How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
The way in which Nietzsche's philosophy was used as a basis for Nazism was probably something which he would not have imagined. However, his idea of 'superman', and 'the will to power' are open to varying interpretations. I am wondering how it can be understood in terms of ideas about possibilities for thinking about the concept of the posthuman or, transhumanist philosophy.
One book which is relevant is, 'Behold! I Teach You Superman', by V. H. Ironside, which is based on the philosophy of the statement, 'Behold! I teach you Superman. Man is something to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass man.' Ironside looks at the nature of physics and the universe, with human beings as 'a major biological species which allowed conscious reflection to be guided by human reflection'. He sees perception as linked with the evolution of conscious awareness and human 'cosmic identity'. Also, he suggests that evolutionary progress is connected to 'power politics and strategic rivalry.' He says, 'On the edge of large events in the evolution of the human mind, we have expanded the frontiers of knowledge beyond all intellectual grasp..'
Having read Ironside, his writings seem to imply the knife-edge of responsibility arising from the power given through scientific knowledge. It relates to consideration of the future, including transhumanism as the realisation of the most technical battle with mortality. Humanism can be viewed as the attempt to control nature and this may have been superseded by the transhumanist movement, with its emphasis on artificial intelligence, gene therapy and other forms of enhancement. However, there is the question of what is possible and how much is fantasy? It could also be asked whether the options would be available for the majority or simply for an elite minority?
Was Nietzsche intending a literal goal of the posthuman condition as enhancement of the human condition, or was he pointing for greater freedom of thought? This ambiguity seems to arise in thinking of his concept of the superman. As a poetic philosopher was he inventing the concept of superman as symbolic for the evolution of the consciousness of human beings?
One book which is relevant is, 'Behold! I Teach You Superman', by V. H. Ironside, which is based on the philosophy of the statement, 'Behold! I teach you Superman. Man is something to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass man.' Ironside looks at the nature of physics and the universe, with human beings as 'a major biological species which allowed conscious reflection to be guided by human reflection'. He sees perception as linked with the evolution of conscious awareness and human 'cosmic identity'. Also, he suggests that evolutionary progress is connected to 'power politics and strategic rivalry.' He says, 'On the edge of large events in the evolution of the human mind, we have expanded the frontiers of knowledge beyond all intellectual grasp..'
Having read Ironside, his writings seem to imply the knife-edge of responsibility arising from the power given through scientific knowledge. It relates to consideration of the future, including transhumanism as the realisation of the most technical battle with mortality. Humanism can be viewed as the attempt to control nature and this may have been superseded by the transhumanist movement, with its emphasis on artificial intelligence, gene therapy and other forms of enhancement. However, there is the question of what is possible and how much is fantasy? It could also be asked whether the options would be available for the majority or simply for an elite minority?
Was Nietzsche intending a literal goal of the posthuman condition as enhancement of the human condition, or was he pointing for greater freedom of thought? This ambiguity seems to arise in thinking of his concept of the superman. As a poetic philosopher was he inventing the concept of superman as symbolic for the evolution of the consciousness of human beings?
Comments (265)
Yep. This idea is very much like how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly i.e. the larva transcends itself from simply being an eating machine (I believe it eats more than its body weight in leaves per feeding session) into something that has beautiful wings and can fly. We too are meant to leave behind what passes for humanity (re Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari) and go, as they say in Star Trek, where no man has gone before.
You see the same sentiment being expressed by Maslow (Maslow's hierarchy of needs) - the tip of the pyramid of "necessities" is, if memory serves, TRANSCENDENCE!!!
I have read 'Homo Deus' by Yuval Noah Harari which looks at future possibilities and the idea of death as being a technical problem to be overcome. It is concerned with what is possible and I do see Nietszche's ideas as paving a starting point for trying to go beyond limitations but it is unclear if he was really thinking of this.
In comparison, Maslow's hierarchy of needs seems to point to self actualisation and peak experiences. Nietzsche could be seen as indicating the need to go beyond the state of 'robotic' consciousness, especially being enslaved by religious control. Also, I wonder how much of Nietzsche' s idea was related to his own mental health struggles. Even this is complicated though because it could even be that the philosophy he was developing were the source of his difficulties.
Generally, I do like his writings, especially, 'Thus Spake Zarathustra', but I see it more of being a psychological quest for freedom on an existential level. However, the actual translation of his ideas is potentially problematic, especially the idea of going beyond good and evil. What would this mean? It could be used to justify almost anything.
The overman is an ideal, a value, something to strive for... his tentative attempt at re-evaluation of values.
He thought western culture and philosophy was focused to much on static a-historical identities, on fixed being.
'Über' is 'over'. The over-man stands for a man that overcomes (his being). Being is becoming is the formula for this re-evaluation.
There’s an excellent little book I’ve been reading that answers these questions. It’s got some ingenious interpretations of the Overman and Will to Power. Really good stuff
You can download it here:
https://ca1lib.org/book/2641016/853436
I do see the idea of the 'overman' as an ideal but the notion of 'revaluation of values' is ambiguous in many ways. I guess that I do subscribe to the idea of revaluation of values though because I have certainly questioned a lot that I was socialised to believe. It is not that I am opposed to his philosophy and the idea of the 'overman' but I am thinking that it is a rather elastic idea, open to being stretched in many directions.
Thanks for the link. I will try to download the book and read it.
Yes I'd think he did that on purpose. Being a prelude to philosophers of the future and a beginning of re-evaluation et al., it has to be a bit non-specific if he wants it to be of use.
This idea shows up when discussing any issue about abandoning traditional values or the possibility of behaving in accordance with an inner voice. Look at the all the discussions we have on the forum about the possibilities of morality without God. It's the strongest criticism against one of my favorite philosophical works - Emerson's "Self-Reliance." I've also seen it as criticism of Taoism. Here's a profoundly radical quote from "Self-Reliance."
Quoting Emerson
It may be that the finding of one's own individual voice is a central aspect of the philosophy quest and that Nietzsche's approach is compatible with this. Finding the individual voice may be complex amidst all of the battling voices within and it may be here that Nietzsche, and Jung on individuation come into play. The Emerson quote is interesting too, in relation to the idea of the devil. Some may see the devil inside and others outside, and this may be bound up with the nature of projection and the ideas of good and evil as opposites, especially within the dualism of many religious perspectives.
I am not sure that Nietszche did intend to overcome hedonism, as his writings suggest that he valued the Dionysian principle of pleasure. I am inclined to think that he was more in favour of celebrating pleasure as opposed to categorizing acts into the division of 'good' and 'evil' as clear moral categories.
Nietzsche was not an evolutionist.He was more of a revolutionist, but not in the sense of a dialectical teleological progression. His superman doesn’t represent a more advanced intelligence but the awareness of self as self overcoming. Self-overcoming is the endless replacement of older values by new values. The new values aren’t ‘better’ than the older ones, they’re just different.
Beyond good and evil refers to the overcoming of morality , not pleasure and pain.
Yes, it may be that the understanding of the concept is understood BADLY often, like a caricature 'superman' in a Marvel comic.
Both.
When Nietzsche says:
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment..."
He is incisively attacking any and all primitive characteristics of humanity that - in his perception - make it impossible for the species to transcend the animal kingdom.
The "Übermensch" is not a kind of "Superman" but something totally different that arises from Man himself.
In my interpretation, Nietzsche is correct in stating that it is the instincts and, consequently, the prevailance of the emotions, that delay the process of Man's transcendence.
We have over 4,000 years of history to prove it...
He must have admired the attempt of modern man to create robots.
Yes, it does seem likely that Nietszche is making a critical attack on the way in which human beings are driven by instincts, especially in his depiction of the 'herd morality'. It is interesting to think of the way the issue of emotions comes in here, and it may be that he sees the way in which human emotions have a negative impact.
But, of course, it can go the other way with people being cut off from emotions and Nietzsche himself did experience difficulties in his personal life. So, trying to take the idea forward it may be about not being swayed by the emotions and instincts, but the quest for transcendence is complicated. We cannot be machines and there is a danger that in the twentieth first century, with the interface between mind and machine people may end up going in that direction and become cut off from sensory pleasures.
Quite the opposite , for Nietzsche our highest intellectual achievements are servants of our drives and instincts. He encourages us to multiply our drives and affects.
“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well?
Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else.”
“From now on, my philosophical colleagues, let us be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-tale which has set up a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge', let us be wary of the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason', ‘absolute spirituality', ‘knowledge as such': – here we are asked to think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and non-concept of eye that is demanded. There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing'; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept' of the thing, our ‘objectivity'. But to eliminate the will completely and turn off all the emotions without exception, assuming we could: well? would that not mean to castrate the intellect? . . “(Genealogy of Morals)
After all my study of the literary works and the life that Nietzsche had, as well as of his own personal opinions, I can say with certainty that, had he saw the state of the contemporary world, he would commit suicide soon after, because everything and everyone, nowadays, can be described as Nietzsche's "The Last Man":
“There they stand; there they laugh: they don't understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears… They have something of which they are proud. What do they call it, that which makes them proud? Culture, they call it; it distinguishes them from the goats. They dislike, therefore, to hear of “contempt” of themselves. So I will appeal to their pride. I will speak to them of the most contemptible thing: that, however, is the Last Man!”
