display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 2902 | Healthy morality is dominated by an instinct for life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct for life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. There is no reasoning against a moral nihilist, because they seem to have no instinct in favour of life. It is the given of morality. |
| 18311 | Philosophers hate values having an origin, and want values to be self-sufficient [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: For philosophers, the higher must not be allowed to grow out of the lower, must not be allowed to have grown at all ...Moral: everything of the first rank must be causa sui. Origin in something else counts as an objection, as casting a doubt on value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is so deep and central that I wrote a paper on it, advocating that the theory of values should focus of value-makers. |
| 18324 | There are no moral facts, and moralists believe in realities which do not exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: An insight formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Not only a slogan for non-cognitivism, but also a clear statement of the error theory about morality, a century before John Mackie. |
| 2904 | The doctrine of free will has been invented essentially in order to blame and punish people [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of will has been invented essentially for the purpose of punishment, that is of finding guilty. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols [1889], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Michael Frede says free will was invented to feel wholly in charge of our own actions. I doubt whether punishment was the first motive. The will just gives a simple explanation of actions. |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
| A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |