The problems some people have with postmodernism are due to their plebeian mentality. — baker

Hahahaha! I've never laughed harder while on this forum. :lol:

Do you think a poor, ugly person enjoys being self-aware, benefits from it? — baker

I would say that self awareness has no bearing on appearance or financial resources. You seem to be talking about self-consciousness or self-hatred.

The elites do. That's why they exist. — baker

Depends on what you mean by elites. Those I have met don't read, they prefer gallery openings. And there are people I know who live on unemployment who study Kant... so I would say it's anyone with free time, which may have little to do with 'higher status'.

My point is that being "open to not fully knowing" is a precarious position to be in, a liability that those who are still relatively healthy and wealthy can afford, but the rest can't. — baker

If you have small children, that's definitely true.

Do you think a poor, ugly person enjoys being self-aware, benefits from it?
— baker

I would say that self awareness has no bearing on appearance or financial resources. You seem to be talking about self-consciousness or self-hatred. — Tom Storm

You keep twisting around what I say..

You keep twisting around what I say.. — baker

Well if I do it's by accident and/or perhaps that you lack clarity? Maybe we should move on then.

Another poster understood me just fine.

Derrida's goal/s with "deconstruction" is one thing, the implications and applicability of what he proposes are quite another thing; and it's the self-refuting nature of the latter – in effect, reducing 'all' truth-making discourses to 'nothing but' tendentious rhetoric – which many critics like me take issue with. — 180 Proof

The term ‘self-refuting’ tips me off to the root of the issue here, which is less about Derrida in particular than about every one of the numerous philosophical discourses thar have appeared over the past 100 year which take their leave from Nietzsche’s
critique of truth — Joshs

I suspect most philosophical discourses in the last twenty-four centuries since Pyrrho of Elis refute themselves either partially or, the case of sophists, completely. — 180 Proof

Going back to this exchange - I've decided I was wrong at the outset of this thread. Given that this is TPF, I think there's probably enough coherence of belief, here, that one could reasonably begin to speak about post-modern philosophy. My original position was merely instinctive and reactive, but unfair and not really based on considered judgment.

And, even more so -- given that this is where we landed after trying to discuss names -- well, then my proposed solution simply didn't work.

EDIT: Was hoping to be able to say more but -- can't! :D Nothing useful anyways. But it's a pondering silence...

I'm having a gander at this. I thought maybe, given the breadth of postmodernism so far agreed to, and the other conversation, Nietzsche might be fruitful.

https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/761/1/K_Gemes_Truth.pdf

EDIT: I should be quick to point out that I'm not endorsing the reading of Nietzsche, but using Gemes thoughts to springboard into the OP. Through all this meandering, I am trying to bring it back around

:up: (re: 'Nietzschean critique' of the ideology, rather than mere pragmatics, of truth).

I'd be interested in trying to find something to read against this, in comparison.

Because I think that the interpretation offered by this paper is basically modernist, in its outlook: Nietzsche as naturalist, which I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement. At the very least it's not apparent that he's a naturalist, and there it seems reasonable to have other readings of Nietzsche -- and it seems this particular interpretation is what the paper I linked is working through and with.


But in the wider sense of postmodern philosophy, we probably wouldn't read him this way. It was just a free and accessible source that could be shared amongst those still interested - something that could be shared other than impressions and opinions.

Also, I thought he was a good pick, from the broader category of postmodernism, for TPF given that it seems he's widely read around here.

Nietzsche as naturalist, which I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement. — Moliere

Yes, many analytic philosophers are doing this reading of Nietzsche as a naturalist. Similar to those doing a non-metaphysical reading of Hegel.

Cool! And kudos to it -- I mean I linked a paper using this interpretation! :D For other reasons too, but I want to keep that interpretation in the conversation to make sure there's a possibility of a shared dialectic, in the end.

I'm meandering about, but my own madness has an eventual method when I allow me to get there.

my own madness has an eventual method when I allow me to get there — Moliere

Sounds good!

I think that the interpretation offered by this paper is basically modernist, in its outlook: Nietzsche as naturalist, which I'm not sure I'd agree with that statement. At the very least it's not apparent that he's a naturalist — Moliere

It occurs to me I've never considered N to be anything but a philosophical (though not scientific) naturalist, especially emphasized in his "middle period" from Human, All Too Human to The Gay Science (and also later with On The Genealogy of Morals). IME, N is neither an existentialist nor a (Jamesian) pragmatist nor a p0m0 'cultural relativist' (nor, if it still needs to be said, a proto-fascist).This paper may be helpful in highlighting those aspects of N's philosophy which are predominately naturalistic as well as referrng to other critical commentaries which corroborate this view.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1171285

Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. — TSZ, Zarathustra's Prologue

It occurs to me I've never considered N to be anything but a philosophical[ (though not scientific) naturalist, — 180 Proof

If by that, you mean he didn't incorporate supernatural causes into his philosophy, yes.

