It would take a truckload of charity not to call the above an evil thing to say, an evil teaching. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I agree, but I think much of what he says is driven by the desire to provoke and shock. Remember this well-known reported incident, which if accurate shows that he did not lack compassion: when in Turin he witnessed a man beating a horse, Nietzsche threw his arms around the horse's neck, tears streaming from his eyes, and then collapsed onto the ground.

"Caesar with the soul of Christ." — Jackson

I think for Nietzsche ethics is an aesthetic matter, and he saw great human beings as possessing the largeness of soul to allow them to be compassionate. Cruelty and indifference to suffering is not beautiful or admirable, and shows smallness of soul; so my personal opinion (and it is only that) is that Nietzsche was not an evil man, or an anti-Semite, or a Nazi, and so on with the other facile caricatures.

I would be surprised if anything positive said about Nietzsche would be worthwhile to you; mired in your self-imposed ignorance of his work as you seem to be.

Where does Nietzsche talk about spirituality? — Jackson

Nietzsche is constantly alluding to, if not unequivocally speaking about, the human spirit and realization of human potential; that is what his philosophy is all about.

So what's the diff? — Wayfarer

You think your transcendentalist conception of spirituality is the one true definition of spirituality? (Speaking of transcendentalists, Nietzsche greatly admired Emerson. He also admired Christ; but Christianity not so much).

I agree; it certainly seems that way. I can't think of anyone I've ever spoken to, who has made the effort to read and understand him who thinks he is of no consequence, evil, or whatever. And having taken several University courses on Nietzsche's philosophy, courses with a lot of discussion, I've met and discussed his ideas with quite a few.

But Nietszche doesn't recognise anything 'spiritual'. — Wayfarer

That's dead wrong. He doesn't recognize anything transcendent might be more to the point.

Philosophy for adolescents. — Banno

A facile characterization of a great, but admittedly flawed, thinker. (And who isn't flawed)? Let him cast the first stone...

I haven't read Nietzsche in a while either. Many years ago and over many years I've read Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Genealogy of Morals and other bits and pieces.

Zarathustra hasn't held my sustained interest because I don't think much of Nietzsche as a poet. My understanding of what he means by "will to power" is a synthetic understanding gained by reading him over the years, and I don't have a specific reference ready to hand to support my interpretation. Do you have any references that speak against my reading?

Will to Power is Nietzsche's best work. — Jackson

Will to Power was not published by Nietzsche, but was compiled from his notes, notes which it is arguable he never intended to publish, by his sister, I think posthumously, but I'm not sure and can't be bothered looking it up.

wholly and solely by the will to power. — Wayfarer


A bit of an exaggeration. In the opening pages of Zarathustra - to my view, Nietzsche's purest moment of visionary insight - the Superman is set out as evolution's aim: from worm to ape to man to Superman. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes, and also the "will to power" is grossly misunderstood by those who have never actually studied Nietzsche. It does not signify power over others, but power over the self, in order to reach one's fullest potential. I think it would be less misleadingly termed "the will to empowerment".

The "very good reasons" are emotional reasons are they not? Reason (logic) itself pertains to the form (coherency, consistency and validity) of thought and has nothing to say about content, as I understand it.

So I would have to side with her in that respect, it becomes richer, more transparent to itself... — Tobias

Right, I agree that it becomes more elaborate, more complex, but I balk at "richer", and "more transparent to itself" since to assert that would entail asserting that our lives are richer and more transparent to themselves now than the lives of the ancients, or for that matter, hunter/gatherers. It is obviously true that they are conceptually richer, if quantity and complexity is the standard. But in the end, leaving aside aesthetics, the emotional life, religious feeling and experience and so on, it is all, from beginning to end, following the inherent logic of Hegel's thought, if not his own beliefs, just ideas and elaborations of ideas, no?

To put it another way because no idea, according to Hegel, is stable and immune to being subject to its negation, then all ideas are in that sense, so to speak, "on the same level". The greater richness then, on that view, does not consist as a greater richness of an idea compared to the idea it grew out of, but in the amplification that consists in the whole process.

