Then it must be true. But I think you reveal too little: for you’re not interesting enough for me to ask you to explain yourself. You might be if you’d actually said something in those whole chunks of text you manage to produce. But then you’d have to have actually had something to say.
You belong ‘beyond’ Nietzsche, along with Baron Munch and, yes, Jakob! I’m so glad you’ve found each other. Now you don’t have to pat yourselves on the back anymore!
It’s so funny that you are the dogmatist, not I!—Science would indeed be actual knowledge; but you just have faith in what you call “scientific knowledge”. I will now reproduce a quote and a non-quote I posted in my other thread, on Nietzsche’s eight principal questions (to which you told me you would reply, by the way):
[list][size=95]It is not the victory of science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but the victory of scientific method over science.
[WP 466 (1888), entire.][/size]
We can now explain this as follows. Science here means scientia, actual knowledge. But Nietzsche does not claim actual knowledge, but actual methodicality. His scientific method makes no claim on knowledge, even as Logic makes no claim on Truth. (His) philosophy is completely rational; it does not depend on Revelation.[/list:u]
Your ‘science’, on the other hand, depends on faith in the revelations of ‘physical reality’.—
From the same post:
[list][size=95]We immoralists—we […] do not even need to tell lies: what other power can dispense with that? A powerful seduction fights on our behalf, the most powerful perhaps that there has ever been—the seduction of truth… Truth? Who has forced this word upon me? But I repudiate it; but I disdain this proud word: no, we do not even need this; we shall conquer and come to power even without truth. The spell that fights on our behalf, the eye of Venus that charms and blinds even our opponents, is the magic of the extreme, the seduction that everything extreme exercises: we immoralists—we are the most extreme.
[WP 749 (1887-88), entire.][/size]
[…]
Already in the Preface to BGE, he had suggested that truth be a woman. But a woman can only be seduced by a strong yet subtle male femininity can only be seduced by a strong yet subtle masculinity. Neither the being whose femininity is seduced, nor the being whose masculinity seduces needs to be clinically female or male, respectively]. The dogmatists that tried to conquer her may have been strong, but they were not subtle. In the above passage, I think Nietzsche implies that he did conquer truth. But the subtlety with which he had conquered her there forces him to not make any absolute demands on her. Immoralists like him can, or pretend they can, do without her.[/list:u]
Nietzsche’s ‘knowledge’ of the ‘truth’ that the world be the will to power and nothing besides is not dogmatic knowledge—i.e., not actual knowledge at all. It marks a victory of scientific method over supposed ‘science’: that is, over the—religious!—faith in so-called ‘science’. Thus scientific method becomes the right hand of philosophy, while religion is given the status of left hand:
[size=95]Supposing truth is a woman—what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy [linkisch, “leftic” (compare “gauche”)] obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman’s heart?
[BGE, Preface.][/size]
It may be no coincidence that you are left-handed whereas I am right-handed. I think neither of us is a philosopher; I think you are a religious human being whereas I am a scientific or scholarly human being. And insofar as this is true, we are opposed! But as Blake said, opposition is true friendship. We both have exclusive paths to the highest: I the right-hand path, the path of the Magus, you the left-hand path, the path of the Fool. Reason and Revelation; Science and Art; probability and truth; seeming freedom and real freedom…
Yes, that’s what I said. What do you imagine have I not understood?
I don’t trust logic more than actual understanding of what’s happening. Logic is just a tool, it can be used and misused. In fact I see almost everyone who employs it avidly using it to obscure things as often as to clarify.
At the point where a philosopher starts questioning scientific certainty for the single reason it is logically possible, he shows his inferior understanding, and in the urge to escape from the underlying position he employs his cunning. What you might call a slave-revolt against science.
Hume considered himself, from what I’ve read about him, a lesser mind than Newton. I can see where he’s coming from. What Hume seems not to have thought about is where the tool of logic has been found.
But that is not the point. The idea that faith or dogma is necessary to appreciate scientific consistency only makes sense to the mind of someone who has need for faith and dogma.
No, it’s what I said. What you said may be compared to the Declaration of Independence:
[size=95]We hold these truths to be self-evident[.][/size]
but in its negative form:
[size=95]These truths were not self-evident to Hume.[/size]
The implicit dogmatism of referring to the notions in question as “truths” is of a kind with yours when you say:
“Apparently this certainty was not self-evident to Hume, for he questioned it. And some still do not hold it to be self-evident! The fools!”
