Well, I would have to agree. To me, the will is in itself finite. Let us consider this. Imagine a world that is as, say, the ancient Greeks conceptualized it. As wrong as they were, they were extremely acute in systematizing a scientifically rigorous and ‘believable’ foundation. Imagine for an instant if such a foundation actually existed. Objects could be cut up into tiny atoms or building blocks that are homogeneous and finite. Whole, fixed concepts like apples and beaches would precede existence. Most importantly, the will, intent, affirmation could be carried out on the basis this homogeneous world. Thus, teleology is created. If the will bases itself on teleology and teleology is finite in nature, in that it stops short of infinity, then it seems that all the boundaries and borders drawn by the will and for the will in themselves suggest finiteness. This is considering that finiteness is:
If you mean that the will is radicalized in direct reaction to nihilisms abrasiveness, then I whole heartedly agree. The increase in nihilistic thoughts and tendencies in this day and age certainly do seem to be fueling a lot of fundamentalist flames in parts of the globe where god hasn’t completely rotted away yet.
The will to power as it were seems to be the core of the ‘philosophies believing in themselves’. But I’d also like to reference Sigmund Freud (who was heavily influenced by Nietzsche) who promulgated a death drive. He considered it “an urge inherent in all organic life to restore to an earlier state of things.” [Beyond the Pleasure Principle] To me, that is reduction at its finest, the will to destroy. I would assume that such a drive is as much a reflection of will to power as any other motivation.
Once again, I in some ways agree with such existential ideas. I personally prefer to create value ex nihilo temporarily and then let them slide make in to the infinity from which they came.
It’s just his more political assertions of slave/master morals and the Ubermensch that I’m somewhat contentious with. It’s one thing to simply leave the conclusion-making to the individual, something I support, but it’s another to maintain that teleology can exist from the foundation of what is believed to be ‘human nature’ or will to power. He upheld this, there’s no denying it.
Sure, I can see that, most definitely. He wanted to retreat; he wanted to recede into pure, finite will. That’s totally fine, I can to some extent buy that reasoning, it’s just that it’s impossible. If creating a teleology is what’s necessary to revert back to a state of ‘animalism’, then it seems sort of self-defeating and somewhat of a sham; animals don’t need teleologies. It seems rather like self-deception, lying to yourself just like Nietzsche accused ‘nihilists’ of doing. As so long as we are conscious, we will require a teleology. Making a teleology that opposes itself seems self-refuting. It reduces itself to the nothingness that it is.
I’m not sure about Nietzsche being a footnote to Plato, but can you elaborate on your point? I like the way it sounds and agree that telos is imperative to the will; I’d just like to know how nihilism is imperative to it as well aside from being the opposing force that defines it and contextualizes it.
All motivation is will to power, sayeth Nietzsche.
Implying that an infinite amount of nothing equals something.
The instrument of reduction is reason. Reason is the faculty of thinking logically. Logic is mathematical. Mathematics is based on what Nietzsche called “the soul superstition”.
Reason can never build something out of nothing (an infinite amount of nothing is still nothing). Therefore, it can never reduce something to nothing.
The will to nothingness (or: “the motivation to reduce”) is still a will, is still a “motivation” (and thereby affirmative). As the reduction is “infinite”, as you say, the will can never be reduced to nothing.
Not even that: it does not do something, it is something: namely, will – that is, affirmation (and indeed, self-affirmation).
(Self-refutation, by the way, would be the refutation of refutation.)
My condolences for the death of your language by the hand of academic “education”.
The Apollinian and the Dionysian are not antitheses. For instance, in section 842 of The Will to Power, Nietzsche says:
“[The grand] style has this in common with great passion, that it disdains to please; that it forgets to persuade; that it commands; that it wills– To become master of the chaos one is; to compel one’s chaos to become form: to become logical, simple, unambiguous, mathematics, law–that is the grand ambition here.-- It repels; such men of force are no longer loved–a desert spreads around them, a silence, a fear as in the presence of a great sacrilege–”
One must not succumb to the popular opinion which says that chaos is Dionysian whereas order is Apollinian. What Nietzsche describes here is at once Apollinian and Dionysian. The “passion” he describes here (elsewhere he calls the will to power a pathos) is equally capable of building and breaking, of breaking in building, for the sake of building…
The Dionysian is no “nihilistic spiral into infinity”, but an affirmative circle. And in that it is ever Apollinian, ever affirming itself as a circle, as a joy in building and breaking and building and breaking again.
