Classics and the Western Canon discussion
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Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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Preface and Part One
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So maybe philosophers have motives other than pure love of truth. That doesn't mean that love of truth is not an important motive. And it doesn't mean that what they say is false. Truth or falsity depends on who has the best reasoning based on the most worthy axioms. It can be hard to figure out which one is better, and debates can go on for a long time, but it doesn't follow to say that that means they're all really equally false.
Thanks David and Donut.I’m so out of the loop here, even after reading Donut’s wiki and David’s interpretation, I’m still not sure what an ass is supposed to stand for.
I do wonder if he’s arranging his treatise like a Dionysus fest, with Satyr plays inserted between (or towards the end of ) a series of tragedies.
Roger wrote: "So maybe philosophers have motives other than pure love of truth. That doesn't mean that love of truth is not an important motive. And it doesn't mean that what they say is false. Truth or falsity ..."I wonder if he’s merely saying all truth assertions are made by humans with motives beyond will-to-Truth. So then when we say truth, even mathematical truths, self-evident truths, logical axioms etc, there’s always a human element to it. There is no meaningful “Pure Truth” without contamination by this all-too-human will (to power?), and those who deny it are simply insecure (Spinoza) or being funny (Kant’s faculty for morality... like faculty for sleep.)
Roger wrote: "I don't buy this Will to Power. Sure, that's what some people want, but others want pleasure, or comfort, or love, or victory, or esteem. Some hunger and thirst after righteousness. Why give Power ..."Based on the way he describes the will in §19, it sounds like Nietzsche’s usage of the word “will” includes/ implies all that: he’s saying “to will” is not some simple, univocal, singular action, state of mind, or idea. It’s complicated, it’s mental and physiological, it involves muscle, it involves feelings, pleasure. It’s not even about having political power or physical strength or money.
A community is made up of all kinds of actors in different social positions, they all inevitably, individually exercise this will to power, so that a slave sees his master as morally bad; whereas the master sees the slave as unworthy and weak. Stoa wants Nature to conform to his tyranny, his world view; atomists demand “soul” to be particular or else declared fiction. It sounds like the “will to power” is not (only) the will to become king, or dominate others, but rather, it is the will to make the world conform to your worldview, to the point where people are willing to bend their understanding of reality to make it conform to their idea.
I think, this will to power is in contest with, and what modifies, will to truth.
David wrote: "I also thought that, the ass arriving most beautiful and most valiant in the old "mystery" play may also be an example of the above referencing Jesus' arrival Jerusalem on a donkey."According to my Portuguese version: this latin text belongs to a medieval "festum asinorum" (donkey festival). This ritual originally celebrated the flight of the Holly Family into Egypt but it turned out to celebrate mostly the donkey as a symbol of humility and naïveté.
The ass plays a much bigger role in Zarathustra, and Nietzsche did say BGE and Z say the same thing, but differently.If anyone is curious about the Ass festival and want to read more (more than what Donut already shared), here's a long quote from A Nietzschean Bestiary: Becoming Animal Beyond Docile and Brutal
The Historical Ass Festival
From the late eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, the Ass Festival was celebrated annually in various European cathedrals and churches at some point during the weeks after Christmas. It was most popular in France, although reports place it at various locations in Germany, Spain, England, Bohemia, and Poland.14 The festival typically involved the sub-deacons, the lowest rank of the clergy, clownishly pretending to be their clerical superiors (often bishops) and engaging in carnivalesque activities such as “the using of masks, talking gibberish, making animal noises instead of articulated speech, men dressing in female clothes, etc.”15 Often the excesses went considerably further, to include clergy members playing dice and eating blood pudding at the altar, braying at Mass, singing wanton songs both inside and outside the church, dancing lewdly, burning old shoes and censing the altar with them, “baptizing” members of the clergy with buckets of water, and driving around town in carts while singing and making obscene gestures.
During the course of this festival, “The Song of the Ass,” or “The Prose of the Ass,” was commonly sung one or more times. This hymn, the one cited in Beyond Good and Evil, is preserved in various forms. The hymn praises the ass, making frequent reference to its strength; for the ass, it proclaims, “no burden was too heavy.” The ass bites the straw he eats “with strongest teeth” and thus becomes sated. Of particular interest for our purposes is the line “None can dance as thou.”16 In the last stanza, the ass is urged to say “Amen.”
