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

Nietzsche isn’t denying that people need value systems in order to function. He is saying that to claim any one value system as privileged over all the others is to deny modem, because it is to deny change by desiring the freezing into place of one value. The purpose of values is to provide a sense of order and control. Being always ensconced withi. one state or other, we will always have a measure of structure and order, but order becomes disorder when it is ossified into ‘truth’.

amor fati — Ross

Go with the flow is what that means to me. Very Daoist!

[reply="Joshs;627399"
Yes I see what you mean but 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. Essentially these philosophies are flexible, there is not set of rules , just guidance on how to achieve well being unlike Christianity or Kant's ethics which includes set of rules and duties to live by. Why does Nietzsche reject Aristotle's and stoicism also . I don't perceive any element of control or the "freezing into place of one set of values" . Rather the stoics emphasis how we can navigate the hardships of life successfully through cultivating resilience. They don't preach a religious creed or doctrines.

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

Nietzsche determines the good as the effect of an ‘instinct’ of assimilation and control. Thus the good , and ‘good character’ is closely linked to conformity to particular value systems. Our sense of morality, righteousness , ‘character’ and goodness cannot escape this association with incorporation and control.

“ The commanding element (whatever it is) that is generally called “spirit” wants to dominate itself and its surroundings, and to feel its domination: it wills simplicity out of multiplicity, it is a binding, subduing, domineering, and truly masterful will. Its needs and abilities are the same ones that physiologists have established for everything that lives, grows, and propagates. The power of spirit to appropriate foreign elements manifests itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to the old, to simplify the manifold, to disregard or push aside utter inconsistencies: just as it will arbitrarily select certain aspects or outlines of the foreign, of any piece of the “external world,” for stronger emphasis, stress, or falsification in its own interest. Its intention here is to incorporate new “experiences,” to classify new things into old classes, – which is to say: it aims at growth, or, more particularly, the feeling of growth, the feeling of increasing strength.”(Beyond Good and Evil)

Thus we must move past the good vs evil
binary , which always privileges the good and depicts evil as a lack, an absence , a negation, and recognize that what opposes the good is not only necessary but fecund.

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.

Thanks for your reply but unfortunately I don't understand alot of what you're saying. There's loads of technical terms that I can't understand. If you could put it into simple straightforward language that would be appreciated. Thanks

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.

If you could put it into simple straightforward language that would be appreciated. Thanks — Ross

Unfortunately I’m utterly incapable of putting anything into simple straightforward language.

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

Sorry, sometimes I give philosophers nicknames. I've always thought Nietzsche to be a very excitable, emotional sort, too fond of exclamations and hyperbole for my taste.

The Stoics didn't merely accept life; that's a common misconception, like the claim that the Stoics disliked emotions. The Stoics always thought of Nature as being governed by a divine, benign, spirit which is immanent in it, and so could not think of our lives as something we must merely accept and resign ourselves to as best we can. You can see something of their reverence for life and the world in the Hymn of Cleanthes, but the Roman Stoics in particular were expressive of this, i.e. Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

So what do you think of my original post about Nietzsche's critique of traditional western philosophy and Christianity as being life denying. Is he correct do you think

I think he has a point if he's addressing the time after the rise of Christianity. Even though ancient pagan philosophers like Plato thought the world to be in a sense "a cave" the rejection of life and its pleasures, physical and mental, wasn't present in ancient pagan philosophy, nor do I think this was a view shared by most in pre-Christian times in the West.

But doesn't only attack Christianity for this he also attacks most of Western philosophy since Socrates as being in the category in what he describes as "life denying". I would take issue with Nietzsche here. I think he is overlooking the great diversity in western thought, some of which was influenced by Christianity but a lot of it may have been influenced by the pagan ancient philosophers and even Eastern philosophy from the 19th century onwards.

The element of what Nietzsche refers to as 'Socratic' (that Nietzsche objects to) is the separation of the realm of becoming from the realm of the eternal in a way where it is said that the former is built upon the structure of the latter.
Nietzsche depicts the delight in the 'given' objectivity of our experiences as secretly relying upon the reliance upon a 'given' eternal condition underlying the chaos we try to make sense of. An article of faith is being treated as a living god. So, it is a really good mask because it has a mask for its mask-i-ness. The world stands before me like a bowl of breakfast cereal.

Regarding the inheritances of cultural legacies, Nietzsche describes 'Christians' stealing the idea of the eternal from the 'Socratic' vision for their own uses. Whatever was going on with Jesus was accepted by N as the last expression of a message barely heard. N described Jesus as the last Christian. But that interesting element is only a side note to how little worth 'cultural legacies' were regarded by N. The way people used/use those legends to develop 'identity' for themselves receive the greatest scorn.

The above is presented for the purpose of noting that N wrote the Genealogy of Morals, not the Science of Morality. Exploration versus Explanation.

It's true, he does get a bit too excited with bashing other ideas. Underneath that, I interpret that he does not actually condemn wholesale all that much. I actually think he did have a specific overarching goal: to reveal lurking nihilism in 19th C (Western) culture. Part of that was an attempt to explore the history of philosophy to find when everything started going wrong. He points to the death of tragedy, a crime that was supposedly committed by Socrates:

We 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 14

This 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.

BT 15

At the same time,

[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.

BGE 10

In 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.

