On the Tarantulas

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Fido
 
Reply Sun 8 Nov, 2009 09:21 am
@Aedes,
Aedes;102360 wrote:
How can one be right and wrong at the same time?

If you disagree with his philosophy that is fine -- Bertrand Russell thought that Nietzsche was repugnant, as I'm sure do most religious moral philosophers. But please, do your argument enough credit to take on his argument as presented in his text.

Look, I hate Heidegger -- he was a flag waving Nazi, he led a burning of Jewish books, and he never retracted his Naziism even after their crimes were made known. But his written philosophy is not antisemitic, at least not in any obvious way, any moreso than Richard Wagner's operas were antisemitic even though Wagner himself had made open statements about ridding Germany of Jews.

So separate the philosophy from the man when you're analyzing the arguments. Maybe the man informs the arguments, but with the exception of Will to Power every bit of Nietzsche's philosophy as he wanted the world to see it is there in written form.

Even though people say that Nietzsche was not contructing a systematic philosophy as Hegel, or Spinozo may have attempted, he was still going to great lengths, and clutching at straws to built a complete picture of humanity free of contradictions...In this picture he noted what was often obvious, but was not true...Most glaring in my opinion, is the thought that people take pleasure in the infliction of pain, as it was then that a man might be forced to loose a body part (Shylock's pound of Flesh) to settle a debt... This was not a practice of long standing, but it was a result of concentrated economic and social power in a single class... What has been the universal fact is a cash settlement for a physical injury down to a price on the loss of a finger... So, he was seeing facts as they had become and presumed upon some evidence, read backwards, that they had always been so... I think Nietzsche talked to the ignorant, and in that age there were some who knew him to be wrong, but that, with wide reading you can see through him easily now...Anthropology was not then what it is now... And we see in money penalties for physical injury, -blood money, as an attempt on the part of primitives to be reasonable, and put limits on punishment which brought them closer to peace and reconciliation... When power became totally undemocratic, the rich simply turned that social device to limit punishment and find peace inside out... They did not seek peace, but victory... There power and wealth depended upon a healthy dose of terror...

Even Nietzsche's correct presumption that humanity is irrational primarily instead of rational is not exactly correct... What we think of as freedom is the freedom to behave irrationally...And individual people have always acted irrationally... But; society has not been so... When people form relationships they must do so on the basis of some rational.. Societies may be bound together by irrational needs, but in their interaction with other societies require rational consideration...When we look at the past we see people with little technology surviving on the basis of rational social organization and control by society of its wild element, its irrational individuals... The irony is that this social control was only as extensive as the need for interaction with others required... The outward social control was only to allow a greater freedom... Look at its opposite as reflected in the Nazi state... The state denied all freedom within society but demand all freedom internationally...Well; this may always be the case, that the frustration of freedom, and of the desire for justice within society makes war certain... The primitives had it better... Free people, and democratic people are good neighbors... The defend their freedom and their lives, but they have no reason to go beyond the necessary...

If it were only so easy to separate the man from his philosophy...In fact, Nietzsche was as detached from humanity and as isolated and Hitler, and in each case, their conception of humanity followed from their failure to relate to others... I have trouble relating to others, but I take the opposite lesson from it because I see the less than overman as being the most happy of people, and it is for that reason that social change is so difficult, because people will accept so little from life and demand little if they can have the love of their families...
 
Aedes
 
Reply Sun 8 Nov, 2009 01:18 pm
@jgweed,
jgweed;102442 wrote:
To dismiss the writings of Sartre because of his temporary idolization of Castro, of Nietzsche because of his breakdown at the end of his life, of Plato because of his friendship with the Thirty Tyrants, or of Heidegger because of his Nazi party membership would seem to deprive us all of major monuments to human thinking.
Though the line is not always so clear. Heidegger wasn't a politically expedient member of the Nazi party. He was a full blown Nazi, he barred Jews from the University he headed, he sanctioned a public burning of Jewish books, and he was friends with Julius Streicher who edited the most violent of the anti-Jewish propaganda publications in Germany (and who was executed at Nuremberg). It makes one want to look at his writing differently to see how the two were related, especially given that most German philosophers at the time renounced Naziism and fled.