But what is the "Last Man" you ask me, and again, Nietzsche can speak for himself:
[i]“I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves. Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself. Bah! I show you the Last Man."
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” — so asks the Last Man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.”[/i]
On our quest to Übermensch, we reached - Last Man!
The way in which I see the idea of the 'last man' is symbolic of the post-apocalyptic predicament and that may be where the idea of the posthuman condition comes in. There may be a parallel between this and Baudrillard's idea of the end of history. It is a possible source of despair with human beings on the verge of destruction. But, even then, it does involve the possibility of chaos 'giving birth to a dancing star'. So, the idea of 'superman' or 'the last man' can symbolize the highest possible, the outcome of history and civilisation as a culmination of human potential.
Nietzsche's relation to the instinctual-rational duality is a hierarchical one.
In fact, everything that is rational - in his perception - arises from the irrational - the will to power -, however, when arguing about the search for the Übermensch, Nietzsche makes explicit the incompatibility of the rational transcendental future of humanity, with the earthly future. species instinct:
"My brothers, why is there a need in the spirit for the lion? Why is not the beast of burden, which renounces and is reverent, enough? To create new values ??-- that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred "No" even to duty -- for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. To assume the right to new values ??-- that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much. to him it is preying, and a matter for a beast of prey. He once loved "thou shalt" as most sacred: now he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey. But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred "Yes" is needed: the spirit now wills his own will dele, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world."
Humanity's instinctive and emotional base must be used as the initial purposeful engine of the journey to the Übermensch, however, after all its load has been used, it must be discarded completely by this new "Being".
In short, "Humanity" is only "Humanity" because it is a medium between an irrational animal and the theoretical Übermensch.
An Übermensch who lets himself be carried away by emotions is anything but an Übermensch.
“ one must ask whether Nietzsche really thinks that
our animal origins are “shameful,” and whether humans are really “higher” than the primates. For when we compare the probity and rigor (as well as the surprising cohesiveness) of Nietzsche’s naturalism with his more traditional and anthropocentric remarks about apes, the
latter seem conceptually insubstantial and incoherent. As we have seen, Nietzsche’s naturalism questions the very speciesism that he himself occasionally falls back upon. But precisely because the tension between these two elements is so obvious and explicit, we should be
careful not to draw hasty conclusions about the consistency of Nietzsche’s thought. It seems unlikely that a thinker as nuanced—and as sensitive to the art of writing—as Nietzsche would have so quickly forgotten his own insights. Rather, when Nietzsche exhumes the traditional anthropocentric assumptions about primates, he is more probably exploiting his readers’ popular prejudices for rhetorical effect, while at the same time retaining an ironic distance from such conceits.”(Peter Groff, Who is Zarathustra’s Ape?)
In fact, Nietzsche believed that humanity - in his period - had immense potential, both for splendor and overcoming - Übermensch - and for destruction and resentment - Last Man -. However, with the privilege of being able to analyze the future of his era - the entire 20th century and, up to the present, the 21st century - it is clear that humanity has misunderstood his ideas, and, in search of transcendence, we ended up inprisoned in instincts and irrationality.
In fact, Nietzsche's perception is intrinsic to the time in which he lived, however, the vast majority of his literature still portrays and can be applied to an overwhelming part of our contemporary society.
I would argue that Nietzsche was a very good ontologist and a very bad anthropologist when both are applied to philosophy.
I recognize there are widely varying readings of Nietzsche. I prefer postmodern interpretations of him like those of Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida.
They jettison the rational-irrational binary in favor of an understanding of knowledge and fact as only existing in relation to overarching value systems that define their sense. These value systems are affectively driven, contingent and relative. Thus it makes no sense to separate fact from value, passion, drive, emotion, affect. They seen Nietzsche as showing us the inseparability of fact and value , the affective and the rational.
If you google Nietzsche-postmodernism you’ll see what I mean.
You, on the other hand, seem to maintian a separation between fact and value, the rational and the affective. I’m guessing your preference is for modernist, realist philosophy.
Indeed.
In other words, Freddy's gedankenexperiment 'predicts' that the übermensch is born (bred) to pass the existential (or meta-psychological) test of "the eternal recurrence of the same" as proposed in The Gay Science (§341) – which is a cultural goal, not a 'Darwinian or Maslowian ideal' (and absolutely antithetical to the 'Aryan Herrenvolk' for which Nazi propagandists had misappropriated the imagery of "Übermenschen" ("the Blond Beast" "Master Morality" etc) as an ideological precursor with the enthusiastic support of N's anti-semitic, proto-Nazi, opportunistic sister who was his literary executor, etc).
Quoting Jack Cummins
No. No.
No. Cultivation, not "evolution". (See Aristotle's Megalopsychia aka "great-souled man").
I have limited interest in Nietzsche, but this accords with my understanding. My only question is why bother with this overcoming (and endless change) if there are no improvements and no foundational narrative underpinning the 'journey'?
Foundations won’t get you where you want to
go in terms of improving your understanding of and relationships with other people and yourself. They will
just assure that you will be locked into old ways of thinking . One can instead strive to construe more intimately intercorrelational ways of interpreting the world, which doesn’t rely on the fixity of precious foundations. In fact , the letting go of those foundations is necessary in order to free up new possibilities. It is hard at first blush to see how Nietzsche allows for any notion of progress or development, but I suggest that for him one’s previous history of valuations prepares one to move more and more fluidly through new channels of construing, even as one transforms those ‘foundations’ in process.
After all, what we call ‘knowledge’ is really nothing but this fluid anticipative embrace of new events.
I'm not sure I understand why FN says it is worth the trouble to seek self-overcoming and new value systems.
I wonder too if there is a foundational core at the center of the idea of overcoming in the first place - an implication that a self can be assessed/understood in order to be transcended, which also sounds suspiciously like a journey built around a kind of measurement system.
Freddy Mercury overcome himself, his Parsi heritage, sexuality, "shy and retiring" personality, and grew as a performer at least until his break with Queen, cultivating an aristocratic image that had the band described as "fascist rock" in Rolling Stone. He lived in this world and forced his own values on others.
SO choose between Freddy and Putin for you Übermensch.
Both have the necessary sociopathic self-absorption and contempt for the effects their actions have on others.
I wanted to ask you earlier what you thought of Nietzsche.
I am not sure that Freddie Mercury was influenced by Nietzsche, but Jim Morrison was, for better or worse. Of course, it was a specific interpretation of Nietzsche and it may have been slanted rather than a thorough reading of his work. In a way, Jim Morrison's references to Nietzsche, as well as Colin Wilson's discussion in 'The Outsider' brought his writings into popular culture or subculture and Nietszche became a romantic antihero.
I do wonder if Nietzsche did really think that the animal side of human nature was something to be ashamed of because that would be more consistent with religious perspectives, or of Plato's distinction between the higher and lower self.
Influenced? The Blond Beast does not think, the Blond Beast acts. That you are here, in this forum, ensures that you will never be the Übermensch.
Morrison was a wannabe Jagger.
It is likely that the idea of enhancements of transhumanism was very far from the scope of Nietzsche's thought. He had more in common with literary traditions and classical philosophy. The world he was writing in was such a different perspective that it probably needs to be interpreted in that context, because seeing it in the chaotic climate of the twentieth first century probably gives rise to distortions.
As far as I know, that is the whole case for the prosecution. Marsh did not seem to recognise the reference to the Czech Christmas lullaby - we will rock you, rock you, rock you etc
https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/rocking_carol-2.htm
FM wasn't a fascist, he was a diva. It's not marching, it's prancing. Mein Kamp. So I submit m'lud.
The question may be whether Nietzsche himself would have been more in place on a philosophy forum or as a rock'n'roll star. He probably would not have been at ease on either and the worse thought is that if such a person existed in the twentieth first century they may be misunderstood completely, or ended up in a remote academic group or as a writer of literary fiction. There are probably not going to be any equivalent figures in the present times in philosophy circles.
You could leave out the Jagger bit...
Isn't it odd that American rock is so...derivative; pale imitations of their British overlords. Even the brilliance of Hendrix had to go to London to be recognised. Yanks treat of the Beach Boys as their equivalent of the Beatles... the Beach Boys! Christ, it's pathetic.
Yeah, wtf?! :sweat:
Would the Freddy fans say that this is because you're enslaved by modernist foundationalism?
A friend of my mums was a close colleague of Carl Jung's - I asked him about FN on the basis that I though Jung was FN friendly. He described Nietzsche as a 'deplorable teenager'.
Quoting Banno
I don't listen to rock often but when I do it's Cream and the Stones over others.
Yes! Philosophy for adolescent failures.
I suspect there are far more people influenced by Nietzsche than Jung.
Sinatra was Morrison's favorite singer. "Jagger"? No. :lol:
Even if that were true (and I am no Jung enthusiast) it has no impact on the quote.
Oh.
I think it would be true, for the simple reason that there are far more unfulfilled adolescent males of all ages than folk with wit, intelligence and a desire to understand.
