What about Nietzsche... I don't want to discuss him at this thread, because that's not the point of it.
And my interpretation of him radically differs from mainstream — kirillov
For me, life (in general) isn't finite. In Buddhist word's, Samsara will make another turn. — kirillov
And there's situations where you can't avoid/moderate pain & suffering (that's what I'm dealing with) , so Epicurus is not for me. — kirillov
I know that suffering is unavoidable. As I said: "life is eternal suffering".
My goal is to affirm it, accept it. To love this life despite all the suffering it entails. — kirillov
Ok. But notice that religions that accept samsara generally posit some kind of transcendence of the transitoriness, suffering, death present in it. They do not 'affirm life' by accepting death, suffering etc but they generally try to find a 'way out'. That's why detachment is generally a common attitude you find in them (as well as compassion for other beings trapped in the prison of samsara). — boundless
1. Life, in general, is eternal. Not life of one particular individual, but in general. — kirillov
2. Life is suffering. One's life, by pure luck, can be pretty good in absent of pain in suffering. But that's not the case overall. — kirillov
3. Life cannot be escaped. — kirillov
And the problem is: how one, given three premises above, affirms life as it is? — kirillov
If, according to Nietzsche, all manifestations of life are manifestations of the 'will to power', and there is no ultimate 'right' or 'wrong' way to manifest it (someone in the classical tradition would perhaps say that the 'right' way is what fulfills the nature of the will, but Nietzsche rejects that), it is somewhat inconsistent to write books glorifying some way of living and criticizing others.
Mind you, I think that Nietzsche had pretty interesting things to say (e.g. about how resentment works and can condition our thoughts, about creativity and so on). But his extreme 'voluntarism', expressed in his mature 'amoralism' and 'will to power' etc is IMO more consistent with an empty philosophy rather than a philosophy that can teach a 'way of life'. To put it differently, the 'pars destruens' was so pervasive than no 'pars construens' seems consistent with it, not his. — boundless
I have a couple of different ideas from my own thoughts and experience. However suffering is part of life so the justification would be just as much part of 'why should one keep living?' and as such some of my ideas are pointed more towards that.How can life be justified in spite of all the suffering it entails? — kirillov
This didn’t mean that he abandoned all possibilities of distinguishing what is a better way of life from what is worse. What he did was to separate this issue from the particular content of meaning of specific value systems. — Joshs
259. To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SOCIETY, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the DENIAL of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy-- not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it LIVES, and because life IS precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the FUNDAMENTAL FACT of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves!
And we can get better and better over time at allowing the creative future to flow into the present. This seems to me to be a promising , growth-oriented way of life. If it is empty, it is only empty of content-based prescriptions, as I think it should be. — Joshs
That the world is divine play [göttliches Spiel] beyond good and evil―for this, my predecessors are the philosophy of Vedanta and Heraclitus. (NF 1884)
Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's (fragment 52)
War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free. (fragment 53)
We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away (?) through strife. (fragment 80)
Why I believe it is 'voluntaristic'? Because Nietzsche didn't distinguish between good ways in which life manifests itself and bad. Simply, whatever the will wills is good. The only bad thing is to hinder the manifestions of the — boundless
“The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism‘.
There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer's superstition:
… a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but to say the “it” is just that famous old “I” – well that is just an assumption or opinion, to put it mildly, and by no means an “immediate certainty.” In fact, there is already too much packed into the “it thinks”: even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself.
So, the mere ability to act in concordance with the will is what 'freedom'. Morality, according to Nietzsche, hinders that ability by constraining it with rules and this is why it is so bad. As I understand him, imposing on ourselves and others 'moral rules' suffocates disables the ability to act according to the will. Rather, Nietzsche would suggest, we should accept to live without putting constraints on the will and accept the suffering that such a way of life entails (due to, say, the conflict that inevitably happens). — boundless
So, in any case, if what is 'good' for the life can change radically, why, say, some 'life-denying' morality could not, in some times, be a legitimate way of the expression of life? Same goes for resentiment? — boundless
“Darwin absurdly overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances'; the essential thing about the life process is precisely the tremendous force which shapes, creates form from within, which utilizes and exploits 'external circumstances' ... -that the new forms created from within are not shaped with a purpose in view, but that in the struggle of the parts, it won't be long before a new form begins to relate to a partial usefulness, and then develops more and more completely according to how it is used.” “Everything that lives is exactly what shows most clearly that it does everything possible not to preserve itself but to become more ...” (Last Notebooks)
The struggle for survival is only an exception, a temporary restriction of the will to life; the great and small struggle revolves everywhere around preponderance, around growth and expansion, around power and in accordance with the will to power, which is simply the will to life. (The Gay Science)
I think that one of his 'Untimely mediation' was actually against the idea of 'progress'. And also in later years he didn't think that the future will be 'better' than the present. Could you provide some references?
In fact, it seems the idea that we 'should' seek a 'better future' goes against many things he says. For him, the will to power doesn't have a 'purpose', it is like an innocent play (see the quote below). — boundless
“That every heightening of man brings with it an overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every increase in strength and expansion of power opens up new perspectives and demands a belief in new horizons—this runs through my writings.”
How can life be justified in spite of all the suffering it entails? — kirillov
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