How wise our instincts can be! From the beginning I have been repelled by this Last Man, by his name and by his avatar picture: both suggested decay to me.
I now think of him simply as a parasite.
I believe you could not have paid me a greater compliment if you had tried.
The “sauwelian/lampert” (lol?) interpretation clearly does not compare to the deleuzian interpretation here - yours is closed, narrow and limited in depth and scope, as well as dogmatic in the sense that is accepts without understanding, without seeking to further understand beneath the shallow realm of correspondence to your own paradigmatic system of thought, which is only borrowed by you from this lampert fellow.
In contrast the deleuzian interpretation is open, wide and unlimited in depth and scope - it can be used to explain Nietzsche directly in reference to his passages, his overall ideas, his specific works, as well as his historical impact and influence, and in cross-disciplinary ways - but most importantly: the deleuzian interpretation (as you call it) explains Nietzsche from a psychological vantage point, in addition to its interpretations from within the Nietzschean conventions and concepts. It reaches across boundaries, validates its conclusions from within AND from outside of Nietzsche himself, and this is its strength compared to the lampert view, which apparently only seeks to understand Nietzsche from within Nietzsche.
But at least we get to the heart of the matter here - your hubris shines through so well in adding your own name to the “lampert interpretation” as you call it, your vanity seems to have no bounds. Yet it is quite refreshing to finally have you identify (if vaguely and insufficiently) where the contrast here between our two interpretations of Nietzsche lies. While of course only a coarse approximation, your lumping them into “lampert” against “deleuze” does indeed touch upon the nature of this distinction.
All I know of the lampert interpretation is what you express here, but that is more than enough for me to conclude that either the lampert interpretation is shallow, self-serving, closed-minded and religious, or you do not understand the lampert interpretation yourself. Perhaps I will seek out this book of his on Nietzsche to determine which of these two is the case.
Ha, I knew it! Another Deleuzian! That explains everything.
From now on I need only add this to my OPs: NO DELEUZIANS!
This is a great relief: I can leave this whole thing behind me now. Back to Neecher!
I evidently belong to the ‘heroes’ division of the Nietzschean Knights: as opposed to the ‘warriors’ division. It cannot be my task to con-vince scientists, Deleuzians, and the like. My task is to make peace with myself (cf. BT Self-Criticism 1).
This is again typical—I will not say of what. The truth is that I had been interpreting Nietzsche in a ‘Lampertian’ manner (i.e., by reading well and taking Nietzsche logically) for years before I ever read a letter by Lampert.
After gratefully dismissing The Last Man as a Deleuzian last night, and making that remark about making peace with myself, I started reading BT Self-Criticism and had a subtle eureka-feeling.
One reason why it was subtle was that it did not give me a great feeling of power, as I felt a bit humbled by the fact that it had been staring me in the face. Another is that I’m not yet sure where it will lead me, if anywhere; for all I know, it’s only a different approach.
I would gratefully accept your labelling me a Deleuzian as the highest of honors, if only I thought you had even the slightest notion of what you speak of.
But the reference and subsequent exclusion of me on your part is unnecessary, as I know I have reached the limits of knowledge I may extract from this conversation, whereas you have reached the limits of your ability to stretch your imagination and intellect to the new spaces and perspectives of which I speak - clearly my involvement here has become unnecessary for both parties, even though certainly my participation still continues to serve to assist you in the false inflating of your ego and the furthering of your own denial, resentiment and religious self-righteousness.
Yet despite that I certainly do enjoy assisting in the bolstering of your own bravado, hubris and ignorance, I will nonetheless vacate this topic, as you pretend to want me to do. Good luck with your delving into Nietzsche, I hope he always continues to be as narrow, shallow, self-contained, self-evident and static as you hope him to be.
Thank you. Goodbye, and Good Riddance!
Perhaps it’s worth the reminder that this place isn’t called ILoveBeingAScholar.com. I personally find a great deal of embarrassment in standing behind better known names to carry the weight of my arguments (especially standing behind names that stand behind names as commentators), reducing myself to a simple medium more than anything else - at best a jigsaw puzzle enthusiast on my more ‘creative’ days. I prefer to demonstrate my own reasoning and its strength of connection from myself - similarities to better known names being more of an awkward coincidence but not to be avoided lest I reduce myself to the “Nay-sayer” that I have been accused of being (by one who rather cleverly followed that up by suggesting one should say ‘Nay’ to and ignore ‘Nay-sayers’).
