I know for sure that he despised Christianity and all it's values and he also despised nearly all secular ethical systems prior to and during his time. — Ross Campbell

Just curious , and you don’t have to answer this, but do you consider yourself a Christian?

Postmodernism does not in my opinion undermine the basis of empirical science. If we were to follow Nietzsche's value system society would have to abandon compassion and kindness and pity because they're a slave mentality and we wouldn't be able to trust the whole scientific enterprise because he attacks that as well. If it wasn't for science we would be still living in caves. — Ross Campbell

You’re right, postmodernism doesn’t undermine the bias of empirical science , they make explicit that basis, which is what Nietzsche does. It’s not a question of saying that airplanes can’t fly and our other machines don’t really function. The postmodern , and Nietzsche’s , croute is not of the results of science but of the way that it has traditionallly thought of itself, how it has branded itself. For instance , that empirical proof is a matter of matching our models of nature to the real world. That assumes what Rorty called ‘science as the mirror of nature’. It ask
goes by the name of the correspondence theory of truth.

There are postmodern approaches within psychology now. You can look up enactivism, 4EA( embodied, enactive, extended and affective cognition ) . autopoietic self-organizing systems approaches , and there you’ll find rigorous research ( Shaun Gallagher , Evsn Thompson , Alva Noe, Matthew Ratcliffe ) on autism, schizophrenia, emotions, empathy, depression ,visual perception and language which reject your view of science.

I'm aware that empirical science has been shown to less reliable than it was previously thought. That's why most scientists would say that their theories are not watertight but are based on the evidence available and are open to being revised. — Ross Campbell

You miss the point . Lamenting science’s lack of reliability implies the classic belief of science as correspondence with nature.

I’m with psychologist George Kelly on science.

“To me the striking thing that is revealed in this perspective is the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.”

The classic view of science sees it as a more ‘rigorous ‘ avenue toward ultimate truth than than the humanities of philosophy. It is supposedly superior by virtue of its method as its use of mathematics. But all this has been called into question. What hasn’t been called into question is the usefulness of science, but not because it gets more reliably to a representation of the
‘way things really are’.

If we were to follow Nietzsche's value system society would have to abandon compassion and kindness and pity because they're a slave mentality — Ross Campbell

We wouldnt need to abandon kindness and compassion
any more than we would need to abandon science. But in both cases it would useful
to abandon our prevailing superstitions about the basis of kindness and compassion and the basis of scientific
truth. We care about others to the extent that they are like ourselves. That is , they share our value system. What we call evil is what is profoundly alien to our way of thinking. This is the basis of compassion and kindness. Nietzsche supports altruism but recognizes that our ability to relate to others is limited by our value systems , and those values are always in flux over longer periods of time. To follow the Christian injunction to locenone another amounts to assuming a single value system locked into place for eternity that we are forced to conform to. I don t mean here that love is a value system. Of course we love what we know , what we relate to , identify with. We don’t need a religious injunction to tell us that . It comes naturally . We don’t need to be told to have compassion, to be kind , to love. We need to understand how our shifting values, paradigms, word views change our ability to relate or others. We need to stop trying to force conformity to one worldview , and to stop labeling deviation from that worldview evil.

Put differently , Jesus’s injunction to love thy neighbor presuppposes that we are making a choice whether to love or hate, to have compassion and kindness or apathy. It explains such social attitudes on the basis of intent and assumes that the world is interpreted in essentially the same way for all of us. Thus we are urged to love each other , and when we don’t our character and intent is blamed. Nietzsche is arguing that choice and intent is not the basis of feelings of compassion or hate. Instead, we live in very different worlds, even within the same community. We love or hate as a result of how our worldview make sense of our social world , not because of personal whim or choice. Urging compassion and kindness is both unctuous and dangerous from this vantage , because it ignores the real basis of social tension and instead blames it on the choice not to be compassionate. This makes a Christian moralism a less kind form of social understanding than Nietzsche. Nietzsche doesn’t blame intent but sympathizes with each person’s situation. That is why his position is beyond good and evil. the ‘evildoer’ lives and loves in a different world from mine , and his values are as justified within his world as mine are within mine.

Now you see my beef with science and philosophy!? — Protagoras

For centuries these have left US out of the picture , as if our relation to experience was not necessary to the facts of the world.

