Nietzsche's view of truth
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" -- Human, All Too Human
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial." -- The Gay Science
I'm curious about how truth is being used in each of these sentences, but a more blunt question: how do these two sentences square with on another. Or do they?
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial." -- The Gay Science
I'm curious about how truth is being used in each of these sentences, but a more blunt question: how do these two sentences square with on another. Or do they?
Comments (104)
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial.[/quote]
Quoting Mongrel
Looks like they don't use it but mention it.
Universals are dependent entities. That's kind of like saying they aren't real. But what about truth?
He only makes explicit this view on truth in an earlier essay, but I doubt that he holds to it by his mature philosophy.
He though, continually speaks of "lies" as a counter-balance to truth. The first example seems to me to be using truth as honesty. When you're lying at least you know the difference. The truth is risked, and muddled, but not entirely abandoned... conviction not so much.
The second seems to be indicating that mystic experiences have no sensuous content, don't point at anything in experience. They aren't even superficial, as they aren't about anything at all.
Again, I don't think that he holds to this view, particularly not as a conviction, lol.
Understand though that Nietszche isn't on a crusade, he isn't an ideologue, he's a troll. He looks for hugely successful, impossible to affront beliefs, traditions, opinions or institutions, and then he attempts to attack them. He does the opposite of going for the weakest, or easiest target.
Part of the reason why, for both, is given by the following two quotes about Nietzsche's epistemology:
I prefer philosophers who write in a straightforward, clear, systematic manner, so that one doesn't have to reconstruct ruins. I don't want to do some other philosophers' work for them.
However, some people don't mind doing this, and here's the beginning of one attemped (re)construction of Nietzsche's truth theory:
What Nietzsche probably had in mind with "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" was kind of the typical superior-than-thou attitude we get in venues like message boards where he's downplaying others beliefs per se contra what Nietzsche himself knows to be true. "Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial" is surely the same sort of thing, with Nietzsche at least being clear in his writing that he's not very sympathetic with religious/mystical approaches.
Cool.
I find the argument quite compelling, and his attack on 'the party man' of conviction on the mark.
The attack on mysticism on the other hand is a convoluted notion that the Schopenhauerian will is undeniable, yet mystics purportedly claim they can deny it. Here Nietzsche calls his own conviction about the impossibility of not willing 'truth' and thereby gets it wrong. Well, so it seems to me.
It's worth adding that "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" fits in with the understanding our epistemology is driven by our values and the pragmatic defence of them.
Our convictions will see us claim truth to a lie when it is right in front of us boldly proclaiming its dishonesty.
Could you expand on this? Would that be called conviction?
Could be. He seemed to think that losing your sense of humor is the worst thing that can happen.
"But to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and all the marvelous uncertainty and ambiguity of existence, and not to question, not to tremble with desire and delight in questioning, not even to hate the questioner -- perhaps even to make merry over him to the extent of weariness -- that is what I regard as contemptible..." -- Gay Science.
Which is why I believe conviction is something he would castigate sincerely (as not all of his verses cohere together). Conviction would stop one from questioning, stop one from considering alternatives or different or new ways of looking at a question and answer. It is something which keeps one sticking to an answer in spite of what may come.
I agree with @Wosret with respect to the second quote.
"We do not object to a judgment just because it is false; this is probably what is strangest about our new language. The question is rather to what extent the judgment furthers life, preserves life . . . ; and we are in principle inclined to claim that judgments that are the most false (among which are the synthetic a priori judgments) are the most indispensable to us, that man could not live without accepting logical fictions, without measuring reality by the purely invented world of the unconditional, self-referential, without a continual falsification of the world by means of the number — that to give up false judgments would be to give up life, to deny life. Admitting untruth as a condition of life: that means to resist familiar values in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that dares this has already placed itself beyond good and evil."
And the following, far more famous lines on truth: "[truth is] A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
In each case it's a question of how truth can be mobalized, used or employed with respect to the affirmation of life. And Nietzsche's judgement is that in general, truth hasn't really been used all that well for the purposes of affirming life. But this in turn means that truth may nonetheless have the potential to affirm life, if employed in the 'right' way. Hence some of his other pronouncements, which acknowledge the value of truth nonetheless: "How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value. ...My philosophy will triumph one day, for what one has forbidden so far as matter of principle has always been — truth alone." And "so far, the lie has been called truth."
