In all seriousness, the only people talking about "radical" are conservatives — Jackson

But the term ‘revolutionary’ is still quite
commonly used in science and philosophy. Is this different from ‘radical’?

I would never use the word "radical" to describe any philosopher. — Jackson

Who would you use it for? A scientist? Technologist? Political theorist? Are radical politics not really radical? Are Kuhn’s scientific revolutions revolutionary without being radical?

And I don't think any philosopher is history is "radical" in so far as they build on previous work. — Jackson

I dont know about that. Of course there is always a history to be referred back to , but philosophy is transformative rather than cumulative.

[

Art for art’s sake, if that’s your meaning, predates FN. — praxis

Here’s one source. Sounds like it relies on formalistic notions of art as aesthetic object. For Nietzsche the art would be in the creative act, not the formal properties of the object.

“Taken from the French, the term "l'art pour l'art," (Art for Art's Sake) expresses the idea that art has an inherent value independent of its subject-matter, or of any social, political, or ethical significance. By contrast, art should be judged purely on its own terms: according to whether or not it is beautiful, capable of inducing ecstasy or revery in the viewer through its formal qualities (its use of line, color, pattern, and so on). The concept became a rallying cry across nineteenth-century Britain and France, partly as a reaction against the stifling moralism of much academic art and wider society, with the writer Oscar Wilde perhaps its most famous champion. Although the phrase has been little used since the early twentieth century, its legacy lived on in many twentieth-century ideas concerning the autonomy of art, notably in various strains of formalism.”

“The creating of possibilities for the will on the basis of which the will to power first frees itself to itself is for Nietzsche the essence of art. In keeping with this metaphysical concept, Nietzsche does not think under the heading "art" solely or even primarily of the aesthetic realm of the artist. Art is the essence
of all willing that opens up perspectives and takes possession of them.”(Heidegger, The Word of Nietzsche).

The eternal return is a riddle. One key to reading that riddle the problem of creation. If all is eternal return then there can be no creation, but above all Zarathustra wants to create are creators. — Fooloso4

Heidegger follows Nietzsche’s thought of eternal return from Zarathustra through his last writings and concludes that will to power , eternal return and transvaluation of value form an integrated configuration:

“…will to power and eternal return of the same cohere. With what right could Nietzsche otherwise substitute the one for the other? Yet what if the will to power, according to Nietzsche's most proper and intrinsic intentions, were in itself nothing else than willing back to that which was and a willing forward to everything that has to be? What if the eternal recur­rence of the same-as occurrence-were nothing other than the will to power.” (Nietzsche Vol I and II)

“The "momentary" character of creation is the es­sence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its su­preme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence of the same.

The aptness of our interpretation is demonstrated unequivocally in that very fragment which bears the title "Recapitulation." After the statement we have already cited-"To stamp Becoming with the char­acter of Being-that is the supreme will to power''-we soon read the
following sentence: "That everything recurs is the closest approxima­tion of a world of Becoming to one of Being: peak of the meditation." It would scarcely be possible to say in a more lucid fashion, first, how and on what basis the stamping of Being on Becoming is meant to be
understood, and second, that the thought of eternal return of the same, even and precisely during the period when the thought of will to power appears to attain preeminence, remains the thought which Nietzsche's
philosophy thinks without cease. “

The eternal return is a riddle. One key to reading that riddle the problem of creation. If all is eternal return then there can be no creation, but above all Zarathustra wants to create are creators — Fooloso4

You sound like you’re not certain what to make of Nietzsche, or at least his notion of the eternal return. So let me try and approach this discussion from the top down. Do you think that Nietzsche introduced revolutionary ideas , a ‘Copernican Revolution’, into philosophy with respect to predecessors like Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer? If so, what were his most radical ideas and why do they constitute a revolution? If not , what era or group of philosophers would you place him with?

This will give me a better sense of where you are approaching his work from.