Would you say there are people whose superordinate system rather than triggering negative emotions when in new unknown experiences or territory "Focus" hard and actually thrive joyfully in spite of the unknown? — Protagoras

Well, if I shift back a minute from Kelly to Gendlin, Gendlin would say that in feeling ‘ stuck’ in a new situation where one does not know how to go on , to move forward, one can use the technique of focusing to tap into one’s bodily implicit intricacy. The body knows how to go forward because it is always implying new possibilities.. But to make that knowing fully conscious and articulate , one has to get in touch with the bodily felt sense of the situation as a whole. Usually we just get stuck in a piece of the situation and react with narrow emotions., which keeps us trapped in the same cycle of thinking. When we sense the situation as a whole it begins to shift and create new possibilities of meaning for us.

If you are into those two thinkers why even bother with the vast majority of continental thinkers? The ideas of those two if refined with some freud are sufficient. — Protagoras

I have always said the ultimate test of any philosophy is how well it serves as a psychotherapy. What can it tell us about ourselves and others that rival psychotherapies miss?

I have a soft spot in my heart for Kelly His writing is packed with a playful humor which I see as reflecting the implications of theory itself. He is often credited as the founder of cognitive therapy but he didn’t want to be seen as a cognitive psychologist because cognition is too closely linked to logical criterion of meaning. Instead, he called his theory the psychology of personal construct. A construct differs from
the classical definition of a concept. If a concept is the dictionary definition of a word, then a construct is the particular sense of a word’s meaning that is unique to our own construct system. We may both use the word ‘dog’ when pointing to an animal , but they may mean slightly different things to each of us. Each construct gets its meaning from its role within a system
of constructs. Think about it this way. Our lives are organized by overarching themes having to do with the way we see ourselves in relation to others, what we stand for, etc. This would be the superordinate aspect of our construct system. The limits of our superordinate system
define a the limits of what we can understand , what we can make sense of. It also defines our affective limits. Those experiences that trigger anger, threat , guilt or fear are events that lie just outside the range of convenience of our total system. Negative emotions define our intellectual frontier. when we find ourselves in emotional crisis , we are prompted to reconstrue our situation , to find alternate ways of making sense of our world. In this way each of us is an incipient scientist.

The core idea of Gendlin’s is that whatever we experience occurs into an implying. That is , the body is an interconnected mesh of behaviors, thoughts and feeling that functions as a single totality and always implies a next move. So what occurs as this thought or this perception isn’t a something out there disconnected from an in here. Objects don’t appear as cut off from our implying of them. They are connected to our implying as relevant and significant in some way, and this has a certain boldly feeling associated with it. The way we use words comes out of this bodily implying.

When I say a critique of rationality I'm talking foucault level of saying science is just control. However,I don't go foucault level of subjectivity being constructed purely by culture etc,nor do I say religious experience is invalid. — Protagoras

Are you familiar with the work of Eugene Gendlin? He wrote about an approach that he dubbed ‘after postmodernism’. His approach , which he worked out when he was working with Carl Rogers, shows how logical forms and patterns are generated out of an implicit intricacy , which is not just the imposition of culture and language on individuals, as the postmodernists claim. One can think beyond language and culture. Gendlin argues that this implicit intricacy is both intentional and affective, before any notion of a split between feeling and thought. I wonder if this might be of interest to you. I’m also a big fan of the psychologist George Kelly, who also abandoned the distinction between feeling, knowing and doing.

Joshs
Your talk about vulnerable and alienation is just your defensiveness — Protagoras

I don’t have all that much to defend because I don’t have that high an opinion of myself. I’m just another shmuck on here trying to learn a thing or two. But there’s no question we all make ourselves vulnerable when we share our ideas , because they are a partn of who we are, and it can be devastating to have our self-image challenged. I think that’s why conversations often deteriorate into name calling.

Yes,the last point is interesting. We could have a good discussion. But if you want that,then talk in your own words,not just quoting others.

I like discourse with you on some level because you actually acknowledge intuition and a critique of enlightment "rationality",which is very rare on this forum. — Protagoras

I think within the continental tradition, and hewing closely to texts of part of that style, but I certainly don’t have to include quotes.

There are a number of contributors here who critique Enlightenment rationality, including Antony Nickles , Xtrix and Streetlight.

