Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment. — frank
They won't remember what you said, they won't remember what you did, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel.
I also explained to you that I work in an emergency room and I was waiting for a trauma at the time I was discussing Nietzsche with you. I explained that this is why I was brief. So maybe you could see your way clear to cutting me some slack. — frank
engage in a friendly way, great. If all you want to do is launch an assault, save it. I'm not interested in that kind of discussion. — frank
I have to say, I think it's sad that when asked on a philosophy forum what Nietzsche's eternal return means to you, you have nothing to say. — frank
Let us beware of thinking that the world eternally creates new things. There are no eternally enduring substances; matter is as much of an error as the God of the Eleatics. But when shall we ever be done with our caution and care? When will these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our de-deification of nature? When may we begin to "naturalize" humanity in terms of a pure. newly discovered, newly redeemed nature? — ibid. 109
Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power-until eventually knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: two lives, two powers both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: — Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 110, translated by Walter Kaufman
My idea is, as you see, that consciousness does not really belong to man's individual existence but rather to his social or herd nature; that, as follows from this, it has developed subtlety only insofar as this is required by social or herd utility. Consequently, given the best will in the world to understand ourselves as individually as possible, "to know ourselves," each of us will always succeed in becoming conscious only of what is not individual but "'average." Our thoughts themselves are continually governed by the character of consciousness, by the "genius of the species" that commands it--and translated back into the perspective of the herd. Fundamentally, all our actions are altogether incomparably personal, unique. and infinitely individual; there is no doubt of that. But as soon as we translate them into consciousness they no longer seem to be.
This is the essence of phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand them: Owing to the nature of animal consciousness, the world of which we can become conscious is only a surface and sign world, a world that is made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to superficialities. and generalization. Ultimately, the growth of consciousness becomes a danger; and anyone who lives among the most conscious Europeans even knows that it is a disease.
You will guess that it is not the opposition of subject and object that concerns me here: This distinction I leave to the epistemologists who have become entangled in the snares of grammar (the metaphysics of the people). It is even less the opposition of "thing-in-itself" and appearance; for we do not "know" nearly enough to be entitled to any such distinction. We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for "truth": we "know" (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species; and even what is here called "utility" is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary, and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we shall perish some day. — ibid. halfway through 354
Even the most cautious among them suppose that what is familiar is at least more easily knowable than what is strange, and that, for example, sound method demands that we start from the "inner world, from the "facts of consciousness"... because this world is more familiar to us. Error of errors! What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to "know" - that is. to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as "outside us." The great certainty of the natural sciences in comparison with psychology and the critique of the elements of consciousness-one might almost say, with the unnatural sciences - is due precisely to the fact that they choose for their object what is strange, while it is almost contradictory and absurd to even try to choose for an object what is not-strange. — ibid. half of 355
Are "metaphysicians" such as Heidegger and Deleuze providing a ground that Nietzsche does not? — Paine
In any discussion of a philosopher’s work, what is just as important as what they ‘actually’ said is what we would like them to mean. — Joshs
In any discussion of a philosopher’s work, what is just as important as what they ‘actually’ said is what we would like them to mean. — Joshs
Here we see a fundamental hermeneutical difference. On the one hand, the attempt to understand an author on his own terms, on the other, the attempt to find one's own interests in an author. The former requires a kind of humility and the idea that certain authors are worthy of being read because they have something to teach us that is not easy to understand — Fooloso4
If our philosophical framework is postmodernist , we are likely to recognize Nietzsche’s work as postmodern, but if we don’t grasp postmodern concepts, we will
never see these ideas in his work no matter how closely we try to hew to the author’s own terms. — Joshs
The reader’s perspective isn’t superior to the author’s , but it is inextricable from how an author’s work comes across to us. — Joshs
I see this as the condition and starting point, not the jumping off point. How an author comes across to me, my perspective, is not fixed, it can change as I learn from him, and must change if I am to learn from him — Fooloso4
@JoshsWhat would it mean to approach the past from the future? If the past extends infinitely can the road turn back? Can the long lane backward be the opposite of the long lane forward if they form a circle?
If all that will happen has happened before over and over what is the starting and end point of what happens?
Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return? — Fooloso4
The figurative style of “The vision and the riddle” allows us to avoid literal and direct approaches to the problem of time. — Number2018
But he does not assert a comprehensive unity, an eternity with an ontological status of a transcendent external Reality, or a universal and unequivocal model of truth or time. — Number2018
Here, Zarathustra-Nietzsche utilizes various arguments in favor of the
Eternal Return of the same. — Number2018
there is nothing more awesome than infinity. — ibid. 124
Yet, he immediately contests this fragment as a mirage — Number2018
Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? ‘Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.
O my brethren, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,—and now gnaweth a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.
My longing for that laughter gnaweth at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!—
Something ultimately new appears ... — Number2018
We glimpse that milieu from within the terms of our own milieu. — Joshs
The only way to truly understand the author on their own terms is to be that author, and even then , ‘their’ own terms change from writing to writing. We have to make do with filtering the author’s ‘own’ terms through our own times and our own philosophical frame of reference. — Joshs
is it not somehow questionable to kneel and crawl before those who themselves refused to kneel and crawl ? — green flag
The strong poet does violence to his precursors, and it's fight for his life as a distinct voice. We must do as they do and for just that reason avoid saying as they say. — green flag
We hide behind the authorial avatar. — green flag
.A frankly violent and shameless interpretation has the virtue of honesty. — green flag
It's not the gossip about the matter ... — green flag
Naïve question: in essence what is Nietzsche hoping his readers will gain from ER? What is the point of it? I can grasp its introductory use as a kind of thought experiment, but what else is there to this idea? — Tom Storm
It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend. — Fooloso4
Why must we do as they do? — Fooloso4
This brings into question what the 'historical' view provides against the background of what does not change (or not at the same rate or for unrelated reasons). When Nietzsche and Heidegger, for example, present how ancient people thought and felt differently than 'we' do, the idea is not presented as an independently experienced fact because that is impossible. The past and present people share a condition that places them in contrast to each other. The proposal can only be interesting if it introduces a new way to look at what is being experienced presently.
That dynamic is missing in a world where our "situatedness" is a horizon that never lets us know what other people thought. That could be the basis for cancelling the 'historical' as a category. Accepting that limit as self-evident also cancels the history of why the contrast became interesting. — Paine
By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead. — Fooloso4
https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Self-Reliance.pdf
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.
The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and
creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
...
For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.
Thanks, yes, I kind of got this from the initial thought experiment. Not sure I'd do it all again. Let alone for ever. You? — Tom Storm
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