First off, on my “many” names (which already started when my mother decided to shift to my second name when I’d just barely been born, because my first name turned out to be too popular at the time—and then not to my full second name but to a pet form of it): Ollie is fine. My ex ultimately called me Barl, to which there is some deep truth (it evolved naturally in the course of our relationship). But it doesn’t really matter.
Second, I don’t think refutation and affirmation are necessarily incompatible. Lampert, for example, has argued ever more comprehensively that Nietzsche did not believe in the ER. And as you also say in your video, it doesn’t really matter when rightly understood. I’ve argued this in my Holochrist thread from the very beginning.
Lastly, when I called that Cyberdelic trip of yours hellish, I didn’t mean you didn’t like yourself then; interesting that you’d infer that. And I wasn’t lying, I thought your experience, like mine, was quite hellish (and in my reply to your reply to my calling it that, I contended that it doesn’t really matter if it was a vision of Hell or an overwhelming vision of God face to face—“the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire.” (Blake, MHH)).
preliminary remarks for an attempt at a refutation of the concept of the eternal recurrence (different from simmel’s)
if an eternal recurrence is true, I could never know it is true for the following reason: right now I do not know it is true, and if it is true, I will always not know it is true, because if I ever did know it was true - during some recurrence - it would not be a recurrence of what I was before… but something different, and therefore not the me that doesn’t know it is true right now.
(see what I did there? rendered the concept non cent sickle.)
I accept that, and indeed it is very possible to invoke the idea. But I am, have always been, obsessively logical in my theorizing.
As a kid used to lie awake every night for years trying to reconcile the idea of finite cosmos, which ultimately can’t be done as I only realized in my 30s, as I had discovered VO and stumbled on a definition of being which proves existence is infinite - for example, necessarily impossible to circumscribe or define in homogenous terms as each proper element of it sets its own terms and is only contained by the limits of its own power – but let me not try to verbally reproduce this whole logic here, right now - you know enough of what I mean.
That was my mistake then, thankfully. I appreciate this particular clarification especially.
Blake is as sublime as any man will ever be. I could top Nietzsche in one aspect (in increasing the depth of his ontology) but I can’t top Blake. I can just be astonished that such a splendor has found its way into existence.
I meant experiencing permadeath seems impossible. I suppose it’s “logically” possible…but how could one even conceive of such a state? It’s almost like trying to source one’s thoughts as they arise.
Does Lampert say Nietzsche does not affirm the ER as a fact? Or that he affirms it as if it were fact? If your model of the universe precludes the ER as Jakob says, then how can you affirm the ER as a fact? The function of the ER when affirmed (even if acknowledged as not a fact) remains the same? Jakob says, “If you’re normally very focused it does not matter in the slightest” as if to say that the very thought of the ER is an afterthought (not vivifying) and not the greatest weight.
We’re talking at cross purposes here. I thought you meant permadeath itself was logically impossible, not just experiencing permadeath. I absolutely agree that experiencing permadeath (the state, not the event that leads to it) is impossible: this is what my ex hadn’t thought through.
I don’t believe in rebirth, or “reincarnation”, though, so I do think all death is permadeath. (As for the distinction between rebirth and reincarnation: reincarnation entails transmigration of souls, but Buddhism denies the soul and instead posits “rebirth”, which entails continuation of mindstreams…)
Jakob questioned your opposite claim, by the way: not the logical impossibility (of the experience) of permadeath, but the logical impossibility of eternal life after death.
For Lampert, Nietzsche’s affirmation of the ER means his affirming it as the highest value, but not as a fact. In other words, the affirmation consists in wishing with all one’s heart that it were a fact, while seeing that it’s most probably not a fact.
In my view, the limit “before” the Big Bang is logically identical with the limit “after” the Big Chill. So if the latter were actually attained, instead of just ever more closely approximated, there would be ER. But it most probably won’t be attained, and that’s perfectly fine, because it doesn’t really matter: what matters is the abysmal thought, the absolute necessity—but not in a billiard ball/soul atom way—of the whole cosmic process.
