Ape, Man and Superman (and Superduperman)
[quote=Zarathustra] All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.[/quote]
Nietzsche's notion of the Superman has been a point of contention and confusion.
To my lights, this iconic passage from Zarathustra offers a non-complex picture of the Superman as envisioned by the author.
It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman.
(... And, of course, from Superman to Superduperman - a vision eternally projectable into the future.)
I've heard folks say that a figure like Napoleon ought to be considered, as it were, Supermanly. The passage above indicates an altogether different vision. As an ape can never be a man, a man can never be a Superman.
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.[/quote]
Nietzsche's notion of the Superman has been a point of contention and confusion.
To my lights, this iconic passage from Zarathustra offers a non-complex picture of the Superman as envisioned by the author.
It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman.
(... And, of course, from Superman to Superduperman - a vision eternally projectable into the future.)
I've heard folks say that a figure like Napoleon ought to be considered, as it were, Supermanly. The passage above indicates an altogether different vision. As an ape can never be a man, a man can never be a Superman.
Comments (135)
It's most likely that the superman will be a computer. Someday people will be transferring their conscious thought patterns into man-made devices. It allows us more room for more experiences and memories. It would allow us to tweak the threshold of happiness. For example, we could taste food without the limit of a stomach that fills up and makes us feel sick.
I don't envy the generation that finally "sets itself free" with technology. There will be endless intense debates about what a human should and shouldn't be. Things will spin out of control quickly as we dope ourselves up on the very best kinds of human experience. It will have the same eerie happiness as an opium den.
Eventually AI will make human anatomy an evolutionary dead end.
Then it wouldn't be a superman. It would be a supercomputer as opposed to just computers, which is what you are using right now.
Maybe superman would be more of a merging of biology and technology. In effect, cyborgs would be superhuman.
Yes, that is exactly the problem; and why so much debate will arise. Humans have always been defined as something that exists independently without the meddling from humans themselves. If we decide to give ourselves ten eyes instead of two, then can the result still be called a human? You could argue that humanity will intentionally design their own extinction. Because they thought of something that seems better. Something we want to replace ourselves with.
But that is also inside the bounds of human nature; to use tools and seek better solutions to our existence. So you could also argue that following the natural path of human nature will always eventually lead to abandoning the human body. Which one is more important? Human intention or the human body? Is survival of human-intent alone still human-enough to be called a person?
Richard Maurice Bucke said that the 'superman' was exemplified in those beings who had broken through into cosmic consciousness, 'as far above normal human consciousness as ours is above beasts.' Whereas Nietszche's Ubermensch was characterised wholly and solely by the will to power. It's hard to see how this wouldn't morph into fascism, although Nietszche's many defenders never seem willing to acknowledge that.
Really? Do you think Jane Goodall would agree?
There remains something fundamentally egregious in Nietzsche.
He's a monster. No question. But with moments of mad illumination. Like Isaiah; like any prophet: Utopian visions breed "the greatest thing ye can experience"..."the hour of great contempt."
"The hour of great contempt" - turned inward to self - opens vistas to a higher, less contemptible, self - for those humble and daring enough to risk the ascent.
His call to wage war against "self-complacency" is far from monstrous: This is his moment of mystical insight, his holy grail sorely won from the ghouls of the underworld:
[quote=Zarathustra]What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!—[/quote]
His vision of transcended self-complacency, of feverish vitality (a life inoculated with lightning) is key to seeing beyond the monster. We have so much to learn from this monster.
Again, humility* is key: Those who have never found themselves contemptible can find no way into Nietzsche's invigorating pearls.
*Not to say Nietzsche was a humble man. But it's obvious he was versed in the Utopianist's self-contempt.
No, I don't.
But [I]I[/i] agree: set beside humankind - "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! ...in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" - the ape is a laughingstock and a thing of shame.
Key to note that Nietzsche immediately clarifies this point by saying:
[quote=Zarathustra]Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.[/quote]
So Nietzsche doesn't precisely mean Goodall's apes. There's some abstractifying going on. He's pointing to something like our degressive tendency to self-complacency: an anti-evolutionary languor.
As with Wittgenstein, it's important not to take in Nietzsche via aphorisms.
