Nietzsche, reality, and our motives for belief

Nietzsche encourages us to embrace reality for what it is, but do we know what reality is? I mean, we know what reality looks like, we know what reality makes manifest to our experience - but the question we want to ask is an ontological one: what is reality?

It’s been a while since I read Nietzsche, and I haven’t yet read all of Nietzsche, but from what I recall, he spoke vehemently against metaphysics and ontology particularly as a form of metaphysics. So how are supposed to heed to his ethic of embracing reality?

Well, here’s where I call upon the expertise of the Nietzsche scholars - tell me if this is true: when Nietzsche speaks against the religious, the metaphysicists, the idealists, the nihilists, etc., he is not speaking against the philosophies themselves, but the motives we have for upholding them.

After all, how can we know which of these philosophies is the truth about reality when we have no way of answering the question conclusively: what is reality? What if reality just turns out to be metaphysical in essence? What if it all turns out to be an illusion, a dream, just products from a mind living in a solipsistic universe? If that were the case, we would not be escaping reality to believe in these things but embracing it.

Of course, Nietzsche never embrace such ideas, but I don’t think he would say it was because he knew them to be wrong. Rather, I think he would say because he has no motive to embrace these ideas - or at least that if he did have a motive, we recognized that motive as one geared towards self-gratification rather than affirming reality as it presents itself to him. Reality simply doesn’t present itself to him as metaphysical, religious, ideal, etc. - and I get the impression he didn’t believe it did for anyone. So the only realistic way he understood others to embrace these ideas was as an escape from the way reality presents itself.

Just to get a better idea of what I’m getting at, imagine two men: the first man clings tenaciously to Christianity because it was the religion he was brought up with, it brings him comfort to think he’ll live an afterlife of eternal bliss in heaven, it makes him feel righteous to believe he knows and follows the right moral codes, and so on. The second man believes because he had a personal revelation, a vivid spiritual experience. A manifestation of Christ himself appeared to him and enlightened him about the truth of the Christian religion. Just to be sure he wasn’t hallucinating, he immediately goes to a doctor and has a whole battery of tests done on him. They take his blood, scan his brain, administer standardized oral and written psychological tests, and a number of other tests. When the results come in, the doctor says he, and a whole panel of other experts, unanimously agree that there is nothing wrong with him. No drugs were found in his system, no abnormalities, no telling signs of schizophrenia or any other psychosis, nothing at all to indicate that what he saw wasn’t real. At this point, the man finds it irresistible to dismiss the conclusion that what he saw was real and that Christianity must be the one true religion. That’s not to say he doesn’t try to resist it, telling himself that maybe a few more experts and a few more tests would have revealed something abnormal about his system, or that maybe he ought to simply settle on being agnostic about the whole thing, but keeping that thought in the back of his mind at all times, the fore of his mind is flooded with a strong conviction that Christianity must be true.

Now which man would Nietzsche say is rejecting reality, and which embracing it? I think he’d say the first man is rejecting it and the second embracing it. The difference is the motive: the first man’s motive is that he wishes Christianity were true rather than what’s presented to him by reality, and so adopts it because it makes him feel better. The second man shows his desire to keep in touch with reality (getting tests done, keeping in mind that he still can’t know anything for certain) and only yields to Christianity because it seems to have been presented to him by reality quite convincingly.

I could also offer this hypothetical case: an atheist and secularist rejects religion and metaphysics because without them, there is no basis on which morality can be imposed on him. That is to say, he is not an atheist/secularist because he wishes to face reality as it is presented to him, but because he finds the idea of doing whatever he wants and getting away with it very appealing. I think Nietzsche would classify him in the same category as the first man in the previous scenario - even though Nietzsche himself was an atheist/secularist. This example shows that it’s not about whether or not you are “in touch” with reality, but your motives for being so.

The larger point, of course, is that in promoting a life-affirming ethic, Nietzsche wasn’t taking a stance on what reality ultimately is, and therefore whether one is a life-affirmer or a life-denier is somewhat independent of what one’s particular philosophy is (scientist, metaphysicist, atheist, idealist, etc.). It is one’s reasons for adopting said philosophy. Nietzsche’s critique against the life-denier is a psychoanalytic one - not a metaphysical one, not an epistemic one, not an ontological one. He’s not getting at what’s real; he’s getting at why we believe.

