What I meant was not that he did not see himself as ruling out such ideas, but that such ideas are definitely not ruled out by the logic of his philosophy; which priveleges flourishing above all else.

Nietzsche was as confused as most pholophers when it comes to the idea of there being an objective order, as opposed to a spiritual or subjective order.

The point of the second quote is the rejection of any order at all. The very idea of order is anthropomorphic, the world is 'in all eternity chaos'. I think it's a mistake to romanticise Nietszche. Anyway I had better shut up because otherwise i'll be sworn at again.

What Nietzsche fails to understand is that the world is necessarily anthropomorphic or human-shaped.

Those who claim there is an objective order also fail to understand this.

I don't know what Bayman is talking about. Divine Lawmaker? What?

I agree with the Hart quote.

Not quite, order is just fictional, an expression of the finite world, which emerges and passes, rather than eternal. In this respect, John isn't entirely wrong. People florush with these fictions all the time. Out of the chaos emerges the dedicated scientist, beliver, philosoper, artist, football fan, mystic, etc., etc. The nihilism of Nietzsche is really an illusion, only seen by those who think meaning is given by an eternal order.

'The total character of the world, however, is in all eternity chaos—in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms... Let us beware of saying that there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word "accident" has any meaning.' — Wayfarer

In this passage we can see a truth claim about the the real: that it is not an order but a chaos. This is as much the kind of mistaken objectivist claim as the kinds of objectivist scientific and religious claims that Nietzsche elsewhere rails against. So it would seem that Nietzsche's attitude towards truth is deeply inconsistent, even conflicted.

We simply don't know whether the Real is an order or a chaos; so no claim at all about it can justifiably be made. The valid claims of spirituality concern not objective, but subjective orders. God needs humanity as much as humanity needs God. This is a subjective truth and not merely a matter of opinion. Some find this difficult to understand. No one will be convinced of this by argument alone.

In this respect, John isn't entirely wrong. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I'd love to hear in which respect you think I am only partially wrong. :)

One quick thing: If Nietzsche's invocation of 'fiction'* is to have any piquancy, it has to stand opposed to 'non-fiction.' In other words, it has to bring with it some idea of 'truth.' Which puts the Nietzschean in quite the muddle.

One way to dance around this is to say that 'truth' is itself a kind of fiction, but that the adherents of 'truth' have found a way to create a particularly spectacular fictional effect where one type of fiction ('non-fiction') appears to have this kind of eminent, majestic quality. So then the real question (tho what does 'real' mean!) would be how this non-fiction/truth 'effect' is produced (or, in a transcendental register, how it is producible at all.) But it's very hard to try to answer this question without recourse to a less sophisticated non-nietzschean (deflationary?) understanding of true vs false.

*as in "Why should the world that is relevant to us not be a fiction?"

You might be right. It's a long time since I read Zarathustra. If God is for Nietzsche a product of the human psyche, then the historical event would presumably be the exorcism. Or else the moment in history when the zeitgeist of the thinking person can no longer take the 'sky-father' myth seriously.

If God is for Nietzsche a product of the human psyche, then the historical event would presumably be the exorcism.

I think Mongrel's right. But the death of of God qua historical event isn't just the the loss of the belief in a benevolent sky-father. It's kind of like: God had been this linch-pin which held everything together (philosophically, culturally, politically) - and the loss of that linch-pin was only the beginning of this slow-motion recoil, like a too-taut rope which has snapped and is flying back at us - and once it finally comes all the way back and hits it source (over many, many years) it's going to destabilize all the other ideas.

Being an atheist in Nietzsche's time, and in Nietzsche's milieu, wasn't all that radical. But he had a premonition that all the other atheists hadn't really understood what their atheism meant. "God is Dead" in-and-of-itself wasn't too wild - but N understood that, in terms of philosophical/cultural/political thought, it was like a distant explosion and the shockwaves hadn't quite hit.

