The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

How should society be organised, if at all?

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promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

Biggs you've noted how Self Lightening has recently been confronted by some kind of nihilism and has experienced a noteworthy change of feeling or character as a result. I'm hoping that this nihilism develops completely in him so that we might use his philosophical finess and insight to build a workable epistemology and ethics of nihilism. we really can't do it without him, Biggs. you don't do epistemology and i don't have the ambition. but we are faced with a world in which there are no other options, no other truths, and we can progress no further until our contemporaries understand this.

i will tell u that when i wuz a fascist - falling under the spell of il duce around 2005 i think it wuz - SL became my elected ambassador and minister of state. like a good guy version of Goebbels. he had devised a comprehensive plan for a state-organization and had written out a model with diagrams and all that shit. i wuz like damn that sounds workable af.
Self-Lightening
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The Paradox of Nihilist Ethics.

Post by Self-Lightening »

Are these the Nazis, Walter?
—No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.


I think Walter is wrong, in that the nothing of nihilism, which permeates all actual nihilists, is very much something to be afraid of. As the nihilist Harry S. Neumann wrote,

"Any effort to be or do anything is self-contradictory. In this universal aimlessness, 'I' will to make 'myself' and my 'students' as aware as possible of the truth about 'themselves' and their 'world' or 'worlds'." (Neumann, Liberalism, "Nihilism Challenged and Defended".)

As to myself, I don't even care about my students, or rather I care about them only in relation to myself: in order to make myself as aware as possible of the truth about myself and my world, it is helpful to formulate my thoughts for others (and I may even learn a thing or two from them). But why should any actual nihilist care about ethics or progress! Well, this is the catch-22 at the heart of the actual nihilist. For why even care about the truth? Being truthful is felt to be superior—which always means morally superior—to being untruthful... Even if the truth-seeker is "transmoral", "beyond good and evil", he feels truthfulness to be courageous and thereby a sign of strength—and strength or power always means self-direction... He needs it to be something to be proud of. But what it reveals is precisely that there can be no reason for pride, because all is, simply put, cause and effect, and there is no first cause or self-cause.

"All striving to do or be anything arises from a nihilist will to overpower nihilism, the will of nothing to be more than nothing. Like everything else that will is nothing." (Neumann, ibid.)

The nothing of nihilism is something to be afraid of precisely from the perspective of the will to power. Fear, as Nietzsche fathomed, is the feeling of a lack of power.
Self-Lightening
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Re: The Paradox of Nihilist Ethics.

Post by Self-Lightening »

Self-Lightening wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 5:28 pm[I]n order to make myself as aware as possible of the truth about myself and my world, it is helpful to formulate my thoughts for others (and I may even learn a thing or two from them). But why should any actual nihilist care about ethics or progress!
If such indirect self-reflection is indeed a means to direct self-reflection, and not to self-deflection for example, it actually is ground for an ethics: for each and every kind of social interaction demands a form of morality! And progress of any kind is just an increase in the ethicality in question. And I do have "a comprehensive plan for a state-organization" in the name of self-reflection... Here it is in a simple model:

The lovers of wisdom, who communicate their thoughts esoterically to each other and thereby to themselves;
The lovers of honour, who are the rightful recipients of the exoteric dimension of the philosophers' self-communications;
The lovers of well-being and ease, who are served by the honour-lovers when these are well fed in their self delusion.
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Agent Smith
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by Agent Smith »

Socrates would've been hospitalized in the modern world? :?:
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

Go easy on the yellow text SL I got a migraine tryna read that.
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by Impenitent »

as long as it isn't yellow snow...

-Imp
Self-Lightening
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Rectification.

Post by Self-Lightening »

Self-Lightening wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 5:28 pmHarry S. Neumann
It now appears it's Harry M. Neumann, not Harry S. Neumann. Harry Morris Neumann. That actually sounds much more impactful, don't ya think?
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

Well I don't know who either of those guys are becuz I can't find anything in a google search. All I know is he's a nihilist. Or they're nihilists.
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

Lol no baloney he's in Durham. That's right down the street. I gotta have coffee with this guy. Think he's works at Duke.
Self-Lightening
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Re: Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by Self-Lightening »

Is there more than one Harry Morris Neumann, too?... The one I mean is from 1930-2013. Like Lampert, he's a Straussian of sorts. Other important Straussians include:

Seth Benardete (specialized in Plato);
Muhsin S. Mahdi (specialized in Alfarabi);
Harvey C- Mansfield (specialized in Machiavelli);
Heinrich Meier (specialized in Rousseau).

And here's a YouTube conversation between two more Straussians, on the whole premise of Strauss's legacy.
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

Wtf I wuz way off. You're talking about the Nietzschean from Scripps I think. Ya know if this guy had a wikipedia page it would make it much easier for *aspiring scholars like myself. If u could go ahead and set him up with a page, that would be great.

* In the straussian sense I would be considered a scholar as opposed to a great thinker, as my work is largely derivative, cautious and overly analytical.

