Nietzsche’s Hammer

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Nietzsche & Values
Alexander V. Razin

Nietzsche rejected all conventional morality but he wasn’t a nihilist – he called for a “re-evaluation of all values”. Alexander V. Razin describes the gulf separating him from that other great moralist, Immanuel Kant.

Again, this as though there is only one APA approved official definition of nihilism. The one true account of what it means for all rational men and women. As though one could take nihilism out of their pocket like a wallet and say, "look, everyone, nihilism".

Instead, the closest Nietzsche came to being a "great moralist", in my opinion, is the extent to which he embraced the Uberman mentality as something that transcends historical and cultural contexts altogether and truly does reflect the most reasonable and virtuous manner in which to live as a "master" rather than a "slave".

But even here, how far did he himself go in living his own life so as to embody the Uberman much beyond an intellectual contraption in his books? In his head. And for others who sought to do so, you have interpretations that ranged from Rand's Objectivists to Hitler's Nazis.

The bottom line [mine] is that you can re-evaluate values until you are blue in the face "in theory", but in the absence of God, once you bring your theoretical conclusions down out of the philosophical clouds, you are immediately confronted with the "real world". And that has been chewing up and spitting out our "my way or the highway" dogmatic authoritarians now for centuries.

Thus...

Friedrich Nietzsche presented the world with a philosophy of life that called for a rigorous reevaluation of all values. His critical analysis of Western civilization resulted in him drawing a crucial distinction between the ‘slave morality’ of the masses and the ‘master morality’ of those superior individuals who elevate human society through intellectual creativity.

A "philosophy of life" predicated on a "critical analysis" of...of what exactly? That's the part where I introduce dasein and suggest we take the masters and the slaves down out of the conjectural clouds and plug them into actual "situations". In other words, what does it mean to be a master and a slave such that the proper distinction is made between "might makes right" and "right makes might"? You're on top given a particular set of circumstances not because you possess the raw power to be, but because you actually deserve to be.

As a result, Nietzsche’s ‘philosophy of overcoming’ emphasizes self-creation and the affirmation of life. Looking ever to the future, he envisioned the coming of a ‘noble man’ who would assert his own will and create his own values without being limited by the false and outmoded values of the mediocre masses.

We'll need a context of course.

[iambiguous]

Nietzsche & Values
Alexander V. Razin

In sharp contrast, the great philosopher Immanuel Kant had attempted to establish moral certainty through his concept of the categorical imperative; “Act only on that maxim which you can will to be a universal law.” In other words, when you are considering a course of action, ask “What would happen if everyone did that?”

As with the Golden Rule, the things that you do, you may well want everyone else to do. Whereas others will, instead, be absolutely appalled if anyone did it. And then back to Kant, the categorical imperative, moral obligation and...lying. To tell or not to tell the murderer at the door where the friend is hiding.

Clearly, exploring something of this sort in a philosophical exchange gets no one killed. And even if one does the "right thing" and refuses to lie, in the end Kant has his own rendition of God around to make sure that ultimately justice prevails.

Thus...

For Kant, moral judgments must be made independent of the particular circumstances, emotions and motives of the people involved. Thereby, he thought that moral certainty could be achieved in the area of human conduct. Ultimately, his ethical framework required a belief in free will, immortality of the human soul, and a personal God as the moral judge of human behaviour (of course, these are religious assumptions which the atheist Nietzsche would never have allowed in his own inquiry into values).

So, basically you tell the murderer where the friend is because even though it results in his or her death, you did the right thing before God and in the end you are vindicated in being reunited in paradise. Meanwhile the murderer writhes in agony for all of eternity for Hell.

Or have I got it all wrong?

So, is there anyone here who would seal a friend's fate? On this side of the grave. Though, sure, we know that some will. Those who hijacked the planes on 9/11 taking their own lives as well. Those who practice a religious faith that forbids them [or their loved ones] from seeking medical help or to have a blood transfusion. Putting everything in God's hands.

On the other hand, any atheists here who believe that in a No God world they would agree that under no circumstances is lying permitted? Telling the murderer where the friend is because it is the only rational thing to do.

This part...

Furthermore, Kant made a crucial distinction between duty and inclination in order to separate the moral motive from all other motives. An act was only moral if you did it out of duty, regardless of your inclinations. Yet, it is not clear why a human being must always follow a pure moral intention, which would require one to sacrifice his or her own interests for the benefit of others or for the good of the whole. One may argue that Kant arrived at an empty intention in his compulsory appeal to the method of universalisation.

