95 ideas
20383 | The wisest man is full of contradictions, and attuned to other people, with occasional harmony [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
A reaction: By 'us' does he mean himself? Whether the rest of us thought such a person to be wise would depend on whether we met them on a contradictory or a harmonious day. Permanent harmony should be viewed with suspicion. |
4520 | I don't want to persuade anyone to be a philosopher; they should be rare plants [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: I do not wish to persuade anyone to philosophy: it is inevitable, it is perhaps also desirable, that the philosopher should be a rare plant. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §420) | |
A reaction: My immediate reaction is disagreement, but 'what if everybody' became a philosopher. The fear is that philosophy paralyses action, but it need not. Good philosophy is time-consuming. History would come to an end. The excitement of medieval history! |
4545 | Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Could not the objective character of things be merely a difference of degree within the subjective? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §560) | |
A reaction: A reasonable speculation. I begin to feel my opinions are objective if they are reinforced by the agreement of others. One can believe in the facts, but despair of objectivity. It is called 'scepticism'. Buf cf. T.Nagel. |
4530 | Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Reason is a mere idiosyncrasy of a certain species of animal. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §515) | |
A reaction: Call me narrow-minded, prejudiced and arrogant, but I just don't believe this. Rational minds meet across cultures, and good reasons can rise above culture. However, I may be wrong about this… |
4523 | What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: What can be 'demonstrated' is of little worth. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §431) | |
A reaction: He admits that some things can be demonstrated, and that they have some worth. But demonstration may be a matter of coherence, so that anything can be demonstrated, by assuming a range of ideas as being beyond demonstration. |
4531 | Our inability to both affirm and deny a single thing is merely an inability, not a 'necessity' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We are unable to affirm and to deny one and the same thing: this is a subjective empirical law, not the expression of any 'necessity', but only an inability. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
A reaction: A remarkable claim, made by someone utterly gripped by relativism. I don't believe it. Why can't we do it? We experience it as a truth, not as a prejudice or mental block. I say it reflects reality - there is only one set of facts. |
4541 | Everything simple is merely imaginary [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Everything simple is merely imaginary. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §536) | |
A reaction: A wonderful aphorism. This is one's worst fear, which is why it is suggested that ontological O's R is bad, though epistemological O's R ('be cautious') is fine. I have to admit that I have no idea whether reality is simple. |
20357 | Truth was given value by morality, but eventually turned against its own source [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
A reaction: Just as 'duty' is said to have withered in modern times, because its religious underpinning has been lost, so this gives an account of the decline of the value of truth. It is still left to us to assert the value of truth, perhaps as the only value. |
4534 | 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: 'Truth' is the will to be master over the multiplicity of sensations. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §517) | |
A reaction: I suspect that this is a nice explanation of why we value truth, but says nothing at all about what truth actually is. I can't think of a better explanation of why we value truth. |
4548 | Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574) | |
A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required. |
16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'. |
5652 | True beliefs are those which augment one's power [Nietzsche, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: For Nietzsche, the true belief is the one which augments one's power. | |
From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
A reaction: Scruton probably had in mind Idea 4534, from The Will to Power, but wider reading suggests this is not Nietzsche's view of truth, which was much more robust. Nietzsche was obsessed with identifying the motivation for a love of truth. |
4508 | The truth is what gives us the minimum of spiritual effort, and avoids the exhaustion of lying [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: What is true? Where an explanation is given which causes us the minimum of spiritual effort (moreover, lying is very exhausting). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §279) | |
A reaction: Nietzsche is just being naughty here. Obviously lazy but intelligent people tell the truth, but to suggest that there is nothing more to truth means the collapse of language and thought. Which means no more reading Nietzsche… |
4538 | Judgements can't be true and known in isolation; the only surety is in connections and relations [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: An isolated judgement is never 'true', never knowledge; only in connection and relation of many judgements is there any surety. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
A reaction: It actually seems impossible to state an isolated judgement in language without having a mass of presuppositions and beliefs to support it. I don't think the full holistic thesis about language follows, however. |
