No. Heidegger refuted this interpretation -the eternal return of the self-same - quite thoroughly in his essay “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”. I don’t have time to discuss it - nor do I have the patience to delve into so frustrating a topic at the moment - but suffice it to say that the concept does not actually entail the repetition of given events or moments in time, or even states of energy or ‘force’. I’m hoping Sauwelios has the essay on-hand and can jump into it with more vigor than I can muster.
This is where you are mistaken. Nietzsche’s philosophy is quantum mechanics avant la lettre. Philosophy need not follow science; rather, it can reason out things that science will only confirm later.
No, that is not true. A quantum is not a particle - neither for Nietzsche, nor for quantum physics. That it can behave as a particle, i.e., can be regarded as a particle for practical purposes is the reason it is meaningful to think of “quanta” of force at all.
As a philosopher, I can reason out that quanta do not exist - that there can be no two equal or even one self-same quantum. Even quantum physics is still thinking in terms of mathematics. Mathematics is Platonic: it does not correspond to the physical world (is a simplification and an abstraction of the physical world).
There are no “new events” for Nietzsche. The recurrence is the original occurrence. The eternal return of the same is really the same return of eternal flux.
There are no repetitions; there is only one circle.
Nietzsche had no conception of quantum uncertainty. He thought it possible that an all-seeing eye could know everything about the universe (scientifically speaking). I am referring to the passage about the waterfall.
And yet he rejected just this premise in the passage I provided above.
No he didn’t.
Miss that?
I can’t recall that passage. But Dionysus is right: Nietzsche only thought that if such an eye could exist (which he didn’t think possible, of course), it could know everything about the universe.
The so-called “uncertainty principle” arises from the attempt to define that which is indefinite. As I said, I can reason out that no definite quanta can exist. I think Nietzsche may have seen this, too, aware as he was of the “soul superstition” as he called it.
I cannot at this point make myself any clearer than by saying that force is finite, yet not definite. A “quantum” (amount) has no definite bounds, yet that does not make it an infinite amount. In fact, I think that the words “infinite” and “unlimited” have been perverted precisely by their use in combination with words like “amount”, “number”, etc. Infinity is not a number; likewise, an amount is by definition a definite amount. Logic and language (note the etymology of logos) are simplifications (in the literal, etymological sense, as well). Fact is that without the idea of a “soul” or its equivalent, there can be no consciousness (hence Jung calls the subsumation of consciousness by the unconscious “loss of soul”).
The quantum is the new soul concept.
No.
Upon The Waterfall
When we look at a waterfall, we may think that we can see free will and choice in the innumerable turnings, meanderings, and breaking of the waves; but, on the contrary, everything is necessary, and it is possible to calculate every movement mathematically. And it is just the same with human actions. If one were omniscient, one would find it simple to calculate every single action in advance, every advancing step on the pathways to knowledge, every error, every act of malice. The acting man is entrapped in his illusion of volition. If the wheel of the world were to stop turning for a second and an all-knowing, calculating mind existed to take advantage of this hiatus, he would be able to plunge deep into the most distant future of all beings, and be able to describe every rut burrowed across the path of the wheel. This self-delusion of the acting man, this assumption that there is such a thing as free will, is also part of the calculable mechanism. - Human, All Too Human.
Thus, Nietzsche is suggesting that one can have precise knowledge of both the location and momentum of an electron, for example, or that such knowledge is inconsequential in terms of predicting future events. But I don’t think he would have made this second assertion.
Yes.
First, let us note that this was Human, All Too Human, which was written in 1878, I believe. As you can see in The Will to Power (especially book III), most of his epistemology is from well after 1883 (and this, the necessity of some form of the soul superstition for consciousness, is an epistemological issue).
Secondly, I think Nietzsche would understand - this is simple Newtonian physics - that if the “wheel of the world” would stand still, that is, if we could make a recording of any one “moment” in the (r)evolution of the universe, there would be no momentum at all: for momentum is a product of (mass and) velocity, and velocity is traveled distance divided by elapsed time. Elapsed time means the time elapsed between two moments. If there is only one moment, i.e., if the elapsed time between the two moments is zero, this means we have to divide the traveled distance (it does not matter that this is also zero) by zero, which is meaningless.
The point is that, at any one moment, there is no velocity, because there is no motion (recall Zeno’s Paradox).