Not an empty intention [from my frame of mind] so much as one confined to a "world of words"...a world of theoretical assumptions up in the intellectual clouds that the "serious philosophers" ascend to in order to keep things like lying and morality far removed from actual human interactions.

[iambiguous]

Nietzsche & Values
Alexander V. Razin

It seems to me, then, that Nietzsche was correct in his scepticism of traditional systematic philosophy. He was also right, surely, to oppose moral nihilism. In an inquiry into values, it is necessary to consider common sense as well as scientific argumentation. It is simply not possible to doubt everything, because this results in both the complete collapse of human conduct and psychological uncertainty. However, rigorous scepticism does throw doubt on metaphysical constructions that merely represent a person’s wishes rather than reality itself.

Again, if this is how some choose to construe moral nihilism, it's not likely that I would be able to convince them to consider my own rendition instead.

Common sense? Okay, choose a moral conflict and encompass a resolution revolving entirely around common sense.

Doubt everything? Who would be preposterous enough to suggest that?

Instead, it is when confronting dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome that I am myself likely to throw doubt on metaphysical constructions that the objectivists sustain in order to hammer the sheer complexity of human interactions into what I construe to be one or another "arrogant and autocratic and authoritarian" moral or political dogma.

One may ask: what kind of rational arguments can be raised for the negation of total nihilism and the use of practical scepticism? In my opinion, there are six points that should be taken seriously in making value judgments concerning human existence: (1) life is preferable to death; (2) freedom is an essential aspect of a subjective being; (3) value judgments must take into consideration human society; (4) compassion is a vital aspect for evaluating human conduct; (5) emotions are a necessary condition for happiness; and (6) happiness requires self-realisation on the basis of socially shared values and goals.

Hmm...

Now all we need is a context?

Sure, take into account these considerations...and others. But trust me: once they become intertwined in an actual set of circumstances, expect any number of conflicting sets of assumptions about life or death, being free, I vs. we, we vs. them, compassion for this, compassion for that, my emotions or your emotions, my happiness or your happiness, our shared values and goals or their shared values and goals.

And here I quote [loud and clear] human interactions to date.

This was no less true for Nietzsche there and then than it is for us here and now.

[iambiguous]

Nietzsche & Values
Alexander V. Razin

It seems to me, then, that Nietzsche was correct in his scepticism of traditional systematic philosophy. He was also right, surely, to oppose moral nihilism. In an inquiry into values, it is necessary to consider common sense as well as scientific argumentation. It is simply not possible to doubt everything, because this results in both the complete collapse of human conduct and psychological uncertainty. However, rigorous scepticism does throw doubt on metaphysical constructions that merely represent a person’s wishes rather than reality itself.

Again, if this is how some choose to construe moral nihilism, it's not likely that I would be able to convince them to consider my own rendition instead.

Common sense? Okay, choose a moral conflict and encompass a resolution revolving around common sense.

Doubt everything? Who would be preposterous enough to suggest that?

Instead, it is when confronting dasein and the Benjamin Button Syndrome that I am myself likely to throw doubt on metaphysical constructions that the objectivists sustain in order to hammer the sheer complexity of human interactions into what I construe to be one or another "arrogant, autocratic and authoritarian" moral or political dogma.

One may ask: what kind of rational arguments can be raised for the negation of total nihilism and the use of practical scepticism? In my opinion, there are six points that should be taken seriously in making value judgments concerning human existence: (1) life is preferable to death; (2) freedom is an essential aspect of a subjective being; (3) value judgments must take into consideration human society; (4) compassion is a vital aspect for evaluating human conduct; (5) emotions are a necessary condition for happiness; and (6) happiness requires self-realisation on the basis of socially shared values and goals.

Hmm...

Now all we need is a context?

Sure, take into account these considerations...and others. But trust me: once they become intertwined in an actual set of circumstances, out in a particular world, expect any number of conflicting sets of assumptions regarding life and death, being free, I vs. we, we vs. them, compassion for this, compassion for that, my emotions or your emotions, my happiness or your happiness, our shared values and goals or their shared values and goals.

And here I quote [loud and clear] human interactions to date.

This was no less true for Nietzsche back than it is for us now.

[Agent Smith]

Nietzsche's hammer

A hammer is an interesting tool. Does the analogy still hold?

[iambiguous]

Nietzsche & Heidegger: Laminate or Separate?
Bill Cooke on the humanist value of Nietzsche.

The story of the long rehabilitation of Friedrich Nietzsche after being unfairly implicated in the rise of Nazism is well known. But the time may be coming when another daring rescue operation will be called for. For several years now, Nietzsche has been hailed as one of the pre-eminent intellectual authorities for postmodernism. But since the ‘Sokal hoax’ in 1996, this eclectic miscellany of moods has come to look decidedly vulnerable and past its prime.

