118 ideas
| 7170 | 'Wisdom' attempts to get beyond perspectives, making it hostile to life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Wisdom' is an attempt to get beyond perspectival appraisals (i.e. beyond the 'wills to power'), a principle that is disintegratory and hostile to life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[14]) | |
| A reaction: I just don't accept that there are no general truths, which are true beyond any 'perspectives'. One sensible person amidst a group of fools should not bow to their misguided perspectives. |
| 7167 | Words such as 'I' and 'do' and 'done to' are placed at the point where our ignorance begins [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We place a word at the point where our ignorance begins - where we can't see any further, e.g. the word 'I', the words 'do' and 'done to': these may be the horizons of our knowledge, but they are not 'truths'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[3]) | |
| A reaction: A nice contribution to the debate over whether our understanding is restricted to what we can say. Compare Ideas 2937 and 6870. Nietzsche seems to support Wittgenstein. I prefer Keith Ansell Pearson. |
| 7196 | Pessimism is laughable, because the world cannot be evaluated [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The total value of the world is unevaluable, consequently philosophical pessimism is among the comical things. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[72]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche always has Schopenhauer in mind when he laughs at pessimism. Presumably, by the same token, optimism would be equally ridiculous. But how can Nietzsche's dynamic hopes for the future operate without optimism? |
| 7137 | Is a 'philosopher' now impossible, because knowledge is too vast for an overview? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Is the 'philosopher' still possible today? Is not the extent of what is known too large? Is it not very unlikely that he will be able to reach an overview, the less so the more conscientious he is? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[24]) | |
| A reaction: If Aristotle had a wonderful overview because knowledge was limited, presumably the overview was inaccurate - not an idea that would appeal to Nietzsche, with his relativism. I'd rather have too much knowledge, and struggle towards an overview. |
| 7132 | Philosophers should create and fight for their concepts, not just clean and clarify them [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The last thing to dawn on philosophers is that they must no longer merely let themselves be given concepts, no longer just clean and clarify them, but first of all must make them, create them, present them and persuade in their favour. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[195]) | |
| A reaction: Compare the disagreement between Wittgenstein (Idea 2937) and Keith Ansell Pearson (Idea 6870). The trouble is that now every book you read is creating new concepts, which usually fail to catch on. I agree, though, with Nietzsche. |
| 22223 | Being-in-the-world is projection to possibilities, thrownness among them, and fallenness within them [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Being-in-the-world is a phenomenon of 'care' with a tripartite structure: a) projection towards its possibilities, b) thrownness among those possibilities, so Dasein is not free, and c) fallenness among worldly possibilities, to neglect of its own. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit Californian to me. Just living among the world's possibilities is evidently a bad thing, because you could be concentrating on yourself and your own development instead? |
| 22158 | Pheomenology seeks things themselves, without empty theories, problems and concepts [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: 'Phenomenology' can be formulated as 'To the things themselves!' It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings, and to conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated. It is opposed to traditiona' pseudo-problems. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro II.07) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if we are invited to look at the world the way a dog might look at it. I am not at all clear what it to be gained from this approach. |
| 15574 | 'Logos' really means 'making something manifest' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger concludes that 'logos' essentially means 'making something manifest'. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 56/33) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§7 | |
| A reaction: It would at least seem to involve revealing the truth of something, though truth doesn't seem to be central to Heidegger's thought. 'Logos' is often translated as 'an account', as well as a 'reason', so Heidegger may be right. |
| 15569 | Heidegger says truth is historical, and never absolute [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger is a relentless enemy of ahistorical, absolutist concepts of truth. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: I presume that if truth is not absolute then it must be relative, but Polt is a little coy about saying so. For me, anyone who says truth is relative doesn't understand the concept, and is talking about something else. |
| 7188 | Logic tries to understand the world according to a man-made scheme [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic is the attempt to understand the real world according to a scheme of being that we have posited. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[97]) | |
| A reaction: This is the ruthless relativist trying to relativise the holy-of-holies, pure logic. I don't believe it. Once you allow counting, identity and sets, based on types, (and why not?) then logic follows. |
| 7145 | Logic is not driven by truth, but desire for a simple single viewpoint [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In logic a drive rules, first of falsifying, and then of implementing a single viewpoint: logic does not originate in the will to truth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[13]) | |
| A reaction: Presumably logic derives from a will to simplify rather than a will for truth. Ockham's Razor describes the essence of human thinking. Even if Nietzsche is right, there is still a desire that the simplified view should be true. |
| 7144 | Logic must falsely assume that identical cases exist [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Logic assumes identical cases exist; to think and conclude logically, the fulfilment of this condition must first be feigned. That is: the will to logical truth cannot realise itself until a fundamental falsification of all events has been undertaken. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[13]) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This implies that the particularism espoused by virtue theorists (there are no principles, as each case is slightly different) should be extended to other branches of human understanding. So arithmetic is impossible?? |
| 21897 | Reducing being to the study of beings too readily accepts the modern scientific view [Heidegger, by May] |
| Full Idea: Continental philosophers, following Heidegger, see in the attempt to reduce the question of being to that of beings a symptom of an age that is too ready to accept the terms in which science conceives the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I take the idea that this is a failing of the modern age to be ridiculous, since I take it to be the key metaphysical move made by Aristotle. Neverthless, Aristotle is closely in tune with modern science. For 'beings', read 'objects'. |
