No, you can not disagree if you have not understood it. And that you have not understood it yet is clear by the fact that you put the word explanation between quotation marks, and from the following:
One thing you don’t understand, and which you will have to if you are to understand what I say, is that I see neither Crowley nor Nietzsche as having fully understood the universe and its workings. I am moving, at least attempting to and in my own mind successfully, beyond them, even if I am using their terminology to support my thinking. So whichever word I use, I advise you to not take it as a representation of an absolute known, but as an indication of a thing only partly known. That is, by the way, how I generally read philosophical language. The same here goes for will, love, and noumenon. I suppose that this is not your preferred method, but keep it in mind when you read my posts. I simply do not think in the same way as you do, so we’ll both have to do exactly what it is that, or so I try to explain, makes accumulative execution of the will to power possible - recognize the other and his limits.
What this means is that the will to power is a rather arbitrary term, and I disagree with that. I do apparently value the term more than Lampert does, for I see it as different from eros - or love, or identifying-attraction, and rather similar to Spinoza’s Conatus. See earlier in this thread.
Indeed this all does pertain to eros, but it is very sloppy thinking, not at all scientific, let alone mathematical, as he suggests. In the first place, the phrase ‘any two things unite’, even though he does not mean it literally, is exactly what is not the case, eros, or identifying-attraction, can only occur with very specific combinations of quanta, as I wrote earlier in this thread. Most forces after all pass each other by, since they do not have common properties by which they can make contact. The parallel with the human world is clear as day. Hence, Eros, or identification-attraction as the function whereby the will to power, or Conatus, is made possible.
Whether or not the latter exists is indeed the question - it has not been not demonstrated to exist physically. that is why I call it metaphysical in the sense of noumenal. But I contend that it can be shown to exist conceptually, as an inference from the results of the collective of occurrences of Eros.
I have also sought fruitlessly for explanations of will in Crowleys work. I see him mainly as an intuitive poet, who sometimes says true things without being able to reveal how he arrived at them. Let it be by Chokmah, going by your words above. Otherwise I have not thought out the subject of this thread in terms of the Tree of Life. I’ll have to get back to you on that.
No no no, here Nietzsche steps out of his turf. Physics is not philology (BGE 22), Newton did not create an apparent world.
I disagree that that’s what it means. It means it’s a revelation (in the literal sense of an “Unveiling”) of the god Eros. The phrase “weakening and attenuating metaphor” is Nietzsche’s own (BGE 22).
I won’t respond to every part of your post, as I think this is where we differ most. I think physics is philology, and that Newton did create an apparent world. Indeed, that apparentness is clear from later, more accurate interpretations (relativity, quantum mechanics). The whole idea of physical “laws” is interpretation, not fact (thus as long as it has not been shown in all cases—past, present, and future—, even gravity is not a law but just a theory: see my answer to this question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnEY8r6VzLZz2gl5.YCYQEnty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20101110115057AAhRuQG).
It’s too bad that Nietzsche was so wrong-headed about power and rank, and that Plato was so wrong-headed about eros and politics. We certainly wouldn’t want to fall into the trap of making immutable laws or dogmatic truths out of their “theories” or of forming crazed “interpretations” such as equating the will to power with eros or inventing a modern political theory based on historical revisionism, falsehoods, and completely mistaken notions about the inherent nature of humans.
“We” being “sensible human beings like jonquil”, I presume…
The truth is of course that people like that have not the shadow of a right to sit in judgment of truly great minds like Plato, Descartes, and Nietzsche; their perspective will always be a frog’s perspective.
I hate to bust your little fantasy bubble, but a frog has a better perspective on life than either of those three idiots. I will put it to you this way. You cannot get a realistic perspective of life and reality from the aristocratic, mechanistic standpoint. It can’t be done. You have to be part of a living, working community that is in touch with nature and how it actually works in order to think well about what it means to be human in an organic nexus.
Sauwelios - I’m afraid we are really finished here, I will reply to you one last time. First of all, I am again (foolish me!) surprised and disappointed that you do not go into the substantial parts of my posts.
More importantly, I am even more disappointed, to the point of bafflement, that you seriously consider physics to be philology, and Newtons laws an apparent world, because of what you think you know of quantummechanics or relativity. What you think you know is wrong, as these fields of physics do in no way refute or replace Newtons findings, but completely rely on them and only refine them on a very specific scale.
Most importantly, you have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of physics. Never is it concerned with a theory about the nature of the universe. Only lesser minds, such as Humes and many far, far less, have read this sort of philosophical thought into Newtons findings. What Newtons or Einsteins laws describe are only the specifics of behavior of forces within an assumed model. Such as: a moving body will keep moving with the same speed and in the same direction when no forces are working on it. What they do not say is that forces exist. In this same way I have been trying to refine the Will to Power doctrine - working within the assumption.
What you mistakenly think is that Newton makes an absolute statement about the universe, i.e. that it consist of forces. He merely says that, IF we formulate the universe in these terms, and we have practical, not ontological, reasons to do so, THEN such and such laws apply. This is physics. It makes no claims beyond mathematical inferences from axioms which are empirically proven to consistently apply in the physical world. Quite simply, physics is not metaphysics.
Metaphysics, or philosophy (for they are by and large the same) has yet to produce a single statement that is remotely as useful to man as Newtons laws, or for example antibiotics, or the wheel. Philosophy has yet to become an instrument. Heidegger has understood something to this extent when he says that we (he means humans but is really talking about philosophers) have yet to begin to think. He has understood this when he abandons his ‘Being and Time’ and goes back to the very modest, physically bound subject of building, dwelling and thinking. This is where philosophy should go - towards a model of the world befitting a more wholesome type of man. Not towards an absolute statement of the nature of existence, which, as Nietzsche has understood, can never be anything but a fantasy.
