Well put.

But I think many evil people will create justifications for evil acts because of a deeper issue - a lack of empathy, fanaticism, tribalism, etc. — ToothyMaw

justifications — ToothyMaw

Not justifications.

The use of the word evil may be problematic as it suggests a convenient explanation for what we all may see as atrocity. Surely Hitler thought he was an agent of moral goodness and that his work was all about improving human life on earth with the same passion that, say a committed environmentalist might feel today.

Thus Spake Zarathustra is a piece of fiction: a passionate rendering of his philosophical approach, and isn’t written as rational argument, but as expression. As Zarathustra says, “They understand me not. I am not the mouth for these ears.” Its fictional, poetic style is a way around the difficulties of language in relation to logic, and for all its ambiguity, his writing continues to resonate with modern readers in a way that only fiction or religious texts can. It’s an imperfect approach, and unsatisfying for those looking for definitive answers with which to prop up failing social structures. He suggests a way forward, but it isn’t what we’re looking for. — Possibility

It's also for some readers (me, anyway), a turgid, often dull book that makes you think of shopping lists, washing the car, clipping the dog's fur - anything to get away from a needy, monomaniacal polemicist. I can take Human, All Too Human and the Gay Science, but not TSZ.

With some writers it's better to try mostly to feel them, and not so much to try understand every word. — dimosthenis9

I'm not really one for feeling up writers. If you're saying that FN isn't interested in being understood - that might be accurate and why I don't feel a passion for his work. He's certainly the source of some fantastically vivid aphorisms and quips, but sometimes to me FN just seems to be a Germanic and rather truculent version of Oscar Wilde.

Mostly I take psychological points from his writing as does Jordan Peterson — Gregory

Like most putative Christians, Peterson celebrates Nietzsche only because he can be used to support the proposition that atheism leads to Hitler. It's ironic how often Christians have reached for Nietzsche to embolden similar notions - FN's probably done more for the apologist's anti-atheism crusades than any other thinker.

The emergence and spread of postmodernism is an indicator of how the world of academia exists primarily for its own sake, catering to its own needs, interests, and concerns. It's also a cautionary tale of what happens when academia is opened to plebeians, ie. people who don't belong there. — baker

I don't disagree but this latter part involving the plebeians - how do you see this working?

:up:

Interesting. Do the 'laws' of logic count as presuppositions? I'd be interested to see examples of some common presuppositions versus suppositions as they might operate in someone's belief system.

For instance, Is a presupposition or a supposition of science the notion that reality is understandable? Or is this scientism? Is the idea of 'reality' itself a supposition?

Are there examples of presuppositions that we can't really do without (the afore mentioned laws of logic, perhaps)?

I can only go by what I do which is muddle through. If I had anything to guide me it is the Golden Rule - a version of which has been conceived by just about every religious and ethical system. My experience tells me that people generally know how to behave, but there are many distractions. Most of us have the capacity to look around and see if we are creating chaos and damage or not.

In such dialogues, the examination of one’s assumptions, what you will accept to be true, is the basic task of philosophy. It can be presumed not to do that, is to live heedlessly, carelessly, unknowingly. But the key point is, in Platonic terms, this is grounded in an acceptance of a real good, understood as the idea of the good, in harmony with which the philosopher seeks to live. — Wayfarer

Nice.

Tangential perhaps but I come at this from 30 years of working in the area of addiction and mental health services. A key responsibility for sustaining any worker who is supporting people in crisis - suicidal ideation, sexual abuse, substance misuse, psychosis- is reflective practice. The worker who doesn't examine their own assumptions about themselves (their understanding of meaning and culture for instance) while they assist others may (amongst other problematic end results) succumb to burn out. This leads to harm as the worker projects their own issues upon the client. You are there to do 'good', not work through your own needs on others. In short; examining yourself - being aware of the systems you and the person you are supporting are in, and the beliefs that underpin your choices and actions - is just as beneficial to others as it is to yourself.