| 15573 | For us, Being is constituted by awareness of other sorts of Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We are Dasein - the entity who possesses - as constitutive for its understanding of existence - an understanding of the Being of all entities of a character other than its own. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 34/13), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to connect to the emerging 'externalist' view of mind that comes with the external view of content coming from Purnam's Twin Earth idea. |
| 9273 | Heidegger turns to 'Being' to affirm the uniqueness of humans in the world [Heidegger, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger turns to 'Being' for the same reason that Christians turn to God - to affirm the unique place of humans in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the first remark I have encountered that makes sense of Heidegger's Being to me! It places Heidegger as a modernist philosopher, trying to grapple with the decline of religion. I'll stick with Bertrand Russell on that. |
| 22157 | Dasein is a mode of Being distinguished by concern for its own Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro I.04) | |
| A reaction: How do you distinguish the Being of normal humans from the Being of someone in a deep coma, who has no existential issues? Has that Dasein ceased to be? Why does angst create a new mode of Being, but flying doesn't? |
| 8137 | Dasein is ahead of itself in the world, and alongside encountered entities [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The formal existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole is: the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6 41) | |
| A reaction: If you find that thought really illuminating, you are probably on the wrong website. However, the thought that we exist 'ahead of ourselves' might be a fruitful line for existentialists to explore. |
| 21951 | In company with others one's Dasein dissolves, and even the others themselves dissolve [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: This being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of being of 'the others', in such a way, indeed, that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.164), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 5 | |
| A reaction: He seems to be describing the psychology of someone who joins a small crowd which gradually increases in size. I take this relation to others to be the basic existential dilemma, of retaining individual authenticity within a community. |
| 20745 | 'Dasein' expresses not 'what' the entity is, but its being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When we designate this entity with the term 'Dasein' we are expressing not its 'what' (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its being. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.297), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: Presumably analytic discussions of persons try to be too objective. Heidegger is trying to capture the thought at the heart of Kierkegaard's existentialism. Objectivity and subjectivity are never in conflict. Is there really a different mode of existence? |
| 8134 | The word 'dasein' is used to mean 'the manner of Being which man possesses', and also the human creature [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger borrows a common German word 'dasein', meaning 'being' or 'existence', to refer both to 'the manner of Being which... man... possesses', and to the creature which possesses it. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.32) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This just strikes me as an elementary ontological mistake. Because something has startling properties it doesn't follow that we have a different type of Being. Magnets don't have a different type of being from ordinary iron. |
| 8135 | 'Dasein' is Being which is laid claim to, and which matters to its owner [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: We each of us not only have Dasein (our kind of Being), but we can lay claim to it. Also the Dasein of a thing 'is an issue for it' - we care about the kinds of creatures we can make ourselves into. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.67) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Heidegger says other more puzzling things about Dasein. The second half of the idea is what makes Heidegger an existentialist, and an inspiration for Sartre. |
| 21948 | Dasein is being which can understand itself, and possess itself in a way allowing authenticity [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which, in its very being, comports itself understandingly towards that being. ...Mineness belongs to an existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.78), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: He might eventually persuade me that Dasein is so different from mere material being that it deserves a category of its own. But a reductive account of mind is also a reductive account of being. |
| 7680 | Ontology is possible only as phenomenology [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.31), quoted by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Jacquette argues against this claim. The idea seems to be the ultimate extension of Kant, and it is not a big move to say that the only real phenomenology we can discuss is our semantics. Wrong, wrong, wrong. |
| 7153 | We can't be realists, because we don't know what being is [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One would have to know what being is in order to decide whether this or that is real - but we don't know that. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is a genius - he puts his finger on something which has always bothered me about realism, even though I call myself a 'realist'. Being and existence are utterly indefinable, and even incomprehensible, so what do we realists believe in? |
| 22161 | Readiness-to-hand defines things in themselves ontologically [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are 'in themselves' are defined ontologico-categorially. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is a direct reference to the problem idealists had with the thing-in-itself. It seems that the reality of a thing consists of the strengthened relationship it has with Dasein, which sounds fairly idealist to me. |
| 7174 | Categories are not metaphysical truths, but inventions in the service of needs [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The inventive force that thought up categories was working in the service of needs - security, quick comprehensibility using signs and sounds, means of abbreviation - 'substance', 'subject', 'being' etc are not metaphysical truths. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 06[11]) | |
| A reaction: This is a relativism going right to the heart of thinking and planting bombs. And yet we happily translate Confucius, and they can translate Aristotle. I bet the aliens could translate and understand our philosophy. How, without similar categories? |
| 7175 | Philosophers find it particularly hard to shake off belief in necessary categories [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers, in particular, have the greatest difficulty in freeing themselves from the belief that the basic concepts and categories of reason belong without further ado to the realm of metaphysical certainties. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 06[13]) | |
| A reaction: As usual with Nietzsche, if you make any attempt to disagree with this, you are merely proving his point. All of Nietzsche's philosophy is couched in traditional categories, even when he criticises them. Is 'will to power' a new category? |
| 7189 | Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis - that there are only subjects - that 'object' is only a kind of effect of subject upon subject...a mode of the subject. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[106]) | |
