Have you arrived at this compulsion? Can you shed any light on the kind of action or battle would that be? Political?
As far as ‘we’ know? Which collective are you referring to? There are surely enough philosophical workers who do not agree.
Are you saying Plato esoterically taught the Will to Power? Can you back that up? I recently learned that “Esoteric” comes from the Pythagorean school, where a student was only after long years “oudisde of the curtain” allowed to study with the master “inside of the curtain”. Does this meaning correspond with how you see Plato’s esoteric teaching? If not, please explain esoteric.
Only in scientific workers, not in scientific genius:
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
These quotations of Einstein show that it is a misconception among scientific workers that science excludes or determines religion.
That is certainly a resonant concept…
But this is too general for me to understand. Can you give examples? Are you thinking about someone like William Blake?
I disagree that this model has existed - the religious have never placed Science above them. Faith is often enough considered more true than science, especially in cultures where there is only faith and no science.
But then the work would have largely to be to form a philosophy about science and religion. How to employ them. Do you have any ideas about this yet? I’m especially interested in how you think science should be used.
Thank you for your most thoughtful response. I will endeavor to reply in kind.
Do not interpret my views on Nietzsche or Nietzscheanism as a threat to you, an assault on your own belief - they are not. As I am sure you will rush to agree.
Why did Nietzsche want to be accepted? Because he was a human being and the need for acceptance is a near universal human trait? Because he craved outlet for his revolutionary and wonderous insights? Because he had a unfulfilled childhood? Why does it matter, specifically? Using the word “interpretation” does not unlock a riddle here, nor insert a key into a formerly locked and barred door - I was commenting directly based on the lines of Nietzsche you presented, making an observation that his quite poetic descriptions must be, as you put it, interpreted from the context in which they originated. Nietzsche’s words expose his desire to view others as distinctly different than himself, to lay judgment upon other philosophers in general as less than he himself is - the need to place the concept-creating and interpretive functions of consciousness in the hands of emotional dissonance and psychological complexes. But that is not even the point I am trying to make: we see that Nietzsche, through his words here, reveals assumptions that are cornerstones of his way of thinking, of his perspective, and these cornerstones may then be used as the context with which to interpret his words, exposing more of his mind to us.
“Never takes a false step” is quite another dishonesty, not the least of which because Nietzsche clearly knew enough of how the mind works that falseness was a common, even necessary outcome. Nietzsche simply was seeking to elevate his philosophy (and through this, himself) into a wholly different place from other philosophers - but the distinction of Nietzsche’s is that he did this, if not always openly, for the most part always honestly, which gives wonderous insight into the true power and magnitude of the paradigms he constructed, and these of course reveal in kind the depth of his intent to delve into himself - the depths of his need to create such intricate and powerful belief-systems.
Indeed he was here revealing his fundamental focus on ordering and rank among men. His classifying men based on type, as if such a narrow and shallow system of classification bears any direct relation to the deep realities of the complex mind of every man, is equally an indicator which along with his words here of falseness reveals another cornerstone of his perspective. I mention these cornerstones because they are essential in understanding who Nietzsche was and what he was saying. Every sentence he wrote needs to be juxtaposed against this psychological statement of intent - the overflowing or consolidation of conscious and unconscious motive factors within Nietzsche’s mind. This imprint of his psyche abounds clearly within his writings, and once honestly looked for, is not hard to see.
I do not argue that Nietzsche was “wrong” - from his own perspective I am sure he was right about most of his ultimate conclusions. I merely point out the other world behind his words and concepts, as they appear to you and me when we create them in our own minds. . . seeing both his words/concepts as well as his psychological intentions and motives creates the possibility for glimpsing the entire Nietzschean paradigmatic structure itself, once we learn to step outside of this paradigm and look take a look at it based on these deeper insights into how it functions.
Once again I reiterate that this is not an assault on you, your beliefs, or on Nietzsche or his beliefs. If they work for you, use them. I seek here simply to illuminate possibly unrealised assumtions that lie at the heart of Nietzscheanism, so we may look at the paradigm itself as a whole in order to redetermine its usefulness.