Perhaps if Nietzsche was around today he would get so carried away on the forum and get banned.
Like, wow. Yeah.
He was a professor of philology.
Yep. A job he could not keep, spending the rest of his life wandering, towards madness.
Romantic, hey? Don't you really what to be like him?
I really don't know what you're talking about. Is this a philosophy forum?!
No idea what you're doing at all. Probably should stop reading your comments.
Perhaps philosophy needs a few romantic bohemians to create inspired writing. In some ways, he may be one of the role models, certainly more so than Kant. What may have been important is his writing style. That was what drew me to his writings and I read his writings long before many of the importance philosophers. But it does seem that he is the consolation for adolescent angst, almost like emo music, and for times of distress later. He is probably read by many who don't read many other philosophers.
I don't agree at all.
Many think Kant is profound, whereas he is just a bad writer.
Many think Nietzsche is poetic, whereas he is just a good writer.
I've been trying to get my fingers to play Bell Bottom Blues. It's a simple riff, but I can't make it sound right.
Now Clapton is too cool to be the Übermensch. He has to settle for being God.
(That'll be lost on anyone younger than fifty five).
People vary so much in which philosophers appeal to them, but it is also worth thinking about the cultural contexts in which they were writing. In particular, Nietzsche's writing is particularly critical of Christianity whereas Kant was firmly rooted in the Christian church tradition. So, how one views Christianity is likely to be important as much as the styles of the two writers. Actually, the two writers make an interesting contrast in their entire approach to philosophy, but they were probably equally serious in their pursuit of philosophy and very intense individuals.
Kant was a conservative.
What a joke: if "Clapton is God", then what does that make Hendrix? Santana? SRV? :smirk:
:up:
In my book, Nietzsche is an anti-Romantic Romantic who "questions the value of truth" in order to "revaluate all values" in contrast to Kant, a Romantic anti-Romantic, who "limits knowledge" in order to "make room for faith". (But maybe thiis comparison is too neat.)
IMO, Hendrix was the best showman and guitarist of his generation. Clapton has always bored me to tears (very overrated), not nearly as soulful a player as Santana et al.
Who?
Here's an analysis of why Clapers is worth a listen. His contribution is significant.
What your link doesn't mention is that most of these 'contributions' are in fact barely concealed ripoffs of Albert King. Which is ironic given his (later?) racism. As a guitar teacher I am growingly aware that younger generations can sometimes be into Cream (which IMO was a great band), but none are really into solo Clapton. It's boring dad rock to them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Ray_Vaughan
I'm biased, however, having attended more than half dozen SRV concerts (about the same number of Santana shows) during the '80s.
:up:
Sure he uses Albert King techniques, as well as B.B, Hendrix, and whoever else you might mention. Who doesn't.
But if you don't like it, you don't like it.
Of course I am taking the piss about Vaughn. His are hard, heavy, long scale-filled riffs that I find uninteresting, and little different to dozens of others of his generation-and-a-half. I prefer, for example, Johny Winter.
None of these guys - to drag the thread back on topic - have the aristocratic arrogance of Freddy Mercury, which is central to why I chose him as an exemplary Übermensch.
Quoting Banno
Each band borrowed from the others. Paul McCartney was blown away after hearing Pet Sounds , while Brian Wilson was trying to capture Specter’s Wall of Sound. In 1964, John Lennon was devastated when Dylan told him he loved their music but they didn’t say anything. The Stones and Led Zeppelin borrowed heavily from Motown , American Country music and Chicago Blues, your beloved Clapton was influenced by The Band (mostly Canadian) and Delaney and Bonnie.
“ Eric Clapton already had one eye on the door with Cream when he heard the Band for the first time. In that moment, he knew that the legendary trio was finished.
“It sounded like they’d jumped on to what I thought we ought to be doing. That was what I wanted us to sound like and here was somebody else doing it,” Clapton tells Uncut. “It shook me to the core.”
David Bowie’a Rock sound was shaped around the Velvet Undergound’s riffs.
Quoting Banno
No, we don’t. At least I don’t( except for Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, which are brilliant compositions and the equal of anything the Beatles did). Around the time of the Beatles most creative phase (1965-69), the U.S. was producing all sorts of idiosyncratic forms of rock My favorites include the psychedelic sounds of Buffalo Springfield , Janis Joplins first two bands, the Love, Moby Grape ,the Jefferson Airplane , the Grateful Dead and the Byrds. Also ther Velvets, Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield ( blues rock) , the Allman Bros and their mix of country, jazz , psychedelia and blues, Parliament-Funkadelic’s psychedelic funk , Frank Zappa’s weirdness, Creedence’s bayou rock, Simon and Garfunkel’s folk rock.
The best of these bands songs was in its own way the equal of the Beatles , but direct comparisons are difficult given how unique each band’s music was.
It’s not that the best American bands couldnt match British rock , rather they weren’t interested in doing that kind of sound because their focus was on creating their own personal expression, with the exception of mediocre direct imitators of british rock like the Raspberries.
My understanding of what Nietzsche meant by beyond good and evil was not about ignoring life and pain. It was more about the conventional superficialities and appearance of 'kindness' represented in the development of Christianity.
As far your argument about Nietzsche's ideas leading to a reversion to an 'animal state', it is complex because this may be a gross misinterpretation of his ideas. He was opposed to emotions in some ways but it is debatable how he understood the instincts and intellect, in understanding the role of the ego needs.
What the quote you give, especially the idea, 'Write with blood' does suggest the Nietzschian path to be more about the call of being a writer than anything else. In this sense, his stance seems to be more of an emphasis on serious pursuit of writing as a way towards truth, and this is probably what makes him important as a philosopher.
Smith, maybe you should actually read his books Beyond Good and Evil AND On The Genealogy of Morals. To translate Freddy's famous phrase, it means "beyond religious (priestly) morality"; that is, a return to naturalistic, this-worldly, values of Good & Bad (re: virtues) rather than, as he sees it, other-worldly, anti-naturalistic values of "Good & Evil" (re: sins).
:up: The old fella is takin' the piss, methinks.
I would go along with the idea of Nietszche as an 'antiromantic romantic'. If anything, his work could be applied to develop a critique of what it means to be a romantic, because he turns the idea of romanticism upside down to create a new romanticism, before the deconstruction of the postmodernists. In some ways, he could be seen as a forerunner to the countercultural developments in the arts.
It's my suspicion that Nietzsche committed the nirvana fallacy. He set the bar so high that not one human could shake off the label of superficiality. I don't blame him though; morality, if that is what we're discussing, has always been divine territory i.e. it's always been beyond the reach of mere mortals.
Regarding letting the beast that's been caged inside us out and allowing it to roam freely in society, I'd say that there may not clear-cut evidence that such was Nietzsche's intent, but the Nazis surely saw something in ol' Freddy's works that could be interpreted thus. Why else Nazism which, though so lofty in its claims, turned out to be nothing more than a cover for a gang of thugs to do what thugs do - loot and kill?
:joke:
Jagger wanted to be Satan. Morrison wanted to be Jesus.
Part of the issue about Nietzsche's ideas being used by the Nazis says a lot about the way human thinking was going, especially in the early twentieth century. Neither Nietzsche's ideas or the Nazis ideas can be seen in isolation but were part of the developments of abstraction and involved a certain amount of inflation of ego consciousness..
One book which I read a long time ago was ' Glamour' by Alice Bailey and she spoke of the way that Hitler's ideas were based on glamour, which involved a wish to be rid of evil. This was projected onto those who were seen to be as inferior, who Hitler wished to destroy in reaching for the highest limits. Hitler himself was influenced by theosophy which spoke of different root races.
It is easy to see how the Nazis were able to draw on Nietzsche's idea of the transvaluation of values. Jung was more directly involved in developments in Nazi Germany because he was working there. He did speak of dangerous development in ideas being developed by some German thinkers, but he was also swept up in this too because he made generalisations about race and failed to speak out about the Nazi movement at the time, and did give therapy to Nazis.
Yesterday, when writing on the thread I was thinking about how the idea of the superman relates to the idea of Satan, as the ultimate rebel. The complexity of it also relates to the idea of Lucifer, who was the figure who was the lord of light initially. Even though Nietzsche's ideas come from a critique of Christianity, the philosophy does go back to the symbolic drama between good and evil.
I've always seen Morrison striving to be shaman and Jagger as an accomplished burlesque performer.
Note the title of the chapter is not "Writing" but "Reading and Writing". He is in part addressing writers with regard to readers -
But he is also addressing the reader with regard to those who write with blood, that is, spirit. Such writers do nothing more for the reader. It is up to the reader to make the unfamiliar spirit his own. Nietzsche more than anyone else was instrumental in the revival of the art of reading what is between the lines
The subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is "A Book for All and None". Above all, Nietzsche is a philosopher addressing the philosopher of the future, one who is yet to be.
As to a "Nietzschean path":
:100:
:fire:
That’s even better.
I think this is right, but should be seen within the larger problem of history. What is properly regarded as good or evil is historically contingent. At one historical stage the morality he sees as unhealthy was a means to man's self-overcoming, but it is no longer so.
This a a problem he addresses in "On the Use and Abuse of History" from Untimely Meditations. He addresses the problem of nihilism. Those who think he was a nihilist should read this. It is the reason the "child" is necessary for the three metamorphoses of the spirit in Zarathustra. If what is called "good" today was at some earlier time "bad" and may at some future time be called "bad", if, in other words, there is no universal, fixed and unchanging transcendent good and evil than this can lead to nihilism. Nihilism, the "sacred no" must be followed by a "sacred yes", but this is only possible if there is a kind of deliberate historical forgetfulness, a new innocence.
This, of course, should not be taken literally. The trope is one of Nietzsche's "inversions" of the innocence of the child in Christianity:
For mainstream Christianity this is impossible. Following Paul, it is not man who changes but man who is changed. But the metamorphoses of the spirit are not dependent on some divine force outside oneself.
It's gotta be admitted that Jagger went low on Negritta and high on Fool to Cry. Never heared Jimbo going high. On voice, that is. "Let's start a religion". Horse latitudes. Never understood that one. But it's wide.
Was Christ just hanging around? Was he an eternalist? Did only he had a torch in the block universe? How could god have constructed it? Why did Nietzsche said God was dead? Did he believe in God and just was man enough to declare him dead? I wonder if he had the guts to yell this at Central Square in Teheran. "God is death, BUT ALLAH AKHBAR!"
SO... this?
(Edit: I hadn't noticed the Weeping Angels before...)
So he went and recorded one album with Duane Allmann. That was enough to shake him out of it. I'll grant you Dylan, Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead, and raise you Led Zeppelin, Marc Bolan and Sex Pistols.
I think you should be looking in Chicago and Motown for your best.
...and Jesus wanted to be Satan but his Dad said "No".
And Jesus (in Mathew 4 1-11) is tempted by Satan. 'Kid, I'll give you anything if you worship me...' Very strange story given Jesus is God... what would God want with kingdoms when he created everything and is already omnipotent and impotent when it comes to the worship of others?
One of the greatest and most influential deep thinkers of all time is condemned by some TPF wannabe-"experts" as "adolescent", "useless" etc etc.
As if they speak for their neighbor living next door.
You don't know what to do. To laugh or cry??Probably they have achieved much greater things to their life than poor, mad, stupid Nietzsche,who only got in the pantheon of Philosophers by luck maybe for them.
I have no problem someone not liking Nietzsche or what he wrote. But treating such a great mind as if he is a "0" it's just a sign of our times.. Cancel everything except our shitself. Our Holy shit self.
P. S. Morrison?? Mercury? Wtf?!?
Fear not, dimo, that which does not cancel Nietzsche makes him grow stronger. :strong:
Thus spoke Banno?? Glorious. Maybe he predicted "The Cancelmensch" also. Not sure though, haven't studied all of his writings yet.
In fact minds like Nietzsche are simply uncancelable. And despite the efforts will remain that way.
Ah, don't apologise; I'm used to it. Goes with the territory.
Yeah, I believe you. You do seem pretty familiar with the territory of arrogance and immodesty.
Criteria as to be considered what Nietzsche meant by "Ubermensch"?
I see only similarity in the way that Mercury ignored social stereotypes, not fearing to expose himself in front of the public and making a way for homosexuals as to gain more acceptance into their societies.
From what I have read about the other aspects of his life(of course I wasn't his buddy as to know for sure) , he didn't seem that spiritual evolved as Nietzsche suggested. I would consider him as a little step towards "Ubermensch" but by far not "Ubermensch" himself.
Nietzsche’s concern was how humanity would ‘replace’ religion. Layered within this are many questions like how do we act, why do we act, what do we need/want and we crave for in our inner most core (what we will)?
My view - related to this topic - is that we are all aware that we are more than what we are. Facing up to that and fully realising it is what life is about. The End.
Yeah. What else do you think Nietzsche meant with Ubermensch? 3 legs and 2 heads? Spiritual not with any metaphysical or theological meaning of course. But mindfulness.
Tell me more.
Nietzsche considered spiritual development as the next step in human evolution. He saw great potential in mind abilities and what humans could achieve with that. A development that could come via knowledge and constant questioning our personal beliefs. A constant internal hard fight of growing ourselves. Not via religion or any other metaphysical superstitions.
That way spirit could overcome our animal nature. Tame our "low" instincts and make us humans something greater than just an "animal with better mind" than monkey.
That way we could re-evaluate our systems, our moral values, our idiot social stereotypes etc. Destroying them and rebuilding them all over.
That is Ubermensch for Nietzsche(in my interpretation at least) . A higher spiritual version of human. The next level in humankind that mind could drive us.
Asking me, we are not even yet "Mensch". So let's become first that, and then we could consider about "Ubermensch".
I am not a fan of "names", "periods" and "ages". I see human thinking as a continuous chain. He was one of the greatest, who set solid foundations in human thinking as "movements" that could get us further to exist.
And if we could live for much longer, we would still see Nietzsche's name to appear even after hundreds of years.
"People can't understand me cause I m 1000years ahead" he said. So yeah,if we take that literally, there are many more years left yet I guess..
I'll leave you to it then. Too much adoration for my taste.
No one has to like or to agree with Nietzsche. It is a matter of taste indeed. I don't agree with anything he wrote either. But that's a different thing than devaluing such a great thinker.Treating him as if he was a "0". Anyway.
That's the Treponema Pallidum talking.
Zombie Insects. Who knows, we could all be zombies too. Jesus was trying to tell us something!
Our brains hijacked, we're under the illusion that we're engaged in some highfalutin colloquy about love, honor, gods, transcendence, nous, aretê, whathaveyou, when in fact all we are are vectors for a sinister virus (DNA & RNA). :scream:
It is a possibility.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Quoting dimosthenis9
You say he is such a great thinker, yet you say he is still centuries ahead of us. How could you evaluate his thinking and find out he is great if you think you can't understand him ? Or perhaps do you consider yourself another "1000 years ahead of y'all" type of guy ?
:lol:
I mentioned what he said. Who told you that I agree with that also? He is a damn great thinker indeed. One of the greatest for me,who will still influence human thinking after hundreds of years. That doesn't mean he couldn't also be arrogant at the same time.
Guess I jumped to a conclusion with no evidence and ended up misunderstanding. Sorry.
It's Ok.No hard feelings.
Funnily enough, when I spoke of Nietzsche creating a new romantic movement, the music of the new romantics came into my mind. I love the music of the electric eighties, including ABC, Ultravox and many others. If anything, the more gothic aspects seem more Nietzschian, such as Marc Almond and, he Tah Duran Duran's 'Seven and the Ragged Tiger,' especially the song, 'The Union of the Snake' seem a bit Nietzschian in questioning values. And, yes I am admitting to being a closet Duran Duran fan, and they are still going.
Yes, it does seem that Nietzsche's approach was about looking beyond the 'animal' aspect of the human being as @Gus Lamarch suggested. I was just looking at Colin Wilson's discussion of Nietzsche in, 'The Outsider'. Wilson suggests an interpretation which is more about the development of the inner aspects of the human being, saying how Nietzsche, asked himself about happiness and the nature of delusion and,
'His imagination set to work on the problem, to conceive a man great enough to affirm. Not the Hero- no hero could ever command a philosopher's complete admiration. But the prophet, the saint, the man of action; or, perhaps, a combination of all four? ' in this way, Nietzsche's emphasis can be seen as going beyond the animal and irrational aspects of human nature, and of becoming the highest possible example of how a person may become.
When I was at university back in the 1980's Nietzsche was described as a romantic and so were the post-modernists who were raging against foundationalist modernity the way the 18th century romantics raged against rationalism.
One issue with reading Nietzsche, and it's a good quote by someone (I forget who), is that Nietzsche is easy to read but hard to understand. I've read a bit of his work now and for me it is fun, pithy, clever, portentous, but I have no real use for it. I would be interested in hearing from others about what N has contributed to their understanding, rather than hearing about how influential N is or isn't.
This is a common misunderstanding. He did not want to replace religion, he wanted to overcome Christianity. He recognized the importance of religion. People need something to believe in, something to follow. Nietzsche does what Plato did, the invention of a religion in the service of philosophy. Only Nietzsche's religion is to be an inversion of Plato's. A religion of the earth, a religion of becoming, a religion of the god Dionysus, of a god who philosophizes.
.
He certainly did like to throw around words like ‘gods’, but in what sense is becoming and self-overcoming religion? He did not simply encourage people to have something to believe in. That would be the ascetic ideal, which he critiqued. What he encouraged was recognizing that the ‘something’ one believes in is always transforming itself into something new, so it is the endless movement , the eternal return of the same movement , that he sees as fundamental , not the enslavement to something one believes in.
Indeed.
Quoting Joshs
Why is this important to him?
Quoting Fooloso4
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that religion has value as a means to an end , but not as sovereign. That is , not for its own sake, such as being something for people to believe in. For instance, it is valuable as a tool for rulers to control and pacify others. And asceticism can be used as a tool by rulers for controlling their own will in order to overcome certain drives and values. But nirvana or religious godliness should not be the goal.