| A reaction: This is an ultimate implication of 'perspectivism'. Elsewhere, though, (Idea 7183) he challenges the ontological status of 'subjects', suggesting that even they are purely fictional. Nietzsche wanted to relativism everything, but kept clutching lifebelts. |
| 7207 | Counting needs unities, but that doesn't mean they exist; we borrowed it from the concept of 'I' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We need unities in order to be able to count: we should not therefore assume that such unities exist. We have borrowed the concept of unity from our concept of 'I' - our oldest article of faith. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79]) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think that counting derives from patterns, and that all creatures can discern patterns in their environment, which means discriminating the parts of the pattern, which are therefore real and existing entities. |
| 15576 | Heidegger seeks a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger tries to develop a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' ('wesen' as a verb). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§25-7 |
| 7161 | The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences. |
| 7134 | Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Something can be irrefutable; that doesn't make it true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[247]) | |
| A reaction: This is a warning to rationalists who are looking for strategies to demonstrate necessities a priori. |
| 7186 | There are no necessary truths, but something must be held to be true [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What's necessary is that something must be held to be true; not that something is true. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[38]) | |
| A reaction: This may be right, but it doesn't follow that the truths we label as 'necessary' are the ones that we have to believe, or even that we have to believe that our chosen beliefs are necessary rather than contingent. Why did we pick those beliefs? |
| 15578 | Propositions don't provide understanding, because the understanding must come first [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Propositions are not a good clue to the essence of understanding, because we must already understand things before we formulate propositions about them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.31) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: I like this, because I think the most important aspects of our thought and understanding are entirely non-verbal - even in cases where they seem to be highly specific and verbal. We don't understand ourselves at all! |
| 7154 | We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A critique of our capacity to know is nonsensical: how should the tool be able to criticise itself when it can, precisely, only use itself for the critique? It can't even define itself! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87]) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to answer that it seems impossible, but it happens. Thinking about ourselves is the hardest part of philosophy, but phenomenologists and others (starting with Descartes) have had an impressive crack at it. Nietzsche was good at it. |
| 7146 | Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Belief in the body is better established than belief in the mind. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 40[15]) | |
| A reaction: Compare Spinoza in Idea 4833. Hawking says he thinks better because he is largely paralysed. Externalism about mind makes it necessarily a part of the world and hence physical. I am inclined to agree with Nietzsche. |
| 22159 | If we posit 'I' as the starting point, we miss the mind's phenomenal content [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an 'I' or subject as that which is proximally given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal content of Dasein. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.1.10) | |
| A reaction: Descartes had thrown doubt on the informativeness of the phenomena, so presumably your phenomenologist is not interested in whether they reveal any truth. So why are unreliable phenomena of any interest? |
| 22160 | Our relationship to a hammer strengthens when we use [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The less we stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become. ...The kind of Being which equipment possesses... we call 'readiness-to-hand' [Zuhandenheit]. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: This example would be well at home in the writings of the pragmatists. It is also an important example for existentialists. In analytic philosophy we might say the experience combines perception with direct exerience of causation. |
| 15580 | There are no raw sense-data - our experiences are of the sound or colour of something [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We always take a noise as the sound of something; we always take a hue as the color of something. We simply do not experience raw, uninterpreted sense-data - these are the inventions of philosophers. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 207/163-4), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: This is something like the modern view of sense-data as promoted by John McDowell, rather than the experiential atoms of Russell and Moore. Experience is holistic, but that doesn't mean we can't analyse it into components. |
| 7181 | Pain shows the value of the damage, not what has been damaged [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Intellectuality of pain: pain does not indicate what is momentarily damaged but what value the damage has with regard to the individual as a whole. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[48]) | |
| A reaction: An interesting claim, but rather hard to substantiate. Boiling water on the back of a hand might be very painful, but not of huge consequence in terms of damage. The palm of the hand is much more important to us than the back. |
| 7129 | Perception is unconscious, and we are only conscious of processed perceptions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Sense-perception happens without our awareness: whatever we become conscious of is a perception that has already been processed. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[30]) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me wonderfully perceptive for its date, and a crucial truth, because we have the delusion that we are our consciousness, whereas that is only a tiny part of what we are. |
| 20749 | Perceived objects always appear in a context [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The perceptual 'something' is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a 'field'. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: Sounds like our knowledge of electrons. Nice point. Standard analytic discussions of perceiving a glass always treat it in isolation, when it is on an expensive table near a brandy bottle. Or near a hammer. |
| 7156 | Sense perceptions contain values (useful, so pleasant) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: All sensory perceptions are entirely suffused with value judgements (useful or harmful - consequently pleasant or unpleasant). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[95]) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a wonderful anticipation of modern neuroscience findings about emotion. It is a nice challenge to Hume's 'impressions' and Russell's 'logical atoms'. But knowledge is power, and we can strip off the values from the perceptions. |
| 19555 | People begin to doubt whether they 'know' when the answer becomes more significant [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Fluent speakers typically become increasingly hesitant about 'knowledge' attributions as the practical significance of the right answer increases. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Epistemic') | |