Nietzsche ‘champions’ his system of interpretation and beliefs as better than those of other dead or current philosophers of his day. In may ways he is right, it is better, depending however upon what one intends to use it for. The extent that you accept Nietzsche’s ideas or systems reveals more about yourself than it does about Nietzsche, his ideas or his systems, other people or the world/life itself. What is most useful to an inquisitive mind will be grasped at. In creating his systems of thought Nietzsche established his own solutions to the problems of his psyche, to his own limitations, needs, instincts and energies - in your acceptance of his systems of thought you likewise create your own paradigmatic solutions to these problems (hurdles, obstacles, blockings, pathways) as they manifest within your own psyche, but you do so through creation of a system for yourself based on the directions and instructions laid down by Nietzsche. Certainly there is nothing wrong with this, Nietzsche’s paradigms are quite powerful and effective to these defensive and pre-emptive ends.
No, it is not. The process of dialectical thought encompasses far more than simple if-then processing, of course, but itself is entirely too partitioned and “bulky” in how it handles information as concepts/beliefs/feelings. Dialectical thinking lacks a holistic approach which would otherwise lend it to being a vehicle for higher consciousness and awareness.
Also, your conceptual analysis of my point regarding Nietzsche’s words here, intent to force it into an if-then frame, is revealing of your own dependence on these modes of thought. The belief/concept concretes that you establish and then set against each other is indeed dialectical in that these concretes are kept wholly separate from each other, nonoverlapping and disconnected from the psychological and experiential frameworks of motives and causes which gave rise to them. I fear you are seeing my points through your own lens of interpretation and mistakenly taking the conclusions of this interpreting by yourself - in the form of your conclusions regarding my points here - and falsely attributing the flaws in these forms themselves, which you yourself created, to me.
Yes unfortunate are the immensely confining words we need to use in order to communicate here. Likewise this misunderstanding stems from the reality behind the word “instinct” as I use it, and as you mistakenly think that I use it. The difference of perspectives here allows very little overlap, not at least without a protracted and lengthy exposition of these concepts themselves.
Your dance concept, much like it is for Nietzsche, is a reaction against the need to formalise and concretise - and thus therefore identify and distant oneself from - the psychological conflicts steming from disparages between your perspective as you see it and the perspectives of others, also as you see them - this is closely related to internal dissonance. This vague concept of dance encompasses key emotional and conceptual triggers within it, so that upon recalling the dance-concept into consciousness certain deeper and highly complicated reactions within your paradigm are temporarily mitigated (pushed out of awareness, out of sensation) by the combined effect of these triggers being brought together in such a way as to counteract the perceptions you experience from the sensed existence of the previously-identified conflicts and inconsistencies, which otherwise cannot be escaped.
These central concepts such as “dance”, deliberately vague and at the same time central to one’s identity as it relates to interpretive analysis itself, are literary in nature and accomplish a lumping-together of vast informations which cannot be directly encountered and decyphered but at the same time are sensed and must be confronted. In the sense that they accomplish this task they become key cornerstones supporting the larger paradigmatic framework itself, in essence linking the unconscious drives/instincts/complexes aspects of it to its conscious belief/emotional based structures.
You reveal too much. Please have some discretion.
Try and read between the lines.
My criticisms of the rank-concept as Nietzsche used it stem from the fact that such orders of rank do not exist outside of his own (or others such as yourself) systems of interpretation. They are designed to falsely simplify otherwise highly complex psychological processes and social phenomenon so as to be more easily categorised in such as way that elevates Nietzsche (or on your own case, yourself) above anyone else you wish, in terms of whatever key values you assume are important attributes of men (these will of course be those attributes that you deem you yourself possess). This is the reactionism I speak of.
This further shows the artificial distillation of otherwise complex processes into easily manageable concretes, for the sake of effortless reactionary dismissal of my point of view, as you correctly sense that it clashes with the cornerstones of your own paradigms here.
Consider that “self-determination” is a concept you have introduced here, not I.
Your tools of interpretive analysis are not finely tuned enough to grasp the essence of what I am saying here, but nonetheless you do sense them in your own way, and thus, react against them. You are of course staying true to your own paradigm, even within your own self-analysis, which is commendable in that it reveals how carefully and intricately and coherently you have constructed your mental frameworks. These paradigmatic frameworks, however, are only a defense mechanism, and if it ever comes to pass that the conditions which make the existence of these defense mechanisms necessary vanish or are otherwise undermined or surpassed by you, the entire carefully constructed system will become obsolete. The danger then is the risk that we become willing victims of ourselves in order to maintain the existence of paradigms and frameworks which would be too difficult to let go of.