You don’t have to read my post carefully to realise that I run alongside the idea of the Nietzschean “Warrior” and thus ‘yea-say’ my intentions towards as well as ‘nay-say’ away from.
It would be a sad day if the “Hero” was someone who more than anything oozed their frustration, and therefore impotence to engage and win-over the cause of what they claim is a mere niggling annoyance. It is admirable to cling so unflinchingly to narrowness in the face of opposition, but it gains you no power when you are outnumbered by multiple attacks without sufficiently engaging defenses and therefore showing yourself to be fairly irrelevant. Maybe the ‘heroism’ being referred to is to die by your virtues and convictions, but this only makes one a martyr who only shows their strength with direction towards death.
Perhaps if you’re only looking for agreement, you’re only looking for approval within a herd and not grateful warrior-like battle with opponents who you are able to enjoy fight and defeat with. Perhaps if you’re able to grow from disagreement and not merely reach frustration and an end to the conversation, you won’t exhibit a reduction and restrictions within yourself.
This relates to the thread as the OP seems to have found trouble in convincing potential members to join “the philosophical workers party”. Whilst Sau has mentioned that “to requite a teacher at all you must become a scholar first”, you also need to in turn become a philosopher to requite a scholar. This is what ILovePhilosophy.com is for. Since Sau actually calls on BG&E 211 to back him up when it even says “philosophical workers and men of science in general should once and for all cease to be confused with philosophers”, he’s kinda already lost the strength of his cause already. The passage goes on to show that being a philosophical worker is just a necessarily foolish step along the way so he reveals his own shortcomings in the very passage he cites…
Neither is it called ILoveBeingAPhilosopher.com…
Thank you for reducing me to your own embarrassing ineptness at philosophical work…
(Non-constructive critics like you don’t deserve any better.) Why don’t you demonstrate your own reasoning etc. in your own thread, instead of whining here?
Whoa, a Nietzschean warrior? But I thought standing behind better known names embarrassed you!
Yes, their frustration at time-wasters like you.
We all have our talents. Apparently you claim to be more talented at that than I.
Yes, outnumbered. A confederacy of dunces.
In that art. But this is all it’s about, isn’t it. Showing others to be irrelevant in the art of arguing. Well, fuck that. If my banishment is no loss, fuck you and fuck the ILP staff.
That is not why I am here. I am putting on public display fights with myself here. Some have an interest in my victories. If you don’t, please take your business elsewhere.
That was a joke. But in a way you (and your kind) are right: my way does not lie outward, but inward.
Says who? See my first remark in this post. And maybe I will one day become an actual philosopher. But you are one already, of course… I fall in prostration!
No, you should learn to read better. Not all philosophical workers become philosophers. And it need not be a foolish step, either (in your case, however…). You have just proven my point.
Well Sauwelios, so far your launch has been pretty successful in the reactions it caused. All publicity is good publicity, so they say.
My grandfather, once a Stalinist, never wavered in front of his criticasters, and he never apologized for the judgments of his early years. They were justified at the time, he said. And in the end he was bestowed with virtue, and the apologetics were cloaked in shame.
All publicity is good publicity in that it does well at being publicity, yes… Sau publicises his philosophical laboriousness and thus he has done well in publicising himself as a proficient reader and summariser + occasional jigsaw puzzle enthusiast. I’d agree that this is justified at this time: people of this sort are more and more useful as gatherers of food for more highly ranked individuals to create into something new. Jakob, you publicise yourself as someone who sees value in pity towards those who are suffering in their chosen plight and also as someone who views greatness as common amongst whose who suffer or flail a little at first in order to reach a later appreciation amongst a particular herd.
I have an instinct for rank, but I also know that this isn’t honestly exhibited from myself via the means of humility towards some well known historical names as in the OP - this, I would say was more respect for ancestry, which I also possess. Humbling myself to the rank of philosophical worker is simply wrong, I know what it was like when I used to compete as a mental labourer and I know that I have moved on from things I still see here like mistaking standing behind names with running alongside the conceptual terms they used. For this, I don’t care what title I’m given, nor do I care for sarcastic prostrations at my feet. So therein lies my Nay-saying towards joining his worker’s party, joke or not, attempt to lead by example or not. I do recognise the term ‘philosophy’ as probably the most appropriate word for my game and I would do well for myself to encourage philosophising from others rather than ‘being a scholar’ or scholasticism if scholars want a more pedantic show of grammar from me.