Agreed. I suspect that you’d also agree that motivations can be quarrelsome with one another. Thus, will is not homogeneous.
Once again, agreed. That is the infinite regress that accompanies nihilism. I think what the issue here is that nihilism to me isn’t necessarily Nietzsche’s (or your) interpretation of it. Nihilism isn’t nor can it ever be a self-affirming philosophy, foundation is required for that. Nihilism or reduction is rather a force. Yes, it is a force that fallaciously affirms itself all the while destroying every other affirmation. I never said nihilism wasn’t hypocritical.
Yes, nothingness is still something, nihilism never denies this. It is a common assumption that nihilism reduces everything to nothingness. It doesn’t; if it did, that nothingness would serve as a foundation unto itself. Nihilism doesn’t assert nothingness, it asserts nothing. A true nihilist would be an insane person who is in the constant process of infinite regress, reducing every word and action to nothing, including those very reductions. Even then, he wouldn’t be a true nihilist simply because he still exists.
Yup.
What’s wrong with my language? So my prose is a little choppy from haste, big deal. You certainly didn’t take the time to separate those quotes properly.
Doesn’t that infinite process of destruction and creation suggest infinite regress?
Why the hell do we think?
What the motivation for thinking?
Don’t we think because we WANT certainty, more exactly, the affirmation of absolute certainty?
Are we satisfied with limited and conditional certainty?
For some practical question, limited certainty like the science can offer us is enough.
But for our most important question, existential question, we want absolute certainty.
And when we think logically for the absolute certainty, we come to face the nothingness.
Because in all affirmations, thee comes some limitations, conditions with them.
The total lack of all affirmation is the absolute affirmation.
Any affirmation is the anti-absolute in the nature.
The absolute is the nothingness.
In other words, we WANTED the absolute, and we got it in the end.
So, we should be happy.
Only problems are in our remaining human conditionings, that may still seek the illusion of absoluteness in some sort of affirmation, be moral, political, scientific, religious, whatever …
But if we stay honest to our desire for the absolute, we would stick to the absolute-nothingness, and all our remaining positive seeking delusions will be gone, eventually.
Pretty easy to say, and not that easy to do, actually.
Because, loosing delusions are equal to dying in a way.
Each delusion has its own life or energy and life-support mechanism.
They feed on our fear, and divert our energy to cling and make the delusion more solid.
And they will resist against any attempt of annihilation, by fear and sometime physical pain (stored in muscle memory … believe or not).
So, it’s going to be long scary and suffering journey.
But if we are honest to our inner most desire of the absolute certainty, it will come to this.
As any motivation has its root in the desire for the absolute, the motivation will cease when it resolves into the absolute-nothingness.
And when the motivation is gone, there is no more movement nor struggle.
The biggest obstacle … the pain and the fear … is the biggest chance/hint and the gateway for the absolute-nothingness.
Understanding, feeling the nature and details of pains and sufferings are essential in continued seeking of the absolute.
Otherwise, we will be definitely thrown away by the sheer fear or by the hint of suffering, as usual, since we are hardwired to run away from negative inputs.
Lately, I’ve been wondering if that’s what Sartre meant by humans wanting to become a thing-in-itself, rather being stuck as thing-for-itself. Perhaps I just misunderstand him, but sometimes I think that if you manage to actually reach the absolute, you have to, in a sense, become a thing-in-itself. There is no longer this sort of “duality” of consciousness present, you just…are.
Or, I guess to put it a little more in Nietzsche’s terms, a highest virtue is like that of shining gold, it is use-less (an end in itself).