| A reaction: The standard examples of this phenomenon are in criminal investigations, and in philosophical discussions of scepticism. Simple observations I take to have maximum unshakable confidence, except in extreme global scepticism contexts. |
| 19557 | Maybe low knowledge standards are loose talk; people will deny that it is 'really and truly' knowledge [Conee] |
| Full Idea: Maybe variable knowledge ascriptions are just loose talk. This is shown when we ask whether weakly supported knowledge is 'really' or 'truly' or 'really and truly' known. Fluent speakers have a strong inclination to doubt or deny that it is. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Loose') | |
| A reaction: [bit compressed] Conee is suggesting the people are tacitly invariantist about knowledge (they have a fixed standard). But it may be that someone who asks 'do you really and truly know?' is raising the contextual standard. E.g. a barrister. |
| 19556 | Maybe knowledge has fixed standards (high, but attainable), although people apply contextual standards [Conee] |
| Full Idea: It may be that all 'knowledge' attributions have the same truth conditions, but people apply contextually varying standards. The most plausible standard for truth is very high, but not unreachably high. | |
| From: Earl Conee (Contextualism Contested (and reply) [2005], 'Loose') | |
| A reaction: This is the 'invariantist' alternative to contextualism about knowledge. Is it a standard 'for truth'? Either it is or it isn't true, so there isn't a standard. I take the standard to concern the justification. |
| 22163 | The scandal of philosophy is expecting to prove reality when the prover's Being is vague [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof [of external things] has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. ...The kind of Being of the entity which does the proving has not been made definite enough. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.43a) | |
| A reaction: The 'scandal' was a remark of Kant's. Presumably Heidegger's exploration of Dasein aims to establish the Being of the prover sufficiently to solve this problem (via phenomenology). |
| 7149 | Comprehending everything is impossible, because it abolishes perspectives [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Comprehending everything' - that would mean abolishing all perspectival relations, that would mean comprehending nothing, mistaking the nature of the knower. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[114]) | |
| A reaction: The point here, I take it, is not just that there is too much to comprehend, but that comprehending is partly a subjective matter. Personally I am drawn to the opposite pole, expressed by Spinoza (Idea 4840). |
| 7169 | Is the perspectival part of the essence, or just a relation between beings? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Fundamental question: whether the perspectival is part of the essence, and not just a form of regarding, a relation between various beings? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[12]) | |
| A reaction: I don't personally understand how the perspectival could be part of the essence of anything. If everything is perspectival, then perspectives are limits, and essences are unknowable. It seems to me that we have learned a lot about essences. |
| 7182 | 'Perspectivism': the world has no meaning, but various interpretations give it countless meanings [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Inasmuch as the word 'knowledge' has any meaning at all, the world is knowable: but it is variously interpretable; it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. 'Perspectivism'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60]) | |
| A reaction: This account sounds like Humean 'projectivism', espoused by Simon Blackburn - meanings are projected onto a meaningless world. If nearly all of our perspectives agreed, might that not be because they were all true? |
| 7183 | 'Subjectivity' is an interpretation, since subjects (and interpreters) are fictions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Everything is subjective', you say: but that itself is an interpretation, for the 'subject' is not something given but a fiction added on, tucked behind. Even the interpreter behind the interpretation is a fiction, hypothesis. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[60]) | |
| A reaction: How glorious to even suggest that the subjective account of knowledge is making too many assumptions! If modern students of philosophy were to meet Nietzsche, they would be reduced to the response of Cratylus (Idea 578). |
| 7133 | There are different eyes, so different 'truths', so there is no truth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are many different eyes, .... and consequently there are many different 'truths', and consequently there is no truth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[230]) | |
| A reaction: Sorry, I just don't follow this. Most people see the same things with their eyes, even if the perspective is subtly different. If we are puzzled by what we see, we swap places to check it. Nietzsche's life was too solitary. Some 'truths' are wrong. |
| 7139 | Explanation is just showing the succession of things ever more clearly [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Showing the succession of things ever more clearly is what's named 'explanation': no more than that! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 35[52]) | |
| A reaction: If you lay bare all causal sequences, you may not have explained anything until you have pointed out a pattern in the events. Explanations must partly depend on the interests of the enquirer, so pure catalogues of events won't do. |
| 21949 | Having thoughts and feelings need engagement in the world [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger argues that having thoughts and feelings is only possible for entity that is actually engaged in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an a priori exclusion of the possibility of a brain in a vat. I guess the ancestor of this idea is Schopenhauer. |
| 7131 | The intellect and senses are a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are, above all, a simplifying apparatus. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[46]) | |
| A reaction: This seems like a profound truth to me. The world, and our own bodies, are of almost infinite complexity, such that only a god could grasp it. In order to teach, we have to simplify even further. We choose a level of simplification for contexts. |
| 22222 | Dasein finds itself already amongst others [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: The world is a world shared with others, so that far from being a solipsistic ego ...Dasein finds itself already amongst others. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.226 | |
| A reaction: Phenomenologists don't seem bothered about the problem of knowing other minds. If you take something for granted, it ceases to be a problem to be solved! |
| 8136 | If we work and play with other people, they are bound to be 'Dasein', intelligent agents [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: How do I know that other people have minds? The question is a bad one. Precisely because I encounter them at work, play and the like, it is guaranteed that they, too, are Dasein, intelligent agents. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.153-) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I've seen film of someone playing peek-a-boo with a bonobo ape, so presumably they have Dasein. It might be easier for the AI community to aim at building a robot with Dasein, than one which was simply conscious. |
