display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 7157 | We think each thought causes the next, unaware of the hidden struggle beneath [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: On the table of our consciousness there appears a succession of thoughts, as if one thought were the cause of the next. But in fact we don't see the struggle going on under the table -- | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[103]) | |
| A reaction: A brilliant thought. I am increasingly struck by my own lack of control over my 'trains' of thought. I am a slave to my own thinking. |
| 7148 | The 'I' is a conceptual synthesis, not the governor of our being [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The 'I' (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from 'egoism'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[87]) | |
| A reaction: Compare Sartre in Idea 7116. Since I am inclined to define the self as the controller of the brain, I am intrigued by the remark in brackets. Presumably he considers the self to be a fiction, and that animals don't have one. I think, probably, animals do. |
| 7138 | The 'I' is a fiction used to make the world of becoming 'knowable' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I take the 'I' itself to be a construction of thinking, of the same rank as matter, thing, substance, individual, purpose, number: that is, only a regulative fiction used to insert a kind of 'knowability' into a world of becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[35]) | |
| A reaction: Personally I consider the 'I' to be a very real brain structure, which controls the multitude of brain operations, and focuses them on the survival and success of the organism. |
| 7135 | 'Freedom of will' is the feeling of having a dominating force [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is our feeling of having more force that we call 'freedom of will', the consciousness of our force compelling in relation to a force that is compelled. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[250]) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree. That describes well how we experience the will, and develop the concept of a will, but the idea that the will is 'free' seems to me to be totally theoretical (and false), and doesn't derive from experience at all. |