What I got out of Nietzsche

While most Nieztschephiles I’ve come across praise Nietzsche for his celebration of the uberman or his exposition of the will to power as the dominant force guiding everything in the universe, what I got out of Nietzsche is a little different. It’s been a while since I read Nietzsche and I have to admit, even at the time of reading him, I only half understood everything he was talking about (I jokingly say that he’s the only philosopher whom I thoroughly enjoyed reading without understanding a word he said), but I did get this from him: when philosophizing with others, look at their motives, not the content of their words. And indeed this could apply to conversations with anyone: ask not what they’re trying to say, but why they’re saying it.

Obviously, this ties into some of the other things Nietzsche is celebrated for–particularly, the will to power. If the final motive for everything we do is an attempt to gain power, then it is also the motive for holding the philosophical positions that we hold. And it will be the motive for coming up with the underlying justifications we use to bolster our philosophical positions. If one understandings this then it can be a distraction. One tends to be a bit more distracted by the question of why someone is arguing the point they’re trying to argue, how does such argumentation help them gain power? And though this is a distraction from the content of the argument, it can also help a great deal in deciding how to respond to such arguments.

But as most Nietzschephiles know, this motive–the motive of gaining power–is typically unconscious. So don’t expect the speaker to agree about what you sense his/her motives are. Even the simple act of admitting one’s motives can sabotage the goal of those motives. The best one can do (usually) in an attempt to gain power via arguing for a certain philosophical position is to allow one’s self to be fully convinced of that position. But that doesn’t impede the listener from trying to get a feel for those motives.

Some examples: 1) one argues for the existence of God, not because one was one day overcome with an irrefutable revelation about why logically God must exist, and is now only reporting the truth as this revelation has shown him, but because he belongs to a religious community, and if he can convince others that the beliefs of the community are true, then the community, and thus he himself, are that much more powerful. 2) One argues for the virtues and the competencies of the Republicans against the Democrats. Why? Not because it’s a proven objective fact that the Republicans are more virtuous and competent than the Democrats, but because one is a member of, or is aligned with, the Republican party herself, or perhaps because one stands to benefit from the policies of the Republican party more so than from the policies of the Democratic party. 3) One argues for more lenient laws concerning drugs use, not because it is actually fair and morally right to be more lenient towards drugs users or drug dealers, but because one is a drug user or drug dealer.

So how does this help the listener? How does gaining a sense of the speakers motives help the listener to respond more effectively to the speakers arguments? Simply because if you understand what’s actually driving the speaker, you gain the leverage of understanding what the speaker is going to agree with and what not. In itself, this understanding is neutral–it can be used to torment the speaker by frustrating their motives, or it can be used to help the speaker by suggesting ways of looking at things that you predict he/she will respond favorably to without necessarily compromising your own views and being locked into a game of win-or-lose with the speaker.

As an example of how I tried to do this in my own life, I remember once getting into a discussion with a fundamentalist friend of mine who insisted that the impossibly-heavy-rock paradox of God’s omnipotence was flawed. He argued that the picture of God inventing a rock that not even he could lift didn’t really expose a paradox about God’s omnipotence because in actual fact, God simple choses not to invent such a rock–He chooses never to do so–and thus His omnipotence never comes into question. Now, while I could have pointed out that this argument misses the point, I recognized that this would be to focus too much attention to the content of my friend’s argument and not enough to his motives for arguing it. His motives are obviously that if the idea of God’s omnipotence is threatened by a scenario that exposes a paradox in that idea, his whole religious belief system is threatened. So what I offered my friend was a compromise solution: the point of the impossibly-heavy-rock scenario is to show, not that God is less omnipotent than believers think, but that it is not logically possible for a god to be that omnipotent. If that level of omnipotence leads to a logical paradox, then no god can be that omnipotent–the whole notion of omnipotence of that kind being logically incoherent. I thought this would help my friend because I thought he would see that he could still hold onto the belief that his God is still the most powerful god there is–indeed, the most powerful that anything can be in principle–without having to compromise his faith. But alas, he responded in the predictably manner that anyone would when they are blind, not only to this insight that Nietzsche had taught me, but to his own unconscious motives, his own will to power. This blindness meant that his response was to press on with his original argument–that God simply chooses not to invent the impossibly-heavy-rock. I think if he understood his own motives, his own desire to not have to compromise his beliefs, then he would see that he didn’t have to press on with his original argument, that he could have accepted my argument that God doesn’t have to be able to create the impossibly-heavy-rock in order to be the same omnipotent God that my friend’s religion says He is, and everything would have resolved into a nice workable solution. But it didn’t, and we no longer on speaking terms (just kidding, it wasn’t that bad of a disagreement).