Order vs Chaos is far too simplistic a reading of Nietzsche, imo. He was doing something more like: there is no fixed order, but rather there are temporary orders precipitated from the interactions of unstable forces. He saw God and christianity as (immanently generated) stabilizing centers in a sort of force-field. And he thought (in quite Hegelian terms!) that a 'slow weaving of the spirit' had undermined them from within. The difference is that he was neutral about this undermining. For him, it was a fait accompli, not an unconscionable wavering that ought be reversed. From dust to dust. Those ideas had been generated, had a good run, and were now disintegrating.

So, yeah, that's definitely a rather radical stance that can be argued against, sure, but I think it's coherent. And, to beat a dead horse, this definitely wasn't a science vs religion thing. He was doing something else.

but rather there are temporary orders precipitated from the interactions of unstable forces.

An early systems theorist? I'm sure they would like that, it would add a certain cachet,

But just as equally a late Heraclitean (who, as you know, can't be simply reduced to 'everything is flux') But I don't think it's all that fruitful to equate Nietzsche to systems theorists (who I'm assuming you don't like based on the derisive tone of your reply) and thereby discard his ideas bc you find it obvious that system theorists don't cut any sort of mustard.

I've got nothing against 'systems theorists' at all, but I think you're drawing a long bow; I don't think you will find anything like 'islands of stability' in Nietzsche, that is a concept that comes out of 20th century biological sciences. He was a lot more radical than that.

in India, as in Greece, the same mistake was made: "We must once have been at home in a higher world (instead of a very much lower one, which would have been the truth); we must have been divine, for we have reason!" Indeed, nothing has yet possessed a more naive power of persuasion than the error concerning being, as it has been formulated by the Eleatics, for example. After all, every word and every sentence we say speak in its favor. Even the opponents of the Eleatics still succumbed to the seduction of their concept of being: Democritus, among others, when he invented his atom. "Reason" in language -- oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

From Twilight of the Idols

I think the underlined phrase is ironic, in that it can easily be turned around. Whence does the 'order of grammar' arise? Try unpacking that, and you will have many years of study, across many disciplines, and it may indeed end up pointing towards something uncomfortably close to a primal mind.

One way to dance around this is to say that 'truth' is itself a kind of fiction, but that the adherents of 'truth' have found a way to create a particularly spectacular fictional effect where one type of fiction ('non-fiction') appears to have this kind of eminent, majestic quality. So then the real question (tho what does 'real' mean!) would be how this non-fiction/truth 'effect' is produced (or, in a transcendental register, how it is producible at all.) But it's very hard to try to answer this question without recourse to a less sophisticated non-nietzschean (deflationary?) understanding of true vs false. — csalisbury

I think this is more or less exactly the move Nietzsche makes: truth and falsity becomes forces in Nietzsche, they are expressions of 'will-to-power'. To affirm the true or the false is, in the last analysis, to affirm as such (we simply call one affirmation true, the other, false, in a purely nominal fashion). To think in terms of the will-to-power or force is to 'flatten' or level the field of the true and the false so they no longer differ in kind. Moreover, The Genealogy of Morals is exactly Nietzsche's attempt to account for how this one kind force prevailed over and above others, and Nietzsche is very clear that even slave morality is a kind of creative, affirmative force, even though it is creativity at it's lowest intensity, as it were.

"The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying ‘yes’ to itself, slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self ’: and this ‘no’ is its creative deed. ... A race of such men of ressentiment will inevitably end up cleverer than any noble race" (GoM, Bk I). And also the famous lines about the fact that man would "rather will nothingness than not will"; In the ascetic ideal there is "a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a rebellion against the most fundamental prerequisites of life, but it is and remains a will!" (Bk III, Nietzsche's emphasis).

It's this attempt to level the true and the false - in the direction of the will-to-power - which constitutes Neitzsche's 'twist' or undermining of metaphysics, and which gives his project a measure of internal consistency.

