Re: nihilism
Posted: Thu Dec 21, 2023 6:28 pm
Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.
Okay, but to what extent was this encompassed [and then defended] back then given a particular set of philosophical assumptions about the human condition? And [I'd presume] one of them being that there was No God.
And then the part where some chose to be Cynics and others chose to reject them. The part, in other words, rooted existentially in dasein. Unless, of course, the Serious Philosophers among us can pin down the extent to which -- ontologically? teleologically? -- Cynicism is or is not objectively the most rational frame of mind.
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.
"They rejected any conventional notions of happiness involving money, power, and fame, to lead entirely virtuous, and thus happy, lives. The ancient Cynics rejected conventional social values, and would criticise the types of behaviours, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering." wikiTypically, however, this going forward into a new world also involves a sort of going back. Gideon Barker’s book Nihilism and Philosophy deals with four such instances. In ancient Greece, the Cynics rejected what they saw as the artificial world of the city-state in the interest of a return to nature.
Okay, but to what extent was this encompassed [and then defended] back then given a particular set of philosophical assumptions about the human condition? And [I'd presume] one of them being that there was No God.
And then the part where some chose to be Cynics and others chose to reject them. The part, in other words, rooted existentially in dasein. Unless, of course, the Serious Philosophers among us can pin down the extent to which -- ontologically? teleologically? -- Cynicism is or is not objectively the most rational frame of mind.
The irony here [for those like me] is how some actually argue that Christianity and nihilism are...interchangeable? And how preposterous is that? Instead, it might be more reasonable to suggest that, while Christianity is the exact opposite of nihilism in terms of ends, once someone embraces it they might come to advocate an anything goes approach to means. The slaughter of innocent children on both sides in the latest Middle East conflagration, for example.Then, with the rise of Christianity, the hierarchical order of the Roman Empire was rejected in favour of a world in which, in St Paul’s words, there would be “neither Greek nor Jew, slave or free, male or female” but all standing equal before God.
And the rest is history. In other words, connecting the dots between Nietzsche and, among others, Adolph Hitler. The Master Race, the will to power, the vermin Jews. Then the part where some connect the dots today between Hitler and Trump.In modern times, after the ‘death of God’, Nietzsche declared the end of what he calls Christian ‘slave-morality’, trusting to the Übermensch or ‘Over-Man’ to bring back an heroic age that valued courage and caste.
Sieg Heil?Then Heidegger, seeing the present technocratic age as a result of more than two thousand years of forgetfulness of Being, tried to return us to a long-forgotten way of understanding and living in the world, to recover a more ‘primordial’ thinking.