“For people who are strong, independent, prepared, and predestined for command, people who come to embody the reason and art of a governing race, religion is an additional means of overcoming resistances, of being able to rule. It binds the ruler together with the ruled, giving and handing the consciences of the ruled over to the rulers – which is to say: handing over their hidden and most interior aspect, and one which would very much like to escape obedience. And if individuals from such a noble lineage are inclined, by their high spirituality, towards a retiring and contemplative life, reserving for themselves only the finest sorts of rule (over exceptional young men or monks), then religion can even be used as a means of securing calm in the face of the turmoil and tribu-lations of the cruder forms of government, and purity in the face of the necessary dirt of politics. This is how the Brahmins, for instance, understood the matter. With the help of a religious organization, they as-sumed the power to appoint kings for the people, while they themselves kept and felt removed and outside, a people of higher, over-kingly tasks.
Meanwhile, religion also gives some fraction of the ruled the instruction and opportunity they need to prepare for eventual rule and command. This is particularly true for that slowly ascending class and station in which, through fortunate marriage practices, the strength and joy of the will,the will to self-control is always on the rise. Religion tempts and urges them to take the path to higher spirituality and try out feelings of great self-overcoming, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race that wants to gain control over its origins among the rabble, and work its way up to eventual rule. Finally, as for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those like them) one more happiness and one more sorrow, it transfigures and improves them, it provides something of a justification for everything commonplace, for all the lowliness, for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls.
Religion, and the meaning religion gives to life, spreads sunshine over such eternally tormented people and makes them bearable even to themselves. It has the same effect that an Epicurean philosophy usually has on the suffering of higher ranks: it refreshes, refines, and makes the most of suffering, as it were. In the end it even sanctifies and justifies. Perhaps there is nothing more venerable about Christianity and Buddhism than their art of teaching even the lowliest to use piety in order to situate themselves in an illusory higher order of things, and in so doing stay satisfied with the actual order, in which their lives are hard enough (in which precisely this hardness is necessary!).
Finally, to show the downside of these religions as well and throw light on their uncanny dangers: there is a high and horrible price to pay when religions do not serve as means for breeding and education in the hands of a philosopher, but instead serve themselves and become sovereign, when they want to be the ultimate goal instead of a means alongside other means.”
Well I :grin: did say something about what kinda lowlives h. sapiens are (vide infra).
Nietzsche: Guys, guys, guys, we're better than this! C'mon!
Wasn't it Frederick thinking people are parasites sucking on the skin of nature? Wasn't he thinking he stood far above the others, being an übermensch? Nietzsche über allen! His sister tried hard in South America. Nuova Germania... Stronghold of the über Aryans.
They should be viewed in light of what they are opposed to. They are by themselves no more religion than being and obedience are.
Quoting Joshs
People do not need to be encouraged to have something to believe in. They desire to believe in something.
Quoting Joshs
In part this answers your question regarding what becoming and self-overcoming have to do with a Dionysian religion. Historical awareness leads to nihilism. What he calls in " The Use and Abuse of History for Life" "deadly truths". These are no truths that a majority of people can live by. It leaves them rudderless. Religious inventions are not for the philosopher, they are creations of the philosopher for the benefit of the people.
The eternal return of the same plays out in one way through the three metamorphoses of the spirit. From acceptance, I shall, to denial, the sacred no, to a new sacred yes, I will. The sacred yes is not enslavement, it is an assertion of the will to power. It is the end and the beginning of the turning of the wheel. The affirmation is not denied the moment it is affirmed. The stages of becoming follow one after the other, they do not happen all at once.
Yes, but this is not simply for the benefit of the ruler. A significant benefit of Christianity was a matter of self-control. But what was then a benefit is no longer so, and this as a result of its success.
But this is not simply for his own benefit. The philosopher is a benefactor.
Sorry it wasnt clear, but I meant to attribute these paragraphs to Nietzsche in BG&E, which is why I began my comment with: ‘In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that religion has value as a means to an end , but not as sovereign.’
We have to begin by understanding the relation between the drives, values and knowledge for Nietzsche.
All knowledge is perspectival, and all perspective are drives.
Dan W Smith writes:
“… for Nietzsche, it is our drives that interpret the world, that are perspectival—and not our egos, not our conscious opinions. All of us, as individuals, contain within ourselves “a vast confusion of contradictory drives” (WP 259), such that we are, as Nietzsche liked to say, multiplicities, and not unities. Nietzsche’s point is not that I have a different perspective on the world than you; it is rather that each of us has multiple perspectives on
the world within ourselves because of the multiplicity of our drives—drives that are often contradictory among themselves.”
Moreover, these drives are in a constant struggle or combat with each other: my drive to smoke and get my nicotine rush is in combat with (but also coexistent with) my drive to quit. This is where Nietzsche first developed his concept of the will to power—at the level of the drives. “Every drive is a kind of lust to rule,” he writes, “each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm” (WP 481)
It is the tension between our drives that produces
creativity , the creation of new ‘gods’ from the sublimation of old drives.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche presents a famous fable explaining the transition from polytheism to monotheism (or what he elsewhere calls “monoto-theism”): when one of the gods declared himself to be the only god (the monotheistic god), the other gods (the gods of polytheism) laughed and laughed and slapped their knees and rocked in their chairs—until finally they laughed themselves to death! Polytheism died of laughter.”
[quote="Twilight of the Idols, "What I Owe to the Ancients""]I am complete skeptic when it comes to Plato[/quote]
Both are skeptics in the original sense of the term, and only a skeptic understands a skeptic. Skepticism in this sense is zetetic.
If Plato had been able to speak freely he might have said: "The gods are dead". The situation then was very much like it was for Nietzsche. The gods could no longer be taken as a viable option, but religion in some form was necessary for the masses. In the mythology of the Republic in place of the gods stands the Good, transcendent, eternal, and unchanging. The philosopher is transformed from one who seeks knowledge to one who possesses divine knowledge.
Nietzsche inverts this. Instead of the mythical philosopher who possesses divide knowledge, a god, Dionysus, is a true philosopher, that is, one who desires but does not possess wisdom. One who possesses what Socrates calls in the Apology "human wisdom", the knowledge that one does not know. In place of the fixed world of being is the changing world of becoming. But here too as in the Republic the philosophers are commanders and lawgivers (see above The Philosophers)
Let’s bring this down to earth a bit. Do you think Nietzsche can be called an atheist? And what is left of the notion of religion if the ‘Good’ is incoherent or irrational? That is, if there can be no concept of good transcendent to contingent, local and relative cultural formations. Don’t you think Nietzsche’s concept of the drives in relation to knowledge is crucial here?
What does it mean to ‘know’ for Nietzsche? Isn’t this just an expression of a drive? You make it sound as our knowledge is limited in the face of all ther is to know , as if knowledge were a matter of correctness of representation with respect to a n empirical world
Really nice approach. That something that Nietzsche wanted people to believe in, is their very own selves. And the tremendous potential that all of us have. That was the type of the "religion" that was Nietzsche's lust. Trying, in a way, to make Philosophy the new "religion". And that's why Philosophy loved him so much.
What do you suppose the ‘self’ meant to Nietzsche? A unitary self-aware ego? Or a disjunctive community of warring drives?
I think we have discussed it again at another thread about Nietzsche at the past.
Yeah, more or less,and with awareness of the impact that his Ego has on others too, I would add. But if I remember well, you had a different opinion.
An intentional or unintentional pun?
Quoting Joshs
Yes.
Quoting Joshs
When religion is free of transcendence the creators of religion need not be bound to it.
Quoting Joshs
Yes.
Yes, this was my opinion:
Dan W Smith writes:
“… for Nietzsche, it is our drives that interpret the world, that are perspectival—and not our egos, not our conscious opinions. All of us, as individuals, contain within ourselves “a vast confusion of contradictory drives” (WP 259), such that we are, as Nietzsche liked to say, multiplicities, and not unities. Nietzsche’s point is not that I have a different perspective on the world than you; it is rather that each of us has multiple perspectives on
the world within ourselves because of the multiplicity of our drives—drives that are often contradictory among themselves.”
Moreover, these drives are in a constant struggle or combat with each other: my drive to smoke and get my nicotine rush is in combat with (but also coexistent with) my drive to quit. This is where Nietzsche first developed his concept of the will to power—at the level of the drives. “Every drive is a kind of lust to rule,” he writes, “each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm” (WP 481)
The quote above continues:
Quoting dimosthenis9
I don't think he regarded philosophy as the new religion or "religion", but rather, religion is what creators create. To what extent they believe their own mythologies is a deep and interesting question. The eternal return, for example
I think we have had this conversation before. I have not read enough of his work to say; but if I did, do you think we would agree in our interpretation of his interpretation?
Or you could look at the eternal return this way:
“But the eternal return must not be understood simply as a doctrine in Nietzsche's philosophy. Rather, the eternal return was first of all a lived experience, which was revealed to Nietzsche in Sils-Maria, high in the Swiss Alps, in August of 1881, and experienced as an impulse, an intensity, a high tonality of the soul—and indeed as the highest possible tonality of the soul. But for this reason, the eternal return, as a lived experience, as a drive, was fundamentally incommunicable, or was communicable only on the condition of being fundamentally falsified. For was this not the result of all the Nietzschean analyses we have just examined—namely, that the drives find an expression in consciousness and in language only on the condition of being fundamentally inverted and falsified, reduced to what is common and average?”
