ILP thread on value-ontology (starting with Nietzsche, WTP)

Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself- he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
(Zarathustra - of the Thousand and One Goals)

If, as Zarathustra says, fundamental to mans being is his valuing, then logically this valuing he must do in terms of himself, for it to amount to his consistent being-man. By such consistently specific valuing, man assimilates material and grows as himself. By this valuing in terms of himself he does not, from the moment of his conception disintegrate by the laws of entropy that seem to govern the universe, but grows, from human cell to human emryo to human being. This was already understood, in a rudimentary form, by Nietzsche. But with this understanding a new question arose: how is a consistent valuing possible? The simple answer would be: by being a consistent subject. But this only createa a circular argumen, and leaves open the question: how there can be a valuing, a being? How does a subject maintain its perspectival consistency, its structural integrity, whereby it values in terms of itself? To explain this we must posit a self-valuing, which is to say, a holding-oneself-as-value, whereby this “oneself” is nothing else than this consistent holding-as-value, in engaging the outer world. This consistency of a self-holding standard-value, is what amounts to being, the accomulation of more and more material to feed and sustain a structurally consistent growing, “a becoming”.

With this logical deepening of the concept valuing, we are faced with the problem of identifying technically what this self valuing is. At this point, this holding-oneself-as-consistent in the face of otherness, the outer, to which I will refer as self-valuing, has been inferred as a necessity to the possibility of valuing, which amounts the activity of manifest being, i.e. interacting with “the world” and thereby assimilating materials to grow while maintaining structural integrity. Other than such this inferring, it may not be possible to directly define self-valuing. We may not be able to describe or define it in the terms we are used to, in which we like to acquire knowledge, the terms which are developed to describe the manifest in exact measurements. The collection of these terms and their proper logic, that of mathematics, is what we refer to as exact science.

Observing the manifest world in scientific terms, we use principles such as quantity, causality, energy-tranferring and interacting, motion, temporality. All these are enabled and interconnected by the laws of mathematics, which is the logic of objective equalies. It relies on given and exactly determined values, which can be defined in terms of each other. It is here that the philosophy of value ontology posits a break with the method of science. The philosopher is not satisfied with positing values as if they are unquestionably given, it is his task to investigate why, or more precisely, how they are given. Mathematics can not provide an answer to this, as such would go directly against the axioms of this science, which include always the word “if”. If A is given as A, then A is given as A. It does not posit that A is given as A. Since the root-logic of science must keep from answering the question why or how, the sciences following from this logic must also keep from this. Science can therefore only describe, not explain.

Philosophy wants to venture where mathematics and its children the sciences, can not go. It wants to posit a value not predicated by an if, it wants to posit that A is given as A. The great philosophersof the modern age have attemped such positive statements in various ways, beginning with Descartes, who posited the certainty “I think therefore I am”, or, read properly in context, “I question that anything is, therefore I am”. Nietzsche and others observed that this “I” who questions is not actually given as an exactly understandable unit. What is this “I” who is, and who questions that anything is, and who posits that he is because he questions that anything is? Descartes accomplished bringing himself the logical certainty that he exists. He does not bring the certainty that anything else is, in fact he calls this very much into question. If the only ground for knowledge of what is (ontology) is to cognate in the way Descartes was doing, then only philosophers can be known to exist, and only by themselves. Clearly this is not a useful definition of being. It is also not an exact application of logic, as it assumes the “I” both in I think. And I exist. The terms “I”, “exist” and “think” are not a mathematical terms: “I exist” can not mathematically be inferred from “I think”.

To correct Descartes logic, we must draw back to the meaning of the word “Am” in “I Am”. We must correctly observe the meaning of the verb “To be”. We must logically be satisfied with the given that what we call “being” by definition exists / is –this is the only meaningful and correct way to employ the verb at all. The correct phrase would be: “I am, therefore I am”. By this phrase, “I” is defined, namely, as that which, apparently, is said by itself to exist. What have we come to know by this? Nothing. We must start all over.