And of course, when recording the (r)evolution of the universe between two “moments”, there is no one location. So even with Newtonian physics, we cannot know both the location and the momentum of a particle at the same time.
Gentlemen, unless “quanta” refers to a scientifically verifiable entity, an “observable” object, it is a metaphysical concept. If it is a metaphysical concept, it is only postulation in an overall theory- if it is just a theory- then it is possible that it is wrong- if it could be wrong- “quanta” might not mean anything.
This is one problem with metaphysics. Consider Leibniz’s “monad”. Or Spinoza’s “sybstance”. What is it? It is a theoretical entity in a larger model of metaphysics. Nietzsche has done the same with his idea of “quanta”.
EITHER what each describe as a real “thing” can be verified through obervationable science, or each thing is no more than an arbitrary concept.
If all three are using those terms to re-describe “physical” being, they are simply describing one aspect of what out modern physicists call “light”. Therefore, the concept is no longer theirs…but belongs again where it could have only began…in physics. These philosophers are all conceptualizing what can only qualify as “real” through the verification of the scieitific method.
The reason why “quanta” works so well in Nietzsche’s theory is because it is a word that compliments any and all possible uses of it, such that it would almost be impossible to use it incorrectly. Give me an example of what is not “quanta”…or better, something quanta cannot do. Chances are you arrive at what is already the last quantum theory available to observational science: light behaves as particle and waves. And I got news for ya…none of that stuff is chaotic. Everything in nature is determined and necessary. Just because you can only calculate what is probable, doesn’t mean that what will happened is not determined.
Suck it up.
The whole concept of an “entity” or “object” is metaphysical. “Observation” is already interpretation: you can only contemplate your image of the observed, never the observed itself (supposing there even is an observed apart from your observation, and the image is not a figment of your imagination).
This is ILovePhilosophy, by the way; not ILoveScience. I would like to invoke Heidegger’s statement here that “science does not think”, which he has explained in a television interview:
“Science does not move in the dimension of philosophy; it is, however, unwittingly dependent on this dimension. For instance, physics moves in the domain of space and time and motion. What motion, what space, what time is, science as science cannot determine. Science thus does not think, i.e., it cannot even think in that sense with its methods. I cannot, for instance, physically or by physical methods say what physics is; what physics is, I can only say thinking, philosophising.”
youtube.com/watch?v=6BHvdTZomK8
Yes and no. The “language” we use to describe experience is metaphysical because it is a reference and not a thing. The things experienced are not metaphysical, they are material, and the reality of the things which allow us to describe things with language is certain. That is, it is real without description. Hence, your using both terms “entity” and “object” to describe a category called “metaphysical”. As of yet, nobody has been able to demonstrate the “metaphysical”…it remains a construct in language.
We are essentially arguing the “meaning” of term used in language. I do not so much wonder what language “means” as I wonder what it “verifies”. I may say that despite your ability to demonstrate exactly what either of the concepts are, you are no less describing something, and that “somethingness” is not in language. The terminology in language is contingent.
This is Kantian representationalism and I don’t follow it. There is nothing beyond the object that is observed. It is, as Sartre put it, the totality of the phenomena in profile. When I see a “tree”, I am seeing “the seeing of treeness”, and if I then see the atoms of the “tree”, I am seeing the “seeing the atomness of the treeness”. None of these compositional parts refer to anything behind them, such as a noumenal reality beyond interpretation. What you inevitably face is proving that the universe must be percieved by a “final eye” in order for you to exist in it, perceiving parts of it yourself, which would not exist without your observing them.
You theory there is hard idealism, Berkelean in a sense.
The quote from Heidegger. There is a difference between doing and thinking, in the “philosophical” sense. Philosophy is speculation in language, not experimentation and practice, so philosophy must always be about scientific findings and theories- not vice-versa.
I don’t mean to be trying to get the last word here, Saully, and I am being honest in my disagreements. I’m not arguing for arguments sake.
That’s a mere assertion.
I’ve always had a bit of a problem understanding how to stamp ‘Being on the world of Becoming’ while at the same time embracing the world as Becoming. If Nietzsche says that ‘the highest will to power is to stamp Being on Becoming’, how does one continually create? Wouldn’t continual creation totally disregard Being?
As I have said above (but then this is perhaps the most complex idea of this thread):
“Becoming can be conscious of itself, understand itself, as a Being in the process of being destroyed or created (depending on its perspective). So even if it is shattering illusion, it can only understand itself as an illusion being shattered: for there is only consciousness of Being, not of Becoming. Thus Becoming stamps the character of Being on itself even in the very destruction of (the illusion of) this Being. This is its transfiguration.”
ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewto … 79#1913979
Struggle/Becoming always “seeks [German will] to preserve itself, to grow, and to be conscious of itself”. All is struggle, and struggle is will to power. Indeed, struggle/Becoming is the result of the will to become Being, which is the will to power. Still more accurately: struggle/Becoming is Willing to become Being. It wills to become Being; that is its struggling. It - Becoming/struggle - seeks to be conscious of itself as Being (for as I’ve said before, all consciousness is consciousness of Being (however illusionary this Being may be)).
The embracing of Becoming requires a double transfiguration: first, the redemption from Becoming in Being; secondly, the redemption from this (illusion of) Being in its destruction.
Becoming transfigures itself in its own martyrdom:
“[T]he peculiar blending of emotions in the heart of the Dionysian reveler—his ambiguity if you will—seems still to hark back (as the medicinal drug harks back to the deadly poison) to the days when the infliction of pain was experienced as joy while a sense of supreme triumph elicited cries of anguish from the heart. For now in every exuberant joy there is heard an undertone of terror, or else a wistful lament over an irrecoverable loss. It is as though in these Greek festivals a sentimental trait of nature were coming to the fore, as though nature were bemoaning the fact of her fragmentation, her decomposition into separate individuals.”
[Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 2, with added emphasis.]
The first transfiguration is precisely this fragmentation, this decomposition, the illusion of individuation. The second transfiguration consists in nature’s redemption from this decomposition: in the destruction of (the illusion of) individuality. But nature can only be conscious of this double transfiguration by means of an organic being, most notably man. The first transfiguration is Apollinian; the second, Dionysian. Without the first transfiguration, Becoming would be Titanic. It is only because of (Greek) Apollinianism that Becoming can be experienced Dionysian:
“[I]n the place of the Babylonian Sacaea, with their throwback of men to the condition of apes and tigers, we now [looking at the Greeks] see entirely new rites celebrated: rites of universal redemption, of glorious transfiguration. Only now has it become possible to speak of nature’s celebrating an aesthetic triumph; only now has the abrogation of the principium individuationis become an aesthetic event.”
[ibid.]
Phusis kruptesthai philei, says Heraclitus - “Nature loves to conceal itself”. If we latinise the first two words, English-speakers may recognise all three: physis cryptesthai philei, “the physical world loves to be cryptic about itself”. Now Heidegger translates phusis as das Walten, literally “the exercise of force” (compare the expression “force of nature”). I, however, will translate it as “Becoming” here. For the termination -sis denotes a process, -ing in English. And as for the phu part: this is actually cognate with to be:
“The modern verb [“to be”] represents the merger of two once-distinct verbs, the “b-root” represented by be and the am/was verb, which was itself a conglomerate. The “b-root” is from PIE base *bheu-, *bhu- “grow, come into being, become,””.
etymonline.com/index.php?term=be
Now “to grow” is precisely the standard translation of the Greek verb phuein. So we may translate phusis as “Growing, Coming-into-Being, Becoming”.
So now the saying reads: “Becoming loves to conceal itself”. How alone may Becoming conceal itself? By creating the illusion of Being. (What I here mean by “Being”, by the way, is Being in the Parmenidean sense, not the Heraclitean sense (Becoming). It is the s-root rather than the b-root:
“Until the distinction broke down 13c., *es-*wes- tended to express “existence,” with beon meaning something closer to “come to be””
etymonline.com/index.php?term=am)
So phusis kruptesthai philei may be interpreted as “Becoming seeks (wills) to resemble Being”. In its highest instance, this will is the will to stamp Becoming with the character of Being, that is, to equate the two. For the closest one might resemble something is to look exactly like it: it would be madness if one were to say, “I want to look as much like Elvis as possible, but not exactly the same as him”. Only in mathematics is infinitesimal distinct from zero.
Now Heidegger presents as the antithesis of kruptein in Greek, legein - “to speak” (whence logos); and he derives this antithesis from another of Heraclitus’ sayings:
Ho anax, hou to manteion esti to en Delphois, oute legei oute kruptei alla semainei.