Elsewhere, truth even constitutes a 'test' of one's spirit: "Something might be true, even if it were also harmful and dangerous in the highest degree; indeed, it might be part of the essential nature of existence that to understand it completely would lead to our own destruction. The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much “truth” he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified." Again, all of this is to say that it's not so much 'a theory of truth' that matters in Nietzsche so much as a 'theory of the value of truth (whatever it may turn out to be)'.
This is why Nietzsche doesn't really care at all for the specificity of truth, and says that there's no real reason to assume a difference in kind between truths and falsities to begin with: " Really, why should we be forced to assume that there is an essential difference between “true” and “false” in the first place? Isn’t it enough to assume that there are degrees of apparency and, so to speak, lighter and darker shadows and hues of appearance—different valeurs, to use the language of painters? Why should the world that is relevant to us not be a fiction?"
I am puzzled as to how you could know what truth does, if you don't know what it is. Perhaps you (and Nietzsche) are really talking, not about truth, but about the idea of truth?
I don't care about that at all. I care what people's beliefs actually are... that's way way way more useful.
He appears to ground these judgments in some broad metaphysical conception of 'Life' akin to Schopenhauer's notion of blind striving will (to power). Those perspectives which are true(r) to Life are ipso facto more life-affirming and desirable, however much they may offend our modern sensibilities. Heraclitus, for instance, comes in for heavy praise by way of juxtaposition with Parmenides (or was it Plato?) precisely because he articulates an accurate view of Life--one characterized by constant movement and change and warfare instead of positing some eternal and ideal world beyond this one.
But this may be a specious reading of Nietzsche. I'm an admirer of many aspects of his thought, and find his life to be of great interest (like Wittgenstein's), but I definitely need to revisit his works after many years away. I do think he felt his perspective was true, and not merely one more useful illusion amongst many others. If this weren't the case, and he looked at all perspectives and interpretations as equally groundless, then he should have had a tremendous respect and admiration for Christianity's overpowering of the world and the values of the ancient Greeks. He may have felt a grudging admiration for this achievement, but he clearly didn't think it was a positive development for historical humanity.
I was just being a bit flip, suggesting that he doesn't regard his own certainties - like the impossibility of not willing by mystics - as 'convictions', only other people's.
Right so we may know what the idea of truth does, but we do not know what it is an idea of.
What is 'our new language' a reference to?
What does 'furthers life, preserves life...' mean? Is this a reference to the supposed 'life-denying' vitiation of Christianity and Platonism?
Why are a priori judgements are among the 'most false' of judgements?
The 'purely invented world of the unconditional' - a reference to the purported philosophical or spiritual 'absolute', first cause, ground of being.
'Admitting untruth as a condition of life' - in so doing, one goes beyond the bounds of conventional morality with its pious platitudes and empty philosophical reasoning.
So the anti-philosopher breaks out of the stifling un-realities of philosophy, which is spun around the philosophical fictions of there being a real good in the Platonist sense, and thence creates imaginary worlds in which man imprisons himself; thereby shattering the conventions by which culture defines good and evil.
Bernie Sanders recently stated that unless we do something about global warming the planet will be "less healthy." This is an example of an imperative a reformer like Sanders would embrace with conviction. It's a belief recommended to the herd which is made of folks who want to be free of shame.
This is a case where the conviction formed by the desire to escape shame is powerful enough to block wonder. People can't question it because they'd risk losing the key to their shame-free status. Thus conviction is worse than a lie.
I'm not quite sure how determinism fits into it. I think that might be the truth that people don't want to face... or it's that truth which is potentially destructive (that N talked about.)
I think Nietzsche admired Jesus Christ, but he considered Christianity to be a slave morality because it is dispensed 'from above'.
Someone above suggested that Nietzsche did not understand Buddhism. I think Nietzsche, despite the fact that his father was a clergyman (or perhaps because of it), did not understand Christianity (or any notion of transcendence) either.
