Do both sides, even as belligerently opposed as they are, not claim to be right, to know the truth? They're indistinguishable in that sense. The two, atheism and theism, may differ in particulars, in fact they're contradictory, but the overall image each projects - each insisting that it's in possession of fact about reality - is identical...at least in spirit. — TheMadFool
Still no paradox. Atheism claims 'theism is false' is true and theism claims 'g/G exists' is true. If the latter (1st order claim – independent variable) is false, then the former (2nd order claim – dependent variable) is true; if theism is true, then atheism is false. (The inverse, of course, is nonsense.) Show me what I'm missing, Fool. — 180 Proof
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Christian_SystemWhoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our race information as to the aim of its existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood. There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the wise, even though these thoughts, liable to error as is the lot of everything human, are often clothed in strange allegories and myths under the name of religion. So far, then, it is a matter of indifference whether a man lives and dies in reliance on his own or another's thoughts; for it is never more than human thought, human opinion, which he trusts. — S
When he cried his "ecce homo" over himself, it was again too late, and the crucifixion of the soul began even before the body was dead. He who thus taught yea-saying to the instincts of life, must have his own career looked at critically, in order to discover the effects of this teaching upon the teacher. But if we consider his life from[382] this point of view, we must say that Nietzsche lived beyond instinct, in the lofty atmosphere of heroic "sublimity." This height could only be maintained by means of most careful diet, choice climate and above all by many opiates. Finally, the tension of this living shattered his brain. He spoke of yea-saying, but lived the nay. His horror of people, especially of the animal man, who lives by instinct, was too great. He could not swallow the toad of which he so often dreamt, and which he feared he must yet gulp down. The Zarathustrian lion roared all the "higher" men, who craved for life, back into the cavernous depths of the unconscious. That is why his life does not convince us of the truth of his teaching. The "higher man" should be able to sleep without chloral, and be competent to live in Naumburg or Basle despite "the fogs and shadows." He wants woman and offspring; he needs to feel he has some value and position in the herd, he longs for innumerable commonplaces, and not least for what is humdrum: it is this instinct that Nietzsche did not recognise; it is, in other words, the natural animal instinct for life.
But how did he live if it was not from natural impulse? Should Nietzsche really be accused of a practical denial of his natural instincts? He would hardly agree to that; indeed he might even prove, and that without difficulty, that he really was following his instincts in the highest sense. But we may well ask how is it possible that human instincts could have led him so far from humanity, into absolute isolation, into an aloofness from the herd which he supported with loathing and disgust? One would have thought that instinct would have united, would have coupled and begot, that it would tend towards pleasure and good cheer, towards gratification of all sensual desires. But we have quite overlooked the fact that this is only one of the possible directions of instinct. There exists not only the instinct for the preservation of the species (the sexual instinct), but also the instinct for the preservation of the self.
Nietzsche obviously speaks of this latter instinct, that is of the will to power. Whatever other kinds of instinct may exist are for him only a consequence of the will to power. Viewed from the standpoint of Freud's sexual-psychology this is a gross error, a misconception of biology, a bad choice made by a decadent neurotic human being. For it would be easy for any adherent of sexual psychology to prove that all that was too lofty, too heroic, in Nietzsche's conception of the world and of life, was nothing but a consequence of the repression and misconception of "instinct," that is of the instinct that this psychology considers fundamental. — J
The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit. — Nietzsche
Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our race information as to the aim of its existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood. — Schopenhauer
Strange how someone who became famous for attacking sacred cows ended up becoming one. — Wayfarer
Hicks is the author of five books and a documentary. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy, 2004) argues that postmodernism is best understood as a rhetorical strategy of the academic left developed in reaction to the failure of anarchism, socialism and communism.[2] However, his work on postmodernism has been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that it is full of misreadings, suppositions, rhetorical hyperbole and even flat out factual errors.[3][4] — Wiki
Schopenhauer said he admired Eastern religions, namely Vedic Hinduism and Buddhism. It is said that later in life he read the Upanisads every evening. Strange he did not say the same about them as they’re both revealed religions. — Wayfarer
Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge. And in view of the enormous intellectual inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that the thoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense a revelation to another. — S
I actually agree that 'both sides' have some vision of the way things are, with one side believing there's a god and the other side disagreeing. That's a massive oversimplification, since God-talk is highly complex and some positions are hard to classify (was Hegel a theist? and wtf is negative theology?).
The problem for me with this insight is (not to be rude) its triviality. It's like saying scholastic nominalism and realism are the same thing because they are opposed to one another.Any philosophical worldview tries to be factual, tell the truth. So what gets left out of this bin? Even your idea of this bin seems to belongs there. — T H E
All honor to the ascetic ideal insofar it is honest! so long as it believes in itself and does not play tricks on us! But I do not like all these coquettish bedbugs with their insatiable ambition to smell out the infinite, until at last the infinite smells of bedbugs; I do not like these whited sepulchers who imitate life; I do not like these weary played-out people who wrap themselves in wisdom and look "objective"; I do not like these agitators dressed up as heroes who wear the magic cap of ideals on their straw heads; I do not like these ambitious artists who like to pose as ascetics and priest but who are at bottom only tragic buffoons; and I also do not like these latest speculators in idealism, the anti-Semites who today roll their eyes in a Christian-Aryan-bourgeois manner and exhaust one's patience by trying to rouse up all the horned-beast elements in the people by a brazen abuse of the cheapest of all agitator's tricks, moral attitudinizing (that no kind of swindle fails to succeed in Germany today is connected with the undeniable and palpable stagnation of the German spirit; and the cause of that I seek in a too exclusive diet of newspapers, politics, beer, and Wagnerian music, together with the presupposition of such a diet: first, national constriction and vanity, the strong but narrow principle "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles," and then the paralysis agitans of modern ideas. — Translated by Walter Kaufman, 3rd essay, section 26
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