Simmel’s refutation relies on infinitesimals—the infinite decimals of pi—, while there are no infinitesimals in Nietzsche’s model. There are in mine, though: more precisely, there’s an infinite approximation of infinitesimality.
As for your own attempted refutation: you might still gain knowledge of the ER’s truth later in life…
Of course not, and thank You for tht, but a. mechanically constructed ideal suits just as well as an inspired one.
After all , what transpires is the transcription of seminal experience through the strain-er of the creation through the creator/created
Maybe such yearning to be objective can only be whispered through parables.
That is why he can but reveal the object of it all to children
Not literally, mind You.
Neo Platinism is no mere revival for It’s own sake any more, it is a dispersion, through and through.
Guttenberg and Newton were instrumental cut off portions of the sorry decline of exclstical decline of authority and the rise of the common man’s sense.
In the scale of the unfathomable eternity of tine, it creates mere bubbles, wrapping our brain around the core issue of wether we are inside looking in or outside looking in.
Leibnitz does this ingeniously at a crucial time of change, and this first attempt to find a vision post Newton into it’s multi many formed dispertions, assures an infinity of bubbles bursting from a foam so large that it really reduces to an absurd vision of transformative and unidentifiable formless mess.Mass.
Reincarnative ER is akin but not identical, but surelly, in this humongous eternally indelible cosmos, every man, can and does recur eternally, the conditional is the number of consciously acquired facets he has mined from the existential minefield, and is able to retain the nerve for such retention somewhere in his cerebellum.
For most the decline, the declanation of the process has acquired the mechanical augmentation of what he sees as an artificially constructed parable, a fairy tale fit for those who deny the necessity of an a priori signified sign( usually a biblically foreshadowed event, for the men whi could see through time. ( prophets)
I mean it’s logically impossible to know it’s true (if it is) on account of certain features or conditions of it’s being true. But I didn’t address an even more pertinent concern when examining the thesis; that it actually has no existential cash value… or I could also say I do not have in mind the importance of what it would mean, if and when I act. And I’d argue that nobody does.
The seductive value of the ER as a replacement or substitute for what was lost when we stopped believing in an afterlife, also loses much if it’s appeal when you consider this simple fact; however many yous might exist, or however many times you might exist, each and every existence will produce the identical conditions of experience which prevent any knowledge of any other existence at that moment in the sequence.
For instance, you might very well have existed x number of times already, and might very well exist x number of times again in the future. But believe me, every one of those past yous, and all the yous to come, will come into and pass out of existence having only experienced that point in the sequence. And every one of the yous before and to come have thought and will think the same thing about the ER.
Similarly, the idea of ‘reincarnation’ is also empty of any cash value and a product of thought with the same existential uselessness as the ER.
As for your own attempt at a refutation of my refutating attempt; you might still gain knowledge of these theoretical problems with the ER later in life.
‘The ER means there’s absolutely no difference between your current recurrence and your next. This means there’s no more of a sense of déjà vu to it, either!’
And my refutation (attempt) wasn’t meant as a slight.
Okay even better. Shoulda said this earlier. This ER process and reincarnation in general can’t be experienced as a culminating or accumulating of experience, if it is actually happening at all. For it to be significant, it would have to be something more than a simple repetition of physical events. There would have to be content that is accumulated over each procession, e.g., in my last life I stole that wallet and that’s why I’m a woodchuck in this life… or vice versa… I gave it all to charity last time and that’s why I’m rich in this one, etc.
Rather what’s happening here is, the person already has an aversion to stealing (doesn’t really think it’s right), and will interpret his present misfortune as a consequence of violating that code or more or whatever you wanna call it. If he happens to be a Hindu, he’ll think his recent car accident is karmically related to the cheeseburger he stole from his brother five days ago.
Most likely, these events are not related in any meaningful way.