16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' arise, in practice, in four ways: as generalisations of disjunctions; when an instance suggests compatibility of terms we thought incompatible; as steps to a generalisation; and in cases of imperfect memory. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Modern logicians seem to have no interest in the question Russell is investigating here, but I love his attempt, however vague the result, to connect logic to real experience and thought. |
16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
Full Idea: The non-mental world can be completely described without the use of any logical word, …but when it comes to the mental world, there are facts which cannot be mentioned without the use of logical words. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: He adds that logical words are not needed for physics, but are needed for psychology. I love Russell's interest in the psychology of logic (in defiance of the anti-psychologism of Frege). See also the ideas of Robert Hanna. |
2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
Full Idea: Without the law of excluded middle, we could not ask the questions that give rise to discoveries. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], c.p.88) |
16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
Full Idea: A disjunction is the verbal expression of indecision, or, if a question, of the desire to reach a decision. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Russell is fishing here for Grice's conversational implicature. If you want to assert a simple proposition, you don't introduce it into an irrelevant disjunction, because that would have a particular expressive purpose. |
16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
Full Idea: Psychologically, 'or' corresponds to a state of hesitation. A dog waits at a fork in the road, to see which way you are going. For crumbs on a windowsill, birds behave in a manner we would express by 'shall I be brave, or go hungry?'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I love two facts here - first, that Russell wants to link the connective to the psychology of experience, and second, that a great logician wants to connect his logic to the minds of animals. |
16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
Full Idea: When we assert 'p or q' we are in a state which is derivative from two previous states, and we express this state, not something about the world. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: His example: at a junction this road or that road goes to Oxford, but the world only contains the roads, not some state of 'this or that road'. He doesn't deny that in one sense 'p or q' tells you something about the world. |
16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
Full Idea: It might be contended that, in describing what happens when a man believes 'p or q', the 'or' that we must use is not the same as the 'or' of logic. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the general verdict on Russell's enquiries in this chapter, but I love any attempt, however lacking in rigour etc., to connect formal logic to how we think, and thence to the world. |
16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
Full Idea: Another situation in which a disjunction may arise is practice is imperfect memory. 'Either Brown or Jones told me that'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) |
16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
Full Idea: A predicate is 'heterological' when it cannot be predicated of itself; thus 'long' is heterological because it is not a long word, but 'short' is homological. So is 'heterological' heterological? Either answer leads to a contradiction. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: [Grelling's Paradox] Yes: 'heterological' is heterological because it isn't heterological; No: it isn't, because it is. Russell says we therefore need a hierarchy of languages (types), and the word 'word' is outside the system. |
4533 | Logic and maths refer to fictitious entities which we have created [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Logic (like geometry and arithmetic) applies only to fictitious entities that we have created. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
A reaction: This finds Nietzsche on the relativist wing of logical empiricism. The thing is, fictitious entities can have a close relationship with truth, as in a great novel. I believe in necessary logical truth, but there are many ways of slicing it. |
20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
4525 | There are no facts in themselves, only interpretations [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Against positivism, which halts at phenomena, and says "there are only facts", I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §481) | |
A reaction: A cornerstone of relativism is the denial of facts. A cornerstone of realism is the affirmation of facts. Personally, I affirm facts. |
4543 | There are no 'facts-in-themselves', since a sense must be projected into them to make them 'facts' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There are no 'facts-in-themselves', for a sense must always be projected into them before they can be 'facts'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §556) | |
A reaction: The relativist (and anti-realist) view. Any attempt at taking this proposal seriously induces a hopeless vertigo, a well known consequence of reading Nietzsche. I don't believe this. It is not to my taste. |
4546 | We realise that properties are sensations of the feeling subject, not part of the thing [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There comes a point where one realises that what one calls a property of a thing is a sensation of the feeling subject; at this point the property ceases to belong to the thing. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §562) | |