A bit of an exaggeration. In the opening pages of Zarathustra - to my view, Nietzsche's purest moment of visionary insight - the Superman is set out as evolution's aim: from worm to ape to man to Superman.
[quote=Zarathustra] Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH... [/quote]
The will to evolutionary ascent.
Come on. You can’t be serious.
Dead serious. A monster:
[quote=Nietzsche - The Antichrist]The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak— [/quote]
Well, certainly there's nothing impressive about a dog being a dog.
I see you snuck in the word "resist" alongside "transcend." A self-resistant (if you like) or self-transcendent dog - say, a dog who, instead of chewing a bone, attempted an exegesis of Hegel - would be impressive indeed. A Disney or Grimm dog here on Earth.
That aside: Nietzsche seems to have in mind a kind of vital orthogenesis along the lines of Bergson and possibly Lamarck. A bit out of my depth here.
[quote=Wiki on Bergson's Creative Evolution]"The book proposed a version of orthogenesis in place of Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse." [/quote]
[quote=Wiki on Lamarck]He saw evolution as comprising four laws:[12][13]
"Life by its own force, tends to increase the volume of all organs which possess the force of life, and the force of life extends the dimensions of those parts up to an extent that those parts bring to themselves;"
"The production of a new organ in an animal body, results from a new requirement arising. and which continues to make itself felt, and a new movement which that requirement gives birth to, and its upkeep/maintenance;"
"The development of the organs, and their ability, are constantly a result of the use of those organs."
"All that has been acquired, traced, or changed, in the physiology of individuals, during their life, is conserved through the genesis, reproduction, and transmitted to new individuals who are related to those who have undergone those changes."[/quote]
As misguided as Nietzsche-qua-Zarathustra's vision of evolution may have been, his soapbox war on self-complacency - his invocation to Earth-devotion and self-overcoming* - is useful as a source of inspiration for any worm, ape or human envisioning, and assaying to be, more.
Even monsters get a day in the sun.
*His call to self-overcoming always linked him, in my mind, to John the Revelator. A parallel to make the man emete:
[quote=John the Revelator]To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.[/quote]
The fruit of the tree of life is a bit like an inoculation of lightning.
That's what I'm talking about!
Everyone wants to be an übermensch! It is, truth be told, an irresistable impulse! To deny/reject is a bigger deal than to indulge in it.
But that, it could be argued, is just another form of self-overcoming. What do you think?
Indeed, but I wouldn't consider following the herd an übermenschen quality (we're all wannabe supermen). Transcendence! We must leave our humanness behind and what is more that than desiring for transcendence! It's quite a puzzle this (reminds me of dialectical materialism - the negation of the negation).
was it you I was talking to about Afrikan Spir's book?
He’s often deliberately provocative. Plenty of interesting things to say about pity.
Also, I agree with him. If you read this as “kill off all the Jews” or something to that affect, that’s your preference. That’s not how I read it.
Nope, never heard of it. Is it a good one?
I miss the Na'vi - did you design your new avatar? Pretty sweet.
I suppose an (over-) charitable interpretation could downplay that - but to my view, there's no reason not to take him literally here. Do you see a reason not to?
Quoting karl stone
I see him as passionately reactionary. I don't think he had the old tribes in mind. More what he saw as an animalesque devolution or slothful self-satisfaction in the ape-men (as he saw it) that were his compatriots. One of the burdens of genius, to be profoundly disappointed with humankind.
Monstrous.
If that wasn't what he felt he should have been more careful with his rhetoric - it can definitely be read that way and it lines up with his views in general.
Possibly everyone on this forum wants it. We all seem to want to improve our minds.
But it's a leap of false charity to say everyone wants it. I've been in close proximity to the uneducated, uninterested, uninspired a good part of my life. The Superman is the furthest thing from their minds.
How do you read it and what is your justification for a non-literal reading?
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
In ‘Who is Zarathustra’s Ape?’, Peter Groff argues that
Nietzsche’s model of nature was not a Darwinian evolutionary position, and that he used the word ‘ape’ to refer not to a primate but to an approach to
thinking, the mimicking or ‘ apeing’ of ideas.
“Nietzsche writes: “No animal is as much ape as the human being.” The human being is more ape than any ape because so much of what it is and does is rooted in superficial imitation.”