Indeed this is the case. Nietzsche stretched his concepts to the limits of their ability to sustain defensive shields. But for the most part he was quite honest about this.
I fear that little aphorism is utterly meaningless, and once again, you betray too much.
Please understand “attack” as an unfortunate word I use here to describe his intent to undermine through understanding, to surpass, counteract, discredit, reveal and unmask, contextualise and push away the religions frames, as he saw them. Of course there is no criticism of this in itself, nor even, necessarily, in the way in which Nietzsche went about it - I am simply making a point regarding his motives.
Certainly not.
No. The rule being the virtually insurmountable psychological workings of the human mind, and of the reality that consciousness and all constructed beliefs and belief-system paradigms are designed precisely because they conform or react against these psychological mechanisms and hidden conflicts, antagonisms, and necessities of structure. The rule that our realities are only what we need them to be, likewise the search for wisdom or higher ‘truths’ from within these paradigms is bound to fail utterly and completely. See my topic on Paradigms, if you are interested in exploring this further.
Yes! Now begin to shift out of the pre-defined and limited slave-context mentality from which you analyse here: What are the conditions for being a slave? And what do these conditions say about all of us, about who, what and how we are?
An interesting story. I do not mean it literally in that sense though, of course.
Where did you find the term “scientific worker”?
Those quotes of Einstein are not science, of course.
And yes, I agree: science need not exclude religion, nor can it determine it. Only philosophy can determine religion (and science, for that matter).
Blake, I plan to research soon, so I cannot yet say. I was rather thinking of WP 1052.
They did not have a choice… With Machiavelli, science usurped the throne from religion, even as religion had usurped it from philosophy.
If there is no science, how can faith be considered more true?
That would be—is—an indispensable part of it, yes.
That makes sense, as the basics of how religion should be used can be found in BGE 61. A clue to how science should be used can be found in aphorism # 205:
[size=95]The compass and tower‑building of the sciences has grown enormous, and therewith the probability has also grown enormous that the philosopher will become weary while still no more than a learner, or that he will let himself be stopped somewhere and `specialize’: so that he will never reach his proper height, the height from which he can survey, look around and look down. Or that he will reach this height too late, when his best time is past and his best strength spent; or damaged, coarsened, degenerate, so that his view, his total value judgment, no longer means much.[/size]
The object of science is mentioned here in passing: to learn, sc. about the world. The difference between the actual philosopher and the scientific human being is made clear in # 211: the philosopher creates values. The philosopher must reach “the height from which he can survey, look around and look down”, because only from that height he can pass a “total value judgment”. If he would have to climb the entire “tower-building of the science” by himself, he would in this day and age probably never reach that height. In the tragic age of the Greeks that may have been possible; but not anymore. Science is to help the philosopher reach his height, and in time.
It must have always been that way esoterically at least because it is a natural order of rank. And for that reason, and because it is just, it should be that way.
We can be quite certain that one of the foulest fallacies in modern literary convention is its superstitious regard for “psychology” ascendant in the sign of Man. When a thing is discovered to be “psychological”, one is at ease and on solid ground at once. Why, of course, it’s only “psychology” - this associative cog and that pneumatic lever, all of which we know so well from illustrated children’s books such as “Psychology: The Science of Behaviour” liberally handed out to everyone in the universities.
To establish the “psychological” nature of a thing has become the most primitive act of deconstruction, during which the natural veil of mystery is lifted and we behold, always under the close hand-holding guidance of our “teachers” with an all-knowing smirk, a surprisingly simple mechanism beneath. “Merely “psychological”, merely human”, so judge the adherents of this contagious sect about all things indiscriminately, according to their favorite fashion. While on the surface this affords a kind of liberation, the feeling of surpassing and overcoming, in actuality the intrepid explorer now becomes the unwitting slave of a new, more sinister kind of bondage.
Far from the malicious criticism of persons or the compulsion for epochal diagnoses, what a healthful thinker cannot fail to consider in this context is the true extent to which what we observe there, under the veil, is itself “psychological” - that is, a mirage conjured into being solely by the whisperings and scribblings of our so-called psychologists.