Philosophy, being beyond the will to truth and adorably dutiful notions such as ‘time wasting’, would be much better uncovered here through an initial display of combat and hostility - that mask that I utilise in posts such as these that implies my direction much better than spelling it out in the correct academic way would. In this way I may seek out a much more rare response of enjoyment in hostility with a refreshing lack in bitterness and resentment and for this, I open my mind to engagements with lower ranks with a side purpose of drawing out interesting insights into their knowledges and psychologies, and not without a hope that they might promote their thinking a little.
These serve well enough as to explain my inputs, but Sau’s claim that he puts on public display fights with himself in order to further his ‘inward’ way makes no sense without contradiction. Clearly a public display in a most preferred field, sending out an appeal and showing personal offense towards not playing by preferred narrowness in rules is to send a message outward in hope of receiving outside input. Here there is folly in one who has to remain standing on lower steps to his superiors, yet who strives to one day be able to dance further up the staircase as if effort and virtue were necessary for one to be able to ascend further up towards being a philosopher. Dialectic severity comes before freedom when one is still vain enough to need to retreat inside rules that were put there by others to avoid disapproval. A bit more humour and a bit less severity mark one who feels able to willingly make a fool of himself enough to be a free spirit. To this post, I have affirmed only disapproval for the presupposed ‘crimes’ of arrogance and immodesty but this lies firmly within my intentions.
People like you, no doubt. I can’t believe you would write such a long post on this. And so utterly tedious.
My real fault is that I got tangled up in the webs of these spiders. I regret ever replying to The Last Man, the first of the lot. One cannot make up for lost time. I have to think about an alternative to not posting at all anymore. If I can’t find one, well…
It is our duty as exciting forum participants to cultivate the power to generate and extinguish opposers at will. We know that the great Diogenes was in the habit of striking himself across the face and scolding himself bitterly after being praised for his virtues. When asked why he would do that, he usually clarified: “The people praise me, is that not a sure sign that what I’ve done or said is unworthy?” Of course it’s no joking matter that so few have understood Sauwelios’ joke. If you want to appreciate it as intended, then ask yourself: just what would a student of that controversial Nazi-inspiring philosopher have to do with any Parties? I feel the esteemed philosophers have put it out of Sauwelios’ range to make such jokes, but after all, if he speaks literally that doesn’t yet make the meaning itself always quite as literal in intent!
As civilized people, we have all agreed to “move beyond Nazism” and the like, but there is a small snag that still remains. We are safely accustomed to thinking that the well-popularized Nazi atrocities of war refute their philosophical ideas, and here is our problem: this enlightened worldview becomes impossible to maintain any longer after understanding a little Nietzschean philosophy. This is precisely why we still need help in “moving beyond Nietzsche”, and “just do it” is really of no help at all.
I do in a similar vein hope for my own sake, that, the gods willing, I should never surpass F.Nietzsche - as that would be all too similar, for example, to surpassing Ted Bundy.
-WL
A joke exists, quite obviously - but an intended joke? Hardly.
Perhaps only an accidental one? Ah, what a joke, indeed!
Nazism and its philosophical foundations may be separated, just as the practical results of Nazi ideology may be taken as refutation of this philosophical grounding. But in the same way that this apparent symmetry may be isolated and played one off of the other in order to resolve a higher dialectic, we may divide the interlaced Nietzschean ideas which were taken and woven selectively into Nazi ideology from this Nazi ideology itself. Contemplating the motives, much less the results of, Nazi leaders and thinkers is sufficient to engender this essential division - of Nietzscheanism qua Nietzscheanism, against Nietzscheanism qua Nazism. Of course this makes it quite clear how moving beyond Nazism is quite disanalogous to moving beyond Nietzscheanism. . . as for what Nietzschean thought says about facsist idealogy, such as Nazism and its underlying philosophical theories, that remains open to some interpreting but not entirely without a certain clarity or direction, as Nietzsche himself made no qualms about attacking and critiquing the growing fascist conditions in pre-Nazi Germany - even if his ideas, selectively taken out of context of course, can be used to support such fascist movements.
Perhaps it is sufficient to have pride in “being a Nietzschean” for one to cross over necessarily into fascist territories - and this is not even touching upon the inherent contradiction in terms (not to mention of course the essential resentimenting involved) with bringing such a pride and an external worship of another within such personal relation to one another.
Nietzsche, more than many other things, was a destroyer of idols, of idolozing per se - of externalising our pride in a dependent fashion upon other agents, of deriving our pride from aligning ourselves with outside sources.
