Whom, if anyone, was this meant to address?
Whoever it was, you didn’t answer my question. Do you think it was coincidence, The Last Man? You can, you know.
Frankly, ganja-smoking need not obstruct, and may even further, such tamasic occupations.
I’m think this sentence is a comment aimed at me - you have objections against the analysis of the ER as the establishment of a Thing vs. the Real? I recommend you read the Birth of Tragedy… I am describing Nietzsches motivation for creating the ER the way he described the Greeks motivation to create the Apollonian fiction.
That is a bold statement… can you give your reasons for saying this?
I don’t see what you mean here - how else should people interpret Nietzsche but to their own ends? to his ends? To your ends? What do the quotation marks mean?
When I was a bit younger and more violently pining for truth and meaning I greatly valued the ER - as an affirmation device, as a method of coming completely in the present, gaining total concentration of will - and I can’t change my thoughts about that because I know it works. But I was reading the last chapter of book 3 of Zarathustra in German, and I was overcome by a sensation that Nietzsche was at that point bordering on insanity. It is powerful poetry - but what it says, to me, is that he abhors the structures he is caught in, and that he wants to return to perfection. Really, it’s a very thinly veiled prayer to the almighty, the absolute.
You mean, do I think that it is meaningful to waste time on things like “Well this passage is in the middle of the book, that must mean something!”…? No, I do not. It is not a “coincidence” because it is not even meaningful.
And you know whom I am addressing with my comments on getting high - that is the danger of Heidegger and other mystical pseudo-philosophers, who spin webs of rhetoric and play on the well-meaning intuitions of capable minds, mind however unable to see through themselves and thus unable to see their own religious instinct, which has been repressed but appears no less virulent.
There is nothing wrong with appreciating someone like Heidegger - but appreciate him for what he is, a religious mystic, an irrationalist, ie. an anti-philosopher. Nietzsche laughed at Hegel and Kant, calling them philosophical labourers for a reason, and yet those like Heidegger try to “interpret” Nietzsche in light of the ideas put forth by the Hegels and Kants of the world. It is nonsense and obviously so to anyone who has a grasp on what Nietzsche is actually saying, below the surface. This is why your superficial understanding of will to power is something I find laughable. Those like Heidegger cause more damage in philosophy than can be accounted for, because the irrationality, the breakdown and destruction of otherwise capable minds truly cannot be measured. Nietzsche was the first modern philosopher, and the first to do so comprehensively, to expose the limitations, circularity, irrationality and impotence at the heart of metaphysics and phenomenology, and at the heart of other areas of philosophic thought where they work from within these same sorts of circles.
Mystical, irrational, “intuitive” thinking is fine, it has its proper place, but it is still the antithesis of philosophy proper, which has its own heart in reason. Nietzsche combined this reason with psychological self-introspecting in order to raise it to new levels, and in doing so, he saw below him the idiocy and falseness of all that is otherwise known as “philosophy” by those “thinkers” who never branch out and explore new territories, but are content always to chart only known waters with increasingly confounding and imprecise tools.
I think a coincidence need not be meaningful. Anyway, your answer is clear.
Where the hell did you get “mystical, irrational, ‘intuitive’ thinking” from? Not to mention the importance of Heidegger to my understanding of Nietzsche.
It was an example, one that I am not surprised is beyond you. But feel free to continue ignoring my points, just keep counting how many pages in Nietzsche writes something as if that actually means anything, or makes you feel like some kind of scholar or something.
Last Man - Please confine your comments to the topics discussed. Expressions of your low personal opinion of Sauwelios are not appropriate here. Feel free to tell him he’s an awesome dude, however.
Last Man, are you under the impression that you are somehow practicing rationality? I have never read anything from you that wasn’t intended at diluting definitions and aiming at a suggested mystical “The Truth”, which must be beheld to be understood.
It’s very curious that you accuse Sauwelios of being irrational. If by anything, I am rather bothered by his meticulous semantic precision.
To me this is a compliment. Though my diametrical opposition to The Last Man in the context of Nietzsche makes me feel even more ausgezeichnet (the difference between us is of course that I think the will to power is the fundamental concept of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy), your being bothered is still a compliment because it confirms that I tend toward ‘extremism’ (as Nietzsche said, what distinguishes him and his kind is that they are “the most extreme” (WP 749)).
[size=95]Whoever pushes rationality forward also restores new strength to the opposite power, mysticism and folly of all kinds.