It's not a question of ignorance ("don't know what truth is..."), so much as it is a question of indifference. That is it an idea - whatever it is, of truth, or the false - is enough to ask of it: how does it affirm life? Who cares (to know) what it 'is'? Hence - again - Nietzsche's relative indifference to the specificity of truth (and his question: "why should we be forced to assume that there is an essential difference between “true” and “false” in the first place?"). Truth might be many things - one could reply: truth is x, y, z - and in all cases, Nietzsche would deem the 'is' of that truth not very relevant, lacking in significance, so long as we do not know what that truth 'does'. This is not a 'bug' so much as a 'feature' of his approach to truth (I don't want to say 'theory of truth...').
Recall also that it's a bit anachronistic to speak in general about 'theories of truth' with respect to Nietzsche's time: Truth still has a Platonic ring about it, in the sense of eternal Truths (of Man!, or Reason! of the Absolute!), and not 'is the cat on the mat?' sort of truths which philosophy today tends to speak about. Nietzsche inveighs against the former.
I certainly agree that truth is not analyzable, and in that sense, and that sense alone, we do not know what it is. But I also think most people intuitively know very well what truth is even though, they cannot explain what it is. Of course, I am not suggesting anyone knows, in the sense of being able to demonstrate, what the truth is, in the sense of what is actually true, even about the more subtle points concerning what ideas contribute to flourishing and what don't. Such a thing is obviously (and with many caveats) known only in the extreme unsubtle cases.
AH! I get it. 'Science'.
Along those lines...
When I ventured: perhaps he meant 'science', then SLX swears at me.
I guess I am just not up to speed on what StreetlightX understands by 'philosophy'. It's probably because I'm old. But it also might be because he just doesn't like me.
'We do not object to a judgment just because it is false; this is probably what is strangest about our new language', I thought he might have been referring to the fact-value dichotomy and 'our new language' being a reference to the way science talks about things (as being, for example, devoid of value, unlike, for instance, Platonism,) OK, it doesn't mean that - so the question remains, what is 'our new language'? Maybe, it's 'philosophy as defined by Nietszche' i.e. a way of thinking about philosophy that he has invented. I don't know - I'm asking the question.
Doesn't sound like a question to me, back-peddler. Sounds like you vomiting words out of a keyboard based on zero textual evidence whatsoever, unmotivated by any of the quotes so far cited in this thread.
Apparently Bannon stated that darkness is good. He mentioned Darth Vader and Satan as examples. He's talking about power... but oddly he didn't mention Adolph. I think N would say Bannon is almost there.
Later in s34 he goes on:
I really do understand that my stab at that was completely mistaken and that the passage I pasted in was nearer the mark.
You know, he also said this:
Buddhism does not promise, it delivers, while Christianity promises everything and delivers nothing.” —F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ
He wasn't a bad guy you know.
So did he. Criticizing people doesn't mean that you don't admire them.
[b]"To make it possible for this discipline to begin, must there not be some prior conviction – even one that is so commanding and unconditional that it sacrifices all other convictions to itself? We see that science also rests on a faith. There simply is no science "without presuppositions". The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to such a degree that the principle, the faith, the conviction finds expression: “Nothing is needed more than truth and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value.”
...
Thus the question “Why science” leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are “not moral”? Those who are truthful in the ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this “other world” – must they not by that same token negate this world, our world?..
It is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests – even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians still take our fire from the flame that was lit by a faith thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. – But what if this should become more and more incredible, if nothing should prove to be divine anymore unless it were error, blindness, the lie – if God himself were to prove to be our most enduring lie?"[/b]
So Nietzsche may be interpreted as rejecting the belief that science reveals to us any transcendentally objective truth or order, just as he is rejecting with his "God is dead" any crude, objectivistic idea that the popular Judaeo-Christian religion of the "sky-father" reveals any transcendentally 'objective' truth or order.
He is therefore, on this reading, not ruling out creative spiritual ideas of subjective transcendental truth or order, which may contribute to the flourishing of human life.
Thus he is very much in line with the Kantian notion that we are warranted to believe some things for which there can be no empirical evidence for practical reasons, even if his notion of what constitutes practicality would not accord with Kant's. and thus even if Nietzsche himself would probably not, on the basis of his rejection of the categorical imperative, agree that his philosophy accords with Kant's.