Very nice, yes. But it needs to be added that power is not so straightforwardly the kind of power that one gains in having one’s community legitimated or having one’s political party grow in popularity. Power is not power-over, but rather power-to. To see this, a nice historical example from Foucault. We tend traditionally to think that sex is repressed, and that by speaking of it we are liberating ourselves. Of course, this isn’t the case: over the last three centuries, far from a growing silence, we’ve seen a veritable explosion of discourses on sex (medical, psychological, educational, and so on). These discourses license certain claims in certain places from certain people. Far from a taboo, there is instead an injunction to speak of sex—and Foucault sees in this impetus an expression of power. Power, then, is not only prohibitive or dominating, but also productive and creative. It doesn’t merely delimit the space of our freedoms, but rather opens and maintains those very spaces themselves. Just think of the way public discourse on gay marriage has made legally credible alternative modes of being-together.

So, yes, the will-to-power undergirds all of our actions, but it is not a power that seeks to dominate and oppress others, but a creative, productive, dynamic, fluid power. Think here of the relationship between a student and his mentor. A power-dynamic, no doubt, but nothing if not a productive one. Which isn’t, of course, to say that power is only creative; it can and does articulate itself oppressively as well.

I think that should add the requisite nuance to your account, gib. But to go even further, Nietzsche would have you ask of your friend not only why he seems particularly partial to proving wrong the rock-paradox (it should go without saying that he doesn’t want his beliefs undermined), but also why he is, in the first place, tied to those beliefs at all. The fact of his theism is itself the expression of an unconscious aspect of his character—namely, for Nietzsche, his slavishness. Why believe in God? Because doing so (for example) allows one to shrug off the weight of one’s suffering, displacing it onto a plan that will have it recouped in heaven. Out of that belief emerges the motive that you’ve correctly identified to keep counter-arguments from attaining philosophical persuasiveness. You can see, then, how very deep Nietzsche’s insight actually runs. One might push it even further: why does your friend (in this hypothetical) find his suffering unbearable? Locating the answer to that question will lead us down even deeper into the shadowy cavities of the human psyche.

Oh yes, I agree. I hope I didn’t give off the impression that I thought the will to power always presses us towards domination over some other agency, some other will. All I meant to convey was that what drives us to take up the philosophical positions we take up is not a “vision of truth” as some might think, but a choosing of ideas, a choosing (specifically) of those ideas that help us (whether by means of an inner monologue or by being expressed to others) to gain power.

That’s quite a good example. It shows a kind of dynamic in which both parties in an exchange stand to gain power by that very exchange. The teacher stands to gain power by potentially acquiring a disciple (or at least someone who ends up seeing things the same way he/she sees things), and the student stands to gain power by potentially acquiring greater knowledge.

In this case, I’m not sure it has anything to do with the will to power at all (but you tell me). In cases like this, I take a genetic/biological look. I say that we are biologically/genetically predisposed to reject ideas we are unfamiliar with in favor of those we were brought up on. This is not an all or nothing affair, obviously, but the way I see it is like this: we are born without any convictions–this is like the idea of the blank slate (although I know we are not literally blank at birth, but as far as abstract ideas and principles on which we tend to stand are concerned, I think it’s fair to say that we, as newborns, have very few of those)–and at some point in our development, our brains gain the ability to process and incorporate ideas, and principles, and values, and worldview, and concepts, etc. on a much more abstract level. As we are typically brought up in a community (or society, or culture, etc.), there are the typical ideas, principles, values, etc. of that community, society, culture, etc. (…you get the idea ) that end up getting downloaded, once our brains are developed enough to compute them, into our minds (like software onto a computer). And here’s what I maintain: first come, first server. That is, whatever community-given belief-system is first “accepted” (let us say) by our brains becomes not only there to stay, but functions as an anti-virus. Which is to say, it not only constitutes our official beliefs and values and outlooks, etc., but works to fending off all other beliefs, values, outlooks, etc. And in many people, it can perform this function so well that it remains the only program running on their brains for the rest of their lives.

What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I don’t think of the tendency of people to be defensive in reaction to counter-beliefs (counter, that is, to their own beliefs) as a result of their will to power, but a result of some genetic/biological underpinning which determines how the brain works. That’s not to say it isn’t an application of the will to power, but rather something more physically determined–and unconscious–but you tell me: you seem far more learned than me in these matters: could something like the above (although its just a personal insight which I have no idea if it’s true or not) be interpreted as a form of the will to power?

That’s quite true–after all, there are forms of suffering which are bearable and forms which are not–when I work out at the gym, my pain is, as a matter of course, bearable. Then there are forms of pain which are not bearable. I find the difference is not only in degree (although that is an obvious difference), but in the quality–specifically whether the pain is physical or emotional. I think that emotional pain tends to be more unbearable (and therefore has a lower threshold of “unbearableness”) because it is not only painful but has a clouding influence over our thoughts, and is therefore a lot more able to manipulate our resolve to keep some measure of control over ourselves (control over our reactions to pain has a lot to do, after all, with our resolve–that is, our cognitive/rational principles).