---------- Post added 11-08-2009 at 02:45 PM ----------

Fido;102455 wrote:
Even though people say that Nietzsche was not contructing a systematic philosophy as Hegel, or Spinozo may have attempted, he was still going to great lengths
He was not attempting to construct a systematic philosophy, because he was primarily a metaphilosopher (at least in terms of his priority, which was ethics).

Fido;102455 wrote:
Even Nietzsche's correct presumption that humanity is irrational primarily instead of rational is not exactly correct
Of course it's correct. A human dying of thirst will drink his own piss even though he knows it's poisonous. Humans will be impulsive and self-destructive against their rational judgement all the time. We may be rational, but rationality is subordinate to irrational forces -- the animal that we are whether or not we're exercising reason.
 
Fido
 
Reply Mon 9 Nov, 2009 07:19 am
@Aedes,
Quote:
Aedes;102470 wrote:
Though the line is not always so clear. Heidegger wasn't a politically expedient member of the Nazi party. He was a full blown Nazi, he barred Jews from the University he headed, he sanctioned a public burning of Jewish books, and he was friends with Julius Streicher who edited the most violent of the anti-Jewish propaganda publications in Germany (and who was executed at Nuremberg). It makes one want to look at his writing differently to see how the two were related, especially given that most German philosophers at the time renounced Naziism and fled.
And Streicher had a Jewish girlfriend, and was too corrupt and incompetent to hold office under the Nazis who were often very corrupt and incompetent... Does Heidegger lie when he helps to explain Kant in a more understandable fashion... I suppose I could look, but he had planned a book on Nietzshe, and that might be interesting...

---------- Post added 11-08-2009 at 02:45 PM ----------

Quote:

He was not attempting to construct a systematic philosophy, because he was primarily a metaphilosopher (at least in terms of his priority, which was ethics).


How could he really be a ethicist having no sense what ever of the value and reason for ethics... He liked to run down Socrates, but he was just as much in the dark on the subject...His philosophy reminds me of a display I once saw of an artifact found in an archeological dig... There was a big sign asking: What is it??? It was a product of art, of European origin, interesting out of contexts, but like nothing, and having no discernable use... That is most of morality to Nietzsche because of his own psychology, and because he did not know enough to realize that the strength of individuals is the strength of their communities... He ran down the masses because their morality led to their victimization... That is a small part of the problem, because having morality they could some day have justice, but no man having no morality ever can recognize justice...
Quote:

Of course it's correct. A human dying of thirst will drink his own piss even though he knows it's poisonous. Humans will be impulsive and self-destructive against their rational judgement all the time. We may be rational, but rationality is subordinate to irrational forces -- the animal that we are whether or not we're exercising reason.




We are reaching the point of recycling sewage for human use, and whether poison or not, all that occurs in the body happens in a medium of water, so people will survive longer drinking their urine sometimes than not doing so.... We have revulsion for certain foods... We do not eat dogs, and many do... And this too, this feeling, is a result of our morality, and is our morality in action...As Freud, who took much of outlook from Nietzshe, and agreed with Nietzsche on the basic irrationality of people also recognized that the reason is like a small voice that will not be silenced, and that eventually gains a hearing...The age of reason accomplished its marvels because people believed in reason... What will we accomplish believing in nothing???When we believe in the individual we believe in nothing... When we believe in community we are believing in the rational government of the individual... We may live in the emotions, in the irrational; but we accomplish all we do through a medium of rational behavior...Individuals are normally mad, and communities are only seldom so...
 
Aedes
 
Reply Mon 9 Nov, 2009 09:42 am
@Fido,
Fido;102581 wrote:
We are reaching the point of recycling sewage for human use
That is a different scenario -- that is a scenario in which our rational faculties are not conquered by our animal needs.

