Everywhere I look, I am seeing God. God on the telly, God on the news, God on leaflets, God in the city centre. God has certainly made a comeback after semi-retirement, hasn’t He?
I am a vulgar modernist, and I look at all this with slight dread. The light is going back into the box. Or are the modern sciences to blame, with their pseudo-claims to have all the answers?
Depends where you live. Outside america, religion is certainly in the media, but not in a supportive sense.
As far as I’m aware, secularism and atheism continues to advance in the developed world, except for the vatican, portugal and the good ole usa.
Where did you hear that?
God never went away, remember that Nietzsche had a madman claim that God is dead, and he was being metaphorical anyway…
Clearly there is a spirit which recognises that science isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be and that our hopes for a rational scientific utopia are ill-founded. But I don’t think that religion ever ‘went away’ - only those seeking to say ‘X is the new religion’ tend to believe that claim.
There’s also a lengthy explanation I could offer about the rise of fundamentalism in a period of widespread uncertainty but that would take more time than I have today…
Russell was as confused about Nietzsche as he was about Wittgenstein. Russell was the king of misunderstanding. He had no authority in the Nietzschean literature ever since the Nazi contortion of Nietzsche was exposed after the war. How to distinguish between the herd and the hero? By war? How could the hero be the hero if his enemy can’t even percieve his weapon? One of the first principle of the philosophy is that the hero can’t be seen by the herd, he’s too high above. There is no war when he goes down under, but only sublimated conquest. He who takes on the hero first, must raise himself onto his level and then accomplish creativity that would lead to the destruction of the hero. Nobody has done that hitherto. A few has managed to destruct Kant, Goethe, Wagner. Russell did Nietzsche? Russell did the wrong Nietzsche because he was the kind of reader that was destinated to miss every single point Nietzsche stated. The English won the war, but they are no hero because of that, the reason is that they never won the philosophy over the German. third-eye, your signature there just reminded of me what a low fool that Russell made out of himself over Nietzsche, whose height of existence he never managed to reach up to, not even close. Grandpa Nietzsche had Grandson Russell predicted and refuted posthumously. Oh the distance!
God is dead. Russell never ever could have understood that. His humane councious simply was not deep enough. That’s why he won Nobel. That’s why Sartre refused Nobel.
I give the following anwser to Frieda Nietzsche whoever she is, was, could be.
What then? Then truth is not a bitch.
But it is, most of the time.
That is why, why we should live a manly life, a Nietzscheanly manly life, so to have the balls to fuck weith this bitchness of life.
But many don’t, their spirit is kneeled down and draged towards the eternal feminine.
Men are getting bitchier and bitchier nowadays, as a result of hating Nietzsche.
Well done Russell, bitches like you keeps Fritz’s balls fertile.
I’m no fan of Sartre but you are spot on re: Russell.
So, Russell was in the wrong depth with Nietzsche, but he wasnt alone in this. Sartre is just pretentious and has no reason to be.
Friedrich may approve, but I think Frieda would mock your posturing. Arent you just trying to woo truth in a manlier way? If truth is a man, then surely you shouldnt bring a whip, but the truth should whip you (get dragged by it! be changed by it!).
Just a small observation: you chaps seem to have begun commenting on third-eye’s signature, not his post.
As for my own take, I’d atrribute this ‘comeback’ less to anything truly significant than to the religious simply being more vocal than the secular. Nothing screams louder than agenda.
Blimey, that was a blast against Russell and a half.
Firstly, he is talking about a clash of “heroes”, not of “heroes” and the “herd”. I have actually met Nietzscheans who are convinced, as Russell says, that they are the hero, but no-one else has seen it yet. It is the type of philosophy that massages the readers ego very well.
Secondly, I think Russell is as entitled to express his views as anyone else. I am not sure on your need for some kind of “authority”. What “authority” can be counted as the correct interpretation? I have read Nietzsche myself, it seems quite clear to me.
Thirdly, since Russell was the teacher of Wittgenstein and knew him very well, I think this entitles him to express an informed opinion of him - an opinion which seemed very sound to me. Unlike many of the Oxbridge elite, he wasn’t worried by the moral terrorism that was in action at the time.
Yes … perhaps I didn’t explain my views in much detail (if at all 
), but I was thinking of the “scientific Utopia” that you mention here.
I have Comte in my mind, who wanted to set up new churches dedicated to the new Utopia of Science with a capital S.
I live in the UK, which usually keeps religious issues under a hat for individual thinking, but it is changing. Yes, in a “changing world”, perhaps religion is seen as a safe thing, a “certain” thing to believe in.
Here’s an impromptu rant I composed about people who say that science pseudo-claims it “has all the answers”:
D: Science, why do you always think you have all the answers? You’re so arrogant.
Science: When did I say I have all the answers? If anything I keep telling you that I’m still working on the answers, and even when those answers are done there will be more to work on.
D: But you always strut around like you own the whole goddamn world. Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, science is working and making a difference. That’s overreaching.
Science: So it’s overreaching and arrogant to want to solve problems?
D: Well, no, but it seems like a lot of the time you don’t help. The rainforests are being destroyed by your bulldozers, biological warfare is made possible by your microscopes and pipettes and petri dishes, and all that stuff. What do you think you’re doing making all these messes?
Science: I don’t make the messes, you people do. I tell you how to make the messes, but you also need me to tell you how to clean them up. So why are you bitching about me?
D: I know you’ve done some good things for us but I think the bad things outweigh the good. I wish you had never come here. Go away!
Science: I’m only here as long as you keep using me and paying attention to me. Forget me if you dare. Go back to that jungle where your species started out and forage for berries or something. See how that goes for you. Maybe you’ll want me back.
That’s a total straw man argument.