So is this a survival of the fittest in ideology, or perhaps survival of the most ingenious?

And ‘islands of stability’ is not a bad way to put it. Here is TSZ:

"If timbers span the water, if footbridges and railings leap over the river, then surely the one who says “Everything is in flux” has no credibility. Instead, even the dummies contradict him. “What?” say the dummies, “everything is supposed to be in flux? But the timbers and the railings are over the river! Over the river everything is firm, all the values of things, the bridges, concepts, all ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – all of this is firm!” –

But when the hard winter comes, the beast tamer of rivers, then even the wittiest learn to mistrust, and, sure enough, then not only the dummies say: “Should everything not – stand still?” "Basically everything stands still” – that is a real winter doctrine, a good thing for sterile times, a good comfort for hibernators and stove huggers.

“Basically everything stands still” – but against this preaches the thaw wind! The thaw wind, a bull that is no plowing bull – a raging bull, a destroyer that breaks ice with its wrathful horns! But ice – breaks footbridges! Yes my brothers, is everything not now in flux? Have all railings and footbridges not fallen into the water? Who could still hang on to “good” and “evil”?

“Woe to us! Hail to us! The thaw wind is blowing!” – Preach me this, oh my brothers, in all the streets!"

Also, William Connolly has a great discussion on the above quote on flux, especially with respect to the sciences, where he directly makes the connection to complexity theory:

"Why entertain his perspective, then? [that of flux - SX] Because of the ethico-political stakes of doing so: the Nietzschean perspective — in conjunction with efforts to overcome existential resentment of a world with these characteristics — invites us to become more responsive to natural/cultural processes by which brand-new things, beings, identities, and cultural movements surge into being. It encourages us to develop more nuanced balances between the comforts and agonies of being on one side and the forces of becoming on the other.

The Nietzschean portrait of nature is often thought to reflect a faulty image of science. The fact that Nietzsche links the scientific problematic to an asceticism previously attributed only to devotees of religious fideism has not endeared him to philosophers of science either. His scattered reflections on nature, then, would be consigned to a dustbin in the history of science if it were not for recent re- flections on the character of science by Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and an inventor of complexity theory. ...The Prigoginian update of Epicurean physics and Nietzschean cosmology engages a nature that is sometimes creative and novelty producing, “where the possible is richer than the real,” and where, therefore, new structures come into being over time.

Even though such systems retain a persistent power to surprise and the evolutionary ability to create what has never before existed, they also display a kind of intelligibility retrospectively. This is where Prigogine expresses appreciation for the “approximations” Nietzsche notes. “What is now emerging,” writes Prigogine, “is an ‘intermediate’ description that lies somewhere between the two alienating images of a deterministic world and an arbitrary world of pure chance. Physical laws lead to a new form of intelligibility as expressed by irreducible probabilistic representations.” A far-from-equilibrium system is neither the reversible system of classical dynamics nor a condition of constant flux unrecognizable as a system. Some read Nietzsche’s “flux” the latter way. My Nietzsche, the philosopher of torsion between being and becoming, is closer to Prigogine’s contention that “a new formulation of the laws of nature is now possible... , a more acceptable description in which there is room for both the laws of nature and novelty and creativity.” (Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed).

Another quote regarding Nietzsche science and truth. The essay 'On Truth and Lies in a Non Moral Sense' is only about 10 pages and really worth reading. Also reading an essay by Nietzsche shows why it's difficult to use his quotes without context. There's often a lot going on which isn't the normal linear style of argumentation.

'Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly in this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems. The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would
thereby dispense with man himself. ' - N. On Truth and Lies

You might be right. It's a long time since I read Zarathustra. If God is for Nietzsche a product of the human psyche, then the historical event would presumably be the exorcism. Or else the moment in history when the zeitgeist of the thinking person can no longer take the 'sky-father' myth seriously. — John

It has to do with the topic of that Camus thread that was recently on the board. It's why positive atheism needs only a one word response: "Nihilism."