I think Nietzsche was always pretty much a nut…Yet Metaphysics is nonsense, and Ontology is a dead end… He was right that people are not rational, but irrational, and he was fundamentally wrong in regard to morals… He said, Philosophers do not like Moralists… I do not see a difference… Our reality, the irrational reality we live in is moral, and even he could not escape being a moralist, if rather an immoral moralist… He did not get it…He did not have normal relationships…So he could not grasp that morality is the most irrational behavior, so that no amount of rational justification can result in moral behavior… Morality is never good for the individual, so it requires the denial of the individual, and since that is all we have, our individual lives, nothing could be more irrational, and yet people are moral, and irrational…

I’m sorta hazy right now, so I admittedly only skimmed your post. But N-man was all about the principle of creativity. So, for him, reality was a constructed element. So, for him the question was: which reality are you embracing: the reality you create yourself or the reality that has been created for you? He was all about the former. That is the whole, what-ever-the-fuck-it-is, monkey-knight-child thingy. You are born a monkey . . . no, that isn’t right, llama? Anyway, at the start you collect knowledge to figure out the world. Once you’ve got a heavy enough load, you magically transform (?) into a knight and if you’ve got the balls, you need to slay the dragon “Thou Shalt not!”. Once you’ve accomplished that, you are a kid again. A kid acts without thinking, yet everything the kid does is good because the kid doesn’t give a crap about what he should and shouldn’t do. Beyond Good and Evil, if you will. But the new kid, the real kid, the real you, has progressed through all those phases to make the kid-mind self-evident. To actualize their own reality, they had to realize what was their reality and what was the reality which they had inherited.

Incidentally, that is also the problem with most self-described N-ians: they think somehow they are the knight but their llama doesn’t have anything of substance on its damned back! Someone who embraces reality as they have inherited it isn’t the uebermensch N-man talked about, they are the priests. N-man tried to preempt that clusterfuck with the whole “the last Christian died on the cross [sic? I’m unusure here really. I assume he means “Jesus” but after Jesus supplanted John the Baptists, crucifixion was all the rage with Christians . . .]” But nobody listened, unless they wanted to hate. Precisely what N-man argued against. His philo of WzM is, “Don’t hate, dominate.” But I see a lot of haters . . .

Nietzsche was a tool below good and evil.

You know, if Nietzsche would have read this comment of yours, he would probably make a separate chapter or sub-chapter for you in his newest book, just to flame you, based on all your posts here.

But on a more serious note; why are you saying this? Justify it.

In the Nietzschean view, reality is the will to power, and nothing besides.

No, because he has no reason. He has no reason (i.e., there is no evidence) to interpret reality other than as will to power. And though this, too, is an interpretation, if we understand interpretation itself as will to power (and what else can it be? Why do we interpret? In order to employ, i.e., in order to place and use in our power)—if we understand interpretation itself as will to power, then the will to power appears to be both an interpretation and the most fundamental fact.

I’m not a Nietzsche scholar, but that’s absolutely what i think he was doing. That’s what it means to say he was moralising - he was attacking people’s motives as much as their beliefs - he certainly did both, so part of it depends on how you read him, either as though he believes everything says or as though he’s just purging his contempt at many points.

Thanks for asking.

‘What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And man shall be that to overman: a laughingstock or painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape…The overman is the meaning of the earth’.

Man is capable of overcoming his animal nature. He is capable of transcending the animal and carnal side of his nature.

However what this transcendence properly ‘embodies’, is improperly realised in Nietzsche.

Nietzsche believes people and animals only really want power.

This is an entirely ‘naturalistic’ definition of human nature and places humans on the level of animals which we all know are below morality.

Dogs can’t be bad.

So Nietzsche was a tool because he was materialist, and he was below good and evil because he called himself an ape.

The overman was not realised because Nietzsche couldn’t escape his own underman.

Nietzsche spewed too much confused hate in too many wayward directions.

He is responsible for his shadow of nihilism and is so condemned to being perpetually less than he ever could have been.

alpha, your sad and completely false understandings of Nietzsche are so blatantly wrong that they dont even merit commentary… im just going to add that, in the future, try to only comment on that which you actually understand. if you want to learn something about Nietzsche, fine. if not, fine. hes not for everyone. even your bible says “dont throw pearls before swine”, which is a rare instance of actually good advice coming from a completely fabricated storybook; but hey, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes, right?

just try (i know its hard, but thats why i say try) to realise that you dont know the first thing about Nietzsche’s philosophy. its quite amusing to watch you prattle on about your insecurities and fantastic constructs, and im sure Nietzsche himself would have gotten a laugh or two from them, but seriously, youre only hurting your own image here. just think to yourself, if you dont understand a philosopher or his theories, of you havent even read or understood a word hes said, why dont you try to not comment on it, and just sit back and listen, if youre interested. or not, if youre not.

either way, its pretty obvious to anyone here with even a little knowledge of Nietzsche that you have no idea what youre talking about.

Listen Shadow the only reason you aren’t here is to make me look good.

So keep your forked tongue behind your teeth, I didn’t pass through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a twisted worm.

a zealot, huh? that explains much, actually.

now we’re reduced to taking quotes as well from LOTR, not just our pics…?

tisk, tisk

‘Be gone, dreaded Wormtongue! No more will you spread your filth and lies here!’ :-" =D>

your (admittedly highly amusing) blend of extreme biblism and the tales of Middle Earth notwithstanding, why dont you go ahead and post some actual content regarding Nietzsche’s philosophy, rather than read off the dictations of your ‘salvation or hell’ jehovas witness pamphlets?

