Live life by your own ends, or live life for the society?
Society values the virtue of selflessness, but in fact, selflessness is valued insofar as it serves as a means to other ends, which society actually values more. It is conceivable that if selfishness were to serve as a better instrument than selflessness in promoting the ends which society desires, then society would extol the selfish, instead of the selfless. -wh
In this post, Wenghong implies that society values some values more than others. Neitzsche, in SAE, seems to imply some sort of social darwinism when he says that "[m]ankind must work continually at the production of individual great men" and that "nothing else is its task". If Nietzsche considers this value this highest of society, the ultimate end of society, then presumably he would want every person to adopt this ends as a personal end. I do not think that he is just using such a shocking premise to make us consider for ourselves what our life's ends are. However, he doesn't seem to advance or support this point in his other passages. All we are left with is "How can [life] be least squandered? Certainly only by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable exemplars ... ". That's all - a 'certainly'. Which leads me to think that he is either wrong, or changed his mind about this. Puzzling.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Thoughts on Azlan's post: Is love lust?
In modern biology, every cell in our body is selfish. In the same way, every person in our society is selfish. Take altruism. It is a provable hypothesis that animals help one another because their cooperation would lead to a better outcome for the group. In the same way, any kind of human cooperation can be construed to be selfish. I say construed because this is not the way we ordinarily used the word selfish. Thus, I want to seperate the notion of biological selfishness with selfishness of the will. Even if it were true that love is a product of biological selfishness(akin to lust), it does not follow for me that it is thus a selfishness of the will. Love can be real, even if a deterministic set of processes were underlying it.
In modern biology, every cell in our body is selfish. In the same way, every person in our society is selfish. Take altruism. It is a provable hypothesis that animals help one another because their cooperation would lead to a better outcome for the group. In the same way, any kind of human cooperation can be construed to be selfish. I say construed because this is not the way we ordinarily used the word selfish. Thus, I want to seperate the notion of biological selfishness with selfishness of the will. Even if it were true that love is a product of biological selfishness(akin to lust), it does not follow for me that it is thus a selfishness of the will. Love can be real, even if a deterministic set of processes were underlying it.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
About Truthfulness
What does Nietzsche mean by Truthfulness? This surely is a term open to endless debate and disagreement. Thus, I shall attempt to say, not what it is, but what it is not in the naïve hope that this would be more fruitful.
There is Truth.
This seems fairly clear. In ‘intellectual conscience’ in 2:GS, he holds contempt for those who do not desire for certainty and calls them lower human beings. Bernard Williams also says that Nietzsche ‘holds on tenaciously to "an ideal of truthfulness that would not allow us to falsify or forget the horrors of the world", for "their existence has been necessary to everything that we value”’ and offers several judicious quotes in support of his claim (WH’s post).
I take it here that ‘desire for certainty’ is not certainty in a myth, mask or noble lie, but certainty in the truth. For example, In section 1 of GS where he says that "man must from time to time believe he knows why he exists", it seems fairly clear (to me) that what a man believes in is not necessarily the truth, and thus not the truth that Nietzsche speaks of.
I also take it that the “ideal of truthfulness” is the same as “Truth”. That there is a will to, value of and ideal of truth implies that there is a truth.
Also, as the intro to the Kauffman edition says, Nietzsche does not seem to be a deconstructive sceptic that holds that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth simply what people think it is, or that truth is just a boring, useless, invented category. Rather, Nietzsche’s main question seems to be how to make truth bearable, and not that truth is malleable or dispensable.
Truth is not Scientific Truth
Scientific truth is only pure knowledge and not Truth, as evidenced in S.as.E (137) in which he lambastes scientists and university philosophers. We also see this is section 344 of GS: ‘In what way we, too, are pious’, where he says “"No doubt, that those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world" - look, must they not by the same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?".