I figured you'd have a particular appreciation for Thus Spoke Zarathustra... part of it is like a play where all the characters are tarot trumps.

So is this a survival of the fittest in ideology, or perhaps survival of the most ingenious? — Punshhh

That's an interesting question. Metaphilosophy directed at Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Darwin as a group.

8-)

It is surmised that the 'raw', absent Real is becoming. The only real that is present is being, and yet that being is never static; it is alive with the dynamism of becoming. I think we can say plenty about that becoming; in fact we can say little about anything else. The conundrum lies in the fact that what is said, unless it is suffused with paradox and so reflects the becoming, is delivered into stasis. Our determinate formulations are the only things that remain still in this ever-shifting life.

To say that we evolved to see things the way we do is to state a purported objective scientific truth. Nietzsche would say the same; and that is why I say his pretension to abandon the idea of objective truth is bogus. You say Nietzsche rails against metaphysical orders, but this evolutionist formulation is a much a metaphysical order, and an imposition, as any other. If we are not genuinely concerned with any allegiance to what is thought to be objectively true, then why should we adopt this evolutionary view? Does it contribute to greater flourishing? I would say it is arguably the opposite: that it objectifies humanity and denies the most important part of humanity: the spirit. And despite all the wordy babble in passages such as that quoted by Streetlight that promise some empirical explanation of how creativity and freedom can co-exist with natural law, no such explanation is ever forthcoming; all that issues are gleefully optimistic promissory notes from those who pretend (probably as much to themselves as to everybody else) that they have eschewed ordinary notions of truth, and are not subservient to the scientific worldview.

You say the meaning we find in the world is a projection; that it is not inherent in nature. Again this is purporting the be an objectively true statement in the ordinary sense is it not? I say there is not only the objective order of nature, but a subjective order of spirit, and the meaning we find in nature is not a mere projection, but a symbolic expression of the subjective spiritual order. Would you think that purports to be a statement of an objective truth, like the statements that the way we see things is explained by physical evolution, or that the meanings we find in life are mere psychological projections? No, it would not purport to be such an objective truth at all, but a subjective truth of the spirit and as such, not a merely subjective claim. Nietzsche and the Postmodern cannot recognize the existence of such a kind of truth, because they deny the reality of the spirit. So, they are left with only objective empirical facts and matters of mere opinion to work with. And yet they pretend to have eschewed the ordinary notion of objective truth. So, what are their writings then, mere opinion?

Yes, I agree. Our entire worldview, including the scientific paradigm, has grown out of the Judeo-Christian (and Greek) worldview. The death of God would have enormous repercussions over a much longer span than would seem obvious. But Nietzsche was wrong; God has not died at all, but has been reborn out of His past objectivist incarnation. Nietzsche was right insofar as the objectivist God has died; or at least is still dying.

That's an interesting question. Metaphilosophy directed at Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, and Darwin as a group.

Yes, I can't help imagining a a group of monkeys, or primitive humans sitting on a ridge in the Rift Valley, dreaming up complex patterns of grunts and interpretations of grunts, becoming gradually more sophisticated until they are organising themselves into religious and political groupings. Each pattern of grunts becomes a competing ideology with the most effective and persistent outliving the others and corralling the groups. And that we are still continuing the tradition, while imagining we are superior to this in some way.

This is why I said you were only partially right. Nietzsche and PM don't deny the "spiritual," they just understand it's a fiction expressed by the world. A transcendent realm, whether understood as "subjective" or " objective," is incoherent. In any case, it is not a realm outside that makes one's "spiritually," it's a person themselves.

"Truth"and "fiction" aren't being used in the usual sense, but as a distinction between the universal/transcendent and expression of the finite/immanent. The "Death of God" is the displine of metaphysics understanding it's niether a universal or transcendence which defines us.