It is here that philosophy must break from science, from the pretense to be able to define the terms “I” and “exist” and “cognate” in terms of each other by exact inference. We must simply be honest, and admit that all three of these terms are simply understood by us, to mean precisely – what we understand by them. No further explication is necessary, no more exact explication is possible. The terms were called into being to describe exactly what we mean when we use the terms. They hold no deeper meaning than what they were invented to convey.

But fear not for the sake of philosophy, it will still find a way. What the terms “I” and “think” and “exist” were invented to convey may possibly be explicated further, deeper, more exact than these terms. To see how this is the case, observe that these terms all three of them refer to the very same thing. “I”, “think” and “am” are all words indicating the same, which also includes the things to which other terms refer, such as “eat” or “walk”. As true as “I think, therefore I am” is, is also “I eat, therefore I am”. By the correction of Descartes logic, we see that the “I” is posited as a condition of “think”, as much as “think” is a condition of “I”. Therefore, when I posit that “I eat”, I posit an “I” which, by common interpretation of grammar, means that I posit that (an) “I” exist(s).

We see that “I” simply means “existing” and that this existing can be expressed in the endless variety of verbs that may pertain to a posited I. Now, the question becomes simply, what do all these verbs, by the grace of which the “I” can be explicated, have in common?

I will cut to the chase and propose that they are all functions of the the verb “valuing”. There is no other activity that propoerly explicates an “I” that is not directly the result of this one. Whether I walk, talk, think, eat or pray, I do so because I move towards an aim. In other words, I act because I seek to obtain a value. I seek to obtain a value because I have established this value to myself, in the form of an object (in the sense of “thing” and/or “goal”) And since all that I actively do is predicated by a value I have established to me, and since “I” can only be explicated in terms of such activites, the I is nothing besides this establishing-value-to-me (this “I”).

Furthermore, in all cases wherein this value-establishing to this “I” lead to a continuation of experience as this I, this I must be understood as a constant, which, as it is explained in terms of value establishment, means a standard value, which is constantly re-established with every act of and following from the act of valuing, as itself, which means that its consistency must itself be understood as an activity.

We can see that this does indeed describe physical reality accurately if we look at the periodic table, at what makes for a consistency of an elements. We may consider the most consistent to be those which are least influenced by other elements or energies. Thse are the “noble elements”, in case of the metals, platinum, gold, silver. What make as an element “noble” is that all of its electron rings are filled. It holds little potential for change, for interaction, but in itself it holds the greatest potential relative to the “atomic infrastructure”. Gold is, considered as itself, relatively extremely active, in that it holds in its structure the maximum amount “activities”. By this maximization of activity within a given structure, amounts to a maximal consistency.

Contemplate now the correspondence between activity, “noble elements”, consistency, and value.

  1. Christianity is anti-master morality.
  2. The Enlightenment movement was against “superstition”, but it could not create new gods or create new values and a new class to stand behind those new values.
  3. The Enlightenment has so opened the door for the atheist form of Christianity - socialism.

Today we suffer from crazy women who think they are the measure of all things (because women are socialists) and from infertile intellectuals who are unable to beat that socialism and create new values.

Largely true, but answer why #2 was/is true.

The answer lays maybe somewhere in France 17. century. It seems that each time it was the Germans who have made a counter-movement (Sturm und Drang) which has suppressed every attempt to turn toward classicism. I’ve started with Descartes, but it could take me a decade to finish it all.

The answer could be simple: for each revaluation Christianity must be devaluated. Nobody did ever an attempt to do that. It was always equal with becoming god.

Now, after Nietzsche, I would dare to assume that a New valuation should win the final weight over everything Christian and German.

The destruction of idols, the abandonment of superstition, is also the destruction and abandonment of values. But new values were in fact created in the enlightenment, it’s just that to Nietzsche they seemed “lowly” - the values belonging to the modern individual. Man had become too concerned with “brotherly love” to attain to classical values, to self-value in the ruthless and uncompromising ways of the Greeks. Man had come to believe in himself as part of a whole, an organized cosmos. Man as a function of a greater entity. The Greeks never saw themselves in this way - this utilitarian view of man, wherein each individual has and is defined by certain rights granted by the state. The state never reached that level of sophistication of control in the classical era, not until the Catholic church and its Jesuit orders took hold of Europe, when the art of spying on citizens and controlling their convictions became an issue. Athens was far too pragmatic and Earthly for this sort of thing, it was simply a band of people, a tribe in favorable conditions, with the good fortune of having a noble narrative (Homer) to serve as a binding super-value (as opposed to super-ego). All these conditions were real, and the values produced from them were therefore natural (to their creators) and solid.

Modern man has learned to define himself in abstract terms, as “a human”, instead of for example “A Greek”, which meant a specific type of human, with a lot of ethical and aesthetic attributes. By introducing the common denominator “human” as both the basic and the supreme meaning of any individual (indeed a result of Christianity), the space for specific human values has been reduced, sterilized. Nationalism was an attempt to break this sterility, but the modern nation state, this cold beast, does in no way guarantee the sort of ground for values that the Greek polis represented. Nazism was an extreme attempt to derive this ground from the will to have it, but as Nietzsche noted beforehand, the Germans were absolutely not ready for such a thing, they entirely lacked depth of being, health, subtlety, culture. Now, with the intermixing of all types, the ground is being laid for what Nietzsche called a new aristocracy - not defined by national borders, but by the capacity to value and produce values, to be value. The infrastructure used to build such an aristocracy is entirely natural, that is to say affect-based, humanity is currently being broken down into types by exposing it to extreme stimuli, and can be reorganized into a new pyramid by understanding these types and finding a proper use and context for them.

The lowest type will not be “Untermensch” but simply “dumb and numb”. The highest type the philosopher-artist, or “artist-tyrant”, who is capable of producing vision and attracting resources and builders to enact that vision. As is always the case, capital flows toward the ideal. Since the enlightenment, the ideal has been “liberty”. Liberty from the church and the tyrannical God - but liberty for what? As this question remains unanswered by anything other than in general “the fulfillment of passions”, capital flows towards all sources of pleasure. The “artist-tyrant” is he who conceives of higher pleasures, capable of inspiring greater forces than the attraction of sex and violence, and from such power may flow a healthy super-national capitalist state, naturally ranked, layered in terms of capacity to value and attain to higher values. Of course capacity to value is physiologically defined, so there will have to be, as part of such a meta-states establishment and maintenance, a tradition of physical, physiological and psychological discipline, a “yoga” whereby strong willed humans are enabled to ascend and educate their children.

So, you claim nationalism and “Nazism” are in deed reactions upon something, as if there were an action behind that?

Until now I have seen the occurrence of nationalism as a typical English product which had no root in any action or reaction upon Enlightenment.

Like I have said once:

Nationalism - a lie that all people who speak the same language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors and aristocracy)
“Nazism” (national-socialism) - a lie that people who speak the similar language belong to the same race (a Christian lie against warriors, aristocracy and oligarchy)
Socialism - a lie that all people are equal, i.e. belong to the same “Human race”. (a Christian lie against W, A, O and everybody who is able to affirm life which is not suffering)

There is and was no connection between them and the Greeks. Who claims the opposite he works for Christianity.

You approve all the lies mentioned above!

And this is pure decadence. It doesn’t matter how many drives you take under observation as long as there is no rule of the reason. “Pleasure” means to lose control over yourself and to ignore a higher happiness, a victory or a higher body! In fact, without the reason, higher drives can not exist. Higher drives are lived inside of the works of art, but which arts do you have available in out modern times? And which classes are present? Thus this all is eliminated and drugs and sex become wings.