Fido;102581 wrote:
all that occurs in the body happens in a medium of water, so people will survive longer drinking their urine sometimes than not doing so....
Incorrect. Urine is WAY too concentrated in a dehydrated person to actually hydrate them. In someone with normal kidneys, your urine can be concentrated up to 1200 mOsm/L which is 4 times the normal osmolality of blood, so you will actually lose free water by taking in that kind of solute load.

Fido;102581 wrote:
reason is like a small voice that will not be silenced
That doesn't make us fundamentally rational, because we have a lot of other voices that won't be silenced either.

Fido;102581 wrote:
and that eventually gains a hearing
In some humans, not all...

Fido;102581 wrote:
The age of reason accomplished its marvels because people believed in reason...
No, it accomplished them because people used reason, not because they "believed" in it. But the Titanic, the Somme, and Hiroshima were just as much an end product of the age of reason as were calculus and the light bulb. Could it be that rational inventions are employed irrationally? If so, that only proves that rationality is a subordinate force.
 
Fido
 
Reply Mon 9 Nov, 2009 08:58 pm
@Aedes,
Quote:
Aedes;102601 wrote:
That is a different scenario -- that is a scenario in which our rational faculties are not conquered by our animal needs.


Really???


Quote:

Incorrect. Urine is WAY too concentrated in a dehydrated person to actually hydrate them. In someone with normal kidneys, your urine can be concentrated up to 1200 mOsm/L which is 4 times the normal osmolality of blood, so you will actually lose free water by taking in that kind of solute load.

I wouldn't recommend it for dehydrated person either, but what kind would have the foresight to drink it when not dehydrated at the moment disaster strikes???If something really bad happens to me, I will have to ring urine out of my shorts to truly enjoy it...
Quote:

That doesn't make us fundamentally rational, because we have a lot of other voices that won't be silenced either.

I never said we were fundamentally rational, but we cannot share any other part of us except through the mediums of art and music... Forms are primarily rational, and all with rules of behavior and what not, and no matter how irrational we all are in our private selves, to gain our wishes or satisfy our needs we must present a rational course to others...
Quote:

In some humans, not all...

No, it accomplished them because people used reason, not because they "believed" in it. But the Titanic, the Somme, and Hiroshima were just as much an end product of the age of reason as were calculus and the light bulb. Could it be that rational inventions are employed irrationally? If so, that only proves that rationality is a subordinate force.


I never suggested rationality was other than a subordinate force; and for that reason those people who have presented ethics in a rational fashion miss the mark... People are good because they want to be good and are good; by nature, and is not the result of a rational process...In this sense, at least, Knowledge is not virtue...We are not good because of what we know, but because of what we feel...
 
Aedes
 
Reply Mon 9 Nov, 2009 09:36 pm
@Fido,
Fido;102703 wrote:
I never suggested rationality was other than a subordinate force; and for that reason those people who have presented ethics in a rational fashion miss the mark
Ok, well we may be in agreement then. And what Nietzsche and Freud (and many others) have suggested, to their significant credit, is that moral decisionmaking is not entirely rational -- in Nietzsche's case there is cultural heredity, in Freud's case there are unconscious forces at work, and it's spawned whole fields of study in psychology and cognitive science.

Fido;102703 wrote:
We are not good because of what we know, but because of what we feel...
Right. And systematic philosophical ethics thinks too highly of reason to recognize that.
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Fri 27 Nov, 2009 06:08 pm
@Theaetetus,
Nietzsche is a vortext. He wore many faces from aphorism to aphorism. He's such a romantic, oscillating between Byron (strong influence) and Blake (a curious parallel). He's also a continuation of Bacon (knowledge is power).

He didn't have any new values to offer, not that I could find. But he had good taste, I think, in the values he endorsed. His attack on resentment is strangely similar to the Christian ideal of forgiveness. His portrait of Christ in The Antichrist is moving and sublime.

He's one of the most interesting philosophers to contemplate. This is a man who would dance naked alone in his hotel room. A man with tendencies toward megalomania. It's as if he was a prophet who delighted in critical analysis, for the savage joy in mocking all that had a lower emotional tone than the music in his soul.
 
IntoTheLight
 
Reply Fri 27 Nov, 2009 06:15 pm
@Reconstructo,
Nietzsche's lesser known speech, "On The Morbidly Obese Illinois State Fair Goers" has a similar theme involving the "Will to Eat Fried Foods".

-ITL-
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Fri 27 Nov, 2009 06:24 pm
@IntoTheLight,
I like when he said he was a female elephant.

People forget what an a** he was. He gets discussed with a humorlessness he would have mocked.
 
Fido
 
Reply Sat 28 Nov, 2009 07:37 am
@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;106485 wrote:
Nietzsche is a vortext. He wore many faces from aphorism to aphorism. He's such a romantic, oscillating between Byron (strong influence) and Blake (a curious parallel). He's also a continuation of Bacon (knowledge is power).

He didn't have any new values to offer, not that I could find. But he had good taste, I think, in the values he endorsed. His attack on resentment is strangely similar to the Christian ideal of forgiveness. His portrait of Christ in The Antichrist is moving and sublime.

He's one of the most interesting philosophers to contemplate. This is a man who would dance naked alone in his hotel room. A man with tendencies toward megalomania. It's as if he was a prophet who delighted in critical analysis, for the savage joy in mocking all that had a lower emotional tone than the music in his soul.

The worst thing about him is that he threw out morals like a child might discard a key because he cannot find a door it fits...Morals are a quality all can touch and few can grasp, but Nietzsche only swatted at it like a fly...

---------- Post added 11-28-2009 at 08:48 AM ----------

Aedes;102708 wrote:
Ok, well we may be in agreement then. And what Nietzsche and Freud (and many others) have suggested, to their significant credit, is that moral decisionmaking is not entirely rational -- in Nietzsche's case there is cultural heredity, in Freud's case there are unconscious forces at work, and it's spawned whole fields of study in psychology and cognitive science.

Right. And systematic philosophical ethics thinks too highly of reason to recognize that.

It really has been the greatest error of all philosophy as far as I can tell to say that virtue can be taught, as Socrates said, that Knowledge is Virtue... Well, virtue is what we learn before we become rational, and yet to become members of nation states we must become rational in our behavior simply because morality is surrended at the door... Blood is thicker than water is moral, that we guard, control, police, punish and defend our own is moral, but no modern society would allow it, so we must act rationally, think rather than react...Morality is to denied us and rationality is impotent- since it does not demand justice and it cannot insure peace...
 
Reconstructo
 
Reply Sat 28 Nov, 2009 06:15 pm
@Theaetetus,
No society could found itself on an impressive mess like Nietzsche. He is a poet for the few, and must be carefully sifted through.

One sentence is sublime, and the next embarrassing. A bit of a rock star, Nietzsche. A bit of a joker. Passionate, youngish, bold, at times ridiculous. Not in the least to be taken dogmatically.

But his relevance is undeniable. The beginning of Beyond Good and Evil is almost essential reading for the mind that wants to expand its possibilities. He searches into the motives of philosophers, and of humanity in general. Whether one likes his answers or not, he is asking the right questions.
 
Fido
 
Reply Wed 2 Dec, 2009 07:38 am
@Reconstructo,
Reconstructo;106729 wrote:
No society could found itself on an impressive mess like Nietzsche. He is a poet for the few, and must be carefully sifted through.

One sentence is sublime, and the next embarrassing. A bit of a rock star, Nietzsche. A bit of a joker. Passionate, youngish, bold, at times ridiculous. Not in the least to be taken dogmatically.

But his relevance is undeniable. The beginning of Beyond Good and Evil is almost essential reading for the mind that wants to expand its possibilities. He searches into the motives of philosophers, and of humanity in general. Whether one likes his answers or not, he is asking the right questions.