There are different attitudes to science - I have mentioned Comte, for one. My attitude is a critical attitude. Others seem to treat science like a religion. And there is the issue of what science can actually understand as well. But all these points complicates your simplistic response.
Do I have to mention Daniel Dennett?
Russel’s preface for Wittgenstein was almost an insult to the man. Sartre’s preface for Fanon made the man the foremost decolonization analyst. There is no comparison. Russel’s mediocre dualistic way of framing Nietzsche’s philosophy, a philosophy that stands above mere duality, makes the guy seems to me a man with devious logicality. He was one of those clever devils who played around with people’s heads, one of those sultry bitches who sucked on people’s dickheads. His philosophy was made for the taste of the herd, made for concordance, acception and honour. He pretended as a saviour of the good conscience from the bombardment of what he would condamn as cynicist philosophy. Thus he won Nobel, won praise from the public, laudation from artists. Russel’s ideology prenteded to be scientific. He did that with the wit of Shakespeare, but that would be a compliment. Russel believed himself to be the holy balance that had the mission to weight up the good and evil of the world in order to keep it around the axis. He tried to philosophize his way into this picturesque of the benevolent intellectual world centred around him, the ever so modest, righteous, bright think god. He was an actor of his own ideal, to frame him Nietzschely. Those who had faith in him were bound to be inflated existentially high, as if taken an overdose of Schiller, who made Beethoven wrote a grand symphony in fever, but that’s only in the case of an effected genius, a common man would simply vent his newfound loving energy into his lover. Russel’s crediblity lies in his easing up of the tense world psyche that just experienced the trauma of two deadly wars, however, it’s already time to get over the peacefulness, the lazy, crazy existential holiday on the Russel beach. It’s wartime, of good wars, nice wars, evolutional wars, existential wars. Let’s leave the antique to where he belongs, the dusty corners of Cambridge’s rotten libraries full of, literally, bookworms. Get over him, girls, you might find that somebody else’s balls are bigger. The Russel alter as an English intellectual Jesus needs to be demolished, boys, let’s rise up the German Jesus’ hammer.
edited
It’s a sign of the times…
A
“It’s wartime” - doesn’t that say it all? I don’t think the size of one’s balls says anything really.
Russell seemed to have big balls.
Nothing says it all, that’s why you say more than one thing.
While nothing says it all, everything says something.
I’m talking about his meNtal balls, you’d apparently prefer it physical, and seem to have already made your observation, although I have no idea about whatever the methodology that you applied, but I have no interest in the credibility of the claim anyway.
What is wrong with a god? I have two and it gives me great comfort to believe in them despite the fact that they, like the rest of reality, could be totally non-existent.
Regarding Nietzsche, there is no paradox in the morality of the greater type, as Russell points out in the simulation of ‘botching.’ The dilemma Russell wishes to create so that he might frame Nietzsche’s morality into a objectivist/relativist dichotomy is in fact nonexistent.
For Nietzsche the dynamic of morality is in one form of power- the Will. The manifestation of the Will exerts itself in individuals, but individuals do not have unique moralities- there are no truely ‘subjective’ morals. Therefore, morals are not ‘relative’ in this metaphysical sense. However they can also be understood practically and linguistically, as with Russell, and as such those false problems can be created to make a haze over Nietzsche…as Academia loves to do.
And that’s not even the bad news for Russell. Even if the above rendition of Nietzsche’s morality is incorrect, one thing still stands- the principle of resentment.
The real moralist does not resent a conflict, but neither does he hesitate to overcome it. In the event that one man wishes to botch another, the one does not despise the other; that would be hipocrisy. So there is no problem in the matter of deciding who gets to be the ‘over-man.’ Those pieces fall into place naturally, the Will to Power is the normative form of morality and ‘conscience’ is merely the surface. The only exception to this principle would be the lie, but even that is a device of the Will. The intentional lie, if it involves hipocrisy, is acceptable…but only if it was on purpose and not accidental…as one would ‘save face.’
There is no way of conversing the objectivity of morality because it is not a phenomena that can be enclosed in language. The understanding of objectivity can be reached by a monistic conceptualization of ecology and organization and it must be intuited; it is the sharpest and simplest sensibility in all things…the interdependence of all events. Objective morality is the determined form of progress as it happens through human reality, only appearing to have multiplicity- as acts and language.
As Schopenhauer once put it, “the world which we percieve is characterized by great diversity, though this diversity is not fundamental. Fundamentally the world is a unity.”
The powering of acts is the same for all things existing- the concept of morality in the individual is the measure of his knowledge…its adequacy, to paraphrase Dunamis, at the time and his understanding of existence.
The morals are then neither objective or relative, but instead hermeunetic?
Diversity owns its conceptual existence to its contrasting perceptual existence with unity, vice versa. We sense no other than relativity. From this principle of the working of human sensory, derived from the working of much phenomena happening in the physical world, relative sensory most often produces continuity, but daulity is the typical case, which in fact represents the two end nobs of the same line. Morality is unity in the sense that it follows a invariant guiding principal of its historical development which is that it serves to whatever is beneficial to society as a whole. Morality is diversity the sense that individuals decide matters differently when facing the same moral delimma. This is the problem of social aggragation. There will be applaud after a rock opera wether I would like it or not. When a certain individuals choose to find whatever is customary as rationally inapplicable to a certain situations, then delimma arises, for these particular individuals and the superfacial concordance of much the rest. Delimma’s very existence is relative as everything else. The fool’s speciality lies in the fact that he encounters no delimma, his bliss lies in the very same fact said in the different way that he posseses no delimma. Morality exists as an existential decisive solution for contrasting choices in the face of power struggles. It’s relative in the sense that without relatively opposing power elements, its existence is impossible, hence the essence of the consitution of its existence is relativity.