‘Reduced’? au contraire.

It is the bat of darkness that can never face the splendour of the sun.

my my, you never run out of fun little metaphors, do you?

i think you might be happier on a different site, maybe a teen chatroom or a D&D fansite, perhaps? a place to spout your irrelevant comments and “light and darkness” analogies?

scurry away, this site is for philosophers, no place for your roleplaying mythology… though, you could try the ‘religion’ forums here… i think they might be more to your liking, what with all the irrational mysticism and faith-based self-worship.

and not to mention, all the quoting, which seems to replace any attempt at actually thinking for yourself. but thats ok, if you can find a caption off of a magic the gathering card that suits your purposes, who am i to say its wrong?

have fun, little one. ill wait and see what content or actual commentary you might have to offer, before deciding youre totally useless.

It needs but one foe to breed a war.

eh-hem, Moderators!!!

Sauwelios, you seem to be the resident Nietzsche expert around here (or one of them at least), so I’m not going to argue with you, but I will ask some question:

Would your quote above imply that Nietzsche felt he had some kind of grip on Ultimate Reality? You say that ‘will to power’ is an interpretation, but it can also pass as a fact. Does this mean Nietzsche was taking an epistemic and ontological stance on Reality?

If so, is this not another conjuration of a certain metaphysics? After all, I don’t think I’m mistaken to say that he borrowed the idea of the will to power from Schopenhauer’s will to life, which is an openly admitted metaphysical concept.

Nietzsche’s interpretation itself was hardly expert.

I will buy that… He was a philologist by training… And in a sense, language is history, and culture, but I think it was in basic statements of fact that his weakness most showed through… It is almost impossible to be a moral philosopher in the industrial age without knowing all there is to know, and that means grasping all the branches of philosophy like sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and science up and into modern physics, -if you do not want to get caught in a contradiction… I am uneducated, so I presume there a great holes in my knowledge…I do not think Nietzsche was aware of his weaknesses, or if so, he covered his weakness with bluff…But if you know better, you know better, and his statements ring false, and the conclusions he drew off of his wrong facts ring false too…Still, he was very often insightful, and his mistakes are only as grand as his clear sight, and no more…It is hard to imagine anyone having a greater effect on history who was not personally or politically powerful, like a general, or a tyrant…

Yes.

First, note that English is not my native language; this may help you understand why, second, I have trouble understanding terms like “epistemic” and “ontological”. I find them too abstract. Looking up “epistemic” on Merriam-Webster, I find “of or relating to knowledge or knowing : COGNITIVE”. This is too vague for me, though,—too general. I would like to make the word less abstract for myself by tracing its etymological roots (which is a job for classical philology, Nietzsche’s original trade). It derives from the pronoun ‘epi’ and the verb ‘histasthai’, and literally means “to stand over or near” something. We can compare it to “under-stand”, where “under” means “among”, as in “under these circumstances”. An epistemic knowledge then seems to me to be a knowledge where the knower stands over or beside the whole, i.e., apart from the whole, grasping the whole. It is therefore metaphysical, in that it comprises the whole of physis, the whole of being—i.e., of what is. I make a difference between being and Being, reserving the latter term to designate what it means to “be”, as Krell does in his translation of Heidegger’s Nietzsche.

According to Heidegger, “will to power” is Nietzsche’s answer to what Heidegger himself calls “the guiding question of philosophy” (i.e., of metaphysics), the question “What is being?” (as distinct from the “grounding” question, “What is Being?”).

What is being/what are beings? Nietzsche says they are the will to power, and nothing besides. Does this mean Nietzsche places himself beyond physis? He does coin this phrase, “the will to power and nothing besides”, in a passage where he says he will show his readers the world in his “mirror”. But this Mirroring cannot be an objective Reflecting:

[size=95]“That would be the highest thing for me”—so saith your lying spirit unto itself—“to gaze upon life without desire, and not like the dog, with hanging-out tongue:
To be happy in gazing: with dead will, free from the grip and greed of selfishness—cold and ashy-grey all over, but with intoxicated moon-eyes!
That would be the dearest thing to me”—thus doth the seduced one seduce himself,—“to love the earth as the moon loveth it, and with the eye only to feel its beauty.
And this do I call immaculate perception of all things: to want nothing else from them, but to be allowed to lie before them as a mirror with a hundred facets.”
Oh, ye sentimental dissemblers, ye covetous ones! Ye lack innocence in your desire: and now do ye defame desiring on that account!
Verily, not as creators, as procreators, or as jubilators do ye love the earth!
[TSZ, Of Immaculate Perception.][/size]
Nietzsche gazed upon life like the dog, with hanging-out tongue: in this sense he was a cynic. He loved the earth as a creator, procreator, and jubilator—that is to say, as a sun…

