moral relativism

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Belinda
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Re: moral relativism

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iambiguous wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 6:00 pm Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Nothing is worth much anymore, everything comes down to the same thing, everything is equalized. Everything is the same and equivalent: the true and the false, the good and the bad. Everything is outdated, used up, old dilapidated, dying: an undefined agony of meaning, an unending twilight: not a definite annihilation of significations, but their indefinite collapse.
Nothing and everything. When, in actuality, over and over and over again, it's almost never either one of them in regard to connecting the dots between a philosophical assessment of nihilism like the one above and the existential parameters of the lives we live from day to day to day. Is it any wonder then that so many have little or no use for such abstract intellectual conjectures?
It would be quite absurd, therefore, to claim that this is what Nietzsche actually desires. On the contrary, he wants to diagnose how we got there. Our culture is like the character God in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy: old and worn out, barely alive, and certainly nothing to really believe in anymore.
No, it appears that what Nietzsche was aiming to accomplish was to replace the God font with the "will to power" Übermensch font.

Whatever that means.

But that's my point. In the absence of the God font "up there" to settle conflicts of this sort, we mere mortals have managed to come up with any number of hopelessly conflicting secular narratives to take His place.

Is yours perhaps the optimal assessment?
The most dangerous side of this nihilism, however, is that in the end it becomes happy and satisfied with itself. Once we used to feel horror and terror at the fact that religion, morality and philosophy don’t really have any meaning, but now we’re quite happy to live in a world without meaning.
Says who? And those who do say so...what exactly are they intent on putting in its place? There are, of course, the amoral capitalists, the amoral sociopaths, the amoral libertines.

What of your own amoral foundation? What are you intent on doing with it?

And then the part here that always comes back around to God:
One example of this satisfaction is the death of God. Again we have to remind ourselves of the passage in the Gay Science, where Nietzsche writes of the madman who rushes into the marketplace and declares that God is dead. Many people read this as Nietzsche is simply celebrating atheism, but if we read this passage more carefully we can see that what it really describes is how the ordinary people don’t really care at all whether God is dead or not. This is what is truly terrifying. Not that God is dead, but that no-one even noticed that he had died:

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’ – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, the provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? – Thus they yelled and laughed."
In our modern world of course this basically revolves around all of the millions upon millions of "lost souls" who spend their days mindlessly preoccupied with pop culture, social media, mass consumption, and the pursuit of celebrity.

God doesn't stand a chance there.

And, come to think of it, neither does philosophy. Or, rather, what's left of it these days.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=175121

Popular culture includes people who seek truth, good, and beauty. We need only good teachers.

The old worn out God that Pullman refers to in His Dark Materials is Authority, where Lyra represents rebellion against Authority, and is herself partisan to friendship, love, affection, courage, loyalty, science, individuality, curiosity, and finally self abnegation for the sake of others.
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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
How can this famous scene..."the passage in the Gay Science, where Nietzsche writes of the madman who rushes into the marketplace and declares that God is dead"...be a declaration of atheism, when the people that the madman announces the death of god to are in fact already atheists? No, this is not what Nietzsche thinks is significant for us understand. The truth of this passage comes a little later, when the madman tells them that it us who have killed God: ‘We have killed him – you and I’.
Well, he is a madman, right? And, obviously, if there is no God, mere mortals can only "kill" Him by acknowledging that we are abandoning that which we ourselves brought into existence. And once we go down that route we are confronted with, among other things, grappling with why, in our heads, we brought Him into existence in the first place. And [of course] what there might possibly be to take His place.

And we all know what Nietzsche "thought up" here in his head. And look around...there are plenty of fulminating fanatic objectivists in the secular camp. All insisting that, in the absence of God, their own particular "ism" is the next best thing.