I take this to entail that no point in the (necessarily) endless dialectical process is any better than any other, but I am not claiming that Hegel would agree with this, just that this is the logic inherent in his conception of the dialectic. No doubt I could be wrong about that given that I am no Hegel scholar, but I would need good relevant argument to convince me of that.

Thanks for your own excellent summary, Tobias! I think you are exactly right that the conflict, and potential for negation, in ideas arises only when an attempt is made to absolutize them; I think this is a very important point. I also agree with you about the potentially misleading distortions lurking in the 'thesis-antithesis-synthesis' model; to counteract the notion that any synthesis could itself be stable and absolute it must be borne in mind that it becomes a new thesis with its own inherent potentiality for negation and new synthesis, and so on endlessly.

I recently had a disagreement with a friend, a teacher at university, who not long ago ran a course on Hegel, when I said I don't see Hegel as a "progressivist" thinker meaning I don't see the idea that the sublation or synthesis is somehow "better" than the idea it grows out of as being inherent to his thinking, and she thinks I am simply wrong about that and have a "quirky" reading of Hegel. Anyway, in light of that I liked your invocation of Heraclitus' "flux".

Here we see the dialectic in full flow. Wishing someone goodnight is at face value a happy wish. However, it also has the connotation something is over and may therefore revert into its opposite, the meaning of "this is done" reverting 'good night' into an angry slam of the door. :wink: — Tobias

Nice extrapolation!

On a side note, I enjoy some of the existentialists that emphasize the importance of becoming for people in pointing out the relevence of the dialectical negative. it is accurate to identify them as the earliest modern psychlogists. — Merkwurdichliebe

Interesting! I wonder which existentialists you refer to. Relatedly, @180 Proof recently somewhere (I couldn't find the post) presented the idea that Hegel's is a positive dialectic in contrast to the negative dialectic of Adorno; I'm not much familiar with Adorno, but this intrigued me so I consulted Wiki:

Adorno sought to update the philosophical process known as the dialectic, freeing it from traits previously attributed to it that he believed to be fictive. For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the dialectic was a process of realization that things contain their own negation and through this realization the parts are sublated into something greater. Adorno's dialectics rejected this positive element wherein the result was something greater than the parts that preceded and argued for a dialectics which produced something essentially negative. Adorno wrote that "Negative Dialectics is a phrase that flouts tradition. As early as Plato, dialectics meant to achieve something positive by means of negation; the thought figure of the 'negation of the negation' later became the succinct term. This book seeks to free dialectics from such affirmative traits without reducing its determinacy."[1]

Adorno's purpose was to overcome the formal logical limits of the previous definitions of dialectics by putting into light that new knowledge arises less from a Hegelian unification of opposite categories as defined following Aristotelian logic than by the revelation of the limits of knowledge.[2] Such revelation of the limits of knowledge reaches out to its experienced object, whose entirety always escapes the simplifying categories of purely theoretical thinking.[3] Adorno raises the possibility that philosophy and its essential link to reality may be essentially epistemological in nature.[4] His reflection moves a step higher by applying the concept of dialectics not only to exterior objects of knowledge, but to the process of thought itself.[5]

To summarize, "...this Negative Dialectics in which all esthetic topics are shunned might be called an “anti-system.” It attempts by means of logical consistency to substitute for the unity principle, and for the paramountcy of the superordinate concept, the idea of what would be outside the sway of such unity. To use the strength of the subject to break through the fallacy of constitutive subjectivity—this is what the author felt to be his task [...]. Stringently to transcend the official separation of pure philosophy and the substantive or formally scientific realm was one of his determining motives."[6]

( I don't know how accurate this portrayal is, but it seems relevant enough to be of interest).

Blake, like Shakespeare, seems to appear out of nowhere: an impressively original vision and voice.

In other words the body is no fool - the label of unreason applied to it reflects ignorance rather than knowledge. — Agent Smith

For Blake there is no body apart from the Soul or Imagination, and the wisdom of the body is pre-rational, although I don't think he would use those terms. It is not a dualism of mind and body that Blake speaks of, but a duality of visions within the imagination: heaven (reason) and hell (the passions). Traditionally wisdom was seen as the ruling of the passions by reason; Blake presents a different vision as portrayed in his well known aphorism "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise".

