in the moral vacuum after it's gone. Only the ones who can't read past a literal interpretation and are poetically blind reach such conclusions. It's the most common notion of Nietzsche from people who actually never really read his texts with a philosophical mind or who understood the actual conclusions he made.
If anything I can agree with, it's that the way of writing philosophy in poetic prose makes it harder for the majority of people to grasp the actual conclusions and arguments he makes. But such criticism has been made by philosophers throughout the 20th century as well. This hard-to-interpret way of writing clouds people's ability to understand into believing the conclusions to be something else than what he actually wrote. But then again, his writing wouldn't have been so widespread if it were not in prose form and poetic.
But for philosophers today, it should be no problem deciphering it. You read it while underlining premises and conclusions, you decipher the poetry into a proper philosophical argument and then read the text again. Then it becomes clearer what he meant.
Quoting Ross Campbell
No, you are not. The only fact here is that you don't understand the very quotes you are picking out. And you ignore Buddha's own remark about women. So what "facts" are you talking about?
Quoting Ross Campbell
Virtues in of themselves are nothing but hollow words. They mean nothing in applied philosophy. You can take any virtue and deform it through subjectivity into an immoral act. The "love" of the nation to battle against enemies as an SS soldier in a concentration camp, to find "compassion" towards the fellow german not of Jewish heritage, the "kindness" towards the neighbor by keeping the race clean. It's "carpe diem" t-shirt philosophy that can be twisted into the darkest corners of humanity. Whenever you dive deep into ethics, empty virtues have a hard time surviving practical reality. What Nietzsche speaks about is the process of dismantling religious constructs of living without falling into the nihilism of nothing being left. He describes the process of leaving the church behind and how to live without it, to be a balanced person.
To point out virtues in Buddhism without including the complexities of morality it becomes a shallow virtue signaling. Nietzsche did the hard work of digging deep past such virtues, into the core of humanity rather than religion. Anyone finding Nietzsche proposing nihilism and hate for virtues does not understand Nietzsche. If anything, he hated empty virtues, the kind of virtue signaling or being a slave to empty virtues used as power over the people. You can find a number of cases in Buddhist groups where the leaders used virtues as a means of power.
If something is easily corrupted as a means of power, it is not a powerful moral tool. Virtues in of themselves are nothing but empty air.
Quoting Ross Campbell
He says the opposite. He speaks greatly of love while he attacks the church and Christianity of making sexuality into a form of sin that in turn creates beasts of men giving in to a destructive form of lust. He attacks the virtues of Christianity to be empty of substance, something that confuses people by going against their psychology. He positions that each and every man needs to think for themselves, to understand beyond empty virtues, and find balance in self-control. That he hates "love" or "kindness" is just an amateur interpretation of his texts.
Quoting Ross Campbell
Of course, but as I mentioned, opinions don't mean anything in philosophy if you can't back it up by actual arguments. What is your interpretation of the quote you cherry-picked? How does that pit against Buddhist virtues? etc. I don't care about your opinions, I want your philosophically constructed conclusion in this matter. Why would I care about your opinion? It doesn't further philosophy, it doesn't add to the discussion about Nietzsche, it's just noise in the billions of people expressing their opinions every day, who the fuck cares? Want to be a relevant voice in philosophy... then do philosophy instead of just expressing opinions that have no substance without a proper argument underneath.
Quoting Ross Campbell
You're on a philosophy forum. Yes, you do. Why are you even in here expressing opinions if all you back them up with is that you are entitled to your opinion? Why would anyone care about your opinions if they have no relevant substance behind them?
This is the illusion of entitled people today. That everyone's opinion matters. No, most people's opinions are just irrelevant noise. The only opinions that matter are those who actually do the work of making proper arguments for them. Anything else is totally irrelevant. People express opinions every day, alone, online, on the street, during family dinners.
As a person who cares to build knowledge and wisdom, digging through opinions of the masses first needs to dismiss all the irrelevant ones, the ones who "feel entitled to opinions" but have nothing more than that. Those are irrelevant to wisdom, they are the noise of the people that can only be practically used as a form of mass statistics of opinions, but not opinions as facts. The wise should dismiss them all and focus on the ones who care to explain themselves, the ones interested in backing up their opinion, the ones who use self-scrutiny to clean up their viewpoints.
Anyone who backs up their opinion with "I'm entitled to my opinion" has nothing of worth to say until they back that opinion up with a substance of worth. In my mind, you are not entitled to an opinion if you cannot back it up. Until then, you are entitled to move your mouth, form words in a text, but I don't value someone's opinion before it has substance past the subjective ego of the speaker.
