All about Nietzsche

[jon1jt]

i'm going to get to red's point about language as it pertains to his dictionary remark. just want red to know i'm not avoiding it.

[jon1jt]

virgil:
you asked about kant. the short of it is, Kant considered how judgments are possible. he unpacks the inner workings of the mind, the mind constructed of 'categories' --- which is simply a template that joins like a puzzle piece to the world, more specifically, to objects or phenomena.

Nietzsche, by contrast, is concerned with why the belief in such judgments are "necessary." kant is concerned strictly with logic; nietzsche with psychology.

hope that makes sense.

[jon1jt]

I am asking you to consider the chaos that results from making language totally subjective in meaning. Connotation is the subjective component of meaning in language; denotation its concrete (hence more objective) meaning. I understand that words are symbolic - that they stand for meanings that are sometimes fluid in nature, but the meaning cannot be completely subjective.



Do you really not understand this, or are you just being condescending again? The dictionary is not where "understanding begins and ends" - someone who seems as well versed in philosophy as yourself certainly knows this. The dictionary is where we store agreed-upon meanings for words. Although meanings can "flex" to a certain degree, they cannot be stretched to any particular individual's personalized "definition."

let me try to articulate the problem of language according to nietzsche:
when you 'see' an image, what you're seeing actually is a metaphor of sense impressions, not the 'thing in itself.' so at this level human beings are therefore incapable of telling anything about the object's essence. now, consider the next layer: the word we attach to the image, which is also a metaphor of a sensory object. the object that you say we catalog in the dictionary is the sum total of a metaphor of a metaphor, thereby two degrees from the object. to put it another way, think of an interpretation of an interpretation of a book. yet you never have access to the author himself. so then, language becomes a sort of world of its own; what nietzsche actually calls a "second world." an illusion, and just because people identify with its - as you say - connotations and denotations - we ought not be duped by that which is far behind a world of flux. stability-seeking human beings created language to drive a wedge between world and themselves---to amuse themselves to death with the idea that there's a ground on which the mind can assemble itself and objects around which it can wrap itself.

let me round this obscure statement with an even more obscure one. When Nietzsche was in the throes of his insanity, his sister Elizabeth was reported to have said that people should not draw rash conclusions about her brother's work because "He is in the heights where he no longer speaks with words but with lightning."

in light of nietzsche's philosophy, can anyone think of why she might have said that? consider that Elizabeth was also the one who titled his book, "Will To Power" which was published posthumously, based on random notes found in his office and elsewhere she cobbled together, which were still being developed, such as the idea of eternal recurrence.

[dramasnot6]

let me try to articulate the problem of language according to nietzsche:
when you 'see' an image, what you're seeing actually is a metaphor of sense impressions, not the 'thing in itself.' so at this level human beings are therefore incapable of telling anything about the object's essence. now, consider the next layer: the word we attach to the image, which is also a metaphor of a sensory object. the object that you say we catalog in the dictionary is the sum total of a metaphor of a metaphor, thereby two degrees from the object. so language becomes a sort of world of its own; what nietzsche actually calls a "second world." an illusion and we ought not be duped by it.

This reminds me of I quote of Descartes I found in my research. "We can doubt everything but that we are doubting" or something along those lines. I love Nietzsche's philosophy as I am introduced to more and more aspects. Language and illusion are working together to create these metaphors,right? I think these ideas around language of Nietzsches would be fantastic to apply to child development. Is the metaphot created by the memory in terms of illusion strengthened when combined with a word recognition? And what about adjectives? How are we to apply words nonspecific to a certain illusion to different illusions, we must use our other senses. Is emotion an illusion too? Do all our senses, jsut because they are created by a development of memory, contribute to these complex metaphors? Does our entire being revolve around sets of metaphors? WHY DOESNT MY SCHOOL OFFER PHILOSOPHY!!!?? sorry...I am just so pumped with curiosity about this guy and have so little to work with! gah!

[jon1jt]

This reminds me of I quote of Descartes I found in my research. "We can doubt everything but that we are doubting" or something along those lines. I love Nietzsche's philosophy as I am introduced to more and more aspects. Language and illusion are working together to create these metaphors,right? I think these ideas around language of Nietzsches would be fantastic to apply to child development. Is the metaphot created by the memory in terms of illusion strengthened when combined with a word recognition? And what about adjectives? How are we to apply words nonspecific to a certain illusion to different illusions, we must use our other senses. Is emotion an illusion too? Do all our senses, jsut because they are created by a development of memory, contribute to these complex metaphors? Does our entire being revolve around sets of metaphors? WHY DOESNT MY SCHOOL OFFER PHILOSOPHY!!!?? sorry...I am just so pumped with curiosity about this guy and have so little to work with! gah!

i can see that you're pumped...cool! my best guess regarding non-specific words is just a humanity's superfluous aid in the fruitless capturing of the object's essence, in the same way we can never capture god or world or universe. only passion is real, and we've repressed most of that out of duty to christian morality.

your school doesn't offer philosophy for the same reason that most American parents can't help kids with their homework: they're too busy buying new cars and plasma screen tv's. ugh.