I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination — William Blake - Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion

Nice! I love Blake, and have done since my mid teens!

If you're not open to it, you reduce yourself to a smart monkey. — Wayfarer

As opposed to, if you are open to it (whatever that could actually mean), a dumb monkey?

Goodnight. — Jackson

If every idea is in conflict with itself, perhaps you meant "badnight"? :wink:

This is exactly wrong and trivializes Hegel's work. — Jackson

I think you misunderstand — Janus


Back at you. Not engaging with personal attacks. — Jackson

So, you see the latter as personal attack and not the former? If so, could you point out what you see as the difference? (Just so you know, I don't see either as a personal attack, but if pressed I would say the former comes closer).

:up:

This is exactly wrong and trivializes Hegel's work. Dialectic is that one idea is in conflict with itself. Not that two ideas are in conflict. This reduces dialectic to legal arbitration.

For example, the concept of faith in religion is based on doubt. There is no synthesis, the very concept is wrong. — Jackson

I think you misunderstand if you think that according to Hegel ideas, as such, simpliciter or in the very first instance, are in conflict with themselves. The claim is that an idea may give rise to a conflicting idea, but an idea simpliciter cannot be in conflict with itself. As 180 Proof said, it makes sense to say that ideas contain or depend on their complementaries in that, for example, the idea of goodness makes no sense unless contrasted with badness.

I don't know what you mean by saying that what I said "trivializes" Hegel and I have no idea what you mean with your "faith in religion" example; more explanation is required.

The German is Aufhebung. This means affirmation/negation. — Jackson

Yes, I know the German is Aufhebung. Affirmation/ negation is one definition; but let's not oversimplify:

The meaning of “sublation” as translation of “Aufhebung”

One central term of Hegel, the German word “Aufhebung,” is usually translated as “sublation” into English.

In fact, the word “sublation” appeared in the 19th century English literature , only after Hegel and the Hegel School began using “Aufhebung” and translators needed an equivalent. “Aufhebung,” depending on context, was being used to mean simple negation, affirmation, or a simultaneous affirmation/negation. English translators looked to Latin (many English scientific words have Latin roots) and found the word “sublatus” (to take or carry away or lift up); the Latin “sublatus” then became “sublation” in English.

Why did the translators associate “lifting” or “taking away” with the abstract ideas of negation and affirmation?

The entire flow of meaning from the original German word “Aufhebung” arises from its basic associative picture, which in German involves simply lifting something from a lower place to a higher place, such as from the floor or ground into your hand.

However, thinking about this process can bring to mind certain associations and inferences when the word is used:

A. Something lifted from its ground has been thereby taken away. A legal ban may be “lifted” and thus may in effect be done away with (negated).

B. On the other hand, something lifted up may in fact be preserved (saved) for later use. Physically or even spiritually someone may “lift up” a person who has fallen and save him from impending destruction. Here we have affirmation.

C. The picture of something being raised to a higher level can be abstracted and then applied to intellectual constructs. Someone might say, “Let’s take this thesis to a higher level.” This actually happens. For instance, it is now commonly said among physicists that classical (Newtonian) physics has been “sublated” by or within relativistic (Einsteinian) physics. In other words, it has simultaneously been negated (superseded or supplanted) and affirmed (confirmed to be valid, but only within a wider, relativistic context that was not suspected by Newton).

Thus, an older thesis may be done away with (negated) but preserved in part, namely that part that has been shown to be reasonable. A new or wider understanding has emerged from a critique of the old. The “sublation” of a concept or thesis in its broadest conception has reformed its implicit assumptions (and even its antitheses) by both preserving and negating them in a higher thought that includes the truth of subsidiary or partial aspects.