I understand philosophy as a performative and noncognitive exercise. Neither "truth" nor "relativism" obtain with respect to it as creating criteria or methods for discernment is a/the basic function of philosophy. In the end, I agree, choice of a philosophy is dispositional and not propositional because, as Pierre Hadot reminds us, it is/ought to be a way of life (which cultivates flourishing (eudaimonia) according to one's 'needs'). That there is more than one path up the mountain is pluralism and not "relativism". — 180 Proof

That's a very helpful and nicely phrased paragraph.

Nice OP. I relate to Wittgenstien's view of philosophy but I don't have his intellectual fire power. In relation to remaining silent, I wish people would do this more often about most things. I interact here a bit because I am very interested in what people think and why - especially if it is informed by theory and reading. I did philosophy briefly at University but left after an argument with the head of department.

Personally I'm not attracted to systems and theories and schools of thought and prefer to just get on and do things, knowing full well that we all absorb and employ philosophical ideas (often a kind of mosaic of incoherence) just by living in the world. I have no need to hold truth or grasp eternity and just want the years to go by as pleasantly as possible whilst being of some use to others in a way that satisfies my own standards of virtue. Perhaps this is why @180's notion of philosophy as a performative and noncognitive exercise resonates with me.

I wonder if we must take Tolstoy seriously as any kind of critic. Let's recall what he said about Shakespeare: "I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium . . . . Shakespeare can not be recognized either as a great genius, or even as an average author."

Tolstoy certainly didn't have much trouble passing judgment, with confidence and no hesitations.

What I am saying is that when arbitrarily taking givens, it would seem very hard as a hard-necked atheist to refute the whole of the new testament. — JACT

Not really. The question is, can you refute the whole of the Koran or the whole of the bhagavad gita or the whole of the Book of Mormon or the whole of any scripture from any given religion? All holy books rely on a similar type of justification - the truth in book form.

A considered atheist position on any given holy book would not be to refute it (or refute that Gods exists) but to ask, is there a good reason to accept any of these books as true? Answer... no. But this doesn't mean that the books don't sometimes count as great literature or that they don't contain some useful stories.

You may be interested to learn that many Christians do not consider The Bible to contain true stories as such, but think of the books held within it as largely an allegorical expressions of the transcendent not to be taken literally.

"The Postmodernists' tyranny wears people down by boredom and semi-literate prose.”
― Christopher Hitchens

"Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives."
― Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

Note Lyotard's use of the word 'incredulity' rather than, say, 'skepticism'.

It's fairly obvious that people who prefer prose to have Orwellian clarity (an English bias, perhaps) dislike postmodernism on the basis that meaning is hard enough to convey without the use of jargon and needlessly convoluted theoretical language. It's also clear some people appreciate the complex language and theoretical conceits viewing this as part of the post-modern process and praxis.

Postmodernism has contributed to making certainty problematic and this generates enemies, especially amongst conservatives (in the broadest sense of this word) who rely upon sacred presuppositions to support their worldview.

What I'd be interested to hear is how post-modernism has changed people's thinking or enhanced their experience of art/culture/philosophy/knowledge in any way.

Thanks. I've always thought that the famous 'god shaped hole' is most apparent in religions themselves. Especially Christian denominations where Jesus' teachings seem to be reversed or annulled. Loy's an interesting figure, his polemical views are bound to be fun.

he Samaritan’s role in the parable is that of the helper, not the helped — Possibility

Oops - yes, I unthinkingly reversed the story. It should should have read:

What seems radical about Christianity is the extension from self-interested altruism into loving your enemy as per the example of the Samaritan, that most loathed of all people. This is much harder to justify than being 'good' in your own tribe. — Tom Storm

think Nietzsche describes a similar shift - beyond these insufficient doctrines, traditional meanings and interpretations that promote ignorance, isolation and exclusion in the name of Christianity. His criticism, like Jesus’ criticism of Jewish adherence to Law, was not to eviscerate the practice of compassion, but its limitations of meaning - increasing an awareness of values more in line with a broader understanding. Compassion can be viewed as an act of self-interest at minimum, or as a capacity to collaborate in the struggle to realise our shared potential (will to power). — Possibility

Hmmm, not sure I quite get this one but well expressed. The issue with FN is he is subject to as much exegetical interpretation as any scripture.