Concerning your quote , he says:
First let us note an obvious fact that misled many of Zarathustra’s earliest readers: Nietzsche is in this passage exploiting Darwin’s popularly caricatured, but still scandalous, insight into the human being’s evolutionary descent from primates. Partly as a result of this, Nietzsche has been often been cast as a Darwinian thinker, a misunderstanding that has since for the most part been dispelled.
If anything, contemporary readers emphasize his opposition to Darwinian conceptions of life. But although Nietzsche attempted to distance himself from the famed English naturalist on a number of philosophical points—and indeed, could not countenance Darwinian interpretations of the Übermensch (EH “Books” 1)—he nonetheless gladly appropriated Darwin’s overall evolutionary model, along with its more radical implications. These are: (1) that biological nature has a history; (2) that the human being can no longer be understood as essentially other than nature (but rather as a product of chance and necessity, like any other natural organism); and (3) that the deeply entrenched prejudice of human superiority with regard to other species no longer has any legitimate purchase, at least as traditionally conceived.”
“The following passage from the Antichrist(ian)
summarizes this aspect of his naturalism most economically:
We have learned differently. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive the human being from “the spirit” or “the deity”; we have placed
him back among the animals. We consider him the strongest animal because he is the most cunning: his spirituality is a consequence of this. On the other hand, we oppose the vanity that would raise its head again here too—as if the human being had been the great hidden purpose of the evolution of animals. The human being is by no means the crown of creation: every living being stands beside him on the same level of perfection. And even this is saying too much: relatively speaking, the human being is the most bungled of all the animals, the sickliest, and not one has strayed more dangerously from its instincts. But for all that, he is of course the most interesting. (A 14; cf. GM 111:25)
“The human being as a species does not represent any progress compared with any other animal. The whole animal and vegetable kingdom does not evolve from the lower to the higher—but all at the same time, in utter disorder, over and against each other.”
https://philarchive.org/archive/GROWIZ
Found it googling 'wayfarer'.
Never understand the pull of Nietszche. My view is that if mankind is unable to acknowledge their difference from and separation from nature, they are unable to take responsibility for their situation and condition.
I don't care much for him either - I admire a few passages from Zarathustra.
It makes sense that young people and disaffected folk really love him. He's so dazzlingly iconoclastic, with vicious and sparkling prose even in translation (Kauffmann). Personally I find him unappealing and have yet to finish any of his works. I am not really philosophically inclined.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know you're talking more in contemplative terms, but isn't it generally argued that it is precisely this separation and our failure to recognize our unity with nature that has resulted in us screwing the environment as just some 'other' to be dominated and exploited?
Yes, and also the "will to power" is grossly misunderstood by those who have never actually studied Nietzsche. It does not signify power over others, but power over the self, in order to reach one's fullest potential. I think it would be less misleadingly termed "the will to empowerment".
Good to hear from you.
If you have time I'd love to have a reference. I've read a lot of Nietszche but it's been awhile.
Will to Power is Nietzsche's best work.
I concure.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Indeed; spouting delusive mistruths.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
Of course not, the anachronism is obvious. Few are those who have heard Goodall yet still think of apes as "A laughing-stock, a thing of shame". That you count yourself amongst them is sad. Nietzsche's analogy ought no longer hold sway given our better understanding of the humanity of the great apes. The implicit acceptance of the teleological misunderstanding of evolution underpinning that analogy adds to the delusion.
Philosophy for adolescents.
As usual, you respond via your agenda and not to what I wrote. Take care.
If you had an ounce of humility you would have a pound of self-contempt.
Putting this into the greater context of his writings, I take Neitzche's superman to be a rationally advanced person who rejects the slave morality of Christianity and derives his morality from this world. The need for such people arises from the death of God, who previously served as the central locus of morality.
The ape quote I take as metaphor, to illustrate the dramatic distinction between a person still adhering to the slave morality and the person who has risen above good and evil, as it were.
I do not read this quote to suggest humanity is in a literal state of continued genetic evolution or even that there is a superman ideal we all strive to emulate. To become a superman, as far I can tell, occurs from a pure act of the will based upon a heightened adherence to rationality and rejection of God. That is, you desire it and you do it.