And you immediately do it again:
Of course it must be that I’ve merely imagined it…
Some more examples of dogmatism (or is it just obstinacy?) in your post:
The thing is that if a philo-sopher questions your beloved ‘scientific certainty’, he does so for the sake of sophia, knowledge regarding physis. Hume is right about there being no certainty—but I must not be dogmatic, and add: “as far as I am concerned”, or: “as far as we are concerned” (cunning slaves with inferior understanding, like Hume and me): for to people like you, of course, the truth about physis is revealed, in your mystical reveries…
Has it been found? Was it ready to use? Did it have the same form it has now? Or did it rather evolve?
The only reason most people today believe in ‘scientific certainty’ is that this characteristic has allowed them to survive long enough to procreate; those that anticipated the possibility of nature suddenly ceasing to be regular have gone extinct, because thus far it has not ceased to be regular. Thus the former had a huge advantage over the latter. But as far as we (cunning slaves like Hume and me) know, it could still cease to be regular at any time.
I seriously recommend reading Book Three of The Will to Power to any cunning slavish philosophers like Hume and cunning slavish philosophical workers like me.
Friends, I feel you have been strikingly uncharitable in reading and commenting Sauwelios, the best Nietzschean that you have available in the forum. From the start everything has been misunderstood, diverted in disorderly ways and criticized without due consideration. Just look at the history of his important post; first he is accosted by intolerable, arrogant narcissism, then immediately chastized for the arrogant narcissism in his own original article, which is really absent in it. But this was not enough! Sauwelios expressed himself in Nietzschean terms, and so the classicist tint of pomposity inherent in the style irked the fine ears of the Americans. You require Sauwelios to apologize for his religious worship, and demand that the enthusiast renounce his enthusiasm, to be replaced with agreeable placcidity after your own example! Is that any way to treat a man, an extraordinary man, who has come to tell you about his struggle, and not some tall tale, but the way it is?
Do you entirely fail to see the author’s real intent? Sauwelios is no longer only talking of, but inwardly, vivisectionally practicing the Nietzschean doctrine of the Order of Rank. Indeed, what does some pathetic inscription under a forum name matter! It would not, if it hadn’t been the announcement of an attempted self-transformation, one man’s triumph over himself, which he merely wanted to share with you. And what’s more, his intention has been genuine, as far as humanely possible, which you can see for yourself by using the following almost-infallible compass: if the author announces to us his self-promotion, then we can be certain, that author knows nothing about the Order of Rank. Sauwelios steps back, as it were, considering himself from a distance, and he makes the opposite decision. He no longer wants to be pleasantly decieved about himself. There we have it, the doctrine proper is demonstrated to you in practice.
Under what pretense do I presume to pontificate here about the Order of Rank, as if it was the axle about which the whole world turned? Is it not merely some Nietzsche-invention, or as some even said, his psychopathology? You be the judge; however, I want to inform you that our ancestors from at least the great Manu onwards, have known of this doctrine and practiced it, saying:
“TO DO (HOWEVER POORLY) ONE’S PROPER DUTY,
IS INFINITELY BETTER THAN TO DO ANOTHER’S WITH EVERY POSSIBLE PERFECTION.”
That the attempted “democratization” and “mob-isation” now practiced everywhere is the opposite of this honest and profound doctrine of the ancients is easy to see, but I would like to draw your attention to the previously obscure fact that, the above formula carries within it a “metaphysic”, a knowledge about the world as-it-is beyond what actually is apparent in the world. The democratizers, of course, have no metaphysic, relying purely on greed (get to the top at any cost), vanity, and the self-delusion of “equality” in all matters. These latter delusions would be of little consequence, if they did not also act as implements of causing chronic trauma. The target? It is, of course, the long-suffering true conscience of every man, which never, under any conditions, permits us to lie to ourselves. In order to do so, as required by modern fashions, the conscience must be tortured into compliance, shut up in a filthy cess-pool of the rejected and suppressed aspects of self, by force.