. I understand that people do sometimes ruminate over basic life decisions. But I don't consider that kind of quotidian decision making (or lack thereof) philosophy. It may be how philosophy begins and then from it an ontology and epistemology is gradually built. — Tom Storm

What about your own personal philosophy? Not sure if you have one? And even if you do, certainly not everyone has one and , more importantly, very few dip into it in order to resolve the everyday trivia of life, right?
But I would argue the contrary. Each of us walks around with an evolving personal philosophy that is referenced implicitly even with regard to the most minute aspects of life.
More importantly, each trivial rumination modifies and re-writes that personal philosophy. So if all of us are already naive philosophers, what separates w the pros from the amateurs? Not much , really, other than an overt conceptual articulation of what is implicitly going on with all of us. Why put in the effort to perform this articulation? No reason other than that for certain people this conceptualizing is the best means of getting in touch with themselves and their world. For others the best way to articulate and grow their personal philosophy may be through the language of music , poetry, dance, painting , running a business , doing science or digging ditches.

An aside - is the idea of a will to power an example of foundational thinking which FN purports to blow up? — Tom Storm

It doesn’t have to be blown up. Will to Power is already self-immolating. Heidegger says "moving out beyond itself", the "opening up and supplementing" of possibilities belongs to the essence of the Will to Power.

“Everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering, dominating, and in their turn, overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated." (Geneology of Morality)

It should be kept in mind that reading Deleuze's reading of Nietzsche is reading Deleuze not Nietzsche. — Fooloso4

Everyone is reading Nietzsche through someone else , whether that someone is themselves or another philosopher. We never have access to the ‘real’ Nietzsche. I always prefer direct quotes to secondary sources, but it is also helpful to recognize whose Nietzsche you’re embracing, either knowingly or not. Having said that , I am not simply aping Deleuze. I had developed my reading of Nietzsche before I read Deleuze. I am quoting Deleuze because he articulates well my representation of Nietzsche.
So whose Nietzsche are you reading him through? The existentialists like Kaufman?

And this slow spider which creepeth in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and thou and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things—must we not all have already existed?

—And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane—must we not eternally return?”—

I follow Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche:

“Repetition in the eternal return never means continuation, perpetuation or prolongation, nor even the dis­continuous return of something which would at least be able to be pro­longed in a partial cycle (an identity, an I, a Self) but, on the contrary, the reprise of pre-individual singularities which, in order that it can be grasped as repetition, presupposes the dissolution of all prior identities.”( Difference and Repetition)

Klossowski’s reading of Nietzsche was influential for both Deleuze and Heidegger:

“The way in which Dionysian Entriickung or rapture characterizes each phase of time and hence subverts every attempt to uncover a unified and stable horizon for time finds a parallel in Pierre Klossow­ski's interpretation of eternal return. Heidegger interprets the eternity of the moment as decision, understanding decision as the authentic appropriation of being-a-self. Yet if the self that thinks eternal return is a ceaseless going-over and going-under, how lucid can it be to itself?

Can anything like an "appropriation" occur in its thinking? Klossowski emphasizes the "ecstatic character" of Nietzsche's experi­ence of eternal recurrence. The dilemma such an experience confronts us with is that it seems as if the thought can never have occurred to us before; the one who experiences eternal return appears to attain an insight that was hitherto closed to him or her. A forgetting and remem­bering, and anamnesis, thus appear to be "the very source and indis­pensable condition" of the thought of recurrence. Riddling at the riddle of how one can stand in the moment of recurrence each mo­ment anew, Klossowski suggests that the ecstatic thinking of return must transform-if not abolish-the very identity of the thinker. " ...

I learn that I was other than I am now for having forgotten this truth, and thus I have become another by learning it. ... The accent must be placed on the loss of a given identity" . Not even the act of willing can salvage the ruined self: to will myself again implies that in all willing "nothing ever gets constituted in a single sense, once and for all". To will the eternal recurrence of the same is to don the masks of "a multitude of gods," the masks of Dionysos fragmented, "under the sign of the divine vicious circle" (102). Klossowski con­cludes as follows (I 07):

Re-willing is pure adherence to the vicious circle. To re-will the entire series one more time-to re-will every experience, all one's acts, but this time not as mine: it is precisely this possessiveness that no longer has any meaning, nor does it represent a goal. Meaning and goal are liquidated by the circle­whence the silence of Zarathustra, the interruption of his message. Unless
this interruption is a burst of laughter that bears all its own bitterness.”

. Rather than the movement from this world to the eternal heavenly afterword, the circular movement may be seen from one perspective as moving up but from another as moving down. There is no final resting point. — Fooloso4

And neither is there any repetition of the past. In this sense the eternal return of the same is a misnomer. It is, fundamentally, the eternal return of difference.

Our intellect is indeed capable of taking sides and decide which of our contradicted "drives" will preveal each time at the end.
For me that is the Will to Power that Nietzsche wanted to spread. The Will to gain Power over ourselves. The Will to drive our "drives" for our own growth. — dimosthenis9

Is this deciding in favor of growth on the part of the intellect a rational process?

We couldn't use it for our own benefit then, if it was unconscious or if it was mostly unconscious. And Nietzsche insisted that we could indeed use that tremendous Will. Making it a hammer as to sculp our Uber-versions. — dimosthenis9

Nietzsche writes that the intellect is merely the instrument of the drives:

The fact “that one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method. What is clearly the case is that in this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another drive which is a rival of the drive who vehemence is tormenting us….While ‘we' believe we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about the other; that is to say: for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence [or violence] of a drive presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is going to have to take sides.”(Daybreak)

In the Gay Science, Nietzsche considers the familiar example we have of becoming more reasonable, of “growing up.” “Something that you formerly loved as a truth or probability,” Nietzsche writes, “[now] strikes you as an error;” so you cast it off “and fancy that it represents a victory for your reason” (GS 307). But it is less a victory for reason, for your reason, than shift in the relations among the drives. “Perhaps this error was as necessary for you then,” Nietzsche continues, “when you were a different person—you are always a different person—as are all you present ‘truths'….What killed that opinion for you was your new life [that is, a new drive] and not your reason: you no longer need it, and now it collapses and unreason crawls out of it into the light like a worm. When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event; it is, at least very often, evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm—something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet” (GS 307).
3 KSA 9:6[70], 1880, as cited in Parkes, p. 292 and p. 447, note 34

.And that constant effort to rule over them by the power of Will, is what goes us further. Ruling over them is what grows us bigger, "transforms" us to Ubermensch. — dimosthenis9

As long as we keep in mind that Will to Power is itself a drive. As such it does not return to the ego a command over the will, as if the ego is only at the mercy of unconscious drives, but consciously rules
over them via will to power. Will to power is just as unconscious as all other drives. In fact, all drives are already drives for power. Our central Will to Power is just whatever particular drive happens to dominate the others at any given time.

I think we have had this conversation before. I have not read enough of his work to say; but if I did, do you think we would agree in our interpretation of his interpretation? — Fooloso4

We probably would if you are comfortable with postmodern readings of him.

To what extent they believe their own mythologies is a deep and interesting question. The eternal return, for example — Fooloso4

Or you could look at the eternal return this way:

“But the eternal return must not be understood simply as a doctrine in Nietzsche's philosophy. Rather, the eternal return was first of all a lived experience, which was revealed to Nietzsche in Sils-Maria, high in the Swiss Alps, in August of 1881, and experienced as an impulse, an intensity, a high tonality of the soul—and indeed as the highest possible tonality of the soul. But for this reason, the eternal return, as a lived experience, as a drive, was fundamentally incommunicable, or was communicable only on the condition of being fundamentally falsified. For was this not the result of all the Nietzschean analyses we have just examined—namely, that the drives find an expression in consciousness and in language only on the condition of being fundamentally inverted and falsified, reduced to what is common and average?”

Dan W Smith, Nietzsche and the Limits of Subjectivity: The Theory of the Drives

Have you read Deleuze? Do you think he is a good interpreter of Nietzsche?