A reaction: I don't believe this. Has Nietzsche no theory about WHY we have one sensation rather than another? I prefer to distinguish primary from secondary qualities. |
4544 | A thing has no properties if it has no effect on other 'things' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The properties of a thing are effects on other 'things'; if one removes other 'things', then a thing has no properties. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §557) | |
A reaction: This is a causal theory of properties. A counterexample is a potential property, like a bomb which never explodes. |
20362 | We saw unity in things because our ego seemed unified (but now we doubt the ego!) [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: We borrowed the concept of unity from our 'ego' concept - our oldest article of faith. If we did not hold ourselves to be unified, we would never have formed the concept 'thing'. Now, somewhat late, we are convinced that the ego does not guarantee unity. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §635) | |
A reaction: Nietzsche tells a similar story about the emergence and subsequent undermining of truth. I am becoming an enthusiast for Nietzsche's account of how our psychology has generated out metaphysics - which doesn't make the metaphysics false. |
4528 | For me, a priori 'truths' are just provisional assumptions [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The most strongly believed a priori 'truths' are for me provisional assumptions (e.g. the law of causality). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §497) | |
A reaction: The example of causality would fit in with Humean scepticism, but presumably Nietzsche would also apply it to maths and logic, since he is a thorough-going relativist. I cautiously disagree. |
4537 | We can't know whether there is knowledge if we don't know what it is [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: If we do not know what knowledge is, we cannot possibly answer the question of whether there is knowledge. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
A reaction: Obviously Nietzsche is pessimistic about the prospects here, but this is a motto for the whole modern analysis of knowledge, and (besides) we have lots of things (like a concept of identity) which we can't define. |
16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
Full Idea: All our knowledge about the world, in so far as it is expressed in words, is more or less general, because every sentence contains at least one word that is not a proper name, and all such words are general. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I really like this, especially because it addresses the excessive reliance of some essentialists on sortals, categories and natural kinds, instead of focusing on the actual physical essences of individual objects. |
4485 | Every belief is a considering-something-true [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Every belief is a considering-something-true. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
A reaction: This is correct, I think, but a little perplexing coming from Nietzsche, who seems to deny objective truth. Presumably we should follow instinct, rather than 'belief'. |
4487 | A note for asses: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: What convinces is not necessarily true - it is merely convincing (a note for asses). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §017) | |
A reaction: I hope I am not such an ass that I need Nietzsche to explain this, as I have always thought it true. Many good modern epistemologists seem to me guilty of this error, though. Pragmatists, riff-raff like that… |
4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: Naïve realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naïve realism is false. Therefore naïve realism, if true, is false, therefore it is false. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], p.13) | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to agree with this, though once you have gone off and explored representation and sense data you may be driven back to naïve realism again. |
4539 | The forms of 'knowledge' about logic which precede experience are actually regulations of belief [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The basic laws of logic (identity and contradiction) are said to be forms of pure knowledge because they precede experience. But these are not forms of knowledge at all! They are regulative articles of belief. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §530) | |
A reaction: This is a standard objection to foundationalism - that the basic beliefs (of reason, or raw experience) are not actually knowledge. We can all speculate about their origin and basis. Personally I think 'truth' must be somewhere in the explanation. |
16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
Full Idea: So long as a man avoids words which are condensed inductions (such as 'dog'), and confines himself to words that can describe a single experience, it is possible for a single experience to show that his words are true. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: One might question whether a line can be drawn between the inductive and the non-inductive in this way. I'm inclined just to say that the simpler the proposition the less room there is for error in confirming it. |
4532 | We can have two opposite sensations, like hard and soft, at the same time [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is a coarse sensualistic prejudice that sensations teach us truths about things - that I cannot say at the same time that a thing is hard and soft. To say that I cannot have two opposite sensations at the same time is quite coarse and false. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §516) | |