Okay, great stuff, gib. This is worth spending some time on, so let’s go slowly. For the sake of brevity, I’ll excerpt only the most important bit from your post.

There’s a lot here. I’m going to say, right from the start, that I hold no position on whether and how community-given belief-systems are first given over to the infantile brain. I don’t think it’s a necessarily interesting question. The infant doesn’t think, not in a philosophically-robust sense at any rate. It is, however, perhaps worth noting the lessons of developmental psychology: to what the infant’s brain will be receptive is determined by the temporal frame in which that stimulus is presented (and I don’t see why this shouldn’t apply to belief-systems as much as it does to music or nutrients) as well as environmental factors like temperature, sound, and so on. Here, there is no hard distinction between intra- and post-natal development: both come as a series of phases in the same trajectory of becoming. There is much here ripe for a Nietzschean analysis, but, that aside, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we take your account for granted: all infants come to maturity with anti-virus systems already installed. The question, then, is why I, for example, was so easily and instinctively able to shrug off the burden of my Christian upbringing for something less gravitative while your friend held so desperately onto his. Either this is (1) merely physical happenstance, which is to say that it is a matter of purely biological, genetic contingency that your friend’s brain opted to marshal updates and patches (to stay a little longer with this metaphor) to bolster the potentially faulty Christian program that was already there instead of uninstalling it and facing the horror of virtual reality through the strictures of a program less, let us say, user-friendly. Or, it is (2) somehow the workings of your friend’s will-to-power that animated this course of action. Here’s where I think you’re coming from in rejecting the will-to-power as an explanation: (2) seems both to attribute some kind of conscious intentionality to the inception of an event that, in all probability, took its earliest root in childhood, and to be unable to account, in its own terms, for why some brains opt to update a faulty program while other brains opt to switch it out—which is to say that it isn’t clear, conscious intention aside, how the event in question can be account for in terms of an increase in, or contest of, power. As a result, (1), or some variation thereon, seems like our best bet. Let me if I’ve mischaracterized the position (this is, of course, just a quick gloss lacking in nuance).

Okay, so, (2) has to deal first with the charge of intentionality, and second with the charge of explanatory inadequacy. Let’s begin by looking more closely at what Nietzsche has to say of the will. He has, to be sure, a multiplicity of positions on the will—so we’ll have to be selective. I like §19, from Beyond Good and Evil.

[size=85]Philosophers customarily speak of the will as if it were the best-known thing in the world. […] Willing seems to me, above all, something complicated, something that is unified only in the word—and popular opinion simply inheres in this one word, which has overmastered the always inadequate caution of philosophers. So if we are, for once, more careful, if we are “un-philosophical,” then let’s say, firstly, that in every act of willing there is, to start with, a multiplicity of feelings, namely, the feeling of the condition away from which, a feeling of the condition towards which, the feeling of this “away” and “towards” themselves, then again, an accompanying muscular feeling which comes into play through some kind of habit, without our putting our “arms and legs” into motion, as soon as we “will.” Secondly, just as we acknowledge feelings, indeed many different feelings, as ingredients of willing, so we should also acknowledge that thinking is an ingredient as well. In every act of will there is a commanding thought, and people should not believe that this thought can be separated from the “will,” as if then the will would still be left over! Thirdly, the will is not only a complex of feeling and thinking but, above all, an affect, and, indeed, an affect of the command.[/size]
That’s only a fragment, but it should suffice, at least alongside this excerpt from §3.

[size=85][…] we must still consider the greatest part of conscious thinking among the instinctual activities, even in the case of philosophical thinking. We must relearn here, in the same way we relearned about heredity and what is “innate.” Just as the act of birth merits little consideration in all the procedures and processes of heredity, so there is little point in setting up “consciousness” in any significant sense as something opposite to what is instinctual—most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is led on secretly and forced into particular paths by his instincts. Even behind all logic and its apparent dynamic authority stand evaluations of worth or, putting the matter more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a particular way of life—for example, that what is certain is more valuable than what is uncertain, that appearance is of less value than the “truth.” Evaluations like these could, for all their regulatory importance for us, still be only foreground evaluations, a particular kind of niaiserie [foolishness] that may necessary for the preservation of beings precisely like us.[/size]
All right, so there’s a lot going on here. First, I think it’s pretty clear that the concept of will at play in the will-to-power is nothing so straightforwardly conscious. It’s not even necessarily unconscious, at least not in the Freudian sense of the term that would confine its activities to the mental realm, albeit below the surface of the conscious “I”. The will is something complicated, a multiplicity unified only in word (and how very deceptive language can be…). It involves feelings, affects, and thoughts. But, one (and one of many, to be sure) of the lessons of §3 is the entanglement of the mental and physical, the lack of opposition between consciousness and instinct, or—in other, perhaps more appropriate terms—between mind and body. So it’s not as if the will involves a feeling directed by a thought, or a thought animated by a feeling; no, nothing so distinct. It is, instead, a meshwork of bodily affects and mental directives, of conscious intentions and physiological impulses. So let’s look at the charge of intentionality: how is it that we can ascribe to a young child deciding to stick with the beliefs given him by his community the will—which is to say, in the terms implied by the framing of this problematic, the intention—to do so? Given Nietzsche’s account of the will, this question no longer carries much of its earlier weight. If what we mean by the claim “the fact that the child held onto his Christianity in the face of doubt was a matter of will” is that the child consciously chose to stick with his community’s beliefs, then, of course this is not a defensible position. But, if what we mean is that the child, for reasons of physiological disposition and character, latched instinctively onto his beliefs, then this becomes increasingly more reasonable. Perhaps the child’s stomach turned at the image of a godless world; perhaps it felt to him the way it does when his parents leave the room for too long. He doesn’t have to consciously weigh the evidence; he has only to feel and to act, as if by instinct. Consciousness, remember, is not, at least not for Nietzsche, opposed to instinct; and neither is physiological tendency opposed to intentional deliberation. So, yes, it can be, on this account, a matter of will—even if the child in question acts reflexively, and even if he is far too young to entertain the weight of the position he is yoking himself to. To take another, more popular, line from Nietzsche: there is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. But wisdom is not always wise. The child acts instinctively, in accordance with the affects of his bodily inclinations and responses, and out of this reflex emerges the foundation for what will later become his motivation to defend his Christianity against the skepticism of science. His body founds his philosophy, but perhaps not for the better.

As for the second problem—how it is this account explains the child’s decision in terms of power—, keeping in mind the bodily formulation of the will, the force of this question too all but dissolves before we need even to answer it. Let us stay with the suggestion that the child feels a turn of the stomach at the image of a godless world: latching onto his Christianity is a matter of power because the sickness he feels is a debilitating one; it is, in Spinoza’s terms, a sad affect. It affects the child negatively, dismantling his ability to act. Think here of the way you feel after a messy break-up. You don’t want to move, you don’t want to work, you find it hard even to muster the energy required to eat—you opt, more often than not, to just order out. These sad affects undermine your potential for activity, they reduce your power (remember, this is power-to, not only power-over) to its minimum threshold. One needs to reduce these bad encounters or sad affects down to their lowest possible occurrence, maximizing instead the affects that enliven us, animating our powers of activity. You might think here of your encounter with morning coffee or with good conversation: they make you feel alive, you become more articulate, you want to write, you feel like you can literally accomplish more. Your power has increased. So, in turning away from the sad affect the child associates with godlessness, he is, by extension, turning toward an increase in his own power-to, perhaps not directly, but certainly in a derivative way. It is in these terms that I would venture the claim that the matter of whether or not a child (decisively or willfully) holds to his community’s belief system is a matter of his will-to-power operating on a physiological, affective level. And this is, to recall §19, precisely the formula for the will: physiological, affective, and (eventually, for the child) conscious—all at once; the will is nothing if not complicated.

Now, we can even introduce a value-judgment here, for Nietzsche wants everything judged on the basis of the valuation of the will-to-power in question. The priestly will is slavish, worth denouncing. It saps from life its vitality. The artistic will is abundant, overflowing with affirmation. So, what of the child’s will in question? It is, of course, and must be, seen for what it is: weak, cowardly, shy, humble. Instead of facing the sickening horror of a godless world, instead of leaning into, instead of away from, the sad affect that accompanies the image or thought, the child opts instead for a comfort fit only for the herd-animal, the slave. As he comes to maturation, the child begins to bolster his belief-system with philosophical argument and thus only reinforces consciously his slavish disposition, guiding himself into a humble life lived far from the dangerous but vital flames of the world, far from the peaks on top of which stand the philosophers, the cliffs on whose edges dance the artists. It does not, then, suffice to say of your friend that he has, since the lonely auspices of childhood, disposed himself toward the world in accordance with a belief system bestowed upon him as if against his will, a belief system it now makes sense for him to want to defend, even if only unconsciously; none of this suffices to sanction off the trajectory of his development from the reach of Nietzsche’s will-to-power and its corresponding judgment of the valuation of life disclosed therein.

Hello gib,
It is a fascinating psychological theory, but it opens the doors to questions that detract from it’s practicality. For example, other people arguments are motivated by unconscious pressures. This interpretation is also motivated by unconscious pressures. As you examine another person, and judge them, who judges you? It is also not necessary to arrive at that conclusion. It is not logically impossible that a person is making a rational argument, not due to unconscious pressures but from conscious pressures. Assuming unconscious motives is perhaps a source of power that insulates the person making this judgment from even having to analyse the argument. It dismisses the argument in a form of ad homenin.
That is my opinion.