The psychology which we recognize, is not the picturesque study of imaginary cogs, but has remained true to its name: Psyche - that means “spirit”. And so, on the one hand, we fault modern “psychology” for being a kind of experimental spiritism (like all spiritism, it is rife with dangerous traps and delusions), but on the other hand, in psychologia true and proper, we are concerned with the millenial breath of the universe, inspiration and expiration, and hence (unavoidably) with rhythm, sound. To acquire the knowledge of spirit and self, it must gradually be, as it were, “sounded out”, never merely conjectured to be this way or that! The jewish insular origins of psychology as such in the work of so-called St.Paul will continue to conveniently obscure these deeper, “unitarian” aspects of the subject from the undergraduate. Whoever first smirked and said, for example, that human psychology is at bottom even human at all? Out with their non-seeing eye!
Last Man, as all you do is retreat from the front lines where my response encountered your post, into the vast (infinite?) void of ‘complex processes’, I hereby close our correspondence. It does not further my work, nor do I find it entertaining. One thing: a com-plex implies sim-plexes. To fly into ever greater (i.e., infinite) complexity will get you nowhere…
I acknowledge your gracious admittance of the fact that you are unwilling to address any of the replies I carefully and thoughtfully wrote for you. This is your topic here and of course you are free to ignore any information or points of view that are too potentially damaging or damning for you to consider. As you have openly exposed your motives here, nothing further needs to be said.
I don’t think the term “philosopher” properly characterizes what those referred to as philosophers have done and currently do for the world. The most basic interpretation is that a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, but that is clearly insufficient to characterize the philosopher. That conception leads one to think that a philosopher dwells on the timeless, eternal truths, which are static, but the philosopher rarely if ever gets to this point. Most of the time the philosopher is struggling to get to the truth, struggling to separate the noble from the base and, to borrow from Deleuze, creating concepts. “Philosophical worker” gives a better picture of what those who are referred to as philosophers are trying to do.
The Last Man has clearly constructed his own defense mechanism in attempts to neutralize the penetrating thought of Nietzsche and those who attempt to interpret Nietzsche in any meaningful manner which goes beyond the mere human. The Last Man has tried to circumscribe Nietzsche through using a passive-aggressive approach of a psychoanalytic reading in order to reduce Nietzsche to a reactive being and contain all the energies inherent in Nietzsche’s thought.
Yes. For the most part it seems that philosophy proper is consumed with an impossible search for “truths” that are “out there” or external, at the expense of realising that truth is a personal experience and can only be arrived at by starting with oneself and subsequently working outward - the philosopher falsely attempts to start from the external, utterly neglecting his human psyche, paradigms, needs, conditionings and compulsions which not only shape the results of his philosophising but also, more importantly, shape (create!) his philosophising intentions, interests, inclinations and methods themselves.
Your assumption that Nietzscheanism is perceived by me as a threat is incorrect - as a frame of reference or a system of thought it is simply unable to account for, explain or contain much of the insights and energies which spring from my self-explorations and intrigues into my own nature, the nature of my mind, and the natures of those around me.
Previously I was able to operate from within a Nietzschean paradigm and successfully use Nietzsche’s terms and concepts as accurate descriptors of what I experienced within myself, and what I experienced through interaction with others. . . but as time has passed I continue to grow and dive more deeply and honestly within myself, expanding my awareness to accommodate new possibilities and into deeper and wider spaces, I was compelled, mostly (at least initially) against my will and at great personal discomfort and sacrifice, to seek new frames of reference, new systems of thought - new terms and concepts, to keep this properly Deleusian - which are able to more accurately account for my insights and discoveries.
Nay - if only the energies inherent in Nietzsche’s thought could contain me! But that time has passed - in some ways much to my own regret, I would add. The Nietzschean framework is very appealing, and very comfortable, for many reasons.
I would also add briefly in passing that “reactive” is not a demeaning or pejorative term, as you (seem to) imply above.
I am curious as to what about my approach here you deem passive-aggressive, and what exactly you mean when you say this. Also - using “psychoanalytic” very much, indeed nearly (but not quite) completely misses the essence of my method here - but I can understand how my method might be perceived as such from outside, and by those foreign to the language that I speak here. Please expand on these accusations of yours, I am most interested in discerning more clearly the specific reasons behind your conclusions and condemnations.
Have you now come to the point where you make claims you cannot back up yourself and then recommend a book? I’m not interested enough to buy and read that. Thrasymachus I looked up superficially, it seems he’s a character propagating the Might is Right idea. But that’s just one of the myriads of perspectives Plato was able to take on. No reason to think this was Plato’s proper or defining idea.
You mean it in the sense of hidden, deep, then? Is that not another way of saying that it can’t be verified?
Well, I just replaced ‘philosophical’ with ‘scientific’, and then it was there.
Indeed, they are philosophy.
Science is empirically determined. Philosophy is completely powerless to change it, it can only employ it. It is in a way it’s slave because it has to conform to it’s laws. You show this in how you try to scientifically explain the ER, for example. If Philosophy was above science, it could just ignore it or change it.
You mean the Christians then. What about the Taoists?
I mean of course little science.
Values don’t change with science. There is no need to know any science to be a creator of values, as they arrive from within, not from without. But that is in line with what you’re saying, I think.
I disagree, even if it would be only for the sake of the argument. I can, because I don’t take your assumptions and moral stances as valid arguments.
Though I have only begun to explore my own fundamental philosophical impulse, I have already composed a very hefty book of over 400 aphorisms. I consider myself to have far surpassed Nietzsche in terms of writing, in terms of the art of the aphorism itself; and my own philosophical impulse, though it has not reached maturity yet, has already diverged from Nietzsche…
411. Advantages in sensuality.– Man is taught by his passions, or so it is said. So are women, but one could add that women have this further advantage in that they can also teach their passions in return.
A woman’s stratagem in love.– If a woman cannot inspire a man with love for her, she will break that tremendous cask of his self-love. The few supple drops left in him she shall claim for herself.
Of the mordacious.– When the limb of that quick-footed salamander has been bitten, or in any case still suffers of a wound, it shall itself seize upon it with its teeth, to see to it that it is completely done away with; only so that a new one might grow in its place with the highest expedience. In the language of the haughty, intellectual, Pascalian conscience: envy.
Exarare stipulas.-- [Loensis in Epiphyllides.] Love uproots that tree of Ovid, whose branches ascend into the Heavens, and whose roots descend into Hades; but still more, she buries those that had been fruits upon the tree of knowledge, and, beatifying, sets into the firmament what was at once concealed beneath the earth.
These random aphorisms I have pulled from my book, equal and surpass Nietzsche’s finest. And in time, I will have elaborated a distinct psychodynamics and philosophy. The point of this post, The Last Man, is to ask this question: how have you exceeded Nietzsche, as you claim you have? Give me your theories and writings, for to have exceeded him you must have an alternative theory- and also a better one, which is to say, a more productive one. And by all means, I implore you to make the attempt. Nietzsche himself says that the pupil who remains a pupil hath done the master poorly. But to speak with such bravado, I am going to have to ask you to show me the little jawbone of beef you have so arduously struggled for- to speak with the poet Cratinus.
Really you keep going on and on about these new, amazing, grand, magnificent frontiers you have discovered in the depths of your own soul that are beyond the capacity of the Nietzschean framework to accommodate. Well lets hear about those. Don’t worry I have a pen.
Well, Nietzsche does mention Kant and Hegel as philosophical workers, not philosophers (BGE 211[/i]); but he mentions Plato as an actual philosopher (WP 972). And from Lampert’s Nietzsche’s Task it becomes clear, at least to me, that Nietzsche regarded himself, too, as an actual philosopher, not just a philosophical worker. Lampert also makes a case for Descartes and Bacon; and Nietzsche mentions Plato in one breath with—indeed, anachronistically in between—Heraclitus and Empedocles. And Socrates, too, appears from Lampert’s book as an actual philosopher. This is how I got to the list I gave earlier on in this thread.
Moreover, from chapter 1 of Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873), we might infer that Nietzsche also considered Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Democritus actual philosophers. And indeed, in WP 419 (1885) he mentions all those mentioned in PTA 1, including Heraclitus and Empedocles, and only excluding Thales and Socrates (the first and the last of what he called the “pre-Platonics”)—again in one breath. As for modern philosophers, and in general: what others might we add to that list? I have some ideas, though I cannot be sure enough to suggest them yet. Probably Schopenhauer, though. Anyone else?
I have my own qualification for the philosopher. One must look behind the philology of the word.
“To redeem these redeemers! But the first little drops of blood- we first redeemers must be also the first sinners, and husbandmen unto the trees of knowledge- for such as these do I write. After all, who is the philosopher? It seems to me more and more that the lover of wisdom, thereby necessarily a sufferer for wisdom- taking the expression in its widest sense, has always found himself, as he often must find himself, like a mad lover, as a greatest danger unto his Eurydice.”