A reaction: I am struggling to think of examples. I might experience something as cool, but judge it to be warm (because my hand is hot). I don't think I know what experience he is referring to. Interesting claim, though. |
16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' may be proved empirically, but propositions about 'all' are difficult to know, and can't be proved unless such propositions are in the premisses. These aren't in perception, so forgo general propositions, or abandon empiricism? | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is obviously related to the difficulty empiricists have with induction. You could hardly persuade logicians to give up the universal quantifier, because it is needed in mathematics. Do we actually know any universal empirical truths? |
4486 | The extreme view is there are only perspectives, no true beliefs, because there is no true world [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance, whose origin lies in us. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §015) | |
A reaction: The idea that 'there is no true world' is incomprehensible to me. But note that here Nietzsche labels this an 'extreme' view, which he may not be asserting. He likes to flirt with danger. |
4536 | It is a major blunder to think of consciousness as a unity, and hence as an entity, a thing [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is a tremendous blunder in absurdly overestimating consciousness, the transformation of it into a unity, an entity - 'spirit', 'soul', something that feels, thinks, wills. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §529) | |
A reaction: This is a wonderfully modern and scientific view. Even strong materialists still make claims about mental unity, behind which an extravagent and contradictory metaphysics can be hidden. Was Nietzsche, then, an 'eliminativist' about mind? |
4551 | Great self-examination is to become conscious of oneself not as an individual, but as mankind [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Tremendous self-examination: becoming conscious of oneself, not as an individual but as mankind. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §575) | |
A reaction: A lovely thought, which illustrates the fact that it is hard to be introspective without bringing an agenda to the process. |
4527 | Perhaps we are not single subjects, but a multiplicity of 'cells', interacting to create thought [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps we are a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and consciousness, an aristocracy of 'cells' in which dominion resides equally. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §490) | |
A reaction: A nice combination of Humean scepticism, and an anticipation of the modularity of mind. Was Nietzsche thinking about evolution? It goes with his doubts about reason (if we are run by a committee). |
20374 | Consciousness is a terminal phenomenon, and causes nothing [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Everything of which we become conscious is a terminal phenomenon, an end - and causes nothing. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §478) | |
A reaction: This appears to endorse epiphenomenalism - which I take to be an incoherent concept. How can becoming fully aware of something, rather than subliminally or subconsciously aware, make no difference at all? If it exists, it has causal powers. |
23938 | Passions are ranked, as if they are non-rational and animal pleasure seeking [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The whole conception of an order of rank among the passions: as if it were the right and normal thing to be guided by reason - with the passions as abnormal, dangerous, semi-animal …and nothing other than desires for pleasure. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
A reaction: This thought of Nietzsche's seems to be very important, because the Enlightenment relegation of passions was inherited from Christianity, and dominated European culture (and Buddhism too, I think). |
23939 | We fail to see that reason is a network of passions, and every passion contains some reason [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The misunderstanding of passion and reason, as if the latter were an independent entity and not rather a system of relations between various passions and desires; and as if every passion did not possess its quantum of reason. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §387) | |
A reaction: This seems to me a much more accurate account of the relation of reason and passion than almost anything in earlier philosophy (though Aristotle is quite good on it). I am retraining myself to see my mental life in this way. |
4554 | The concept of the 'will' is just a false simplification by our understanding [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'will'; it is only a simplifying conception of understanding, as is 'matter'. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §671) | |
A reaction: Nietzsche shares this view with British philosophers such as Hobbes and Bernard Williams. So what is the ontological status of the 'will to power'? |
4552 | There is no such things a pure 'willing' on its own; the aim must always be part of it [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is no such thing as 'willing', but only willing something: one must not remove the aim from the total condition - as epistemologists do. 'Willing' as they understand it is as little a reality as 'thinking': it is a pure fiction. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §668) | |
A reaction: This is parallel to the common modern assertion that emotions also have intentional content, and cannot be understood as having a 'pure' identity. |
16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
Full Idea: I once, to test the story of Buridan's Ass, put a cat exactly half-way between her two kittens, both too young to move: for a time she found the disjunction paralysing. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Buridan's Ass is said to have starved between two equal piles of hay. Reason can't be the tie-breaker; reason obviously says 'choose one!', but intellectualism demands a reason for the one you choose. |
4521 | None of the ancients had the courage to deny morality by denying free will [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Not one of the ancient philosophers had the courage for a theory of the 'unfree will' (i.e. for a theory that denies morality). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §428) | |
A reaction: The ancients were struck by fate, and by the elusiveness of truth, and Heraclitus said that "character is fate". But Nietzsche seems basically correct. |
4496 | 'Conscience' is invented to value actions by intention and conformity to 'law', rather than consequences [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: "Conscience" was created as an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention, and the degree to which this intention conforms with the "laws". | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
A reaction: The idea of conscience does seem to preserve moral authority in the absence of gods, but intentions need not only be judged by their obedience to laws. |
20136 | There is an extended logic to a great man's life, achieved by a sustained will [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There is a logic in all of a great man's activities, hard to survey because of its length .... he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §962 (1885)) | |
A reaction: This looks very close to Nietzsche's moral ideal - that one creates a life in impeccable taste, like a great work of art, by deliberately training one's nature, like a gardener. He talks of it as having 'style' in character. |
20358 | The highest man can endure and control the greatest combination of powerful drives [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The highest man has the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength that can be endured. Indeed, when the plant 'man' shows himself strongest one finds instincts that conflict powerfully (e.g. in Shakespeare), but are controlled. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §966) | |
A reaction: Are there some people, perhaps in mental hospitals, who cannot endure or control such things? Do these people have some drives which the rest of us never experience? Do good people only have good drives? |
20369 | The highest man directs the values of the highest natures over millenia [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: He who determines values and directs the will of millenia by giving direction to the highest natures is the highest man. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §999) | |
A reaction: The second half is the interesting bit. If Ghengis Khan inspires hordes to commit massacres, he certainly creates values, but he hasn't inspired highest natures. So who inspires highest natures? Who are the role models of role models? |
4506 | There is a conspiracy (a will to power) to make morality dominate other values, like knowledge and art [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Whose will to power is morality? - Since Socrates there has been a sustained attempt to make moral values dominate over other values, so that they guide living, but also knowledge, the arts, and political and social endeavour. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §274) | |
A reaction: Is the 'will to power' really an explanation? If all human activity is the will to power, then you have to explain the difference between activities. Genocide and altruism are strikingly different manifestations of the will to power. |
4514 | The basic tendency of the weak has always been to pull down the strong, using morality [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The basic tendency of the weak and mediocre of all ages is to weaken and pull down the stronger: chief means, the moral judgement. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §345) | |
A reaction: Obviously this contains some truth. Morality is a vast trade union movement by means of which the weak seek power and security. And good luck to them, I say. Why is mass power any worse than aristocratic or oligarchic power? |
20370 | All evaluation is from some perspective, and aims at survival [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: All evaluation is made from a definite perspective: that of the preservation of the individual, a community, a race, a state, a church, a faith, a culture. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §259) | |
A reaction: There seems to be a tension over the source of values in Nietzsche. Are they the individualistic visions of an übermensch, or do they arise from the collective pressures of one of these social groups? I suspec that his answer tries to combine them. |
20354 | The ruling drives of our culture all want to be the highest court of our values [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: What is common to all [the artistic, scientific, religious and moral views]: the ruling drives want to be viewed also as the highest courts of value in general, indeed as creative and ruling powers. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §677) | |
A reaction: An interesting question is whether those four socially dominant forces could reach a consensus on a core of values. And also which value held by one of the groups is viewed as crazy by the other three. |
4505 | How can it be that I should prefer my neighbour to myself, but he should prefer me to himself? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: What does it mean that the welfare of my neighbour ought to possess for me a higher value than my own? But that my neighbour ought to subordinate his welfare to my welfare? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §269) | |
A reaction: Interestingly, this is Nietzsche using a Kantian tool to criticise Christian morality. He is pointing out a logical inconsistency. It seems to me an excellent question, though Christians could say it is benignly circular. The most benign circle possible. |
4509 | Utilitarians prefer consequences because intentions are unknowable - but so are consequences! [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Utilitarians say actions must be judged by consequences, because it is impossible to know the origins. But one only knows the consequences about five steps ahead, and who knows what an action can stimulate, excite, provoke? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §291) | |
A reaction: The utilitarian slogan seems to be 'do your best', but that could apply equally to intentions and consequences. Nietzsche seems to offer nothing to compensate us for our massive ignorance. Nihilism. |
4558 | We have no more right to 'happiness' than worms [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One has no right to 'happiness': the individual human being is in precisely the same case as the lowest worm. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §759) | |
A reaction: This seems an obvious truth, but nicely made clear. It is, I suppose, aimed at Christians and socialists. |
4500 | It is a sign of degeneration when eudaimonistic values begin to prevail [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It is a sign of degeneration when eudaemonistic valuations begin to prevail (physiological fatigue, feebleness of the will). | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §222) | |
A reaction: Aristotle's analysis of eudaimonia says that it is only achievable through action, and he considers consequences to be an essential part of an action. Surely hedonism is more degenerate than aiming at all-round success in life? |
4550 | Pleasure and pain are mere epiphenomena, and achievement requires that one desire both [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values - they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §579) | |
A reaction: I am struggling with the notion that I must desire pain if I am ambitious, but to label these feeling 'epiphenomena' is challenging and plausible. I certainly deny that they have intrinsic value, which is a matter of judgement, not feeling. |
4519 | The ego is only a fiction, and doesn't exist at all [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The 'subject' is only a fiction: the ego of which one speaks when one censures egoism does not exist at all. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §370) | |
A reaction: This is the true Nietzsche, the nihilistic relativist. On optimistic days he thought some people had quivering dynamic egoes, to which they apparently owe duties, as one might to a great talent with which one was born. |
4517 | Egoism is inescapable, and when it grows weak, the power of love also grows weak [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: There cannot be anything other than egoism; in men whose ego is weak and thin the power of great love also grows weak. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §362) | |
A reaction: We have captured this now in the popular psychological notion of 'low self-esteem', which blights a persons behaviour. It runs counter to the Christian ideal of self-effacing altruism. |
4560 | The Golden Rule prohibits harmful actions, with the premise that actions will be requited [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The rule 'do nothing that ought not to be done to you' prohibits actions on account of their harmful consequences: the concealed premise is that an action will always be requited. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §925) | |
A reaction: Indeed it seems to be a slogan for contractarians, though I don't see why you shouldn't be influenced by the thought that there might be reciprocation, even if you don't expect it. |
4555 | The great error is to think that happiness derives from virtue, which in turn derives from free will [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The tremendous rat's tail of errors that has hitherto counted as the highest inspiration of humanity: 'All happiness is a consequence of virtue, all virtue is a consequence of free will!' | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §705) | |
A reaction: A nice suggestion about the hidden agenda of Greek and Christian philosophy. If one began to doubt free will, where would that leave Socrates and Aristotle? |
4493 | Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Be natural! But how, if one happens to be "unnatural"? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §066) | |
A reaction: Quite so, though Nietzsche isn't the person to offer a solution. Choose the route of Aristotle ('normal' human function), or Kant (escape from nature into reason). |
4494 | Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Not "return to nature", for there has never yet been a natural humanity. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §120) | |
A reaction: I like that. The notion of dividing humanity into natural and unnatural makes me uneasy (and certainly isn't PC), and yet us all having to be 'natural' seems a conservative straight-jacket. |
4498 | 'Love your enemy' is unnatural, for the natural law says 'love your neighbour and hate your enemy' [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One drives nature out of morality when one say "love your enemies": for then the natural "Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thy enemy" in the law (in instinct) has become meaningless. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §204) | |
A reaction: When the stoics said 'live according to nature' they meant according to reason, which presumably compromises with enemies. Profoundly Christian acts may be unnatural, but they are very moving. |
4511 | We would avoid a person who always needed reasons for remaining decent [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It would arouse doubts in us concerning a man if we heard he needed reasons for remaining decent: certainly, we would avoid him. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §313) | |
A reaction: This is a perfect slogan for virtue theory, and so rather surprising coming from Nietzsche. And 'decent' isn't a great Nietzsche value (though he WAS a very decent man). |
4512 | Virtue is pursued from self-interest and prudence, and reduces people to non-entities [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Above all, gentlemen of virtue, you are not our superiors: it is a miserable self-interest and prudence that suggests virtue to you. If you had more strength and courage you would not reduce yourselves to virtuous nonentities in this way. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §318) | |
A reaction: It is certainly true that virtue is about self-interest, and also that it tends to be rather conservative. But we recognise the virtues of adventure and risk. |
20372 | The instinct of the herd, the majority, aims for the mean, in the middle [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The instinct of the herd considers the middle and the mean as the highest and most valuable: the place where the majority finds itself. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §280) | |
A reaction: The reason, I think, for Nietzsche's hostility to Aristotle. But the doctrine of the mean doesn't just seek the middle. It seeks what is appropriate. The mean for bravery and cowardice is not somewhat timid bravery; it is alarmingly brave, but sensible. |
4510 | A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: A path to power: to introduce a new virtue under the name of an old one. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §310) | |
A reaction: A nicely wicked Nietzschean suggestion. One doesn't replace altruism, one 'reinterprets' it. Or democracy. Or 'true' courage. |
4515 | Modesty, industriousness, benevolence and temperance are the virtues of a good slave [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Modest, industrious, benevolent, temperate: is that how you would have men? good men? But to me that seems only the ideal slave, the slave of the future. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §356) | |
A reaction: An extremely good critical observation on virtue theory. Start from scratch, and list the virtues you would want in a good slave. |
4516 | Many virtues are merely restraints on the most creative qualities of a human being [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Industry, modesty, benevolence, temperance are just so many hindrances to a sovereign disposition, great inventiveness, heroic purposiveness, noble being-for-oneself. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §358) | |
A reaction: The traditional virtues here are reasonably precise and clear, but Nietzsche's preferred virtues are vague, and open to bizarre interpretations. One foresees a bunch of obsessive arrogant fools trying to live up to Nietzsche's ideal. |
4559 | When powerless one desires freedom; if power is too weak, one desires equal power ('justice') [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One desires freedom as long as one does not possess power. Once one does possess it, one desires to overpower; if one cannot do that (if one is too weak), one desires 'justice', i.e. equal power. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §784) | |
A reaction: Personally I hope the Martians have freedom and justice, but that is presumably just a sublimation. People have given up power for freedom and justice. |
4557 | The supposed great lovers of honour (Alexander etc) were actually great despisers of honour [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The type of the ambitious man who thirsts after honour is supposed to be Napoleon, or Caesar, or Alexander! As if these were not precisely the great despisers of honour! | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §751) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure how Nietzsche knows this, but it sounds right. Great success comes from total focus on the end, not on incidental rewards. |
4507 | The categorical imperative needs either God behind it, or a metaphysic of the unity of reason [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: One needed God as an unconditional sanction, as a 'categorical imperative'; or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §275) | |
A reaction: I am not sure what a 'metaphysic of unity' is, but this still captures the problem with Kant. The categorical imperative is purely formal, and will justify consistent principles of pain and destruction, without some value to get it off the ground. |
4501 | Utilitarianism criticises the origins of morality, but still believes in it as much as Christians [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Utilitarianism (socialism, democracy) criticises the origins of moral evaluations, but it believes them just as much as the Christian does. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
A reaction: It is a critique of both utilitarianism and Kantian deontology that they seem to rest on unquestioned assumptions about what has value (pleasure, happiness, reason). I think Aristotle offers a better answer to this problem than 'divine' authority. |
4489 | If faith is lost, people seek other authorities, in order to avoid the risk of willing personal goals [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Having unlearned faith, one still seeks another authority (in conscience, or reason, or social instinct, or history); one wants to get around the will, the willing of a goal, the risk of positing a goal for oneself. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §020) | |