For N, truth is always a metaphor, though, so he certainly wasn't a physicalist. His touchstone was Schopenhauer.

It occurs to me I've never considered N to be anything but a philosophical[ (though not scientific) naturalist,
— 180 Proof

If by that, you mean he didn't incorporate supernatural causes into his philosophy, yes.

For N, truth is always a metaphor, though, so he certainly wasn't a physicalist. His touchstone was Schopenhauer. — Tate

Yes, a touchstone, and also an adversary. Nietzsche’s starting point is in opposition to Schopenhauer.

Nietzsche’s naturalism is not Darwinian. It consists of the tension between affective drives rather than causal
relations among physical objects.

Yes, a touchstone, and also an adversary. Nietzsche’s starting point is in opposition to Schopenhauer. — Joshs

Opposition to Schopenhauer's pessimism, yes.

Freddy only opposes Artie's conclusions, I think, not his pessimistic premises.

Freddy only opposes Artie's conclusions, I think, not his pessimistic premises. — 180 Proof

For Schopenhauer, the only way to keep the will active is by, well, creating drama, problems to be solved, evil to be overcome.

Nietzsche’s point is that what Schopenhauer is calling evil is only evil in a Christian framework (or some other life abdicating ideology).

According to him, our ancestors enjoyed a different set of values which lauded the very things we condemn.

Opposition to Schopenhauer's pessimism, yes. — Tate

Also opposition to his metaphysics, which Nietzsche thought was too close to Kantian idealism( his notion of will , for instance). Nietzsche considered himself to be making a radical break with metaphysics , and he thought Schopenhauer remained attached to it.

Also opposition to his metaphysics, which Nietzsche thought was too close to Kantian idealism( his notion of will , for instance). Nietzsche considered himself to be making a radical break with metaphysics , and he thought Schopenhauer remained attached to it. — Joshs

I missed that. Where does he shoot down Kant?

I missed that. Where does he shoot down Kant? — Tate

More on that here:

https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/nietzsches-engagements-with-kant-and-the-kantian-legacy-volume-i-nietzsche-kant-and-the-problem-of-metaphysics/introduction?from=search

“The later Nietzsche’s uncompromising criticism of Kant places him in clear opposition not only to Schopenhauer, but also to the early ‘back to Kant’ movement.”

I checked in with some professors on reddit. In some ways the later N is opposed to Kant, but he never strayed from basic Kantian metaphysics, that is, we don't know the world as it is.

You're putting it a little too strongly, in other words.

↪Joshs I checked in with some professors on reddit. In some ways the later N is opposed to Kant, but he never strayed from basic Kantian metaphysics, that is, we don't know the world as it is.

You're putting it a little too strongly, in other words. — Tate

There are many Nietzsches. That is , there are many interpretive camps when it comes to his work. There are right and left Nietzscheans, realist and postmodern Nietzscheans. The Nietzsche I understand and find still
radical and exciting is a postmodernist. The best interpreters of him I have found are Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Heidegger. Those who think he believes we ‘don’t know the world as it is’ are not postmodernists, they are neo-Kantians. They certainly have a right to their interpretation but I find it utterly conventional, missing everything that I find original in his work.

For the Nietzsche I understand , there is no way the world is in itself apart from our creative interaction with it. The world isn’t an external reality, it is a ceaseless becoming.


“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? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –,

… we must make the attempt to hypothetically posit the causality of the will as the only type of causality there is. “Will” can naturally have effects only on “will” – and not on “matter” (not on “nerves” for instance –). Enough: we must venture the hypothesis that everywhere “effects” are recognized, will is effecting will – and that every mechanistic event in which a force is active is really a force and effect of the will.

– 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.”
( BGE)

Most of the quote you posted isn't contra Schopenhauer. I didn't say he was a faithful disciple, but you seemed to be asserting that N turned against S in general. I don't think so.

Plus he had a huge mustache.

There are many Nietzsches — Joshs

Yup! That's why I thought he'd be good too -- relative popularity, fits within the category, but also has a wide breadth of interpretations. Plus, given Nietzsche's aphoristic style, it makes sense that there are many Nietzsche's. I was hoping, given that, we could avoid some of the "what he really meant" type thoughts.

Had a headache today so didn't work on the thread, but thought I'd pop in and put out some of my intentions here.

Plus he had a huge mustache. — Tate

At least he didn’t have mutton chops.

Silly speculative question, perhaps, but what do you think Nietzsche would have made of postmodernism and Derrida's reading of him?

↪Joshs Silly speculative question, perhaps, but what do you think Nietzsche would have made of postmodernism and Derrida's reading of him? — Tom Storm

I would like to think he would say ‘Finally someone understands me.’( maybe not so much with Derrida)