And I’m paraphrasing here, look for the link yourself. I can’t remember what aphorism this is in which book.
We can only really understand what we have experienced. When we communicate feelings, it is because we have already experienced something similar and something strikes us as familiar, as remembered . Not consciously most of the time, remember that most of your thinking goes unworded. But on a feelings-level, which is all consciousness and subconsciousness levels, only the experienced is understandable.
I think he said that when introducing a book, by way of saying “look, not everybody is gonna get this, and this is why.”
As you must know by now, I’m no real fan of Nietzsche; however, paraphrase or not, I question what I’ve underlined for this reason. When the mind ‘experiences’ something from outside itself, it immediately starts to change the experience–as long as it isn’t too traumatic like rape–into something that is understandable–something already digested, internalized, and, therefore, ‘understood.’
So, what is the ‘experienced?’
I’m not asking for a general definition. I’m asking you what you think Nietzsche meant by ‘experience.’
Experienced, in the case of feelings, is to feel. If you see a picture of a person doing a handstand and you have never experienced anything similar to a handstand yourself, then you wouldn’t understand what it feels like. A person that had done one would feel a little bit like he or she is doing it his or herself. But it doesn’t end there, because you can relate to the body parts and the geographical cues, so you would understand the basic physics of what you are seeing.
His finest hour was when he willed the eternal return fucking the scavy whore after playing the piano for them. History wonderfully left out what happened between the end of that song and coming down with syphilius. I wanna see your O face Nietzsche.
One of his finest hours no doubt.
Try reading aphorism 354 from The Gay Science where he expands on something similar to this.
Consciousness makes up a very small part of the soul; it largely remains unconscious. Communication can only occur when a word has been given to describe an experience or feeling. The more the pressure that builds to communicate, the larger the vocabulary becomes. The man who knows his experiences and feelings better and can communicate them will have a larger lexicon than someone who pays little attention to his experiences and feelings.
So is he saying you have to have experienced–to have felt–something, like physical pain, in order to understand it?–to empathize with it? Weellll–Yeah! That seems rather obvious to me. I didn’t realize Nietzsche was ever that obvious.
But I still question the comment, for the reasons I gave in my first post in this thread.
You gave someone doing a handstand as an example. My daughter was a gymnast. I know the amount of shoulder strength needed to push off a vault high enough to twist and spin on your landing–I know the timing needed and the basic physics involved, but I’ve never actually vaulted. Maybe your example wasn’t exactly what you meant to say.
On the contrary, that is exactly what I was saying. You understand the science of the handstand perfectly, but you don’t understand what it feels like, you lack that bit of information until you feel it yourself.
It is obvious, but some of it’s deeper implications are reflective of a less obvious level: To understand a bit of philosophy, hell, bit of language, you need to be able to relate to what is being said. You have to have experienced the necessary mix of experiences.
So a Viking from the 0000’s might have had some trouble figuring out a Buddhist treatise.
Does that then mean that, in order to understand Nietzschean philosophy, I’d have had to gone through–to have experienced, felt, and understood his exact experiences? Or is it enough to find a correlation between our two lives? If the former is so, how can I ever understand Nietzschean philosophy; if the latter is so, how can I ever understand Nietzschean philosophy?
I’m not criticizing you, Pezer, even in the sense of literary criticism. I’m trying to understand why Nietzsche is now considered by so many people to be the ‘greatest’ philosopher of the 19th Century. I can only do that by attempting to critique what he wrote.
How can I do that–how can anyone do that–if his language, his feeling, his understanding, isn’t understood?
Well that’s Nietzsche’s whole shtick. He was writing for readers that he believed haden’t even been born, because he himself had never met anybody else that had experienced anything similar to what he had.
No, obviously you don’t have to have been Nietzsche yourself, but you need to have done certain… intellectual chores beforehand on your own. Nietzsche, in a way, only preaches to the choir, except the choir came up after he had been dead for many years.
I am delighted to find a neitzche fan as big as myself. I do really like what was said earlier in the thread about when he said consciousness is only as small part of the soul. My greatest appreciation of him is that he really did try to reason all the way to being. He will not accept any a priori bullshit and deals with the heart of man. He is not afraid of our pandora’s box. Although I chuckle when my brother who is a very intrelligent person, tells me that reading neitzche made him physically sick. Neitzche would not have cared for him either.
What, then, has led to a somewhat wholesale acceptance of Nietzsche’s philosophy by so many younger people in the Western world? It can’t be nihilism, since Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist. Is it a feeling of futility?–the sort of futility Nietzsche felt when he created the only things he could think of that would give hope in the miasma of futility and hopelessness?–a man who can achieve a desire to gain power over the futility and hopelessness and become a greater man–an ubermensch–as the result.?