Sartre’s theory involves a kind of “phenomenological dualism”, rather than the traditional Cartesian dualism. For Sartre, consciousness is an epiphenomena, which means it requires substance to exist, but has no reciprocal effect on substance. In this sense it is a nothingness. Being-in-itself is what consciousness is present-to. Being-for-itself is consciousness-with-intention, although the intention, again, has no effect on the causal world of substance. Only when you become an “object-for-the-other”, that is, when you are known by the other, do you have the quality of being-in-itself. For Sartre, consciousness and being is contingent, meaning it is not necessary and exists for no reason.
The “absolute”, as you say, is for Sartre impossible. The desire of man is to become both the in-itself and the for-itself (God), which are incompatibilities. Sartre believed that for God to exist, he would have to be conscious…but if he were conscious…he would be for-itself and not in-itself. The idea of God is contradictory then. God cannot exist.
There is more to it. You can research Sartre on the web, or course. Also, you will get an excellent summary of his ideas in the introduction of Being and Nothingness.
Personally, I don’t care about Sartre … nor even Nietzsche.
Actually, I don’t care much about theories.
I don’t know about the dualism (in some ways), because I always felt myself as an awareness in the existence, but more as nothingness.
In the core of myself, there is absolutely no movements, no sound, no color …the absolute calmness.
A little far away, there is the logical mind (among other things like emotions and physical sensations), poor logical mind which needed absolute logical answer, the absolute certainty.
But now, the logical mind knows that what it wanted was the core of myself, and it’s satisfied.
I have one remaining logical question, though …
Also, I know that some people are a little like me, feeling the core nothingness more than other people.
Normal humans seem to identify her/himself with the outer layer of the human animal, somehow …
And they usually don’t want to loose that petty identification.
It seems that it hurts when they loose these identifications.
So, it’s going to be even harder to destroy all clinging and the layers of identifications.
There will be physical sensation of Nausea, or more subtle sensation of “uneasiness”, etc.
I bet some philosophers might have felt one or more of these … and returned to whatever the self-identification that would let them keep away from the absolute-nothingness.
There are people who does it by “believing” in whatever, too.
But for some of us, who knows s/he can’t be satisfied by nothing less than the Absolute, there is no way to use any of these substitute absoluteness, simply because it’s too obvious … the stupidity of seeking the absolute in non-absolute.
Eventhough it’s really painful, especially until one accept the fact that it’s going to be painful … for the rest of our life.
If we consider the possibility of reincarnation of some sorts, it’s even worse …
Imagine the possibility of suffering many many lives till everything is resolved by the core absoluteness …
It’s nothing other than torture.
But who cares?
The core nothingness doesn’t care, at all, although remaining human junks might be scared to death.
I can understand why some person would go insane facing the absolute, though …
If someone is more identified in the existence side, there is no way to keep the balance, as there is no solid ground (absolute certainty) other than the core nothingness.
But personally, “believing” appears to be as insane as loosing mental balance.
Isn’t it stupid to abandon own reasoning and take the some absurd theories as something absolute?
I know it’s more comfortable for people who do that, but it’s unbelievable to me.
It’s hilarious and amazing and a bit sad …
But who cares?
We are busy with our own business, consuming all remaining energies and resulting movements.
And it requires the absolute honesty, determination, and attention of our part.
Otherwise, we might start to see the false absolute in any of remaining affirmative desires and habits, which some of us may call and welcome as “hope”.
This sounds nice, and I certainly mean no offense by saying this, but that is a fool’s nihilism. It is as I’ve stated above, nihilism does not equate to nothingness, it equates to nothing. Nothing contrasts with nothingness in that nothingness is something that is, as you would say, absolute. Nothing on the other hand is neither positive nor negative but rather the continual and never ending disclosure of underlying parts in a system. To stop this infinite disclosure short so as to consolidate the “absolute” is to create nothingness. Nothingness is too afraid to dive headlong into the abyss, putting forth abbreviations instead. Nothing does not fear the infinity and persists through it, constantly exposing the nakedness of the Universe.
It is by nothing’s uncoverings that everything I just said above is reduced into nullification.
It was Nietzsche’s conjecture that nihilism was about nothingness when in fact it was about nothing.
If it sounded nice, then you didn’t understand what I said.
Read again and you may see.
And the way you (literally) categorically rejected entire post of mine simply using the matter of terminology shows a lot.
When did I talked about “nihilism”?