[dramasnot6]

i can see that you're pumped...cool! my best guess regarding non-specific words is just a humanity's superfluous aid in the fruitless capturing of the object's essence, in the same way we can never capture god or world or universe. only passion is real, and we've repressed most of that out of duty to christian morality.

Ah ok. So that is why Nietzsche believed it was important to remain in touch with our Dionyssian side? Because the passion involved in that is the only thing actually real? And religion is part of our inculturalization? It is all connecting.

your school doesn't offer philosophy for the same reason that most American parents can't help kids with their homework: they're too busy buying new cars and plasma screen tv's. ugh.

Gotta love that consumerism. But i agree, if they arent busy buying them then they are busy working overtime to make the money to buy them...sad.

[Virgil]

virgil:
you asked about kant. the short of it is, Kant considered how judgments are possible. he unpacks the inner workings of the mind, the mind constructed of 'categories' --- which is simply a template that joins like a puzzle piece to the world, more specifically, to objects or phenomena.

Nietzsche, by contrast, is concerned with why the belief in such judgments are "necessary." kant is concerned strictly with logic; nietzsche with psychology.

hope that makes sense.

OK thanks.

[Redzeppelin]

when you 'see' an image, what you're seeing actually is a metaphor of sense impressions, not the 'thing in itself.' so at this level human beings are therefore incapable of telling anything about the object's essence. now, consider the next layer: the word we attach to the image, which is also a metaphor of a sensory object. the object that you say we catalog in the dictionary is the sum total of a metaphor of a metaphor, thereby two degrees from the object. to put it another way, think of an interpretation of an interpretation of a book. yet you never have access to the author himself. so then, language becomes a sort of world of its own; what nietzsche actually calls a "second world." an illusion, and just because people identify with its - as you say - connotations and denotations - we ought not be duped by that which is far behind a world of flux. stability-seeking human beings created language to drive a wedge between world and themselves---to amuse themselves to death with the idea that there's a ground on which the mind can assemble itself and objects around which it can wrap itself.

This is one of the reasons that philosophy after Aristotle becomes incomprehensible to me. I'm fine with this deconstruction of meaning, but followed to it's logical conclusion, your own words cease to have any stable meaning. I find it interesting that philosophers like Nietzsche and literary theorists like Derrida strip language of its inherent meaning but assume that their usage of language is somehow "outside" of their own definition. Once you tell me that language is an "illusion" we now must define all usage of language "illusory" - including the language that postulated the illusory nature of language in the first place. If that's what Nietzsche is saying, what good does that do? His own statements become as flexible as I wish them to be - or have I missed something? Despite all this abstract theorizing - we still have to communicate. But if words hold no (reasonably) stable "truth" in terms of what they mean, then any statement of "truth" becomes absurd.

let me round this obscure statement with an even more obscure one. When Nietzsche was in the throes of his insanity, his sister Elizabeth was reported to have said that people should not draw rash conclusions about her brother's work because "He is in the heights where he no longer speaks with words but with lightning."

Poetic, yes; a reasonable conclusion? Not so sure about that. Insanity may be some sort of "second sight" (it is often romanticized as such), but it is also the disconnection of one's senses from reality - the deception of the mind upon itself. If truth emerges from that sort of chaos, it must be largely incidental.

My point is simply this: you cannot invalidate a tool that you're using to invalidate that tool. If Nietzsche wishes to believe language is an "illusion," his use of it to define it as such becomes absurd. Is that his point?

[blp]

Red Zep, did you know that when blind people recover their sight, they see a swirling chaos of colour for some time before 'normal' vision returns. Or that our eyes actually see everything upside down and our brains turn them the right way up. Or that our eyes see only a tiny fragment of the entire colour spectrum. There is always an ordering that is always, to some extent, imposed. One of the interesting things about Kant and Nietzche is that they came to this realisation without scientific evidence.

Yes, stable meaning's a problem - and yes, that's recognised by Derrida and Nietzche, but no, I don't think they exclude themselves from that. Derrida says there is nothing outside the text. Nietzche often seems to be contradicting himself in Thus Spake Zarathustra and the aphoristic style he uses elsewhere allows him to create little parcels of thought, for argument's sake, that are not necessarily all consistent with one another - and to avoid a process of linear argument that will always, as Derrida shows, at some point end up contradicting itself.

