Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment. Thanks.

Didn't see anything that inspired me to comment. — frank

I suppose that being shown that you are wrong about his "theory of truth", being a Kantian, and the eternal return does not inspire comment.

A significant part of the problem is, as you should be aware, given that you quoted it:

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.

Although you were addressing me, it was others who said your response as "contemptuous" and commented o your behavior. I was willing to give you the opportunity to explain, but more of the same.

It was only after dismissively suggesting more than once that I read Nietzsche that you mentioned that you were "waiting for a gunshot wound to the chest". Without mentioning that you work in an ER, this can mean something quite different. More along the lines of, I need that like I need a hole in my head.

The fact is, despite your claim:

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

you did not explain that you work in an ER at any point and did not explain that this is why you were so brief, in the prior exchanges. A simple explanation would have gone a long way.

When you then go on to say:

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 think that those reading along would think you should have been talking to and listening to yourself.

Next:

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

I had already said quite a bit in the post I started the thread with. In addition, the fact that I had not yet posted something that I spent a good part of the day working on does not mean I have nothing to say. Contrary to your plea that you be cut some slack, you accuse me of having nothing to say. Is that your idea of engaging in a friendly way?

Nietzsche directly addresses what science is when he asks these questions in The Gay Science:

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

This brings a fundamental tension into the investigation because a ground is not being invoked where the two uses of science are clearly distinguished. That tension is evident in the next section where the human condition is put forward as the combination of two errors:

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

The "life-preserving power", through which these conditions are introduced, cannot be called upon to settle the case here because what is to be counted as a fact is under investigation. In regard to the recent discussion about truth upthread, these set of conditions Nietzsche puts forward has 'truth' as a component of the creature in question.

Passing from one kind of nature to another will be tricky. Nietzsche speaks differently (sometimes contradictorily) of how one is going away from the old or toward the new in different contexts. The preference for a genealogy of ancestors over a chain of causes can be seen in this light. As The Gay Science nears the end, the "combination" of errors in 110 is explained in a different way:

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

The question about science asked in 109 is no longer a tug-of-war between motivations but has its benefits and defects collected together:

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

The passengers on the little boat are not only seasick but cold and hungry too. If this is the primary condition, what happened to the perspective of the individual and the choices they make? The difference
Nietzsche sees in embracing the return for the benefit of becoming who one is happens where the elements favor a different outcome. That is why I ask:

Are "metaphysicians" such as Heidegger and Deleuze providing a ground that Nietzsche does not?

Pardon me if that was more elaboration than you were asking for.

Are "metaphysicians" such as Heidegger and Deleuze providing a ground that Nietzsche does not? — Paine

I’m not seeing what Heidegger and Deleuze are providing as constituting a metaphysical ground. I agree that the above authors are forming a whole out of Nietzsche’s fragments, but I read his fragments as constituting the outline of a system that is consistent with their interpetation of it, at least with regard to Eternal return. For me it boils down to the fact that Nietzsche, contrary to the claims of Brian Leiter and other ‘existentialist’ interpreters, is neither a realist nor an anti-realist.

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. I wouldn’t like Nietzsche to be a realist in the mold of Leiter. That would make him profoundly uninteresting to me.

Heidegger specifically claimed that Nietzsche "closed the circle of Western metaphysics but did not think beyond it. What is at issue is to what degree Nietzsche intended the system others filled out for him.

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

How is my presentation not an effort in that regard? I was not arguing about how to classify Nietzsche in relation to other thinkers but to wrestle with what is meant by the author. Every reader has to decide what is being said for themselves. "Liking them to mean" something has to be tied to more than a wish for it to mean something.

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. The latter, the superiority of the reader. But not every reader is superior to the writer, and if one picks carefully, very few if any are.

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

The former requires a trick of hememeutic acrobatics that runs counter to the historically perspectival nature of authorial interpretation. 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. 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. This is what I meant by the relevance to interpretation of what we would like to read an author as saying. 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.

:up: :up: :up:

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

If the only tool in the toolbox is a hammer ...

Although I accept the idea that we are historically situated, I do not think it necessary to impose postmodernist theories on Nietzsche. But if your claim is that he is postmodern then the framework and concepts of his work itself, in its own situatedness, should be essential and sufficient in our attempt to understand him, but essential.

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.

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

But you are not just learning from him. The reason you have a perspective in the first place is that your thinking is situated within an intersubjective matrix that delimits and informs what is relevant for you and how it is relevant. It is in this way that authors go in and out of fashion. Your nietzsche is filtered through your perspective, which is itself a discursive element of a larger cultural perspective. There is continuous change in these dynamics , but also a robustness that relativizes what we learn , and how we change, to our partially shared cultural perspectives. The framework and concepts of his work itself, in its own situatedness, is also inextricable from Nietzsche’s situstedness within his own discursive milieu. We glimpse that milieu from within the terms of our own milieu.