Quoting Ross Campbell
The way you use "evil" and "virtues" like this just shows how lacking in moral knowledge you have. The nature of "good and evil" is the common man's idea of moral, but in philosophy, it's almost a joke and essentially a black and white fallacy. And the misuse of the ideas doesn't have to be extreme in order to be destructive, just as Nietzsche described in his text on chastity. It can be that the structural form of virtues and sins creates a psychology within people that become destructive on a large scale. The way sexuality was detached from love created beasts of lust that was a widespread problem, not something a few "extremists" did. All these tie into structural problems we have in today's society. The idea that some people are just "evil" is a sloppy observation of society that ignores the actual machine that creates them. And the virtues, ideas, sins, and vices that they misuse are only able to be misused through their simplicity in face of the complexity of life and society. This is why you sound like an evangelist. You speak of these virtues as good without explaining why, you speak of criticism of these ideas as bad and that people who misusing these as being evil, and you position yourself to be entitled to these opinions without anything else to back them up.
It's all shallow speak, no substance, no insight, the evangelical speech of the entitled ego. Why should we care?
Yes, Nietzsche was critical of the Enlightenment’s approach to constructing a more secular culture based on prevailing assumptions they considered to be empirically beyond question. Their views on women would be among those assumptions, and while Nietzsche was in no position to question these gender assumptions himself, this ‘progressive philosophy’ had NO interest in freeing culture from its misogyny. Don’t try to make it out as if Nietzsche was critical of any existing gender progressiveness.
Quoting Christoffer
:up:
Or he simply isn't good at his job.
Right. Ok then . Give me examples of hard evidence that Nietszche provides to BACK UP his ideas, not just clever aphorisms, or mythical narratives, like Zarathustra, concrete examples, case studies of REAL people in REAL LIFE situations, including data, empirical findings. Because as far as I'm concerned without these his opinions remain just opinions, as you yourself have indicated that most people's opinions don't count.
So you're saying I shouldn't be blogging on this site because I'm giving opinions without hard evidence. I find that an unfair comment. Show me please where it says in the administrators ground rules on this blog that people are not allowed express their OPINIONS on this site unaccompanied by hard evidence.
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, and I don’t know where you got that from. Show me please where I made that comment.
I did ask you to clarify whether you were making a suggestion, expressing an opinion or stating a fact. You keep shifting from one to another, sometimes in the same post, and it’s quite confusing. If you’re making a suggestion or expressing an opinion in a philosophy forum, then you should be willing to at least temporarily entertain the possibility that you don’t have the full picture, and be open to hear and discuss other perspectives that don’t quite align with your own. But you seem a little too attached to your opinion to engage in a philosophical discussion of the topic. Which is why so many contributing to this thread are assuming that you’re making some kind of argument, and asking you to support it with reasoning and evidence.
You’ve been criticising a particular philosopher for what you assume to be his ‘hatred’ of certain virtues, based on an interpretation of his writings that many here have refuted. And then you’ve highlighted a particular quote that you believe supports your argument (or may at least render Nietzsche’s position indefensible). When it’s made clear that it doesn’t, and that your argument fails, your only defence is to try and refashion your statements as mere opinion, and to then appeal for the validity of expressing this opinion in a philosophical forum - which is what you are trying to deny Nietzsche.
I believe that you’ve made a number of unfair comments against Nietzsche in a thread that you started. Each of us are allowed to defend him in his absence with reasoning and evidence. You can express your opinion, sure - but if you want us to agree with you, to not dismiss them as unfair comments, then I’m afraid you’ll need to back them up with more than rhetoric.
Or you should just pick up his books, go through and spot premises and conclusions for each segment, analyze through historical context, and find higher understanding than shallow interpretations of cherry-picked quotes. I've done enough job for you to show the meaning in that section on chastity alone to show that you have done a very shallow job of that quote you chose. The example is right in there, in my explanation.
It should be obvious to you how to decode philosophical texts like these, especially Nietzsche since he's pretty much one of the first philosophers you learn about. So with your degree in philosophy and your 11 years of teaching, it should be no problem for you to do this.
Quoting Ross Campbell
This is not philosophy, or at least it is philosophy in an entirely scientific research form, which is not what philosophy has to be. It can be observational and analytical of those observations. That doesn't mean it's not logical, it can be purely logical in its inductive form when the deciphered premises and conclusions form an argument.
Quoting Ross Campbell
I'm starting to see that you are just poetically illiterate. You are blind to the text in front of you and you don't understand it. I have provided so much information to you on this subject and you just ask for more without any argument yourself or anything other than your opinion.
I'm done with this, you are simply the worst academic philosopher I've ever encountered and I feel sad for the students under you. As long as you aren't bullshitting about your experience in order to look more educated than you actually are. Because you clearly have no idea how to read philosophical prose and you have no insight into Nietzsche based on how shallow you interpret your example quote alone.
Exactly this. Enough has been provided in opposition to the original opinion and the request is for better support to that opinion.