Dan W Smith, Nietzsche and the Limits of Subjectivity: The Theory of the Drives
Hm.. Not sure that the last time we discussed it you had mentioned the "drives" matter. But I can't tell for sure. Just mention it cause there aren't much that I disagree with what you posted here from Dan Smith. And especially this, which I find it totally right :
"Quoting Joshs
At the end when I say "self awareness" of course that includes our understanding of our own drives and their contradictions.And that constant effort to rule over them by the power of Will, is what goes us further. Ruling over them is what grows us bigger, "transforms" us to Ubermensch.
We probably would if you are comfortable with postmodern readings of him.
As to state it better, imo, he saw Philosophy as the path, the methodology for the new "religion" that would be born.
As long as we keep in mind that Will to Power is itself a drive. As such it does not return to the ego a command over the will, as if the ego is only at the mercy of unconscious drives, but consciously rules
over them via will to power. Will to power is just as unconscious as all other drives. In fact, all drives are already drives for power. Our central Will to Power is just whatever particular drive happens to dominate the others at any given time.
Not so sure about that. We couldn't use it for our own benefit then, if it was unconscious or if it was mostly unconscious. And Nietzsche insisted that we could indeed use that tremendous Will. Making it a hammer as to sculp our Uber-versions.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Nietzsche writes that the intellect is merely the instrument of the drives:
The fact “that one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method. What is clearly the case is that in this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another drive which is a rival of the drive who vehemence is tormenting us….While ‘we' believe we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about the other; that is to say: for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence [or violence] of a drive presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is going to have to take sides.”(Daybreak)
In the Gay Science, Nietzsche considers the familiar example we have of becoming more reasonable, of “growing up.” “Something that you formerly loved as a truth or probability,” Nietzsche writes, “[now] strikes you as an error;” so you cast it off “and fancy that it represents a victory for your reason” (GS 307). But it is less a victory for reason, for your reason, than shift in the relations among the drives. “Perhaps this error was as necessary for you then,” Nietzsche continues, “when you were a different person—you are always a different person—as are all you present ‘truths'….What killed that opinion for you was your new life [that is, a new drive] and not your reason: you no longer need it, and now it collapses and unreason crawls out of it into the light like a worm. When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is, at least very often, evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm—something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet” (GS 307).
3 KSA 9:6[70], 1880, as cited in Parkes, p. 292 and p. 447, note 34
And that's all the "juice" for me.Our intellect is indeed capable of taking sides and decide which of our contradicted "drives" will preveal each time at the end.
For me that is the Will to Power that Nietzsche wanted to spread. The Will to gain Power over ourselves. The Will to drive our "drives" for our own growth.
I don't know what this means. Certainly not an experience like seeing the Grand Canyon which is there to be experienced. Perhaps like deja vu, which may be nothing more than the mind playing tricks on itself. Or Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, which was for him a profound experience but questionable with regard to whether it corresponds to anything other than what his mind has produced, a product of his imagination.
All experience is a lived experience. There is something ambiguous about such an experience. No doubt there is something that is experienced, but the experience of actually being on the moon is not the same as having an experience that one has been on the moon even though you have never been there.
Is this deciding in favor of growth on the part of the intellect a rational process?
Surely not totally but a part of it yes. And that's the only "part" we have a say on. The conscious part of that procedure .At unconscious level isn't much that we can do.
And our Will to Power and how strong it might be will decide how big that part could become. As to gain more and more control over ourselves.
The use of "inversions" is an odd feature of Nietzsche's work. He said that one should be careful about what one opposes because it gives the 'enemy' new life. The battle better be worth it.
The idea of eternal recurrence is at odds with the 'future of a species' vision. Each person will only be what they experience being themselves. So, what does it mean to insist upon that necessity while saying other things about the world?
The undeniable is strangely unsuited for any of the available jobs on offer.
Reminds me of Lord of the Rings. One ring to rule them all! What’s the point of this self-control? Why is it good or desirable?
What's the drive to rule in the drive to smoke?
And imagine before I was amazed that I actually believed that you appreciate Nietzsche.Even thought for a min that I might have misunderstood you. But oh boy, how could you? I should have known better. You were just exercising your favorite sport "trolling".Poor fool me.
Quoting praxis
None. Totally useless.Don't try it. Especially when you are home and alone!
Don’t have to be in full agreement or understanding to appreciate others in various ways. I’m sincerely curious about what you’ve been saying about drives and self-control. I guess it’s implied that you think self-control is desirable, that it’s good in some way, but it’s unclear what exactly the benefit is.
That is the salient question.
We already have some self control otherwise we would have been like most animals driven just by our instincts. So yes if we gain more self control that means we are able to have a bigger part of ourselves that we actually have a say on.
Unconscious, subconscious, drives, instincts etc, all these are parts that we can't do anything at all about them,and surely cannot be totally tamed. But the more we develop our self control(plus our self awareness) the more we get things on our hands.We have only a part that we can control and that's the conscious part. And even realizing our drives and what motivates them (as much as that is possible) has its significance also. So yeah I do find it extremely crucial as for us to be developed more.
With regard to the question you ask about whether Nietzsche was an atheist, people often assume that he was on the basis of how he spoke of God as being dead. However, Colin Wilson saw this as implying a specific atheism as mistaken and when I was reading Nietzsche initially I saw his writings as compatible with belief in God.
Colin Wilson argued,
'Nietzsche called himself an anti-Christ when he probably meant an Anti- Luther. Nietzsche's temperament was less devotional, more intellectual than Blake's; there is a fundamental similarity all the same, and it would be more accurate to regard Nietzsche as a Blakeian Christian...'
It may be hard to know to what extent Nietzsche really was an atheist or not because he didn't look at the arguments for and against God's existence on a metaphysical level. However, Nietzsche's name is often linked to the notion of atheism but it may not be that simple.
.
Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence doesn't have to be taken literally as it can be interpreted as a symbolic way of thinking about life. Life is part of cycles and, in a way, there are potential symbolic ways of seeing all the various possibilities of each moment, in each person's life.
It does seem that Nietzsche's idea of consciousness was about greater depth of knowledge and awareness, rather than about being governed by instincts and emotions blindly. His ideas came before the development of psychoanalysis, but, like Freud, a central aspect of his approach to life seems similar to Freud with an emphasis on the will to live as a driving force.
Do you know if Nietzsche actually looked at the God question? That is because from the reading which I have done, it doesn't seem particularly clear what he thought. However, theism and atheism were probably framed in a different way at the time because asking about the existence of God was less common place.
I agree even at the dots.
He's a pioneering anti-foundationalist - the question of god/s or not has no intrinsic meaning/value, it is but one of infinite possible perspectives (with no objective reality), which people hold in whatever value systems they adhere to. And by the way, I'm fairly sure FN would also have hated the current pop-atheists for their ostentatious foundational positioning of atheism and concomitant secularism and enlightenment values.
I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: it is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers — at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think! (Ecce Homo 'Why I Am So Clever' §1)
[quote=Ecce Homo]"God", "immortality of the soul", "redemption", "beyond" -- Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them?
I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers - at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think![/quote]
Quoting 180 Proof
Re: Freddy's "existential (or meta-psychological)" challenge ... which he suggests (later in TSZ) only 'Übermenchen' can/will endure:
[quote=The Gay Science (§341)]"The greatest weight -- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you [ ... ] Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"[/quote]
I think the question "if Nietzsche was atheist?" is same as asking if Sky is blue. If Nietzsche wasn't atheist then no one was/is.
Quoting 180 Proof
Nice.
Thanks for the quotes from 'Ecce Homo'. I thought that he had probably suggested his thoughts on the issue of existence of God somewhere in his writings.
My impression from FN calling eternal recurrence a doctrine is that he meant it to be an antidote to the idea of an eternal life that turns our time in this cosmos into a waiting room for death. In that context, it is sharply against seeing one's existence as a cycle through generations. Whatever we can give to future generations is only possible through what we give to ourselves as ourselves.
The waiting room for death is more nihilistic than the death of God as the judge of good and evil.
:up:
This fits in well with the motif of going up and down, ascent and descent, higher and lower. Rather than the movement from this world to the eternal heavenly afterword, the circular movement may be seen from one perspective as moving up but from another as moving down. There is no final resting point.
And neither is there any repetition of the past. In this sense the eternal return of the same is a misnomer. It is, fundamentally, the eternal return of difference.
In the section "The Vision and the Enigma" in Zarathustra:
I follow Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche:
“Repetition in the eternal return never means continuation, perpetuation or prolongation, nor even the discontinuous return of something which would at least be able to be prolonged in a partial cycle (an identity, an I, a Self) but, on the contrary, the reprise of pre-individual singularities which, in order that it can be grasped as repetition, presupposes the dissolution of all prior identities.”( Difference and Repetition)
Klossowski’s reading of Nietzsche was influential for both Deleuze and Heidegger:
“The way in which Dionysian Entriickung or rapture characterizes each phase of time and hence subverts every attempt to uncover a unified and stable horizon for time finds a parallel in Pierre Klossowski's interpretation of eternal return. Heidegger interprets the eternity of the moment as decision, understanding decision as the authentic appropriation of being-a-self. Yet if the self that thinks eternal return is a ceaseless going-over and going-under, how lucid can it be to itself?
