Thinking about the END OF HISTORY.

After the end can not be an after - that’s right -, but I said: “after the end of history”, and after the end of history there can be an after, namely an after without history. We are talking about history, especially about the end of history, and, if there will be an end of history, about the time after the end of history.

So, an “after the end of history” means an “after without history”, thus: a time without history.

The time of history in the evolution of the human beings is very tiny; it is the exception of the rule: human beings without history. And why should there not be a time without history in the future evolution of the human beings? The question is, whether there will be such a time or not.

But Arminus, history is recorded time. So if history ends, recorded time ends. So how can we really know anything after, if there is no recording of it? I sense i know what You mean by ‘after’but after what? What singular event can ever signal in the very end? I think time like space stretches at that point, so that Parmenides’ turtle will never reach an absolute signification. What event other then total annihilation can signal the absolute end to recording? If it’s a relative concept, as You seem to indicate, then how is the relative importance of the signifying moment of the end in time absolutely? Maybe even a survivable WW3 can not claim pre eminence, since there are precedent world wars? As an idea in a world of approximate-able limits, such situation would make absolute sense, however in the relative sense, it may become an impossible uncertain and unqualified scenario.

That’s absolutely right, Obe.

We don’t need that recording in order to know something about the time after the end of history. We know something about the human beings before the human history started. So we can also know something about the human beings after the human history will have ended.

We don’t know, whether the human beings in the future will know something about themselves, but we know that - preconditioned the history will end - they will know nothing about history because the history will have ended then; but: we are able to know it now.

In the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief in the United States that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent. Historians have for the most part agreed that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny:

  • The special virtues of the US people and their institutions;
  • The mission of the US to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian US;
  • An irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty.

Therefore my other thread: Will machines completely replace all human beings?

Being a hard determinist, I think the end of history will either happen or not. My “may be” is the expression of my knowledge of my ignorance in this regard. All I know is that it has not (yet) come about. I know this because I know I myself and others don’t want it to come about, and as long as there is dissent it has not come about. I also know what philosophers are capable of. I understand why the end of history is theoretically possible–namely, due to the fact that nature has become a problem–, and I know the mechanism by which the problem is to be solved. In fact, my current signature quote is all about this.

The philosopher is completely prevented when, and only when, the end of history has come about. Preventing it, however, does not mean postponing it–not even indefinitely. It means bringing about a new beginning of history. It means bringing about historical recurrence.

N.B. Nietzsche did will the eternal recurrence, but found it boastful to say so: hence “Zarathustra”. Only by the time of his last works did he consider the situation sufficiently dire to risk appearing boastful.

Why not? Animals have no memory at all. Why do you think the Last man is the end? Why not the Last ant?

  I was under the impression he liked the limelight. Maybe he thought he went overboard.  But if the situation was/is as dire, as he thought, wouldn't the message have trumped any perception of that overboard-overcoming?  (With the exception of the general population.)  I would think, he was primarily talking to other philosophers, so boasting would maximally have been perceived as inelegant. My feeling is he was concerned about misinterpretation and it's diffusion into the general populace.  And isn't exactly that, what has happened?

Your 3. point is included in the topic of my thread, included in my OP.

Very interesting is that the name “Marx” is not mentioned in Nietzsche’s works.

That is what I say. :slight_smile:

That is what I say. :slight_smile:

Yes. But according to “the fact that nature has become a problem” Contra-Nietzsche means that it is merely founded by the “Green Movement”, which is merely a German movement, and it is typical German to “find a grand solution” (=> #).

Your current signature quote:

Who is Harry Neumann?

Yes, but it can also fail. And it is very difficult and hard to bring the history back after the end of history has begun. So optimally the philosopher has to do his work before the history ends.

Yes, of course. That’s known. But we don’t have always to concentrate on Nietzsche when it comes to talk about the end of history (cp. my OP.)

In extracts:

For example the two youngest on the list: Sloterdijk and Fukuyama:

What do you think about the thoughts of Sloterdijk and Fukuyama relating to the end of history?

This people don’t know what history is based on, they still believe in “philosophy” as if it is not already their own end.

Only people who aspire a world domination can make history, only those with an unbroken evil will, those where every second person is called Vladimir. And not Koch, Kaufmann, Bäcker, Müller … Industry is for old dying people.

Brav/e Slav/e Vladimir.

  The boy with the weak brain,
      and here he goes again:

       "Brsgwdsvkrkpmxwic"
      which is slavish, slavic.

          He has no idea,
           he is Vladimir.

      He has a tributary toy,
      his so called Cezarboy.

              (Refrain)

      Brav/e Slav/e Vladimir,
          he has no idea,
   but he has a creeping toy,
     his tributary Cezarboy.

A.

At least he had known his publicity for many years. Nevertheless: actually he was shy. Besides: Who doesn’t like the limelight, especially after a time of acclimatisation?

You may have said that in your thread, but you definitely do not say it in your OP, which is what I replied to.

