The Tao Of Nietzsche

[Stosh]

_{Bubbles seems to indicate that a persons will to power is a paradigm of self discovered fulfillment versus and exteriorly generated paradigm of the church.}

_{One can say there is a difference there , but Fred is re writing the gospels from his own view ,, thats fine but , then one has a new set of gospels , the 'gospels according to Fred' .}

_{If he had just said that the other guys stuff was all BS and that one had to work out a personally generated paradigm in order to best fit ones mind to ones world I wouldnt see any irony in it.}

_{However he isnt here giving anything more than opinion and assertion- to the bad effect that the religious institutions have, versus the individually generated mindsets he says are-would be, so 'wonderful' ,,}

_{If the world isnt covered-populated with his supermen , his paradigm doesnt work very often.}

_{If it does work well..Who would these supermen be, ? so enlightened by praxis. The third reich?}

 

_{It makes fine sense to me to say that within human endeavor is a drive to harmonize the world around us to the world within us , a self-fulfilling praxis. But the idea that there are no external-objective items is philosophical babble, and his livingroom chairs werent a figment of his "will to power."}

 

 

 

 

[Bubbles]

_{Bubbles seems to indicate that a persons will to power is a paradigm of self discovered fulfillment versus and exteriorly generated paradigm of the church.}

_{One can say there is a difference there , but Fred is re writing the gospels from his own view ,, thats fine but , then one has a new set of gospels , the 'gospels according to Fred' .}

_{If he had just said that the other guys stuff was all BS and that one had to work out a personally generated paradigm in order to best fit ones mind to ones world I wouldnt see any irony in it.}

_{However he isnt here giving anything more than opinion and assertion- to the bad effect that the religious institutions have, versus the individually generated mindsets he says are-would be, so 'wonderful' ,,}

_{If the world isnt covered-populated with his supermen , his paradigm doesnt work very often.}

_{If it does work well..Who would these supermen be, ? so enlightened by praxis. The third reich?}

 

_{It makes fine sense to me to say that within human endeavor is a drive to harmonize the world around us to the world within us , a self-fulfilling praxis. But the idea that there are no external-objective items is philosophical babble, and his livingroom chairs werent a figment of his "will to power."}

 

Every sacred text in every tradition can be interpretated in various levels. In this regard, what Nieztsche did was just offering a level of interpretation according to his own philosophical presupposition. Remember that he was first a philologist and and he perfectly knew what an interpretation is. He clearly stated that there was no truth in the absolute meaning of it, just interpretations according to one's life settings and values ( look at what GmP quotes from Genealogy of morality). His way of reading the Gospels is just that. They are not Nietzsche 's new Gospels but the Gospels according to Nietzsche.

 

To him- and you can call that an opinion or assertion if you want- Life should be/is the ultimate criterion because the values are all deriving from it and everything we do/think come from it. We can accept this assumption or not, but it is the basis of his whole philosophy.

 

Supermen are exceptions in our world because our world is the product of an historical sequence that originated from Socrates and the morbid relation to Life he set up. Nietzsche said he wanted to go back to the pre-socratics. What Socrates/Plato initiated, it being reinforced by the priests and by the middle-class democracy values ,has generated into our nihilistic world. So supermen are necessarily an exception to the rule in our nihilistic world.

 

The third Reich is not at all something that Niezsche would have wanted. Because the Supermen are a type of men unrelated to any class, race. Niezsche was not antisemit. His works ( the Will to power book) have been falsified by his sister and brother in law to fit nazi ideology.

 

The idea that there is nothing objective is not to be taken in the sense that the world out there is not real, but in the sense that we won't be able to find what the living roon chair is in itself/by itself because there is no real objective truth to be found. To make it short and somewhat caricatural, this idea of objective world came from Plato's distinction between appearances aka 'sensible world' and reality aka 'ideas world' and then confirmed with some adjustments by Kant's distinction between phenomenom (the world as it appears to our mind) and noumenon (the world as it is).

