Yep. Throw away a perfectly good real opportunity for an infinitely better but imaginary one. Reminds me of Pascal's wager. — TheMadFool
.I would not describe it as a 'perfectly good real opportunity.' Perhaps you are aware of this, but Nietzsche specifically called out Pascal as the poster child of how a great talent can be misled by morbid ideas (more in N's notebooks than actual books).
On Nietzsche's side, one is risking a lot. The desire for certainty is not any kind of promise it will be met. Honesty is the wager.
On Pascal's side, the wager is not even a gamble. There is nothing to lose if you shove your chips across the board. The casino is an illusion. You are not here. — Paine
In accounting, finance, and economics, a risk-seeker or risk-lover is a person who has a preference for risk.
While most investors are considered risk averse, one could view casino-goers as risk-seeking. A common example to explain risk-seeking behaviour is; If offered two choices; either $50 as a sure thing, or a 50% chance each of either $100 or nothing, a risk-seeking person would prefer the gamble. Even though the gamble and the "sure thing" have the same expected value, the preference for risk makes the gamble's expected utility for the individual much higher. — Wikipedia
In economics and finance, risk aversion is the tendency of people to prefer outcomes with low uncertainty to those outcomes with high uncertainty, even if the average outcome of the latter is equal to or higher in monetary value than the more certain outcome.[1] Risk aversion explains the inclination to agree to a situation with a more predictable, but possibly lower payoff, rather than another situation with a highly unpredictable, but possibly higher payoff. For example, a risk-averse investor might choose to put their money into a bank account with a low but guaranteed interest rate, rather than into a stock that may have high expected returns, but also involves a chance of losing value. — Wikipedia
William Lee Bergstrom (1951 – February 4, 1985) commonly known as The Suitcase Man or Phantom Gambler, was a gambler and high roller known for placing the largest bet in casino gambling history at the time amounting to $777,000 ($2.44 million present day amount) at the Horseshoe Casino, which he won. — Wikipedia
I would not describe it as a 'perfectly good real opportunity.' — Paine
Very typical of Nietzsche, full of assumptions, pronouncements, exclamation points and rhetorical questions. — Ciceronianus
tzsche, if I am not mistaken, admired the Stoic spirit of acceptance of what cannot be changed, like Spinoza, but what do you say of his critique of the Stoic's belief in logos and providence? — Janus
I can't comment on the merit of his ideas but the prose it so bombastic I can't ever get though more than a few sentences before needing to leave in a hurry. It's like being stuck next to a hectoring uncle who teaches lit crit somewhere. — Tom Storm
You want to live "according to nature"? Oh you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purpose and consideration, without mercy and fairness, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power — how could you live according to this indifference? Living — is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is not living estimating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And supposing your imperative "live according to nature" meant at bottom as much as "live according to life" — how could you not do that? Why make a principle of what you yourselves are and must be? — 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 and incorporate your morality, your ideal onto nature, even into nature, you demand that it 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 universalization of Stoicism! For all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, so rigidly and hypnotically to see nature falsely, namely stoically, that you are no longer able to see it differently — and some abysmal arrogance finally still inspires you with the insane hope that because you know how to tyrannize yourselves — Stoicism is self-tyranny — nature, too, lets itself be tyrannized: is not the Stoic — a piece of nature? ..... But this is an old, eternal story: what formerly happened with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as any philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image, it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical drive itself, the most spiritual will to power, to the "creation of the world," to the causa prima. — Beyond Good and Evil, Chap. 1, sec.9
As you can see, the moment you think of the this and now as not ideal, you open the doors to Pascal's wager. You can't have one without the other. Hence, my statement, "perfectly good real opportunity". — TheMadFool
↪Ciceronianus
I think some of the style comes from growing up in a dour religious household — Paine
Don’t you think that if a writer is astute enough to distill the spirit of their time and put it under critique, that they would be as deliberate and insightful in choosing their style of attack? — Joshs
Understood. (I also prefer Brahms. Btw, N did outgrow and then repudiate both Wagner and his music ... as not Dionysian enough!)Maybe the Romanticism of the time induced them to write in such a florid, bombastic style, and aphoristically. You see the Romantic bombast in the music of the time as well--consider Wagner and Franz Liszt. I prefer their contemporary Brahms. As to Nietzsche in particular, maybe he was too much devoted to the mad god Dionysus, forsaking Apollo altogether. The Stoics were never followers of Dionysus as far as I know — Ciceronianus
When you put it that way, the 'now' sounds like a description of a Bed and Breakfast one reports visiting without enthusiasm. It was okay for the night but not anything to celebrate. — Paine
Nietzsche is asking for one to put oneself in a vulnerable position by choice. The bird he held in his hand is free to fly away. He seeks a verification that may not happen. That is why he keeps talking about being courageous.
On Pascal's side, the risk being taken on by his interlocutors has already been accepted. These people have deferred the sufferings for their sins upon some kind of existence they have already abandoned. They are numb and suspicious. Pascal proposes a period of accommodation rather than call for people to fall on their knees in fright. Those cards have already been played — Paine
Leaving aside my reading of Pascal in the context of Christian expression, what text of Nietzsche exemplifies the grin and bear it quality you hear? — Paine
Nietzsche is asking for one to put oneself in a vulnerable position by choice. — Paine
Vulnerable means, in my book, to be deprived of all means of escape/relief - there's nothing you can do (amor fati) and so :grin: and bear it! — TheMadFool
Vulnerable means, in my book, to be deprived of all means of escape/relief - there's nothing you can do (amor fati) and so :grin: and bear it!
— TheMadFool
That expression is at odds with Nietzsche saying life keeps happening despite the entropy. The cups keep getting filled over. We have no idea why.
And what do you make of all the language surrounding freedom from bad science and sick thoughts? He does not replace all that with sunshine. That absence is part of his proposition, if you could make it a sentence, the sentence would have been written. — Paine
Amor Fati wouldn't seem to be the most novel or revolutionary of Freddie's insights. — Ciceronianus
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