So meh, where do I go from here?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

I’ll take a guess (with Nietzsche in mind) that it’s not designed to be a guide?

There’s a line from the show Heroes (think what you will) that goes like this:

It’s not my path - not if you’re leading the way.

I always thought that was brilliant.

Diet and exercise is good for health and thinking, but health and thinking are good because…? I think it will be through/with other people that gevtell finds motivation, direction, enthusiasm. We should find/create our own paths, but they are meaningful to us in so far as they relate or connect to the paths of others. How they should relate/connect - how should I know? I’m struggling myself.

22

fuse,

Relationships are certainly important for the mental health of most people. I agree. I’d just add that as a component and not an end, or purpose, or telos, or something like that.

Sauwelios,

You use other’s quotes to speak for you. If you think “naturalizing values” practically amounts to something other than “diet and exercise”, then think for yourself and say so. It wasn’t in the quote. Again, the repetition again and again is fine because it’s a worthy recommendation. Piece of advice: stop parroting sources.

23

As I tried to say, to tackle nihilism we have to question becoming sense.

Nihilism denies everything, except the usual meaning of becoming…
That is its Achilles’ heel.

Questioning the becoming it will show us new unexpected possibilities.

24

That’s not Nietzsche you have in mind but only a common misconception of Nietzsche.

[size=95]Order of rank: He who determines values and directs [lenkt] the will of millennia by giving direction to the highest natures [dadurch dass er die höchsten Naturen lenkt] is the highest man.
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 999 (1884), entire, trans. Kaufmann.]

I am that predestined man who determines values for millennia.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass 1882-86.][/size]
In this sense, by the way, Nietzsche/Zarathustra is the Overman—of the new, post-Platonic/-Socratic age, at least.

25

Sauwellios,

That doesn’t quite settle the point for me - and no amount of quoting will.

Perhaps you are right - but as I am currently reading N., I’ll get there myself.

26

So?

Ah, got you interested, eh? As Lampert says in the quote, Strauss is going to make clear (further on in his essay) just what those values are. And on page 100, Lampert mentions “eternal return, the heart of the new, consciously created values.”…

Piece of advice: stop giving me pieces of your a*****.

27

Well, my point was that he implies in effect that he is himself the man who directs [lenkt, also “guides”] the highest natures by determining values for them.

28

Monooq,

I think we are agreed.

29

There is a certain freedom you have in not caring much about anything, and feeling very enthused about nothing in particular. There are people who go about depressed because there are starving children in the world or because of pollution. These people seem to care too much, and then on the other end of the spectrum you have those that do not even care to brush their teeth or comb their hair. The former is always depressed and the latter is always bored or disinterested. I believe that we have to find a medium level of caring, meaning that we should care about certain things but not care to the point that it hinders are ability to attain goals. If starving children depress you, then stop being depressed and donate money to charitable organizations that feed children. Being depressed all day can get you fired or lose out on that promotion which otherwise would have meant more money to give to the charity. And if you find yourself bored or not caring about anything, then set yourself whatever goal you think will get you motivated and go for it. If you need to use your imagination and creativity to keep you motivated, than use it because that is why it is there. I believe that evolution has given mankind the ability to imagine and be creative to fool ourselves into caring to do something. I initially started bodybuilding to look attractive for the opposite sex. It has not helped me much but it has kept me busy and out of boredom. So even though I no longer have the same motivations, or believe in the same motivations, that initially got me into bodybuilding I still do it because it works in keeping me from getting bored. Otherwise boredom can lead to drug use or just negativity. So set yourself that goal and go for it, regardless if you really believe in it or not.

30

What would apathy taking complete control look like in your opinion? I think it would lead to depression or drug use, or even suicide. I mean, to be truly apathetic means you will not even feed yourself when you are hungry.

31

Emile Cioran from The Heights of Despair:

When all the current reasons—moral, aesthetic, religious, social, and so on—no longer guide one’s life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life.

The irony of course is how a passion for philosophy can take some through circuitous close encounters with all manner of received wisdom and in the end deposit them instead into an intellectual wasteland that engenders a feeling of being profoundly disconnected from all the great thoughts of all the great minds.

What happens is this: you try to connect the dots between the great ideas floating amidst the clouds of abstraction and the gritty world you actually live in and it finally begins to dawn on you the aim was quite the opposite. The aim was by and large to take you out of the cave altogether…out into the blinding light of Truth.

The blinding light of…The Word.

The absurd shreds that to bits, of course, but if you’re lucky it will rescue you from the philosophical straitjacket that is either/or. Ambiguity is the ticket. It discards either/or and instead suggests another way: neither/nor.

Among other things, this increases your options by leaps and bounds. And that is because the logocentric truth-tellers always feel compelled to follow the straight and narrow path of one or another rendition of Enlightenment. They become slaves to The Word.

And when the absurd turns on you in moments of existential despair there are always distractions to divert you—love and sex and sports and entertainment and careers and family. The list is practically endless. The illusion becomes real because you are
able to trick yourself psychologically by falling into them.

Only death is insurmountable. But then, if you’re lucky, you may reach the point where you want to die. Cioran once made note of how fortuitous it was that Nietzsche died insane.

Oblivion admittedly can be the toughest nut to crack. There are few distractions that work when the doc tells you the tumor is inoperable. Not even the absurd helps if you love your life and its about to end. Then you have to trick yourself like Plato and Kant [and so many others] with philosophy or religion.

I often wonder how they do that.

32

A kind of depression yes. An inability for action, a lack of aspiration, the absence of a joie de vivre. It’s a depressant, a sedative, a sleep-inducing fog of the mind that causes a continual “no” to all the fruits of life.