| 7152 | With protoplasm ˝+˝=2, so the soul is not an indivisible monad [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Along the guiding thread of the body. When protoplasm divides ˝ + ˝ does not = 1, but = 2. Thus the belief in the soul as monad becomes untenable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[68]) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably an anticipatory remark about the cutting of the corpus callosum (in the brain), which seems to cut a physical person into two people. Personally I always found the absolute unity of the mind or person implausible. |
| 7130 | Unity is not in the conscious 'I', but in the organism, which uses the self as a tool [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If I have anything of a unity within me, it certainly doesn't lie in the conscious 'I' and in feeling, willing, thinking, but somewhere else: in the ... prudence of my whole organism, of which my conscious self is only a tool. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 34[46]) | |
| A reaction: What an interesting thinker Nietzsche was! I think I agree with this. I think the self is built on the necessary internalised body-map all animals must have. The body requires the map, not the map needing the body. |
| 22164 | When Dasein grasps something it exists externally alongside the thing [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always 'outside' alongside entities. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.2.13) | |
| A reaction: This is the first plausible fruit of phenomenology I have been able to discover. Analysing the passive mind is not very promising, but seeing what happens when we become more proactive is revealing. |
| 7155 | Consciousness exists to the extent that consciousness is useful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness exists to the extent that consciousness is useful. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[95]) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a great truth, first because it emphasises the necessity of giving an evolutionary (survival) explanation of consciousness, and also because it invites us to consider the 'extent' to which we are conscious of brain activity. |
| 7143 | Consciousness is a 'tool' - just as the stomach is a tool [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is just a 'tool' and nothing more - in the same sense that the stomach is a tool. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 37[4]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was very critical of Darwin, but he absorbed his teachings quicker than anyone. I agree with this, and with Fodor (Idea 2508), that to understand a mind you must think about why we have minds. |
| 22162 | There is an everyday self, and an authentic self, when it is grasped in its own way [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self [das Man-selbst], which we distinguish from the authentic self - that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) | |
| A reaction: To a novice this sounds like a requirement for increased self-consciousness during daily activity. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal self' said one of Lawrence's characters. |
| 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. |
| 20114 | Everyone is other, and no one is himself [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Everyone is other, and no one is himself. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.165), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |
| A reaction: Safranski describes this as the idea of 'structural self-evasion'. He detects the same idea in Nietzsche's 'Daybreak'. |
| 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. |
| 15577 | Moods are more fundamentally revealing than theories - as when fear reveals a threat [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger moods are disclosive; they show us things in a more fundamental way than theoretical propositions ever can. For example, fear reveals something as a threat. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.30) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§30 | |
| A reaction: Most modern students of emotion seem to agree. Even though they may not have specific content, it is always possible to consider the underlying cause of the mood. |
| 7171 | Rationality is a scheme we cannot cast away [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Thinking rationally is interpreting according to a scheme we cannot cast away. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[22]) | |
| A reaction: We can turn the tables on this one: how could Nietzsche know that this is the case if he cannot criticise his own rationality? The brain is a truth machine, and truth is (mostly) vital for survival. |
| 7209 | There is no will; weakness of will is splitting of impulses, strong will is coordination under one impulse [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Weakness of will is misleading, for there is no will, and hence neither a strong will nor a weak one. Multiplicity and disaggregation of the impulses results as 'weak will'; coordination under the dominance of a single one results as 'strong will'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[219]) | |
| A reaction: That Nietzsche seems to be right is clearer if we remember that the Greek terms are 'control' (enkrateia) and 'lack of control' (akrasia), with no reference to anything called the will. |
| 7194 | Experiencing a thing as beautiful is to experience it wrongly [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: To experience a thing as beautiful necessarily means experiencing it wrongly. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[167]) | |
| A reaction: So much for 'beauty is truth' (Keats). I suppose I agree, for example, about a face. If you don't experience the beauty of a good melody, there is nothing else left to experience - no mundane truth that needs reporting. |
| 7136 | Morality is a system of values which accompanies a being's life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: By morality, I understand a system of valuations which is contiguous with a being's conditions of life. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[264]) | |
| A reaction: It needs to be added that the values influence and control the life. Note that this defines morality as neither the qualities of character of virtue theory, nor the rules for conduct of deontology and utilitarianism. Morality MUST be rooted in values. |
| 7163 | Morality is merely interpretations, which are extra-moral in origin [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: My main proposition: there are no moral phenomena, there is only a moral interpretation of those phenomena. This interpretation itself is of extra-moral origin. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[165]) | |
| A reaction: The origin will, of course, be the 'will to power', which is the drive for survival, linking Nietzsche with sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. |
| 7147 | Values are innate and inherited [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Valuations are innate (despite Locke!), inherited. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 01[21]) | |
| A reaction: This would conform with Charles Taylor's views (e.g. Idea 4002). But how are we sheep ever going to fall in with the values of our Superman when he arrives, if we are stuck with our own innate values? |
| 7190 | Our values express an earlier era's conditions for survival and growth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of value is always antiquated, it expresses a much earlier era's conditions for survival and growth. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[23]) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I myself grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Have I ingested values that were created for that era, and are no longer required? |