I talked about my own thought coming from my own experiences, and although there are some similarities with nihilistic thinking, I don’t know and I don’t care if it can be called nihilistic or not.
Who cares?
Actually, you are using sophist type technique of twisting the subject, knowingly or not.
Nothing can’t be a “part” of any system. Isn’t it easy to understand?
And actually, I don’t make a big difference between nothing and nothingness.
I used and prefer to use “nothingness” to represent what you are trying to imagine as “nothing”.
Also, I don’t imply any positive value nor affirmation in the “absolute†or “absolutenessâ€.
Rather, I’ve already said the absolute is the total lack of any attribute, property, including the “existence”.
Probably, you are still hoping or dreaming some positiveness in the Absolute, and thus can’t see the neutrality of it.
Also, I prefer “nothingness” to “nothing” because “nothingness” is a quality vs “nothing” might suggest something similar to "something (that is)†with the property of the “existence” implied.
It sounds just another meaningless theory to me.
“Absolute” cannot be consolidated form something.
“Nothingness” cannot be created.
Something consolidate or created are confined under the condition of consolidation/creation and cannot be “absolute” nor “nothingness”.
Also, “nothing(ness)” does nothing.
It has NO room for any action. Don’t you remember that it has no property, attribute, etc.
It’s just the universe side that falls down into nothingness, so to say.
It seems you imagine too many attributes in “nothing(ness)”, which means you talk about reduction but your illusion about “nothing” aren’t yet reduced …
It’s somewhat similar to common imagination aound the “godâ€.
The god is supposed to be “absolute†(thus it can’t have any propety).
But people can’t stop dreaming all sorts of powers and attributes of god …
If you just wanted to play word game around what Nietzsche might have said or thought, I’m not interested in that and sorry for bothering.
Please continue with people who love to do things like that, and there are many of them as you know.
I’m only interested in talking about the personal view of the “absolute-nothing(ness)”.
For someone who has intimate relation with the “awareness”, “nothing(ness)”, “absolute(ness)”, it has nothing to do with academic interest.
It’s the life and death situation, which is funny, painful, and a bit interesting but not too much.
In some cases, it can drive the person to insanity and suicide, too, only if they can really forget that what they want is nothing other than the “absolute†aka “nothingness 
Hmmm, I think I know why it’s difficult for some people to understand that “nothing(ness)” is the “absolute(ness)”.
When we think about something correct, truth, whatever, we are implying “absoluteness” (or “absolute certainty”) in nearly every phase of our thought process.
In other words, we are in fact seeking the “absolute”, but mostly in our subconscious mind, and the surface logic is done without much awareness of this.
And by searching the answer, mainly because of the lack of absolute primary premises, we encounter the lack of meanings, values, moral, and so on, and perceive this situation as “emptiness” or “nothingness”.
And from the experiences, we know that “nothing(ness)” destroys all on its path.
So, it appears as something"negative" to positively tainted/tilted mind of us.
When this implied “negative” view of “emptiness/nothingness/darkness” is combined with the rather positively tainted illusions around the “absolute(ness)” (which was the alternative god for some poor soul contaminated with monotheistic religions…), they can’t appear as something equal, same.
They happen to appear as something opposite to many people.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I had more intimate relation with “darkness/nothingness/emptiness” since I was very young, and I knew already the “nothingness” was the “absolute” for many years.
But I didn’t really ponder upon this till I used my logical brain to recapture all these, recently, simply because it was something too obvious and natural that I didn’t see the value (for other people) of this equation.
Well, by knowing clearly that “nothingness” is the “absolute” and we are always seeking the absolute".
It may help some of us to keep mental balance and let us continue on the painful path of annihilation without regret.
Although I’m not pushing anyone into it, as it’s not easy at all, for someone who is already in contact with the nothingness, it may act as a sort of auto-balancing mechanism.
But it still requires the absolutely solid desire to seek the absolute no matter what, and clear reasoning, and maybe some other qualities.
Otherwise, we will cling to any of favorite dreaming habit, word playing, positive illusions, whatever.
Nothing wrong with it, though.
It’s a matter of personal fate … or subconscious choice.