L.Man,
What have you been reading as of late? Throw it away as soon as possible, your marriage may be at stake. I have detected (with difficulty) your thought that Nietzsche is separable from Nazism. That’s not groundbreaking news by itself, considering that anything is separable from anything else in the realm of abstraction. I feel that applying motive psychoanalysis to one’s enemies is just a means to invade their private thoughts and feelings with our own phallus-shaped tanks - or to pretend we can do so, for some theatric purpose. But aren’t enemies people too? As people we respect, they are enitled to their quiet place, their privacy and a degree of protection from gloating rapists.
I hinted that ALL things resembling Nazism are no longer unjustified, if Nietzsche is understood. Past, present and future - one needn’t accept or believe anything that the philosopher said, it happens by itself, as his explanations open up new emotions and horizons in the reader. You can be certain that Sauwelios’ use of these associations was always intentional! He studies Nietzsche, don’t you know.
We have looked at pride as an inner “force majeure” earlier. Naturally, it has political implications also. There is no way to separate good Nietzschean pride from bad Nazi pride; which is not meant to say that they are all bad (as is usually said by so-called christians). We consider them as types of alienation instead, which under certain conditions become medically necessary for the organism’s survival (physiological war against parasites, cancer, etc.). Concerning idolatry, too, I will not agree with you. If we idolize a person, and then “destroy” the idol through our own insight and effort, what we are left with is not worthless emptiness (that’s what hasty people imagine), but the original being. Destroying the idol called “God”, we are left face to face with the original God. The destruction of the idol can at first herald the cessation of all ties with the original, but in time it does just as well become the beginning of a new relation, based on the only non-idolatrous emotion available - intimate love. Unaware of all this, outside observers will always continue to call the lover an idol-worshipper, and inquire with him very annoyingly as to what his “belief” is. Not yet knowing what to say, he looks for explanations, but the most direct and inexplicable (for the critic) answer would be that he has no beliefs, and instead seeks the intimate knowledge of another for its own sake. That is religious mind-formation par exellance, religion in the highest sense, and so it stands far above any aberrant, conditioning-driven slander against it. It’s a marvel - to what extent we want to stay blind about who and what our closest colleagues and friends are, all inertially, all because of a long-forgotten misstep, a prejudice, or a secret little maliciousness of our own heart!
-WL
Gratefully for your response here, I have thoroughly missed our conversations! I do enjoy a good theater show - after all I have stuck around here far too long as it is. Especially a show of a tragic undertones and a comic presentation is always quite interesting and engaging.
Nietzscheanism and Nazism are distinct entities with a degree of overlap - the intention to separate, or to refute or qualify such a separation, implies failure to recognise this essential reality, where it does not explicitly take into account the differential relationship therein. Likewise a failure of recognition is evident in the overgeneralising of the specific to the abstract without coextensively establishing the fundamental connectives that relate one to the other - separation itself, to be unforgivably blunt, cannot be so dismissed where it results from such a failure of recognition or from a staring at only as if from a great distance.
As to the entitlement of private spaces, such has been partially forgone by the active participation in public critical discourse, and more fully dismissed by the open and intended hostility which seeks engagement with rival forces for the sake of providing a context upon which one’s prided and beloved personal possessions and accomplishments may be gloatingly displayed. The phallus lies at the heart of such behavior and its motivations just as squarely as it lies at the heart of the intention to expose, ridicule and discredit such behaviors - that is to say, imperfectly so and not without a large degree of deliberate and resentimental self-deception.
In terms of horizons and associations, we must note that of course the use thereof for the express purpose of constructing a closed box and a repelling shield reveals not the desire for progress, but for regress. And in this we cannot help but smile at your praise of the religious, of the higher religious - that is to say, the most perfect, the most without self-contradictions of its own nature - and in this I must absolutely agree with you, that our host here displays a fine obedience to the requirements and essences of the religious creed. The only denial with respect to such a creed is superficial, and for the secondary purposes of reinforcing the box and the shield themselves. Indeed, such a pride as is displayed by our host is quite merited - if only he might be more courteous in accepting praise for it, even praise in the guise of ridicule!
This of course implies that such destruction has indeed taken place. One must wonder on this point however when one’s pride is inherently tied into one’s own self-effacement and protestations of modesty and inferiority with respect to the idol.
Ah, truly you speak as I do only to myself - how wonderful a rare clarity of honesty is!
Ah, hello, Silhouette. You publicize yourself as someone so attention hungry he would smear himself with feces and turn up at a random party, crying out “it smells of shit in here!”. Anyway, we’re open minded here at ILP, so welcome to the thread, silhouette. Now that you’re done introducing us to yourself, feel free to share some of the original thoughts you carry around. Don’t try to keep yourself so mysterious.