In simplest terms, we need to look beyond ourselves. We can and do change our perspective. We can broaden it. We can change the direction we are looking in. We can consider concerns that are not our own and may find compelling reasons to make them our own.

In doing so we still do not see things as an author's contemporaries might, but we may come to understand an author better than his contemporaries did. Philosophers, using the term in a way, as Nietzsche did, that is reserved for only a few, do not simply think within their time but against it. Do we have a better understanding of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Heidegger than we did a hundred years ago or just a different understanding? Are we not able to answer the question because we are delimited and informed within an intersubjective matrix?

What 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

@Joshs

The figurative style of “The vision and the riddle” allows us to avoid literal and direct approaches to the problem of time. Nietzsche creates paradoxes and dramatizes a series of characters, scientific models, and narrative dynamics. 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. “’See this moment!’ I continued. “From this gateway Moment a long eternal lane stretches backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can already have passed this way before? Must not whatever can happen, already have happened, been done, passed by before? And if everything has already been here before, what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must this gateway too not already – have been here? And are not all things firmly knotted together in such a way that this moment draws after it all things to come? Therefore – itself as well?” Here, Zarathustra-Nietzsche utilizes various arguments in favor of the
Eternal Return of the same. Yet, he immediately contests this fragment as a mirage: “I stood all of a sudden among wild cliffs, alone, desolate, in the most desolate moonlight. But there lay a human being! And truly, I saw something the like of which I had never seen before.” Something ultimately new appears,
despite repeating the previous scene of the combat. The accelerating unfolding of the plurality of events constitutes the Nietzschean becoming and causes the disclosure of a circle of simple repetitions. Zarathustra and his doubles, their insights and mental states do not affirm any stable and firm identity, experience, or selfhood. There is no return of the author’s ego or the agent of action. Instead, there is the return of the work itself, ensuing the dimension of subjectivity. The Eternal Return undoes the paradoxes of the past and future. What really matters and generates the effects of time is the intensive recurrent motion, spreading itself out along the entire circumference of the circle of metamorphosis.

A specific example:

Christianity and Latin terminology stood between us and Plato and Aristotle. But that need no longer be the case. We can now stand closer to them than we could in the past. We can understand their terms in a way that is much closer to their use than was possible ever since they were translated into Latin. We can strip away Christian imposition.

The figurative style of “The vision and the riddle” allows us to avoid literal and direct approaches to the problem of time. — Number2018

As a work of literature we enter this world and from within this world attend to what we find in it, as what is literal within this world. The dwarf says all that is straight lies, that all truth is crooked, and concludes that time is a circle. Is this the crooked truth? Does it become a lie if we attempt to straighten it out? But straight and circle are not the only alternatives. The fact that the dwarf says this, and not Nietzsche and not Z. should be taken literally because it prompts us to identify the dwarf and the problem of the spirit of gravity. What is at issue is not the question of time in abstraction but Z.'s struggle with life in time.

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

Nietzsche, like Plato, wears a mask. Just as Plato never speaks in the dialogue, Nietzsche does not appear in TSZ. What he might have believed about the eternal return is something he keeps from us. But if we take the infinity of roads literally it does not seem possible that anyone can know that there is an eternal return because we cannot traverse an infinite distance in the finite time of our existence.

Here, Zarathustra-Nietzsche utilizes various arguments in favor of the
Eternal Return of the same. — Number2018

From the moment, the gateway, we have a limited view of the past and no view of the future. This is why Z. calls it an abyss. But there is an argument which has been made independently of Nietzsche and the eternal return that in an infinite amount of time everything that can happen has happened. I don't know if Nietzsche accepts this but Z. accepted something like it, and is deeply troubled. Nietzsche on the other hand, as @Paine quoted him says:

there is nothing more awesome than infinity. — ibid. 124

Yet, he immediately contests this fragment as a mirage — Number2018

He says:

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.

Rather than contest, he questions himself and what he had seen and what he is now seeing. Was the discussion of eternal return a dream he had awakened from or was it seeing the man the dream that he has awakened? We are told that after biting off the head of the snake the man is transfigured. Is this part of Z's own transfiguration? Had he awakened to laughter, to levity?

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

This too is part of the riddle. How can there be something new if everything has happened before? I discuss this and some of the other things you touched on above.

We glimpse that milieu from within the terms of our own milieu. — Joshs

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.

Apart from arguments about what is 'metaphysics' any longer, it is fruitful to read 354 and 355 of The Gay Science because it directly addresses what is often discussed in "post modernism."

My observation does require accepting a common language capable of such a comparison.

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?