Listen guy. Don't pigeon hole me or try to patronise me. — Protagoras

I don’t know you well enough to pigeonhole you. All I know is you’ve been on this site for less than two weeks and have already managed to show hostility to all but two of the people you have engaged with here. I think that’s some kind of record. Does that mean you are one who ‘doesn’t play well with others’? I guess that’s not for me to say. You’d know better than I if you have a pattern of feeling alienated from the social groups you find yourself involved with. Maybe that’s because you’re the only righteous one amongst all your peers. But if so that must be a lonely cross to bear.

Listen

If your too anal and think I need to show proof of every bit of malevolence in historical matters then you keep believing the narratives dealt to you by the powers that be. — Protagoras

I was hoping you’d humor me and show prooof of the specific malevolence you claimed.

Listen

You stick to your comfortable post modernist narratives.
— Protagoras

I’d rether you present an interesting critique of those post modern narratives. Isnt that what we’re here for?

Listen

As if I owe you a detailed spoon feeding of how to asses narratives. Do your own research and use your own brain not relying on academics to justify your every viewpoint — Protagoras

A good policy for all of us . But wouldnt it be quicker just to say that you don’t have any specific evidence to back up your assertion concerning Einstein rather than give me a lecture on interpretation of narratives? That’s what someone does who’s trying to cover their ass.

Listen

And the irony of ",conspiracy monger" when you read deleuze,Nietzsche,foucault et al and say there is a variety of perspectives. — Protagoras

That could be an interesting starting point for a discussion, Much better to go in that direction than just throw it out as an attack one-liner. It makes you more vulnerable but the other direction just closes you off to people.

I still think it makes perfect sense to talk about the individual. The term is used widely in public debate, as well as academia. — Ross Campbell

Of course one can talk about the individual. The question is what is the relation between the individual and culture. There many different philosophical positions on this issue, ranging from Enlightenment rationality to Kantian idealism to Marx and Hegel to postmodernism. It sounds to me like your position is a traditional one. You talk about individual character , and emphasize empiricism in the old fashioned way without seeming to have any acquaintance with the wide range of discourses in both analytic and continental philosophical traditions which deconstruct and problematize the assumptions underlying empiricism and individualistic approaches to personality and ‘character’. You had no idea that Nietzsche is embraced by postmodernists, even though a two second search via the keywords ‘Nietzsche Postmodernism’ would have given you numerous sources verifying this.

It seems absurd that a thinker such as Nietzsche can eschew thousands of years of philosophical wisdom , not just particular philosophers but the whole tradition of philosophy since the ancient Greeks. — Ross Campbell

Haven’t you heard the news? Multiple generations of philosophers at least since Schopenhauer have eschewed thousands of years of philosophical wisdom on the subject of moral values like kindness and compassion. I would also suggest that each era of philosophy since the Greeks has consisted of eschewing fundamental tenets of previous approaches. You act as if philosophical innovation froze after Kant.
Many, including Freud , have remarked at the similarities between Nietzsche’s psychological model and that of Freud. Do you think Freud ‘eschewed thousands of years of philosophical wisdom’? And what about Darwinian based models of altruism?

I think this discussion has digressed from my key point and that is that In my opinion Nietzsche is mistaken in his contempt for the time honoured values of compassion and kindness. — Ross Campbell

I think in order to understand what Nietzsche means by compassion and kindness , and why he is critiquing the traditional metaphysics underlying these values, it is absolutely necessary to see his criticism in the context of his larger philosophy. , which is centered around the Will to Power. You can’t just extract a few concepts , assume
that your definition of them is Nietzsche’s, and then assume that he is dissing them.

I don't see how Aristotle's ethics which are grounded in empirical evidence and common sense is other wordly. — Ross Campbell

Nietzsche may have been the first to recognize that empirical evidence and facts in general only make sense in relation to the larger value systems that define them. Analytic philosophers like Quine , Sellers, Putnam and Davidson refer to this as the untenability of the fact-value distinction. We cannot separate facts from values , and this is what philosophers of science like Kuhn were getting at in showing that scientific theories ( paradigms ) dont mirror or represent the world( the traditional notion of empiricism) , they interact with it. It is necessary to understand these and many other facets of Nietzsche’s approach and see how they all connect up with each other in order to see what he is up to in his treatment of values of compassion and kindness.