A reaction: But what goal should you risk willing, and why? And what limits my goals? What is the hallmark of a healthy goal, or good taste in goals, or whatever it is Nietzsche aspires to? |
4513 | Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: A virtuous man is a lower species because he is not a "person" but acquires his value by conforming to a pattern of man that is fixed once and for all. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §319) | |
A reaction: A penetrating critque of virtue theory. If, even now, we are trying to conform to Aristotle's model, that is VERY conservative. The obliteration of individual identity is also a charge against Kant and Bentham. Virtues are more flexible than rules. |
4504 | Morality used to be for preservation, but now we can only experiment, giving ourselves moral goals [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Formerly one employed morality for preservation: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Therefore an experimental morality: to give oneself a goal. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §260) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as the essence of Nietzsche, and the relativist position. Exciting and dangerous. Let's kill someone (Gide). Take drugs (Manson). Betray friends (Genet). Be altruistic…? |
4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §121) | |
A reaction: Intriguing. What can Nietzsche have meant by 'civilization'? Certainly not the English utilitarian ideal. He probably means aristocrats running slaves… |
4491 | In modern society virtue is 'equal rights', but only because everyone is zero, so it is a sum of zeroes [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Our entire sociology simply does not know any other instinct than that of the herd, i.e. that of the sum of zeroes - where every zero has "equal rights", where it is virtuous to be zero. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §053) | |
A reaction: I see his point, but all social arrangements are a trade-off. It would be quite exciting if warlike aristocrats dragged us into massive conquest, but nuclear weapons seem to have ruined that game. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
4542 | Science has taken the meaning out of causation; cause and effect are two equal sides of an equation [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Science has emptied the concept of causality of its content and retained it as a formula of an equation, in which it has become at bottom a matter of indifference on which side cause is placed and on which side effect. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §551) | |
A reaction: What a perceptive remark in the nineteenth century. Science is notoriously uninterested in the direction of time, and such a symmetry seems to make the concept of causation redundant. |
4553 | We derive the popular belief in cause and effect from our belief that our free will causes things [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The popular belief in cause and effect is founded on the presupposition that free will is the cause of every effect: it is only from this that we derive the feeling of causality. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §667) | |
A reaction: It may be that our first experiences of causation involve the wil, though I don't see why babies shouldn't also observe. Nietzsche is muddling the epistemology with the ontology. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |
4535 | A 'species' is a stable phase of evolution, implying the false notion that evolution has a goal [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: When a 'species' appears, it is a phase in which evolution is not visible, so an equilibrium seems to have been attained, making possible the false notion that a goal has been attained, and that evolution has a goal. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §521) | |
A reaction: A penetrating explanation of a crucial that won't go away, and that still grips people's minds. Even if we all want a particular goal, evolution will ignore our dreams and go another way. |
4497 | The concept of 'God' represents a turning away from life, and a critique of life [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The concept 'God' represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §141) | |
A reaction: Clearly Nietzsche has the same view of Platonism, and any view which aspires to 'higher' things, and views humans as being potentially divine (even Aristotle's dream of pure 'contemplation'). |
4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §018) | |
A reaction: A nice remark. The interesting implication is that theists do NOT cling so strongly to morality (perhaps because they hope for mercy, or ultimate justice). |
4502 | Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Morality cannot survive when the God who sanctions it is missing! The "beyond" is absolutely necessary if faith in morality is to be maintained. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §253) | |
A reaction: It strikes me that Nietzsche is self-evidently wrong. We must ask why people hang on to moral absolutes after they lose religious faith. Nietzsche seems to think it is a comfort blanket. But he admits the contractarian origins of morality. |
4499 | Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state; it is opposed to defence, justice, patriotism and class [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: Primitive Christianity is abolition of the state: it forbids oaths, war service, courts of justice, defence of self or community, the distinction between citizens and foreigners, and differences of class. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §207) | |
A reaction: Interesting. This tension is still in Christianity, and permeates international socialism movements. But then Diogenes the Cynic said he was a citizen of the world. |