With the ER, the same but different. You’re not accumulating or collecting victories and/or defeats as you recur. Each time produces in general the same balance of victory and defeat… that’s how you’re going to experience each recurrence.
Well, in the case of reincarnation/rebirth, that is actually the case (though I don’t believe in it). But the point of the ER is precisely that there is no escape, no improvement.
Well, a guy who steals cheeseburgers is probably not the best driver.
Not just in general, but in particular: the exact same balance. Anyway, yeah, I think we generally agree.
The way I interpret ER is a little different. The idea of it is literally immaterial. We are talking soul with a capital S.
That does make a slight difference here.
The amount of deflection I mean reflective consciousness, does have an absolute value, and that is the main difference.
One can hobble along in life and have a reflective brilliance stemming from IQ 40 and below, or aspire a higher grade. Then all hell can break loose, or as in Blake- heaven.
The reconstructed pan hellenism after the faint echoes of the accompaniying classical aftershocks fade away, there is a new day, the twilight of yesterday has been detained by only a few dreamers and crazies.
Those who can behold the minute brilliance of freshly rolling Dee from a leaf of grass, while is able to luxuriate in the deliciousness of a common house fly walking down his stomach toward his pubis, must forget the danger of realizing that he after all was a maggot in former life feeding on rotted meat .
It’ s all too beautiful. Blake, Proust, et al .knew that. And may be Kandinsky.
L’expérience esthétique de Proust et Kandinsky, une réfraction de la vie spirituelle
Alternate title: La experiencia estética de Proust y Kandinsky, una refracción de la vida espiritual; The aesthetic experience of Proust and Kandinsky, refraction to spiritual life
Yes, but they’re the same in my mind (permadeath and “eternal” life)… I guess there could be a life after death in the way that there is an ending that never ends, a never-ending cooling… A “life” that is perpetually fading away without actually “dying”… Which would be quite horrible… a life being ever deprived of all stimulants to life with ever diminishing memories of who you are (forgetting that you even forgot)…never being thrust back into a world of suffering, just a slipping away without being pulled back.
Could you say then that one can’t properly “stamp becoming with the character of Being” unless one affirms the ER as the highest value? It seems like its the exactness of each repetition which give the moment its clarity. And how could one even become light if he’s not affirming the ER? Reincarnation then (while being more demanding than Christian heaven) seems to lack the clarity of the moment as well as offering a “way out.”
Also, despite the ER being “probably” not a fact, doesn’t make the moment feel any less infinite?
"In what follows it is shown that the anthropological account of Nietzsche’s doctrine (White) lays the ground for the eternal recurrence to be considered as the return of singular moments (Ansell-Pearson) inaugurated by the will willing itself through the moment of joy and thus redeeming itself from the affliction of past time while laying in its present moment the foundation for its future. As such, the eternal recurrence is proven to be conceived of as neither a line nor a circle but to be of three types – the eternal return of meaninglessness, different meaning, and same meaning – and have the following life-evaluative function: affirmation of all life through the affirmation of one single moment.
In [i]Within Nietzsche’s Labyrinth[/i] (1990), Alan White interprets eternal recurrence [i]anthropologically [/i](meaning the doctrine serves to affirm one’s own human existence) and [i]phenomenologically [/i](i.e., the doctrine is not an argument, but it reveals a human type that affirms life – the Overhuman), not cosmologically, but as “the resurrection of the Nietzschean soul, a resurrection not elsewhere or else when or once and for all – not a single, decisive event in some hinterworld or distant future – but rather here and now and repeatedly, a re-creation of the soul and by the soul, on an earth that has regained the ‘innocence of becoming’” (White 73) – a resurrection or re-creation at every [i]moment [/i]within the span of this his life, his only life, his [i]eternal [/i]life, from the labyrinth of which there is no escape: the religious nihilist is convinced “that there must be a way out” (an afterlife) and the radical nihilist (one who denies truth) vilifies existence “from which there is no exit” (14). In this regard, one makes what one [i]wills [/i]of one’s soul on the basis of the material available from the past in the present (104). “In this my eternal life, I always return, and the structure of the moment (the present moment of two contradicting lanes – past and future) always returns, with its unknowable but singular future, as well as its inescapable past. To will the eternal return is to will this life” (101). What return(s), therefore, are/is the self and/in the moment, and the return of the moment as such is neither circular nor linear in character. In this vein, Ansell-Pearson, I believe, goes on to elaborate on the structure of the moment, the return of which White connects with the resurrection of the soul, i.e., eternal life, and finds that what returns is the [i]character [/i]of the moment. To this we now turn.
