Nietzsche's Natural Ethical Order.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
61

empty assertion

Learn the difference from “above” to “among”.

So now your point is that the Ubermench will rank himself “through time” in terms of determining a “natural order” to enable “ethical choices”?

That’s pure fantasy projection on your part.

Oh how nice, empty assertion with a weak ad hom. How fascist of you.

You can take your Herbert Spencer out of Nietzsche anytime you want, and take those elsewhere.

Thus Spake Sau!! :laughing:

This thread, Sau, is about you, not Nietzsche.

Follow your own suggestions or STFU already.

No, not really, its about what you want the Overman to be that is wrong, and even N’s own writings don’t back you up.

No, as you said, only you know what this thread is about. It’s about what you want N to justify in your value system.

Patently un-Nietszchean of you.

Ah, your penchant for fascism seems to be a unqueched thirst, quite the petty tyrant you are. I take no orders from you, nor do I have to tolerate your Nietzschean disguised Herbert Spencer social darwinian masturbatory fantasies.

62

Not in the light of everything I wrote above.

I am not, by the way, here to do your homework.

…

Having read the rest of your post, I hereby close this correspondence.

Thank you for your obtuseness. It has catalysed some excellent posts.

63

Yes, because you implied it had to do with ethics.

If you were to merely say that not all are capable of being Ubermensch, and this creates orders of men who have been “enlightened” as it were… then yeah, I could see that.

If you were to say that these men would make the best Master or ruling class, then yeah, to a point.

If your were to say these men were best suited to make ethical choices for “the others,” then yeah, I could see that, to a point.

But what I do not see is the suggestion in N’s writings that the master class perpetuates the slave class, that it should, and that that is the ethical thing to do because of the “natural order / ranks”. That’s the point where it all totally falls apart, and that seems to the main thing you’ve taken from N.

Like Kaiser Wilhelm much, do you? :wink:

How you can think that is the case after reading Genealogy of Morals and TSZ is absolutley mind numbing to me.

Yes, it did. In return I thank you for your eloquent and steadfast incorrectness. I do quite enjoy reading your N postings and informing you of what they actually mean.

:wink:

64

REOPEN CORRESPONDENCE

Where the hell did you get that?

RECLOSE CORRESPONDENCE

65

[laughing]

Give it up, Sauwelios. If you didn’t make it out of here before one thousand posts…you ain’t going anywhere.

This place is like Hotel California. You can check out, but…

66

Could you give me an example of someone who has his own hygiene?

67

You recall Nietzsche’s description of different “ranks” among a society and how each rank has its own habits and practices. He explains these things as if they are matters of “moral” order, as if a caste actually is incapable of practicing the cultures of a caste above or below, and is so because of a “natural ethical order.”

My point is a marxist point. The “classes” are not inherently subject to these practices and customs. They are adapted to them according to their roles in society and these things do not “naturally” fall into place. For example, a member of the ruling class could very well become a lower class person depending on is social activities, and vice versa for a lower class person.

The ranks are not “divine” and they do not occur through monarchical power (well they do…but its bullshit). One is not a “born leader” or a “born worker,” but when they become one or the other, they take up the habits and cultures of the class as it already exists in its social contexts and are conditioned to become a member of a class.

I have been among lower class people who have bad hygiene, and this is not noticed by the others. It is commonplace and to be expected among that class of people.

68

And I don’t mean to appear contradictive with this earlier quote to Cezar:

I believe that a progressive socialism is the ideal system which consists of the proper ethical orders among people because it is based solely on production modes and democractic communal ownership. Ranks should be graduated, into and out of, and leadership is not something that is done from a vantage point and from a non-working class. Recall that Lenin wanted the bolshevik party to “be on the same payroll” as the working masses.

The natural ethical order is fundamentally one which is designed around a mode of production, and which organizes the inequalities of men in useful, productive and progressive ways…ways which provide incentive for the working people to earn leadership positions. But such positions are not an escape from work, nor should they be.

69

Actually Nietzsche says that habits are bred. When he suggests that they are inherent in individuals he certainly doesn’t mean they are absolute, god given, but that it takes generations to cultivate them. That is why there is need to fight for class structure in the first place. It is not a given, but something that might be attained under favorable circumstances.