Zarathustra hasn't held my sustained interest because I don't think much of Nietzsche as a poet. My understanding of what he means by "will to power" is a synthetic understanding gained by reading him over the years, and I don't have a specific reference ready to hand to support my interpretation. Do you have any references that speak against my reading?
Quoting Jackson
Will to Power was not published by Nietzsche, but was compiled from his notes, notes which it is arguable he never intended to publish, by his sister, I think posthumously, but I'm not sure and can't be bothered looking it up.
You are correct.
The popular view is that the Bible promisses to give man dominion over the earth and that Western culture has exploited that to ransack the planet. But I don't know how much of that is actually preshadowed in the Bible. It was Frances Bacon, one of the forefathers of modern science, who talked of 'putting nature to the rack to reveal her secrets'. That nowadays combines with the generally (and even hysterically) anti-Christian narrative that is predominant in popular culture. Christianity is associated with patrimonial hierarchy where environmental green left politics exalts diversity and equality.
Hence the reverence that is now expressed for first nations peoples and the natural environment. Of course it's a good thing to revere nature and to develop sustainable economics and to treat first nations peoples respectfully. But I wonder if the underlying motivation is that 'nature', and the kind of Rousseavian noble-savage mythology sorrounding first nations peoples is a kind of displaced religiosity. They collectively represent 'The Primordial' - the pure, the unconditioned, the unsullied. Nature has rushed into the vacuum left by the collapse of religion. I suppose the natural wilderness has always been associated with purity, but now its become the literal image of it.
I noticed in studying Eastern philosophies and non-dualism the centrality of the idea of 'separation', 'alienation', and 'apartness' which is at the root of the human condition. The meaning of non-duality is in the overcoming of the sense of otherness or separateness - which requires a complete change of outlook, a different way of life, a true 'metanoia'. In Christian culture that is the original motivation for compassion towards the poor and outcaste, and the sense of Christian fellowship - that 'we are all one in Christ' (Gal 3:28).
But actually going out into nature or living in the wilderness is plainly an impracticality - the overwhelming demographic trend is towards urbanisation. Now the idea of nature has become a substitute for God in secular culture (or one of them.) But it's a mirage, insofar as you're 'one with nature' then you're on your way to becoming compost, same as everything else that lives. A Christian would say that the real source of immortality, the spirit that gives life, is not to be found in the worship of nature.
As far as evolution is concerned, I'm probably inclined to accept an orthogenetic approach - that the existence of life is not 'a fluke', the outcome of the 'accidental collocation of atoms'. I see the existence of life as the realisation of horizons of meaning that could never develop in its absence. We're part of the cosmic story. And the impulse to say that 'we're no different to animals' is to evade the responsibility that this brings.
Quoting Janus
But Nietszche doesn't recognise anything spiritual. I don't think he understands it at all. What kind of 'empowerment' could he envisage, other than political power, the domination of the strong over the weak? The religious cultures that he abjurs depict fulfillment in terms of divine union or transcending the self, but there's nothing that can be mapped against that in Nietszche's philosophy as there's nothing beyond the ego. Is there?
A facile characterization of a great, but admittedly flawed, thinker. (And who isn't flawed)? Let him cast the first stone...
Nietzsche bothers those who never read him.
That's dead wrong. He doesn't recognize anything transcendent might be more to the point.
Where does Nietzsche talk about spirituality?
...and predictably the adolescents pile on, with nothing worthwhile to say.
No need for personal attacks. All I said was Will To Power was his best work.
People mistake the fact Nietzsche was a good writer with him not being a good philosopher.
So what's the diff? Anyway, I'm not arguing the case, it's a supreme irony that Nietszche of all people has now assumed the status of Sacred Cow.
Then go away.
He's a complicated man, certainly not pure evil, but has said things I'm comfortable with calling evil.
It would take a truckload of charity not to call the above an evil thing to say, an evil teaching.
Quoting Jackson
Nietzsche is constantly alluding to, if not unequivocally speaking about, the human spirit and realization of human potential; that is what his philosophy is all about.
Quoting Wayfarer
You think your transcendentalist conception of spirituality is the one true definition of spirituality? (Speaking of transcendentalists, Nietzsche greatly admired Emerson. He also admired Christ; but Christianity not so much).