I thought "God is dead" was supposed to be about an historical event.
You're reading things into Nietsche which aren't there.
'Why did Nietzsche, in his zeal to deny God, end up rejecting science as well? Because his denial of God is dependent on the denial of any order whatsoever in the universe. Because he knew that science took its origin, and is still based on, a world in which order prevails. If the world is chaos, there can be no order, and hence no laws either of nature or of science. (In our day, however, even the word "chaos" is being redefined, as mathematicians and scientists discern hidden order in chaos.) For the existence of any kind of laws presupposes a Lawgiver, and indeed the originators of modern science—Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, etc.—quite openly expressed their faith in a Divine Lawmaker. In order to deny the latter, Hume, Nietzsche, and those who follow their path must deny the existence of any kind of order at all.'
Henry Bayman
'The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms... Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word "accident" has any meaning.'
The Gay Science
What I meant was not that he did not see himself as ruling out such ideas, but that such ideas are definitely not ruled out by the logic of his philosophy; which priveleges flourishing above all else.
Nietzsche was as confused as most pholophers when it comes to the idea of there being an objective order, as opposed to a spiritual or subjective order.
Those who claim there is an objective order also fail to understand this.
I agree with the Hart quote.
Not quite, order is just fictional, an expression of the finite world, which emerges and passes, rather than eternal. In this respect, John isn't entirely wrong. People florush with these fictions all the time. Out of the chaos emerges the dedicated scientist, beliver, philosoper, artist, football fan, mystic, etc., etc. The nihilism of Nietzsche is really an illusion, only seen by those who think meaning is given by an eternal order.
In this passage we can see a truth claim about the the real: that it is not an order but a chaos. This is as much the kind of mistaken objectivist claim as the kinds of objectivist scientific and religious claims that Nietzsche elsewhere rails against. So it would seem that Nietzsche's attitude towards truth is deeply inconsistent, even conflicted.
We simply don't know whether the Real is an order or a chaos; so no claim at all about it can justifiably be made. The valid claims of spirituality concern not objective, but subjective orders. God needs humanity as much as humanity needs God. This is a subjective truth and not merely a matter of opinion. Some find this difficult to understand. No one will be convinced of this by argument alone.
I'd love to hear in which respect you think I am only partially wrong. :)
One way to dance around this is to say that 'truth' is itself a kind of fiction, but that the adherents of 'truth' have found a way to create a particularly spectacular fictional effect where one type of fiction ('non-fiction') appears to have this kind of eminent, majestic quality. So then the real question (tho what does 'real' mean!) would be how this non-fiction/truth 'effect' is produced (or, in a transcendental register, how it is producible at all.) But it's very hard to try to answer this question without recourse to a less sophisticated non-nietzschean (deflationary?) understanding of true vs false.
*as in "Why should the world that is relevant to us not be a fiction?"
You might be right. It's a long time since I read Zarathustra. If God is for Nietzsche a product of the human psyche, then the historical event would presumably be the exorcism. Or else the moment in history when the zeitgeist of the thinking person can no longer take the 'sky-father' myth seriously.
I think Mongrel's right. But the death of of God qua historical event isn't just the the loss of the belief in a benevolent sky-father. It's kind of like: God had been this linch-pin which held everything together (philosophically, culturally, politically) - and the loss of that linch-pin was only the beginning of this slow-motion recoil, like a too-taut rope which has snapped and is flying back at us - and once it finally comes all the way back and hits it source (over many, many years) it's going to destabilize all the other ideas.
Being an atheist in Nietzsche's time, and in Nietzsche's milieu, wasn't all that radical. But he had a premonition that all the other atheists hadn't really understood what their atheism meant. "God is Dead" in-and-of-itself wasn't too wild - but N understood that, in terms of philosophical/cultural/political thought, it was like a distant explosion and the shockwaves hadn't quite hit.
So, yeah, that's definitely a rather radical stance that can be argued against, sure, but I think it's coherent. And, to beat a dead horse, this definitely wasn't a science vs religion thing. He was doing something else.