This is a solid point and has to be addressed. I think it can be addressed, but it needs to be.
IOW is it a skill? Can one get better at noticing/feeling the influence of will to power’s influence on what people believe including oneself? How can one test this ‘getting better’ or otherwise know that one is generally skilled or not and what might affect this skill even in those with the skill?

I agree with this. I’m not sure you even can pin down an exact point or phase in a child’s development when they will be receptive to the beliefs and values of their community. I think these beliefs and values are on-goingly filled into the mind of the child as he/she grows up, and this partly due to certain inherent characteristics of the ideas themselves. For example, my wife is Catholic (I’m not) and she’s raising the kids Catholic* (5 year old daughter, 3 year old son). Our daughter, Cassidy, believes in God, which is to say that the God meme has successfully been downloaded onto her brain. But what about the idea of the holy trinity? I don’t even know if she’s heard of that, and if she has, I doubt she’d be able to make sense of it. But no doubt, if she continues to gobble up these kinds of Catholic teachings, she probably will one day not only understand the concept of the holy trinity, but accept it. The point is, the child’s acquiring his/her community’s beliefs and values is an ongoing process which is partly a consequence of the character of the beliefs and values themselves–the simpler ideas and values being absorbed early on, the more complex or abstract ones later on.

If there’s any mischaracterization here, I would say it’s not in how you summed up my views but in how you seem to interpret this view as a rejection of the will-to-power explanation of why we cling to the beliefs and values that we cling to. Don’t take me to be rejecting it. I just didn’t (at the time) see a clean way to make my view (with the anti-virus metaphor) compatible with the will-to-power view. I mean, I did consider that since Nietzsche’s idea of the will-to-power is supposed to be descriptive of almost every force in nature, you could say that even the genetic/biological underpinnings of our tendency to cling to certain beliefs and values must be a manifestation of the will-to-power–but there I would still have to contend with anyone suggesting that that instance of the will-to-power is one and the same as our conscious and deliberate decisions to cling to our beliefs and value (if we even do make such decisions consciously and deliberately). But what you gave me following the above quote has done the job nicely (thanks!). It makes sense–whatever the genetic/biological underpinnings of our tendency to cling to our beliefs and values, it is felt subjective just as Neitzsche said:

And given your account, I suppose we would say that what usually motivates people to cling to their beliefs and values (although this is not a hard and fast rule) is the fact that they’ve gotten comfortable with them, grown accustom, secure, safe, they’ve adapted–so that any contending belief or value attempting to supersede them will feel like a force trying to take all that away–all that comfort, all that being-used-to, that being-adapted-to. Yet, I don’t think we should say that every mechanism within us that might pass as the phenotype of this genetic/biological underpinning will necessarily be felt in some way subjectively. I think some of these mechanisms are going to be totally unconscious and not felt in any way. For example, I have noticed this in myself: I have notices that sometimes when someone expresses an idea that clashes with my own belief, I will almost instinctively react by saying “no, I disagree,” and then proceed to confabulate something. I think this is more than just a report that: I hold beliefs that clash with the ones you just expressed. I don’t think just noticing or reporting on such a clash between ideas counts as a disagreement or rejection of the foreign idea. Why not, after all, be skeptical of your own beliefs as a first reaction? What I’m getting at is that this style of reaction that most people have does seem to me to come out of an instinct asserting itself, an instinct of thought, almost a reflex, a spontaneous reaction to disagree with any ideas that don’t conform to your own. This could be a result of conditioning–that is, it may have originally stemmed from semi-conscious subjective feelings of discomfort or insecurity over experimenting with how it feels to be skeptical of your own views, but over time you might have learned, as a general rule, to simply not be skeptical, and this conditioning, once in place, became an automatic reaction (all this taking place unconsciously, of course). But once the conditioning takes hold, it’s hard to see how Nietzsche’s rich description of the subjective experience of willing fits in.

• Even though I’m not Catholic, I have no problem with this. When Cassidy becomes old enough to ask questions on a somewhat deeper level, I’m going to tell her the truth: some people believe, others don’t. Mommy believes, your daddy sorta believes but not the conventional way, and others don’t believe God exists at all. Ultimately, no one knows for certain. And that’s how I’ll leave.

omar,

All that may be true, omar, but all I’m saying in this thread is that’s what I got out of Nietzsche.

I don’t see off hand any reason such a skill can’t be acquired, but it should be said that getting better at noticing the will-to-power in one’s self and what that will is doing must also be motivated by the will-to-power.

I agree, though how does one know one is getting better and that one is good at it, rather than using it to ward off felt threats - ideas that may be true but one is uncomfortable with without knowing, etc. - or to feel entitled to dismiss, ignore or dominate?