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

:up:

I agree with@Fooloso4's emphasis on the importance of humility, but is it not somehow questionable to kneel and crawl before those who themselves refused to kneel and crawl ? 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. Only the heroic idiot can hope to understand the depth of another heroic idiot. Historians are useful, but the temptation is something like a transference. We hide behind the authorial avatar. A frankly violent and shameless interpretation has the virtue of honesty. It's not the gossip about the matter that's primary but rather the matter itself --even if that matter can only be approach in terms of sifting through the gossip about it, because we are that gossip. We begin precisely as that undifferentiated gossip. The birth of his distinct voice is the birth of the writer. The vision of the world is simultaneously a vision of the hero who grasps it that way.

If I can jump in, it's at least a test. Let's say a demon comes to you tomorrow and brings your death and a choice. You can be gone forever or come back again, for the same exact world and life, over and over forever, except you never get the choice again. In all but the first time (this is a nice touch), the demon who brings death reminds you of your choice and wipes your memory and sets you down again for next run.

What does your choice say about you ?

is it not somehow questionable to kneel and crawl before those who themselves refused to kneel and crawl ? — green flag

It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend.

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

Why must we do as they do? How many distinct voices are there that are worth hearing in place of the philosophers, and here again I use the term philosophy in Nietzsche's sense of an exclusive club with very few members. By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead.

We hide behind the authorial avatar. — green flag

Perhaps some do, but reading need not passive. It is a way of thinking. A way of engaging with an author. An opportunity to be guided by and learn from them.

A frankly violent and shameless interpretation has the virtue of honesty. — green flag

.

I don't think so. As I see it, we would benefit more from being honest with ourselves and admit that there are those who have far more interesting and important things to say than we do. But perhaps I am wrong and there will be books and seminars and classes devoted to studying green flag.

It's not the gossip about the matter ... — green flag

Gossip? Is this an example of frankly violent and shameless interpretation?

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?

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

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati.

It is not only questionable, it is not something I would do or recommend. — Fooloso4

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. I'm just using vivid language to draw out the situation. What is the correct attitude ? To read passionately is already a form of humility, for one is reading rather than talking or writing.

I think it's about saying "yes" to all of life, both the good and bad, recognizing that the two are inextricable. Amor fati. — frank

That works. Thanks.

:up:

Why must we do as they do? — Fooloso4

We of course don't need to take our hemlock and follow Socrates. And most don't. What kind of fool aspires to philosophical greatness ? Probably everyone who ever obtained it, along with the multitude that did not. I think philosophy and art are close indeed, both of them creative interpretations of the world against a background of other such interpretations. What kind of fool thinks he can add something that isn't just noise or distraction from something better ? On the other hand, what kind of fool thinks he can understand that kind of fool without being that kind of fool ?

What role does death play for the young Heidegger ? This question in its depths is about the role death plays for me and whether I will have the courage to face reality in the specificity of my little passing moment down here. Personally I think we are footnotes to Shakespeare. The most that I hope for is a joke or two worth remembering, or maybe I can add a worthy metaphor to the pile, even if I expect to heat death to erase everything and everyone. As I see it, no one makes a dent that lasts on this machine that seems to be eating itself.

I will need a bit more time to answer this. For now I will say that I think there is more to it than a test. I don't think he would have introduced this ancient belief simply as the backdrop for a test.

That sounds tantalizing. I'll look forward to it.

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

Is this problematic of cultural history not also that of natural history? When scientists delve into the earliest and oldest origins of life or of physical or chemical history, don’t we understand the earliest and oldest via the latest and most empirical models? Doesn’t that mean that our past is always ahead of us? When we spin out a history , we are creating and then following a trajectory leading into fresh territory of thinking, going back and forth between our new rendering of the ancient past and the way this revisionism alters our vantage on the present. It is from this new vista that we make our comparisons between what was , what is and what may be. We always know what previous cultures thought. But the purpose of our knowing, just as in the case of our knowledge of empirical past of nature, is forward looking. We know the past only by producing a new pragmatic set of relations with others in our present.

It is not history that is cancelled in this way of thinking , it is historicism , the metaphysical assumption that a history is a causal chain on a timeline. It is historicism that conceals the actual dynamics of history.

By avoiding saying as they say we do not thereby have something of worth to say in their stead. — Fooloso4

Of course. But these cautionary platitudes are only appropriate if your hearers are consciously taking an artistic risk. Are these cautionary platitudes themselves worth saying ? Is this how you'll make your mark ? Warning others away from the risk of creativity ? Hinting that you find them boring ? But are you not just as concerned about such a role itself being boring ? Could not a bot be assigned to this task ?

Here's Emerson's version of idle talk and its opposite.

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.

https://emersoncentral.com/ebook/Self-Reliance.pdf

This is one of those books that looks good on a shelf but is not to be believed and acted upon, for that would not be respectable, not nearly as respectable as the safely dead and famous name. What is it to 'restore force to the elementary words'?

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

I don't know. I might be stupid enough to say yes. Saying no means no more girls' eyes.