The aspects A and B are explicit mentioned by Hegel himself, while his pupil and Hegelian Professor of Philosophy J.E. Erdmann was the first one to explicit mention all three aspects in his comment of 1841.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) states that “sublation” means to “negate … but preserve as a partial element in a synthesis.” This is as close to the philosophical meaning as should be expected from a common dictionary. Dictionaries, after all, merely report what most writers appear to mean when they use a word.

In order to express the three aspects (A,B,C) mentioned above all together, Hegelians prefer to speak of “Aufhebung” instead of “expansion,” “inclusion,” “synthesis,” “sublimation,” “transfiguration,” “transfiguration,” which all more focus on some aspects or else involve unhelpful additional (and unnecessary) connotations.

BTW, Hegel himself never used the term “synthesis” for the concept of “Aufhebung” discussed here.

From here

But (an/the) antithesis of a thesis X is its complement – whatever completes X (e.g. Y) – not merely Xs "negation" (~X or absence of X), right? Or am I giving Hegel too much credit (re: being / becoming)? — 180 Proof

I think you are right. The usual formulation: thesis—antithesis—synthesis was not explicitly enunciated by Hegel, but scholars generally seem to think it is a good model for what he was doing.
In English we have various words which suggest negation or antithesis, but which may differ more or less in meaning from negation in subtle ways, for example: contrary, complement, contradiction.

As I understand it, Hegel thinks of the dialectical development of thought and spirit in terms of moments in the development of consciousness. The classic as presented in POS is "sense certainty". I understand this as equating to naive realism. But this idea contains the seeds of its negation(s): anti-realism, idealism, indirect realism, which arise by taking what is observed to be the case about the human perceptual organs and their processes as simply true; i.e. that they "filter" or "distort" the "real" objects we encounter so that we "see through a glass darkly".

But then Hegel argues that this is itself a distorted picture, and that the things we encounter are the end process of perception, not its inception; the appearances are the reality and the "ding an sich" is a meaningless phantom, This is the synthesis of the apparent contradiction between the thesis: we see things just as they really are and the antithesis: we see things distorted through the filters of the senses,the synthesis being: we see things just as they are as they and our senses enable us to see them. ( So it is simplistic to say that we inevitably see things "as they really are" or "through a glass darkly")

So, as clumsily as I have hastily put all that, and given my own limited understanding of a difficult philosophy, you are right because in the synthesis the apparent negation is shown to be just that, only apparent. I think this synthesis is referred to as "sublation", but I won't attempt to go further into that, because it is a complex subject that I don't know enough about.

The idea of negation is important though, even though it is superceded, because that is what drives the dialectical development of reason, according to Hegel, as far as I understand it anyway.

:up: Or to put it another way every idea contains the seed of its own negation.

It is important to note that Blake sees a duality of the soul and the body. Of course, it is rare to use the concept of the soul, and are more likely to use the term mind or self. I find the idea of 'Energy is eternal delight' inspirational and many others have done so too. Blake was an artist and poet who was radical for his time. He was also rather eccentric and a visionary. If he were alive today he would have probably been Sectioned for treatment in a psychiatric hospital and, quite likely, he would not have written and created the work for which he is known and loved by so many. — Jack Cummins

Did you not mean rejects rather than sees a duality of soul and body? Your last sentence here is way too baselessly speculative for my taste.

Blake's philosophy is extremely interesting one in the way it came at a time when most people believed in the metaphysical reality of God and the devil. — Jack Cummins

I'm not sure if this is what yo are alluding to but, if so. yes, Blake seemed to have believed that deities found their life in the human imagination:

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country. placing it under its mental deity. Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood. Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such things. Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast. (My bold)

From 'The Marraige of Heaven and Hell' William Blake The Complete Poems Kindle Edition

Thanks Josh it looks interesting. I've downloaded it and will certainly read it when I have some time.

Yes, my presupposition would be that there be robust, testable physical evidence. I don't generally accept anecdote, stories, feelings or claims as proof.

I generally hold to 'good evidence' as opposed to just evidence. There is the 1967 Roger Patterson film footage of Bigfoot which is clearly evidence of Bigfoot. But is it good evidence? Is it ultimately persuasive, or does it look like some person in a monkey suit? Is there anything more than testimony and blurred 8mm film to demonstrate the existence of this creature? The Bible is evidence of god. But it is good evidence, or just one of many contradictory old books which exist for disparate faiths? — Tom Storm

I agree with you, for what it's worth, and I think it is a lot easier to establish what is good or real evidence in empirical matters. But when it comes to metaphysical matters it's another story. For example there can be no clear evidence for reincarnation, because any evidence, even if granted as legit, can always be explained in other ways, or if scriptures are taken as evidence, as per your example, then the fact that they appear to contradict one another does not inspire confidence except in those who are already disposed, or predisposed, to believe.

Then the answer will be either that I just happen to believe in the one true religion, or the apparent contradictions are just that, only apparent. or most religions posit one God in some form or other, and we don't always get it right because God is mysterious, but the fact that God is, or gods, are universally posited is itself good evidence. For the latter type of case think of the Baha'i faith, for example.

Of course none of this type of evidence is good evidence in the kinds of ways that empirical evidence can be, but there is good reason to expect that to be the case, the proponents will argue, and I think they do have a point.

Or a rock. Or a tree. I am a panpsychist. — Jackson

I find something of value and interest in Whitehead's panexperientialism, but the idea that rocks have minds does not convince; nevertheless to each their own...

I think it grounds it. For me 'Implausible' hangs in the air without any precision. — Tom Storm

Would you say that anyone finds anything implausible without believing they have reason to think so? And does not believing you have a reason to think that something is likely to be the case amount to believing that you have some evidence to think that, even if the "evidence" is nothing more than a gut feeling? This is why I disagree with the definition of faith as "believe in spite of the evidence", because that definition only speaks to a certain conception of what constitutes evidence; a conception which has its own unevidenced presuppositions underpinning it.

There is an ambiguity. Consider the conversation:

"What is it like to visit Vegas?"
"It's not like anything at all." — bert1

The question is really asking what would one (typically) experience if one visited Las Vegas, so the answer is not so much ambiguous, as it is pedantic in taking the question literally when it is obviously (in ordinary parlance, and unless specified otherwise, at least) not meant that way.

Similarly, Nagel's overworn question "what is it like to be a bat?" is really asking "what (kinds of things) would you experience if you were a bat?".

So, in a subtle way the "what is it like?", the idea of resemblance, comes in in the form of "kinds of things" experienced, as @Banno said earlier; so now it seems to me that I misinterpreted what he was suggesting, and we were not disagreeing after all.

OK, thanks Mww, it doesn't seem to me that you understood and/or addressed my points and questions at all, which is evidenced most starkly by this:

But I get what you mean. In this day and age, with the world seemingly so small, so many damn people, so much information, so much new stuff all the time.....seems like it’s impossible not to be influenced by it all. Think about it, though......what gets lost in all that noise? — Mww

which, unfortunately, has nothing at all to do with what I've even talking about. When the strawmen start marching I have a tendency to leave the vicinity.

Anyway, I'm out of energy and/or enthusiasm for this topic so I'm happy to leave it there.

Aquired in the womb but still. — Hillary

Yes, well in the womb is already in the world in some sense (not the shared sense, obviously), and I have no doubt that sentience begins in the womb at some point of development. Is there any sense of differentiation in the womb? Interesting question but hard to answer, I'd say.

I don't think 'implausibility' of supernatural is quite the right frame. It is more of a case of 'unlikely given the available evidence'. — Tom Storm

Isn't "unlikely given the available evidence" a fitting definition of 'implausible'?

"Exhilarating" has its use in the resemblance of different exhilarations.

But you are right that this it trivial. — Banno

:up: Trivial indeed, since the name of any kind of thing has its use on account of resemblances of different instances of the kind of thing named.

I do not think the self which underlies is anything but all those aspects. — Jackson

You can lose aspects, but not the underlying sense, of self. From my own experience I can say that the underlying sense of being myself does not change; it just consists in being me.