“The lord, whose oracle it is in Delphi, neither speaks nor conceals but gives a sign.”
Heidegger also looks at another Greek word, alethe(i)a, usually translated as “truth”. The expression alethea legein, also used by Heraclitus, means “to speak the truth”. But a-letheia literally means “un-concealment”. So Heidegger interpreted legein, as the opposite of kruptein, as “revealing by speaking out”. And this, the revealing of Becoming (phusis) from behind the veils of Being, is what Nietzsche presents as the activity or will of the Dionysian artist:
“In an eccentric way one might say of Apollo what Schopenhauer says, in the first part of The World as Will and Representation [I:1, 3], of man caught in the veil of Maya: “Even as on an immense, raging sea, assailed by huge wave crests, a man sits in a little rowboat trusting his frail craft, so, amidst the furious torments of this world, the individual sits tranquilly, supported by the principium individuationis [principle of individuation] and relying on it.” [The World as Will and Representation, I:4, 63] One might say that the unshakable confidence in that principium has received its most magnificent expression in Apollo, and that Apollo himself may be regarded as the marvelous divine image of the principium individuationis, whose looks and gestures radiate the full delight, wisdom, and beauty of “illusion.””
[Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 1.]
As we have seen, this Apollinianism is only the first transfiguration of Becoming: the transfiguration of Becoming into Being, by way of the tyrannical will of the Apollinian Greek. The second transfiguration lies precisely in the abrogation of the principle of individuation - in the destruction of the beautiful illusion of Being.
“Poetry does not lie outside the world as a fantastic impossibility begotten of the poet’s brain; it seeks to be the exact opposite, an unvarnished expression of truth, and for this reason must cast away the trumpery garments worn by the supposed reality of civilized man. The contrast between this truth of nature and the pretentious lie of civilization is quite similar to that between the eternal core of things and the entire phenomenal world. Even as tragedy, with its metaphysical solace, points to the eternity of true being surviving every phenomenal change, so does the symbolism of the satyr chorus express analogically the primordial relation between the thing in itself and appearance. The idyllic shepherd of modern man is but a replica of the sum of cultural illusions which he mistakes for nature. The Dionysian Greek, desiring truth and nature at their highest power—he sees himself metamorphosed into the satyr.”
[Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 8.]
Nietzsche is being very Platonic (Kantian) here. We must remember that this is his first philosophical work, of which he later wrote:
“How I regret now that in those days I still lacked the courage (or immodesty?) to permit myself in every way an individual language of my own for such individual views and hazards—and that instead I tried laboriously to express by means of Schopenhauerian and Kantian formulas strange and new valuations which were basically at odds with Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s spirit and taste!”
[Attempt at a Self-Criticism, section 6.]
We must therefore revalue Nietzsche’s Platonic expressions:
“Poetry does not lie outside the world as a fantastic impossibility begotten of the poet’s brain; it seeks [will] to be the exact opposite, an unvarnished expression of truth [aletheia], and for this reason must cast away the trumpery garments worn by the supposed reality of civilized man. The contrast between this truth of nature [phusis] and the pretentious lie of civilization is quite similar to that between the eternal core of things and the entire phenomenal world. Even as tragedy, with its metaphysical solace, points to the eternity of true being [Becoming] surviving every phenomenal change, so does the symbolism of the satyr chorus express analogically the primordial relation between the thing in itself and appearance.”
It is not an opposition between the eternity of true Being (in the Parmenidean sense) and phenomenal change; it is not change which is merely apparent (Greek phainomenos), but Being. The eternity of true being is perpetual change, eternal Becoming; what is merely apparent is the illusion of Being. Poetry (from the Greek poiein, “to do, make, create”) seeks (wills) to be an unvarnished expression of truth (alethe). This means it must express, that is, reveal by speaking out, the phusis that is concealed.
“In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to strain his symbolic faculties to the utmost; something quite unheard of is now clamoring to be heard: the desire to tear asunder the veil of Maya, to sink back into the original oneness of nature; the desire to express the very essence of nature symbolically.”
[Nietzsche, BT 2.]
Symbolically. Here we see the reconciliation of revealing (legein) and concealing (kruptein): for we might translate semainein as “to symbolise”. The lord, whose oracle it is in Delphi, neither reveals nor conceals, but symbolises. Heraclitus does not say that this lord is Apollo;
“Dionysus himself shared Delphi with Apollo to the point of sometimes appearing to be the real master of the sanctuary, it being claimed that he even preceded Apollo there.”