"Caesar with the soul of Christ."
I agree, but I think much of what he says is driven by the desire to provoke and shock. Remember this well-known reported incident, which if accurate shows that he did not lack compassion: when in Turin he witnessed a man beating a horse, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck, tears streaming from his eyes, and then collapsed onto the ground.
Quoting Jackson
I think for Nietzsche ethics is an aesthetic matter, and he saw great human beings as possessing the largeness of soul to allow them to be compassionate. Cruelty and indifference to suffering is not beautiful or admirable, and shows smallness of soul; so my personal opinion (and it is only that) is that Nietzsche was not an evil man, or an anti-Semite, or a Nazi, and so on with the other facile caricatures.
Yep, he's a shock jock; yep, the horse scene.
I agree. I don't see Neitzche as evil or simplistic. I see his criticisms of traditional ethics as presenting significant challenges to it and I think he points out the consequences of the declaration of God's death.
Here is my reply to the OP, again, for the simple-minded klutzes amongst you: Apes are no longer merely objects for amusement, except amongst the ill-informed or childish.
Hence to claim that quote as the "iconic passage from Zarathustra" suits my prejudices well; Zarathustra is a condolence for inadequate juveniles, something to be transcended as one reaches towards adulthood.
The ubermensch is your father, Luke.
(...this is fun...)
It's a hyperbolic criticism to an exaggerated interpretation of the virtue of meekness within Christianity.
Opening of Will to Power talks about the coming of European nihilism. That truth as a function of subjectivity was coming to an end.
Share with me that quote. The subjective nature of truth seems critical to Christianity, so it would make sense that he sees its destruction imminent.
Not a quote. Nietzsche is explaining that as values went from being objective properties of the world to subjective judgments, values themselves looked arbitrary.
I wonder what is the evidence that there is much difference to culture between alleged nihilism and Christianity? It's not like Europe under centuries of Christianity wasn't free of abusive power, endless and bloody wars, poverty, hatred, tribalism and general misery brought about by ignorance and ideology.
The ape might well have been a common representative figure for what might have been considered to be stupid, low, a joke and so on in Nietzsche's day, but his use of the ape as a symbol for such is not at all relevant to how the apes are seen today, nor is how we see apes today at all relevant to Nietzsche's usage. Ever heard of anachronism?
30 (Nov. 1887-March 1888; rev. 1888)
The time has come when we have to pay for having been
Christians for two thousand years: we are losing the center of
gravity by virtue of which we lived; We are lost for a while.
Abruptly we plunge into the opposite valuations, with all the
energy that such an extreme overvaluation of man has generated
in man.
Now everything is false through and through, mere "words'
chaotic, weak, or extravagant:
http://www.newforestcentre.info/uploads/7/5/7/2/7572906/nietzsche_-_the_will_to_power.pdf
It can be interpreted that way. I call it a truckload of charity. If [I]I[/i] said it, I think you would call it an evil thing to say.
If you'd ever had a single moment of self-illumination you might have some idea what you're talking about.
Well, yes, indeed, that is what I have been arguing: we grew out of it. If it is the "iconic passage from Zarathustra", so much the worse for Nietzsche's fatuous fatidic alter-ego.
I have, and I do. It's a shame you've missed it.
You chose a particularly poor quote for your OP. That's down to you, not I.
The trope represents the notion of reaching a greater potential than it is commonly believed we are capable of. The symbols Nietzsche used are not suited to our time, to be sure, but the underlying idea is relevant.
Your unthinking prejudice is so pungent I can smell it coming to me through the ether.
Your objection is silly, as if you're so offended on behalf of the apes that they might have been used to describe a less advanced man so much so that you can't move beyond it and address the substance of the quote.
But power exhausts itself in what it takes power over and is replaced by a new trajectory of will to power.A given Will to power cannot be separated from the value system that it posits, and that is serially overcome by a wholly different value system ad infinitum( eternal return of the same). This is different from a ‘growth’ oriented notion of empowerment and optimal potential.
In ‘Who is Zarathustra’s Ape?’, Peter Groff argues that
Nietzsche’s model of nature was not a Darwinian evolutionary position, and that he used the word ‘ape’ to refer not to a primate but to an approach to thinking, the mimicking or ‘ apeing’ of ideas.