To put it another way: the descent into Hades on the part of Orpheus to attempt a resurrection is the incorporation of the truth of Eurydice in processus. This suffering is not only necessary to the philosopher, it is fundamental: the truth must be suffered, as Nietzsche says- endured, for it must be incorporated. That is the test, as he says: to what extend can truth be incorporated. And that test is nothing less than philosophy.
I’m not interested enough in convincing you to go into it deeper. But you touch the crux of this thread. I, as a scientific or scholarly human being (specifically, a philosophical worker), am a specialist. When I claim that Lamarck was wrong, because acquired characteristics are not inherited, I can hardly back that up. I am no biologist. But the Nietzschean enterprise—the philosophical enterprise!—does need biologists as well as Nietzsche-scholars. Hence my appeal.
As for Lampert’s statement of his case, you can read some of it here.
No, I mean everything you said about curtains, just not literally. An esoteric writer like Plato wrote with curtains, that is, he wrote in a veiled manner, but lifting tips of the veil all the time. The self-proclaimed scholar (not philosopher!) Leo Strauss has done much to unveil Plato, and others; but he himself, too, wrote esoterically… A Nietzschean worker like Lampert is needed to unveil Strauss’ own writings while not writing esoterically himself (at least not in the sense Strauss and Plato did. Thus Nietzsche, too, can be said to have written ‘esoterically’, only he did so in a different way. Much of Nietzsche’s writings is hardly veiled, hardly prudent; and yet even I, who know TSZ, for instance, very well, as you may know, would probably never have seen the plan of that book without Lampert’s book, Nietzsche’s Teaching).
All scientists, insofar as they are scientists, are workers; “scientific worker” is a pleonasm.
Indeed. So yes, science need not discard religion, because it need not discard philosophy. But (modern) science tends to discard religion, as I said, and it does so because it tends to discard philosophy (remember Three Times Great’s incredulity and ridicule when I told him philosophy ought to rule science, not vice versa. To judge vice versa, however, is to discard philosophy—actual philosophy).
Wrong. As Heidegger said, science does not think.
[size=95]Science does not move in the dimension of philosophy; it is, however, unwittingly dependent on this dimension. For instance, physics moves in the domain of space and time and motion. What motion, what space, what time is, science as science cannot determine. Science thus does not think, i.e., it cannot even think in that sense with its methods. I cannot, for instance, physically or by physical methods say what physics is; what physics is, I can only say thinking, philosophising.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BHvdTZomK8.][/size]
No, because philosophy is not above nature (physis, being(s)-as-a-whole). It has to ‘conform’ to nature’s ‘laws’, though this is already an anthropomorphism (the ‘lawfulness’ of nature is only an interpretation: see BGE 22). What science does is, it models nature. Philosophy then uses its models as a mirror, in which it can behold nature and judge nature, determine what is to be done with it. And indeed, the notion that nature is to be modeled, i.e., to be studied scientifically, is itself instilled by philo-sophy: the thirst for knowledge regarding physis.
[size=95]Taoism (or Daoism) refers to a variety of related topics such as philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennia and the West for over two centuries.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism.][/size]
So Taoism is not strictly a religion. Within Taoism, as everywhere else, philosophy should rule religion. But yes, this is about modern, i.e., Western, science. So yes, I mean the Christians, because Christianity was, for all practical purposes, the only religion in the West.
Faith versus science is an instance of the age-old battle of Revelation versus Reason.
That faith is generally considered more true (namely, by the less intelligent) was exactly why Plato sought to compromise intelligence with stupidity, philosophy with religion, Reason with Revelation: for as Zarathustra’s day-wisdom says:
[size=95]Where force is, there becometh number the master: it hath more force.
[TSZ, Of the Three Evil Things, 1.][/size]
And the stupid are in the majority, of course: for instance in the United States, there are nearly 160 million Christians, against nearly 30 million non-religious or secular people; whereas out of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence or educational level, 39 found an inverse connection (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxGMqKCcN6A 14:33-16:45).
Yes, ultimately value-judgments only say something about the one making them:
[size=95]Judgments, value-judgments concerning life, for it or against it, can, in the end, never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms,—in themselves such judgments are stupidities. One must by all means stretch out one’s fingers and make the attempt to grasp this amazing finesse, that the value of life cannot be estimated. Not by the living, for they are an interested party, even a bone of contention, and not judges; not by the dead, for a different reason.—For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life is thus an objection to him, a question mark concerning his wisdom, an un-wisdom.—
[Nietzsche, TI Socrates 2.][/size]
So what does a philosopher’s value-judgment concerning life or existence mean? What value does it have?—It shows whether he is a decadent or an ‘ascendent’. But this assessment of the philosopher would not be accurate if he knew ‘nothing’ of what he is judging. Aiden Mclaren, for instance, seems to be a pessimist only because of things like this: where he lives, in Australia—whose population consists largely of the offspring of British convicts, of course—, people who read books in public tend to get beaten up (this is what I got from a couple of posts of his I read last night). Of course I do not presume that his value-judgment springs from a single incident, or only a few incidents, but it might still be due to bad luck.
I suppose you mean you don’t take my premises to be true. My argument was not very clear, however. I will reformulate it.
Syllogism 1a:
Premise 1: “Philosophy is naturally above science and religion.”
Premise 2: “The above is just.”
Conclusion: “Philosophy’s being above science and religion must be sanctioned.”
Some steps are missing:
Syllogism 2:
Premise 1: “What is natural is what is just.”
Premise 2: “What is just must be sanctioned.”
Conclusion: “What is natural must be sanctioned.”
We can thus rewrite syllogism 1:
Syllogism 1b:
Premise 1: “Philosophy is naturally above science and religion.”
Premise 2: “What is natural must be sanctioned.”
Conclusion: “Philosophy’s being above science and religion must be sanctioned.”
So there are three premises whose truth value you can contest:
Premise 1: “Philosophy is naturally above science and religion.”
Premise 2: “What is natural is what is just.”
Premise 3: “What is just must be sanctioned.”
I know Heidegger said science does not think, but he has a very particular definition of thought. But this is not the point. Science is empirical, which is not a matter of thought but of action. If it is not, it is not properly scientific. String theory is not properly scientific, it is more philosophy. Most psychology is no science, but philosophy. Science cannot be determined by philosophy, although ideas can be presented as possibly scientific. Neither is the drive to scientific knowledge philosophical, or philosophy. Sophia means wisdom, or something tot hat extent, not practical knowledge. Knowledge of how to make fire is science, not philosophy. Knowledge that the sun comes up and goes down continuously is science. Hume’s questioning of this is philosophical. Here you see that the two do not necessarily go together, but that this does not change scientific knowledge. The sun still goes up and goes down, we now understand why, and Hume’s questioning this certainty is still considered to be serious philosophy. I don’t understand why, probably because I’m not a philosopher, I think it is folly, some very clever kind of vanity of the mind, which thinks it can outwit physical reality, without actually changing it. Some philosophy has value to me, as psychology, especially. Some of it approaches science, as in Heideggers studies of physis, as he studies what is actually happening, how we need to interpret what we see. In these cases I can very much appreciate philosophy.
Your notions of above and below do not really mean exact things to me - I do not hold to an order of rank as firmly as you do. I value concepts, but I do not organize them, do not frame them together necessarily. That is too two dimensional for me to work with. But I don’t reject the idea of an order of rank when it is applied to beings, instincts, mindsets, human characteristics. It is all too obvious that there are lower and higher minds, stronger and weaker types, more and less refined tastes, etcetera.
Plato undoubtably was a thinker of many layers. If this makes him esoteric I don’t know, in the literal sense he actually might have been I suppose… honestly I haven’t read enough of him to tell.
Lastly, I think the task of philosophy should be to direct science. That does not mean that it is higher - it is more like the taming of a beast. The lion tamer might seem higher than the lion, but without the lion, he is nothing.
Apparently you still haven’t understood this. What Hume questioned was precisely the ‘certainty’ of it. And the sun ‘going up and down’ is just an example, of course. It goes for any recurring phenomenon. What he’s saying is that that recurrence may, as far as we know, be only apparently lawful or necessary. One day the sun may not go ‘up’, because the fact that it has gone up every single day we can remember does not prove anything. Even the fact that we ‘understand why’ it goes ‘up and down’ does not prove anything. The regularity we perceive does not prove anything regarding the future. But we suppose it does, because otherwise we would have no structure at all in our lives. The sun might, as far as we know, suddenly implode, and science would have to run after the fact in order to fit it into a more complex model of regularity.