I have my answer to this, but I am interested to hear yours.

Also one must not confuse likely motivation with a problem with the position someone is arguing. And this seems like an area where this kind of analysis is likely to be misused.

I Think some speakers will agree that what they Believe matches their desires - to put it differently from will to Power. For the same reasons, I would guess, that you Think someone could get good at discerning their own and other people’s motives, they would be aware of their own mental patterns and needs, etc.

This Cuts across beliefs of course, even including atheists, but I wanted to Point out a twist on this. A person may want the role of believer, so they can encounter their own doubt in Another person. If I am the one arguing against the atheist (or the theist), I am not the atheist (or the theist). This can be soothing since without this interpersonal dynamic the intrapersonal dynamic will be easier to notice/feel.

Or it fits one’s temperment and long standing . many lifetime - feuds and hatreds. At root people tend to lay blame in certain patterns and priorities. This goes way back. Not that they remember for the most part.

Or one knows that laws against drugs are in part laws against having different from the norm states of mind. I realize you are just given possibilities, I just want to extend and explore a bit. One could also see how these laws get aimed at the poor or certain races more than others. One might be poor, but one might also not want to be part of a force that attacks the poor or other races. Call it the will to feeling good about yourself.

Could you give an example.

I have not found this to be sucessful, but if you have some examples - even a link?

Oh, lookie!!! (below)

But then it did not help? or?

But I Think you partially misread his will to power. First dealing with you is not dealing with Dawkins or online atheists. Just because you might accept a compromise does not mean many he will deal with will. SEcond, despite the idiocy of that whole argument and the theologians who set it up - and also much of Western rationality - with their abstract, disembodied arguments and and mullings over, this is what many believers now think they need to believe and this is what a God is.

It’s a bit like a compromise where you try to tell someone who does not Believe their mother ever turned tricks that they can love their mother even though she is a prostitute. At least for a while, they probably could not.

People are defending themselves against a loss of Control that they do not know the outcome of. And I find this to be near universal, though each Culture has its looser areas. Cvivilized people often Think they can lose Control because they have ‘open minds’ and can allow certain ideas to be in their heads without much emotion. Other Cultures deal with more, well, I would say, actual losses of Control, though they do have trouble with the civilized, educated skill of mullling over ideas for a while. Or getting drunk friday night.

Yes, very much agreed. But I do think that’s rare. I mean, for one thing, I think it would have to be a part of your beliefs and values just to look for those motives. Usually the brain just invents (or appropriates) beliefs and values for the sake of gaining power in the Nietzschean sense without having to reflect on the reasons why or how this whole process works. It’s unnecessary at best, and a waste of energy at worse. But, yes, it can happen.

And thus, more painful?

Thanks for adding to the examples, Moreno. These are all good.

Well, if you know the speaker has some motive X behind why he says this or that, than you can torment him by denying him the satisfaction of X. X can be aimed at something as simple as wanting to convince you of the speaker’s views. So persistently acting stubborn and playing ignorant will frustrate the speaker. Compare this with a speaker who makes a point simply as a passing remark–let’s say because they recognized a logical mistake in your argument. This speaker may have no motive in doing so except merely that he felt like pointing it out (maybe even to help you). Being stubborn and acting ignorant in response to this likely isn’t going to have much of an effect on the speaker–it might just give off the impression to the speaker that you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed or that you’re kind of immature–and the speaker is probably just going to brush you off saying “well, if you want to insist that you’re right, all the power to you. I’m just going to move on.”

Or let’s say someone continually argues for certain economic policies that, over a certain period of time, you begin to notice all support a socialist system. He may not have officially ever come out and say it, but it becomes clear to you that his motive is to encourage socialism. So if you’re really feeling sadistic, you could one day say, in a really brazen and provocative manner, “socialism is the worst political/economic system the world has ever seen. There is not one redeeming aspect of it. It should be completely eradicated from the face of the Earth,” and then just keep spouting out crap like that in the speaker’s face throughout the whole debate.

No, it didn’t help but the point of that example was to show how I chose to respond to my friend, not how he responded to me.

Well, compare that with what I said about what I think were my friend’s motives:

Is that different from what you’re saying?

Yeah, it would take some time for my friend to process the logic of what I was saying. But if he reacts in a defensive manner from the very beginning, he won’t even give himself a chance to process it.

Yes, a feeling of insecurity. Ideas and beliefs are like tools. So long as we’ve adapted them to our minds, we feel we have a tool with which to get through life. Destroy that tool and we feel in danger.

Usually what this means is that there are a whole bunch of ideas the person is able to accept without experiencing any kind of emotional angst that don’t touch on the ideas and values he actually does feel touchy about. For example, I highly doubt those who claim to have an “open mind” would be open to racist ideas or hate speech, but they don’t usually find themselves having to grapple with this because people in general don’t usually openly exchange racist ideas or express hate speech. The person can conveniently avoid the issue 99% of the time.

Yes, that’s one of the hallmark skills that Western civilization exercises well. Takes talent.

To not notice why you are doing things, what your motives are, what emotions are triggered by philosophical/idea threats, is using energy. It takes energy to maintain an outer defense while at the same time suppressing what you are really feeling and doing. Keeping these out of consciousness. It creates anxiety also. Even simply having the goal of relieving anxiety - not by pushing it out of consciousness ( which does seem to work for some people, but not for me) should be enough to make one begin looking at what is really going on underneath their beliefs. Though I agree most do not do it much.

I think so. And also then you have to invest denial suppression energy. Once you are in the dynamic where someone else is playing the role for you of having the wrong belief, you can simply react to them. Distress caused by confusion, ambivalence, cognitive dissonence is painful and heavily avoided by most people.

I understood this example. I will have to mull this over. You know I think I respond to people’s actual motives, sometimes, but I do it too directly.

Well, compare that with what I said about what I think were my friend’s motives:

Yes, in the first case because it will be used against him by some people, though not by you. With you he will not suddenly find himself in a retreat, protecting his withdrawel, but with other atheists he will. So he needs a response in general, even if he did not with you. In the second, it is close, but then it should not have surprised you. Modern Christians and Muslims, have to have a perfect got with all qualities as ultimate superlatives. That is God. A God without those would not be God. This is sad because it is a strange minority theological position that caught on like the Spanish flu. For him to acknowledge this option - basically you were pointing out a false dilemma - he would cut himself off from most of his peers. He would be considered by other fundamentalists to be a heretic. He would be stepping, also, into the unknown. What would this mean if God was not able to break logic? And that is a hard question for anyone to answer.

Sure, I’m not saying it was the right move on his part. My point was more that the impact is in a wider context and entails a great deal more than what you would accept in that interaction. In relation to you, in that moment, the pain would be fairly low, but in general, it would be have huge cascading effects on much of what he holds deal including his relations with, likely, many other important people in his life. Effects beyond what could be predicted by him - or by us - but way past…oh, I can still believe in God, just there is a logical limitation on what this God can do?

Yes. Also anything that implies that they use intuition or non-scientific processes to arrive at certain positions often triggers real defensiveness in these open minds. Anyway, this phrase ‘open mind’ seems to me to generally mean: I can have an idea I disagree with in my mind and peck at it for quite a while before officially coming out and rejecting it as I was going to all along, which makes me better than all the fanatics.

To me it just seems to make them slower. They still wanted us to invade Iraq, just as a certain group of fanatics convinced them was logical.

It need not to be a joke. Frankly, I could say pretty much the same thing about myself. Being unsure about what he means, and still enjoying it, it’s definitely enticing – or so it feels to me.
I would say that I have learned not to pretend to understand, to leave things suspended and wait until they come to me. I have had to become cautious, a slow reader necessarily keen on details.

As for the rest of your post, I see things somehow differently.

I guess that Nietzsche never looked for philosophizing with others, rather against others - and even against himself. OK, that’s semantics after all, but his stance is rather specific, dialog is something less than an option. The “others” are interpreted more than listened to.
As for motives, maybe he takes it a bit further, also the why-s are questioned. Among the many references to illustrate this attitude, I guess that GS, Preface, 2-3 are possibly exemplary.

As you pointed out, very little of man’s activity can be explained through conscious pursuits (and even that is probably mere appearance) – at least this is what Nietzsche assumes. So, while wtp is indeed the driving force (wtp is everything), portraying this as a conscious strategy to subject the opponent seems to me too narrow a point of view, for two reasons. One is that such a strategy, which ultimately reveals itself as merely eristic, can apply to some, but hardly to everybody. The second is that prevailing in a debate is not necessarily a goal functional to prevailing in a larger context where more lively aspects come into play. If prevailing, expanding, overcoming is the natural tendency of everything, a hypothetic strategy for that would not necessarily have a dialectic victory as its primary goal (though this needs to be assessed in a given context, but that serves the point: it is not necessarily a goal per se).
The examples you propose are also unsuitable because Nietzsche condemns dialectic philosophizing (TI, The problem of Socrates, 5-6). Conversely Nietzsche has definitely raised and attempted to examine the problem of what triggers the pursuit of truth “at all costs”, meaning that a higher “phenomenology” of will-to-power, such as science, is indeed alien to this adoption of positions subject to the aim to prevail that you present - that would be plebeian…