| 20748 | We do not add value to naked things; its involvement is disclosed in understanding it [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We do not throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something is encountered as such, the thing in question has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.190-1), quoted by George Dickie - The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude 3 'Undoing' | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophy and science have tried to dismantle experience, and Heidegger wants to put it back together. I would say there is a big difference between encountering a thing (which is a bit facty), and understanding it (which is more valuey). |
| 7201 | Knowledge, wisdom and goodness only have value relative to a goal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge and wisdom have no value as such; nor does goodness: one must always first have a goal that confers value or disvalue on these qualities. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |
| A reaction: So what goals should we have? Nietzsche talks about the 'enhancement of life', but what is that, and why should we want it? There may be an ecological cost to enhancing human life. |
| 7205 | Altruism is praised by the egoism of the weak, who want everyone to be looked after [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Behind the general praise for 'altruism' is the instinct that the individual will be best safeguarded if everyone looks after each other....it's the egoism of the weak that created the praise, the exclusive praise for altruism. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[5]) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand why Nietzsche so strongly despises the weak. Callicles (in Plato's 'Gorgias') embodies the strong, but he is utterly unlovable, and appears to be motivated mainly by a desire to have fun at other people's expense. |
| 7141 | A living being is totally 'egoistic' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A living being is 'egoistic' through and through. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[20]) | |
| A reaction: Can't I even fight against my own dominating egoism? I just don't accept that this generalisation applies necessarily to all human beings at all times. How can a totally egoistic creature have 'low self-esteem'? |
| 7168 | Modest people express happiness as 'Not bad' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The happiness whose proper name on earth the modest believe is: 'Well, not bad'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[7]) | |
| A reaction: Alexei Sayle expresses it in the English slogan 'Mustn't grumble'. Nietzsche certainly had the English in mind. Nietzsche seems to have the romantic tendency to think that only something completely new and original can bring happiness. |
| 7159 | The only happiness is happiness with illusion [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Happiness with existence is only possible as happiness with illusion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[110]) | |
| A reaction: A characteristically tough remark! It is, of course, indefeasible, because if you claim to have happiness without illusion, Nietzsche brands you as another fool. But why should a gradual stripping of illusion totally destroy happiness? |
| 7197 | Pleasure needs dissatisfaction, boundaries and resistances [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The feeling of pleasure lies precisely in the unsatisfaction of the will, in the way it is not yet satiated unless it has boundaries and resistances... | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[75]) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a 'higher' sort of pleasure, preferred by Nietzsche and Mill and clever chaps like that. Personally I like sunbathing and listening to music, and I float along very comfortably, like a cork on the stream of indulgence... |
| 7165 | Virtue is wasteful, as it reduces us all to being one another's nurse [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Nothing would be more expensive than virtue: for in the end it would give us the earth as an infirmary, and 'Everyone to be everyone else's nurse' would be the pinnacle of wisdom. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[7]) | |
| A reaction: Once again, I think that Nietzsche does not understand Aristotelian virtue theory. This attacks Christian virtue (his bęte noir), with its emphasis on compassion and humility. A truly virtuous person is more likely to be an artist/politician/philosopher. |
| 7193 | Virtue for everyone removes its charm of being exceptional and aristocratic [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The preachers of virtue are its worst enemies. For they teach virtue as an ideal for everyone; they take from virtue the charm of the rare, the inimitable, the exceptional and unaverage - its aristocratic magic. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[109]) | |
| A reaction: At last I think I have found why Nietzsche disliked Aristotle, who makes elementary 'phronesis' (practical reason) a sufficient intellectual endowment to achieve virtue, with no need of more than moderate wealth or power. I prefer Aristotle. |
| 7191 | What does not kill us makes us stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What does not kill us makes us stronger. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[87]) | |
| A reaction: A famous remark! Actually, of course, a very stressful human life tends to be much shorter than a comfortable one, but Nietzsche wouldn't equate strength with longevity. Nowadays we are all a bunch of softies. |
| 7151 | Courage, compassion, insight, solitude are the virtues, with courtesy a necessary vice [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Our four cardinal virtues: courage, compassion, insight and solitude - they would be unbearable to themselves if they hadn't forged an alliance with a cheerful and mischievous vice called 'courtesy'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was wonderfully wicked. I struggle (with Aristotle) to see how a naturally social creature can have solitude as a virtue. It is startling to see Nietzsche naming compassion as a virtue, but how ironic is the whole remark? |
| 7185 | Replace the categorical imperative by the natural imperative [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Replacement of the categorical imperative by the natural imperative. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[27]) | |
| A reaction: This places Nietzsche rather firmly with evolutionary psychologists (who see morality in evolutionary terms), which he probably would not like. I just don't believe we are helpless victims of nature, and nor must we endorse what it asks of us. |
| 7164 | Not feeling harnessed to a system of 'ends' is a wonderful feeling of freedom [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What a sensation of freedom it is to feel, as we freed spirits feel, that we are not harnessed up to a system of 'ends'! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[206]) | |
| A reaction: Given his view that we are utterly dominated by the 'will to power', I am beginning to wonder in what sense we could ever be 'free'. If my happiness is an 'illusion' (Idea 7159), then I retaliate by saying that his freedom is also an illusion. |
| 22166 | Dasein has the potential to be itself, but must be shown this in the midst of ordinariness [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Because Dasein is lost in the 'they', it must first find itself. It must be 'shown' to itself in its possible authenticity. In terms of its possibility, Dasein is already a potentiality-for-Being-its-self, but it needs to have this potentiality attested. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], II.2.54) | |
| A reaction: I wish there was some criterion for knowing when you are being yourself and when you are not. |