As a matter of fact I had already decided that I'm done with this ridiculous fencing match of a discussion. You think I m the worst academic you've ever come across well I happen to think likewise that you're the worst blogger I've ever come across. I have never from all my students or colleagues in my 16 years of teaching literature and philosophy been attacked for my views in so virulent a manner .
Maybe you are just used to being looked up to by your students and the power of the teacher not having to deal with actual valid criticism. Maybe because you never really done something like arguing against other people than students who are new to philosophy makes you unable to conduct proper philosophical arguments for a conclusion or opinion you make.
The fact that you are teaching philosophy is not valid support for the inadequate arguments you are making. And I have no interest in arguing further if the other side is just writing opinions and never get involved with actual discourse.
That's fine. I understand your point about backing up ones point with proper argument. To a certain extent I was playing the role sometimes of the devil's advocate in order to provoke debate. I wasn't accusing Nietszche of being a misogynistic and denigrating him I was merely drawing attention to some provocative statements he made and and debating what he meant by them. I was puzzled why such a brilliant genius like Nietszche who is so popular today would make such statements. I Know it's taken out of context but nevertheless if a philosopher today was to make such pronouncements I think he/she would be severly attacked for what seems discriminatory. And the argument that Nietszche is a product of his times doesn't hold water for me because other 19th century thinkers like John Stuart mill expressed more enlightened views about women.
what about one of the other bloggers on this thread who said Nietszche was like a Germanic version of Oscar Wilde. Is his/her opinion also just empty rhetoric and should not be on a philosophy blog?
Quoting Ross Campbell
“A number of Nietzsche interpreters argue that Nietzsche was using irony and other devices to make points that were not on the whole intended as anti-female.
Susan Padilla writes:
Nietzsche probably utilized the tools of irony, parody, and hu- mor as a way of coping with his difficulties concerning the accu- racy and value of language. Finally, because his work is so an- fractuous, it is absolutely critical that any one comment of Nietzsche‘s be explicated only in context with the greater whole of his work. It is virtually impossible to make singular selections or anthologize Nietzsche without distorting his meaning.”
“Friedrich Nietzsche is widely regarded as a man who hated women. His work has been assaulted with accusa- tions of misogyny. It is true that his writing contains nu- merous references to women, few of which seem com- plimentary when taken at face value. From his earliest works, to those composed at the end of his life, one can identify dozens of excerpts to support the misogyny charge. One can read almost any work by Nietzsche, employ a narrow interpretation, and conclude that he was in fact a misogynist. His comments regard- ing women appear, at best, ambiguous. At their worst, they seem down right degrading. At least prima facie, Nietzsche seems per- haps the most sexist philosopher in history. A closer examination of his book Beyond Good and Evil will reveal a different picture. There is a different exegesis of Nietzsche which exonerates him from the charge of misogyny. Properly construed, Nietzsche is revealed as a man who appreciated the natural instincts and po- tential power of women, and who, through his use of irony and his criticisms of both ?woman as such? and women, wished to educate women on approaching the emancipation issue more effectively without losing their inherent femininity. He in fact implored women to cease in the cannibalization of other women and ?woman as such? in order that they could better achieve their goal of emancipation or even better, from Nietzsche‘s per- spective, to achieve a goal of self-overcoming, and in so doing become free spirits.”
As a matter of fact many of the classes I have in recent times are adults, some who actually have degrees in philosophy themselves , and we have loads of debate. Actually I encourage debate in my classes and Ive had lots of opinions and disagreement in the classes. I actually prefer debate, it's more boring just lecturing at people without any discussion. Anyway if you object to my expressing opinions on this blog perhaps it's you don't respond to them. I would prefer not to continue this discussion anymore. I'm a bit sick of it at this stage.
That's interesting but why can't Nietszche express himself more clearly and if he has a positive view of women why didn't he just make that clear instead of leaving himself open to misunderstanding. As far as Im aware most other famous thinkers throughout history from Plato and Aristotle to Hume , Betrand Russell, Stuart Mill, Satre and Camus, and many more , all of them express themselves clearly, they are not readily open to misunderstanding, and thinkers like Camus use fictional techniques , like philosophical novels to express their ideas. Yet it's clear what all these thinkers ideas are. Why Nietszche has to be so ambiguous . Every time I read an article about Nietszche it says some scholars interpret Nietszche this way and then there's another camp who interprets him in a different way. Who are you supposed to believe.