Objective truth is, according to Nieztsche, something that has been set up by the herd lead by the scientists who use reason, logic as counter-power to Life, impose moral/epistemological values on it in order to control it. What the living room chair is, is the meaning it has for you as an individual . This meaning is to be found either in how the very Life that permeates and sustains your being relates to this object or either in the dominant meaning you adopted from the group you belong to. Apart from that the living room chair is nothing objective.

 

I am sorry, my command of English language is limited so I may not be able to explain what I want in a meaningful way

Edited December 26, 2012 by bubbles

[Marblehead]

I am sorry, my command of English language is limited so I may not be able to explain what I want in a meaningful way

You did pretty darned well, IMO.

[Bubbles]

Thanks for all your kind words, Marblehead.

 

Edited to add 'all'

Edited December 26, 2012 by bubbles

[Stosh]

Thanks for all that explanation , It is well said.

I need to consider it in the light of what I am reading of Freds ( which was really bumming me out on his opinion)

I dont agree with Fred on several counts, but at least it looks less like a handbook for sociopaths.

In one place he says outright that his goal is not always to be understood , in essence ,self- jealous that "his" ideas should be scooped up by others who didnt generate them etc

He almost seems to go out of his own way to throw negative light on his own propositions ( if your gentler interp is correct).

 

The big thing I am still not getting is what his purpose is supposed to be towards his readership, essentially

what is the superman?

is it supposed to be an ideal , a role model?

is it a hopeful description of what the German people were destined for ?

Is it another Sage?

 

I consider Laos 'sage' a literary device to convey point - is 'superman' similar?

 

contentious part follows

 

Nihilism (pron.: /ˈnaɪ.ɨlɪzəm/ or /ˈniː.ɨlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.^[1]Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological or metaphysical/ontological forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that reality does not actually exist.

 

Going by this definition it appears Neitzsche IS a nihilist himself

he is against objective meaning to life

he contends morality is a man made construct

and that knowlege of external realities cannot be known

so how can he be against societies nihilism? (and instead promotes the superman worldview)

 

Maybe his opinions were mis-used by his relatives ,maybe

but we have a saying that if the shoe fits, wear it.

That shoe sure does look like a good fit as a philosophical underpinning for Nazi propaganda.

Simply saying he wasnt anti semitic doesnt remove all the comments about the stereotype 'differences' between the northern and southern peoples. etc

I can easily chalk up the reasonably nice assessment of Jesus as placating Christian readership (because he does say Jesus failed- in the end -on the cross.)

That cross symbol was long used as derogatory symbology for christians with the meaning being that -jesus failed and died -( till they negated that use by adopting the symbol as representing sacrifice)

BUT

Ill have to check exactly which ideas were presented in the will to power book

Edited December 26, 2012 by Stosh

[Bubbles]

The superman comes up from fully acknowledging and drawing the necessary practical conclusions (from Life viewpoint) from the Death of God. The superman is the one who decides to be equal to the task to live a life where there is no God. When there is no God anymore, there is no external/transcendent morality, the reference point of humanity is no longer the ‘good’ man ( the man who lives a moral life in accordance with the priests morality).Since the priests morality operating mode was to eliminate some part of life features identified as bad, dangerous etc.., removing it means that the superman will be a man who integrates all life contradictions within its being.

 

“the supreme man would be the one who has the greater diversity of instincts, and those with the greater intensity within the limits of what is bearable. In fact: where the man-plant appears strong, we find some instincts that oppose powerfully (for eg Shakespeare), but under control.” Posthumous fragments, X, 27 ( translation by me, with my limited skills)

 

According to Nietzsche, the superman type has never probably existed. Some men have come close to it. Nietzsche admire Shakespeare, Hafiz, Cesar Borgia, Napoleon, Goethe for eg but these are only prefigurations of the superman, kind of models for lack of real examples. As you can see, the superman is not a German feature. It goes beyond nationality.