The future depends on the forces which are capable for a revaluation-based new aristocratization.

There was only the ideal, a wishful thinking about a “master race”, not any ground.

You may want to look into the advent of nationalism in relation to France.

Indeed. “Germans” do not share the same physiology, type. The unity is a lie, not a reality.
I believe I made all this clear.

I don’t know why you think that you are disagreeing. I meant to make it clear that such ideological bonds are an unreal surrogate for the real unity a Greeks polis formed.

I have no idea what lies you think that I agree with. Read closer. “Pleasure” is the feeling of power. It can exist in lower and higher, greater and smaller, cruder and finer forms. There is no pleasure without consciousness, and there is no healthy mind without of a healthy body.

The mind can take control over the body only by knowing the body. Why do you think that athletics were so important in Athens?

Re-valuation of values is not enough. A revaluation of valuation is required.

I thought you were talking about nationalism as reaction against the idea of the brotherly love.

But pleasure shall not be mistaken with happiness.

Someone who is able to have sex still doesn’t need to affirm life.

Someone who can differ happiness from sex can surely affirm life.

Sex is a humiliation to the degree of lower types of organisms. That is why it is made secretly.
Also work is a humiliation to the degree of an animal, because it serves only to gain food.

Who is humiliated, he can surely not affirm life.
Therefore, if we are decadents a half of a life, I would not allow someone who is over 30 (or maybe over 25) to mix up pleasure and happiness.

I dont consider nationalism to be a direct reaction against Christianity, but a reaction to the sterility that resulted from a conception of “mankind” as uniform, undifferentiated. But in so far as it was aimed at producing lasting values, it has mostly been failed attempts, as the connection between citizens of a nation was not a positive, active type of (self-)valuing, but a passive undergoing of the fate of falling under the same language and law. There are exceptions - France and pre-WWII Japan are examples of slightly more active, involved nationalism, where the nation actually stands (or stood) for certain spiritual (geistige) values that are both positive and considered to be exclusive to the nation. Characteristic to such value-bearing cultures is that they do not attempt to venture outside of their own realm. As Nietzsche notes somewhere, the French, like the Greeks, do/did not learn to speak other languages, as that would be a degeneration.

Physical pleasure is simply a very short lived and therefore insubstantial, “low” form of happiness.

Was the secrecy of the sexual act not encouraged by its vilification by the church? I am not sure that what you say here holds water, but I am not sure that it doesn’t either. I certainly disagree that work is always humiliating if it serves to bring food. Stay true to the Earth. Work is humiliating only if one is being forced to do it, if it is done as a slave(-wager) or if the work has no value corresponding with ones own valuing. Philosophy is also work, so is the life of the artist. The ideal form of work is play, which is the most serious and dedicated type of work.

No it was not. The ancient Greeks have not done it in public. Only barbarians like Scythians did. But barbarians are weak and cowardly.

In contrary to your opinion, I see the roots of nationalism in the English parliamentarism. And the brotherly love can be only a Christian reaction to that.

We have the French revolution and brotherhood as an ideal coming after the American revolution.

Frenchmen were “the soldiers of the English ideas” - N, consequently the orders came from England.

I suspect a low origin behind your nickname.

I must, to my regret, say that it has never occurred to me to wonder what is behind your mask and nickname. Still such curiosity has not taken hold of me.

To your opinions on sexuality and nationalism:

  • There are no indications that the sexual act was kept “secret” in either Greece or Rome, nor that it was considered a humiliation. That it was not done out in the open has nothing to do with secrecy. Keeping an activity private does not mean that one is ashamed of engaging in it or that one wants to keep this activity from ones fellows. Rather the opposite - it has is in general been a reason for shame (and self-loathing) to not be sexually active, for the simple reason that it suggests weakness. I do not mean that to abstain from sex deliberately means to be weak - not at all - but it is certainly untrue that to be sexually active was a source of shame in the classical world.