Well, maybe this will clear up confusion in some… and create more in others …
Who knows?
Yes, I certainly do agree that it is an innate drive within us all to seek absolute certainty. I use my own little nomenclature for it, but nonetheless I think it shares the same point. (I find it fascinating how we stick to our personalized vocabularies to express our philosophical observations.) For me, this is reasoning. It is the pursuit of truth or what could be interpreted as truth. Reasoning does one of two things, it either:
1.) looks for answers such as “Why does that ball bounce?” or “Where is the nearest source of food?” or;
2.) it fabricates answers when they can’t be uncovered empirically so as to quell questions like “Why does the sun rise and set daily?” or “What makes lightning and thunder?”
Of course, through rigorous scientific methods, the questions in number 2 have been answered satisfactorily. Back when we were cavemen, though, those and other questions like them were the bases for religions.
So what reasoning does is find or make reasons. Either way it is trying to quench some subconscious thirst we have for answers. Now what nihilism does is simply reduce answers to, as you call it, nothingness. The problem with nothingness comes when one realizes that a.) nihilism is an answer unto itself and b.) nothingness is an answer unto itself. This is quite self-contradictory.
Reasoning and its resulting answers like to clump parts of the Universe together into practical forms and concepts, i.e. table, bird, boob. The thing is these clumps, these forms aren’t really there, they’re just figments of our imaginations. So what this initial nihilism does is conclude that since all forms and objects are baseless, they should all be clumped together into one big form called nothingness. The thing is that this nothingness is just that, a form. That is fake nihilism, it brings everything together into absolute nothingness.
True nihilism on the other hand doesn’t want to bring things together, it wants to push things apart. It resents the coagulating ways of reasoning. Instead of minimizing forms and values into nothingness as the fake nihilism does, true nihilism reduces forms and values into nothing. It in no way limits its cross hairs to anything or anyone; it targets even itself in its annihilation.
Now what Nietzsche has to do with this that he had a pretty different interpretation of nihilism; he thought it to be what I’ve delineated as fake nihilism which explains his deep criticism of it. Not only that but he is, in my opinion, just as guilty of clumping absolutes. In the wake of his own annihilating frenzies he coalesced some forms of his own. This eventually snowballed into what would be his beloved answer to end all questions: the will to power.
I thought about making detailed comment about your post, but decided not to do that.
It’s basically because you are still seeking the absolute in something positive or in some affirmative way.
Your way of talking about “truth”, “reasoning”, “fake vs true nihilism”, etc. etc., as if they are absolutely certain, shows that very well.
In other words, you are happy with something less than absolute.
Good for you. You will live and survive.
[size=50]In the illusion of true something. [/size]
That, sir, is a cop-out statement. If you haven’t adequately articulated your point to my comprehension, which you certainly haven’t, then by all means enlighten us lowly souls with your near-omniscient knowledge. What the hell are you talking about?
Also, I don’t appreciate your harassment of certain terminologies I am prone to using when you are guilty of the same; “absoluteness”, “nothingness”, etc., etc. Did I not say in my last post that we all utilize personal vocabularies that are completely relative to convey abstract ideas? In what fashion does that amount to absolute certainties?
Well, can you understand that you are often (if not almost always) implying absoluteness in your statements and evaluations ?
If yes, can you understand the absurdity of that?
If yes, can you stop that?
If yes, you can read all my posts (there are only 12 or so) without any thought process or interpretation of yours that subconsciously implies absoluteness.
When you could do that, you can ask me to verify what you’ve understood and what you couldn’t understood.
Then I might take my time to explain, if I feel like doing so.
If you want to “build” something, then you don’t need to talk with me.
I’m a demolition specialist, so as the “Absolute”,“nothing(ness”,“emptiness”, whatever the arbitrary and temporary name we use.
My logic is for dissecting, not for gluing.
And there is no fortress in the world. Everything is ephemere.
Also, you don’t need to build more sandcastle, you, yourself is one, already.
Moreover, unless you are willing to spend the rest of your life with full of suffering, you don’t have to understand what I’m saying.
The worst thing for you, things you fear the most, will certainly happen to you if you really understand what I’m talking about.
