Thanks for the advice, but I am not looking for suggestions about something I have been doing for many years — Fooloso4

Cool. Immersed as you have been in Nietzsche, how would you describe his attitude to truth?

You first.

You first. — Fooloso4

Sure. I'm waiting for a GSW (gun shot wound) to the chest, so I'll make it short. He believed that truths are metaphors. Think about what that implies about the return.

A one word answer. Doesn't seem like too much to say while on your phone at work. But it does explain why you think it is not likely to be a cosmological claim. I will point out two problems:

First, it fails to distinguish between claims that are or are not metaphorical. Or perhaps you think he held all claims to be metaphorical.

Second, unless all claims are metaphorical and his texts can be cited to support this claim (which is of course metaphorical), what he says about the eternal return does not indicate that he means it to be understood metaphorically.

Third, it closes off an existential interpretation because the claim is metaphorical.

Fourth, what is metaphorical has some meaning. Saying that the truth is metaphorical does not say what it means. Or perhaps you think the truth for Nietzsche is always indeterminate and open to numerous or innumerable meanings.

I guess my question would be: do you actually want to discuss this with me? Or did you just want to present your view and be done with it? I'm happy either way.

I guess my question would be: do you actually want to discuss this with me? — frank

In my world responding to what you said is discussing it with you.

In my world responding to what you said is discussing it with you. — Fooloso4

Cool. So I guess you were asking of Nietzsche's theory of truth undermines itself. Nietzsche is on Wittgenstein's ladder and I think he was aware of that. When you get to the top, you toss the ladder because you've discovered the limits of language and it's sunk in as to what this means.

If you can think about what I just said there and 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.

Fourth, what is metaphorical has some meaning. — Fooloso4

Of course. It's probably not cosmological though. I can't imagine how someone would fit that into the rest of Nietzsche's works. If you're among those who look at it that way, I'd be glad to hear how you do it.

This description of the 'world' does fit better with later thinkers of 'cosmology' concerned with stating the conditions of our existence. How that search for elements relates to personal experience is critical to many of the disputes, Jamal referred to. The "thought experiment" presses the acceptance of the condition to be either a cruel punishment or an unanticipated release. If this is amor fati, there can be no hedging of bets.

This places a tension between attempts to explain the world and questioning what those explanations are. The section 110 from Gay Science I quoted upthread puts the problem in sharp relief. The role of explanation is being explained against a background of circumstances that no Organon of Aristotle could support.

In the horizon of the infinite.-- We have left the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now. little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realize that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom and there is no longer any "land." — ibid. 124

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market.

If the road goes infinitely away from the present moment for the future and past, just do what the mathematicians did with imaginary numbers: Find a way to move up instead of just back and forth.

If the road goes infinitely away from the present moment for the future and past, just do what the mathematicians did with imaginary numbers: Find a way to move up instead of just back and forth. — RogueAI

How do you move up?

So I guess you were asking of Nietzsche's theory of truth undermines itself. — frank

I am asking for evidence that his "theory of truth" is that truths are metaphors and how we can make sense of that.

Nietzsche is on Wittgenstein's ladder and I think he was aware of that. — frank

This is a misunderstanding of both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein.

If all you want to do is launch an assault, save it. — frank

It is common philosophical practice to ask for an account and a defense of that account. That is not an assault.

I can't imagine how someone would fit that into the rest of Nietzsche's works — frank

There is an extensive literature on this.

So your turn. What's Nietzsche's theory of truth?

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.

I don't know. How do you move up from the numberline? Invent a way.

don't know. How do you move up from the numberline? Invent a way. — RogueAI

Don't have to. If you can see the number line, you're already above it. I mentioned this earlier, but my keen insight was ignored. :cry:

Where do you think I got the inspiration?

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market — Paine

Could you elaborate on that point a bit more?

Where do you think I got the inspiration? — RogueAI

:joke:

I can but it would help if you gave a point of departure from the argument I put forward making the proposition.

Are you saying that what I said is not intelligible as it stands? Or are you saying it makes some kind of sense but you are not sure what?