If this means it's hard to communicate, well, quelle surprise. We see the difficulty of communication constantly, from arguments between forum visitors, to those between lovers to those between nations. One person says something, the other throws it back at them and the first claims they've been misinterpreted. Don't shoot the messengers who warn us of the pitfalls. A bit of honest self doubt would be a refreshing thing in most politicians, rather than the rhetorically bankrupt insistence on dubious positions we generally get from them.

[Scheherazade]

In the light of some PMs I have received, I would like to remind that a general warning in a thread is addressed to everyone who has been posting and who think of posting to prevent things from deterioration. They are not necessarily aimed at the last person who has posted and when we would like to address indivual members, we do so by either singling them out within the thread or by contacting them via PMs.

Also, unfortunately, we have no way of gauging members' individual sensitivity levels and keeping a track of them; hence, we try to make sure that the Forum Rules are in place at all times. If you prefer communicating with certain members on more personal levels, you can always do so by PMs.

[ennison]

I'd imagine that most of us find Nietzsche intermittently very interesting and can easily see the madder proclamations as oddities we can ignore. After all the political creeds that leaned on Nietsche were soundly defeated but can probably never be totally eliminated.

[Scheherazade]

Thank you for bringing the discussion back on track, Ennison, which is Nietzsche and his philosophies.

Please note that any off topic posts are likely to be deleted with or without any further notice form now on.

[dramasnot6]

I'd imagine that most of us find Nietzsche intermittently very interesting and can easily see the madder proclamations as oddities we can ignore. After all the political creeds that leaned on Nietsche were soundly defeated but can probably never be totally eliminated.

Very interesting point. But what exactly do you mean by this statement? I am aware that there were many political ongoings and discoveries in many areas at the time but what exactly is it that can not be eliminated?

Thanks for joining us!

[kilted exile]

Very interesting point. But what exactly do you mean by this statement? I am aware that there were many political ongoings and discoveries in many areas at the time but what exactly is it that can not be eliminated?

Thanks for joining us!

I believe it is refering to the way the Nazis leaned on Neitschzes works due to a (mistaken?) understanding of his "superman" philosophy

[Virgil]

I believe he is talking about Nietzche's idea on will to power. It was something that I hoped would be discussed and seems like the one signature Nietzsche thought. Here it is summarized in Wiki:

The concept of the "will to power" in Nietzsche's thought has had many interpretations, most notoriously its misappropriation by the Nazis, which amounts to its characterization as a "desire for and of power" ("power" here specifically denoting the more limited concept of "dominance"). Some Nazis (Alfred Bäumler, etc.) also upheld a biological interpretation of the Wille zur Macht, making it equivalent with some kind of social darwinism, although Nietzsche explicitly criticized the latter in his works. This misreading was criticized by Martin Heidegger himself in his 1930s courses on Nietzsche. By Wille zur Macht, Nietzsche did not have raw physical or political power in mind. He didn't mean "Will to power", but rather "will-to-power": one particular and inedit concept, rather than the union of two different concepts, "will" and "power".

Opposed to a biological and voluntary conception of the Wille zur Macht, Heidegger and Deleuze both argued that the will to power and eternal recurrence are to be considered together. The concept must first be contrasted with Arthur Schopenhauer's "will to live": one must first of all take into account Nietzsche's background and criticism of Schopenhauer.

To understand the will to power, Schopenhauer posited a "will to live," in which living things were motivated by sustaining and developing their own lives. Nietzsche instead posited a will to power, a significant point of contrast to Schopenhauer's ideation, in which living things are not just driven by the mere need to stay alive, but in fact by a greater need to wield and use power, to grow, to expend their strength, and, possibly, to subsume other "wills" in the process. Thus, Nietzsche regarded such a "will to live" as secondary to the primary "will to power", and more generally there are varied manifestations of it, two prominent distinctions by Nietzsche are: a "life-denying" modality and a life-"enhancing" or -"affirming" one. Henceforth, he opposed himself to social darwinism, as he contested the validity of the concept of "adaptation", which he considered a narrow and weak "will to live".[6]

Another particular standpoint of the will to power is that it is a process of expansion and venting of creative energy that Nietzsche argued was the underlying – the "most fundamental fact" – "inner" force of nature.

"I do not speak to the weak: they want to obey and generally lapse into slavery quickly. In the face of merciless nature, let us still feel ourselves as merciless nature! But I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant p[eople], without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.). The powerful n[atures] dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury themselves in a garden house!"
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachlass, Fall 1880 6[206]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Will_to_Power

I wonder why Nietzsche keeps talking about people as "weak" or "slaves" versuses those that aren't? Any explanation?