I think we have discussed it again at another thread about Nietzsche at the past.
Yeah, more or less,and with awareness of the impact that his Ego has on others too, I would add. But if I remember well, you had a different opinion. — dimosthenis9

Yes, this was my opinion:

Dan W Smith writes:
“… for Nietzsche, it is our drives that interpret the world, that are perspectival—and not our egos, not our conscious opinions. All of us, as individuals, contain within ourselves “a vast confusion of contradictory drives” (WP 259), such that we are, as Nietzsche liked to say, multiplicities, and not unities. Nietzsche’s point is not that I have a different perspective on the world than you; it is rather that each of us has multiple perspectives on
the world within ourselves because of the multiplicity of our drives—drives that are often contradictory among themselves.”

Moreover, these drives are in a constant struggle or combat with each other: my drive to smoke and get my nicotine rush is in combat with (but also coexistent with) my drive to quit. This is where Nietzsche first developed his concept of the will to power—at the level of the drives. “Every drive is a kind of lust to rule,” he writes, “each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm” (WP 481)

That something that Nietzsche wanted people to believe in, is their very own selves. And the tremendous potential that all of us have. — dimosthenis9

What do you suppose the ‘self’ meant to Nietzsche? A unitary self-aware ego? Or a disjunctive community of warring drives?

Nietzsche inverts this. Instead of the mythical philosopher who possesses divide knowledge, a god, Dionysus, is a true philosopher, that is, one who desires but does not possess wisdom. In place of the fixed world of being is the changing world of becoming. But here too the philosophers are commanders and lawgivers (see above The Philosophers) — Fooloso4

Let’s bring this down to earth a bit. Do you think Nietzsche can be called an atheist? And what is left of the notion of religion if the ‘Good’ is incoherent or irrational? That is, if there can be no concept of good transcendent to contingent, local and relative cultural formations. Don’t you think Nietzsche’s concept of the drives in relation to knowledge is crucial here?

What does it mean to ‘know’ for Nietzsche? Isn’t this just an expression of a drive? You make it sound as our knowledge is limited in the face of all ther is to know , as if knowledge were a matter of correctness of representation with respect to a n empirical world

What he encouraged was recognizing that the ‘something’ one believes in is always transforming itself into something new, so it is the endless movement , the eternal return of the same movement , that he sees as fundamental
— Joshs

Why is this important to him? — Tom Storm

We have to begin by understanding the relation between the drives, values and knowledge for Nietzsche.
All knowledge is perspectival, and all perspective are drives.

Dan W Smith writes:
“… for Nietzsche, it is our drives that interpret the world, that are perspectival—and not our egos, not our conscious opinions. All of us, as individuals, contain within ourselves “a vast confusion of contradictory drives” (WP 259), such that we are, as Nietzsche liked to say, multiplicities, and not unities. Nietzsche’s point is not that I have a different perspective on the world than you; it is rather that each of us has multiple perspectives on
the world within ourselves because of the multiplicity of our drives—drives that are often contradictory among themselves.”

Moreover, these drives are in a constant struggle or combat with each other: my drive to smoke and get my nicotine rush is in combat with (but also coexistent with) my drive to quit. This is where Nietzsche first developed his concept of the will to power—at the level of the drives. “Every drive is a kind of lust to rule,” he writes, “each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm” (WP 481)

It is the tension between our drives that produces
creativity , the creation of new ‘gods’ from the sublimation of old drives.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche presents a famous fable explaining the transition from polytheism to monotheism (or what he elsewhere calls “monoto-theism”): when one of the gods declared himself to be the only god (the monotheistic god), the other gods (the gods of polytheism) laughed and laughed and slapped their knees and rocked in their chairs—until finally they laughed themselves to death! Polytheism died of laughter.”

Who are you quoting in these four paragraphs. And why? If one takes to heart what Nietzsche says about idle readers then reliance on secondary sources, while helpful, should always be secondary. And to not cite sources is understandable if it is an oversight, but inexcusable when it is one's standard practice. — Fooloso4

Sorry it wasnt clear, but I meant to attribute these paragraphs to Nietzsche in BG&E, which is why I began my comment with: ‘In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that religion has value as a means to an end , but not as sovereign.’