Which is why, over and over and over again, I suggest that in regard to whatever is construed to be a premodern, modern or postmodern philosophical assessment of the "human condition", it all must be brought down out of the theoretical "worlds of words" clouds and shown to be relevant to the lives that we actually live.

Instead, many will be more preoccupied with pinning down precisely which intellectual contraptions [here for example] are or are not analogous to Sokol's own "postmodern" con job.

And to complicate matters still further, Nietzsche has been bound in an increasingly close association with Martin Heidegger. In most works of theoretical postmodernism, Nietzsche and Heidegger are discussed as its principal intellectual influences. And they are usually discussed together, to the point where David Farrell Krell has described Nietzsche/Heidegger as a laminate.

Okay, in regard to this intellectual contraption, bringing theoretical postmodernism down out of the clouds, how might Nietzsche and Heidegger be compared in regard to the flesh and blood historical Nazis? Starting for example with the fact that Nietzsche had died decades before the Nazis had come to power in Germany. And noting that in some ways Heidegger was right in the thick of it... having joined the Nazi party itself in the 1930s

Thus...

Now, of course, Heidegger’s intellectual reputation has hit major problems of its own, and is struggling for its life. Even his admirers admit he was consistently anti-democratic, chauvinistic and anti-egalitarian. As Deleuze and Guattari lament in What is Philosophy?: “It is not always easy to be a Heideggerian.” Most of them go on to insist that Heidegger is nonetheless essential reading for contemporary thinkers, and some, such as Julian Young, even argue that Heidegger can yet be put to work in the cause of liberal democracy.

Here, of course, each of us will react to all this in different ways. And my point is not so much to explore what Nietzsche and Heidegger and you and I thought or think of Nazis and liberal democracy, but in how they and we came to think what they did and do given the manner in which I think as I do regarding the role that my dasein plays in the creation of an existential identity in the is/ought world: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=176529

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Nietzsche & Evolution
H. James Birx looks at Darwin’s profound influence on Nietzsche’s dynamic philosophy.

The scientist Charles Darwin had awakened the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche from his dogmatic slumber by the realization that, throughout organic history, no species is immutable (including our own).

Indeed, it's always fascinating to imagine the further evolution of the human species. An evolution such that far down the road all that we surmise regarding what we have evolved into so far is all but rendered moot. And that's not counting all of the extraordinary advances in science itself. New ways to think about where we fit into the world of the very, very big and the very, very small.

On the other hand, given just how far into the future this will be, it's not likely to impact the dogmatic slumber of those among us "here and now" who insist that their own take on the "human condition" has already nailed it. The "psychology of objectivism" as I call it.

Pervasive change replaced eternal fixity. Going beyond Darwin, the German thinker offered an interpretation of dynamic nature that considered both the philosophical implications and theological consequences of taking the fact of biological evolution seriously.

It's not change [along with contingency and chance] that is of most importance here, however, but, in my view, that changes themselves always revolve around each of us as individuals out in particular worlds understood in particular ways. So, when changes do occur, we react to them differently. And it still always comes down to not what we believe about the changes, but what we can demonstrate to others that all rational people are obligated to believe in turn.

What Nietzsche was instrumental in providing was the part that revolved around the most fundamental change of all for mere mortals: No God.

What then?

[owl of Minerva]

Both Nietzsche and Freud misinterpreted Greek myth. The myths were cautionary tales that enacted human inner states and emotions and their consequences. The gods could be crazy or rational.

Freud did not recognize this, taking the myth literally and Nietzsche misinterpreted the Greek attitude to tragedy and to Dionysus who he thought they favored over reason. Which in his view did not raise it ugly head until Socrates.. This was not the case, the myths always favored reason.

The Greeks were wary of Dionysus who arose out of chaos and could easily return to it. The mother/goddess versus the father/god were representative of the emotional versus the rational. The punishment of Orestes for killing the mother was slight, the punishment of Oedipus for killing the father: blindness, was severe and permanent.

Nietzsche saw the death of god in the rule of reason over emotion, the rational over the non-rational. His god was dead because the drama of the great myths were no longer in play. Therefore there was no god.

In the nineteenth century syphilis was rightly feared, there was caution, which Nietzsche, siding with Dionysus, evidently did not exercise and consequently went mad.

Graffiti spelled it out:

GOD IS DEAD
___Nietzsche

NIETZSCHE IS DEAD
—-God