Thus...
And yet, even though we are the murderers of God we still have no idea of what a universe without God, without any values really means, because as such we still cling to the ideal world even though it is absent. It is not enough to negate values, because then all you are left with is negativity, and negation is dependent on the very thing that it negates. I say that I don’t believe in God, but paradoxically this non-belief is just as much dependent on the idea of God, as the belief in God is, for without the idea of God how would it be possible to be an atheist. We have to get beyond both the belief and non belief. We have to get, to use a title to one of Nietzsche’s books, Beyond Good and Evil.
In other words, for each and every one of us as unique individuals...whatever that means?

What does it mean to you? For me of course whatever it does come to mean for each of us will revolve around dasein. Suggesting that, once again, in a No God world, there does not appear to be a way to determine what it ought to mean...pinning down the most rational assessment of what in fact it does mean.

Philosophically? Politically? Naturally?
The real source of nihilism is negation, and therefore to understand nihilism we have to understand negation, or what Nietzsche we call negative will to power. There two sources of values for Nietzsche in the world: reactive and active. Nihilism in all its forms is reactive, and this is precisely the reason why Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be nihilism, for it is against reactive will to power that it is written.
Your negation or mine? Mine still comes back to No God. No God and no transcending font. No transcending font and no Judgment Day. No Judgment Day and we mere mortals, utterly lacking in both omniscience and omnipotence, are on our own.

But: if we can invent religion, we can invent Humanism too. Our own Reasons. Our own Vices and Virtues.

As opposed to theirs.

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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
The real source of nihilism is negation, and therefore to understand nihilism we have to understand negation, or what Nietzsche we call negative will to power. There two sources of values for Nietzsche in the world: reactive and active. Nihilism in all its forms is reactive, and this is precisely the reason why Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be nihilism, for it is against reactive will to power that it is written.
Once again, another "general description intellectual contraption": The "negative will to power", "active or reactive will to power."

You tell me how the author's point here is applicable to your own life. Note for me a set of circumstances in which some would insist on acting/reacting one way, while others will be equally adamant it is, instead, another way altogether.

And then, nestling down all the more in a scholastic assessment...
Nietzsche’s critique of morality is that in fact it is secondary. Morality presents itself as a disinterested objective valuation of the world, but underneath it is just another form of will to power: the desire for self preservation, even if that means dominating others.
Given what actual historical, cultural and uniquely personal/interpersonal context? And, given what particular understanding in such contests, of where to make a distinction, to draw the line between "I" and We"? Morality here as a "disinterested objective valuation of the world"? When on Earth has that ever been the case? All of this [to me] precipitates profoundly problematic narratives from each of us as individuals. What you construe to be a "desire for self-preservation" or "dominating others" or what I do? Or what others here do?

Again and again and again: given what context?
All morality is hypocritical, not because it is false or wrong, which would be too simplistic, since all human beings live by values, even if the supreme value in our age might be to value nothing, but because it presents itself as though it were not of this world, above petty politics and striving, objective and absolutely true.
Now this, even as a "general description intellectual contraption", certainly seems rational and realistic to me. And, indeed, by focusing in on a "situation" -- something fiercely debated "in the news" -- I think it is reasonable and realistic for one to subscribe to "situational ethics".

That, in other words, it is the moral objectivists among us who embrace their own dogmatic value judgments as though they did float above the world encompassed in the actual history of human interaction to date.

Just note your own God, your own Ideology, your own School of Philosophy, your own assessment of Nature.

Then in your own "world of words" define and defend them as the One True Path.

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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Nietzsche is not criticising values in general, but reactive values, and it is these values that have led to the nihilism of the West. Having negated the world, and seen nothing positive in it, it has ended up with the ultimate negation of destroying itself.
Got that? Okay, then explain it to us in regard to your own behaviors of late.