Compassion can be viewed as an act of self-interest at minimum, or as a capacity to collaborate in the struggle to realise our shared potential (will to power). — Possibility

And presumable there are additional views.

By extension, all life is sacred... — Possibility

Nicely done.

or sometimes to strap on an explosive vest and be rid of the infidel.
— Banno

That says a lot more about your prejudices than the subject at hand. — Wayfarer

He did say 'sometimes'. It's not like this isn't true.

Again, not responsive to my post. Just not what I was talking about. — Hanover

I brought this up because it was left out as it so often is and really should not be.

You also make a presumption that a faith based epistemology is being advocated for empirical claims. — Hanover

I simply quote what I have heard directly from the faithful. I make no such claims without evidence.

Different categories of questions require different methods of epistemology. — Hanover

That can be pretty slippery. There are still good and bad ideas.

I could read Star Wars in the same way. But can you drill down without getting too theoretical?

A particular faith can only generate the assumptions you listed above because it generates predictions and anticipations based on the content of the faith. — Joshs

You see I would say the faith doesn't generate, it's retro fit in order to justify.

I'm not taking any cues from Dennett but he may be onto something here and there.

Perhaps you could provide an example of faith in the context you are suggesting. :wink:

I don’t think faith is content-free. It is the expression of a value system — Joshs

For me it is the value of nothing and, perhaps, everything as there is nothing it can't cover off on.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. ~F.N. — 180 Proof

Having met in my work over 30 years, around four Yahwehs, two Kirshna's, a Vishnu, four Jesus' and a Darth Vader, I concur with our aphoristic friend.

Faith isn't the belief. Faith is the justification for the belief. — Hanover

Faith is the excuse a person gives when they don't have a good reason for a belief. The real problem with faith is there is nothing you can't justify with an appeal to faith. People have it on faith that there is no COVID 19; that some races are inferior to others; that women are not as smart as men, etc. And within a single religion - in Christianity - faith is used to justify the beliefs of members of the KKK and Desmond Tutu. Faith is not a reliable method of justification because it is content free.

For example, we believe (rightly imo) that a scientific theory is legitimised by empiricism, but what legitimises empiricism? Somewhere along the line, you hit an overt or covert preference for one thing over another and find that, if you prefer the other instead, you get a different narrative. This doesn't mean that the other is better or that the first is necessarily untrue. If you compare a scientific review of climate change to a Trump rant about climate change, one does come off better than the other. But you can't elevate the former to the status of truth that way either, otherwise you're doing this: — Kenosha Kid

I agree but I was just quoting what some might say about Derrida. I personally have no position on Derrida.

Epistemology is tricky. This would matter more to you than to me since I am not a scientist or a theorist. I really don't need much more than experience or judgement to get by in my world. You need a lot more. I'm also not in the search for truth business either; what brought me here is to understand what others think and why. It's been very interesting.

I take it for granted that we all hold presuppositions that undergird our belief systems and personal epistemes. Justifying these presuppositions is tricky and in some cases impossible. If God had meant us to apply philosophy to all things he would have made us clever.

No one should worry about getting a philosopher right. A great philosopher is able to reach a wide variety of readers on many different levels. — Joshs

There's different levels and then there's wrong? No? If we say Derrida says nothing is true and nothing matters, do we not challenge and to some extent scorn that reading?

Or do you think the point is found in having the contretemps?

If you were to ask me what Derrida books to read to get the most consistent and clear sense of what he is trying to tell us , I would immediately answer , skip the formal works and go for the interviews( Points, Positions , Limited, Inc, Arguing with Derrida) . Here he was forced to do what he hated most, to summarize in a succinct sentence or two his major themes. — Joshs

That was certainly my experience. It was kind of a relief actually.

This just smacks of anti-intellectualism. If you can’t understand the French writers, then so be it. But don’t blame them for your difficulties. — Joshs

You may be right. I guess my take on this kind of critique would be that getting a coherent or appropriate reading on much of the work by these theorists is so often contentious even amongst gifted academics, so why bother? If some of our great minds, who are sympathetic to the French writers, don't get it right, what chance for the rest of us? You can see how people come to a view that this is an exclusive cultural activity for those in academe whose business it often is to pars the ostensibly inscrutable and talk to each other about it.