That makes sense to me. But where does it lead us? Nietzsche says, in his way of thinking, ‘it’ can be done. Humanity can overcome the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and can ‘transcend’ the futility and seemingly non-purposefulness of life. Once that’s done, man can become part of a ‘better’ life by becoming the transcendent ubermensch. Man has the ability to do that, if he wants to–and if he works at it.
Was, in this instance, Nietzsche (btw I love typing out his name–it exercises my left-hand key-boarding so well) saying that religion wasn’t needed–that God was dead-- because man could do it on his own? Only didn’t he also say man wasn’t doing it on his own? Man killed God, but left nothing after his death–not even the desire to become the transcendent ubermensch.
How are young people today, in the Western World, using Nietzshe’s philosophy, which they seem to have taken on as a true philosophy of life, transcending the ‘realities’ of the world–and its politics–finding the solutions needed to become ubermensche, and changing things?
I don’t really know any Nietzsche enthusiasts outside of this forum, so I wouldn’t be able to tell ya with any accuracy, but I can tell you the appeal for me: That he takes all the paradigms that we have now (or had then) as a result of thousands of years of human existence, and analyses them. not just to decunstruct, but precicely to construct, or to find. A paradigm shifter par exelence.
Lizbethrose I think many people use Neitzche to vent their frustratrations because they plain and simply do not understand philosophy or a philosopher. He was both but they are neither. They hijack the ideas a philosoper uses to make a point and turn it to their use. Its what the nazis did with Neitzche but they were not philosophers they were opportunists. A philosopher by nature must shake up the people from their assumptions in life and complacency. In order to do this they take many ideas to radical extremes that are really only necessary ro make a point. We are reactionary as a discipline when we think that everyone else is going the wrong way. And don’t forget as brilliant as the man was he was only a man. He was reacting to his world of aristocracy and privledge falling apart before his eyes. You know the communist manifesto was published 20 years before beyond good and evil. Can you imagine how that must have had Neitzche losing sleep about his world. Not to mention the blood bath of the french revolution was still a real part of european history. His philosophy has some really fascinating and wonderful parts but mostly in its ability to get people to dream of what could be if we utilize the will to power.
Lisbeth - Firstly, Nietzsche was a master of the obvious and the mundane. Sometimes, things are what they seem to be.
The short answer is that testosterone poisoning and Nietzsche are a powerful and intoxicating combination. And, ironically enough, while many miss entirely the politics in Plato, Kant and even Hume, they tend to inject it precisely where it has no place - in the thinking of Nietzsche. Also - N’s method is regularly either not noticed or it is misunderstood. He does not argue from premises to a conclusion - he makes evidentiary arguments and lets his readers draw their own conclusions.
It’s like popular music. Young people not only think that their favorite music speaks to them - they tend to think it speaks for them.
Not exactly - he claims that maybe some men can. Not “humanity”.
N recognised the psychological need many, if not most, people have for religion. It was obvious to him that God wasn’t needed.
Testosterone-poisoned Nietzscheans (TPN’s) are probably not changing the world much. Perhaps through art. There may be fewer TPN’s than you think, though.
i think one of Neitzche’s finest moments is in his critique of other philosophers.He teaches that every philosophy is really a kind of personal confession and evaluation by that philosopher on his own life. I am sure he knew that he was no exception to that rule.
If consciousness is based in cellular communication, it means that all truths are forms of infromation, which is communication and language.
Our eyes communicate and impression, as our skin communicates an impression, and everything else communes.
The sum is sense, but it is only realized with memory, for the moment is not enough.
Most thought is based in remembering other experiences or thoughts then having them react to one another.
Our mind talks to itself with lots of different zones in the mind and all this self-talking and images and stuff becomes knowledge and personality.
Dan I would like to point out that you begin your statement with a pretty big if. To notice that consciousness can utilize cellular communication does not mean that it is limted to it. Particulary, how can all truths be forms of informatiion if truth is formless. I am not sure but I think the quote relates to a discussion of Neitzche about paying attention. How when we are discussing something our mind may be somwhere else entirely. Personally I think the beauty of Neitzche comes from the will to power. Where does it come from? What is it? How could it be what it is, because the reality is that it is. I think these are the questions he left for the free spirits. Certainly people have tried to manipulate its value without knowing what it was. Much like a child might play with a gun and end up shooting themselves or others.
But if he was no exception to it, isn’t his teaching that every philosophy is really a kind of personal confession and evaluation by that philosopher on his own life itself, too, a kind of personal confession and evaluation by a philosopher on his own life? In other words, if every philosophy only says something about its originator, how can Nietzsche’s philosophy teach us anything about anything else than Nietzsche? If all Cretans always lie, how can a Cretan teach that all Cretans always lie?