In the end it does not matter whether or not the philosophical worker is understood, because in so far as he is not a philosophical actor as very many are, the worker continues his work - profitably for himself and those around him. It is easy to supra-rank oneself with the greatest figures of all time; nowadays every undergraduate student of any mettle has surpassed Nietzsche, scathingly criticized Kant, and found Descartes’ formulas (mathematical and otherwise) woefully inadequate. But this flattering maneuver, if it is repeated in areas other than these meaningess contests with the dead that are of no consequence to anyone, causes the formation of cancerous callouses on the surface of the soul, as it continually suffers incorrect “chemical” contact with the world. Indeed, the man whom life or fortune casts UP, above his proper place and station, is invariably very unhappy and unfulfilled. No wonder - his peers all seem to outclass him by an order of magnitude, in all things. Crudely, such a man could be compared to a middle-class worker, who now lives with his family in the luxurious neighbourhood of the supra-wealthy. The opposite situation is also easily imaginable, and the man who is by some error stuck in a lower rank than properly belongs to him will also experience profound unhappiness, in this case due to being over-rich, and having all the things worked for in the sweat of the brow by his peer, coming to him without any effort whatever. He is cursed with forever longing for something MORE, a challenge, a catastrophy, something that he could properly apply himself to. (The fantasists never understand the lament of this second man, no matter how vividly his suffering is painted to them, because unlike the genuine man of higher rank, they lack the “metaphysical” impetus, the drive. Fantasists consider the described situation a mostly pleasant and flattering arrangement.)
Times have changed since wise Manu recieved his knowledge from God and set rules upon his people that reflected, catered to the timeless law. Now we no longer want to hear about the caste-system, considering it a barbarism. But to what extent is this merely because we do not any longer understand it? Meanwhile, the timeless law, which Nietzscheans call the Order of Rank, remains, as ever, unchanged.
Look in any society in todays world and, if you have accomplished a modicum of philosophical vision, they will stand before you just as in the ancient times: Brahmin, the priest-scientist-philosopher-renunciates; Kshatriya, the military-adminstrator-political rulers; Vaishya, the merchants-landowners-industrialists; Shudra - the factoryworkers-bread&butter-simple good men.
Beyond the spoken ideas of philosophical systems there exists a much more interesting, unspoken battlefield where, if we are worthy, we all stand rank and file at our respective battlestations. You now know more than most of this, thanks to the generosity of Sauwelios who thought to share with everybody an element of the continued struggle of self against self, for the sake of Self. Without seeing the nature and intent of each other’s effort, although we may be great scholars, it will be as though we never said a helpful word to one another.
-WL
Esteemed mr. chairman. I realize Hume questioned the certainty of it. He in fact questions the certainty. That means that he does not see it as certain. What, I ask again, is it that you imagine I don’t understand? And what is, suddenly, your objection to imagination? I was under the impression that you think that imagination is the basic human expression of the will to power. But possibly your views have changed since you founded the party.
What Hume does is alike to the Zen poet. He does not wish to succumb to the tyranny of if-then, he wants to be free to create his own causeless space. He is free to do this, in his imagination. But that tyranny, mr. chairman of the philosophical politbureau, is what Hume lived his life by, as I imagine you do. Your party can claim to question it all it wants, even if it keeps operating by it, I have no objections to that. Where I object is when your party, with it’s imaginative program, makes claims to high positions. The philosophical workers party has proven to not be capable of ruling, it has avoided confrontation with critics and has done so by means of all-too-simple classifications and condemnations of them and their motives, in a way which is reminiscent of it’s totalitarian religious predecessors.
Logic, to answer your question, is an abstraction of relations of events as observed in nature. And yes, I realize ‘‘event’’ is an abstraction as well. Also of nature. The scientific mind observes nature, and from interpreting these observations springs all conceptual thought. All of your party’s concepts are a product of the scientific observations of your scientific ancestors. The idea that the certainty of cause leading to effect is questionable is also a product of the observation of infallible recurrence of patterns in nature as observed and interpreted.
I think the issue is more that Sauwelios requires others to apologize for their lack of religious worship of Nietzsche. And what is there to be misunderstood here? If this is about order of rank, it is about pathos of distance, and Sauwelios has every opportunity here to make that pathose felt.
We should not blindly trust modesty. But a Christian might fail to see the falseness of modesty, even when a worshipper makes claims to the entire world of knowledge, when he demands that non-believers should be even more modest than the worshipper himself.
Certainty can not be drawn from such superficial observations. You present a very simplistic method of classification here.
and is he not proud about this? Does he not present it as something we should admire him for? Does he not judge and classify his critics into as proudly as before? This is just a tool, a means to power, to subject others who have not humbled themselves. It has a distinctly communist flavor to it.
And is Sauwelios not doing anothers duty? What is the motivation to claim Nietzsche’s spiritual descendancy? How come I agree with Nietzsche, and disagree with Sauwelios? Sauwelios makes it seem, to himself at least, that anyone who disagrees with him does so because he doesn’t understand Nietzsche. But they are separate persons, Nietzsche and Sauwelios, and have different duties. What’s more, Nietzsche has already done his duty. To write a book titled "What Nietzsche means’', as has another philosophical workers, is to claim a duty that isn’t ones own.