For me Aristotle's Ethics , though not without problems are very well thought. I'm very impressed with them. They seem to me firstly to be full of common sense and secondly they're all based on sound careful logical reasoning and drawn from many case studies and empirical research that Aristotle undertook. They are not based on a belief in God or any religion. Nor are they based on a set of rules. Why does Nietszche have a problem with them? I can understand his attack on Christianity as a slave morality. I would agree he has many valid points there. But you can't describe Aristotle's Ethics or Stoicism as a slave morality. In my view it takes a lot of courage, inner strength, resilience and fortitude to live according to the virtues. In fact I think it was Epictetus who said that many people wouldn't have the strength to be a true Stoic. Nietszches famous injunction Be yourself. The Stoics would completely agree with that
But the point is that he’s NOT a philosopher today, so it’s unfair to attack his words out of context, as if he were.
It was J S Mill’s focus on equality and freedom of thought that led him to speak up in support of women’s suffrage. Nietzsche’s focus, though, was on the process of disentangling social interactions from religious moral assumptions - he highlighted the cultural views about women as lacking empirical substance, but he was in no position to represent women here. As a woman, it’s practically impossible to accept his articulation of the cultural perspective on face value - which is kind of the point. We’re supposed to react, to speak up and demand to be heard and represented accurately. For Nietzsche to do it for us defeats the purpose. So I think both these men supported women’s suffrage in their own way.
Quoting Joshs
:up:
Fine. I take your point. I've been told by many that the quote is out of context.
On another matter Id like to discuss and that is , Is Nietszches attack on the value systems of traditional philosophy correct, not only Christianity but on secular ethics of both ancient and modern philosophers. He attacks The whole Enlightenment tradition of the values of freedom, liberty and equality and democracy. He thinks they are part of the herd mentality, or offshoots of the slave morality of Christianity. I agree with him that the ideas of sin, salvation, hell and damnation are unhealthy and ridiculous Ideas, used for purposes of power over others.
Heres a thought experiment, it's my own idea.
What if Nietszche had been a peasant or an intellectual living under the autocratic monarchy of King Louis IV around the time of the French Revolution where nearly all intellectuals and philosophers of the time, like Voltaire, Kant, David Hume , Thomas Paine, and many writers etc supported the ideals of the Revolution- Liberty, Equality and Freedom, ideas which Nietszche attacks. Now would Nietszche, had he been living at that time not shared their ideas. Because these ideas were universally accepted by nearly everyone outside of the ruling classes.
During Nietszches time it became very popular for thinkers to attack religion, and many traditional values, Marx, Freud, Schopenhauer, the list goes on , 19th was a much more radical age. My point is does this not suggest that Nietszches ideas are what Hegel describes as products of the zeitgeist.
Would he not have been a champion of Freedom if he had been living under an autocrIc monarchy where people were imprisoned for expressing certain ideas
I think Nietzsche’s philosophical approach identifies an internal, qualitative process at the heart of our interaction with the world, which language seems ill equipped to define. It’s all well and good to insist on clarity, but to do so with language requires a reductionist methodology that either explains affect or excludes it. For Russell, at least, this was a sacrifice he was willing to make for the sake of certainty. Nietzsche’s approach was to try and retain qualitative variability in the process, at the cost of clarity/certainty. In this, his approach is more aligned with quantum theory than analytical philosophy or existentialism, metaphorically speaking. This may be why there are still so many different interpretations of Nietzsche. It’s not so much about the right interpretation, but the most reliable and precise process for predictability in interactions.
Is philosophy - wisdom - more about its applicability or its description?
I’d say it’s the construction he’s attacking - the way we value ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’, for instance, without really understanding what it means to be free or equal human beings, except in some narrow-minded, culturally assumed sense. When it was written into the US Constitution that ‘all men are created equal’, they didn’t really mean all men, let alone humanity. It was a value whose upper and lower limits were culturally imposed, constructed from ignorance, isolation and exclusion in how we don’t or won’t relate to each other. In this sense, supposedly ‘enlightened’ culture was no better. People were still herded or enslaved by assumed limitations on their potential - based on moral judgement without empirical understanding.
I think the constructed values Nietzsche suggests are largely misunderstood because there’s a tendency to try and define what his ambiguous terms of ‘power/life’, ‘affirmation’, ‘truthfulness/honesty’, ‘art and artistry’, ‘freedom of spirt’ and ‘pluralism’ mean in language - which defeats the purpose. All that does is impose upper and lower limits to our interactions based on cultural assumptions, and then we’re back to square one. I think it’s more about awareness of our potential to interact, not how we describe it.
You were saying that language imposes limitations on what one can express and Nietszche was aware of this. Didn't Wittgenstein also point out the limitations of language . But how else can we communicate ideas apart from through language. It may not be a perfect system but it's all human beings have. Of course alot of communication is non verbal. Perhaps Plato was right in saying that philosophy should be conducted through real life dialogue between people because then it's taken away from the abstractions and limitations of the written word and all the non verbal aspects are included. Most philosophy nowadays seems to be done through the written word . However there is also a lot of Philosophical debate too.
Cooperation and competition both each have benefits and costs.