| 7198 | Nihilism results from measuring the world by our categories which are purely invented [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Belief in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism - we have measured the value of the world against categories that refer to a purely invented world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[99]) | |
| A reaction: What a remarkable thought! He will have Kant especially in mind. The implication is that we might avoid nihilism by creating more accurate categories, but Nietzsche, as relativist, thinks that is impossible (Ideas 7174, 7175). Nihilism is our fate. |
| 22165 | Anxiety reveals the possibility and individuality of Dasein [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individualisation. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.40) | |
| A reaction: Is sounds like insecurity, as a sort of trauma that shocks one into self-realisation. The idea means very little to me personally. |
| 21952 | Anxiety about death frees me to live my own life [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger, as a consequence of my anxiety in the face of death, I am set free to live my life as my own rather than doing things merely because others expect me to do them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 7 | |
| A reaction: Contrary to Epicurus, Heidegger thinks anxiety about death is a good thing. The point is, I suppose, that we all die alone, and people who are very socially contrained need to face up to death in order to grasp their autonomy. |
| 22224 | Anxiety is the uncanniness felt when constantly fleeing from asserting one's own freedom [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety [angst] is the disturbing sense of uncanniness by which Dasein is overtaken (thrownness) when it discovers there is nothing other than its own freedom to sustain its projects (projection), and from which Dasein constantly takes flight (falling). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Kierkegaard's idea, unamended. In my experience anxiety only comes when I am forced into making decisions by worldly situations. An 'existential crisis' is a sort of blankness appearing where a future life was supposed to be. |
| 15572 | Being what it is (essentia) must be conceived in terms of Being (existence) [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein's Being-what-it-is (essentia) must….be conceived in terms of its Being (existentia). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 67/42), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the origin of Sartre's famous slogan 'existence before essence'. It seems to be a rebellion against Husserl's quest for essences. |
| 7150 | By developing herd virtues man fixes what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Men's increasing morality allows them to fancy they can rise to the rank of 'gods', whereas in fact they sink; by cultivating the virtues by which a herd can flourish, they develop the herd animal, and 'fix' what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[13]) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] More than any other remark, this explains the sense of distress found in all of later Nietzsche. If he is right, it looks even more true now than in 1886, because of the globalisation of culture. I think he is right. |
| 7177 | Virtues from outside are dangerous, and they should come from within [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The virtues are as dangerous as the vices, to the extent that one allows them to rule as authority and law from outside instead of generating them from within oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[6]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche was a romantic, who thought things only have worth if they are authentic, individual, autonomous, original. Existentialism is the last fling of romanticism, and expresses an adolescent yearning for 'freedom'. From what? |
| 20453 | Heidegger says we must either choose an inauthentic hero, or choose yourself as hero [Heidegger, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger says you must choose your hero; either you choose 'das Man', the inauthentic life, or you choose yourself - the point being that you have to choose yourself as your hero in order to be authentic. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 5 | |
| A reaction: If Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo' is the model for choosing yourself as hero, I am not too sure about this idea. Needing a hero seems awfully German and romantic. Ein Heldenleben. Be your own anit-hero (like a standup comedian)? |
| 7172 | Existence without meaning or goal or end, eternally recurring, is a terrible thought [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or goal, but inevitably recurring, without any finale into nothingness: 'eternal recurrence'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[71].6) | |
| A reaction: I take this in a positive spirit - that if you wish to live well you should create a life which you could endure and enjoy, even if it recurred eternally. But that might be rather conservative rather than exciting, if we always avoided giving offence. |
| 7166 | Man is above all a judging animal [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Man is above all a judging animal. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 04[8]) | |
| A reaction: This seems awfully close to Aristotle's supposed claim that we are the 'rational animal' (though see Idea 6559). To me it implies that if judging is our proper function, then judging well is our highest virtue. The highest good for man is understanding. |
| 7204 | The upholding of the military state is needed to maintain the strong human type [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The upholding of the military state is the ultimate means to either adopt or keep hold of the great tradition respecting the highest human type, the strong type. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[407]) | |
| A reaction: I do find this kind of thing disappointing, after Nietzsche's wonderful deconstruction of traditional value systems. Is a killing field the only place where human strength can be exhibited? What's the point of human strength if it is displayed in killing? |
| 7173 | Rights arise out of contracts, which need a balance of power [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Rights originate only where there are contracts; but for there to be contracts, a certain balance of power must exist. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 05[82]) | |
| A reaction: It is a notorious problem with contractual ethics that the weak have nothing to bargain with. Nietzsche's view would make the concept of animal rights almost incoherent, but we understand them, even if he would not have done. |
| 7176 | 'Purpose' is like the sun, where most heat is wasted, and a tiny part has 'purpose' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The case of every purposive action is like the supposed purposiveness of the sun's heat - the huge mass of it is wasted, and a part barely worth considering has 'purpose', has 'meaning'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[1]) | |
| A reaction: A very nice metaphor for human life, where you might discern a purpose in certain large events, but you certainly won't find it in the myriad of small actions that make up nearly all of our existence. |
| 7195 | If the world aimed at an end, it would have reached it by now [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: If the world process were directed towards a final state, that state would have been reached by now. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[72]) | |
| A reaction: If advanced aliens existed, they would be here by now... I doubt if anyone now believes that the world has an end. However, strictly speaking, how could we possibly assess the time scale for such things? |