Thank you, Jakob. But I think WL is, or pretends to be (I always feel I can’t fathom the guy), too positive about me. It’s true that there’s a lot of ressentiment of me in this thread. I have a choleric temper, if that means anything to anyone. What is ressentiment? The will to requital inflamed by the feeling of powerlessness. My feeling of powerlessness in this thread (among others) has sprung from the condescending manner of, e.g., The Last Man. What can one do about that after all? Express one’s feeling of superiority over such manners? But what angers me is precisely that I feel forced to do that for the sake of my ‘image’ (i.e., I won’t allow such insolents to misrepresent me to other, perhaps more naive readers). But men like WL seem to teach me that I need not worry about that.
I also think I sometimes give others the same feeling—ressentiment—on these fora, but I think I at least give them substance—unlike The Last Man and Silhouette.
You certainly give me the feeling often enough, and I agree with The Last Man that you do not do justice to all of the criticism you get, but on the other hand with WL that you are the best Nietzschean on this board. I realize since recently that the courage of ones convictions is more valuable, more a sign of substance, than the convictions themselves. I agree with The Last Man about a lot of things, because I intuit what he means, where he’s coming from. With you I can’t quite fathom that, because you so rigorously hold certain truths to be self evident or self explanatory, that I don’t agree with. As you’ll probably remember we’ve discussed this before, I also hold to such truths, different ones, the premises of American legislation.
I realize now that taking such truths to be self evident in the face of well thought out criticism is not a sign of intellectual weakness, but of a strong will, which takes the intellect as a weapon instead of as a god. Unless, such as in the case of Netwon, you actually treat it as such, and aim directly at understanding the intellect itself - which is, in my humble opinion, what applied mathematics is aimed at. The universe is after all understood through the mind, so all man-formulated laws about it are laws of the mind in the face of experience, not of ‘objective’ nature. There can be no laws about that, only zen poems, if you’ll be so gracious to understand what I mean.
Mathematics an-sich, when it is not coupled with physics or economics or any other empirical domain (even if it is just the Greek geometrical method, which restrict its means of construction to what can be done with compass and ruler, i.e. instruments found in nature (rope and stick)), fails to make sense. It becomes schizofrenic, exactly like a mind disconnected from a practical life. There was a mathematical panic at one point, a crash if you will, when theories of purely abstract mathematics began to contradict each other. Many mathematicians apparently now refuse to have anything to do with physics, because it is such an annoying hindrance to appreciation of their beautiful theories. But this, applied mathematics, God, is not the business of the philosopher, but of the scientist. (I disagree with you that all scientific workers are scientists. There are as few scientists as there are philosophers - both are law-givers, the ideas of both rule over a paradigm in which others explore and construct.)
Man, not God, is the business of the philosopher, and there I can see that the Will to Power is a useful element. My own belief, which is a result of my own set of values, does include the will to power, but it legislates it. I hold moral values which I have rejected on the same ground as those that bring me to them again. They are subjective - I believe in a subject, a principum individuationis, because I value that which is attained under that banner. As you know I believe in Dionysus as well, and I certainly value the results of his frenzy - but I don’t try to incorporate Dionysos in my rational beliefs, otherwise there would be nothing to tear apart. It would be one big mess of confusion and agonizing half truths, instead of the glorious spiritual bloodbath it is supposed to be.
Sauwelios, after again reading a reply of the Last Man in another thread in which he continues claiming to have been where I have been, but to have moved beyond that now, and pontificating that we must all understand what he now understands, without ever explaing what he understands except saying in innumerable slightly different sentencesthat it is “deeper”, my sympathy for your attitude towards him has grown a bit again, and whereas I previously said I intuit where he’s coming from, I feel compelled to admit now that this was mainly an attempt at keeping the peace, because I might actually have been projecting my own occult ideas on him.
On another note, I realize that the will to legistlate the will to power can easily be seen as itself the will to power. But, I do not see the will to power as an adequate explanation of my own conviction. More is needed, because whereas the will to power can be deduced from my conviction, it is much harder to induce my conviction from only the will to power. In other words, the will to power is too rudimentary. A complimentary explanation, in terms of natural law, i.e. mathematics, harmonies, would go a long way to make this induction, if used alongside the will to power. It immediately becomes apparent that we then get something to the extent of force + form. It would turn out to be quite tedious if I were to expand on that here, mainly because I do not feel the urge anymore to deconstruct my own values. But possibly it will seem more appealing to make an attempt at it later.