Why are compassion and kindness understood as fundamentally ‘positive’ human interactions? It isn’t because God told us, or because it earns us ‘brownie points’, because we just agree, or because it’s what our laws are founded on, and it isn’t because they can eliminate suffering as an apparent ‘evil’. There’s no longer any foundation here. If we’re going to call on each other to act with compassion and kindness, then we need to give them better reasons than this. Part of this is understanding what we mean when we use these words, rather than assuming we’re talking about ‘something good’. We need to unpack the value we attribute here. — Possibility

Most cultures and religions seem to end up with some variation of The Golden Rule it seems to me. It's sheer ubiquity suggests that self-interested altruism (if that's what it is) is hard wired. Did humans evolve to cooperate and coexist respectfully for the most part? Do we really need something as substantial and potentially transcendent as a 'foundation'.

What seems radical about Christianity is the extension from self-interested altruism into loving your enemy and helping that most loathed of all people e.g., the Samaritan. This is much harder to justify than being 'good' in your own tribe. This seems to echo the Roman poet Terence - "Nothing that is human is alien to me." By extension, all humans are sacred.

It's interesting that Nietzsche singled out this 'compassion' because is seems to me that Christianity did a bloody good job of eviscerating this from their practice all by themselves, even with a putative foundation.

I don't think such manipulation of scientific discourse was happening before Pomo. Maybe I'm wrong, but the idea is that the current post-truth moment is a child of Pomo. — Olivier5

It's a key cultural question whether this is right or not. I am not sure myself. I suspect that post-truth was the inevitable trajectory of corporate power. As we know some of the academics hired to say that smoking did not cause lung cancer (Dr Fred Singer, etc) later started to work in the climate change denial business. Being able to denigrate facts or notions of truth is really important to some corporations. Everyone learned a great deal from the pioneering denialism and alternative facts of Big Tobacco.

Liberty is a kind of burden in some ways, because so much is left up to the individual. I think that's why people used to join the army or become monks - it removes that burden. — Wayfarer

Totally agree. I would add prison to this. Thirty years ago I would have added university too, which used to function as a kind of sheltered workshop for so many men and women of tenure. Freedom is terrifying to many people. I have often noticed that for many people having a dependency on substances is also a good way to avoid calling the shots.

Who are these non/Jamesian pragmatists? Certainly not Dewey or Mead. Do you mean Peirce? And where do you stand on critical theorists like Adorno and Habermas, Badiu , Lacan, Zizek or pomo theologians like Caputo , Critchley, Charles Taylor? — Joshs

This must be to 180 Proof since I have not raised theory. Any female pomo theorists other than Kristeva?

Joshs, what I am really interested in is do you have a view on Wayfarer's tentative historical timeline QM to postmodern thinking?

I guess it all boils down to hard scientific certainty versus the application of scientific enquiry and principles.

I mentioned philosopher Susan Haack in my first response to this issue.

Haack argues that it's a hallmark of scientism to be preoccupied with the demarcation between what is and is not science. It's actually not that certain. Here are some excerpts from her influential essay Six Signs of Scientism.

The fact is that the term “science” simply has no very clear boundaries: the reference of the term is fuzzy, indeterminate and, not least, frequently contested.

I might say, as a first approximation, that science is best understood, not as a body of knowledge, but as a kind of inquiry (so that cooking dinner, dancing, or writing a novel, isn’t science, nor pleading a case in court). At a second approximation, I would add that, since the word “science” has come to be tied to inquiry into empirical subject-matter, formal disciplines like logic or pure mathematics don’t qualify as sciences, nor normative disciplines like jurisprudence or ethics or aesthetics or epistemology). And at a third approximation, to acknowledge that the work picked out by the word “science” is far from uniform or monolithic, it makes sense to say, rather, that the disciplines we call “the sciences” are best thought of as forming a loose federation of interrelated kinds of inquiry.

Like natural-scientific inquiry, social-scientific inquiry will follow the underlying pattern of all serious empirical inquiry. Like natural scientific inquiry, it will benefit from internal social arrangements than encourage good, honest, thorough work, and discourage cheating. But at least many of the special tools and techniques of which it will have need are likely to be very different from the special tools and techniques most useful in the natural sciences.