[size=95]Innocence, and creative desire, is all solar love!
See there, how she [the sun is feminine in German] cometh impatiently over the sea! Do ye not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love?
At the sea would she suck, and drink its depths to her height: now riseth the desire of the sea with its thousand breasts.
Kissed and sucked would it be by the thirst of the sun; vapour would it become, and height, and path of light, and light itself!
Verily, like the sun do I love life, and all deep seas.
And this meaneth to me knowledge: all that is deep shall ascend—to my height!
[ibid.][/size]
Contrary to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche did not seek to stand apart from life, i.e., from the will; to the contrary, he sought to merge with it as completely as possible—that is to say (as Schopenhauer did not really place himself beyond life, but was just deceiving himself, according to Nietzsche), to be as fully alive as possible to the fact that the world is will to power, and nothing besides. If you don’t mind me quoting again, and being even more long-winded (but if you’re still reading at this point, I don’t think you will), in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche says:

[size=95]It [philosophy] always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the “creation of the world,” to the causa prima [first cause].
[section 9.][/size]
Does this mean Nietzsche’s philosophy is a mere Tyrannising, a mere Imposing? But what Nietzsche imposes on the world is precisely the character of Tyrannising, of Imposing. If all worldviews are interpretations, then the view that the world is itself an Interpreting is the supreme.

[size=95]It remains a claim; it never ascends to certainty. But it has an arguable and plausible superiority as an interpretation, and it is able as well to account for both the world of concern to us and the world in itself.
[Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.][/size]

Epistemics is the philosophical study of knowledge. Its aim is to answer the question “How do we know?”

Ontology is the philosophical study of being (or of Being). It is the study of existence in and of itself (i.e. apart from how things seem).

Both of these are metaphysics. I’m wondering if Neitzsche is knowingly partaking in metaphysics. Is he claiming to know that the world is will to power? Is he claiming this to be true of Ultimate Reality or just in his experience of the world?

(NOTE: I suppose you could merge ontology with phenomenology - if you believed the world just was what we see. Would it still me metaphysics then?)

I wouldn’t charge Nietzsche with hypocracy if he was doing metaphysics, only if he claimed absolute knowledge of it. In describing his vision as his ‘mirror’, I take it he recognizes his own views as personal and perhaps subjective - that is, not absolute - which is fine - we all have mirrors.

So he admits his view is an interpretation, like any other, but it is better than those of the metaphysicist, idealists, nihilists, religious, etc. Is this right?

I don’t know if I would classify epistemics or ontology, or even phenomenology as metaphysics… Some one should get at what Aristotle originally refered to, that was later classified as metaphysics…It is all physics… Whether we know the cause of it or not, when we know, and when we are, it is the result of a physical state…If we know something is true, and learn it is false, and learn something new in the place of the old is true; whether we can explain the process or not, it is not a spiritual change, but one that is ultimately explainable in physical terms; and what they are exactly is not nearly so important to know it is physical, as to know that the slightest phenomenon rests upon physical cause… We are what we are in part because we can conceive of ourselves…The fact that we conceive of ourselves as spiritual beings does not make it so, or the fact that we consider knowledge part of a spiritual enrichment does not make it so…In fact, no one has ever shown what has often been asserted that knowedge is virtue, that people are made better by knowing…Only if we discern a difference between false knowledge and every other sort, which is a false dicotomy, can we consider such an outrageous statement to be true…

Consider it as the thirteenth commandment: Thou shall not shet yourself… And I can give you one great example of where it happened…Reading a neat little book called: The Scientific Background of Modern Philosophy, I came across an essay by Galaleo called The Assayer…Right after he made the statement that heat was movement, which was several centuries before a proof, he then said that color or taste, having a sound etc. were part of our own sensitivity… Why he would think that we carry around our own sweet until we should run across sugar I do not know… We know that the reason sugar tastes sweet and sacarine tastes sweet is the same, and that our senses do react in similar ways to similar conditions, but we get no where confusing cause with effect, as all metaphysics does… Now I presume a lot, but the purely metaphysical presume much more…We are physical in a physical world, and we have grown up adapting to what we encounter… And the other side of the equasion is all we cannot sense when sensing it might save our lives…If sensing carbon dioxide had ever been important for our primeval existence we might well have developed the sense of it… Barring that, we develope sensors for co, recognizing that people do not die of nothing…Looking for a physical cause for all events has made physics, even while conceiving of ourselves as spiritual beings has made us human… People should think of themselves as spiritual, and realize that all of humanity exists in a certain physical dynamic that is quite fragile, and while we might frame enough food in terms of justice, it is not justice alone that keeps a person from starvation…