Nietzsche’s song in “The Awakening” follows its model closely. When Zarathustra returns to his cave, he discovers the higher men “all kneeling like children and devout old women and adoring the ass. And just then the ugliest man began to gurgle and snort as if something inexpressible wanted to get out of him; but when he really found words, behold, it was a pious strange litany to glorify the adored and censed ass.” The litany begins
Amen! And praise and honor and wisdom and thanks and glory and strength be to our god, from everlasting to everlasting!
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
He carries our burden, he took upon himself the form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never says No; and whoever loves his God, chastises him.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
He does not speak, except he always says Yea to the world he created: thus he praises his world. It is his cleverness that does not speak: thus he is rarely found to be wrong.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh. (Z:4 “The Awakening”)
The Ugliest Man’s litany follows the medieval model by including braying, censing, and the song praising the ass’s strength and its satisfaction in food (it does not “despise food” [Z:4 “The Awakening”]). Later in the text, reports of the ass dancing are mentioned. The ass’s hee-haw, rendered “I-A” in Nietzsche’s German, sounds like “ja,” the affirmative interjection. In effect, Nietzsche’s ass says “Amen,” as the medieval “Song of the Ass” urges, for “Amen” is the affirmative expletive “so be it.”
The Ass Festival got its name not only from the hymn and the foolish behavior associated with it but also from the role played by an ass of the more literal sort. The feast involved a procession to the church that hosted it, often a feast including an ass. Chambers describes the “amazing account of the Beauvais ceremony” of the twelfth century described in the glossary of Ducange as revised by later editors.
A pretty girl, with a child in her arms, was set upon an ass, to represent the Flight into Egypt. There was a procession from the cathedral to the church of St. Stephen. The ass and its riders were stationed on the gospel side of the altar. A solemn mass was sung, in which the Introit, Kyrie, Gloria and Credo ended with a bray. To crown all, the rubrics direct that the celebrant, instead of saying Ite, missa est, shall bray three times [ter hinhannabit] and that the people shall respond in similar fashion. At this ceremony also the “Prose of the Ass” was used, and the version preserved in the Glossary is longer and more ludicrous than that of either the Sens or the Beauvais Officium.17
Although the details of the celebrations varied, the ass was a common participant. Chambers summarizes the account of the feast’s celebration at Chalons-sur-Marne in 1570:
[T]he chapter provided a banquet on a theatre in front of the great porch. To this the ‘bishop of Fools’ was conducted in procession from themaîtrise des fous, with bells and music upon a gaily trapped ass. He was then vested in cope, mitre, pectoral cross, gloves, and crozier, and enjoyed a banquet with the canons who formed his “household.” Meanwhile some of the inferior clergy entered the cathedral, sang gibberish, grimaced and made contortions. After the banquet, Vespers were precipitately sung, followed by a motet. Then came a musical cavalcade round the cathedral and through the streets. A game of la paume took place in the market; then dancing and further cavalcades. Finally a band gathered before the cathedral, howled and clanged kettles and saucepans, while the bells were rung and the clergy appeared in grotesque costumes.18
The ass involved in such processions was not inevitably admitted into the church. However, Chambers cites a number of reports that place the ass inside, and he observes that the braying typical of these festivals already brought the ass into church by making its cry a part of the service itself.19 Again, Nietzsche’s version of the Ass Festival, with the ass processing to Zarathustra’s inner sanctum and braying in response to the ugliest man’s litany, resembles its historical antecedents.
Not surprisingly, Church authorities were dubious of the Ass Festival. Complaints by the papal legate in France to the bishop of Paris resulted in an order for the reform of the ceremony as practiced at the Paris Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Chambers and Gilhus both cite at length a letter addressed in 1445 from the Theological Faculty of Paris to the French bishops and chapters. It itemizes the offenses of participants in the Ass Festival and reproves participants for their abominable behavior, which, the letter claims, preserve the pagan traditions of Janus. These practices, it argues, are not harmless relaxation but the consequence of original sin.20
Perhaps the most startling feature of these festivals in retrospect is the significant participation of the clergy themselves. Those clergy who defended the feast had argued prior to the Theological Faculty letter that “foolishness, which is our second nature and seems to be inherent in man, might freely spend itself at least once a year. Wine barrels burst if from time to time we do not open them and let in some air.”21 In many parts of France, the history of the feast involves the authorities making intermittent efforts to reform or eliminate the festival, surrounded by periods in which the feast was celebrated with enthusiasm and spontaneity.
Several features of the historical Ass Festival might have recommended themselves to Nietzsche. First, the “burlesque of the sacred and tedious ceremonies” that Chambers describes might well have struck a chord with Nietzsche who, as the son and grandson of Lutheran ministers, was also quite painfully familiar with such services. He seems to enjoy lampooning these ceremonies in the Ugliest Man’s litany. At the same time, he is able to mock the Catholic ecclesia, large portions of which engaged in a festival on the order of what Nietzsche presents in “The Awakening.”