Do you know this? Or do you also think this is what Nietzsche means? Does thinking that Nietzsche means this relieve you of your duty to put arguments behind this statement?
How is his work profitable for those around him if he is not understood? And what if he would happen to be misguided? Does the simple fact of his modesty make his work profitable? I don’t think so.
Yes, and that is nothing more than vanity on behalf of the student, but it is also possible to disagree with Nietzsche or Kant or Descartes without feeling one has surpassed them. To surpass a great philosophical writer, one would have to produce a superior work.
We understand the order of rank as it is naturally organized by one’s potential, as in the case you illustrate. We don’t anymore understand it as it is sustained by a doctrine of blood, because there is no purity of blood anymore in this world. Nietzsche writes of blood as the defining factor in rank, so this presents us with a problem. The order of rank in the Nietzschean sense cannot be as easily explained as setting a rank for oneself based on one’s own assessment of ones capabilities and capacity. It has to naturally emerge, from who and what one is. I know Sauwelios as a priest, that is how his writing stands out among other writing. How is one now to see him as a worker, while he retains the attitude of a priest? Restricting oneself to another mans work does not a modest man make.
I suppose I must be happy with your contempt.
That he was right. Or wait, is that putting it dogmatically again? That he was right from the narrow perspectives of those trapped in the confines of logic.
In a thread on this very subject (Hume and his questioning of ‘scientific certainty’), you said:
[size=95]His [i.e., Hume’s] mistake was the assumption that science needs logic to predict with certainty.
[http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=2078908#p2078908.][/size]
This was less than eight months ago, so I will assume that you have not changed your mind on this. My question, then, is: on what basis do you imagine that science can predict with certainty without using logic? From my narrow perspective, that basis must be revelation, as there is no alternative. It must be that the future is revealed to the scientist. For this is the crux of the problem: what Hume questioned was that, if we would know any past period perfectly (and remember that, as Crowley says, we can never know what is happening, only what has (just) happened), we could with complete accuracy induce the whole future from it. In other words, what he questioned was the idea that we know existence to be (completely) mechanistic, i.e., logical. We do (and probably can), of course, not even know any past period perfectly (unless it has been revealed to us!); and even if we did, that alone would not suffice to know the future.
Premise 1: “I know a past period perfectly.”
Premise 2: “Each period follows logically from the immediately preceding one [or, more generally: “Reality is entirely logical”].”
Conclusion: “I know the whole future perfectly.”
But back to my question: on what basis do you imagine that science can predict with certainty without using logic? You could just answer: “On no basis at all” (or not answer at all), for asking about ‘bases’ and ‘grounds’ and the like is logical, and you have claimed that science does not need logic to predict with certainty.
If reality is not logical, then…
I founded the ‘party’ only when I started this thread. And your impression is wrong, or at least not quite right. I have said in the past that I thought imagination or representation was of the essence of the will to power (in my “Will to Might” thread, most notably). Anyway, this is irrelevant (I have already revealed your insinuation), and I find it hateful that you do not back up your claims and ‘impressions’ (as I did above, by giving you the link to that post of yours).
Who or What has revealed his motives to you?
But ‘it’ is not a fact: as I’ve said, the universe may still cease to be regular at any moment, for all we know.
Yawn.
You are making yourself so ridiculous… But then, your intended audience probably consists of morons. I take it science can predict with certainty without logic, according to you, because it does not interpret? It only ‘observes’? (As if observation and interpretation can be separated!) It bases itself solely and wholly on the revelations of its God, nature… This correspondence is closed. Kindly get thee back ‘beyond’ Nietzsche, where thou belongeth.
I think it’s very much a question of intended audience. If I belong to The Last Man’s intended audience, for instance, he does not do a good job of arousing or retaining its interest. The same goes for Jakob’s and Mr. Parodites’ intended audiences. Perhaps they use the same ‘tactic’ as I have, so far: not adapt to an audience one imagines, but write for oneself and see to whom, if to anyone, else it appeals. Thus I can say Nothingness belongs to my intended audience, at least to an extent, but only because my work appeals to him, to an extent. Even if they use the same ‘tactic’ as I, however, the difference between The Last Man, Mr. Parodites, and Jakob on the one hand, and myself on the other, in this thread at least, is that this is ‘my’ thread, not theirs.