People need something to believe in, something to follow. — Fooloso4

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche argues that religion has value as a means to an end , but not as sovereign. That is , not for its own sake, such as being something for people to believe in. For instance, it is valuable as a tool for rulers to control and pacify others. And asceticism can be used as a tool by rulers for controlling their own will in order to overcome certain drives and values. But nirvana or religious godliness should not be the goal.

“For people who are strong, independent, prepared, and predestined for command, people who come to embody the reason and art of a governing race, religion is an additional means of overcoming resistances, of being able to rule. It binds the ruler together with the ruled, giving and handing the consciences of the ruled over to the rulers – which is to say: handing over their hidden and most interior aspect, and one which would very much like to escape obedience. And if individuals from such a noble lineage are inclined, by their high spirituality, towards a retiring and contemplative life, reserving for themselves only the finest sorts of rule (over exceptional young men or monks), then religion can even be used as a means of securing calm in the face of the turmoil and tribu-lations of the cruder forms of government, and purity in the face of the necessary dirt of politics. This is how the Brahmins, for instance, understood the matter. With the help of a religious organization, they as-sumed the power to appoint kings for the people, while they themselves kept and felt removed and outside, a people of higher, over-kingly tasks.

Meanwhile, religion also gives some fraction of the ruled the instruction and opportunity they need to prepare for eventual rule and command. This is particularly true for that slowly ascending class and station in which, through fortunate marriage practices, the strength and joy of the will,the will to self-control is always on the rise. Religion tempts and urges them to take the path to higher spirituality and try out feelings of great self-overcoming, of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race that wants to gain control over its origins among the rabble, and work its way up to eventual rule. Finally, as for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those like them) one more happiness and one more sorrow, it transfigures and improves them, it provides something of a justification for everything commonplace, for all the lowliness, for the whole half-bestial poverty of their souls.

Religion, and the meaning religion gives to life, spreads sunshine over such eternally tormented people and makes them bearable even to themselves. It has the same effect that an Epicurean philosophy usually has on the suffering of higher ranks: it refreshes, refines, and makes the most of suffering, as it were. In the end it even sanctifies and justifies. Perhaps there is nothing more venerable about Christianity and Buddhism than their art of teaching even the lowliest to use piety in order to situate themselves in an illusory higher order of things, and in so doing stay satisfied with the actual order, in which their lives are hard enough (in which precisely this hardness is necessary!).

Finally, to show the downside of these religions as well and throw light on their uncanny dangers: there is a high and horrible price to pay when religions do not serve as means for breeding and education in the hands of a philosopher, but instead serve themselves and become sovereign, when they want to be the ultimate goal instead of a means alongside other means.”

He did not want to replace religion, he wanted to overcome Christianity. He recognized the importance of religion. People need something to believe in, something to follow. Nietzsche does what Plato did, the invention of a religion in the service of philosophy. Only Nietzsche's religion is to be an inversion of Plato's. A religion of the earth, a religion of becoming, a religion of the god Dionysus, of a god who philosophizes. — Fooloso4

He certainly did like to throw around words like ‘gods’, but in what sense is becoming and self-overcoming religion? He did not simply encourage people to have something to believe in. That would be the ascetic ideal, which he critiqued. What he encouraged was recognizing that the ‘something’ one believes in is always transforming itself into something new, so it is the endless movement , the eternal return of the same movement , that he sees as fundamental , not the enslavement to something one believes in.

Jagger wanted to be Satan. Morrison wanted to be Jesus.
— Joshs
I've always seen Morrison striving to be shaman and Jagger as an accomplished burlesque performer. — 180 Proof

That’s even better.

Morrison was a wannabe Jagger. — Banno

Jagger wanted to be Satan. Morrison wanted to be Jesus.

Isn't it odd that American rock is so...derivative; pale imitations of their British overlords. — Banno

Each band borrowed from the others. Paul McCartney was blown away after hearing Pet Sounds , while Brian Wilson was trying to capture Specter’s Wall of Sound. In 1964, John Lennon was devastated when Dylan told him he loved their music but they didn’t say anything. The Stones and Led Zeppelin borrowed heavily from Motown , American Country music and Chicago Blues, your beloved Clapton was influenced by The Band (mostly Canadian) and Delaney and Bonnie.