Second, Nietzsche would likely have been pleased by the Ass Festival’s impact of undercutting the authority of the Church hierarchy. The medieval festival deliberately reversed the status of the clergy, raising the sub-deacons above the bishops. As some of the Church hierarchy seemed to recognize, this pretended undermining of clerical authority actually undermined it. In many of his works, Nietzsche analyzes Christian doctrine as formulated to establish and reinforce the power of priests. The Ass Festival is a celebration that reverses clerical power, and Nietzsche, who rejected the Christian Church in both Catholic and Protestant forms, would have applauded this. The fact that the participating clergy themselves were instrumental in destroying clerical power makes the Ass Festival also a symbol of what Nietzsche sees as pervasive self-destructive tendencies in Christianity, which ultimately led to the death of God.22 The fact that the litany in “The Awakening” is sung by the Ugliest Man, the higher man who allegedly killed God, further supports this connection.
Third, the reversals involved in the Ass Festival, which Gilhus and T. K. Seung both emphasize, revalue values along lines that Nietzsche endorses. Of particular interest for Nietzsche, the Ass Festival rejects the orthodox Christian view that one must suppress the body and the senses. Seung also stresses that the Ass Festival rejected the aspiration of trying to become like God in favor of the goal of being healthy animals.23
Fourth, the festival character of the historical feast is something that Nietzsche would appreciate, which is indicated by his portrayal of Zarathustra praising festival. Zarathustra recovers from his shock and fury at the higher men and claims that convalescents need festivals. This suggests that Nietzsche may have seen the participants in the historical Ass Festival as being convalescents, recovering from Christianity’s denigration of the body and earthly joy. Zarathustra suggests that the Ass Festival is a creative expression of the higher men’s spiritual state.24
Most important, the higher men’s Ass Festival is comical. In the first section of The Gay Science, Nietzsche argues that the somber teachers of morality, who insist that some things are too sacred to be laughed at, are always eventually overcome by waves of laughter. The history of religion involves a pendulum swing between the poles of tragic seriousness and comic lightheartedness, and Nietzsche suggests that the latter perspective is the more profound (see GS 1). “The Ass Festival” describes Zarathustra’s own spiritual transformation from angry seriousness to light-hearted amusement at the higher men’s antics. This shift reflects the religious trajectory that Nietzsche sees as desirable for contemporary Western humanity, and Zarathustra’s experience serves as a demonstration of how it can be achieved.
This last point suggests that the ass is an important symbol in Zarathustra’s spiritual transformation, as well as in the convalescent stage of the higher men. In order to see how the ass plays this role, we will first observe the interaction that Zarathustra has with the ass-worshipping higher men and then consider the parallels between Zarathustra and Apuleius’s The Golden Ass and their implications. Finally, we will conclude that along with its other symbolic roles, the ass represents both a crucial stage in spiritual development and the folly that is eventually left behind in spiritual maturation.
Yes Patrice! The next section in the book I quoted above is the Golden Ass.Though, it seems the ass is a very, very common literary device / symbol in medieval writings/ crafts. Bruno-the-martyr wrote quite a bit about the ass:
Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass
You can read Bruno's Cabala and Ass of Cyllene for free here https://archive.org/stream/giordanobr...
I'm reading so much Ovid (not just M though) into this, it's unreal.It's incredibly frustrating to me that there's no book or paper on this subject in my library. I should roast a librarian.
(Ovid also talked about Elegiac growing up, and obviously Metamorphoses explicitly depicts different epochs of humanity, different self-perception of what it means to be human etc.)
Lia has mentioned the transcript of the course on BGE at St. John's College (1971), but I was just looking at the 1967 Nietzsche seminar from 1967 (University of Chicago) and want to quote two passages.In the first, Strauss points out that Nietzsche's "Will to Power" actually builds on a Kantian framework. In the second, he orally corrects some of Kaufmann's translation:
To generalize, all philosophy is a kind of the will to power, by which a kind of man tries to put his stamp on pre-given matter; this matter would be nature in this sense. But of course, as we have said more than once, if this is so, first of all the question is: Is not Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power itself such an attempt to put a stamp on nature, rather than being simply a verity? And second, of course, also: What kind of will to power is philosophy? He says it is the most spiritual will to power. But what is spiritual?
We would have to pose this question.