I think the idea of the self is something of a fetish. Hume's critique of identity is accurate. There are multiple selves without there being an identity of all the selves. — Jackson

There is a general sense of self which underlies and ties all the different aspects of the self together in that they are all aspects of my self, even if some of them are in conflict.

It was your interjection that now appears to have been without purpose.

it's not clear to me what you had to add to the discussion. — Banno

My interjection? My original comment was a response to @Tom Storm; I wasn't addressing you at all, so if anyone interjected it was you. The point I made was that "what is it like to be...or do...?" just means "how does it feel to be.. or do...? and has nothing to do with resemblance.

You attempted, unsuccessfully, to argue against this, albeit without actually presenting a cogent argument. The best thing you've said lately in this thread was your point about the so-called "view from nowhere" actually being the view, not from nowhere, but from anywhere; a point which I also have made in a few of these kinds of discussions (and which I recently discovered was also made by Merleau-Ponty back in the middle of last century).

If you mean, a human infant kept in an isolation tank will never learn English, then, sure. But that's not really the point. Expose any sentient being other than a human to experience, and they're not going to learn to speak, notwithstanding your 'logical dog'. :-) — Wayfarer

My point all along has been that so-called synthetic a priori judgements come after experience, as a result of "grasping" the general character of experiences, and that is why they do not depend on any particular experience to justify them.

Of course other animals who do not have either the intelligence or the structural potential to learn language cannot learn language, just as we cannot learn to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field.

There are two electrons in a superposition. That's the object used in quantum computing. There have been made superpositions of 100 of them even. The electron's identities get mixed up totally. There is no logic applicable. Love and hate are completely crazy and illogical. Not to mention irrational. — Hillary

If there are two electrons then they're are not one thing; now it may be the case that there only appear to be two or a hundred or whatever electrons, but there is really only one, and that would not contradict anything I've said. I'm getting tired of repeating the same point.

Meaning it is an innate ability, — Wayfarer

It's not an innate ability, but an innate potential if anything. And only experience of the required kind will actuate and develop that potential.

We can, and indeed do, talk about what it is like; the adrenaline, the free-fall, the stomach in your mouth. — Banno

All feelings, which if the person had experienced them, they would recognize. Do you have an actual point of interest to make or are you just enjoying being pedantic?

You are saying what it is like to skydive by naming experiences had elsewhere, and in skydiving. — Banno

No, I spoke in general terms of feelings, not other experiences or resemblances. If I had said skydiving is like bungee jumping that would be "naming experiences had elsewhere" or citing resemblances.

But that would not tell you how either skydiving or bungee jumping felt for me in any case, because even if you bungee jumped you would know only how it felt for you, not for me. I could say something like " you feel you are flying" or "you feel the powerful force of the air rushing past your face and body" but these are already easily imaginable, and so do not tell much that would not already be known.

That's why their position doesn't make them different. — Hillary

OK, logically if some one thing could be in two different places at once, then it would be two different manifestations of the one thing, I suppose. But how do we establish that it is in fact the one thing?

That may have a mathematical meaning in the context of QM, but it has no logical meaning — Janus


It does. There are two electrons. In superposition. — Hillary

Logically, if there are two electrons. then they are not the same. Perhaps you mean that there is only one electron that appears as two electrons in superposition. You can't have it both ways.

Long story short...we understand stuff because we’ve come equipped to do it, and one of the ingredients we come equipped with, is the idea of cause/effect. — Mww

So, is the claim that we have that idea from the moment of birth? When I said "conceive" I was not thinking in terms of linguistic conception; I believe there is evidence that animals also think in terms of causation. My point the whole time , though is that from the moment of birth experience, both extroceptive, introceptive, proprioceptive and agential is happening for both humans and animals. Whether we have a kind of 'hardwired' capacity for thinking in the various categorial terms, analogous to Chomsky's idea about being hardwired to learn language is another question of course. The body has its inherent capacities, no doubt, and we are not born as "blank slates".

Obviously, things we perceive must be possible, else we wouldn’t perceive them, but that doesn’t hold for things we merely think. — Mww

Are we able to think of anything that is not something we have heard of, or at least a composite of things experienced and/ or heard of?