No just kidding I'm a straussisn great thinker, not a scholar.
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

i dunno SL i feel like if something can be said it must be said clearly or it can't be said. when purposely concealing a meaning inside of a text, this problem is compounded even more. but here's the little paradox; if clear meaning is made of the text, nothing is esoteric about it. if something is esoteric about the text, it can't be known clearly... in which case u couldn't be sure if u discovered a hidden meaning or just misunderstood the clear meaning not yet (or ever) made of the text by the reader.

now if u got ciphers and shit goin on, a text would be esoteric only insofar as only those with the codes can find the meaning. but in this case again, this can't be esoteric meaning for those with the codes... and the rest can't be sure if they've misinterpreted a text.
promethean75
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Re: The Ideal of the One Who Paves the Way. A second amendment to Laurence Lampert's Leo Strauss and Nietzsche.

Post by promethean75 »

u can't know u missed what u don't know is there (or not).
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Alexis Jacobi
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Re: The Paradox of Nihilist Ethics.

Post by Alexis Jacobi »

Self-Lightening wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 5:28 pm "Any effort to be or do anything is self-contradictory. In this universal aimlessness, 'I' will to make 'myself' and my 'students' as aware as possible of the truth about 'themselves' and their 'world' or 'worlds'." (Neumann, Liberalism, "Nihilism Challenged and Defended".)
Then with this ‘effort’ to be or do (within the general aimlessness) that self-consciousness is antidotal to the sense of perceived and then proclaimed aimlessness.

Any effort to be or do anything is self-contradictory.

This statement self-contradicts. I go that far.
Self-Lightening
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Esoteric Nihilism?

Post by Self-Lightening »

It strikes me that your arguments are very similar in form, though not in content. Yes, to one who has discovered a secret, it's no longer a secret; yes, if you posit a goal then it's not true that there are no goals. In the latter case, the problem is that the goal in question is either completely arbitrary—namely, if it's posited by free will—or it's not really posited by oneself, but only through oneself—namely, if there are any factors (co)determining one's positing of the goal.—Now to be sure, Neumann would have been the first to agree that he's contradicting himself:
Objection: Does not your claim that nihilism is true require a nonarbitrary distinction between truth and falsity?
Answer: No. The gist of your objections implies that genuine communication and community is possible. It implies that the 'we' who communicate and 'things' communicated—including this exchange!—are more than nothing. In reality they are meaningless impressions, dreams whose dreamers are themselves dreams.
Source: Neumann, ibid. Note that elsewhere in the book, he speaks in the singular, of a dream whose dreamer is himself a dream. This makes no real difference, however. Like I said before, 'in order to make myself as aware as possible of the truth about myself and my world, it is helpful to formulate my thoughts for others (and I may even learn a thing or two from them).' In fact, I was putting it mildly there;

"Rousseau, who in the writings of Jean-Jacques finds himself, is no longer alone, since he recognizes [erkennt] in Jean-Jacques a kindred nature." (Meier, Reflections on Rousseau's Rêveries, my translation.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogues ... an-Jacques

"In Rousseau's essentially private, incommunicable world of scientific reveries or methods, there is no place for philosophic dialogues or indeed for any real communication or community. That is why Rousseau—or any [genuine] scientist— can write only for himself." (Neumann, Liberalism, "Review of The Reveries".)

But does Rousseau—or any genuine philosopher—even have a self or a nature? Well, in fact he does, though it's basically "Buddha-nature"; or, as Aleister Crowley puts it:

"Now the grade of a Magister teacheth the Mystery of Sorrow, and the grade of a Magus the Mystery of Change, and the grade of Ipsissimus the Mystery of Selflessness, which is called also the Mystery of Pan.
Let the Magus then contemplate each in turn, raising it to the ultimate power of Infinity. Wherein Sorrow is Joy, and Change is Stability, and Selflessness is Self. For the interplay of the parts hath no action upon the whole." (Crowley, Liber B vel Magi sub figura I.)

Compare my translation, from nine months ago, of this famous untranslatable Zen koan:
Student: "Does a horse have Buddha-nature?"
Lama: "Nay!"
And what Crowley calls "the Curse of the Magus", the last thing that keeps him closed to the grade of Ipsissimus, is this:

"O divine princes, the astonishing singular difficulty for those bodhisattvas is […that] those sentient beings whom they would lead to final nirvāṇa are utterly non-apprehensible.
Those great bodhisattva beings who think they should seek to train all sentient beings […] might as well think they should seek to train space. If you ask why, sentient beings should be regarded as voidness because space itself is void. Similarly, sentient beings should be regarded as emptiness because space itself is emptiness, and sentient beings should be regarded as essencelessness because space itself is essenceless. For this reason, divine princes, it is difficult for great bodhisattva beings". ("The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Ten Thousand Lines", 26.37-38, translated by the Padmakara Group.)

In other words, unenlightened beings are already enlightened, they just don't know it yet;

"[A] humanity that, though it belongs to man as man, is not open to every man, since what he is necessarily he is not necessarily unless he knows that that is what he is necessarily." (Benardete, A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey.)

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Last edited by Self-Lightening on Sun Apr 23, 2023 4:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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