Now let us see. In the following paragraph, Nietzsche speaks of the non-metaphysical thinkers of his age, those who reject metaphysics. But he says that this is again not simply scientific, but also a certain kind of will. For example, he says “there may be puritanical fanatics of conscience, who lie down to die rather on a safe or secure nothing, than on an
unsafe or insecure something. But this is nihilism, and a symptom of a despairing, deadtired soul.” So in other words, that is as little scientific and theoretical as Plato’s metaphysics itself. It is a sign, a symptom, of a certain kind of soul.
He turns then in paragraph 11 to Kant and German idealism; he pokes fun at Kant’s famous questions, such as: “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” He makes jokes here which ultimately are unfortunately only jokes. He quotes these famous verses from Molière, from Le Malade imaginaire; we cannot go into that. I would like to say only one thing. Nietzsche himself had spoken of prescribing one’s ideal to nature. That is a modification of a Kantian phrase, that the understanding prescribes nature its laws; Nietzsche builds here on Kant.
(one more excerpt in following post)
https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leo...
(p.79 of pdf)
We must read a few more passages which are essential, and therefore I will proceed a bit faster. In number 14, read only the first sentence.Reader: “It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that natural philosophy—”
LS: No, no: physics.
Reader: “physics is only a world-exposition—”
LS: “that physics too is only”—physics too, to say nothing of the metaphysical systems, about which almost everyone agreed with Nietzsche at that time. But physics, physical science, too, is only a world interpretation, i.e. something radically subjective. So Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics includes a critique of science, and the argument would be that science itself rests on metaphysical foundations, whether it is aware of it or not.
https://wslamp70.s3.amazonaws.com/leo...
Here is my translation of it.Nowadays in perhaps five or six heads the idea is dawning that even physics is only an interpretation and explication of the world (for our benefit, if I may be permitted to say so) and not an explanation of the world. But to the extent it rests upon a faith in the senses, it counts for more for a long time yet, that is, as an explanation.He also seems to give his blessing to science when he states at the end of the chapter:
Ian Johnston, trans.
. . .but nonetheless for a crude, diligent race of mechanics and bridge buildrs of the future, who have nothing but rough work to do, it might be precisely the right imperative.I can recommend Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It as a great resource for the history and present state of this ongoing debate.
Ian wrote: "“indeed, one may ask as a physician: ‘how could such a malady attack this loveliest product of antiquity, Plato?”(Hollingdale)
Of all options this is the best translation.
Lia wrote: "In this case, I think it’s important to read §3 and §4 together. From §3:Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly, physiological dem..."
[Reply to message 138]
Right now I am reading The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1 by Arthur Schopenhauer, and I noticed a part that is a bit critical of the use of logic. I think that maybe N. may have been thinking along the same lines of the following quote when it comes to his criticism of logic:
[note: copy and pasted from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/... from pages 58 and 59]
_________________________________________________
"" Because, through it, all syllogistic rules may be seen in their origin, and may be deduced and explained. It is not necessary, however, to load the memory with these rules, as logic is never of practical use, but has only a theoretical interest for philosophy. For although it may be said that logic is related to rational thinking as thorough-bass is to music, or less exactly, as ethics is to virtue, or æsthetics to art; we must yet remember that no one ever became an artist by the study of æsthetics; that a noble character was never [pg 058] formed by the study of ethics; that long before Rameau, men composed correctly and beautifully, and that we do not need to know thorough-bass in order to detect discords: and just as little do we need to know logic in order to avoid being misled by fallacies. Yet it must be conceded that thorough-bass is of the greatest use in the practice of musical composition, although it may not be necessary for the understanding of it; and indeed æsthetics and even ethics, though in a much less degree, and for the most part negatively, may be of some use in practice, so that we cannot deny them all practical worth, but of logic even this much cannot be conceded. It is nothing more than the knowledge in the abstract of what every one knows in the concrete. Therefore we call in the aid of logical rules, just as little to enable us to construct a correct argument as to prevent us from consenting to a false one, and the most learned logician lays aside the rules of logic altogether in his actual thought. This may be explained in the following way. Every science is a system of general and therefore abstract truths, laws, and rules with reference to a special class of objects. The individual case coming under these laws is determined in accordance with this general knowledge, which is valid once for all; because such application of the general principle is far easier than the exhaustive investigation of the particular case; for the general abstract knowledge which has once been obtained is always more within our reach than the empirical investigation