Is it rather the case that many of these philosophical systems of ethics and morality whether it's Aristotle's or Plato's ethics or Kant's moral theory that they are a goal or set of ideas for humanity to aspire to. An attempt to construct a framework of values by which a society or even an individual can live by without any such framework it would be almost anarchical. Isn't Aristotle correct that human beings are fundamentally social beings and therefore in the matter of ethics and values that it's important to see them in a SOCIAL context, to provide a some kind of guide to how human beings can flourish not only as individuals but also crucially to live together with a common set of moral values. But Nietzsche attacks all forms of moralizing altogether. Is he correct here or is it being unrealistic? — Ross
what about Aristotle's ethics or virtue ethics, neither are not a rigid system of rules or codes to live by. They emphasis the importance of developing a good character , that's their end goal and they do not include a prescription of what one most do or believe in. — Ross
Who is Frantic Freddie, I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about here. Are you saying that Nietzsche is borrowing some ideas from other thinkers. I think Nietzsche's concept of amor fati is different from the ancient stoics. It's more above loving and embracing life rather than mere stoic acceptance, which for Nietzsche seems not very life affirming. — Ross
BT 14We need only consider the Socratic maxims: "Virtue is knowledge, all sins arise from ignorance, the virtuous man is the happy man." In these three basic optimistic formulae lies the death of tragedy.
BT 15This is why the image of the dying Socrates, man freed by insight and reason from the fear of death, became the emblem over the portals of science, reminding all who entered of their mission: to make existence appear intelligible and consequently justified.
BGE 10[To] ultimately prefer even a handful of ‘certainty’ to a whole carload of beautiful possibilities [ . . . ] this is nihilism and the sign of a mortally weary soul.
Reginster, "The Affirmation of Life", chapter 6 part 2In this praise for ignorance and uncertainty, and for the problematic character of life itself, Nietzsche finds himself close to Socrates, indeed perhaps closer than he acknowledges.
Why does Nietzsche reject Aristotle's and stoicism also — Ross
BGE 9In truth, the matter is altogether different: while you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature—even on nature—and incorporate them in her; you demand that she should be nature “according to the Stoa,” and you would like all existence to exist only after your own image—as an immense eternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism.
Is it rather the case that many of these philosophical systems of ethics and morality whether it's Aristotle's or Plato's ethics or Kant's moral theory that they are a goal or set of ideas for humanity to aspire to. — Ross
Whatever else the phrase augurs, to adopt the stance of amor fati is to rebel – Das Ja-sagen "Nein!"@ :strong: :sweat:Why wo[uld] Nietezsche declare amor fati and then rebel against Christianity or anything else? :chin: — TheMadFool
(Emphasis added.)What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion.
Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value…
Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.
Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle. — The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
I was misled by fate which I read as passively, stoically, resignedly accepting whatever it is that comes your way without resisting (rebelling). — TheMadFool
Are you familiar with the doctrtine of eternal recurrence that N proposed as the antithesis to depicting life 'here' as some kind of test for another life? The idea is not presented as a desiderata. It is presented as an unavoidable medicine if one is to reject the other pharmaceuticals on offer. — Paine
A 'moral-psychological' test for loving fate (i.e. affirming life-nature-entropy): Freddy's gedankenexperiment of eternal recurrence of the same.Amor fati: Life has no (e.g. metaphysical, or "god-given", or necessary-permanent) purpose/s, meaning/s, goal/s ... to live is to play AND struggle, to eat AND to be eaten, to breathe via screams AND laughter ... living learns – flourishes – from failure AND fails to learn (folly), creates AND wastes itself – collectively contributing to the acceleration of cosmic entropy – like countless stars blazing AND THEN burning-out, one by one, in the black ... — 180 Proof
The latter is an analogic translation of the former, it seems to me, with the same speculative (chthonic) throughline going all the way back to, at least, Empedocles & Kohelet. :fire:Nietzsche' eternal recurrence vis-à-vis Camus' Sisyphusean nightmare scenario. How do the two relate? — TheMadFool
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. — Marcus Aurelius
The greatest weight.-- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you:
"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? — The Gay Science, no. 341
:death: :flower:... a metaphor, an existential reminder to live each day, not as if it's your last day, but to live so completely and mindfully as if it each day is an entire lifetime. — 180 Proof
The eternal return of the same "infinite task", no? Zarathustra and his self-overcoming mountain, Sisyphus and his philosopher's stone – twin 'eternal champions of the multiverse.' :smirk:If I may ...
"Imagine a bucket with a hole. Yes the hole (suffering) must be adequately sealed (negative ethics) but the goal actually is to fill the bucket (positive ethics)."
— TheMadFool
Yet since "the hole" can never be filled once and for all (without discarding ... "the bucket"), the infinite task (à la Sisyphus' stone) of re/filling "the hole" becomes "the goal". — 180 Proof
2
The intellectual conscience. - I keep having the same experi-
ence and keep resisting it every time. I do not want to believe
it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an
intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if
anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in
the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert.
Everybody looks. at you with strange eyes and goes right on
handling his scales, calling this good and that evil. Nobody
even blushes when you intimate that their weights are under-
weight: nor do people feel outraged; they merely laugh at your
doubts. I mean: the great majority of people does not consider
it contemptible to believe this or that and to live accordingly,
without first having given themselves an account of the final
and most certain reasons pro and con, and without even· trou-
bling themselves about such reasons afterward: the most gifted
men and the noblest women still belong to this "great majority."
But what is good heartedness, refinement, or genius to me, when
the person who has these virtues tolerates slack feelings in his
faith and judgments and when he does not account the desire
for certainty as his inmost craving and deepest distress-as that
which separates the higher human beings from the lower.
Among some pious people I found a hatred of reason and
was well disposed to them for that; for this at least betrayed
their bad intellectual conscience. But to stand in the midst of
this rerum concordia discors and of this whole marvelous
uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning,
without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such
questioning, without at least hating the person who questions,
perhaps even finding him faintly amusing-that is what l feel
to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first
in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human
being has this feeling, simply because he is human. This is my
type of injustice. — The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Book One, paragraph 2
to live so completely and mindfully as if it each day is a whole lifetime — 180 Proof
What Nietzsche rejects in the expectation of an afterlife is that it avoids our responsibility to decide for ourselves what to value or discard in this one — Paine
Thanks for the notion of the fractal relation of a day a year a lifetime. :cool: Sisyphus' amor fati. — 180 Proof
Frantic Freddie had an unfortunate tendency. He enjoyed belittling others, thinking his views were unique. But they weren't entirely, and so he would from time to time borrow from other philosophers, without attribution and even while criticizing them. His Amor Fati, for example, is similar to Stoicism, though he maligned the Stoics. — Ciceronianus
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