“ Eric Clapton already had one eye on the door with Cream when he heard the Band for the first time. In that moment, he knew that the legendary trio was finished.

“It sounded like they’d jumped on to what I thought we ought to be doing. That was what I wanted us to sound like and here was somebody else doing it,” Clapton tells Uncut. “It shook me to the core.”

David Bowie’a Rock sound was shaped around the Velvet Undergound’s riffs.

Yanks treat of the Beach Boys as their equivalent of the Beatles... the Beach Boys! Christ, it's pathetic. — Banno

No, we don’t. At least I don’t( except for Good Vibrations and God Only Knows, which are brilliant compositions and the equal of anything the Beatles did). Around the time of the Beatles most creative phase (1965-69), the U.S. was producing all sorts of idiosyncratic forms of rock My favorites include the psychedelic sounds of Buffalo Springfield , Janis Joplins first two bands, the Love, Moby Grape ,the Jefferson Airplane , the Grateful Dead and the Byrds. Also ther Velvets, Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield ( blues rock) , the Allman Bros and their mix of country, jazz , psychedelia and blues, Parliament-Funkadelic’s psychedelic funk , Frank Zappa’s weirdness, Creedence’s bayou rock, Simon and Garfunkel’s folk rock.
The best of these bands songs was in its own way the equal of the Beatles , but direct comparisons are difficult given how unique each band’s music was.
It’s not that the best American bands couldnt match British rock , rather they weren’t interested in doing that kind of sound because their focus was on creating their own personal expression, with the exception of mediocre direct imitators of british rock like the Raspberries.

My only question is why bother with this overcoming (and endless change) if there are no improvements and no foundational narrative underpinning the 'journey'? — Tom Storm

Foundations won’t get you where you want to
go in terms of improving your understanding of and relationships with other people and yourself. They will
just assure that you will be locked into old ways of thinking . One can instead strive to construe more intimately intercorrelational ways of interpreting the world, which doesn’t rely on the fixity of precious foundations. In fact , the letting go of those foundations is necessary in order to free up new possibilities. It is hard at first blush to see how Nietzsche allows for any notion of progress or development, but I suggest that for him one’s previous history of valuations prepares one to move more and more fluidly through new channels of construing, even as one transforms those ‘foundations’ in process.

After all, what we call ‘knowledge’ is really nothing but this fluid anticipative embrace of new events.

Humanity's instinctive and emotional base must be used as the initial purposeful engine of the journey to the Übermensch, however, after all its load has been used, it must be discarded completely by this new "Being".

In short, "Humanity" is only "Humanity" because it is a medium between an irrational animal and the theoretical Übermensch.

An Übermensch who lets himself be carried away by emotions is anything but an Übermensch. — Gus Lamarch

I recognize there are widely varying readings of Nietzsche. I prefer postmodern interpretations of him like those of Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida.

They jettison the rational-irrational binary in favor of an understanding of knowledge and fact as only existing in relation to overarching value systems that define their sense. These value systems are affectively driven, contingent and relative. Thus it makes no sense to separate fact from value, passion, drive, emotion, affect. They seen Nietzsche as showing us the inseparability of fact and value , the affective and the rational.

If you google Nietzsche-postmodernism you’ll see what I mean.

You, on the other hand, seem to maintian a separation between fact and value, the rational and the affective. I’m guessing your preference is for modernist, realist philosophy.

He is incisively attacking any and all primitive characteristics of humanity that - in his perception - make it impossible for the species to transcend the animal kingdom. — Gus Lamarch

“ one must ask whether Nietzsche really thinks that
our animal origins are “shameful,” and whether humans are really “higher” than the primates. For when we compare the probity and rigor (as well as the surprising cohesiveness) of Nietzsche’s naturalism with his more traditional and anthropocentric remarks about apes, the
latter seem conceptually insubstantial and incoherent. As we have seen, Nietzsche’s naturalism questions the very speciesism that he himself occasionally falls back upon. But precisely because the tension between these two elements is so obvious and explicit, we should be
careful not to draw hasty conclusions about the consistency of Nietzsche’s thought. It seems unlikely that a thinker as nuanced—and as sensitive to the art of writing—as Nietzsche would have so quickly forgotten his own insights. Rather, when Nietzsche exhumes the traditional anthropocentric assumptions about primates, he is more probably exploiting his readers’ popular prejudices for rhetorical effect, while at the same time retaining an ironic distance from such conceits.”(Peter Groff, Who is Zarathustra’s Ape?)

In my interpretation, Nietzsche is correct in stating that it is the instincts and, consequently, the prevailance of the emotions, that delay the process of Man's transcendence. — Gus Lamarch

Quite the opposite , for Nietzsche our highest intellectual achievements are servants of our drives and instincts. He encourages us to multiply our drives and affects.


“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well?

Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else.”

“From now on, my philosophical colleagues, let us be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-tale which has set up a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge', let us be wary of the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason', ‘absolute spirituality', ‘knowledge as such': – here we are asked to think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and non-concept of eye that is demanded. There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing'; the more affects we are able to put into words about a thing, the more eyes, various eyes we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will be our ‘concept' of the thing, our ‘objectivity'. But to eliminate the will completely and turn off all the emotions without exception, assuming we could: well? would that not mean to castrate the intellect? . . “(Genealogy of Morals)

There is also the question whether there can be a 'Y' that is both determined and the result of pure chance. I'm not sure. You ask about the die. The result of a die throw is pure chance. It's also determined by how the particular throw was made. Someone might argue that is an example of 'both determined and pure chance'. I don't think that works - but perhaps it does. Even if it does work, it doesn't help or hinder either side of the argument I think. — Cuthbert

I think it is helpful to get back to the moral
arguments concerning desert-based blame. It wouldn’t make sense for the advocate of free-will
to argue that the willing self is nothing but a randomness generator. If they believe that, then they wouldn’t believe in holding the immoral subject responsible. They have to believe that the choices made by the will have a certain rational consistency to them in order to hold a person accountable, a rationality that may hold for them and them alone. To put it better , there is a moral calculus that can hold for them alone.

If we look at the views of determinists, I think what is crucial isn’t that there be a strict causal determinism. After all , postmodernists share with modernist determinists the rejection of retributive blame and justice. What these two groups have in common is the belief that individual behavior belongs to a larger social system which constrains and guides it ( as well as being shaped by bodily influences). So what is central to this ‘ determinism’ in terms of allowing a rejection of desert-based blame is not that it is a strict causal determinism but that it shifts responsibility away from the solitary autonomous individual in favor of a self beholden to social and natural-biological influences.

The difference between the modernists and the postmodernists is that the latter replace linear causal determinism with a dynamical reciprocal causality

Here's the thing: free will (which essentially makes one deserving of punishment) requires self-creation or at least absence of external creation. Whether determinism is true or not is beside the point.

And it isn't true, because it doesn't make sense. Determinism is the thesis that every event that occurs had to occur. That is, it is the thesis that every event occurs of necessity. However, necessity doesn't make sense as a concept. There is no such thing as necessity. Thus, nothing occurs of necessity.

The same applies to contingency (the opposite of necessity). Contingency, defined as it is in terms of necessity, also makes no sense.

What matters where free will is concerned is that one is the ultimate source of what one does. And that requires self-creation or absence of external creation. — Bartricks

Here’s my take.

If blame is a function of a belief in the arbitrariness, randomness and capriciousness of motive, then what makes Cartesian desert based approaches , which are assumed to arise from the deliberately willed actions of an autonomous, morally responsible subject, harsher and more ‘blameful’ in their views of justice than deterministic , non-desert based approaches, which rest on shaping influences (bodily-affective and social) outside of an agent’s control? Isn’t the latter account a more ‘arbitrary’ interpretation of behavior than the former?