of the particular case. With logic, however, it is just the other way. It is the general knowledge of the mode of procedure of the reason expressed in the form of rules. It is reached by the introspection of reason, and by abstraction from all content. But this mode of procedure is necessary and essential to reason, so that it will never depart from it if left to itself. It is, therefore, easier and surer to let it proceed itself according to its nature in each particular case, than to [pg 059] present to it the knowledge abstracted from this procedure in the form of a foreign and externally given law. It is easier, because, while in the case of all other sciences, the general rule is more within our reach than the investigation of the particular case taken by itself; with the use of reason, on the contrary, its necessary procedure in a given case is always more within our reach than the general rule abstracted from it; for that which thinks in us is reason itself. It is surer, because a mistake may more easily occur in such abstract knowledge, or in its application, than that a process of reason should take place which would run contrary to its essence and nature. Hence arises the remarkable fact, that while in other sciences the particular case is always proved by the rule, in logic, on the contrary, the rule must always be proved from the particular case; and even the most practised logician, if he remark that in some particular case he concludes otherwise than the rule prescribes, will always expect to find a mistake in the rule rather than in his own conclusion. To desire to make practical use of logic means, therefore, to desire to derive with unspeakable trouble, from general rules, that which is immediately known with the greatest certainty in the particular case. It is just as if a man were to consult mechanics as to the motion of his body, and physiology as to his digestion; and whoever has learnt logic for practical purposes is like him who would teach a beaver to make its own dam. ""
I do not agree with Schopenhauer. In everyday life maybe people don't appeal to the rules of logic, but in particular perplexing cases I think they do, or at least they ought to. People often mistake correlation for causation, for instance, or attribute a common group trait to an individual, and if this is brought to their attention they can learn to reason better.
Roger wrote: "I do not agree with Schopenhauer. In everyday life maybe people don't appeal to the rules of logic, but in particular perplexing cases I think they do, or at least they ought to. People often mista..."I agree with you.
Thanks MJD. Have you read BGE? As we get further into the book, I’m convinced Nietzsche recycled a lot of ideas that Schopenhauer also dealt with, but then Schopenhauer obviously also recycled ideas from the tradition (Aristotle, Hericlitus etc), so I’m not sure whose name I’m supposed to stamp on each argument/ assertion.At any rate, looking back (like most philosophical treatises) the Preface/ Part I is probably the hardest to decipher. Schopenhauer was apparently really influential when Nietzsche was writing, maybe Nietzsche was taking it for granted that his readers have read Schopenhauer’s assertion (which you quoted) when he wrote that strange, paradoxical aphorism:
“The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgements a priori belong) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live – that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself, by that act alone, beyond good and evil.”
Michael Tanner remarked in the introduction (Hollingdale trans, Penguin pub):
“Nietzsche is not claiming that we do, or should, embrace judgements that we know to be false – it is not even clear that such a suggestion makes sense. His point is rather that many of the judgements to which we subscribe most firmly may in fact be false...”
This makes a lot of sense, maybe those who blindly cling to synthetic a priori and logic are charged with dogmatism, or Nietzsche might be saying it is conceivable that logic is fiction, and yet it’s dangerous to reject it simply because it’s false.
Although, I’m by now thoroughly suspicious of people who make Nietzsche make sense. :p Reading Nietzsche is like reading Dogen, it’s one paradox after another.
Nietzsche is not just saying that many of our judgments may be false--he's saying that that's a good thing, that false judgments are good if they promote life. Sort of like a noble lie, I guess.
Roger wrote: "Nietzsche is not just saying that many of our judgments may be false--he's saying that that's a good thing, that false judgments are good if they promote life. Sort of like a noble lie, I guess."Sure, the will to ignorance is the will to live with the conscious awareness that we are in fact ignorant. The thing we abstract, simplify, the models we use for "reality," are in fact untrue. Take every premise to its extreme and you will probably find inconsistency. Every point on the circumference of a circle is equidistant to the center, take a microscope, the things we call circles in the real world have points that are slightly closer to the center, so we have no right to call them circles. But it serves practical purposes to call them circles.
I think that is not a complete negation of the will to truth though. Nietzsche mocks those who deny evidences that contradict their dogmatic faith in metaphysics, in synthetic a priori, in Christianity, in order to cling onto their faith. Sounds like he's an equal-opportunity mocker who mocks everyone.
Some will to truth is fine, but we shouldn't throw value and life away for it. Some will to value and power is fine, but we shouldn't completely suppress our will to truth for it. It's a refinement he seeks, a kind of golden mean, a middle way.
Lia wrote: "Thanks MJD. Have you read BGE? As we get further into the book, I’m convinced Nietzsche recycled a lot of ideas that Schopenhauer also dealt with, but then Schopenhauer obviously also recycled idea..."I was planning on reading it after reading The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1, but I noticed that this group was reading it now so I started reading it ahead of schedule in order to read and comment along with other people. So far I've got done with the first part. So far so good.
Lia wrote: "Roger wrote: "Nietzsche is not just saying that many of our judgments may be false--he's saying that that's a good thing, that false judgments are good if they promote life. Sort of like a noble li..."For me I like Schopenhauer's conception of the value of truth and the trouble with falsehood that he states in TWAWAR: “It has often been said that we ought to follow the truth even though no utility can be seen in it, because it may have indirect utility which may appear when it is least expected; and I would add to this, that we ought to be just as anxious to discover and to root out all error even when no harm is anticipated from it, because its mischief may be very indirect, and may appear when we do not expect it, for all error has poison at its heart.”
For me I think that the better defenses against the idea of "good falsehoods" is made by Kant in "ON A SUPPOSED RIGHT TO LIE FROM ALTRUISTIC
MOTIVES" (Note: I acknowledge that a "lie" as convinced by Kant in this essay and a "falsehood" as conceived by N. in this book are not the exact same concepts, but I think that there is enough crossover to use Kant's essay to refute what is said by N. and/or what some people may interpret what N. is saying): http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/tex...
While I think that the essay works best when read as a whole, I do think that the highlighted part (copy and pasted below the line below) is the best part:
___________________________________________________
"For a lie always harms another; if not some other particular man, still it harms mankind generally, for it vitiates the source of law itself. This benevolent lie, however, can become punishable under civil law through an accident (casus), and that which escapes liability to punishment only by accident can also be condemned as wrong even by external laws. For instance, if by telling a lie you have prevented murder, you have made yourself legally responsible for all the consequences; but if you have held rigorously to the truth, public justice can lay no hand on you, whatever the unforeseen consequences may be. After you have honestly answered the murderer's question as to whether this intended victim is at home, it may be that he has slipped out so that he does not come in the way of the murderer, and thus that the murder may not be committed. But if you had lied and said he was not at home when he had really gone out without your knowing it, and if the murderer had then met him as he went away and murdered him, you might justly be accused as the cause of his death. For if you had told the truth as far as you knew it, perhaps the murderer might have been apprehended by the neighbors while he searched the house and thus the deed might have been prevented. Therefore, whoever tells a lie, however well intentioned he might be, must answer for the consequences, however unforeseeable they were, and pay the penalty
for them even in a civil tribunal. This is because truthfulness is a duty which must be regarded as the ground of all duties based on contract, and the laws of these duties would be rendered uncertain and useless if even the least exception to them were admitted. "
Lia wrote: "Roger wrote: "So maybe philosophers have motives other than pure love of truth. That doesn't mean that love of truth is not an important motive. And it doesn't mean that what they say is false. Tru..."[response to message 178]
Your comment of there being underlying motives behind outward "pure" motives reminds me of an interesting modern book I've read called The Elephant in the Brain. If you are interested in the subject of hidden motives I would recommend this book and/or this podcast episode in which one of the authors talked about the book: https://samharris.org/podcasts/119-hi...
I don't think Nietzsche is writing about knowing abstractions we make about the world, like calling something a circle when geometrically it is only approximately one. I think he's concerned with much more consequential lies--perhaps believing we have free will when we don't.
Roger wrote: "I don't think Nietzsche is writing about knowing abstractions we make about the world, like calling something a circle when geometrically it is only approximately one. I think he's concerned with m..."It does seem that he doesn't care so much for the abstract and esoteric so much as he does the practical and worldly. I hope I'm not reading too much into it but it does remind me of the Buddhist parable of the poisoned arrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable...
Roger wrote: "I don't think Nietzsche is writing about knowing abstractions we make about the world, like calling something a circle when geometrically it is only approximately one. I think he's concerned with m..."I suppose we will have to read on to find out.
But let's say everything humans hold dear in history were a kind of "fabrication" to Nietzsche: Metaphysics was invented to cope with dissatisfaction with this world; Christianity was invented by those who cannot act against the masters and have to twist the narrative to see themselves as the spiritually richer, better ones. Kantian/ Neo-Kantian grounding were the last throes to defend their illusory myth from empiricism and modernity. Even logic is suspect, it merely describe the world according to human prejudices, it does not explain the world.