Can anything like an "appropriation" occur in its thinking? Klossowski emphasizes the "ecstatic character" of Nietzsche's experience of eternal recurrence. The dilemma such an experience confronts us with is that it seems as if the thought can never have occurred to us before; the one who experiences eternal return appears to attain an insight that was hitherto closed to him or her. A forgetting and remembering, and anamnesis, thus appear to be "the very source and indispensable condition" of the thought of recurrence. Riddling at the riddle of how one can stand in the moment of recurrence each moment anew, Klossowski suggests that the ecstatic thinking of return must transform-if not abolish-the very identity of the thinker. " ...
I learn that I was other than I am now for having forgotten this truth, and thus I have become another by learning it. ... The accent must be placed on the loss of a given identity" . Not even the act of willing can salvage the ruined self: to will myself again implies that in all willing "nothing ever gets constituted in a single sense, once and for all". To will the eternal recurrence of the same is to don the masks of "a multitude of gods," the masks of Dionysos fragmented, "under the sign of the divine vicious circle" (102). Klossowski concludes as follows (I 07):
Re-willing is pure adherence to the vicious circle. To re-will the entire series one more time-to re-will every experience, all one's acts, but this time not as mine: it is precisely this possessiveness that no longer has any meaning, nor does it represent a goal. Meaning and goal are liquidated by the circlewhence the silence of Zarathustra, the interruption of his message. Unless
this interruption is a burst of laughter that bears all its own bitterness.”
Developed in what way and to what end? There are all sorts of wills, such as:
If will to power is the one will to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them), then just like in Lord of the Rings, will to power is the will that needs to be taken to the forge from whence it came, the fires of Mount Doom, and destroyed in order for us to be free. But, unlike Tolkien’s story, will to power is held to be the fountain of all life so to destroy it is to destroy life, and that would be rather counterproductive.
An aside - is the idea of a will to power an example of foundational thinking which FN purports to blow up?
It should be kept in mind that reading Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche is reading Deleuze not Nietzsche.
There is no end in development. It's a constant procedure.
Will to Power is one of the most debatable concepts about Nietzsche's ideas. That and the one of the "Eternal Return".There are many interpretations of what he actually supported . And one of the most" famous " one(the most laughable one also ) is what Nazis used.
Mine is that Will to Power refers to ourselves. To power over our drives. To become the absolute Creators of our New Self. A higher spiritual-intellectual self. That way, the" Ubermensch" won't even need to spend any effort to rule over anyone. Others would want to be "ruled" by him willingly. There is a good chance also though that he wouldn't even care to rule them or lead them or whatever. Again I repeat that's my interpretation of Nietzsche's Will to Power. I don't know for sure if it's the right one.
But for one thing I m sure indeed. That Nietzsche's Will to Power had absolutely nothing to do with nazism. That's really ridiculous for anyone who has read even just one book of Nietzsche. I wrote it again and I will keep writing it, Nietzsche would spit Hitler on the face.
Nietzsche himself had almost predicted it, in some way when he said : "I really get scared when I think about the things that some people would think that they understood from my words"
Everyone is reading Nietzsche through someone else , whether that someone is themselves or another philosopher. We never have access to the ‘real’ Nietzsche. I always prefer direct quotes to secondary sources, but it is also helpful to recognize whose Nietzsche you’re embracing, either knowingly or not. Having said that , I am not simply aping Deleuze. I had developed my reading of Nietzsche before I read Deleuze. I am quoting Deleuze because he articulates well my representation of Nietzsche.
So whose Nietzsche are you reading him through? The existentialists like Kaufman?
Rather it’s the futile eternal recurrence of a hamster wheel, right? No progress is possible.
Quoting dimosthenis9
It seems to me that the point of a higher spiritual-intellectual self and “power over our drives” is, in a word, liberation. This would require that we defy will to power rather than bend to it. But Nietzsche doesn’t want to do that and promotes an inegalitarian ideology.
Quoting Tom Storm
Given the above, I think it is.
It doesn’t have to be blown up. Will to Power is already self-immolating. Heidegger says "moving out beyond itself", the "opening up and supplementing" of possibilities belongs to the essence of the Will to Power.
“Everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering, dominating, and in their turn, overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated." (Geneology of Morality)
The problem is, at least from what you have provided, is that it does not solve the riddle of "The Vision and The Enigma". It does not respond to the question:
To deny it does not give us the reason why Nietzsche denies it, if in fact he does.
Perhaps a first step in solving the riddle is to identify it. What are we to make of this "crooked truth", this truth that is not true, that is, not straight? Zarathustra begins with a model of an eternal past and an eternal future running in opposite directions. The two roads come together in the moment but no one has yet gone to the end of them. He then asks if one could follow the road further and further would they still be antithetical. The spirit of gravity answers: all truth is crooked, time is a circle.
If no one has “yet” followed further and further for an eternity and more then no one knows that the roads form a circle. The first problem with this is the “yet”. There can be no yet if all has occurred before, or if it can be then it is not true that whatever will happen has happened. The second problem is that if time is a circle does it only move in one direction?
When he hears the dog howl he asks whether he had ever heard a dog howl like this and answered that he had in his youth. But when he sees the shepherd he says he had never seen this before. If it is true that everything that happens has already happened then it would be false to say that he had never seen this before. After biting the head of the snake off, the transfigured being who was no longer a shepherd and no longer a man, laughed as no man on earth had ever laughed.
Zarathustra poses the problems this parable, this enigma: who is it that must come some day? Who is the shepherd? He does not ask about the snake. Is it the snake that bites its own tail, completing the circle? Having bit off its head is the circle broken? Is the laugh that no man has ever laughed something new? Has the one who must someday come come before or is it something that has yet to happen?
The eternal return is a riddle. One key to reading that riddle the problem of creation. If all is eternal return then there can be no creation, but above all Zarathustra wants to create are creators.
You sound like you’re not certain what to make of Nietzsche, or at least his notion of the eternal return. So let me try and approach this discussion from the top down. Do you think that Nietzsche introduced revolutionary ideas , a ‘Copernican Revolution’, into philosophy with respect to predecessors like Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer? If so, what were his most radical ideas and why do they constitute a revolution? If not , what era or group of philosophers would you place him with?
This will give me a better sense of where you are approaching his work from.
I would go further and say that anyone who is certain does not understand it.
Quoting Joshs
Becoming without teleology. Perspectivism.
Quoting Joshs
My approach is to read him carefully, treating the text as a whole, under the assumption that it was carefully written as a whole. This means, that his style is integral. I take him to be a skeptic and ironist and so we need to put things together in order to make sense of the whole, that what he seems to be saying should not simply be taken at face value and that he can be deliberately misleading.
The topic of will does incorporate various meanings. It goes back to the idea of voluntarism which goes back to Kant. Schopenhauer on will is also important. However, there is a big debate over will in relation to the intellect. Here, the issue of will in relation to pleasure vs intellect is particularly important. I guess that the nature of the self is also important too, especially in the idea of ego in mediating the various aspects of will, ranging from truth, pleasure and meaning. The idea of ego is mostly associated with psychoanalysis nowadays but Nietzsche's ideas come prior to that. However, it is likely that the idea of will is sometimes vague in philosophy and psychology. The idea of 'will to power' may be extremely vague and that may be the basic problem which arises when trying to interpret his understanding of human motivation.
Quoting Fooloso4
Heidegger follows Nietzsche’s thought of eternal return from Zarathustra through his last writings and concludes that will to power , eternal return and transvaluation of value form an integrated configuration:
“…will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recurrence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power.” (Nietzsche Vol I and II)
“The "momentary" character of creation is the essence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its supreme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence of the same.
The aptness of our interpretation is demonstrated unequivocally in that very fragment which bears the title "Recapitulation." After the statement we have already cited-"To stamp Becoming with the character of Being-that is the supreme will to power''-we soon read the
following sentence: "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of Becoming to one of Being: peak of the meditation." It would scarcely be possible to say in a more lucid fashion, first, how and on what basis the stamping of Being on Becoming is meant to be
understood, and second, that the thought of eternal return of the same, even and precisely during the period when the thought of will to power appears to attain preeminence, remains the thought which Nietzsche's
philosophy thinks without cease. “
"Art is life's metaphysical activity." (Will to Power; forget what section).
Nietzsche was one of the few philosophers, with Hegel, who actually understood what art is. He said an aesthetics of production is needed because people only talk about the aesthetics of reception.
What does that mean?
Making art is different from looking at it. Most aesthetics is about the finished product and ideas of beauty. Making art is more about making meaning. The artist is not trying to make a beautiful object, but produce something that says something about how the world is.