  • There is no reason to connect nationalism to the proletarian movements. The sense of an shared identity of a people has in many cases taken on the form of identification with the state. In other cases, propaganda to identify with the state has been a way to artificially forge an identification where there was no physiological ground for this - no developed taste. I can not make any statements about the English as being or not being ‘a people’ - I doubt that Nietzsche should be blindly taken as an authority on such matters - but I know that the French certainly have characteristics of a type in the sense of taste, as do the Japanese. The Germans do not, although they can perhaps be described as lacking in taste. Going by the food they produce, perhaps the same can indeed be said of the English.

I wonder if you know a single thing about the Greek position of shame and what is bad. Except that from Nietzsche.

As long as you don’t think that you are considered an authority on such matters, wonder away.

Coz you need to bow down in front of the authoritey, no fixey?

I am afraid I have no one to bow down to, Cezar - by authority I do not mean the same as you – I do not mean Allah or Nietzsche, or any sort of superior being – what I mean by an authority on the subject of Greek history is simply someone who has read and studied diligently and is able to produce some knowledge. Your epileptic bouts of spurting some random trivia do not amount not such an authority. Besides that you can never attain to a single clear thought, is has become clear to me from your notions of shame and secrecy that you’ve never actually read Homer, hence know precisely nothing about the Greeks.

Whatever. You are a new guy to me in the world of thought. Can’t say I have read anything original from you so far.

I can’t say that you seem to have understood anything I have written.

As for the focus on “originality”, seeing your obsession with Nietzsche, I assume you knows what he says about this. It is in any case the opposite to classical taste.

What I have done is, I made Nietzsches philosophy more powerful, into an instrument. You may instinctively rebel against such a move, or simply not be smart enough to understand it. You are in the camp of the anarchists, so richly represented on ILP these days, and try desperately to corrode the massive structure I have arisen amidst the tides of your uncontrolled chemistry.

Read very carefully, slowly, the arguments I have written on value ontology in this thread, reread them, and read them again – the thought seems mainly difficult to understand for those who seek to use Nietzsches philosophy to make themselves feel superior. It makes the notion of will to power into something more than a new God, which it has been to you – it makes it truly understandable, but only as a consequence of complete self-honesty.

Your “will to power” Cezar may very well be the will to deceive yourself about yourself. The only self-deceiving I have done the past decade has been to consider myself equal to others. Others have never been able to attain to my honesty, because others were never as powerful, as free as I am. It is lonesome at the top, but this is a wellspring of happiness. What hurt me was the yearning of others for the type of power that I have, the jealousy – this made me try to convince them that they could also attain to such power – I lied, and I drove men insane by this lying.

“What determines your rank is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice.”

You sound now like someone who was a teenager before a short period of time and now you are finally able to regret some things.

There is a difference between considering others equal to yourself and giving others equal rights. Nobody is able today to possess unequal rights… not unpunished.

No idea what you mean. Originality is always spirituality in the classical sense. That is what you called “producing knowledge”. Creating new solutions and discovering new regularities. You appear as somebody to me who possesses that “gefährliches Halbwissen”. Like a Christian who wants to revalue Nietzsche as a symptom of decadence.

If you accuse someone of being obsessed with someone, then it is your trademark. In truth I was always obsessed only with truth. And truth is in reality overhumanly. Didn’t you know that? How poor would I be without this man then? How hungry and thirsty was I all my life until the age of 24. How poor the world has seemed to me! The man has enriched an entire world, so, why not give him the honor of a god? If Alexander could take that honor, then he certainly can have it.

I am obsessed with everything overhumanly and that is what I call “living life to the fullest”, in contrary to the modern “living life to the foolest”.

And of course I dislike it when a Christian engages in philosophy, it is most harmful.

Obsessed with truth. In truth, no less.
Sounds serious.

I was also partly psychotic. But I was also partly sane.