If everything humans ever believed in were artful fictions anyway, and if those false beliefs caused impressive monuments and cultural flowering and fulfilling living experiences and positive self-image, maybe Nietzsche's task for his pet "free spirits" is to create the next artful lie that would allow a post-Christian Europe to find meaning somehow.
IF that is the case, which is my hunch, then we basically agree. It would be the consequential sort of "lie," but it's closer to creating arts than "we have no tariffs" kind of lie. It's closer to inventing the next best metaphor that make life alluring, exciting, stimulating, as opposed to weary, nihilistic.
Lia wrote: "Roger wrote: "I don't think Nietzsche is writing about knowing abstractions we make about the world, like calling something a circle when geometrically it is only approximately one. I think he's co..."Have you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet?
Lia wrote: "Roger wrote: "I don't think Nietzsche is writing about knowing abstractions we make about the world, like calling something a circle when geometrically it is only approximately one. I think he's co..."I think that you sum up one of the major points of N. in this book, a point that I think he made more poetically (and I think clearer) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, especially in the part about "The Three Metamorphoses": http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche...
MJD wrote: "Have you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet? .."I've read some parts, but I didn't finish. Focus is not my strong point, I've read parts of BGE before as well. So please don't tempt me with more new and shiny books, my partially-read pile is exploding!
Lia wrote: "MJD wrote: "Have you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra yet? .."I've read some parts, but I didn't finish. Focus is not my strong point, I've read parts of BGE before as well. So please don't tempt me w..."
I understand, I have the same problem : )
That being said, I think that "The Three Metamorphoses" parable can stand alone as an interesting piece of writing that to me seems to encapsulate N.'s main point for his entire philosophy. Here is a link to the parable seperated from the rest of the book: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/Nietzsche...
Lia wrote: "But let's say everything humans hold dear in history were a kind of "fabrication" to Nietzsche: ... Even logic is suspect, it merely describe the world according to human prejudices, it does not explain the world. ..."I think you have the right idea here.
Back in message 150 I brought up Hans Vaihinger's The Philosophy of "As If": A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind
Besides this inexpensive Kindle edition there are free pdfs of the translation, and of the German original, available on The Internet Archive (archive.org).)
I have since (re-)read the fairly short chapter on Nietzsche, at the very end of the book. It collects a lot of what Nietzsche had to say on the subject, offers it in a fairly systematic argument, and contextualizes it in the history of philosophy (or makes the attempt). His Nietzsche is a lot less radical than one might suppose, but seems to me a lot blunter and more insistent than his predecessors on the problem of how much truth is both attainable and useful for human beings.
The chapter also includes references (and cross-references) to other philosophers who were suspicious of claims to knowing the complete truth, rather than enough truth to be useful in life.
So now I'm considering reading the rest of it (although not immediately), rather than just the immediately preceding chapters on Kant and Fichte. Vaihinger wrote extensively on Kant elsewhere. He thinks that Nietzsche misunderstood, as well as misrepresented, him. And that Nietzsche still derived more than he acknowledged -- or perhaps realized. (Kant was probably an inescapable legacy for anyone writing philosophy in German in the nineteenth century.)
AaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggMore books, you guys. Hasn't my TBR list suffered enough? I can't add more! I won't add more! I ... will add more >__<
FWIW, many contemporary (adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish) scholars do argue Nietzsche either posits himself as the heir of Kant, or else as a rival, but "masks" that by exaggerated insults. My humble collection of Nietzsche’s special insults for Kant:
- a "moral fanatic,’
- "scarecrow,”
- "philosopher for civil servants,’
- "moralist,
- "cunning Christian,’
- "deformed conceptual cripple”
- “horrible scholasticism" of Kant
I'm hoping Nietzsche offers private lessons in childish insults, I'm completely awed. (also reminds me of Ovid's humorous insults directed at his "friends" back home, Ibis, and maybe Cupid.)
Lia wrote: "Thanks MJD. Have you read BGE? As we get further into the book, I’m convinced Nietzsche recycled a lot of ideas that Schopenhauer also dealt with, but then Schopenhauer obviously also recycled idea..."For those reading BGE without an introduction or notes that explain such things:
Nietzsche "discovered" Schopenhauer in 1865, and remained strongly under his influence through the rest of the decade. A mutual admiration for Schopenhauer helped form the bond between Nietzsche and Richard Wagner.
However, by 1871 Nietzsche had rejected Schopenhauer's pessimism, and, then or later, his dualism. This philosophical shift probably exacerbated his eventual break with Wagner, although there were many other issues involved there, including Wagner's increasingly overt anti-semitism, and the composer's reconciliation with the new German Reich. (In contrast, disagreement over Schopenhauer did nothing to harm Nietzsche's friendship with Paul Deussen, who had back-tracked from Schopenhauer to learning Sanskrit, and studying the Upanishads and Vedanta.)