[Elizabeth Chalier, The apollonian Vishnu and the Dionysian Bhairava.]
We may take this “lord” to be the Apollinian (that is, the Greek) Dionysus - as opposed to the Titanic Dionysus. The Apollinian Dionysus represents the reconciliation between the Titanic Dionysus - Becoming - and Apollo - Being. He is himself the symbol of the reconciliation between the concealment of Becoming - in Being - and its revelation.
Note:
There’s no intent at concealment.
There is only error or weakness in the observer, who is not a completed observer but a observer in the process, a becoming observer.
The movement is a towards the unknown or yet to be determined.
The becoming has no goal but constructs them along the way, as signposts.
The concept of being is a product of understanding, which requires order so as to know and to store experience into memory which coalesces a unity into a self-becoming.
Being is a human creation which makes the experience of becoming, of existing, comprehensible.
In regard to " the desire to express the very essence of nature symbolically", Nietzsche continues:
“Thus an entirely new set of symbols springs into being. First, all the symbols pertaining to physical features: mouth, face, the spoken word, the dance movement which coordinates the limbs and bends them to its rhythm. Then suddenly all the rest of the symbolic forces—music and rhythm as such, dynamics, harmony—assert themselves with great energy.”
[Nietzsche, BT 2.]
In summa: man is released, i.e., breaks out of, the bounds of civilisation:
“The Dionysian Greek, desiring truth and nature at their highest power—he sees himself metamorphosed into the satyr.”
[BT 8.]
“Here archetypal man was cleansed of the illusion of culture, and what revealed itself was authentic man, the bearded satyr jubilantly greeting his god.”
[ibid.]
What we have here is the honest expression of the microcosm - man -, which (microcosm) may be regarded as “an image and isolated example of existence in general” [Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 417] - i.e., of the macrocosm. But the satyr is merely the votary of the god. Where is the god, the Apollinian Dionysus?
“In this enchantment the Dionysian reveler sees himself as satyr, and as satyr, in turn, he sees the god—that is, in his transformation he sees a new vision, which is the Apollinian completion of his state.”
[BT 8.]
Thus, originally, rather than being merely an illusion of Being stamped on the underlying flux of Becoming, the god Dionysus was a complete hallucination of Being.
“But, notwithstanding its subordination to the god, the chorus remains the highest expression of nature, and, like nature, utters in its enthusiasm oracular words of wisdom. Being compassionate as well as wise, it proclaims a truth that issues from the heart of the world. Thus we see how that fantastic and at first sight embarrassing figure arises, the wise and enthusiastic satyr who is at the same time the “simpleton” as opposed to the god. The satyr is a replica of nature in its strongest tendencies and at the same time, a herald of its wisdom and art. He combines in his person the roles of musician, poet, dancer and visionary.”
[ibid.]
The hallucinated god Dionysus is merely the image (German Vorstellung) the will needs to will to become Being; it is an image of Being which arouses the will to might - it is the tele (goal) of the satyr’s passion. And this need for a tele, this need to hallucinate a Being, does itself express the nature of phusis:
“That lies are necessary in order to live is itself part of the terrifying and questionable character of existence.”
[Nietzsche, WP 853.]
The highest man, according to Nietzsche, is the man who acknowledges this truth, and acts accordingly:
“[T]his type of man that he [Zarathustra] conceives Ãœbermensch], conceives reality as it is: it is strong enough for it—, it is not estranged or removed from it, it is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in it, only in that way can man attain greatness…”
[Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Destiny, 5.]
If the illusion of being is only due to the weakness of the (becoming) observer in the process, then the rise of consciousness within the process is a consequence of weakness. If you think this is so, can you explain more about it?
But is this construction an act of weakness? If so, how? Does it not presuppose some strength to construct anything? Indeed, is not weakness relative? Relative strength, in fact?
I don’t quite follow. What coalesces a unity into a self-becoming? And is “self-becoming” one word?
But if (the illusion of) Being is a human creation, and human beings are really human becomings (beings in the process, becoming beings), is not the will or need to make becoming comprehensible - by means of the creation of (the illusion of) Being - intrinsic to the process, to Becoming?