An early systems theorist? I'm sure they would like that, it would add a certain cachet,
From Twilight of the Idols
I think the underlined phrase is ironic, in that it can easily be turned around. Whence does the 'order of grammar' arise? Try unpacking that, and you will have many years of study, across many disciplines, and it may indeed end up pointing towards something uncomfortably close to a primal mind.
I think this is more or less exactly the move Nietzsche makes: truth and falsity becomes forces in Nietzsche, they are expressions of 'will-to-power'. To affirm the true or the false is, in the last analysis, to affirm as such (we simply call one affirmation true, the other, false, in a purely nominal fashion). To think in terms of the will-to-power or force is to 'flatten' or level the field of the true and the false so they no longer differ in kind. Moreover, The Genealogy of Morals is exactly Nietzsche's attempt to account for how this one kind force prevailed over and above others, and Nietzsche is very clear that even slave morality is a kind of creative, affirmative force, even though it is creativity at it's lowest intensity, as it were.
"The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. ... A race of such men of ressentiment will inevitably end up cleverer than any noble race" (GoM, Bk I). And also the famous lines about the fact that man would "rather will nothingness than not will"; In the ascetic ideal there is "a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental prerequisites of life, but it is and remains a will!" (Bk III, Nietzsche's emphasis).
It's this attempt to level the true and the false - in the direction of the will-to-power - which constitutes Neitzsche's 'twist' or undermining of metaphysics, and which gives his project a measure of internal consistency.
"If timbers span the water, if footbridges and railings leap over the river, then surely the one who says “Everything is in flux” has no credibility. Instead, even the dummies contradict him. “What?” say the dummies, “everything is supposed to be in flux? But the timbers and the railings are over the river! Over the river everything is firm, all the values of things, the bridges, concepts, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – all of this is firm!” –
But when the hard winter comes, the beast tamer of rivers, then even the wittiest learn to mistrust, and, sure enough, then not only the dummies say: “Should everything not – stand still?” "Basically everything stands still” – that is a real winter doctrine, a good thing for sterile times, a good comfort for hibernators and stove huggers.
“Basically everything stands still” – but against this preaches the thaw wind! The thaw wind, a bull that is no plowing bull – a raging bull, a destroyer that breaks ice with its wrathful horns! But ice – breaks footbridges! Yes my brothers, is everything not now in flux? Have all railings and footbridges not fallen into the water? Who could still hang on to “good” and “evil”?
“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thaw wind is blowing!” – Preach me this, oh my brothers, in all the streets!"
"Why entertain his perspective, then? [that of flux - SX] Because of the ethico-political stakes of doing so: the Nietzschean perspective — in conjunction with efforts to overcome existential resentment of a world with these characteristics — invites us to become more responsive to natural/cultural processes by which brand-new things, beings, identities, and cultural movements surge into being. It encourages us to develop more nuanced balances between the comforts and agonies of being on one side and the forces of becoming on the other.
The Nietzschean portrait of nature is often thought to reflect a faulty image of science. The fact that Nietzsche links the scientific problematic to an asceticism previously attributed only to devotees of religious fideism has not endeared him to philosophers of science either. His scattered reflections on nature, then, would be consigned to a dustbin in the history of science if it were not for recent re- flections on the character of science by Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and an inventor of complexity theory. ...The Prigoginian update of Epicurean physics and Nietzschean cosmology engages a nature that is sometimes creative and novelty producing, “where the possible is richer than the real,” and where, therefore, new structures come into being over time.
Even though such systems retain a persistent power to surprise and the evolutionary ability to create what has never before existed, they also display a kind of intelligibility retrospectively. This is where Prigogine expresses appreciation for the “approximations” Nietzsche notes. “What is now emerging,” writes Prigogine, “is an ‘intermediate’ description that lies somewhere between the two alienating images of a deterministic world and an arbitrary world of pure chance. Physical laws lead to a new form of intelligibility as expressed by irreducible probabilistic representations.” A far-from-equilibrium system is neither the reversible system of classical dynamics nor a condition of constant flux unrecognizable as a system. Some read Nietzsche’s “flux” the latter way. My Nietzsche, the philosopher of torsion between being and becoming, is closer to Prigogine’s contention that “a new formulation of the laws of nature is now possible... , a more acceptable description in which there is room for both the laws of nature and novelty and creativity.” (Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed).
'Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly in this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems. The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would
thereby dispense with man himself. ' - N. On Truth and Lies
It has to do with the topic of that Camus thread that was recently on the board. It's why positive atheism needs only a one word response: "Nihilism."
I figured you'd have a particular appreciation for Thus Spoke Zarathustra... part of it is like a play where all the characters are tarot trumps.
That's an interesting question. Metaphilosophy directed at Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Darwin as a group.
8-)
It is surmised that the 'raw', absent Real is becoming. The only real that is present is being, and yet that being is never static; it is alive with the dynamism of becoming. I think we can say plenty about that becoming; in fact we can say little about anything else. The conundrum lies in the fact that what is said, unless it is suffused with paradox and so reflects the becoming, is delivered into stasis. Our determinate formulations are the only things that remain still in this ever-shifting life.
To say that we evolved to see things the way we do is to state a purported objective scientific truth. Nietzsche would say the same; and that is why I say his pretension to abandon the idea of objective truth is bogus. You say Nietzsche rails against metaphysical orders, but this evolutionist formulation is a much a metaphysical order, and an imposition, as any other. If we are not genuinely concerned with any allegiance to what is thought to be objectively true, then why should we adopt this evolutionary view? Does it contribute to greater flourishing? I would say it is arguably the opposite: that it objectifies humanity and denies the most important part of humanity: the spirit. And despite all the wordy babble in passages such as that quoted by Streetlight that promise some empirical explanation of how creativity and freedom can co-exist with natural law, no such explanation is ever forthcoming; all that issues are gleefully optimistic promissory notes from those who pretend (probably as much to themselves as to everybody else) that they have eschewed ordinary notions of truth, and are not subservient to the scientific worldview.
You say the meaning we find in the world is a projection; that it is not inherent in nature. Again this is purporting the be an objectively true statement in the ordinary sense is it not? I say there is not only the objective order of nature, but a subjective order of spirit, and the meaning we find in nature is not a mere projection, but a symbolic expression of the subjective spiritual order. Would you think that purports to be a statement of an objective truth, like the statements that the way we see things is explained by physical evolution, or that the meanings we find in life are mere psychological projections? No, it would not purport to be such an objective truth at all, but a subjective truth of the spirit and as such, not a merely subjective claim. Nietzsche and the Postmodern cannot recognize the existence of such a kind of truth, because they deny the reality of the spirit. So, they are left with only objective empirical facts and matters of mere opinion to work with. And yet they pretend to have eschewed the ordinary notion of objective truth. So, what are their writings then, mere opinion?
Yes, I agree. Our entire worldview, including the scientific paradigm, has grown out of the Judeo-Christian (and Greek) worldview. The death of God would have enormous repercussions over a much longer span than would seem obvious. But Nietzsche was wrong; God has not died at all, but has been reborn out of His past objectivist incarnation. Nietzsche was right insofar as the objectivist God has died; or at least is still dying.
Yes, I can't help imagining a a group of monkeys, or primitive humans sitting on a ridge in the Rift Valley, dreaming up complex patterns of grunts and interpretations of grunts, becoming gradually more sophisticated until they are organising themselves into religious and political groupings. Each pattern of grunts becomes a competing ideology with the most effective and persistent outliving the others and corralling the groups. And that we are still continuing the tradition, while imagining we are superior to this in some way.
This is why I said you were only partially right. Nietzsche and PM don't deny the "spiritual," they just understand it's a fiction expressed by the world. A transcendent realm, whether understood as "subjective" or " objective," is incoherent. In any case, it is not a realm outside that makes one's "spiritually," it's a person themselves.
"Truth"and "fiction" aren't being used in the usual sense, but as a distinction between the universal/transcendent and expression of the finite/immanent. The "Death of God" is the displine of metaphysics understanding it's niether a universal or transcendence which defines us.
It runs far deeper than "scientism." Scientism treats the natural world as God and science is its worship. In Nietzsche's terms, it is a slave morality, much like Christianity. The Death of God breaks the metaphysical tie of the world to reason. Our world is not constrained by logic, to any one particular outcome which "makes sense," but possibly does (basically) anything. Reason no longer guarantees states of existence.
Rather than empirical facts (including the presence of believers; the Death if God doesn't mean no-one believes in God), Nietzsche and PM are dealing in something else: the distinction between logic and the world.
God is dead not because gods have been shown to be impossible by our empirical observation. Such " supermen in the sky" are entirely possible. It is the metaphysical God which is dead. No matter what someone might propose, it's the world which does existence, which expresses the spirtual. The presence of metaphysical God is logically impossible .
In a sense, Nietzsche and PM's focus is quite close to "objective" in the old sense of the world. What they are describing is the logical truth that logic does not give existence. It's a truth of reason, not the empirical, much like claims of metaphysical God. It's a truth known only by "intuition," rather than one also involving observation. What defines the philosophy of Nietzsche and PM is actually that they give more than empirical facts. Indeed, it sort of the entire point.
* l realise that I am using "mind" in what might be an unconventional sense.
It's what the mystic attempts, yes. But they fail. They are left with the "unknowable" transcendent which partakes in making the self (being, nomoumen).
It's an approximate representation of being and nomoumen, but it still views being and nomoumen as something to know about, some sort of presence which acts. The mystic does not stand up and say: "being and nomoumen are themsleves, and there is nothing more to know about them."
Rather, the mystic treats being and nomoumen as the defintion or cause of something else. In addition to being and noumenon, they are also the "mystery" of how someone exists or means-- an action and conceptual knowledge which cannot cohrently be attributed to being and noumenon. The mystic is too empirically and concerned with putting our meaning into conceptual terms. They will not let being and noumenon stand on their own.
Where you go wrong is in thinking that any alternative to an objective or empirical reality or order could be nothing more than a fiction. Apparently you simply cannot accept the notion of a subjective order.
Of course we are not "defined" by the transcendent; it is obvious we can only ever be "defined" in empirical terms. Our empirical natures
are, however, an expression of the transcendent.
I agree with what you say about scientism, except I would equate it with fundamentalist religion, not with Christianity as such.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Of course the existence of superior empirical beings that we might refer to as 'gods' is not logically impossible. The existence of a transcendent God is not logically impossible either. What is impossible, because self-contradictory, is the empirical existence of a transcendent God. When you say the existence of a transcendent God is impossible, you really mean the idea is incoherent. But the idea is not incoherent at all provided it is understood that the word existence is not being used in its empirical sense. You are justified in saying that, for you, the idea is incoherent, but you cannot be justified in saying that it must be incoherent for everyone. You should take seriously the possibility that you simply lack a faculty that would make it coherent to you or that you are too mired in your own prejudices to be able to find it coherent.
So the mystic has a quiet sanctuary where being is in communion with the noumenon and no mind is allowed in.
Why do you think this? I'm asking because I tend to be heavily reliant on a Schopenhauerian outlook when I'm interpreting N. I occasionally wonder if I'm taking that too far.
But Christianity didn't exactly outlive the other worldviews that existed in its infancy. It absorbed them. I think that's generally how conversion works. If I want to convert you, I find out what's important to you and just swap names. Voila. You're converted.... maybe dunk you in water and then call you converted.
In that way, when people convert, they change the religion they're converting to. Chinese Buddhism has Taoism in it because Taoist words were used to translate it. Those words already had meaning in Taoism.
Going back to Christianity, they went to great lengths to set their identity and ideology in stone, literally quite often. As I write this I look up and see a church tower that was built in 1100AD, so it has sat in the middle of this village for nearly a thousand years.
You're looking at a Gothic structure for which I'm insanely jealous. Ever read Otto Georg von Simson's book on Gothic architecture? I had a weird experience of that book.
Here's the church, flint construction as most are around these parts.
As Punshhh said, Nietzsche has a "nice turn of phrase"; it's good literature. However, I think wisdom should be expressible in simple terms that the average man or woman could understand. A passage may be as complex, subtle and allusive as you like, but whatever wisdom is in it should be able to be distilled to a few words, and rendered as a simple truth; even if the simple expression of that truth might be seen to be, in a certain sense, a kind of 'lessening', or even inappropriately concrete hypostatization of the more subtle expression. What, in the simplest terms, do you think Nietzsche is trying to say in this passage?
That's the issue. The mind is not so much an obstacle as an irrelevance. Quiet sanctuary is achived by many. Anyone can do it. All it takes is living the moment rather than theorising about what logic, description or concept amounts to your existence.
The mystic tells a falsehood: that respect for being and noumenon is given by abandoning thought and saying the (conceptual!!!) "mystery" formed them. Rather than quieting of the mind, it is the mind yelling at the top of its lungs, demanding that respect for being and the noumenon requires this concept of mystety (which is what makes the mystic profound over everyone else).
No doubt in living, the mystic achievies contentment, as do many others, but that's not the issue. It's understanding of contentment which the mystic gets wrong. It sees them demand contentment is a matter of realising that being is given by concept of "mystery."
What you write shows so little understanding of what mystics in general speak about that it leads me to doubt that you ever read any mystical texts, or made any serious attempt to understand them.
What do you think my point is? It's exactly that: disagreement; the mystic's understanding is incoherent. Of course I don't understand as the mystic does. If I understood like the mystic, I would think it's true that contentmentmust be made thinking the concept of "mystery" and living the practices connected to it.
Despite understanding what the mystic thinks and how the mystical is important to them, I certainly don't understand as they do. I think their account of meaning is (descriptively) mistaken. My realisation of being's mystery and its profundity is only hypothetical. I can think like a mystic, but it's only ever pretend. I know what they argue, what they think is important, but I do not live it.
Here your accusation doesn't make sense because whether I know what the mystic thinks doesn't make a difference to my point. I could be ignorant of what they thought, just consider mystics "monstrous madmen," and my lack of living the mystic philosophy would be just as strong.
The only way your accusation makes sense is if you expectation of "making a serious attempt to understand" would result in me holding mystics had a coherent postion. It's quite literally to consider the point I'm making to be impossible, as if somoeone couldn't seriously consider mystical thought and come away with a conclusion it was incoherent.
Quite, but it is your assumption that the "theorising about what logic, description or concept" is in some way an alternative to quiet sanctuary. It might be for some, including those who are being mislead, or exploited, but for genuine practicing mystics part of the practice is in developing the discipline to manage ones own internal life and experience. For example, a mystic will have all their philosophical, spiritual ideology as a kind of reference library in their memory. But this is kept seperate (including its content) from other action and being through disciplined practice. Likewise when it comes to their living in the external world and likewise for when they take sanctuary, or any other of a number of other practices. None of these regions of their being impinges on the other and the practiced mystic will easily draw from a number of these regions for a specific purpose, or action, while maintaining an inner freedom from their uncontrolled impinging on their internal space. There are systems and practices specifically developed to enable this kind of mental discipline.
This is an incorrect assessment, perhaps because you are observing mystics who have succumbed to forms of vanity. This is understandable as we are human and this is human nature. This is nothing that a healthy dose of humility won't dispel.
Again you display a lack of understanding here. It is as I say understandable for there are people around who for whatever reason do make these mistakes, as in any walk of life. For the mystic the role of mystery is in the acceptance of the mystery in life. Or in other words to develop an awareness of what we don't know, or understand and the extent to which some aspects of our life are mysterious even in the face of logic and reason.
Essentially the processes in the life of a mystic are to develop an awareness of, a control of and an alteration in the orientation of the person within the world. The primary step taken before this can be done is to strip away metaphorically the person from the being and establish a communion with the noumenon (God in traditional language). Thus establishing a stable anchor for the self which could be put off course during the practice. Provided these processes are done well none of the mistakes, or dubious ideologies you allude to are of any concern.
However I do realise that due to there not being any academically established and regulated mystical school in the world at this time(with the exception of those that can be found within a few religious traditions), it is a "Wild West" out there and any budding mystic will have to establish their own foundations to their practice which is not easy especially when there is no one telling them what information is useful and what is a distraction.
OK, that's a fair start, What attributes, then, would you say Nietzsche thinks science has, such that it would be a "precious tool" for the job of aiding philosophy in its task of telling us how to live?