Really? Contemporary cognitive neuroscience agrees with embodied cognition / enactivism in the philosophy of mind:
[quote=Spinoza]Will and intellect are one and the same thing.[/quote]
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ce.4.2.07mor
[quote=Nietzsche]The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey.[/quote]
Art for art’s sake, if that’s your meaning, predates FN.
Absolutely not. Just the opposite.
What you mean or the history? Please elaborate either way.
The aesthetics of production has nothing to do with art for art sake. Like I said, it is about meaning and the production of meaning.
Quoting praxis
Here’s one source. Sounds like it relies on formalistic notions of art as aesthetic object. For Nietzsche the art would be in the creative act, not the formal properties of the object.
“Taken from the French, the term "l'art pour l'art," (Art for Art's Sake) expresses the idea that art has an inherent value independent of its subject-matter, or of any social, political, or ethical significance. By contrast, art should be judged purely on its own terms: according to whether or not it is beautiful, capable of inducing ecstasy or revery in the viewer through its formal qualities (its use of line, color, pattern, and so on). The concept became a rallying cry across nineteenth-century Britain and France, partly as a reaction against the stifling moralism of much academic art and wider society, with the writer Oscar Wilde perhaps its most famous champion. Although the phrase has been little used since the early twentieth century, its legacy lived on in many twentieth-century ideas concerning the autonomy of art, notably in various strains of formalism.”
“The creating of possibilities for the will on the basis of which the will to power first frees itself to itself is for Nietzsche the essence of art. In keeping with this metaphysical concept, Nietzsche does not think under the heading "art" solely or even primarily of the aesthetic realm of the artist. Art is the essence
of all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of them.”(Heidegger, The Word of Nietzsche).
I just don’t see how this is in any way a radical idea.
Well, look at most aesthetics today and it is mostly Kantian--the oppposite of Nietzsche.
And I don't think any philosopher in history is "radical" in so far as they build on previous work.
I dont know about that. Of course there is always a history to be referred back to , but philosophy is transformative rather than cumulative.
I would never use the word "radical" to describe any philosopher.
Who would you use it for? A scientist? Technologist? Political theorist? Are radical politics not really radical? Are Kuhn’s scientific revolutions revolutionary without being radical?
In all seriousness, the only people talking about "radical" are conservatives. Not that you are conservative, but the term seems to be pejorative. Or, that a thinker's ideas are so original that they are named radical. But this seems to be more from the popular mind.
But the term ‘revolutionary’ is still quite
commonly used in science and philosophy. Is this different from ‘radical’?
What philosophers do you call revolutionary?
Quoting Jackson
Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, for starters.
Sure, no problem.
But I'll take Hume over Kant. Kant is more influential in analytic philosophy, but I think Hume is correct and refutes Kant. Kant just normalizes the conventions of science.
I know that Spinoza says that will and the intellect are the same thing, but I am not sure that it is as simple in practice. Philosophy and psychology may emphasise the rational, but I still wonder whether in daily life rationality is as powerful as many would like to believe, or how much of human life is often driven by irrational aspects of human motivation. Cognitive behavioral therapy and reflection may help, but they may not be the norm. Perhaps, human beings have a long way to go in reaching the idea of 'superman' yet.
All major figures in Continental philosophy since 1800 are Kantian in a certain sense, and generally acknowledge that fact
Maybe. But Hegel is at least as influential.
An interesting counterpoint to Spinoza cancelling the notion of will as ether a prerogative of the divine or what individuals do is that he places much value in being less stupid as an agent of change in the world.
The idea that art is about production goes back to Aristotle:
"Now action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of
things also is so. Thus if a house, e.g., had been a thing made by nature, it would
have been made in the same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature
were made not only by nature but also by art, they would come to be in the same
way as by nature. The one, then, is for the sake of the other; and generally art in
some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates
nature." (Aristotle, Physics; 199a9-19)
Notice, "art...completes what nature cannot bring to a finish."
I have just looked at the link because I didn't notice it before. It is an interesting. I suppose this may be where psychiatry comes into the picture of posthumanist possibilities, because there are ways to fix the human emotions. I would like to read Damasco's ideas further because the philosophy of mind does raise the issue of volition and how much is physical and how much is the brain, because emotions are at the interface between mind and body.
The will may be hard to pin down here because it is connected to the physical brain and deeper aspects of concepts arising in human thought or culture. Taking this back to the cultural elements, even the concept of the 'superman' or 'overman' is bound up with the construction of what the highest evolutionary possibilities are, and what is practically or morally desirable from specific viewpoints.
:up:
I was never good with Greek riddles.
Maybe the meaning is that art is the creative act? If so, I’ll point out that creativity isn’t exclusive to art production, and also that art can be reproduced without creativity.
Riddle? Just say you did not understand it.
:grin: I thought that’s what I did say. No help?
Sorry, my mistake. I posted that passage to show that Aristotle's idea of art is treat it as producing things. Not just entertainment.
Nietzsche famously proclaimed that “only as an aesthetic phenomenon is existence and the world eternally justified.”
I suppose this was revolutionary thinking back in the old-timey days of the nineteenth century.
Will you people writing constant insults please get some manners!
Still is, at least the way Nietzsche meant it.
It's nothing new this day and age, is what I meant.
How do you think Nietzsche intended this?
Aesthetics to counteract rationalization in society, essentially.
How would this work? Does Netflix count? :groan:
Quoting Jackson
Given his training as a philologist it seems likely than Nietzsche make the connection with the etymological meaning of aesthetic, to perceive, although no passage comes to mind in support of this. Perception is an act of will. That is, not simply what is passively given or received, but what is made, a creative act.
I cannot remember the section, I thought it was Will to Power. But he explicitly makes a distinction between the aesthetics of making art and reception of art.
“Schopenhauer made use of the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem, – although he definitely did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant intended to pay art a tribute when he singled out from the qualities of beauty those which constitute the glory of knowledge: impersonality and universality. Whether or not this was essentially a mistake is not what I am dealing with here; all I want to underline is that Kant, like all philosophers, just considered art and beauty from the position of ‘spectator',instead of viewing the aesthetic problem through the experiences of the artist (the creator), and thus inadvertently introduced the ‘spectator'himself into the concept ‘beautiful'.” (Genealogy of Morality, third essay)
Yeah, pretty good. I have been a practicing artist (painter) about 30 years and find Kant completely idiotic when he talks about art.
Do you think Nietzsche’s ideas as a whole have been absorbed, at least by most atheistic thinkers?
Well, we are 230 years removed from the 1790’s. Our best contemporary philosophy will probably look as idiotic a couple of centuries from now.
No, I mean Kant was wrong when he wrote it. He barely mentions art works at all. Analytic aesthetics today still follows Kant.
This may be the section I was thinking about:
"3. the compulsion to imitate:
This is what distinguishes the artist from laymen (those susceptible to art): the latter reach the high. point of their susceptibility when they receive; the former as they give-so that an antagonism between these two gifts is not only natural but desirable. The perspectives of these two states are opposite: to
demand of the artist that he should practice the perspective of the audience (of the critic-) means to demand that he should impoverish himself and his creative power. Our aesthetics hitherto has been a woman's aestheticsto the extent that only the receivers of art have formulated their experience of "what is beautiful?" In all philosophy hitherto the artist is lacking."(Will to Power; #811)
It doesn’t, but in theory it would be a movement away from materialistic rationalization (efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control) and towards well-being and meaning, but not capital M Meaning, because as the Neitch infamously said, God is dead.
Are you familiar with the work of art critic Clement Greenberg, a promoter of abstract expressionism? I believe he was a Kantian. It’s interesting that certain formalist tendencies of the modernist period of art seem to be amenable to analysis in Kantian terms.Then Arthur Danto came along and replaced the Kantian approach with a Hegelian interpretation, which he applied to Warhol and pop art.
I sincerely hope not.
Yes, familiar. I have met Kantian art critics. They really have no idea what artists are actually doing.
That explains why you think he’s unoriginal
What are the attributes of a Kantian art critic?
Formalism. They treat the art object as a physical object and try to derive properties from it.
Disinterest. They get art exactly backwards--it is because we are interested in the world that meaning comes about. Not despite it.
Universal judgment. They think 'subjectivity' is wrong and we must strive to universalize our judgments. Why should a work of art appeal to everybody?!
Beauty is fairly meaningless. Any beauty comes from content; there is no formal beauty.
??? I never said he was unoriginal.
Quoting praxis
You said his theory of art was unoriginal, and his theory of art is derived from his main thesis, Will to Power.
Quoting praxis
Quoting praxis
I still don’t know what his theory of art is. Can you explain it?
Regarding aesthetics, people have been having sublime aesthetic experiences and transcending the duality of good and evil for thousands of years.
One can’t understand his theory of art without first understanding his larger philosophical project, becuase the two are co-determinative.
Quoting praxis
You said you sincerely hope his ideas have not been absorbed by today’s atheistic thinkers, which implies that you have an understanding of his philosophy of Will to Power. Can you summarize what it consists of?
I’m skeptical if even the Neitch himself could do that to everyone’s satisfaction. I also suspect that may be by design.
Quoting Joshs
Of course art is related to aesthetics but we’re really talking about aesthetics, right?