Further, you confuse ethics with action, high class with leadership. Not all nobility is fit for commanding, and Nietzsche never says so. It is quality of life he aims at and judges by.

70

What are you talking about? The word “correspondence” above refers to my correspondence with “more or less” only. And I do not want an answer to my last question to him, I just wanted to point out that I am dumbfounded by his stupidity.

71

Sauwelios

I think you are missing the point, specifically the role of active/reactive forces as resulting in a typology. Nietzsche’s natural ethical order is nothing but a gradated scale of the relationship of the reactive and active forces within a person. The ability to concede the absence of a natural ethical order points to a certain relation of active and reactive forces, that is more powerful or creative than the relationship that necessitates the belief in a natural ethical order. Nietzsche is simply saying that there are qualitative differences in perspectives.

72

Do not confuse “natural ethical order” with “natural moral order” - it seems to me that you have done that here.

The natural ethical order of Nietzsche’s that I am discussing is one based on truthfulness, i.e., the relation between truthfulness and untruthfulness within a person, not between activity and reactivity. If you are suggesting that we treat the relationship between the two relations, I am sincerely interested.

73

I haven’t done anything of the sort, although in the gradated scale of action/reaction, certain less powerful gradations are going to manifest in the form of believing in natural moral order.

I have no interest in discussing truthfulness and untruthfulness as such in regards to Nietzsche, as I think it completely misses the mark of what Nietzsche is saying. This being said, the perspectives that you would call “truthful” for Nietzsche are the result of the relationship of active and reactive drives within the person. I’m unsure how you are trying to use truthful and untruthful…i.e. truthful as such, or truthful for the person based on the relation of active/reactive.

Nietzsche’s perspectivism demands that what truth one accepts is the result of the perspective one holds, and the perspective one holds is the result of the relation of active and reactive forces within the person. Meaning one cannot meaningfully discuss truth/untruth in Nietzsche without considering the relation of forces, because there is no truth/untruth outside perspective.

74

Showing your true colors once again, I see.

That you are dumbfounded is not in dispute.

75

I’ve tried to suggest it a million ways, but what he seems incapable of seeing is that what he is arguing amounts to saying that the ranks are born and cannot change.

He fails to understand, because he seeks to be the self-serving “Master” and not an Ubermensch as near as I can tell, that what he is suggesting is that the individual born of a “naturally ordered rank” cannot free himself from the imposed moral/societal Master/Slave structure. He seems to assume that N is endorsing the Master class, as he confuses them for necessarily being on the “ubermenschen path.”

One of the major points of the will-to-power is that it is not natural for a human to slaved by the moral constructs of the master class. Morality is used to enslave, and this have nothing to do with ethics - it is in fact an unethical system in terms of the revaluing of all values.

I would go as far to suggest that, according to N, moralty itself is unethical [specifically that which is not derived from the individual, but from the Master class].

I have always viewed the will-to-power argument and TSZ as for being a emancipatory message, the point again being that the “naturally ordered ranks” that both Sau and detrop keep bringing up are the creation of the old “moral system” that is controlling and suppressing our natural will-to-power.

Sau’ inherent contradiction is to assert that we can have a will-to-power and ranks - both “naturally” and “ethically” - it is the assertion I would expect the power mongerer to make.

76

But is that a perspectival truth?

77

How can your perceived truth be my perceived truth, and be the truth? Specifically with “ethics” versus “morals.”

Traditional morality denies perspectivism as for being possible [aka relativism] and individual derived truth -“ethics” do not. Ethics in this sense are human derived, specifically individually derived for N. Otherwise, they only serve to control our will-to-power.

Truth would be defined only by the agreement of fellow ubermenschen, and its veracity would only hold as long as the agreement holds.

Coherency is ethical truth, order emerging from the void.

78

I say there aren’t. A habit is a behavioral tendency that can, but not neccessarily, be inherited. But the environmental conditions can influence a habit and change the response significantly. Nurture has as much force as nature here.

In less than one generation cycle, I can teach a rat to refuse to press a lever, despite the fact that he was bred from a family of lever-pressing rats.