In his article entitled “The Eternal Return of the Overhuman: The Weightiest Knowledge and the Abyss of Light” (2005), Ansell-Pearson claims that “[i]n [i]Thus Spoke Zarathustra[/i] Nietzsche presents the eternal return in terms of the event of the moment” (Ansell-Pearson 14). On his reading, the doctrine – the eternal recurrence of the same – that Zarathustra presents to the dwarf in “On the Vision and the Riddle” 2, means the eternal return of “the character of the moment” (ibid.). He writes that “...the innocence of becoming, of time as such, is to be restored.... where time qua transience is conceived as the moment that both gathers and splits up the past and future. This curious ‘moment’ ([i]Augenblick[/i]) is the event” (13, italics mine). When the moment splits up the past and future, change, becoming, suffering, and death set in. When the moment gathers the past and future, time disappears, happiness is enjoyed, and immortality is achieved through the eternal return of the same moment, the[i] same innocent character [/i] of the moment which desires itself, its own return (15). The moment “inaugurates itself”, it begins itself every moment(ibid.). The innocence of each [i]singular [/i]moment keeps coming back with every moment, hence no past, no present, no future. Eternity is one big same innocent moment now. Thus its will is liberated from the pastness of time. Zarathustra’s short sleep in “At Noon” becomes the symbol for timeless time gathered into one single moment, the moment of affirmation – so the whole world seems asleep. Such a sleepy state of consciousness allows for the redemption from the ordinary understanding of time as [i]linear[/i], as [i]affliction [/i](GS 314). Time is innocent, full of chance, exists without any purpose, and is eternal – time is eternity (Ansell-Pearson 16) through the affirmation of the whole. In this regard, Ansell-Pearson rightly notes that the dwarf, in responding that time itself is a circle, misunderstands Zarathustra’s doctrine because
“he [the dwarf] does not experience the weight of the thought that concerns the eternal return of the moment as the same. It does not matter how far one goes along the two lanes [of eternity], whether the lane that lies behind or the lane that lies ahead, the character of the moment will always be encountered as the same (14, italics mine).”
The evidence Ansell-Pearson offers in support of his argument, citing a section of the text to which we have already referred, is that “Zarathustra provides the decisive insight when he declares: ‘Are not all things bound fast together in such a way that this moment draws after it all future things? Therefore—draws itself too? […] all things that can run must also run once again forward along this lane’ ” (ibid.). What Ansell-Pearson means by the “character of the moment” is its singularity. “[T]he eternal return of the moment as a singularity” serves to dissolve the eternal contradiction between the past and the future(ibid.). Reading the eternal recurrence as the eternal recurrence of the character of the moment disproves both linear and circular conceptions of time.“ The image of the circle of time posited by the spirit of gravity is unable to grasp the deep well and abyss of time. Only this image can give us the moment as one of ‘eternity’, the duration of which is not to be thought in terms of our ordinary linear conception of time (as chronological succession, for example)” (15). Indeed, only “a moment that inaugurates itself and that, as such, desires itself and to the point of desiring its eternal return” can do justice to the interpretation of the doctrine(ibid.). “For Zarathustra it even has the appearance of the dis-appearance of time"
And I think that’s one theory of the experience of death (as distinct from near-death—although it is in fact a nearing death ever more closely but never fully reaching it). It’s certainly the individual equivalent of universal heat death!