It runs far deeper than "scientism." Scientism treats the natural world as God and science is its worship. In Nietzsche's terms, it is a slave morality, much like Christianity. The Death of God breaks the metaphysical tie of the world to reason. Our world is not constrained by logic, to any one particular outcome which "makes sense," but possibly does (basically) anything. Reason no longer guarantees states of existence.

Rather than empirical facts (including the presence of believers; the Death if God doesn't mean no-one believes in God), Nietzsche and PM are dealing in something else: the distinction between logic and the world.

God is dead not because gods have been shown to be impossible by our empirical observation. Such " supermen in the sky" are entirely possible. It is the metaphysical God which is dead. No matter what someone might propose, it's the world which does existence, which expresses the spirtual. The presence of metaphysical God is logically impossible .

In a sense, Nietzsche and PM's focus is quite close to "objective" in the old sense of the world. What they are describing is the logical truth that logic does not give existence. It's a truth of reason, not the empirical, much like claims of metaphysical God. It's a truth known only by "intuition," rather than one also involving observation. What defines the philosophy of Nietzsche and PM is actually that they give more than empirical facts. Indeed, it sort of the entire point.

This is all grist to the mill for the mystic. It involves collapsing all the ideas of metaphysics and reification of the human experience. All that is left in terms of logic and reason is your being and the noumenon. This is why I say from time to time that the mind* is the obstacle, the obstacle while also being the only tool of being in this world.

* l realise that I am using "mind" in what might be an unconventional sense.

It's what the mystic attempts, yes. But they fail. They are left with the "unknowable" transcendent which partakes in making the self (being, nomoumen).

It's an approximate representation of being and nomoumen, but it still views being and nomoumen as something to know about, some sort of presence which acts. The mystic does not stand up and say: "being and nomoumen are themsleves, and there is nothing more to know about them."

Rather, the mystic treats being and nomoumen as the defintion or cause of something else. In addition to being and noumenon, they are also the "mystery" of how someone exists or means-- an action and conceptual knowledge which cannot cohrently be attributed to being and noumenon. The mystic is too empirically and concerned with putting our meaning into conceptual terms. They will not let being and noumenon stand on their own.

Where you go wrong is in thinking that any alternative to an objective or empirical reality or order could be nothing more than a fiction. Apparently you simply cannot accept the notion of a subjective order.

Of course we are not "defined" by the transcendent; it is obvious we can only ever be "defined" in empirical terms. Our empirical natures
are, however, an expression of the transcendent.

I agree with what you say about scientism, except I would equate it with fundamentalist religion, not with Christianity as such.

God is dead not because gods have been shown to be impossible by our empirical observation. Such " supermen in the sky" are entirely possible. It is the metaphysical God which is dead. No matter what someone might propose, it's the world which does existence, which expresses the spirtual. The presence of metaphysical God is logically impossible . — TheWillowOfDarkness

Of course the existence of superior empirical beings that we might refer to as 'gods' is not logically impossible. The existence of a transcendent God is not logically impossible either. What is impossible, because self-contradictory, is the empirical existence of a transcendent God. When you say the existence of a transcendent God is impossible, you really mean the idea is incoherent. But the idea is not incoherent at all provided it is understood that the word existence is not being used in its empirical sense. You are justified in saying that, for you, the idea is incoherent, but you cannot be justified in saying that it must be incoherent for everyone. You should take seriously the possibility that you simply lack a faculty that would make it coherent to you or that you are too mired in your own prejudices to be able to find it coherent.

You misunderstand me, did I not say that mind is the obstacle? So why would you think that the mystic is putting our meaning into conceptual terms, when that is the obstacle itself. For unveiling the pristine being and neumenon is the focus, the mind is nothing more than a witness, or for the canny a tool employed in retrieving intuitive knowledge(information from the transcendent interplay between being and neumenon) again, no conceptual construction, in terms of thinking intellection, going on. This information being a food of contemplation to be digested later.

So the mystic has a quiet sanctuary where being is in communion with the noumenon and no mind is allowed in.