He does not have a theory of truth. He rejected fixed, unchanging truths. He does not put a high value on truth in all cases . Truth should serve life and so in some cases, as with Plato, lies are preferable. In On the Use and Disadvantages of History for Life he lists three truths that are deadly:

... the doctrine of the sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all ideas, types, and styles, of the lack of all cardinal differences between man and animal.

In The Will to Power he says:

Belief that there is no truth at all, the nihilistic belief, is a great relaxation for one who, as a warrior of knowledge, is ceaselessly fighting ugly truths. For truth is ugly.

(325)

This is not intended to represent the scope of the problem.

The dwarf is the spirit of gravity. It calls Z. a "stone of wisdom. Hurling himself high but sentenced by himself to fall down.

What is the spirit of gravity? In the chapter "The Spirit of Gravity" he says:

Man is difficult to discover, and unto himself most difficult of all; often lieth the spirit concerning the soul. So causeth the spirit of gravity.

He, however, hath discovered himself who saith: This is my good and evil: therewith hath he silenced the mole and the dwarf, who say: "Good for all, evil for all.

"One must learn to love oneself—thus do I teach—with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about.

In TSZ. the dwarf is first said to be half mole. Z. is at odds with himself. He travels antithetical paths. He strives for what is high but like a mole digs down into himself. He says to himself:

… being at two in such a way truly makes one lonelier than being at one!

He begins the riddle and vision by saying:

I tell the riddle that I saw – the vision of the loneliest one.

He sees something:

the like of which I had never seen before. A young shepherd I saw; writhing, choking, twitching, his face distorted, with a thick black snake hanging from his mouth.

My hand tore at the snake and tore – in vain! It could not tear the snake from his throat. Then it cried out of me: “Bite down! Bite down!
Bite off the head! Bite down!” –

Z. interrupts his story:

Now guess me this riddle that I saw back then, now interpret me this vision of the loneliest one!
For it was a vision and a foreseeing: what did I see then as a parable? And who is it that must some day come? Who is the shepherd into whose throat the snake crawled this way? Who
is the human being into whose throat everything that is heaviest, blackest will crawl?

The shepherd bites the head off.

No longer shepherd, no longer human – a transformed, illuminated, laughing being! Never yet on earth had I heard a human being laugh as he laughed!

He overcomes the spirit of gravity. Transformed by the spirit of levity.

If all that is has been before then how is it that he had never heard a human being laugh as he laughed? He asks if he is dreaming, but wouldn’t it be that even our dreams have been dreamt before?

When his thoughts of eternal return became quieter and quieter he heard the howl of a dog. He asks if he had ever heard a howl like this.

Where now was the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Was I dreaming? Was I waking? I stood all of a sudden among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight.

His thoughts race back to his childhood when he heard such a howl. Childhood is an important theme. The first chapter of the first part of Z. is titled “The Three Metamorphoses”. It too is about transformation. The last transformation is into a child.

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast.

Perhaps Z. forgot that he saw before what he sees now. If the child is innocence such forgetting cannot be a willful forgetting. And yet this may be what is necessary. Every Yea of the spirit in time becomes a Nay. Every creation of new values become old values to be overcome. This cycle repeats again and again. It is deeply troubling to think that what one holds to be of utmost, absolute, permanent, unchanging value is not.

The positive side of this is the idea that one need not carry the burden of imposed values, One can be free of the dwarf and mole who says: "Good for all, evil for all”.

The moment is the gateway of the eternal return. Whether or not this moment has occurred countless times does not matter because it is in this moment that one must decide:

But courage is the best slayer, courage that attacks; it slays even death,
for it says: “Was that life? Well then! One More Time!”

We are always at the moment:

where do human beings not stand at the abyss?

The choice is always there to be made. Do I choose this life? We cannot choose what has been but at this moment we can choose what will be. To choose wisely is to choose as if we are condemned to make the same choice over and over again. Has the choice already been made? It does not matter, for at this moment we can make a choice as to how we wish to live.

Are you saying that what I said is not intelligible as it stands? Or are you saying it makes some kind of sense but you are not sure what? — Paine

The second one.