I’m not assuming that you will come to embrace Nietzsche’s point of view on ethics, but until
you can produce a coherent summary of his overall project that bears some resemblance to scholarly interpretations then I don’t think you should assume that you are grasping his terms.

I'm saying nearly everything we have heard about Albert Is mainly prooganda. — Protagoras

Like what. Please give examples. Otherwise I might take you for a conspiracy monger. For someone who’s big on empirical truth and correctness you seem to throw out a lot of unsubstantiated claims. If you have specific evidence that he didn’t create special relativity while working in a patent office , let’s have it. Otherwise don’t waste my time or the time of other readers of this site.

This is fine except that theism is not at all necessarily "one static truth". — Janus

The most liberal forms of theism I know , post-Kierkegaaedian religion after religion , heretical Christianity etc, reduce dating to a desire for the good, which is certainty a far cry from fundamentalism , but I would argue there is still a static , unchanging element here , and that is the ‘good’ as something that remains what it is as a desire, a trajectory.

philosophy books I've read about existentialists, Nietzsche is listed amongst them. Post modernism came lond after Nietzsche's death. I've never heard Nietzsche described as a postmodernist. In fact the latter is probably a reaction against thinkers like Nietzsche and other existentialists who regard their ideas as the unique product of the thinker. — Ross Campbell

Most books that you read about existentialism probably list Nietzsche as an existentialist because , for one thing, his era overlapped Kierkegaard and dostoyevsky, who were among the first to be called existentialists. Another reason is that , at least in English speaking countries , the first interpretations of his work were by writers who were existentialists themselves. Postmodernism may have come long after his death , but many philosophers have had their work ignored or misread for years until a major reinterpretation puts their ideas i to a whole new light. That has happened with the American pragmatists and phenomenology as well. Heidegger wrote extensively ion Nietzsche ( Heidegger is another one whose work has been miscategorized as existentialist), as did Deleuze.

What do you mean by "the individual is a social creation"? — Ross Campbell

Many post structuralists argue there is no
such thing as the autonomous subject. What we think of as the individual is a construction emerging
social relations. I assure you the originators of postmodernism ( Jean Francois Lyotard coined the term )
we’re enormous fans of Nietzsche.

“Lyotard follows Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in arguing that there is no objective science or forms of knowledge that are not based in a desire or what Nietzsche called a will for power, a point that Lyotard will make by looking at the desire or libido behind the so-called scientific works of the later Marx.”

“Nietzsche is also a precursor for postmodernism in his genealogical analyses of fundamental concepts, especially what he takes to be the core concept of Western metaphysics, the “I”. On Nietzsche's account, the concept of the “I” arises out of a moral imperative to be responsible for our actions. In order to be responsible we must assume that we are the cause of our actions, and this cause must hold over time, retaining its identity, so that rewards and punishments are accepted as consequences for actions deemed beneficial or detrimental to others (Nietzsche 1889, 482-83; 1887, 24-26, 58-60). In this way, the concept of the “I” comes about as a social construction and moral illusion. According to Nietzsche, the moral sense of the “I” as an identical cause is projected onto events in the world, where the identity of things, causes, effects, etc., takes shape in easily communicable representations. Thus logic is born from the demand to adhere to common social norms which shape the human herd into a society of knowing and acting subjects.

For postmodernists, Nietzsche's genealogy of concepts in “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (Nietzsche 1873, 77–97) is also an important reference. In this text, Nietzsche puts forward the hypothesis that scientific concepts are chains of metaphors hardened into accepted truths. “

I’m an independent writer in philosophy and psychology. I only have a masters degree and yet my work is accepted in academic journals.

By todays scientism logic he would have been chased off this forum as a lunatic anyway. You need degrees,phds,white coats and to worship newton or the current paradigm to be able to be in our club of science. — Protagoras

btw, I thought you were a realist? It sounds like you’re endorsing Kuhnian science here. How would you describe the nature of scientific progress? Is it cumulative ?

The amount of nonsense and misinformation written about Einstein is legendary... — Protagoras

Are you saying Einstein didn’t work at the parent office when he began generating special relativity?

So your a minimum wage scientist!! I'm sure for the love of science you would work for free. — Protagoras

Wasn’t Einstein a patent clerk when he developed
special relativity?