We say that the subject who has free will wills of their own accord, chooses what they want to choose , and as such has autonomy with respect to ‘foreign’ social and internal bodily influences. The machinations of the free will amount to a self-enclosed system.

This solipsist self functions via an internal logic of values that, while rational within the internal bounds of its own subjectivity, is walled off from the wider community of selves and therefore can choose value in a profoundly irrational or immoral manner with respect to social consensus.

Therefore, the very autonomy of the Cartesian subject presupposes a profound potential laxity and arbitrariness to individual free will in relation to the moral norms of a wider social community.

Modernist deterministic moral arguments of those like Pereboom and Nussbaum surrender the absolute solipsist rationalism of free will-based models of the self in favor of a view of the self as belonging to and determined by a wider causal empirical social and natural order.

If we ask why the agent endowed with free will chose to perform a certain action , the only explanation we can give is that it made sense to them given their own desires and whims. If we instead inquire why the individual ensconced within a deterministic world performed the same action, we would be able to make use of the wider explanatory framework of the cultural and natural order in situating the causes of individual behavior.

↪Jack Cummins Beyond good and evil could be rephrased, salva veritate, as beyond hedonism — Agent Smith

Beyond good and evil refers to the overcoming of morality , not pleasure and pain.

Was Nietzsche intending a literal goal of the posthuman condition as enhancement of the human condition, or was he pointing for greater freedom of thought? This ambiguity seems to arise in thinking of his concept of the superman. As a poetic philosopher was he inventing the concept of superman as symbolic for the evolution of the consciousness of human beings?
3h — Jack Cummins

Nietzsche was not an evolutionist.He was more of a revolutionist, but not in the sense of a dialectical teleological progression. His superman doesn’t represent a more advanced intelligence but the awareness of self as self overcoming. Self-overcoming is the endless replacement of older values by new values. The new values aren’t ‘better’ than the older ones, they’re just different.

Literature is an evolving concept. It reflects the issues that arise and complicate our lives, and it has in this "relevance" and moves with the times. This is very different from philosophy which has its world grounded in basic questions, questions that do not change with politics, ethics and social norms. — Constance

All modes of culture, including the sciences, literature and philosophy, are evolving concepts which move ‘with the times’. This is why historical movements such as the Classical period , Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernism and the Postmodern are defined by the inseparable interrelations among these cultural modalities. It’s meaning less to say that philosophy always asks the same questions if the sense and meaning of the questions changes with the times , which it does. If philosophy really asked the same questions over and over, it would come up with the same answers.

Heidegger (2010) expresses this well :

“Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way. We intimated that we are always already involved in an understanding of being.”

↪Joshs Nice and very useful. Where's that Derrida extract from, Joshs? — Tom Storm

Limited, Inc

Derrida is a sceptic. So a lot of his arguments are about the impossibility of knowledge. — Jackson

Derrida is no sceptic, and he never argues that knowledge is ‘impossible’, only contextually embedded.

“For of course there is a "right track" [une 'bonne voie "] , a better way, and let i t b e said i n passing how surprised I have often been, how amused or discouraged, depending on my humor, by the use or abuse of the following argument: Since the deconstructionist (which is to say, isn't it, the skeptic-relativist-nihilist!) is supposed not to believe in truth, stability, or the unity of meaning, in intention or "meaning-to-say, " how can he demand of us that we read him with pertinence, preciSion, rigor? How can he demand that his own text be interpreted correctly? How can he accuse anyone else of having misunderstood, simplified, deformed it, etc.? In other words, how can he discuss, and discuss the reading of what he writes? The answer is simple enough: this definition of the deconstructionist is false (that's right: false, not true) and feeble; it supposes a bad (that's right: bad, not good) and feeble reading of numerous texts, first of all mine, which therefore must finally be read or reread.

Then perhaps it will be understood that the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”

And yet, if we take Rorty seriously about pragmatism, he makes the same claim. — Jackson

My point is that Rorty is impugning to Derrida something that Rorty thinks we should do instead of philosophy, but this ‘private fantasizing and free-associating’ is not what Derrida is doing.