Please elaborate.

79

More or less, please get a new avatar. That guy with the pipe infuriates me every time I look at him.

80

The subject of this thread is intimately connected with the subject of my latest thread in the Essays & Theses forum, Nietzsche’s “bon sauvage”.

Both these threads are concerned with my solution to scientific nihilism. The order of development is as follows: (1) unphilosophic herd members → (2) philosophic herd members → (3) nihilist scientists → (4) a Black Order → (5) Supermankind.

The first three kinds of men are described by Harry Neumann:

"Unlike unphilosophic herd members, philosophers, that is philosophic herd members do not unquestioningly accept what their herd believes to be right and good. They transform their herd’s main concern, to live the good or pious life, into a question. They doubt their herd’s claim to answer this question, to know what is good for its members. However, in the decisive respect, philosophic herd members sided with their unphilosophic brethren by embracing the illusion that their political good exists as something more than nihilistic reveries. Like all herd members, philosophers are shaped by what Nietzsche called the spirit of revenge.

“Unlike scientists knowledgeable about reality’s nihilism, philosophers never doubt the existence of a true moral-political good for their herd, however difficult or even impossible it may be to adequately ascertain this good. Since they obtain this fundamental certainty not by self-evident insight but by a political faith shared by all herd members, they remain philosophers, seekers after wisdom or knowledge. As such, they claim to know that heir political good is the highest object of knowledge, although they do not know it adequately. In Socrates’ words, they know what they do not know. In any case, the illusion created by their herd membership precludes scientific realization of reality’s nihilism. They remain philosophers, not scientists; political men, not nihilists.”
[Neumann, Politics or Nothing!]

Unphilosophic herd members believe both that the good is knowable (discovered, not invented), and that they know what is good, whereas philosophic herd members know that they do not know what is good, but still believe that the good is knowable or, at least, “out there”, fixed, even if inaccessible to human beings (Kant). So the former are unaware of both their prejudices, whereas the latter are aware of the one but unaware of the other, deeper one. Of the three, only nihilist scientists are aware of both, i.e., have neither.

In Of the Famous Wise Ones, Zarathustra likens the (moral) philosopher (2) to a donkey which draws the people’s (1) cart:

“The people have ye served and the people’s superstition—not the truth! —all ye famous wise ones! And just on that account did they pay you reverence.
And on that account also did they tolerate your unbelief, because it was a pleasantry and a by-path for the people.”

In contradistinction to this donkey, he sketches the image of “the free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-adorer, the dweller in the woods”, whom he likens to a wolf or a lion:

“Conscientious [wahrhaftig, “truthful”]—so call I him who goeth into God-forsaken wildernesses, and hath broken his venerating heart.
In the yellow sands and burnt by the sun, he doubtless peereth thirstily at the isles rich in fountains, where life reposeth under shady trees.
But his thirst doth not persuade him to become like those comfortable ones: for where there are oases, there are also idols.
Hungry, fierce, lonesome, God-forsaken: so doth the lion-will wish itself.
Free from the happiness of slaves, redeemed from deities and adorations, fearless and fear-inspiring, grand and lonesome: so is the will of the conscientious.”

In (3), as nihilist scientists, these lion-willed ones are still lonesome; but in (4), they have formed a pack, a Black Order - an order of rank. For they do evidently not regard “the people” and its “donkeys” as equal in value to their own ranks (and nor does Zarathustra, evidently - whom we may consider as an exemplar of these “lions”). Nay, “conscientiousness” is the measure, and based on this conscientiousness they will found an order, a black order - an order based on their black nihilism:

“Ye lonesome ones of today, ye seceding ones, ye shall one day be a people: out of you who have chosen yourselves, shall a chosen people arise:—and out of it the Superman.”
[ibid., Of the Bestowing Virtue, 2.]

Note that this Black Order will also be a people [Volk]; but not a people believing that it knows the moral good (“good” as opposed to “evil”), but a Folk which actually knows the ethical good (“good” as opposed to “bad”).

“Verily, a place of healing shall the earth become! And already is a new odour diffused around it, a salvation-bringing [Heil bringender] odour—and a new hope!”
[ibid.]

Hail Nietzsche!