That’s not what I meant, though it does have some connection to it. As I wrote in early 2012,

I think the fundamental problem of our era, which was also Nietzsche’s era, is the conquest of nature. The conquest of nature was “commanded and legislated” (cf. Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 211) by Machiavelli, Bacon, and Descartes (among others) for the sake of philosophy, which was gravely threatened by Christianity back then. The scientific revolution instigated by those philosophers was what “killed” the Christian god, for which “killing” we should be most grateful. However, just as the religious revolution instigated by Socrates and Plato et al. was first beneficial but later became detrimental to philosophy, the revolution instigated by Machiavelli et al. has now itself led to a grave threat to philosophy. For “genuine philosophers” (again BGE 211) like the ones mentioned above belong to the formidable exceptions among men, and those exceptions are now in threat of becoming obsolete to the rule, the many, because of the technological advancements that in the West have made life easy for the many, who now no longer need such formidableness (which is indispensable in real crises).

The dire situation of many animals is just one of the consequences of what Heidegger called nature’s reduction to a Bestand, a standing reserve, a resource. The real problem is paradoxically not that animal rights are not being respected, but the conceited notion of the existence of any rights at all! There’s no such thing as natural rights; men are not naturally entitled to accommodate the rest of nature to their needs. But neither are they naturally forbidden to. Therefore, there’s only one way to counteract the continuing exploitation of nature; and that consists precisely in the ideal of the eternal recurrence, in the wish that everything, including all the woes that befall animals—and of course men, too, are animals—, recur eternally… For by wishing for the eternal recurrence of all things, one manifests oneself as the counterideal to the ideal of the man who wallows in “wretched contentment” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 3)—as an Übermensch as opposed to a Last Man. And only this ideal, “the ideal of the most high-spirited, most alive, and most world-affirming man” (BGE 56), can raise people out of their comfy animal-hide armchairs—if only by offending them!

Yes, that’s who he is, or was–thank you for that link, I didn’t even know he was dead (though I’m not surprised; he must have been ancient!).

Well, Nietzsche willed the eternal recurrence the same century Hegel published his Phenomenology. That publication may well mark the end of the beginning of the end of history, but it certainly does not mark the point at which history had completely ended. It still has not completely ended. Yes, it would have been optimal to prevent it from even starting to end, but then again, less than optimal conditions, to say the least, are precisely the optimal conditions of the philosopher!

[size=95]“[A]ll the world bewails today the evil situation of the philosopher in earlier times, hemmed in between the stake, bad conscience, and the arrogant wisdom of the Church Fathers: the truth, however, is that precisely this was a much more favorable condition for the education of a powerful, comprehensive, cunning and audaciously daring spirituality than the conditions of life at present. Today, another kind of spirit, namely the spirit of the demagogue, the spirit of the actor, perhaps also the scholarly beaver- and ant-like spirit, finds conditions favorable. But things are so much the worse even for superior artists: for are they not, almost all of them, perishing from lack of inner discipline? They are no longer tyrannized over from without by a church’s tables of absolute values or those of a court; thus they also no longer learn to develop their ‘inner tyrants,’ their will. And what is true of artists is true in a higher and more fateful sense of philosophers. For where are there free spirits today? Show me a free spirit today!–” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Kaufmann edition, section 464.)[/size]

The Christian idea of a heavenly afterlife was indeed preferable to that of a “Heaven on Earth”, i.e., the end of history. And as for eros and thymos: most people are erotic rather than thymotic; but the rather thymotic do indeed tend to dominate history, so they have to be overruled by the rather logic, the philosophers. The Machiavellian mechanism, as found in Bacon’s New Atlantis, was this: to promote a social system in which scientists and inventors–a species of the thymotic–are praised and rewarded for improving the lives of the masses. By this mechanism, modern philosophers overruled another species of the thymotic, the religious zealots of the time of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Contra-Reformation. By Nietzsche’s time, however, it had led to the threat of the end of history.

Yes, I didn’t say it; therefore I said: “Your 3. point is included in the, included in my OP.Included. Not directly said, but indirectly. Anyway, it is quite important to say it directly. So thank you for writing it!

Okay, I merely refered to Contra-Nietzsche’s argument in order to get perhaps a counter-argumnent from you. It’s not important anymore.

I agree.

That’s what I’ve meant, yes. So we have to focus on both thymos and eros as the two focuses (foci) of the ellipse of life, as I sometimes say.

On the end of his-story:

Arminius, please keep your comments relevant to the discussion at hand and not the personal character of other posters. Otherwise, warnings will follow. This holds for all posters in this thread.

Arminius, please keep your comments relevant to the discussion at hand and not the personal character of other posters. Otherwise, warnings will follow. This holds for all posters in this thread.

Arminius, please keep your comments relevant to the discussion at hand and not the personal character of other posters. Otherwise, warnings will follow. This holds for all posters in this thread.

Arminius, please keep your comments relevant to the discussion at hand and not the personal character of other posters. Otherwise, warnings will follow. This holds for all posters in this thread.