 

I am not sure, the sage ideal can fit the superman ideal. The sage seems to me be too lukewarm to fit the superman figure.

 

About Nihilism:

Nietzsche was not nihilistic in so far as going beyond good an evil is something different than nullifying good and evil. Our nihilistic times are those in which morality can’t do the trick anymore (because God is dead) but we don’t have anything in replacement. We are at a loss: people can’t find any operative values, all our past ideals have become dead. Of course the morbid ideals (Church etc) were life destructive but at least there were ideals. Now that they have become ineffective, there are no ideals anymore. The nihilistic man is not capable of creating any new values, he doesn’t strive towards a greater life intensity (which is the real purpose of the will to power) but he takes pleasure in a dozing happiness, in a life becoming weaker and weaker.

 

Life is what is feeling itself. The more intensively Life feels itself the more Life is alive. Being alive is the purpose of Life, but not only to maintain itself but to develop this aliveness to a even greater intensity. This is the core of the will-to-power. The will to power is not firstly the will to dominate, but the will to more vital power. This feeling-itself feature requires that Life bears and endures the feeling (singular on purpose here, not a misspelling) when it grows and become more intense because at some point intense pleasure is also intense pain, intense aliveness brings intense sensitivity. Life at its highest point is overabundance of itself and then has no choice but to give itself gratuitously. This gratuitous giving of itself is what for eg, great artists, creators are capable of. Not every life can do that. In each individual life, there is a tendency to avoid this and this is exactly when life begins to turn against itself. This is what Nietzsche calls ‘morbidity’. The strong are those who can endure and bear the feeling of being more and more alive without trying to escape in fabricated ideals that negates or deadens life. So Nietzsche is not nihilistic, he is promoting values: the values he is promoting are those of Life. And the values of Life are immanent, they don’t come from something external to Life itself. The fact that he negates objective values doesn’t mean there are no values. Subjective values are those of Life and there is no equalitarian relativism in it ( which is what nihilism is about).

 

As for his relationship with Nazism I’ll leave it to you to make your own opinion after some research on the subject. I am not here to support Nietzsche, but I do think that the case is complicated because one has to take into account his outrageous and exaggerated style of writing, which was entirely part of his philosophical project and has to be included in any interpretation we make of his works.

Edited December 27, 2012 by bubbles

[GrandmasterP]

Fred does sort of approach stasis, albeit subtly.

That example of the great birds of prey and the lambs they prey on.

Fred posits the system those creatures inhabit as 'thus and so' , that's just how things are.

It's the differing viewpoints of the birds of prey and the lambs within that natural order that he has fun imagining and presenting for our delectation.

He was quite the joker at times was old Fred. Seriously funny guy.

 

[Marblehead]

That example of the great birds of prey and the lambs they prey on.

Fred posits the system those creatures inhabit as 'thus and so' , that's just how things are.

It's the differing viewpoints of the birds of prey and the lambs within that natural order that he has fun imagining and presenting for our delectation.

Chuang Tzu speaks to this often as well. That is what caused me to start this thread in the first place. (The naturalness of all things.) (Yes, bad for the lamb, good for the bird. Nature's way is beyond good and evil.)

[GrandmasterP]

Absolutely and reading sentiment into nature is human but ultimately futile.

 

I love that last line in Camus' ... L'Etranger....

 

"... and so, I surrendered myself to the sublime indifference of the universe".

[Marblehead]

"... and so, I surrendered myself to the sublime indifference of the universe".

Indeed, IMO we all need do this at some point in our life. And the sooner the better. (But "we" can still make a difference, small though it might be.)

[GrandmasterP]

I surrendered years ago mate.

:-)

No point fighting a losing battle.

[Stosh]

I am not sure, the sage ideal can fit the superman ideal. The sage seems to me be too lukewarm to fit the superman figure.