Nietzsche's third "Untimely Meditation" on "Schopenhauer as Educator," in 1874, is notably lacking in references to "The World as Will and Representation," probably because Nietzsche no longer felt he could endorse many of Schopenhauer's key positions. The fourth, and in the event, final, essay in the series is "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth."
However such formative influences can't be entirely erased. That evidence of his reading of Schopenhauer shows up in later works is to be expected.
I just want to say that calling mathematics "abstractions we make about the world" is really begging the question.For the philosophers who discovered mathematics, the perfection of the circle (abstract) was really mind-blowing. For one thing, it is eternal. No circle we make is permanent, therefore, the 'ideal, eternal' circle has a more real "being" than any sublunar approximation of a circle.
Far from being 'abstractions we make,' furthermore, the laws of mathematics would appear to be true whether human beings existed or not.
They would also be true independent of human will.
So, again, mathematics and 'the ideal world' are actually bound together in a non-trivial way.
Does math "exist"? Obviously math isn't a material substance, human came up with math to represent substances and ideas. If there's no human around to comprehend math, does it "appear to be true"? Who would it appear to? Is math anything other than human sense-making?
Lia wrote: "Does math "exist"? Obviously math isn't a material substance, human came up with math to represent substances and ideas. If there's no human around to comprehend math, does it "appear to be true"? ..."I think that N. may have been reacting to Kant's conception of math in Critique of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Here is a link to an online version of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (which, to me at least, is much much much easier to read than the Critique): http://strangebeautiful.com/other-tex...
I think that you can read from page 15 to page 23 to get a handle on Kant's idea on math.
Getting back to this book, I think that N.'s attacks on math can be seen as an attack on a Kantian conception of math (i.e. since Kant used math to defend his metaphysics N. attacks math to attack Kant's metaphysics).
[edit: The online source that I posted has different page numbers at the bottom of each page in comparison to the page numbers of the doc itself. When I pointed out pages 15-23 I should have been clear that I meant that these are the page numbers posted to the bottom of the pages. The relevant doc page numbers are 60-68. }
Sorry MJD, I should have clarified I was responding to Christopher's assertion in @211, and I'm not addressing Nietzsche's assertions here.
Lia wrote: "Sorry MJD, I should have clarified I was responding to Christopher's assertion in @211, and I'm not addressing Nietzsche's assertions here."My mistake. (It's hard sometimes for me to follow longer discussions like this thread, especially since I'm coming in a bit late).
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Critique of Pure Reason (other topics)Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (other topics)
The Philosophy of "As If": A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind (other topics)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (other topics)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (other topics)
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Ian, this is kind of my point. Nietzsche was alluding to sub-atomic theory, which must have been 'cutting edge.'
But, I was actually w..."
I finally got around to reading a good article by Robin Small "Nietzsche and Cosmology," in the Blackwell A Companion to Nietzsche, which deals with Nietzsche's acquaintance with nineteenth-century science, and his tendency to reject experiments and mathematics as arguments.
Of course, as a classical philologist, he had no specialized training in the latter worth mentioning (not that I am any different), and so, as a philologist dealing with mathematical physics, was rather in the position of a physicist with a smattering of Greek trying to evaluate very technical problems in ancient Greek grammar.
There is also some relevant material elsewhere in the volume (the pdf of which is searchable).
The story gets complicated by the fact that from time to time Nietzsche actually read some of the less technical scientific literature (which he found boring), as well as popularized versions, and sometimes came up with what looks like a "right" answer, but by an invalid route.
See https://www.academia.edu/7150638/Blac...
There is some interesting material there on Nietzsche's rejection of the then-recent (1854) idea of the "heat-death of the universe," including the whole idea of entropy having any meaning in a spatially finite but temporally infinite (eternal) universe. After all, with an infinite past, the universe should have already "run down" if this was possible.
(The denial of spatial infinity, and acceptance of temporal infinity, goes all the way back to Aristotle, so it was not some peculiar notion of his own. Recognition that this was an inconsistency on Aristotle's part goes back to at least the later Middle Ages, when it figured, e.g., in Jewish controversies about religious rationalism, and the creation and size of the universe.)
This denial of entropy bears directly on his notion of the Eternal Recurrence, in which finite substance in a finite space repeats its presumably finite possible combinations without end, an idea which, however, he seems to have adopted for other reasons.