| 7206 | Things are strong or weak, and do not behave regularly or according to rules or compulsions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Things' do not behave regularly, not according to a rule: things are our fiction, and nor do they behave under the compulsion of necessity. That something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of obeying or rules or compulsion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79]) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about the denial of 'things', given that they are then said to be strong or weak, but Nietzsche seems to have had the key insight of modern essentialism, that the so-called 'laws' are merely the outcome of the inner natures of things. |
| 7140 | Chemical 'laws' are merely the establishment of power relations between weaker and stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I take care not to talk of chemical 'laws'. It is rather a matter of the absolute establishment of power relations: the stronger becomes master of the weaker to the extent that the weaker cannot assert its autonomy - there is no respect for 'laws'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[18]) | |
| A reaction: This links Nietzsche's will to power with Locke's talk of physical powers, and both point towards an essentialist view of natural laws, rather than seeing laws as something imposed from outside on nature. |
| 7142 | All motions and 'laws' are symptoms of inner events, traceable to the will to power [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One must understand all motion, all 'appearances', all 'laws' as mere symptoms of inner events. ...all the functions of animal and organic life can be traced back to the will to power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[31]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche must be the first philosopher to put inverted commas round the word 'law', referring to nature. |
| 7180 | Darwin overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Darwin absurdly overestimates the influence of 'external circumstances'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |
| A reaction: In some ways Nietzsche was just as bad as the Christians in his reluctance to face up to Darwin's idea. Does he really think that creatures evolve a certain way because they want to? Even fans of Nietzsche must bite the bullet of natural selection. |
| 7179 | Survival might undermine an individual's value, or prevent its evolution [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Something useful for maintaining the individual over time might be unfavourable to its strength and magnificence; what preserves the individual might simultaneously hold it fast and bring its evolution to a standstill. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |
| A reaction: He heads this 'Against Darwin', but I think Darwin could accommodate these observations, as he merely points out a mechanism, and makes not value judgements at all. |
| 7178 | The utility of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The utility of an organ does not explain its origin, on the contrary! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[25]) | |
| A reaction: This may be wishful thinking on Nietzsche's part, wanting the human mind to be free of its utility for survival, so that it can be focused on 'higher' things. We can explain by origin and purpose, but also by causal possibilities. |
| 7192 | Remove goodness and wisdom from our concept of God. Being the highest power is enough! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Let us remove the highest goodness from the concept of God, and likewise remove the highest wisdom, for which the vanity of the philosophers is to blame. No! God the highest power - that is enough! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 10[90]) | |
| A reaction: Since everything is, apparently, 'will to power', then power must be the ideal. Why does Nietzsche want such a thing? As far as I can see, the greater seekers of power are idiots who have no idea what to do with it when the achieve it. |
| 7158 | Morality kills religion, because a Christian-moral God is unbelievable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Religions perish through belief in morality: the Christian-moral God is not tenable: hence 'atheism' - as if there could be no other kind of god. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[107]) | |
| A reaction: This remark is mainly aimed at Christianity, which has become progressively more sentimental in its conception of God. When some great earthquake comes, this God is not plausible, where a tougher sort of God might be. |
| 7199 | It is dishonest to invent a being containing our greatest values, thus ignoring why they exist and are valuable [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is the pinnacle of man's mendacity to think up a being as a beginning and 'in-itself', according to the yardstick of what he happens to find good, wise, powerful, valuable - and think away the whole causality by which they exist and have value. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |
| A reaction: I think most non-religious people feel that religion completely fails to solve the problems it is meant to address, by just ignoring the problems, or pushing them to another place. |
| 7162 | Morality can only be upheld by belief in God and a 'hereafter' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Naivety: as if morality remained when the sanctioning God is gone. The 'hereafter' is absolutely necessary if belief in morality is to be upheld. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[165]) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'good' and 'evil' of social values, not the natural values which accompany the life of any creature (see Idea 7136). Even with a God, it required the priests to interpret the morality and the sanctions, and they had their thumbs in the scales. |
| 7208 | Paganism is a form of thanking and affirming life? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Is the pagan cult not a form of thanking and affirming life? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[89]) | |
| A reaction: Yes, but it also centres on worries about life, such as potential famine and natural disasters. It is rooted as much in the negative of fear as in the positive of gratitude and appreciation. |
| 7160 | Christian belief is kept alive because it is soothing - the proof based on pleasure [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It seems that Christian belief is to be kept alive precisely for the sake of its soothing effects; ...this hedonistic turn, the proof based on pleasure, is a symptom of decline. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[144]) | |
| A reaction: The abolition of hell by the Anglican church in the 1990s is the last stage in this development. To be fair (and why not?), the Christian life demands a rather large effort, if it is to be lived properly, so it is a rather demanding sort of hedonism. |
| 7203 | In heaven all the interesting men are missing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Has anyone noticed that in heaven all the interesting men are missing? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[153]) | |
| A reaction: It does appear that the huge problem with paradise, when it is portrayed as lying around being waited on and revering God forever, is boredom. No charity work will be possible, so only a deadening politeness will remain of the good human life. |
| 7200 | A combination of great power and goodness would mean the disastrous abolition of evil [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A high degree of power in the hands of the highest goodness would entail the most disastrous consequences ('the abolition of evil'). | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 11[122]) | |
| A reaction: This goes with Mackie's claim that the actual existence of evil is proof that an omnipotent and benevolent God can't exist (Idea 1472). |