It’s the exactness of each moment which gives each moment its clarity.
'If the highest will to power expresses itself as the closest possible approximation of a world of Becoming to a world of Being, then the will to power as such is the will to approximate Becoming to Being.
‘Thus the will to power is the will to affirm (make firm) Becoming.’ (Sauwelios, “The Will to Might”.)
::
Look, the will to power sublates itself in willing the ER. I’ve explained this several times in the past. After that sublation, there is no longer any need to stamp becoming with the character of being; being is what persists through all becoming, the emptiness that comprehends and penetrates everything.
Very interesting. White doesn’t do much for me, but I’m definitely impressed by Ansell-Pearson. Still, this completely changes the meaning of the ER: it’s really a recurring eternity (RE) or at best an eternally recurring eternity (ERE). The particular configurations do not recur; what recurs is only the general character of existence. I’m reminded of Heraclitus’ saying that “the nature [physis] of every day is one”: the particular days do not recur, what recurs is only the one nature of all days. Zeroth nature.
Like I said, when playing street fighter it was extremely useful.
Its a useful concept to affirm, no one is arguing that- but when we know that it is a metaphor, it changes - it doesn’t have to actually exist, but it also doesn’t exactly have to mean what it means.
But, let it mean what it means, for it is useful that way.
Ive got a bit of criticism on your approach to the concept of good vs evil, which does not extend to my take on your approach to Blake - as far as it works for me, I find the second more fortunate. It is the literalness of Nietzsche that betrays him. Heidegger was needed to resolve the problems he therein created. English is even worse, as the subtle sneaky hilarities in German cynicism are entirely lost and yet they are what most directly reveal the instinct out of which it was born, this whole immoralism of the embrace of eternity.
Your criticism may apply to (Mitra-)Sauwelios, but not to Zeroeth Nature. In any case, I think the will to be beyond good and evil involves a valuation of that position as good as opposed to bad, not as good as opposed to evil. Still, Leo Strauss says:
“Surely our probity must not be permitted to become the ground or object of our pride, for this would lead us back to moralism (and to theism).” (Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.)
And indeed, for the longest time it was a matter of pride for me, i.e., of feeling morally superior.—
Adam and Eve were told not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In other words, they were told it was evil to eat from it. But, not having eaten from it yet, they did not know what this meant; they had to eat from it in order to know, i.e., to feel God’s wrath… It is only punishment which makes something evil! And likewise, it’s only reward which makes something good. And what greater reward than being beyond the Abyss? Although that cannot be the impetus for grappling with it…
Yes, the impetus is merely the superabundant strength which must set such tasks. This effort is then punished - as we have seen in ourselves and in certain friends - with forms of madness, meaning an exertion of an even greater amount of strength is demanded. Thus it is that ultimately one doesn’t cross the abyss except in the employment of all that one is.
Well, originally, and this also means in principle or primarily, it was a religious-artistic rapture (Rausch, “intoxication, frenzy”) that made me a Nietzschean. So it wasn’t about truth as such. Yet it also wasn’t about herd-moral superiority, but rather master-moral superiority: the idea of being strong enough for the deadly truth.
Now how did I get beyond this? Well, when I finally saw the truth, I mean the truth about myself and life in general, I found that it was also actually better to be aware than to be unaware of it! Consider the very important aphorism # 344 of The Gay Science:
“[L]et one just ask oneself thoroughly: ‘why do you not want to delude?’ especially if it should have the appearance—and it does have the appearance!—as if life were aimed at appearance, I mean at error, deception, dissimulation, blinding, self-blinding[.]”
No matter how rhetorical, it remains a fact that life’s being aimed at appearance (Anschein) is itself an appearance, according to Nietzsche—and not necessarily a reality, truth! And indeed, like I said, I’ve found that it’s better for me not to delude myself about myself and life in general.
As for your second question, which you edited away: my practice, as Zeroeth Nature, is to raise my awareness of the importance of the fact that it doesn’t matter… Because that means it might just as well be true!