“ For Einstein, the patent office was "that worldly cloister where I hatched my most beautiful ideas.”

The fundamental problem with Nietzsche , as with some other existentialists is that they are too individualistic in their thinking. — Ross Campbell

Values and morals are not private issues , as Nietzsche would have it, merely of concern to the individual and chosen or discarded at the whim of an individual, they are social concerns , part of the fabric of society. — Ross Campbell

Ya know , you don’t have to stick with only one group of scholars’ interpretation of Nietzsche. I can introduce you to an entirely different Nietzsche than the ‘existentialist’ one.

Are you aware, for instance , that Nietzsche forms the very heart of a huge variety and volume of postmodern, poststructuralist writings which spread from French and German continental writers like Heidegger, Foucault , Deleuze and Lyotard to English speaking countries, and have had a dominating influence on academic discussion of politics, arts and philosophy? Were you further aware that the fundamental basis of their approaches is that the individual subject is a social creation, and they find direct support for this in Nietzsche’s work? In other words, they don’t interpret Nietzsche as an existentialist at all.

Being is becoming... overcoming... over man. Joy is the feeling of 'increase' in power, — ChatteringMonkey

it's the journey not the destination that matters. — ChatteringMonkey

There are certainly plenty of Nietzsche interpreters who give it this existential spin. I prefer the poststructutalist readings. From that vantage , the increase in power belongs to the period within a particular value system, but Will to power as self-overcoming means that the basis of any ‘increase in power’ as defined by a particular value system must be overcome along with that value system. Put differently , life isnt an endless increase in power, it is power constantly overcoming its basis and therefore power starting anew with every shift in value system. So the journey isn’t the unfolding of variations on a theme , or an endless increasing of something, but an endless return of the ‘same’ unrepeatable values, goals , basis of power).
What one seems desirable changes along with changing values, so no criterion of power or its increase survives this becoming.

he is showing us that we do (together/each) have interests and desires. In seeing that now (reflected in our moralism), I/we aim to do/be better. This is beyond the argument of grounded or not grounded; absolute or relative; goals, utility, ought. — Antony Nickles

Maybe you could elaborate what doing or being better means in the context of the contingency of values. What is an aim to do better outside of goals, utility, ought? What is an interest or desire if not normative , goal-oriented , anticipatory? Aren’t interests and desires the very essence of normativity? Is there
anything that thwarts our interests and desires? Could it be that time and history themselves thwart our desires and interests by transforming the basis of what we find interesting and desirable? In other words , isnt it presupposed in the very structure of interest and desire that we inevitably desire other than what we desire? That we aim for other than what we aim for? And how does this transform the meaning of ‘better’? Doesn’t betterment become otherwise than better?

Why the allergy to the word truth? — Protagoras

Maybe this will help. Rorty explains why the notion of truth needs to be jettisoned.

http://critica.filosoficas.unam.mx/index.php/critica/article/download/696/668/

“Rorty wishes to undermine modern philosophers' conception of philosophy and its place in culture, as did his philosophical heroes, Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Yet his argument owes most to Sellars attack on the 'myth of the given' and to Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic, necessary/contingent, a priorila posteriori distinc- tions. Their joint insight (suitably purified by Rorty) that is truth, justifica- tion, and knowledge are nothing 'more than what Dewey caled "war- ranted assertability" ... what our peers will, ceteris paribus, let us get away with saying (176). Rorty labels this insight 'epistemological behaviourism.

Well the gods eye view has always been nonsense,so of heidegger says that,I agree. — Protagoras

What’s the difference between the god’s eye view and justified true belief?

I know Rorty does, but he probably got booted out of the club for that. What about Putnam, Sellers or Davidson? Maybe even Quine?

Did they both reject platos justified true belief? — Protagoras

Here’s a very partial list of philosophers who reject platos justified true belief:

george Kelly
Derrida
Heidegger
Husserl
Gene Gendlin
Merleau-Ponty
Nancy
Zahavi
Gallagher
Ratcliffe
T. Fuchs
Varela
Thompson
Noe
Lyotard
Piaget
Deleuze
Protevi
Massumi
Foucault
William Connolly
Manuel Delanda
Bernard Stiegler
Bennington
Joseph Rouse
John Shotter
Ken Gergen
Jan Slaby
Arthur Fine
Gadamer
Rorty
LaClau
Colombetti
William James
John Dewey
G H Meade

But the bottom line is the myth of rationality is still adhered to.

Any philosophers claiming intuition or beliefs are primary yet? — Protagoras

Husserl made intuition ( the primal impression ) fundamental. Heidegger defined truth as disclosure. What he meant was that what appears in every single
moment of experience is truth. He rejected the idea of truth as correctness

Yet the entire critique is still based on the primacy of "rationality". — Protagoras

I wouldn’t say that the trajectory of continental philosophy over the past 100 years has been a matter of leaving traditional concepts of rationality intact and simply qualifying or limiting them. Instead rationality has been thought differently. The very notion of critique as understood by Kant has also been transformed.

All nietzsches works are fuelled from resentiment,it's obvious from his writings,especially from zarathustra onwards.

But a lot of his psychological insights are correct. — Protagoras

Again, what does ‘fueled’ mean here? Certainly you don’t mean that all one needs is a feeling of resentment in order to churn out a world-changing new philosophy. Do you mean that Nietzsche experienced an inordinate amount of things to be resentful of in his life, and that’s why the centerpiece of his work is resentment? If that the case , then given Freud’s observation of the uncanny resemblance between Nietzsche’s ideas and his own, would you surmise that Freud also experienced a lot of resentment in his personal dealings?
Here’s an alternative explanation. Readers of Nietzsche’s work like to focus on resentment at the expensive of , and in isolation from , the overall arc of his ideas because they seem more easy to grasp and are more dramatic to read. Nietzsche scholars , on the other hand , see how each aspect of his work fits into and implies the whole. And they understand this whole to be an extraordinarily complex and sophisticated construction that cannot possibly be reduced to , or even anticipated on the basis of , the ordinary everyday notionof resentment.

. I thought the definition of philosophy was supposed to be logical or rational argument. — Ross Campbell

Your notion of philosophy is out of date by at least 100 years. So is your notion of empiricism. Philosophy has spent most of the latter half of the 20th century up till now critiquing ideas of truth as logic and rationality.

it is hard not to speculate that resentment fueled many of his ideas. — Tom Storm

What do you mean by ‘fueled’? As in ‘Einstein’s craving for fame fueled his discovery of relativity’? Or as in ‘I find many of Nietzsche’s ideas to be so superficial and unimpressive that I can reduce them to an arbitrary and simplistic causal motive’?

Modernist versions of constructivism believe that there is a real world that we only have indirect access to via our constructions of it. Postmodern constructivism, also known as radical constructivism( see Maturana, Von Glasersfeld, and Varela) believe that our constructions of the world don’t represent a reality supposedly existing independently of us , but enact a world partly determined by our constructions.

I am bewildered by the fact that on many philosophy channels on the internet and YouTube there seems to be more material on Nietzsche than almost any other thinker and he's had an enormous influence also on writers, artists and psychology. — Ross Campbell

Maybe you should investigate the ideas of some of these writers, artists and psychologists. Let’s
start with Keiji Nishitani, a Japanese philosopher who integrated Buddhist and Western thought.

“Nishitani distinguishes between these two kinds of groundlessness because his fundamental point is that
European thought in its largely successful critique of objectivism has become trapped in nihilism. Here
Nishitani's assessment of our situation actually follows Nietzsche's. As we mentioned in chapter 6, nihilism
arises for Nietzsche when we realize that our most cherished beliefs are untenable and yet we are
incapable of living without them. Nietzsche devoted considerable attention to the manifestation of
nihilism in our discovery that we do not stand on solid ground, that what we take to be an absolute
reference point is really an interpretation foisted on an ever-shifting impersonal process. Nishitani deeply admires Nietzsche's attempt but claims that it actually perpetuates the nihilistic
predicament by not letting go of the grasping mind that lies at the souce of both objectivism and nihlism.
Nishitani's argument is that nihilism cannot be overcome by assimilating groundlessness to a notion of the
will-no matter how decentered and impersonal. Nishitani's diagnosis is even more radical than Nietzsche's, for he claims that the real problem with Western nihilism is that it is halfhearted: it does not consistently follow through its own inner logic and motivation and so stops short of transforming its partial realization of groundlessness into the philosophical and experiential possiblities of sunyata.” (The Embodied Mind)

Nietzsche was not a very happy man, so what wisdom did he possess? — Tzeentch

He wasn’t wise enough to know that all unhappy people are stupid.

Our desire for the ideal, kills us. We set aside the thing-in-itself because we can not have it on our terms. In our weakness we destroy our world because we can't know it with certainty, and give ourselves the pity of our own reason. It is the humanization of epistimology. — Antony Nickles

When our desire is for the ideal , even when we set aside aside the thing-in-itself we are still presupposing it. It is our belief in the ideal that kills us. As Nietzsche argued , the ascetic ideal, which motivates scientific truth as well as moral values as striving toward the good and the perfect, is a kind of death in that it is a desire for sameness , changelessness ,perfect self-presence.

If our guidance is changing, in flux, and becoming, then we are getting near and approximating; bettering, perfecting. Maybe this time with a greater attention to observation, and with this knowledge that we will never be perfect and timeless. — Antony Nickles

Are you talking about perfection as the thing in itself , as an asymptotic ideal? The thing about notions of progress and approximation toward a telos is that , while we may never ‘be’ perfect’ , the reality of the perfect and the timeless is presupposed. Perfecting, approximating, developing, evolving all imply a telos or center that defines the movement. There must always be a basis on which the evolution unfolds , a basis which stands outside of the contingent and relative history that is organized around the basis. The unfolding moments of the progress are variations of a theme, and the theme (the good, god, the divine, the moral) is protected in its sense from contamination and alteration. Thus, the notion of progress and the divine are indissociable.

Nietzsche and writers like Heidegger, Deleuze and Derrida asked how the good, the perfect, the telos of a progress , are able to reside outside time and history. Their conclusion was that nothing can reside outside time and history, and that the belief in the stability of the telos of perfecting is the result of an idealizing tendency in human thought.

is pulling out the carpet really the point?So are we left without 'forms' or 'things'? without morals, rules, words? — Antony Nickles

The point isnt pulling out the carpet. Post -structuralism , deconstruction and Will to Power don’t eliminate structures, they reveal the movement within and between structures that prevents the justification of the basis of a progress. There is always a carpet ( value posturing) underneath, which emerges non-deductively and non-causally from a previous carpet. It provides the temporary and relative stability of cultural, ethical and scientific norms, as well as the sense of a progress according to the normative values it lays down. It is then succeeded by a new carpet , with new and different moral values, and this process is endless, an eternal return of the same contingent, relative carpet in a new guise. If there is a moral impetus here , it is in the celebration of the movement itself , the imperative not to let oneself fall prey to any particular value system or notion of ‘perfection’ but to delight-suffer in the process of endless carpet installation. As Derrida says, ther is always an other heading, installed in and intrinsic the the present heading. This is an absolute other , beyond calculation and beyond all thought of perfection.

I think Van Gogh poisoned him.

He had syphilis,
— frank
Maybe not. — tim wood

This was discussed a bit earlier in the thread.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/nietzsche-died-of-brain-cancer-20030506-gdgprc.html?js-chunk-not-found-refresh=t — Joshs

without Nietszche you don't have Wittgenstein; the idea of looking at a fictitious history as a case to learn the ins-and-outs of something; the idea of the ordinariness of our concepts, that they come from a place in our lives; that our concepts are not precise and fixed... — Antony Nickles

I certainly agree with this , but I think Nietzsche went where Wittgenstein was unable to go. Witt remainded a deeply moralistic person his whole life, not in a traditional religious sense, but in a Kierkegaardian sense.

I think it's too simplistic to say Nietszche is doing away with it or replacing it; he finds there is no "human" history or recognition of our part in the creation or our misuse of morals to judge people. If he is taking it apart, it is to see our part in it. — Antony Nickles

If you substitute ‘grounding moral values’ for truth in the passages below, you arrive at my interpretation of Nietzsche’s deconstruction of morality.

“The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not fact but fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is "in flux," as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for--there is no "truth" (Nietzsche 1901/1967 Will to Power)

“…the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo separate; that anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it; that everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering, dominating, and in their turn overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' [Sinn] and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated.

No matter how perfectly you have understood the usefulness of any physiological organ (or legal institution, social custom, political usage, art form or religious rite), you have not yet thereby grasped how it emerged: uncomfortable and unpleasant as this may sound to more elderly ears,– for people down the ages have believed that the obvious purpose of a thing, its utility, form and shape, are its reason for existence, the eye is made to see, the hand to grasp. So people think punishment has evolved for the purpose of punishing. But every purpose and use is just a sign that the will to power has achieved mastery over something less powerful, and has impressed upon it its own idea [Sinn] of a use function; and the whole history of a ‘thing', an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random.” (Genealogy of Morality)

What is left of the coherence of the concept of god , the good, or morality if such values are mere contingent and relative moments in a genealogical history utterly without ultimate propose or aim , whose successive phases and eras ‘just follow and replace one another at random’?

I'm not sure this is such a black-n-white fight. — Antony Nickles

I agree with this too. I’m just declaring my support for post structuralist readings of Nietzsche ( Heidegger, Deleuze, Derrida) as opposed to existential interpretations.

If you 'aspire' to a specific idea of what it is to be virtuous, you are abdicating the opportunity and responsibility to be a better you. Also a moral moment may be lost on you if you feel you are a good person because you have done what has been decided beforehand by others long ago. — Antony Nickles

This sounds consistent with the moral perspectives of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Levinas (and Caputo, Critchley and Sheehan) , because it still makes the idea of
god coherent. I read Nietzsche as deconstructing this thinking.

Martin Luther King was a pretty squeaky wheel. [gratuitously provocative] I also don't remember that the suffragettes burned down any buildings[/gratuitously provocative]. — T Clark

MLK’s political movement was based on enlightenment individualistic liberalism, which assumed that one must appeal to the reason of each individual, rather than assuming a socially based shaping of subjective views. But this appeal to reason only went so far. Specifically, it preached mostly to the choir and those on the fence , convincing those already inclined to be sympathetic to such values. Note that it did not convince most who were opposed to the civil rights movement , which is why it took the ‘incivility’ of the national guard to end segregation. I suppose the incivil wokists would point to this hypocrisy , appealing to individualist reason but using miltancy to enforce it.
If the success of MLK’s movement is to be judged by its popularity, then by that standard blm and crt are wildly successful , given that only 30 years ago a tiny handful of scholars were advocating its theoretical foundations and now it has become standard rhetoric in most universities and in many large corporations . I don’t think its languaged of incivility will persuade the opposition any more than MLK’s appeal to reason , but like that prior movement , it will grow. of its own accord among the like-minded. You may despise it, but your children will likely be more disposed toward it. Why? Because despite its excesses , it captures truths missing from MLK’s approach.

Calls for civility seek to evade our calls for change. The accusation of incivility is a technique of depoliticization aimed at undoing collectivity. We do not need to debate civility; we need to clarify, expand, and intensify our demands.

I'd like some more examples from mainstream political discourse. — Tom Storm

Here’s my take. There are two routes to follow in countering this ‘incivility as radicalism’ thinking. The first is to reject it and simply stick with traditional individualism. I don’t think this is a good choice for two reasons. First, there are certain valuable insights about the limits of individualism imbedded within wokeness perspectives. Second, it is not going to go away by itself and will instead eventually become assimilated widely within the culture. The best way to counter it is to go beyond it , to take what is valuable in it and move further.
It is still too closely tied to the Marxist critique of individualist moralism , which manages to replicate it by substituting for it a collectivist moralism( implicit bias, privilege, etc). To move beyond it is to no longer accept either individualist imperialism or the tyranny of dominating (economic) social structures. Instead one can recognize that we all are shaped by social structures but interpret these influences via a point of view.

In the article, incivility is firstly defined as anger, as an act of outrage. https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/
"Incivility is anger directed at unjust civil ordering. — Number2018

Where do you think blame and moralism fit into this act of ‘outrage’ against ‘ injustice’?

Specifically , do you think it is what Ken Gergen is critiquing as the moralistic blamefulness and indignation of identity politics? Would anger, outrage and condemnation apply if one throughly rejects the ethical foundationalism on which rightness and justice are grounded?

Why can’t we follow Gergen’s lead and jettison the outrage in favor of a throughly relativistic approach to societal transformation?

“By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no preestablished context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge.

In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation. Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)