From Oxford Reference website:
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (and after him French philosopher Gilles Deleuze) used these categories to describe two different ways of acting and—by extension—being in the world. An action (which may be a thought, feeling, or practice) is active when it takes something as its object; conversely, it becomes reactive when it is made the object of someone or something else. Thus, if we feel sad (or happy) and we do not know why we feel this way, then we are reactive; if, however, we can discover the reason we are feeling this way, we can convert reactive forces into active forces. Reactive is not the same as negative and should not be thought of as intrinsically bad; it is, rather, the usual state of things. It is, however, a limiting state of things, because it separates us from what we can do—if we are sad for no apparent reason, and we do not seek out the cause, then we are prevented from forming an appropriate response to that cause, and our power to act is reduced. We are reacting when we could be acting, and more problematically still we are using our reaction to excuse our lack of action. Nietzsche generally refers to this state as ressentiment. Therefore, the challenge for both philosophy and life, according to Nietzsche, is to overcome the reactive state of things and become active, thereby constantly enhancing our power to act.
Does that clear things up for you?

Of course, it's preposterous to criticize "values in general" because human interactions without values amounts to no interactions at all. We all value different things. We have to. Otherwise what would motivate any behaviors at all.

Instead, the truly dramatic elements throughout human history revolve by and large around interactions in which we mere mortals clash over what some insist we ought to value while others insist that we ought not to value those things at all, but other things.

Then, staying up in the clouds of abstraction...
Active and reactive values describe the relations of dominance and subordination. What is reactive is always a response to what is active. It subordinates itself to more dominating forces. But it is important to realise that this subordination is not an absence of power. It is just as much an expression of power, Nietzsche believes, to dominate as subordinate oneself. In the second case, one obtains power by accommodating and regulating oneself to the status quo. This is exactly how the power of modern societies operates. It is the power of adaptation and utility, and those who are better adapted have more power, and those who refuse to adapt, conform and fall into line, have little or no power. Be like everyone else, or else! This is the motto of our societies, and our schools and universities are nothing but machines to produce this submission.
On the other hand, around the globe there must be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of very different social, political and economic contexts where this "general description intellectual contraption" can, to any particular individual, mean practically anything.

That's why I ask, "what's it mean to you?" given a specific situation where you are either active or reactive in choosing your behaviors.

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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Because our societies, or perhaps society itself, is essentially reactive, it is much harder to describe what active forces are. One thing that we do know is that they must be first, because without active forces, there would not be any reactive, for what would they be reacting against?
How about this then: "we'll need a context."

Someone noting what they construe to be an example of an "active force" in society today. The pandemic? MAGA/QAnon? BLM? The war in Ukraine?

Lots of reactions to them of course. But what never changes is that, however we distinguish action from reaction here, there are almost always going to be fierce conflicts regarding the right actions to take and the right reactions to them.

Me: dasein. You? Let's explore it.
This is the first step away from nihilism.
Or, in fact, towards it. Depending on whether the discussion revolves more around ends or means.
For nihilism says that what is first is negation. But this is precisely how reactive forces speak: negate! What is active, on the contrary, is what is creative, what imposes forms and dominates. Its first word is not negate, but create, and what one must first create is oneself beyond the reactive forces of society.
Again, though, given what context? For some, what they deem to be active behaviors others deem to be reactive behaviors to their own active behaviors. We create, you negate. Each side has their own set of accusations regarding things like "politically correct", "woke", "cancel culture", "fake news." And it's not for nothing that these fanatics embrace objectivism in regard to the ends and nihilism in regard to the means. Just follow the news for a few weeks.
Again simply to negate society, and the values implicit within it, is not enough, for this is to be dependent on the values of the very society one despises, and have negated it all that one is left with is a black hole. The point is to create new values that leap beyond the negative values of society. This is what Nietzsche calls the ‘Dionysian power’.
And how is this all that far removed from the thesis/anthesis generating a new synthesis becoming the new thesis folks? Hegel as the idealist, Marx as the materialist. Action/reaction all the way down.

Ever and always predicated on objectivism.

But then that's where "I" come in, isn't it?

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popeye1945
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Re: moral relativism

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Moral relativism spells disharmony to a global community/the global village, religion needs to be based upon the sacredness of the world and one's own biology. The one thing all life forms have in common is common carbon-based biology. A human moral system/tradition needs to be based on our commonality which is our common biology and its common experiences, anything less is missing the mark.
Last edited by popeye1945 on Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Walker
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Re: moral relativism

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popeye1945 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:05 am Moral relativism spells disharmony to a global community/the global village, religion needs to be based upon the sacredness of the world and one's own biology. The one thing all life forms have in common is common carbon-based biology. A human moral system/tradition needs to be based on our commonality which our common biology and its common experiences, anything less is missing the mark.
Suffering is an experience common to everyone. This is why Buddha used the concept of suffering as a touchstone to teach about the nature of mind, which is not suffering.
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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Perhaps the best way to understand this [Dionysian] power is through the distinction Nietzsche makes between Dionysus and Jesus. The life of Jesus, as those who have seen Gibson’s film The Passion know, is a life that is the justification of suffering and which makes of life itself something that causes suffering and which must be justified and legitimated as suffering.
One thing few will deny. If you are a human being then, one way or another, you will become well acquainted with suffering. Your own or the suffering of those you love. And sometimes this suffering comes at you and at them from all directions. And sometimes it seethes and surges to the point where you or they can't take it anymore. So, in order to end the suffering, some put an end to life itself. Roll the dice and take their chances on "the other side".

If there is one.

So, it's not for nothing that some religious paths will concoct someone or something in the general vicinity of Jesus Christ. He's there to make your suffering...necessary? To give it "transcending" meaning. To link it to immortality and salvation.

And suffering in a No God world?

Well, that can get trickier. Some pull no punches and cut right to the chase: that human suffering is no less essentially meaningless and purposeless than human joy. We do what we can to minimize it but, when, in situations that are largely "beyond my control", we do what we can as mere mortals to deal with it.
This must be distinguished from Dionysus, or at least what this Greek god represents for Nietzsche. Here life does not need to be justified, and even if there is pain, then this is a justified part of life. It does not have to be paid for somewhere else, as in the suffering of Jesus, for example. Life does not need to be redeemed, for this is nothing to be redeemed. Rather life is to be affirmed as it is.
A more or less philosophical acceptance that "shit happens". You make it as meaningful as you are able to. And, of course, some concoct secular renditions of God in order to make this meaning all the more substantial. You suffer [even die] "for the cause", "for the movement", "for the revolution".

Or for your honor. Or for the nation.

Anything, in other words, that will allow you to affirm the life you live as more than just part and parcel of the "brute facticity" embedded, in the end, in an utterly indifferent universe.

We have lots of members here who are able to do this, don't we? The One True Pathers. And for a few it's the path that Nietzsche suggested: the Übermensch.

See them swaggering before the flocks of sheep.

Here for example: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Why then is Nietzsche not a nihilist? Because the nihilist is the one who reduces life to nothing. In this sense it is the Christian or the moralist who is the nihilist. For without Jesus, or morality, life would be exactly nothing. It is because they experience life as nothing in itself that they need the extra moral or religious order above life.
Come on, as though there are not conflicting ways in which to think this through. As though nihilism includes mathematics, the laws of nature, the empirical world around us and the rules of logic in "reducing life down to nothing". Actually, in regard to value judgments, religious and secular objectivists are, in fact, "for all practical purposes" anything but nihilists. In their interactions with others, others toe the line. Or else.

What does it even mean to "experience life as nothing in itself"?
The modern nihilist is merely the believer without, God, the Christian without Jesus, the moraliser without morals.
Even here this is always a matter of degree. The distinction is always between essential, so-called "universal meaning" said to be applicable to all of us, and intersubjective existential meaning evolving over time historically and culturally. Not all nihilists are "fractured and fragmented" as I am.
They are left with the negation of the world, but simply have no belief system to replace religion, morality and philosophy.
"Negation of the world". Another classic intellectual contraption that can mean practically anything. You tell me what it means to you given your own day to day interactions with others.