[WP 1012.][/size]
I have concerned myself with my share of ‘mysticism’ (and ganja-smoking!) in the past. Often enough, nothing useful came out of it, but sometimes, there did. For instance, my combination of the gunas of Hinduism with the Tree of Life of Qabalah. Thus my ‘mystical experience’ in relation to Zarathustra’s Grave-Song was not just tamasic, but rajasic-tamasic. Rajas has everything to do with attachment; and it was Shiva’s attachment to Sati that aroused his anger about her death.
But wrath was only the first part of that experience. For it gave way to mystical joy:
Here we see my will sitting “as life and youth”, “full of hope”. The ‘death’ of one particular ‘Sati’ is not the end of the world;
[size=95]My first solution: Dionysian wisdom. Joy in the destruction of the most noble and at the sight of its progressive ruin: in reality joy in what is coming and lies in the future, which triumphs over existing things, however good.
[WP 417.][/size]
Which sattva was this mystical joy, however? The sattva of sattva, of rajas, or of tamas? Or was it the sattva, the rajas, or the tamas of sattva?—I think I attained to the latter sattva (the “of sattva”). But which?
Could we, perhaps, be taking Nietzsche’s philosophy a little too far here?
I just mean to say that his aphoristic style makes it somewhat difficult to form any one, cohesive, absolute conclusion about his intentions (universal to all readers, that is). Plus, debates like this one seem to often result in people pitting N’s ideas, and ‘passages’, against each other – like people debate contradictory passages in the Bible.
I would think the evolution in his writing is evidence enough that even he, himself did not expect his philosophy to be viewed as absolute truth, nor followed like tenants of a religion.
On the other hand, to argue which interpretation is “best”, or most accurate, is kind of like arguing who’s conception of a baseball game is most accurate (…as an example). You’ll likely come up with many of the same types of conclusions, but interpretations are always very relative.
[NOTE: For the record, I thoroughly enjoy N’s work and read it regularly. I also find much profundity and truth in his writing. I just get this suggestive undertone from his work as if to say “I think and make assumptions like everyone else because I am human, but my mind remains open”. I don’t see his work necessarily condemning the necessity of human assumption, and subsequent error, as much as drawing attention to the fact.]
As a perspectivist, that was in fact his central point.
I however think that perspectivism was his non-dogmatic, non-perspectival truth.
Dogma is truth that is meant to be shared, and unquestioned by those with whom we share it. It’s just a political term.
I know I don’t do you any injustice here. I was just making the point that the Last Man is wrong to an absurd degree - I think he might be hallucinating, projecting himself on you. I can’t even think of anything he has said about Nietzsche that didn’t have to do with you not understanding him. I agree that the Will to Power is the fundamental concept of Nietzsche’s philosophy - even his immature philosophy, if that exists. He laid the groundwork for it in the Birth of Tragedy, with his explanation of how the Greeks overcame nature by means of Apollonian illusion. The will to power as interpretation. And he’s right about all of that. He’s wrong about the ER, I think - but, given his understanding of the will to power as interpretation, that doesn’t matter. If he could convince himself, or me, that is good enough. As I said to the Last Man, the realization of the ER is the same kind of act as the creation of the Apollonian world as a reaction to the terrible nature of - ehm, nature.
The Last Man - these are hardly veiled attacks on you, but you might interpret them as hypocritical, as you’ve done before - so just to be clear about it, I did not mean for them to be hidden.
I can’t seem to wrap my mind around this…
Perspectivism is a method based on assumption, so I would think dogma a necessary component of nearly any ‘ism’.
The descriptive term - “non-perspectival” - is to mean “not dependent upon perspective”? If so, …how?
I think a staunch objectivist, for example, might debate that.
Check out the Description of my Yahoo Group, Human Superhuman. I think we can paraphrase Strauss as follows: “Precisely if all views of the world are perspectival, the perspective of perspectivism is at the same time perspectival and non-perspectival”.
Wouldn’t “perspectival” and “non-perspectival” be considered the same in this context? If all views are to be considered perspectival, that is.
It is “non-perspectival” because a perspectival view is considered the standard, applying to all. It is “perspectival” in that perspectivism still pertains to one’s perspective. Any way you slice it you are still left with a view that all is perspectival – all pertains to perspective.
On a side note, the word “perspective” is now almost foreign to me…