Reginster, "The Affirmation of Life", chapter 6 part 2

That's what happens when you philosophize with a hammer. I'm still ambivalent about a lot of his writing as soon as it gets into science, rationality, etc. As someone who tries to play a bit of music, the angle of "life is actually art, and your precious rationality will implode without it" was at first appealing, but I'm not so sure anymore. It's a similar sentiment to what I think Lovecraft expresses in e.g. The Silver Key. However, it seems to me that the trajectory of modern (neuro)science could well lead to real knowledge of art, maybe even to the death of the soul?

---

Why does Nietzsche reject Aristotle's and stoicism also — Ross

Again, good questions. I can't quickly find a passage of his criticism of Aristotle, do you have an example? I'm not doubting that he does this. His criticism of Stoicism:

In 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.

BGE 9

Seems problematic. I'm not about to go full solipsist, but current ideas about how our brain functions suggest that we are constantly minimising misfit between predictions based on our model of the world and our experiences. So yes, we are constantly "imposing" stuff on "nature". Not clear how else morality or ideals or any of that are supposed to happen. I agree that it seems like he is trying to spin this as dogmatism, which he can then dismiss in terms of his overarching anti-dogmatic project.

---

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

They are, however I think he means that many of them are compromised by subtle ties to dogmatic or religious ideals and tend to use some kind of cop-out to deal with the issue he wants to examine, which is the problem of suffering and its role as a source of nihilism in the modern world. I'm convinced now that he was significantly influenced by reading Schopenhauer, but completely disagreed with Schopenhauer's conclusions. He can't stand the idea of "denial of the will", and from this point of view he distrusts, any aloof, rigid systems that impose boundaries from outside. Of course, some boundaries are necessary in practice, as you said. I think his contribution is to point out that in the highly dynamic modern world, if we want to keep any ideals, they need to be resililent to being constantly challenged.

But Aristotle's ethics which have been hugely influential in western thought is not at all a rigid system. There are no rules or duties in it. It's aim to cultivate a good character through developing the virtues. Now what argument could Nietzsche make against that. Aristotle's ethics are not life denying, they are secular, don't assume any creed or doctrines. Yet Nietzsche attacks the whole tradition of the thought and I presume he's including Aristotle in this critique.

Why woud Nietezsche declare amor fati and then rebel against Christianity or anything else for that matter? :chin:

Why wo[uld] Nietezsche declare amor fati and then rebel against Christianity or anything else? :chin: — TheMadFool

Whatever else the phrase augurs, to adopt the stance of amor fati is to rebel – Das Ja-sagen "Nein!"@ :strong: :sweat:

And because Christianity is, according to Freddy, "contra amor fati" (i.e. life-denying resentment), contra — self-overcoming – every kind of "contra amor fati" is also what amor fati (i.e. life-affirming approbation) entails.

@

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

(Emphasis added.)

Right! Profound words there.

I was misled by fate which I read as passively, stoically, resignedly accepting whatever it is that comes your way without resisting (rebelling).

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.

I think Nietzsche is mistaken in his critique of Socrates and western philosophy here. It is a misunderstanding of human psychology. It's human nature to seek certainty, it's probably related to our survival instinct. I don't agree that Socrates thought is nihilism. Socrates and many others after him and indeed the field of science sought a rational explanation for the universe and for human life. There's nothing nihilistic about that. I think some of the religious or political ideologies may be a form of nihilism eg the belief in salvation and in heaven or a Utopia etc. But I think Nietzsche goes to far in attacking the whole edifice of western thought including even science of being nihilistic.

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.

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

So Nietzsche scorns religion's offer of a better afterlife. Basically one-bird-in-the-hand-is-worth-two-in-the-bush logic. I like that. To Nietzsche religion is an empty promise, a scam as it were that's defrauded people by the billions of a life they have by dangling before their eyes an afterlife that's so good to be impossible to resist and, before I forget, there's an element of threat (hell) for those more cautious with their $10 million (the worth of a human life).

"Eternal life" is now-here – "giving all to the present" as Camus says ("blessedness" ~Spinoza, "beatitude" ~C. Rosset, "unselfing" ~I. Murdoch)

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

A 'moral-psychological' test for loving fate (i.e. affirming life-nature-entropy): Freddy's gedankenexperiment of eternal recurrence of the same.

:up:

Nietzsche' eternal recurrence vis-à-vis Camus' Sisyphusean nightmare scenario. How do the two relate?

Nietzsche' eternal recurrence vis-à-vis Camus' Sisyphusean nightmare scenario. How do the two relate? — TheMadFool

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:

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

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile."
~The Myth of Sisyphus

... 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

:death: :flower:

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

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:

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. Note how having an intellectual conscience is demanded without qualification:

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

This touched a chord. It resonates with me and as chance would have it I have something to say about it.

In the book Jurassic Park, the mathematician Ian Malcom talks about fractals and he gives an example - cotton prices. The graph for cotton price variations for a decade looks exactly like that of a year, a month, a week. A lifetime = A day.

What did I do today?

Awoke, washed up, went to work, returned home, slept.

What would I have done for my entire life?

Ditto!

Sisyphus & Eternal recurrence!

By the way, thanks for explaining Nietzsche & Camus to me

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

Yep. Throw away a perfectly good real opportunity for an infinitely better but imaginary one. Reminds me of Pascal's wager.

Thanks for the notion of the fractal relation of a day a year a lifetime. :cool: Sisyphus' amor fati.

Thanks for the notion of the fractal relation of a day a year a lifetime. :cool: Sisyphus' amor fati. — 180 Proof

:up:

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

Consider this from Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 1, section 9 sourced from here

You desire to LIVE “according to Nature”? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, “living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “living according to life”—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature “according to the Stoa,” and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?… But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima.