you're just playing the purist to satisfy an agenda. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Indeed, it is cold and wet outside and you are but my playthings. You may thus console yourself.

I think his emphasis on values is still relevant. — Xtrix

I agree with this: a revaluation of all values is a perennial necessity.

The strong for Nietzsche overcomes itself , displaces itself , transforms itself. Its strength is in reinvention, not holding onto some self-constant value system — Joshs

Into what, exactly? With the abolition of the celestial hierarchy there's nothing to be transformed into, except maybe a more intelligent (or should we say 'craftier') ape.

you are but my playthings — Banno

Has a Nietzschean ring to it. Or is that Machiavelli?

At any rate, your good-faith/bad-faith shtick is far more adolescent than the provocations of Nietzsche and adorers. No wonder if the bulk of your close relations are forum avatars.

You forgot to thank me for the fourth page of your thread.

That's your adolescent game, not mine. I don't measure my success in thread pages. Truly jejune.

Rather, in self-illumination, vitality, wakefulness, focused vituperance, wisdom and energy.

Energy is Eternal Delight. — William Blake

That's your adolescent game, not mine. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You even had to borrow your insults from me.

You even had to borrow your insults from me. — Banno

Sitting at the foot of the master. Take care.

Arguing about the true meaning of Nietzsche often seems like arguments over the meaning of Bible versus.

Pedophiles, rapists, murderers. They’re a set of human beings. They seem the botched and weak to me. Doesn’t seem evil to help them perish. — Xtrix

Not keen on this approach. It seems medieval. Does 'help them perish' mean kill them? Or do we bathe in the warmth of a responsibility free figurative reading? :wink:

Take care. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:wink:

And you.

Does 'help them perish' mean kill them? Or do we bathe in the warmth of a responsibility free figurative reading? :wink: — Tom Storm

One way or the other.

Well put.

It's a question of evolution: from ape to man to Superman. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That's only part of Nietzsche's perspective; what about the overall progression from simplex to complex.

There were 4 revolutions:

1. Nothing $\to$ Something [ Creatio ex nihilo ]

2. Inanimate $\to$ Animate (life) [The origin of living organisms]

3. Animate $\to$ Consciousness [animals]

4. Consciousness $\to$ Self-awareness [man]

And then Nietzsche...

5. Self-awareness (man) $\to$ Übermenschen

Does the process of evolution, ceteris paribus, ever stop?

6. Übermenschen $\to$ Artificial Intelligence [AI]

7. AI $\to$ Technological singularity [ hic sunt dracones ]

↪Banno Arguing about the true meaning of Nietzsche often seems like arguments over the meaning of Bible versus. — Tom Storm

Indeed; spouting delusive mistruths. — Banno

It seems medieval. — Tom Storm

In moving 'beyond good and evil' he devolves to feudal ethics, to serfs, feigned nobility, despotism. A great leap backwards.

Nietzsche's perspective — Agent Smith

I was thinking strictly of the passage quoted in the OP. An all-inclusive conception of Nietzsche's oeuvre is beyond my capacity and interest.


From Superman to AI. I've heard this bandied about on the forum. Interesting but possibly vapid in terms of vital potential, a lust for life, the universalizing of life-meaning...

It's Nietzsche's idea!, taken to its logical conclusion.

If you like sucrose, you'll love fructose! :snicker:

In moving 'beyond good and evil' he devolves to feudal ethics, to serfs, feigned nobility, despotism. A great leap backwards. — Banno

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

It's Nietzsche's idea!, taken to its logical concclusion. — Agent Smith

A Nietzschean logic is a manybranching monstrosity. Grotesque poisonous Yggdrasil - for the healing of the nations?!...

A Nietzschean logic is a manybranching monstrosity. Grotesque poison Yggdrasil - for the healing of the nations?!... — ZzzoneiroCosm

:chin:

hehe, it's late

On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. — John the Revelator

Trees were funny back then...weird fruiting times, some could talk, others walk and talk! :snicker:

They've gotten lazy.

They've gotten lazy. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:snicker: Laziness pays better!

....

Arguing about the true meaning of Nietzsche often seems like arguments over the meaning of Bible versus. — Tom Storm

Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered?

The strong for Nietzsche overcomes itself , displaces itself , transforms itself. Its strength is in reinvention, not holding onto some self-constant value system
— Joshs

Into what, exactly? With the abolition of the celestial hierarchy there's nothing to be transformed into, except maybe a more intelligent (or should we say 'craftier') ape. — Wayfarer

Difference precedes identity. This is the idea that has inspired so much of 20th and 21st century philosophy, from Bergson, James and Husserl to Freud, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida.
Transformation isn’t a movement from
one static state to another, a special event that may or may not happen, but the precondition for any existent.

Difference precedes identity. — Joshs

Agree.

we can steal fire from these Gods. — karl stone

We stole Zeus' thunder (electricity) too! When was that again? mid 18^th century or thereabouts. He is furious! :snicke4:

Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered? — Hanover

Course not. But it doesn't change what I said about Nietzsche. Nietzsche is more interesting because of his much broader appeal, much of it outside of philosophy. I think the issue is that Nietzsche is a pleasure to read (unlike most philosophers) and for many readers this creates an illusion of pellucidity.

Nietzsche is a good writer. Kant is a very bad writer.

Splendid rationale for diversity, but it doesn’t appeal to me.

I have to try and say something about my view. Rather than Nietszche's abandonment of the whole corpus of traditional philosophy - he called himself an anti-philosopher - I am seeking to reinterpret philosophy in such a way that it is at least compatible with today's world.

Among the fundamental beliefs typical of secular liberal philosophies are that life "began by chance" and that humans are continuous with other species and the product of chance and necessity - chance being the originating factor, and the necessity being that of scientific law.

As I mentioned above my philosophy is more orthogenetic - orthogenesis being 'directional'. I believe there's a direction in evolution, namely, to higher levels of awareness and intelligence. That is strictly taboo in the Darwinian attitude towards the matter. I've learned that the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, had similar views, and fell out with Darwin over them, but this is politely dismissed as eccentricity on his part, and his later-life turn to what is quaintly called 'spiritualism'.

In any case, what I'm driving at is an idea that is found in various philosophies although rarely made explicit, namely that through sentient beings, the Universe becomes self-aware. And through rational sentient beings, the Universe itself discovers new horizons of meaning.

I see traditional philosophy as the implicit attempt to come to terms with that. So, I see in the decline and rejection of traditional philosophy the rejection of the sapiential dimension of Western thought. Where I see it, is in the traditional role ascribed to nous, intellect, the meaning of which, like so many other fundamental philosophical terms, has been changed so enormously as to no longer be recognisable in the original terms. It is the faculty of nous that is sapiential, capable of wisdom. Which is our ostensible species name, although no longer accurate.

Man's apotheosis is now being sought through space travel, the fantasy of colonizing other planets and travelling to the stars. What is actually needed, is the realisation that we have one and only one spaceship, that being Spaceship Earth, and that it's dangerously over-heating and facing resource depletion. So what is needed is a philosophy not based on consumption, instrumental power and leisure. A philosophy is needed which does realise the value of not having, not consuming - in other words, a renunciate philosophy that is available on a mass social scale. Learning to be at ease without massive consumption. Which is of course impossible to even imagine in the culture in which we now live, although very soon it may become thrust upon us (see John Michael Greer's Collapse Now, and Avoid the Rush.)

So - within this general framework, respect for the traditional understanding of 'the philosophical ascent' and true spiritual apotheosis must be restored, but you won't find that anywhere in the philosophical mainstream, or (dare I say) amongst the postmodernists.