His relevance to history as philosophy is undeniable...To philosophy as philosophy he was a retch... He got significant facts wrong from which he drew false conclusions, and his personal life was not normal, and his sexuality, if you can believe him was deviant, and he was incapable of mature relationships with women and this is apparent for the want of Mrs. Superman and Baby Superman...The morality of the poor comes from the fact that they want peace so they can enjoy love, and there will always be supermen willing to use this fact against them to exploit them and work them into an early grave; and apart from demeaning them, it only adds meaning to the goodness of their lives...Nietsche identifies with and supported the true criminals in our societies, and I don't think he made a secret of this fact...But; you have to know that society once reined in such characters and used them, and progress went on apace... We will never know how far advanced we might be if so many intelliigent and moral people who love truth as the greatest good were not fed into the maw of wars and profits...Our society perverts more people than it saves, and denies every advance till profit can be made on it...

Children should not be allowed to read Neitzsche...Anyone who knows anything will not buy his crap, and he seems all too logical to those without the knowledge to see through him....
 
andy1984
 
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 12:43 am
@Theaetetus,
well i like nietzsche. i'm probably quite clumsy at writing about it and definitely not as widely read as most here.

as far as tarantulas go, i think that the rabble is the web. as soon as someone picks on the meek or points out their meekness, a tarantula appears as an advocate/leader to defend them in the name of equality. even as they do so they disprove equality by showing it is their place to defend others who cannot defend themselves, in that way they are stronger. with equality there is no room for improvement. he's just pointing out another way in which some values many people have are/were a mess.

i like the way nietzsche uses animals to express the moral landscape. he doesn't like tarantulas, but they are just another kind of animal that's out there. i guess he doesn't like them because he's the kind of moral animal they like to bite. to him that's bad, but to us it might be good. its a jungle of values without objective good and bad where survival is truth. the jungle is changing, maybe god is dead. our values need to adapt, and he sees tarantulas as something that is holding us back.
 
Fido
 
Reply Wed 6 Jan, 2010 06:22 am
@Theaetetus,
You might read some history...The Feudal structure of society Nietzsche can be seen defending came about because of the threat to Christian Europe from Muslim Spain, andd though the Muslim Calvery broke against the Frankish foot soldiers, it was to the Cavalry that Charles the Great gave his attention, and he was assisted in this by the introduction of the stirrup, which made one mounted man thee equal of many foot soldiers...Now, to telescope events, it was with the excuse of this minority defending the many which resullted in the many supporting the few on horseback, and with rights of government going to those with the wealth and the ability to defend that wealth... It moved rather quickly from a fairy tale world with Kings two a penny as one said, to a very few controlling great landed estates in fee...And what did they do by way of defense for their former equals??? They took their rights and took their wealth, and they offered very little resistence to the North Men, which was the last serious threat faced by Europe from barbarians...

It is possible that had the Mongols wanted it, that the whole of Europe would have been theirs...Were these not the tarantulas of your speculation??? They used the excuse of defense to enslave their people.. What did they do for human progress and technology??? If you read Mark Bloc on the subjct of European Feudalism; Not Much... They could keep their own people down, strip them of their rights, but their need for technology was no greater than their need to oppress demanded...To have the defense of a minority is in no sense better than the defense a whole people can offer itself as free people... Nietzsche was talking about an aesthetic value, of not so gentle gentlemen keeping the masses under harnass... This is simply the means humanity has always chosen to impede their own progress, and make certain their societies would fall to others more vital and natural and free... It is free people that destroy empires... That is the meaning of Frank, what people mean when they say Frankly: Freely...The historical spectacle of one group of free men binding their equally free brothers into servitude is nearly constant, and it is a harbinger of the end for such societies...

This country is being reduced to two classes, and the poor must suffer the loss of rights to have their mcmeals...Unity, and equality are essential to democracy and freedom, and it is the fiirst thing trashed by the rich as a nuisance...
 
 

 
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