You don’t have to feel ashamed if you can’t understand. It’s very normal.
Also, you don’t gain anything … well maybe a little bit of clarity, so to say, but it won’t help you in obtaining something.
You are not going to be omniscient. It’s totally opposite.
You will be more of non-scient.
For example, I don’t understand basic notions such as “dividing”, “one(ness)”, and so on, anymore.
It feels good, though.
I was glad, when I lost the notion of “one(ness)”.
I lost the remaining interests in math, altogether.
Actually, what I lost was the subconscious certainty that was attached to these notions.
When we understand more about the nature of the absolute, we also understand the temporal and arbitrary nature of all existence, all affirmations, all notions, all concepts.
But it still takes some time and also digging of subconscious mental processes.
We need to see how these affirmations, notions, concepts are built, examining minimum required elements for these, the conditions for them to be valid, for example.
On top of these losses, you may also loose your job, family, home, country, nationality, whatever, too.
So, if you are scared, simply remain in your religion of “true nihilism” and be happy.
Nothing wrong with that. Most humans do something pretty similar.
If the absoluteness make the warm hole from your surface mind to the inner core, all the way through the layers of subconscious mind, there will be no possibility of returning.
It’s like a black hole sucking everything.
So, stay away if you don’t want to vanish, slowly, suffering.
Also, I don’t exclude the possibility of reincarnation or something similar, meaning the suffering process may not end with the physical death.
I mean, we may suffer for many many lives … maybe till the end of the universe … maybe even longer …
I’m not overly fond of taking on Nietzshe business on here, but was inspired by your OP and wanted to share my thoughts on what I view as ‘wrong’. I apologize for only skimming the rest of the posts, there’s too much by which to get sidetracked and I don’t have the time to do it justice anyway.
I don’t exactly understand what you view to be the ‘ending of nihilism’. My explanation for the problem described in the opening post comes from my view that Nietzsche’s form of nihilism is problematic because it’s a positive one. His claim of ‘eine heilige Luge’ (‘God is a sacred lie’) isn’t the same thing as ‘God is a lie’. His point is that God is a lie because of this sacred idea, and he’s taken umbrage with the theologians who create the sacred lie, the artificial construction. His scorn is directed to the assignment of absolute value and perfection to the human, who is actually accidental and impermanent within the flux of arising and ceasing, and to the positing that humans have the possibility of knowing this absolute value and perfection. He views this as evil because it prevents humans from rebelling against life or despairing of their ability of knowing. Then he further claims that this God is dead, for the simple reason that it was a lie that was invented because we couldn’t bear the valuelessness and the meaninglessness of the world. Instead of speaking of the nothingness, instead humans speak of God or Nirvana (more on that in a minute) or deliverance, pure bliss, which Nietzsche regarded as “a tendency which is antagonistic to life”. The construction he viewed (correctly, I think) as an inevitable product of our instinct for self-preservation. So it’s paradoxical in a sense, indispensable for human life, but a disguised and inverted function of the transcendent will to power. Because he deemed the essence of life as the instinct to power (or ‘life energy’, or whatever), he was outraged at the concept of ‘nature fabricated as the anti-concept to “God”, the “natural” could not help becoming the world for "worthy of being rejected:, and the total world of that fiction has its root in hatred of the natural [of actuality!]’. So in this sense, his nihilism is based on an awareness of falsity.
Where I see the error is in what is essentially the affirmation behind this assertion. It stands in contrast to the writings of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, who identifies pretty much the same thing but instead posits the need for negation. Because they both agree that there’s no world apart from our value interpretations but, in Nietzshe’s case, these value interpretations, despite being empty constructs, have the positive affect of maintaining life through a disguised will to power. A world fabricated in terms of value (even though empty construct) is still something to be affirmed. For Nagarjuna, the world perceived by the discriminating mind doesn’t possess positive meaning as such, but is a world of ignorance and illusion which must be absolutely negated. That is to say, he doesn’t recognize such a perceived world to be advantageous for the preservation of life. This is a view that the delusory world isn’t grasped from the perspective of will to power, but instead from the perspective of the discriminating mind as the problem of illusion or ignorance. So it’s a dilemma inherent in the discriminating mind, the problem being how to free oneself from that. Because just as the mind can’t be objectively grasped, in the very attempt to treat illusion and ignorance objectively as issues and to overcome them as issues, there is illusion and ignorance. There is a need to extricate ourselves from this, but it’s not, as Nietzsche erroneously believed, a transcendence towards an other-shore (Nirvana) beyond illusion and ignorance. So there is no True Mind apart from discriminating mind. And apart from the realization of ignorance as ignorance, there’s no transcendence, no other realization or awakening (he makes a mistake by lumping Buddhism with theism here). I’d contrast this with Nietzsche’s nihilism, which doesn’t have its core in the awareness of the delusory nature of the world, but in the delusory nature of ‘God’. By his claim that ‘God is a sacred lie’, he makes an affirmative establishment of the will to power. Pretty much everything he writes has this at its root. I think that’s an error.
And there is the fake nihilism at its best. Oh, how it rejoices in the conclusions it feels it has made. It is under this strange impression that there is a state of consciousness, of existence that one may enter and never leave. The fake nihilist thinks he has gained Nirvana.
He believes that he has not only obliterated all notions of self and concept and form and object to their fundamental properties, but he must now suffer the ramifications of his own destruction; he must now bear his cross. What a horribly romantic notion… Wait a god damned minute, notion? Holy fuck! Little does the fake nihilist realize, but he has managed to create a notion in the wake of destroying notions. It is inescapable I tell you!
I’ve just come to an epiphany. I now realize how much of a genius Nietzsche really was. He considered Christians and his version of nihilists (i.e. the fake nihilist) to be one in the same because they were. I didn’t see this until I said how the fake nihilist bears his own cross but it all makes sense now. I’ve gained a newfound appreciation for Nietzsche. Thanks, Nah.
So the fact that you and I both exist, breathe, and–hopefully–think in no way equates to affirmation. I thought it was pretty evident that as so long as you are alive, your are affirming something, whether you like it or not. In fact, there’s no real way of avoiding affirmation; the very attempt to avoid it is affirmative in its own right. Even if you were to commit suicide, you’d still be making an affirmation.
True nihilists don’t exist, they can’t exist. For a true nihilist to exist, he/she/it/blah would have to both breathe and not breathe at the same time. Even then, he/she/it/blah would still exist, meaning that he/she/it/blah would have to inhibit the very quantum wavelength breakdown of his/her/its/blah’s atoms. Even then, he/she/it/blah would exist at a near-infinite dimension of suspension, but near-infinity is not infinity.
Wow. Just wow.
It’s not just the blatant pretentiousness; I’m the first to admit that I’m usually that snobbish prick who always thinks the book was way better than the movie. For me, it’s the denial, the self-induced blindness of his very own notion-making. It’s dumb-founding.
Man, I really sound like Nietzsche now.
Let’s get to the meat and potatoes here. You have notions, I have notions, my Border Collie probably has a few notions in that nugget of his. The very fact that you’ve uttered a word on this forum is notion-building. Granted these notions are absolutely arbitrary, even near-idealistic, but that doesn’t make them any less inescapable. A notion is a finite thing, it is homogeneous, usually self-propagating, and has a clear and precise domain of influence. Human beings are exactly the same way.
What’ most important is that we are finite, particularly in our perspective. If I sit in front of a tree and stare at it forever, I will never be able to know what is on the opposite side of that tree unless I circumvent it. It is my angular perspective that limits me to this lack of knowledge. As soon as I walk around it to the other side, the side I just came from becomes hidden. For all I know, there could be a ghost-twin on the other side of that bark mass, mirroring my every move. There could be an infinite possibility of things in a world that we perceive as being beyond this one. This is where notions are made.
That it is what it is to be finite. If we were omnipresent and, respectively, omniscient, we would be able to perceive all angles of all objects, including the tree, we would be one with infinity, so to speak. We would also no longer be conscious.
As a caveman, deep in the forest, you are surrounded by objects that obstruct your vision of what is behind them. At a 360 angle, you see nothing but obstructions, facades that are hiding implications, notions, monsters, food, or sabretooth tigers. It is evolution that has built a brain meant to compute, accurately, the possibilities of these notions and to react accordingly. It is these complex brains that go on to imagine and formulate things beyond things. They eventually systematized into religions and other institutions.