Now, after their interruptions, I will pick up my work again: some of it has stacked up in the meantime.
[list]
"Ye say ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra? Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers?
"Ye had not yet sought yourselves when ye found me. Thus do all believers; therefore is all believing worth so little.
“Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me will I come back to you.”
[/list:u]
I have wanted to go into this more deeply for some time now. Zarathustra’s speech Of War and Warriors sheds a lot of light on the kind of action or battle it could be. But that speech is about fighting other workers/warriors. One might say that that is what I do here. But one may counter that I avoid those battles (e.g., with The Last Man, Mr. Parodites, and Jakob); yet the truth is that I do engage in those battles, but when I find my opponent retreats into his own brainforests (The Last Man), is not to be taken seriously by me, even if he’s no impostor (Mr. Parodites), or is for some other reason not to be reasoned with (Jakob), I choose not to waste any more time, and return to my work. Characteristic of this work is a different kind of battle: one not with other knights (note that the word means “servant”, originally!), but with monsters… These monsters are my philosophical problems.—
Yawn.
Look at how Nietzsche himself reveals your falsehood and misunderstandings, through the very words that you yourself regard as Holy Scripture.
Yawn all you like. But read that quote again. No I am serious: read it. Yes, right now. Read it. Read it again. Now think about it. Really think what it means, sincerely and seriously. I am not joking or mocking you. I know you can get there.
Or rather, since I know you will ignore my advice, think about Nietzsche’s concept of ‘bad conscience’. I mean no disrespect, but you have a long way to go - this is not up for debate. Nietzsche can of course be interpreted in many, many ways, but you clearly are interpreting Nietzsche in a way which he himself guarded against, and quite clearly. Do not forget that Nietzsche told his followers to surpass him, and not to worship him!
Remember his great fear that he would be worshipped in posterity! Consider his wise words: “Do not, above all, confuse me with what I am not!”
Yupe and its a message that, unfortunately, has never gotten through!
kp
Who, me? I’m just making a bit of fun of your severity.
He was right in his imagination. I can’t argue with that.
No, logic is an abstraction of recognition of relations. No need to call perception and interpretation ‘revelation’.
This does not amount to questioning the certainty of cause and effect. It only says that if we don’t know the full cause, we cant know the full effect.
Indeed, reality is only interpreted as logical on the basis of recurring observation. There is this idea that logic is the basis of organization of knowledge, but that is how it seems when you look from a Platonic model, when the outlines of the osystem come first, then the content. Logic is derived from mans relation to himself and the rest of nature. It is a product of consciousness, and consciousness from recognition of patterns of impulses and actions. You might call the actions of an ant logical, sure, but only from your own perspective. Or do you think an ant makes use of logic? If so, you’ve extended logic so far that the term has lost it’s meaning.
Yes, should a new party free from criticism? I think the opposite. And I simply think you’re imagining things about my understanding, and that you’re doing this because you want to feel powerful.
That is what a philosopher does, he looks behind beliefs for motives.
I could be wrong, (I do make false steps) but I don’t think so. I see two motives - the will to escape from the iron grasp of a misinterpretation of logic, and wanting to surpass Newton in depth of understanding.
But only by causes which are then unknown. Not without a cause.
Logic is the product of interpretation. I don’t know if you are really making an effort to read badly or whether maybe this is actually a difficult concept. Maybe it is, because I don’t think Hume was stupid.
Yes, I will talk to you again in person, when you don’t have to uphold your mask, for which you seem to temporarily swap your brain.
No, you reveal my ‘falsehood and misunderstandings’, if any, instead of just insinuating, time-waster!
Again a mere insinuation, time-waster!
Stop trying to command me, time-waster! Right now!
You are joking and mocking, and I’m reporting you for it, time-waster! And again, you are insinuating I haven’t thought about it, and have not been sincere and serious. Despicable, time-waster!
I do, but not in the condescending, self-flattering way you mean,—time-waster!
Who gives a shit what you think is up to debate, time-waster?!
Cannot his ‘clear guarding’ against my way of interpreting also then be interpreted in many, many ways? You are again undermining your own statements, time-waster!
Kindly produce a passage where he tells his followers to surpass him—or stop wasting my time.
You confuse worship with reverence, time-waster. I wonder what that says about you.
Oh, great, now you’ve gotten Ms. Krossie to chime in! A sure sign of the degeneration of any serious thread on Nietzsche.
Do we need a time-out, kids?
I will only go into one remark you made; the rest are not worth of my time: it’s not my task to educate you.
Wrong!