 

 

This point closest adresses the OP so , Ill proceed from here.

Would I be correct in saying that this difference in self expression is at sharp contradiction with considering Neitzsche to be a Taoist?

 

(The Sage of Lao reins himself in , in order to come to a harmony with the natural forces and living things around himself,even to the extent of negating his own ego-identity, whereas the Uberman endlessly extends himself to ,and exerts himself on, that which is around him ,,drawing vitality thereby. Though they both do not look to gods for either spiritual guidance or succour .)

Edited December 27, 2012 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

Hi Stosh,

 

Bubbles will likely do much better than I at responding to this but I want to voice my understanding.

 

No, Nietzsche would not be a Laoist. But I believe that he would be a Chuangist. Both are obvious anarchists. Neither seem to find much value in religion and most rites. I actually prefer Chuang Tzu's view that there really is nothing to over-come. But I think both would lean strongly toward self-expression.

[Bubbles]

Bubbles will likely do much better than I at responding to this but I want to voice my understanding.

 

No, Nietzsche would not be a Laoist. But I believe that he would be a Chuangist. Both are obvious anarchists. Neither seem to find much value in religion and most rites. I actually prefer Chuang Tzu's view that there really is nothing to over-come. But I think both would lean strongly toward self-expression.

 

Hi Marblehead,

 

This is a huge but very interesting task.

It takes time to develop what you already wrote and I am not sure I would do better than you anyway.

 

Will see it later

[Bubbles]

I am not sure, the sage ideal can fit the superman ideal. The sage seems to me be too lukewarm to fit the superman figure.

 

 

This point closest adresses the OP so , Ill proceed from here.

Would I be correct in saying that this difference in self expression is at sharp contradiction with considering Neitzsche to be a Taoist?

 

It looks to me that there is no straight or easy answer to this. Following Marblehead suggestion, we can try having a closer look at how Nieztsche and Chuang-tseu views can meet and separate. For sure, Nietzsche is not a taoist stricto sensu, but there is a lot in common between Nieztsche and Taoism.

 

For a start:

 

We find at the beginning of the §354 of Nietzsche's Gay Science the following:

 

'The problem of consciousness (or more correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and zoology (which have thus required two centuries to over take the hint thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel, will, and recollect, we could likewise "act" in every sense of the term, and nevertheless nothing of it all need necessarily "come into consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as in fact even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without this mirroring, and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well, however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher.

 

and we can compare it with what we find in the famous chapter III of Chuang-tzu ( translation B.Watson) about the cook Ting:

 

 

"Cook ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. AZt every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee- zip! Zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as tough he were performing the dance of the mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music

"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now - now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

"A good cook changes his knife once a year-because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month-because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room - more than enough for the blade to play about it. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

"However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until - flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."

"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!

 

Chuang-tzu shows how one can upgrade from the human level to the celestial level (sage). At first the cook is overly-conscious of what he is doing, he acts intentionnaly, using his personal will. Then, three years later, he was better at it, but still encountered difficulties, and finally, he find the ox by spirit and doesn't look at it with his eyes_ implying by that that he disconnected his actions from his consciousness. His activity comes from within, from the deeper and obscure part of himself. Now, we should notice that at times, he says that he needs to be careful at what he is doing. Counsciousness comes up when one is encountering obstacles. Its function is to help temporarily when the situation requires it but then can vanish

 

In Nietzsche quote, we have a similar take on it. Consciousness is secondary in the course of life. Life doesn't need it to operate and produce actions.

 

To live at our fullest, we just need to allow all its resources, forces etc act spontaneously.

,

In chapter 23, Chuang-tzu:

 

"Not yet! Just a moment ago I said to you, 'can you be a baby?' The baby acts without knowing what it is doing, moves without knowing where it is going. Its body is like the limb of a withered tree, its mind like dead ashes. Since it is so, no bad fortune will ever touch it, and no good fortune will come to it either. And if it is free from good and bad fortune, then, what human suffering can it undergo?"

 

No conscious volition can lead anyone to spontaneity. This was also Nietzsche's criticism towards the status given to consciousness by the old philosophers and the emphasis he put on the body as the real source of knowledge and wisdom.

 

'We admit here that the totality of the organism thinks, that all the organic components contribute to the thinking, the feeling, the willing, thus the brain is just a huge concentration device" ( Postumous fragments 40 translated by me)

 

To be continued

Edited December 28, 2012 by bubbles

[Marblehead]

To be continued

What I have read here by both, to me are perfect examples of "wu wei".

[GrandmasterP]

I wonder?

My reading, which is partial and opinionated for sure but here it is....

Fred seems to me to be saying...'Be the best bird of prey you can be, work at it; get to really know your prey... empathise a bit, even".

That's not Wu Wei or is it?

[Marblehead]

I wonder?

My reading, which is partial and opinionated for sure but here it is....

Fred seems to me to be saying...'Be the best bird of prey you can be, work at it; get to really know your prey... empathise a bit, even".

That's not Wu Wei or is it?

I am sure that there are many who would disagree with me but here goes.

 

In order to attain the state of wu wei one must be self-assured within their environment. What is the best way to be secure? By having no fear of anything that might occur around you. And how does one attain such a condition? By being the best they can possibly be. The best grass eater so that you are strong and can evade the preditor. By being the best preditor so that you don't have to worry where your next meal will be coming from.

 

Even the Sage who begs for alms needs to be the best begger around so that his/her needs are quickly satisfied so they can devote more time to helping others.

 

Eat or be eaten. I apologize for being this crude but that is life in the real world.

[GrandmasterP]

I agree MH.

Maybe I have Wu Wei backasswards.

Thought it was 'not doing'

[Marblehead]

Thought it was 'not doing'

Hehehe. Belly laughs. Gotta do lots of practice before you learn the right way to do nothing.

[Stosh]

^{Ill agree to similarities and common points between them , but there is also difference}

^{In the Neitzsche excerpt the subject is conscious effort versus non-conscious behavior as it is in the Cook-Ting excerpt but the traditional view( so I have been told) of that Cook Ting story is that Ting has been enlightened to the way which guides his actions for him, his knife follows the bone and has no thickness, he is carried along by the circumstance and this is how he exemplifies the ideal , (his ego is not center stage) The Neitzsche portion doesnt appear to hold this volitionless habit as an ideal, it is merely a reflection that a great deal of our behavior doesnt require much consideration.}

^{He does say that he allows the forces to happen spontaneously but he doesnt say here what the forces are- they can be his own innate drives as much as the environment. . and its got be considered most likely that his is what he meant if the 'Uber trend' is to expand and exert. ( mind you I am just trying to operate within the context provided and am avoiding some personal conclusions,,,more later , lunchtime is ending)}

[Marblehead]

^{Ill agree to similarities and common points between them , but there is also difference}

Yeah, that's something you will have to reconcile on your own. I don't have a problem with it but then I need mention that when I did most of my reading of Nietzsche it was before I first read the TTC or Chuang Tzu.

[Bubbles]

^{Ill agree to similarities and common points between them , but there is also difference}

I agree. That's why I wrote 'to be continued' at the end of my post. I had planned to show some the differences I could see so that some balanced point of view could be reached.

 

^{In the Neitzsche excerpt the subject is conscious effort versus non-conscious behavior as it is in the Cook-Ting excerpt but the traditional view( so I have been told) of that Cook Ting story is that Ting has been enlightened to the way which guides his actions for him, his knife follows the bone and has no thickness, he is carried along by the circumstance and this is how he exemplifies the ideal , (his ego is not center stage) The Neitzsche portion doesnt appear to hold this volitionless habit as an ideal, it is merely a reflection that a great deal of our behavior doesnt require much consideration.}

 

Yes. Because one thing is to say that our will doesn't come from our consciousness, another is to say that we should be kind of volitionless. Nietzsche gives a great importance to the will, as long as it is originated from the subjective body forces. The superman is exactly the one who can contain all the contradictory forces within him without trying to suppress one. Out of this internal tension will come out something great.For eg, in his analysis of artistic creation he explains how the artist should be in a kind of ecstasy/drunkness of the mind ( as a result of the intensification of the internal forces in him) that pushes him to put of himself into the things created.

 

^{He does say that he allows the forces to happen spontaneously but he doesnt say here what the forces are- they can be his own innate drives as much as the environment. . and its got be considered most likely that his is what he meant if the 'Uber trend' is to expand and exert. ( mind you I am just trying to operate within the context provided and am avoiding some personal conclusions,,,more later , lunchtime is ending)}

 

The forces are his innate drives for sure. Actually Nietzsche doesn't buy the separation between the individuals and the environement. It has to be taken as a whole but without having/ending with a closed totality. He rooted his philosophy into an Democritean/Heraclitean viewpoint, so no One we should return to.

[Stosh]

Yeah, that's something you will have to reconcile on your own. I don't have a problem with it but then I need mention that when I did most of my reading of Nietzsche it was before I first read the TTC or Chuang Tzu.

 

I dont really need to reconcile them , I already recognize that the difference is a spiritual one. As you may have already noticed I am not of a traditional opinion regarding Lao TTC or wu wei , Im ok with a persons personal imperative , and that they can and should live to fulfill that. BUT for the purpose of discussion here I need to look at this from a more standard perspective , and from there it is quite obvious to me that Ting the butcher is hardly the Uberman ideal of Neitzsche as described so far.

And neither is Jesus a practioner of wei wu wei.

 

The general message as I see it coming out of the east is that folks tend to drive themselves nuts, that we start from a stubborn confused perspective trying to maintain an ego-identity and because of it we apply force against what we might go around more easily having little flexibility. That we jump from temporary satisfactions to dissatisfaction and then back again , never finding a lasting sense of peace. So the messages of the TTC attempt to rectify those things.

 

Neitzsches Uberman ideal sounds completely contrary to the peace that the TTC appears to offer, it is the Yang- to the Yin of Lao. That no one ( I guess) ever meets this ideal isnt a big surprise since its an unending 'reach' rather than a count of ones blessings. The ideal as I personally see it is more in line with what you mentioned to me a long time ago , to do just enough- no more. Not to retreat into ones mind fearing to be of influence nor to drive for the impossible, the goal - An achievable dynamic balanced harmony between the aspirations we have and the possibilities presented to us.

 

PS your word choice 'dynamic' in the other post-thread would have improved upon my definition very nicely

Edited December 28, 2012 by Stosh

[Stosh]

I agree. That's why I wrote 'to be continued' at the end of my post. I had planned to show some the differences I could see so that some balanced point of view could be reached.

 

 

 

Yes. Because one thing is to say that our will doesn't come from our consciousness, another is to say that we should be kind of volitionless. Nietzsche gives a great importance to the will, as long as it is originated from the subjective body forces. The superman is exactly the one who can contain all the contradictory forces within him without trying to suppress one. Out of this internal tension will come out something great.For eg, in his analysis of artistic creation he explains how the artist should be in a kind of ecstasy/drunkness of the mind ( as a result of the intensification of the internal forces in him) that pushes him to put of himself into the things created.

 

 

 

The forces are his innate drives for sure. Actually Nietzsche doesn't buy the separation between the individuals and the environement. It has to be taken as a whole but without having/ending with a closed totality. He rooted his philosophy into an Democritean/Heraclitean viewpoint, so no One we should return to.

 

Thanks bubbles , I dont see anything in that there post to have issue with so Ill wish you and Mh a nice weekend and leave it till something pops up.