He does not have a theory of truth — Fooloso4

It was along these lines from On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral Sense:

"The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The “thing in itself” (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors… It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… A word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept “leaf” is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the “leaf”: the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted — but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model… We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us."

“What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished…”

"To be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone… From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as “red,” another as “cold,” and a third as “mute,” there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes.

"As a “rational” being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept.

"If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare “look, a mammal” I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be “true in itself” or really and universally valid apart from man.

"At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man’s service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.

It is even a difficult thing for [man] to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that “the correct perception” — which would mean “the adequate expression of an object in the subject” — is a contradictory impossibility.


"So far as we can penetrate here — from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths — everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound — then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree."

This is an interesting article about it if you happen to have jstor access: here.

Thanks. An interesting essay, with lots to unpack. I will limit my comments to the problem of the eternal return.

Beginning with the title he has already made two distinctions: between truth and lies, and between the moral and nonmoral sense. All play a role in the question of the eternal return as discussed above, and make it clear why the gnomic "truths are metaphors" is at best inadequate and at worst misleading. But having furnished the essay, (which was like having to extract a tooth) we can move beyond that.

From the essay:

we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities… — frank

Original entities and what we say about them, our metaphors, are two different things. The entities are not metaphors.

...whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us." — frank

Here we get to the center of the problem. What you say about eternal return as metaphor:

It's probably not cosmological though — frank

must then be said of the natural world. But Nietzsche does not deny the natural world, only that we do not have epistemological access to it as a "thing in itself". Put differently, the natural world is the human world.

The cosmological question of the eternal return remains open. We know something of the concept (metaphor) but whether or not Nietzsche believed that all that is recurs has not been settled. In either case, like the natural world, it is not something apart from the human world.

Thanks. An interesting essay, with lots to unpack — Fooloso4

So to clarify, you had not read this particular work by Nietzsche. I think it's pretty important to take his views about truth into consideration while taking in the rest of his ideas.

Beginning with the title he has already made two distinctions: between truth and lies, and between the moral and nonmoral sense. — Fooloso4

That's in the title, yes.

All play a role in the question of the eternal return as discussed above, and make it clear why the gnomic "truths are metaphors" is at best inadequate and at worst misleading. — Fooloso4

These are his own words:

"Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.”

But having furnished the essay, (which was like having to extract a tooth) we can move beyond that. — Fooloso4

So you come back to this issue again, so let me explain. At first, I was sure you hadn't looked into Nietzsche very far since you didn't know about his views of truth. Then you said you'd studied him for years, so I assumed you had read this essay. Now I find that you studied Nietzsche for years without understanding that he was a Kantian.

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.

From the essay:

we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities…
— frank

Original entities and what we say about them, our metaphors, are two different things. The entities are not metaphors. — Fooloso4

No one has ever claimed that the "thing in itself" is a metaphor. No one. Ever.

. Put differently, the natural world is the human world. — Fooloso4

This is not contrary to my point. As Nietzsche explains, science forgets its limits. He is not trying to do science. The Eternal Return is not cosmology. The Big Bang is cosmology. The Eternal Return is not. Nietzche's view of truth and science should make this abundantly clear.

The cosmological question of the eternal return remains open. — Fooloso4

Ok. Argue for it in the light of his Kantian views. Make it fit. You said there is literature that addresses that. Feel free to quote a little something from one of them.

In either case, like the natural world, it is not something apart from the human world. — Fooloso4

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not.

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not. — frank

The interpreters of Nietzsche that I am allied with argue that he offered a critique of the assumptions guiding Western science , the main one he formulated in terms of will to truth, which is a subordinate to will to power and exemplifies the ascetic ideal. This critique turns against realism and the Kantian split between noumenon and phenomenon. Nietzsche does not propound a metaphysics of the world as thing in itself.

“Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation – I have already explained –; that is to say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies, – so that, if they must be fought, they can only be fought and called into question together. A depreciation of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings about a depreciation of the value of science…”

Nietzsche aimed to include the so-called natural
world within the will to power, and given the inseparable relation between will to power and eternal return, the latter must encompass any cosmological view of time.

“Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect…”

Assuming, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire life of drives as the organization and outgrowth of one basic form of will (namely, of the will to power, which is my claim); assuming we could trace all organic functions back to this will to power and find that it even solved the problem of procreation and nutrition (which is a single problem); then we will have earned the right to clearly designate all efficacious force as: will to power. The world seen from inside, the world determined and described with respect to its “intelligible character” – would be just this “will to power” and nothing else. –

“Both of them, science and the ascetic ideal, are still on the same foundation – I have already explained –; that is to say, both overestimate truth (more correctly: they share the same faith that truth cannot be assessed or criticized), and this makes them both necessarily allies, – so that, if they must be fought, they can only be fought and called into question together. A depreciation of the value of the ascetic ideal inevitably brings about a depreciation of the value of science…”

He's saying that Christianity and science rise and fall together because they have the same basic attitude to truth. It's a fascinating idea. :cheer:

Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect…”

See, I would say that his description of the mechanistic world as contiguous with our own desires and passions is exactly what Schopenhauer was saying. Am I wrong?

In the face of this, it seems fair for me to ask if Heidegger and Deleuze are asking for more "land' than Nietzsche was willing to put on the market. — Paine

It seems to me that Nietzsche is a skeptic in the Socratic sense of knowledge of ignorance. The metaphor of the ship, having left terra firma, and an infinite horizon, echoes the metaphor of the problem of navigating the ship in the Phaedo. The eternal return too is a matter of life and death, of the unknown, of the abyss.

I think I understand what you are getting at when @Joshs you say "more land". I take it to mean they talk as if we are still on terra firma, that things are more settled than they are, and that treating all this as a theoretical problem is to have, so to speak, missed the boat.

See, I would say that his description of the mechanistic world as contiguous with our own desires and passions is exactly what Schopenhauer was saying. Am I wrong? — frank

I guess you’re right in the general sense that both assimilate the being of the mechanistic world to the will. Of course the devil is in the details. Nietzsche deconstructs the metaphysical presuppositions underlying Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the will.

Deleuze has an interesting take on cosmology and eternal return.

“First Aspect of the Eternal Return: as cosmological and physical doctrine:

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible.”

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. But the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible.” — Joshs

I'll have to ponder that for a while

Now I find that you studied Nietzsche for years without understanding that he was a Kantian. — frank

It is because I have studied him for years that I know he is not a Kantian. To raise the problem of the concept of a thing in itself does not make one a Kantian. He is not a Kantian for the simple reason that he rejects the concept of noumenon. That we do not know the world as it is in distinction from how we are does not mean that he accepts the notion of a noumenal world.

No one has ever claimed that the "thing in itself" is a metaphor. No one. Ever. — frank

The point is, the claim that the concept of eternal return is metaphorical, like the concepts of original entities (which are not for Nietzsche things in themselves), does not mean that there is no eternal return in the same way it does not mean that there are no objects.

This is not contrary to my point. — frank

Your point is, as you said:

Seen in the light of his ideas about the nature of truth, it seems unlikely. — frank

Accordingly, the natural world seen in light of his ideas about the nature of truth, seems unlikely.

The Eternal Return is not cosmology. — frank

This begs the question of whether it is cosmological. Repeating it does not make it true.

Argue for it in the light of his Kantian views. Make it fit. — frank

Trying to make it fit your erroneous Kantian assumptions is part of the problem. It creates an unrecognizable distortion.

Scientists will insist methodologically that the natural world is quite apart from the "human world." This is the distinction surrounding the question of whether Nietzsche meant you to take the Eternal Return as a feature of a scientific view (cosmology) or not. — frank

There is a difference between a cosmological view and a scientific cosmological view. The idea of eternal return is an ancient cosmological opinion. It is simply wrong to assume that if Nietzsche held a cosmological view it would be "as a feature of a scientific view".

With regard to a scientific view, cosmology is highly speculative. There are in contemporary cosmology cyclical models