“Nietzsche writes: “No animal is as much ape as the human being.” The human being is more ape than any ape because so much of what it is and does is rooted in superficial imitation.”
https://philarchive.org/archive/GROWIZ
At the center of Nietzsche’s philosophy was a critique of ‘rationality’. Reason to Nietzsche was nothing but a product of the oppositional relation of the affective drives to each other. The superman doesn’t master these drives with reason. On the contrary , he embraces and encourages the overcoming of reason through the creative becoming that the clash of drives fosters.
No one who has would denigrate the prophets.
Quoting Banno
I'll take your word for it. To my lights you have no idea what you're talking about. I don't throw that phrase around carelessly.
Maybe go back to defending direct realism year after year after year - like a record player that needs a kick.
For Nietzsche power doesn’t control , it is both dominating and dominated , within the same psyche. The ‘ego’ or self does not rule , it is a community of drives in tension with each other. The strong for Nietzsche overcomes itself , displaces itself , transforms itself. Its strength is in reinvention, not holding onto some self-constant value system.This is the polar opposite of fascism, which desires the forcible institution of fixed values. For Nietzsche there is nothing beyond the relation of drives, and that means plenty beyond the ego.
“… 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)…”
The underlying idea? That the bungled and the botched are to be the objects of derision? That's not a sentiment that deserves sympathy. That's the attitude adopted by Putin's soldiers, and the eighteen-year old "well regulated Militia" as they storm the classrooms of America.
There is a reading of Nietzsche that involves becoming a better individual. There is also a reading of Nietzsche that leads to the diabolical treatment of others. The fan-boy adoration evident in some here ends in Belsen. If one would have a balanced view, then one ought acknowledge this.
You incapacity to actually address the criticism is telling; instead you hide behind misfiring insults. There is a truth in Russell's admonishment of Nietzsche that ought be acknowledged. Instead we have grovelling apologists.
You should be thanking me for making your pitiful thread even vaguely amusing. Even this throw-away comment will add pages.
I think it’s monstrous to want the weak and botched to thrive at the expense of everyone else.
He’s talking about values, and is usually figurative. If you read this as “kill all the disabled people” or something— no I don’t think that’s accurate. Nietzsche himself was sick most of his life.
From the excerpts you provide in your post, it looks like Nietzche was mostly interested in how Darwinism knocks off humanity from the pedestal it had put itself on. Humans were no longer special in the living world, made in the image of God as some like to put it. We were just another animal, an ape to be precise, and we had to come to terms with that fact; a hard pill to swallow for some, but for others a piece of cake. In essence Nietzsche was putting his own weight behind the Copernican revolution of the 16[sup]th[/sup] century.
If you had read what I wrote instead of jumping in half-cocked you would know I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
:up:
Agreed.
Where do you see that happening?
Again, he says: One should help the botched and weak to perish.
If you have a specific justification for a figurative reading, I'm all ears.
As to who we should understand the botched and weak to be... If it's some set of human beings - no matter how numerically insignificant a set - then this is an evil teaching.
I read what you wrote; you praise with faint damnation.
Right. Hold fast to your agenda.
It's a poet's praise for what I consider a great and beautiful - world-illuminating - inspiring and invigorating - passage of poetry. Not all of Zarathustra, just my cherry-pickings.
You were piqued by it and mistook it for praise for Nietszche. I never once praised the man.
As to your issues with the ape trope, the others have explained it well enough: you're just playing the purist to satisfy an agenda.
Why?
Pedophiles, rapists, murderers. They’re a set of human beings. They seem the botched and weak to me. Doesn’t seem evil to help them perish.
But Nietzsche can be interpreted any way you like. He’s been blamed for the Nazis and for everything else under the sun. Not without some reason, of course. But given he’s intentionally being contrarian and provocative, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
I think his emphasis on values is still relevant.
Your specific justification for a figurative reading?...
It seems evil to me.
Indeed, it is cold and wet outside and you are but my playthings. You may thus console yourself.
I agree with this: a revaluation of all values is a perennial necessity.
Into what, exactly? With the abolition of the celestial hierarchy there's nothing to be transformed into, except maybe a more intelligent (or should we say 'craftier') ape.
Has a Nietzschean ring to it. Or is that Machiavelli?
At any rate, your good-faith/bad-faith shtick is far more adolescent than the provocations of Nietzsche and adorers. No wonder if the bulk of your close relations are forum avatars.
Rather, in self-illumination, vitality, wakefulness, focused vituperance, wisdom and energy.
[quote=William Blake] Energy is Eternal Delight. [/quote]
You even had to borrow your insults from me.
Sitting at the foot of the master. Take care.
Quoting Xtrix
Not keen on this approach. It seems medieval. Does 'help them perish' mean kill them? Or do we bathe in the warmth of a responsibility free figurative reading? :wink:
:wink:
And you.
One way or the other.
Well put.
That's only part of Nietzsche's perspective; what about the overall progression from simplex to complex.
There were 4 revolutions:
1. Nothing [math]\to[/math] Something [ Creatio ex nihilo ]
2. Inanimate [math]\to[/math] Animate (life) [The origin of living organisms]
3. Animate [math]\to[/math] Consciousness [animals]
4. Consciousness [math]\to[/math] Self-awareness [man]
And then Nietzsche...
5. Self-awareness (man) [math]\to[/math] Übermenschen
Does the process of evolution, ceteris paribus, ever stop?
6. Übermenschen [math]\to[/math] Artificial Intelligence [AI]
7. AI [math]\to[/math] Technological singularity [ hic sunt dracones ]
Quoting Tom Storm
Quoting Banno
Quoting Tom Storm
In moving 'beyond good and evil' he devolves to feudal ethics, to serfs, feigned nobility, despotism. A great leap backwards.
I was thinking strictly of the passage quoted in the OP. An all-inclusive conception of Nietzsche's oeuvre is beyond my capacity and interest.
From Superman to AI. I've heard this bandied about on the forum. Interesting but possibly vapid in terms of vital potential, a lust for life, the universalizing of life-meaning...
It's Nietzsche's idea!, taken to its logical conclusion.
If you like sucrose, you'll love fructose! :snicker:
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
A Nietzschean logic is a manybranching monstrosity. Grotesque poisonous Yggdrasil - for the healing of the nations?!...
:chin:
[quote=John the Revelator]On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.[/quote]
:snicker: Laziness pays better!
Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered?
Difference precedes identity. This is the idea that has inspired so much of 20th and 21st century philosophy, from Bergson, James and Husserl to Freud, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida.
Transformation isn’t a movement from
one static state to another, a special event that may or may not happen, but the precondition for any existent.
Agree.
We stole Zeus' thunder (electricity) too! When was that again? mid 18[sup]th[/sup] century or thereabouts. He is furious! :snicke4:
Course not. But it doesn't change what I said about Nietzsche. Nietzsche is more interesting because of his much broader appeal, much of it outside of philosophy. I think the issue is that Nietzsche is a pleasure to read (unlike most philosophers) and for many readers this creates an illusion of pellucidity.
I have to try and say something about my view. Rather than Nietszche's abandonment of the whole corpus of traditional philosophy - he called himself an anti-philosopher - I am seeking to reinterpret philosophy in such a way that it is at least compatible with today's world.
Among the fundamental beliefs typical of secular liberal philosophies are that life "began by chance" and that humans are continuous with other species and the product of chance and necessity - chance being the originating factor, and the necessity being that of scientific law.
As I mentioned above my philosophy is more orthogenetic - orthogenesis being 'directional'. I believe there's a direction in evolution, namely, to higher levels of awareness and intelligence. That is strictly taboo in the Darwinian attitude towards the matter. I've learned that the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, had similar views, and fell out with Darwin over them, but this is politely dismissed as eccentricity on his part, and his later-life turn to what is quaintly called 'spiritualism'.
In any case, what I'm driving at is an idea that is found in various philosophies although rarely made explicit, namely that through sentient beings, the Universe becomes self-aware. And through rational sentient beings, the Universe itself discovers new horizons of meaning.