As for what follows in your post, you are very correct. Yet you are suggesting a situation based on a personal understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy that, in my view, fails to render the complexity of his position. What is a motive at the end of the day? You seemingly presume something thoroughly rational resulting from a conscious aim to prevail at all costs… Well, indeed, as others have pointed out, some finesse is most required. Else the analysis is shallow, there are too many layers forsaken in your examples.
People may argue for some thesis because of a variety of reasons, and maybe the motive put forth is just an excuse. But the fact that men are incorrigible liars is fully acknowledged… it’s pointless to object to Nietzsche on the basis of this.
In your (and onto-bios’ and moreno’s and omar’s) attempted dynamic theories of beliefs – which make sense, btw, and make the debate philosophically more relevant – you lay scenarios that pertain better to Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Not all unconscious processes are repressed or require defense mechanisms. Some things just don’t come to the surface because they simply haven’t been noticed. Can you imagine how much our conscious minds would be flooded if everything that went on within us unconsciously had to become conscious when all defense mechanisms were suspended? For some of our motives and drive–most of them, I would say–there is no advantage to them being conscious–like there being no advantage to a dog reflecting on his hunger and how it drives him to look for food in order to actually gain food. He doesn’t have to suppress such thoughts; his brain just isn’t wired to have such thoughts to begin with.

What do you mean?

I see what you mean. You mean to say that not only does the impossibly-heavy-rock paradox undermine his whole belief system, but it poses a threat to his sense of membership in the Christian community. My compromise solution may have resolved the first of these, but not necessarily the second since he’d essentially have to get his entire community on board with my compromise solution before he could feel comfortable accepting it.

I see that now.

And therein lies the unconscious motive once again. They think they’re simply exploring the issue from all sides and arrive at the conclusion that they are justified in rejecting it because they’ve weight all the facts. But really, this “exploration” is more of a laborious task of invention–inventing whatever justifications they need in order to sanction rejecting what it was their goal to reject all along.

attano, I’ll respond to you shortly.

So gib, what are your motives in posting this? What are you trying to defend or promote?

I believe what you’re talking about has been addressed above. I’m aware of what you’re saying (if I understand you correctly) and I agree with it. I don’t think it takes away from my main point though.

You’ll have to explain why that is. Whatever Nietzsche’s sentiments about dialectic philosophizing, I don’t see why the examples I gave aren’t good examples of how the will-to-power figures unconsciously into people’s choice of positions and arguments.

I think one could think of science as an emergent sociological phenomenon that rises above the mere sum of its components–those components being individual human scientists. IOW, while science may have, as its intrinsic goal, the pursuit of truth, it is not human. Individual human scientists, on the other hand, conduct their scientific work in order to put food on the table. This isn’t to say they have no interest in truth, or that one can’t act like a scientist in one’s leisure time, but that they pursue it “at all costs” or “for it’s own sake” is often an inaccurate statement about their motives. However, one would have to be a fool to believe there is no truth-seeking motive in men–indeed, knowing the truth can enliven one, even inspire and awe–and this does feel like a positive feature of truth worth seeking for its own sake–but it’s not hard to see how the pursuit of truth serves the will-to-power: one is typically more empowered the more truth he/she knows.

Then you’ve misread me.

Just trying to kill some boredom, OH. I’ve got a whole pack of potential thread topics lined up, but I’ll save them for my Friday’s.

As you say, the origin of the conflicting position in a hypothetical dialogue is ultimately unconscious. I did not perceive the “unconscious” dimension that you posited in motives, as you objected I probably misred you.
The dialogue is a reflection of a psychological outfits determined by various factors and situations. According to Nietzsche, all this can be traced back to wtp, so in this respect you are right. Nevertheless it is not by limiting the scope to what is said and its possible motives that one can actually – or, rather, adequately – see the underlying psychological dynamics; the difficulties of this approach have been highlighted by others quite well. In this respect I would also stress the fact that a dialog is a conscious effort where one expresses oneself complying with various criteria (one can be rationality, but it can be some other common framework as well) – as others have noticed. That means that the expression of the self is adulterated somehow (which is one of the problems with dialectics) and that one may be possibly led to say things that in a way he does not mean, even more so when using deliberately eristic tactics, (and I guess that in a way or another many among us have had that kind of experience).
Please note that I am just discussing about the unsuitability of your examples, I am just saying that the portrayed situations are insufficient to corroborate or falsify or simply observe a theory of the wtp, but not that it is certainly mistaken. Also I would not like to give the impression that only the subconscious matters and that everything that is said is utterly irrelevant.
My point can be subsumed simply by saying that it is not that simple, that one does not get to interpret one’s opponent by supposing motives. First because the cui prodest is not really a criterion Nietzsche uses and, mostly, because motives may be in fact “masks” (a word often used with Nietzsche that I personally don’ t like) for something else. If you never meant to ignore this complexity, then I have no reason to object.

Yes, it makes sense. Actually the focus was more on the quest for truth, not particularly on science - which is, in its practicality, often carried on like a trade among others, but I did not mean to convey this perspective by my reference. While I was writing I had GS 344 in mind, but also the whole books V of GS and VI of BGE.