I think Haack would argue that psychology does qualify as a science. She may well argue that some of it is poor science.

I hear you and I have often thought likewise. Agree about WWI and mechanized slaughter erasing the final optimistic glint from modernism and the 'wonderful machine age'. It would be nice and convenient to tie it to QM and the end of certainty.

The last "metanarritive" to fall is the future. This knowledge is now pervasive. Is this late stage postmodernism, or are we now in some new, eschatological condition? — hypericin

Well, spacetime is doomed, so why not?

Postmodernism proper begins around the first two decades of the 20th C. 'All that is solid melts into air'. 'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold'. — Wayfarer

I was always taught (sociology, sorry) that postmodernism begins mid 20th Century, esp 1960's. I think the theory's slippery lack of specificity is telling and appropriately ironic. I guess you are trying to align it to a bigger picture.

So, in thinking about postmodernism, perhaps we need to think about what was helpful, or unhelpful, and where do we go from here? — Jack Cummins

I think you would first still need to agree that po-mo had provided a particular lens through which to view things. I am not sure this can be readily established. I really doubt the word has been used in a precise way by anyone, except, in earlier days to sex up pastiche and cynicism.

Modernism minus the Enlightenment equals p0stm0dernism

Now that's something to think about. :up:

Now show how it is a science. — tim wood

I'm not sure how to and I imagine it depends on the type of psychology and the definition of science one uses.

:up:

Ordinary now. But ordinary at the time? Was it usual for Americans to distrust each other for no obvious reason before McCarthy? Was it usual to assume your President was engaged in criminality before Nixon? — Kenosha Kid

Distrust, tyranny and corruption has taken place on and off during the history of the Republic. Lincoln abolished habeas corpus and shut down newspapers to control the press. Many Americans thought Lincoln was a devious tyrant. James Buchanan was seen during his time as a petty crook who chose a cabinet of famously corrupt men to advise him. Warren Harding was known as presiding over one of the most corrupt administrations in US history.

Wow... what brought this on? A quote from WLC too, nice.

More shadows cast by Nietzsche's Death of God?

McCarthyism taught us to doubt our neighbours, a handy leg-up for individualism and isolationism. Nixon taught us that government is a kind of criminal activity. We have uncountable postwar conspiracy theories about aliens, missing flights, 9/11, black helicopters, chem trails, vaccines, elections, and, of course, Jews. Alternative facts are everywhere while actual facts have little value to most people because there is no objective, neutral authority they would accept. — Kenosha Kid

Is that post modernism, or just the result of ordinary cynicism and conventional scapegoating, the product of political failures and concentrated media ownership? I think the internet has simply helped to concentrate and organize some eternal problems.

Postmodernism is probably understood or 'used' by a handful of academics and badly understood by a few million self-appointed experts - film critics/amateur theorists/essayists/novelists/sitcom writers. I may be wrong but it seems to me that for much of the rest of the of the world po-mo is just a flickering bricolage with no coherence.

Digression - I re-read part one of Don Quixote recently and it showcases many of the alleged po-mo literary devices; parody, self-reflexivity, irony, pastiche, double coding and that was in 1605. This ancient novel showcases an astonishingly contemporary sensibility.

Also, many times, a person's problems aren't actually due to their faulty psychology, but due to external factors, like poverty or abuse by other people; situations where any sane person would eventually go crazy. But it doesn't seem to be in psychology's interest to acknowledge this. — baker

But that is precisely what any competent psychologist would do. One important part of psychology is assisting people to deal with extraordinary situations, like recovery from war or rape or poverty/deprivation or child abuse. I have seen this work well (in most cases) for decades and I've seen it provide people with a greatly enhanced life. It focuses on people's strengths and upon what is important to them. The first thing a competent psychologist would do is acknowledge the situation and impact of this on the person.

I think some people have seen movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest too many times.

I am sure there are countries where power is abused and psychology (along with other disciplines) is used against people. I am sure there are bad practitioners. I am sure that there are unscientific schools, modalities and elements. But psychology and psychiatry is vast and complex and like most human activities it holds the good, the bad and the indifferent.