So, what does that mean? That means that as so long as we are finite, we will build notions, no exceptions. As a self-proclaimed nihilist, you should have the lucidity to admit this. Obviously you don’t. You’ve built a fairly grandiose notion, in fact, wherein you seem to fill that imaginary world with nothingness. Remember when I said nothingness is still something? For you, the only thing on the other side of the tree is a void of nothingness. You consolidate it as such. What a notion!
For me, what lay beyond the tree is, by the powers of my notion-building faculties, probably another tree. Probably another one exists beyond that one. Then maybe a meadow. Maybe a house after that. If I go too far, though, I’ll begin imagining things. So be it. I’ve nothing else to do.
I say I build sandcastles because I build notions, as we all do, but I do so with sand. I understand that they’ll inevitably be destroyed, in all likelihood it’ll be at my own hands, but at least they aren’t the fortresses constructed by the institutions of man.
As for you, you seemed to have made a dungeon with brick and mortar. You’ve locked yourself into this dungeon with no light whatsoever so that you may feel like your in a void of nothingness. Really, you’re just sitting in a dark room all alone.
I’m not a nihilist because they don’t actually exist, only fake ones do. I’m more of an existentialist with extremely nihilistic tendencies.
Don’t expect to get sympathy for carrying your own cross.
Wow, Ingenium, I don’t think I could have said it better myself. First off, I’d just like it if you could read the latest criticisms I delivered to Nah so as to note some of the parallels with what you just said. Secondly, I’ve always found that comparisons and contrasts between Nietzsche and Buddhism to be fascinating. I sometimes wonder whether Nietzsche would have reinterpreted Buddhism if more adequate reading material on it was available during his time.
It is quite obvious that Nietzsche was more concerned about the picking apart of God rather than the world itself. This is sort of uninteresting for us today because God isn’t nearly as prevalent of an institution as it was in his day (he is probably one of the many individuals responsible for this fact too). For him, much of his promulgations had sociological and even political girth. Today, they are certainly applicable philosophically but not nearly as relevant in other paradigms. Sometimes I feel inundated with the “God is dead” phrase; it no longer has the same impact and value it once had for me. Granted, it still means the same thing, it’s just that its volume seems to have been turned down out of repetition. I mean if I say ‘cat’ over and over again, it eventually loses its meaning.
I think the question at hand is who was right, Nietzsche or Nagarjuna? Or neither? Or both? On one hand, Nietzsche delivers a compelling argument that the delusory nature of any and all things is inescapable. So equipped with a discriminating eye, man ought to determine what delusions and lies he wants to be subjected to. It’s to admit that lies exist and in fact permeate practically everything we perceive. It’s to say that we shouldn’t fight these lies, but rather discriminate to what end they serve. The problem with this is discrimination itself.
Nagarjuna, as you said, would want to negate the lies with the discriminating mind. “The designable is ceased when the range of thought is ceased” is a famous quote of his which alludes that he understood how unavoidable notion-making was. But he seems to acknowledge this more in passing whereas for Nietzsche it is fundamental. I think a distinguishing factor is Nagarjuna’s Two-Truth Doctrine which sort of establishes two planes of communication. For one, truth is built and demolished on temporary and relative bases, using concepts like “himself” and “that dog” to communicate subjectively. What’s interesting is that it is self-admittedly subjective, serving a communicative purpose and nothing more. This seems much like how Nietzsche saw the delusory world, being filled with lies that could be used for personal and practical reasons.
The other truth however, is something Nietzsche didn’t have. It is ultimate truth, truth that is too abstract to express without using the common truth above. This truth is objective, or at least it is believed to be, while the other truth is subjective. What I find extraordinary is that Nagarjuna actually put commonly upheld Buddhist doctrines like “no-self” and “emptiness” into the subjective repository. The thing with this concept though is that it falls victim to the logic used by Nah; it never at any moment stops to wonder if the objective truth could be just another ethereal concept in the subjective paradigm. Could this be idealism vs. physicalism?