You’re so easy to be “disappointed”, “baffled”, and the like. I think this is because you tend to take what I say too lightly.
I said, “I won’t respond to every part of your post, as I think this is where we differ most.” What I meant was “most fundamentally”. Surely, as long as more fundamental difference are not taken care of, it’s futile to go into those supposedly substantial parts.
Yes, as I said: “more accurate interpretations”. By saying, in effect, “more refined”, you only use a different formulation.
“On a very specific scale” here means “on a certain scale and below”. And everything that exists on larger scales consists of things that exist on those smaller scales, of course.
In other words: within a certain framework of interpretation. The word “model” already says it: it is supposed to model nature or the universe…
Exactly: consistently. Such laws are therefore laws of thought (which apply only within the “nation” that is the paradigm), not laws of nature.
Without the commandings and legislations of genuine philosophers (BGE 211)—e.g., Bacon and Descartes—, the scientific Enlightenment (in whose service Newton was a labourer) would not have come about. Philosophy has been, or seemed, an instrument for too long. It is to rule over science and religion, and thereby over everything else.
Remember, I’m talking about how people take their ideas to extrapolate to some very insane notions about life and humanity, particularly as they get applied to politics and economics.
Sauwelios, you can’t make a religion out of “philosophy” in order for it to rule over religion and science. That makes no sense. Your religionist impulse tends to lead you into some very strange and very emotional places.
No, what’s lächerlich (laughable, risible, ridiculous) is that you, who ultimately hate all the great philosophers that turn up in a discussion (e.g., Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche), still frequent a site titled “ILovePhilosophy.com”.
I don’t hate them or everything they wrote, but I have a particular antipathy to the aspects that don’t work to describe the inherent nature of humans or how societies work.
I do have a challenge for you, though. Have you ever asked yourself WHY these guys are considered “great philosophers”? Do you ever allow yourself to think critically about some of the more inhuman and unworkable aspects of their so-called “philosophy”? If you think in terms of prejudicial assumptions that influence and determine thought, like a square box without any give or flexibility, then you might see where I’m coming from here. One’s whole worldview and set of assumptions can limit thought and even cause one to make totally irrational statements or systems on the forced premise that they are rational. But when something doesn’t work, it can only be seen as utterly lächerlich.
There may be a difference between why they are considered great philosophers and why they should be considered such. They should be considered such because of what ultimately moved or motivated them:
[size=95]A Nietzschean history of philosophy recovers in Plato what is fundamental to all the greatest philosophers, what ultimately moves or motivates them. Most fundamental are two passions or loves. Philosophy is the passion to understand the whole rationally, the love of wisdom that is, Socrates indicated in the Symposium, the highest eros [“love”] of a whole that can be understood as eros and nothing besides. Political philosophy, the acts of communication and legislation undertaken on behalf of that primary passion, is driven by love of the human, philanthrophy[. …] Philanthropy, now a common word, has an uncommon sense in the philosophers, for it denotes action on behalf of the human in its highest reach, its reach for understanding. A Nietzschean history of political philosophy studies the actions taken by the greatest thinkers to further the human through the advancement of philosophy. The history of political philosophy, whose opening chapter this book chronicles, is ultimately the history of philosophic philanthropy, philosophic rule on behalf of philosophy.
[…] Plato and Nietzsche share great politics because each knew what religions are good for. But they share as well the essential paganism of all philosophy, eros for the earth, and that is the deepest sharing, for each discovered that in being eros for what is, philosophy is eros for eros, for being as fecund becoming that allows itself to be glimpsed in what it is: eros or will to power.
[Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, pp. 13-14, 417.][/size]
There is a problem, though. If the basic assumptions on which your society, your language, and your thought are built… if these assumptions are themselves flawed and irrational, then any attempt to form a philosophy appealing to reason will fail. And that is exactly what has happened.
Sauwelios: - never say never, here I am again - I just wanted to correct something I said - that metaphysics and philosophy are by and large the same - that is nonsense. Now that I’m here, I read your reply. I’m not as angry as yesterday, but what you say is still just as nonsensical as that statement of mine. That a theory can be refined does not imply any of the things you suggest it does. As I explained, the phrase “Laws of nature” has nothing to do with physics or Newtons laws, only with philosophy, which is just a monicker of the theory, not a part of it.
If you think that Newton had anything to do with Bacon and Descartes, I am sure you have read this in a beautifully illustrated book about the enlightenment. Within the field of mathematics and physics, Newton is seen to draw from Kepler, who drew from Apollionius. No philosophy was necessary for any of their findings. Conversely, the philosophy you are immersed in began with mathematics, when Plato misinterpreted geometry as pertaining all thoughts instead of a specific domain of inferences for a specific set of axioms, and came up with his ridiculous Form idea. Contrary to what you and Plato think, thought is rooted in experience of a specific type - the human type - and not vice versa. You are truly an anti-Nietzschean.
I suspect now that when you conceded that I had a point, this was not because you saw it, but because, following me, two other posters said they had had enough of your methods. Your image was damaged and you feared to be left alone here with jonquil. Now that I’ve come back to share my thoughts you return to your habit of phenomenally bad reading, probably just to provoke me into posting more, to keep my in your witches circle.
There are so many layers of nonsense in this statement and how it is placed in its context that it is almost impossible to even reply to it!! If I would say “reality is bfudsi&(&__cbouwe, it is filled with 1153209572390572309 cdhsio*&%*(cwdoicw and Sauwelios RULES OVER IT ALL WITH HIS THIRTY SEVEN ELEPHANT SNORKELS!”, you would classify this in the same category as Newtons laws. I disagree, but even if I would agree, your reply would still not pertain to my explanation… It is hopeless. Enjoy your witches dance with Jonquil!!!