I see traditional philosophy as the implicit attempt to come to terms with that. So, I see in the decline and rejection of traditional philosophy the rejection of the sapiential dimension of Western thought. Where I see it, is in the traditional role ascribed to nous, intellect, the meaning of which, like so many other fundamental philosophical terms, has been changed so enormously as to no longer be recognisable in the original terms. It is the faculty of nous that is sapiential, capable of wisdom. Which is our ostensible species name, although no longer accurate.
Man's apotheosis is now being sought through space travel, the fantasy of colonizing other planets and travelling to the stars. What is actually needed, is the realisation that we have one and only one spaceship, that being Spaceship Earth, and that it's dangerously over-heating and facing resource depletion. So what is needed is a philosophy not based on consumption, instrumental power and leisure. A philosophy is needed which does realise the value of not having, not consuming - in other words, a renunciate philosophy that is available on a mass social scale. Learning to be at ease without massive consumption. Which is of course impossible to even imagine in the culture in which we now live, although very soon it may become thrust upon us (see John Michael Greer's Collapse Now, and Avoid the Rush.)
So - within this general framework, respect for the traditional understanding of 'the philosophical ascent' and true spiritual apotheosis must be restored, but you won't find that anywhere in the philosophical mainstream, or (dare I say) amongst the postmodernists.
The way I read Nietzsche's idea of will to power is in terms of overcoming. I'm not sure what you mean by "growth", but for me growth in any spiritual sense logically consists in overcoming (weaknesses, fixations, prejudices, delusions, etc). I have the impression from previous reading that Nietzsche aligns himself with Aristotle's notion of eudamonia, "good spirit" or "flourishing", but I don't have time to search for a reference for that.
Quoting Banno
Now you've switched the conversation: we were referring to the 'ape' trope, not the 'bungled and botched' trope. In any case others have pointed out that the latter case is very much open to interpretation. But I doubt you have much will to overcome your prejudices when it comes to Nietzsche (or Heidegger).
I think you are correct. Though, I do not think Nietzsche discusses Aristotle.
Yes, and he provided such a stellar example of that.
You're probably right. I think he disagreed with Aristotle's reasons for considering Tragedy to be the highest from of drama, even though agreeing with the assessment.That may have been about the extent of his explicit discussion of Aristotle.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know what about Nietzsche you are referring to: can you explain?
Aristotle's understanding of tragedy is quite insightful. Nietzsche misread Aristotle's notion of pity as a Christian concept.
OK, I haven't read much of Aristotle's work regarding tragedy, and I haven't read Birth of Tragedy for many years, so I'll have to take your word for that.
Fair enough.
An interesting approach to the superman was advocated by FM-2030. As one of the prominent figures in the transhuman movement, a term coined by Julian Huxley (brother of Aldous, "Brave New World") he advocated for a science-based superman.
Of course one could ask if a transrans evolves. Where will it stop? What will the ultimate singularity look like? A superdooper trans?
So an übermensch (superman) is just a super-duper ape!
[i]"I'm an ape, are you Bishop?" - Richard Dawkins
"I'm not, definitely I'm not. I'm special, made in the image of God, in the creative mind of God, creative as God who made me. That's the difference between the ape and me." - Bishop Boniface Adoyo
"Well, I'm an ape, I'm an African ape and I'm very proud to be an African ape and so should you be." -Richard Dawkins[/i]
Friedrich Nietzsche... :snicker:
Right.
Humans are apes that do physics, metaphysics, abstract art, jazz, epic poetry, space exploration, mystical ecstasy...
No matter how morally indignant the philosimians get, facts are facts, there is no equivalency.
Humankind is superapekind.
Butbutbut---say the philosimians - but look: world war, torture, pedophilia, nukes, rape, self- and ecological destruction, etc... *
No one is claiming a moral - or for that matter, a physical - superiority or ascent. The ascent is intellectual. And - for those who give a damn - an ascent of spiritual possibility.
*See Erich Fromm's "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" for evidence of the circumstantial basis for human heinousness.
Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm
In man's evolution he's created the city
And the motor traffic rumble
But give me half a chance and I'd be taking off my clothes
And living in the jungle
'Cause the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in the coconut trees
Oh what a life of luxury to be like an apeman
(Apeman, Ray Davies and the Kinks)
The Jungle: Eden for ticks and mosquitos. But in light of our technological ascent, still an option for the superape.