To some extent what I have said about golf and archery could also be said about philosophy. Think about thinking and understand the mechanics of thinking but after that just think. The meta is only the mechanics of philosophy; it is not philosophy itself.

Many people don't seem to realise that Nietzsche's "God is dead" speech was directed at atheists. The point is that if you "kill" God, what then? If you destroy that which was most holy, the fulcrum of belief of billions of people, do you just shrug your shoulders and declare yourself to be a liberal humanist like Richard Dawkins? Dawkins would have nauseated Nietzsche with his bland and banal statements about "morality".

Nietzsche brought forward the suspicion of the primacy of language in which there is no world outside of language. Humans impose arbitrary categories and signs of meaning and most often believe in them if only to avoid being confronted with bewildering chaos, confusion and meaninglessness.

Perhaps language does not even reflect reality. Certainly, there is no intimate link between a word and thing, and even if in some limited cases this were the case, Nietzsche understood that the system of language necessitates moving beyond the instance and into the realm of categories, types, universals, abstractions, lexicon words, the Logos itself. All signs pointing to no-thing out there and so for Nietzsche, we could no longer guarantee ever knowing for sure about any reality outside of the sign.

To some extent what I have said about golf and archery could also be said about philosophy. Think about thinking and understand the mechanics of thinking but after that just think. The meta is only the mechanics of philosophy; it is not philosophy itself.

You must ask yourself how people communicated before there were linguistics, or formal grammers...Tell me how anyone ever reached a logical conclusion before there was formal logic...

Let me put it another way... Words and number are forms of communication and also forms of relationship... When people cannot express themselves through words, they often resort to violence... And we see this in places where people are unable to communicate with their governments, or with each other...Now, violence is a form of communication, but not one of abstraction for the most part because it is an attempt to give whole the impression one takes from life... It may work as communication, but it is a terrible form of relationship since it is likely to damage the relationship beyond repair...

So long as people can maintain their forms of communication so they serve that purpose, and do not give up on their relationships and resort to violence they do not need to understand the mechanics of their language... Those who choose the words control the thought, but that is not rocket science... We have a lot of people bending the language to suit their purpose and in the process injuring our ability to think and communicate; but they are doing it to themselves at the same time... They trash the language to keep power and are making violence all the more certain because they destroy the ability of people to communicate with words...

This whole post is brilliant and impressive, but as for the quoted part, IMO, what is said is not exactly what N. meant - although I find this interpretation very interesting. The third book of GS and the foreword to the second edition (inter alia

Thank you, attano, not only for your kind words, but for pulling me up on this one.

The main thrust of my intrepretation, as you have so rightly claimed it to be, is the general critique of language scattered about B.G.&E and The Genealogy. I've basically read N as saying something like, without language, there couldn't be consciousness as we have it. So, for example, our subject-object predicate need have nothing to do with the 'out-there,' and more to do with the ontological structure of our brain in language mode; an insight which enables him to right-off Cartesian dualism as fundamentally trivial. The idea of being stuck or trapped in language mode, I lifted from his On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense essay, where the famous quote about the "mobile army of metaphors" can be found. This is a great insight, but perhaps equally so, or even more so, is the idea that, "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colours, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities." That almost reads like something Laozi could have written. After pondering stuff like this, even if I'm coming in at a bit of an odd tangent, you can appreciate why I wrote something like, "for Nietzsche, we could no longer guarantee ever knowing for sure about any reality outside of the sign." Hope this helps, and thank you for your supportive, yet positively critical post.

I respect that. But here we are still talking about our talk. Of course that might just be because I started it. I wish you well, sir!

---------- Post added 05-20-2010 at 04:38 PM ----------


I agree with what you are saying here. I don't see a pressing need to go down certain streets. And it is even arguably selfish and indulgent. It's one thing to play the game and another to pretend it is essential for all mankind to play it. Yes, the ordinary use of language is primary, and also the foundation for its self-investigation. On the other hand, for you to make your point here you must have already done some thinking concerning the nature of thinking. See what what I mean?

---------- Post added 05-20-2010 at 04:46 PM ----------


I sympathize with all of this. Pound liked to drive home the relationship between the corruption of society and the corruption of its language.

One of the reasons linguistic investigation was valuable to me is that I wanted to extract myself from puppet strings. It takes a certain amount of self-confidence to stand against the values of this world. Language is crucial. Perhaps you will at least agree with me here. Even if I am lately feeling less selfish, that wasn't always the case. Linguistic philosophy is an arsenal as far as argument goes. Of course a man can get tangled in his own net, or distracted by unnecessarily introduced complexities.

The real is rational... The fact is, that anything irrational, that cannot be understood to behave in a certain fashion cannot be conceived of... Every idea represents knowledge... You cannot know a river except in the most general sense because because it is never the same twice, and yet it may be learned, as Mark Twain, our home grown Philosopher proved...

This is a great idea, and it's exactly what I also meant in certain threads. I'm not saying it has an obvious use, but it makes us aware of certain possible abuses of language. And this ties into the God issue, as well. A man can never understand another man who is above him. It makes no sense. To understand a man or a god's idea, you simply have to possess that idea. To call the real rational and to drive the point home is to protect against a fuzzy mysticism. Of course to call the real rational is not to take away from its mysteriousness and beauty (and terror) as a whole.

Do you see how, when people talk of God as though real, and a concept, they are using the words to confuse themselves, and using those who manipulate the words to control them...Talking as though some infinite is real does not make it so...

Yeah man! That's what got me into math. I don't believe in the infinite. It's a negation of the finite. It's a round square. Of course it can be used as a sort of algorithm in math, or a sort of pointer. But it's not really infinite. Two of the greats in math went mad from taking this infinite seriously. And I'm talking about an infinity of infinities, trying to prove the relationship between these infinities. I started a thread long ago about the power of negative prefixes. Immaterial, unthinkable, infinite. These negative prefixes refer to what does not as exist except as a paradox.

A perfectly negative theology is just atheism that sees reality and humanity as more than enough of god --except the "god" word is just a way to transfer the sense of strangeness and beauty that takes taken from everyday reality by boxing up god in miracles or an afterlife or particular names. True religion is the denial of all finite religion, you might say. The stress must be on love, on the danger of having contempt for the other..the danger in exaggerating the differences between us. I feel that this is all the Gospels, but mixed therein with poison. Man's vanity wants a god to himself or just for his in group. And perhaps most Gods have been born as War Gods or Tribal Personifications. Perhaps we could not see beyond the tribe. Maybe now many humans can easily feel that all humanity is a tribe. But of course it's not that simple. Because resources are not infinite. So politicians will use not only words like "god" but other synonoms of the good and the true and the just (or just as significant, their opposites: evil ! evil ! evil !) to motivate murder, fear, etc.

The main thrust of my interpretation, as you have so rightly claimed it to be, is the general critique of language scattered about B.G.&E and The Genealogy. I've basically read N as saying something like, without language, there couldn't be consciousness as we have it.
So, for example, our subject-object predicate need have nothing to do with the 'out-there,' and more to do with the ontological structure of our brain in language mode; an insight which enables him to right-off Cartesian dualism as fundamentally trivial.

without language, there couldn't be consciousness as we have it.

The idea of being stuck or trapped in language mode, I lifted from his On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense essay, where the famous quote about the "mobile army of metaphors" can be found. This is a great insight, but perhaps equally so, or even more so, is the idea that, "We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colours, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things - metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities." That almost reads like something Laozi could have written. After pondering stuff like this, even if I'm coming in at a bit of an odd tangent, you can appreciate why I wrote something like, "for Nietzsche, we could no longer guarantee ever knowing for sure about any reality outside of the sign." Hope this helps, and thank you for your supportive, yet positively critical post.

I have been reading about Heidegger, and some of his early work was on that negation, which if I remember correctly, was that the negation was an affirmation of self... Could it be that the affirmation of the infinite is a denial of self, of our own being???

At this stage of the book, the life philosophy of Nietzche, and others, including Bergson is being discussed...It is interesting stuff, with Bergson for one suggesting reason as a biological adaptation, but with insight able to move us beyond reason, which seems reasonable... I would like to reproduce at least one paragraph whole for another thread in regard to a tangent on logically possible worlds... To me, speculation, even on the logical is not philosophy, exactly...

. Emotions, and intuition always plays a part, and even if we can create a heaven, or a logically possible world, we cannot do so without the projection of self into it subconsciously, which is the same as saying: Not At All...

TO me, this is the sort of thing that Nietzsche was good at pointing out. What is truth made of? Why truth?

What is meant by those questions? Anything? No wonder he was good at pointing them out.

I'm not especially talking about everyday truths, like "how late is Walgreen's open?" I'm talking about the Quest for Truth, or the sacrifice for Truth. Basically, Truth as a religious sort of notion. By the way, Jesus used that metaphor himself. "I am the truth." Nietzsche attributes this same attitude to Plato, correctly or not.

?

Yes, I see. You are asking a question I don't understand, and what may not be a comprehensible question rather than a question that I do understand, and which is a comprehensible question. I have no idea what you might mean by "truth as a religious notion". If I ask whether it is true that Quito is the capital of Ecuador, am I using "truth" as a geographical notion? Why would truth be particularly a religious notion rather than (say) a geographical notion?

Let's say that a scientist dedicates his life to the "Truth." This is his replacement of religion, to speak loosely. A philosopher could also indulge in this. In the absence of a traditional God, in what ways does the "anti-natural" attitude of the priest persist? You mention a practical truth. That's not the focus, really, though it is related.

Let's imagine an example. If a child who does not show "giftedness " is told nevertheless that he is gifted, could this lie encourage him to make to the most of himself? Could this lie become true?

Or let's say that a child shows substandard intelligence (ignoring the problems of testing this sort of thing.) What would happen if the knowledge is concealed from the child, and the child was told that he was normal? Would this help the child thrive?

One last example. What if an army is told that it is protected by its wargod, who would lead it to victory even against greater armies? AND that those who died would get to live in a heavenly palace full of virgins? Would this lie help the army win? And if the army wins, the resources available to the tribe would increase. More land, more babies, more armies, more lies.. How does this issue alone help explain the nature of certain religions?

Sorry. You have lost me. I thought we were having a tolerably clear discussion. I have no idea what your point is. The question for you is whether you do.

I do. Yes. Those examples were clear as ice water.