But wait. Doesn’t section 344 also say that “it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rest… that God is truth; that truth is divine…”? Maybe what Nietzsche means then is that science is bad only on the fact that its metaphysical foundations are wrong; truth then can be found in another kind of science - maybe a science that is subjective (Tee How) and not dogmatic (Wenghong).
What does Nietzsche mean by Truthfulness? This surely is a term open to endless debate and disagreement. Thus, I shall attempt to say, not what it is, but what it is not in the naïve hope that this would be more fruitful.
There is Truth.
This seems fairly clear. In ‘intellectual conscience’ in 2:GS, he holds contempt for those who do not desire for certainty and calls them lower human beings. Bernard Williams also says that Nietzsche ‘holds on tenaciously to "an ideal of truthfulness that would not allow us to falsify or forget the horrors of the world", for "their existence has been necessary to everything that we value”’ and offers several judicious quotes in support of his claim (WH’s post).
I take it here that ‘desire for certainty’ is not certainty in a myth, mask or noble lie, but certainty in the truth. For example, In section 1 of GS where he says that "man must from time to time believe he knows why he exists", it seems fairly clear (to me) that what a man believes in is not necessarily the truth, and thus not the truth that Nietzsche speaks of.
I also take it that the “ideal of truthfulness” is the same as “Truth”. That there is a will to, value of and ideal of truth implies that there is a truth.
Also, as the intro to the Kauffman edition says, Nietzsche does not seem to be a deconstructive sceptic that holds that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth simply what people think it is, or that truth is just a boring, useless, invented category. Rather, Nietzsche’s main question seems to be how to make truth bearable, and not that truth is malleable or dispensable.
Truth is not Scientific Truth
Scientific truth is only pure knowledge and not Truth, as evidenced in S.as.E (137) in which he lambastes scientists and university philosophers. We also see this is section 344 of GS: ‘In what way we, too, are pious’, where he says “"No doubt, that those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this "other world" - look, must they not by the same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?".
But wait. Doesn’t section 344 also say that “it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rest… that God is truth; that truth is divine…”? Maybe what Nietzsche means then is that science is bad only on the fact that its metaphysical foundations are wrong; truth then can be found in another kind of science - maybe a science that is subjective (Tee How) and not dogmatic (Wenghong).
Thursday, September 04, 2003
Evolution
"Man must from time to time believe he knows why he exists" (bold my emphasis) (GS,29)
The very thought that all our purpose in life is a self-delusionary, yet necessary is certainly mind boggling!
This is almost the same as saying that all knowledge is relative, or there is no real knowledge (a postmodernist account), but we all must believe in that there is real knowledge.
I disagree with Nietzsche's fatalism. Simply because I think we have not just evolved into 'a fantastic animal that must fufil one condition of existence more than any other animal'(29), but that we have become entirely different creatures.
Nietzsche's convictions, which seem to follow from an evolutionary account of life, are surpassed by some modern accounts of evolution that hold that cultural evolution (memes) elevates humanity unto a different plane from plainly the genetic evolution of mere animals. Coupled with truly random fluctuations at the quantum level, I believe we must reject all crude fatalistic accounts that seem to follow from evolution.
"Man must from time to time believe he knows why he exists" (bold my emphasis) (GS,29)
The very thought that all our purpose in life is a self-delusionary, yet necessary is certainly mind boggling!
This is almost the same as saying that all knowledge is relative, or there is no real knowledge (a postmodernist account), but we all must believe in that there is real knowledge.
I disagree with Nietzsche's fatalism. Simply because I think we have not just evolved into 'a fantastic animal that must fufil one condition of existence more than any other animal'(29), but that we have become entirely different creatures.
Nietzsche's convictions, which seem to follow from an evolutionary account of life, are surpassed by some modern accounts of evolution that hold that cultural evolution (memes) elevates humanity unto a different plane from plainly the genetic evolution of mere animals. Coupled with truly random fluctuations at the quantum level, I believe we must reject all crude fatalistic accounts that seem to follow from evolution.
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