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popeye1945
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Re: moral relativism

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Nihilism can only be seen as the utter meaninglessness of the physical world in and of itself, in other words, the physical world is meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, for biology is the measure and meaning of all things. The other possible meaning is that an individual sees no meaning, no value in the continuation of his life. Being that the source of all meaning is biological the individual sees this out of the core of his being. Belief in something not of this world could be termed pathological, belief without evidence, belief without experience of, there would necessarily be no way for biology to extract meaning from the immaterial.
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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

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Nietzsche and Moral Nihilism
Dr W Large
Without God life is meaningless. But this means that Christianity has to prove that life without God is meaningless. Now that God is dead, all we are left with is the meaningless of life.
Let's go to the dictionary:

Meaningful: having a serious, important, or useful quality or purpose.

Does anyone here...either alone or in interacting with others given any number of different contexts...engage in meaningful experiences from day to day? Do these experiences acquire meaning only because you believe in God?

Existential meaning let's call it.

No, instead, what is meant by meaningless in a No God world is that without God [or one or another religious and spiritual path] there does not appear to be a way in which to assess your experiences as essentially meaningful. Meaningful in the sense that all rational and virtuous people are obligated to find them meaningful; and meaningful in the sense that after you are dead and gone from this side of the grave, the meaning continues on for all of eternity on the other side of it.

And most Christians will scoff at the idea of proving anything in regard to the Lord. They have taken their leap of faith to Him and that need be as far as it goes.
All that could happen in the future is that we would get new beliefs (capitalism, nationalism) that would simply cover over this the death of God.
And, of course, that is precisely what many have done. They have shifted their objectivist font from the sacred to the secular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

Not relevant much beyond the grave perhaps but at least you've got something in the way of an "identity politics" from which to divide up the world properly between "one of us" [the good guys] and "one of them" [the bad guys].

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popeye1945
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Re: moral relativism

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The physical world is meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, thus it is up to the individual to bestow meaning upon the world and thus create a meaningful life for that same said, individual. To attempt an escape from this reality is just an absence of courage called theology.
Belinda
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Re: moral relativism

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popeye1945 wrote: Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:32 am The physical world is meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, thus it is up to the individual to bestow meaning upon the world and thus create a meaningful life for that same said, individual. To attempt an escape from this reality is just an absence of courage called theology.
Very much in accordance with Sartrean authenticity. However I do believe there is a version of deity which is not regimented into religions.

It's a matter of history that religions have been the main bearers of the Axial Age moral message, but this is not a sufficient justification for religions as religions have been mightily divisive.
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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

Post by iambiguous »

popeye1945 wrote: Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:32 am The physical world is meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, thus it is up to the individual to bestow meaning upon the world and thus create a meaningful life for that same said, individual. To attempt an escape from this reality is just an absence of courage called theology.
I agree. I just take it further.

To reject religion and theology as the font for moral objectivism and to substitute instead a secular philosophical or political rendition is to lack the courage to face an essentially meaningless and purposeless world in which, in the end, each of us tumbles over fractured and fragmented into the abyss that is oblivion.

Fortunately, however, I have no way in which to demonstrate that this is in fact true.

But, here and now, it sure seems to be.
Belinda
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Thu Oct 27, 2022 5:10 pm
popeye1945 wrote: Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:32 am The physical world is meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject, thus it is up to the individual to bestow meaning upon the world and thus create a meaningful life for that same said, individual. To attempt an escape from this reality is just an absence of courage called theology.
I agree. I just take it further.

To reject religion and theology as the font for moral objectivism and to substitute instead a secular philosophical or political rendition is to lack the courage to face an essentially meaningless and purposeless world in which, in the end, each of us tumbles over fractured and fragmented into the abyss that is oblivion.

Fortunately, however, I have no way in which to demonstrate that this is in fact true.

But, here and now, it sure seems to be.
There is no need for religion and theology for meaning to happen. All that it takes for meaning to happen is caring about what happens.

Morality is a subsection of meaning . Varieties of morality are subsections of morality. Most people here believe the individual is the basic unit of moral concern.
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