Yesterday's post made the ridiculous connection between the suicide of Bud Light and the deicide of Nietzsche, but more problematically, promised to continue the discussion tomorrow.
Well, tomorrow has arrived, so we face a crossroads: discretely change the subject, or double down?
I see that you too like to live dangerously.
Thaaaat's right, Petey, we get a thrill out of blogging without a net, a plan, a goal, or an audience. Having any one of these would render me self-conscious, and the latter in particular would freeze my fingers in their tracks, depriving them of all limberness.
So yeah, let's talk about that cabbage-eating son of a bitch.
Eberhard Anheuser? Or Adolphus Busch?
No, we're done with Budweiser. I was thinking of Nietzsche. How did he become so popular? What's the appeal?
Now, in order to answer that question, I have only to take a deep dive into my own past, for I myself once dabbled with nihilism.
This was back when I began dabbling with philosophy, and was so new to dabbling that I had no way of knowing that, whatever Nietzsche is, he is the antonym of "philosopher." This is not an insult to Nietzsche, rather, Nietzsche is an insult to philosophy. Not for nothing did he refer to himself as Das Hammer.
Back in the day, the scope of my philosophical endeavors was roughly 6' by 6', which was the size of the philosophy department of B. Dalton Books. There you could find everything from Aristotle to Zarathustra, but I began my quest chronologically, not alphabetically, so naturally I began with the latter.
That's quite enough gnostalgia, and besides, you've told some version of this story a million times.
True, but maybe I have a different point this time. For example, supposing one wishes to dive into philosophy, exactly where does one begin? Every other discipline has an object of study: for biology, living organisms, for history, the past, for psychology, the mind, etc. What is the object of philosophy?
Today I would say Being. Back then I have no idea what I would have said.
What is a philosopher? Defined literally, it is someone who disagrees with other philosophers. Again, being that I assumed philosophy progressed like (or perhaps with) science, a Nietzsche was superior, since he hammered everyone who came before, whereas Aristotle didn't know about Nietzsche, nor about modern science.
The problem with nihilism is that it's a jealous god, and once you accept its premises, there are no longer any premises, and it doesn't matter anyway. Still, you can learn a lot from a strict nihilist, for what is a bad man but a good man's teacher?
Hunter Biden?
Now, every philosophy must have an object and a method. But guess what? Ironically, every philosopher deploys the identical method, which implies that they are actually dealing with the same object, even if they deny it. What do I mean by this?
Well, what is the one thing that Plato, Aquinas, and Nietzsche have in common?
Not exactly lightweights?
Guess again.
They could all be found at B. Dalton Booksellers?
Yes, but more fundamentally, they all wrote. Now, why did they write? Why does anyone write? To communicate with others (or to deceive, but communicating a lie is still communication).
But why communicate? And more to the point, what is communication, and how is it even possible? In what sort of cosmos (for it must be a cosmos and not a chaosmos) is communication possible? It is between subjects, but what is a subject, and by virtue of what principle is the conscious subject possible?
Any philosophy short of Bob's philosophy simply assumes these things and gets on with the philosophizin'. Only Bob's philosophy begins with the eternal question: How in the wide world of sports is Bob even possible?
And once you've sorted that one out, how is Bob communicating his thoughts to you at this moment, or even having thoughts? What's a thought? And since Bob would never lie to his readers, what is a true thought?
Now, every philosopher short of a consistent nihilist like Nietzsche spends his life unproblematically formulating and transmitting his thoughts to others. But that is not only a problem, it's pretty close to the first problem, for how are these things possible?
Nietzsche could never provide a coherent answer, for it would equate to the affirmation that This sentence has no meaning, so nihilism annihilates itself with its first utterance, assuming the utterance is true and is addressed to someone who understands it.
I get it.
32 comments:
I have only to take a deep dive into my own past, for I myself once dabbled with nihilism.
Nihilism? I mean, say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos!
Nah, who is Walter kidding? Socialism followed to its end is still nihilism masquerading as a caring nanny state.
...what is a true thought?
One would think that was the task of psychology to discover, but considering the general state of psychology today, one would likely be mistaken.
Anyway, once we start asking about true thoughts, we go back to trying to discover what is truth, and of course the answer to that is I AM, and we're right back where we started.
If I AM = WE ARE, then the communication of the logos is built into the very nature of things.
I blame Kant for placing epistemology before metaphysics. Yes, it started with Descartes (or perhaps before that with William of Ockham), but Kant could have righted the ship and he botched it.
Yes, Kant is very much implicated in the plot to exile us from being.
Yes, just so.
Had to think about that a minute, my brain is barely functional today. Amazing how a lack of sleep hits harder the older one gets.
I'm partial to starting with the mirrorcles of intelligence and intelligibility.
That's a good sketch. Once you step on the nominalism train, you've derailed the human. That was the point of Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences.
Well, it was a good sketch.
Summary from Eve Keneinan:
Ockham -> Luther -> Descartes -> Hume -> Kant -> Nietzsche
Ockham: Redefines God as an arbitrary monster of will and power, unconstrained by reason or any objective standard of goodness.
Luther (and the Reformers): Draw the theological consequences of Ockhamite theology and redefine Christian faith as hostile to reason.
Descartes (and the Enlightenment): Reject the anti-rational faith of the Reformers, and oppose it with the anti-faith concept of reason as secular rationality. Man, not God, holds first place. God (if He exists) is merely an adjunct to Man.
Hume: Draws the skeptical consequences of the Enlightenment, causing the self-destruction of reason.
Kant: Attempts to save reason by defining it as “reason”, making it a world-creating thing rather than a world-understanding thing.
Nietzsche: Draws the Kantian consequences to their fullest extent. The “old quarrel” between philosophy and poetry (Socrates) is over: poetry wins. Reasoning is willing is poetry is creating the world by an act of will.
Agreed, all baked into the the nominalist cake.
With this one trick you step into an alternate universe!
Sorry the mishap. Made a few typos so I just deleted it and reposted.
If you think about it, the theory of natural selection says that with enough typos, humans pop out of the biosphere.
What next?!
The Superman.
:D
Now there's a thought.
Of course, if things really went Fred's way, the result would be less Superman and more Bizarro.
Now you're talkin', Fred.
It seems to me that it's not a question of what a philosopher says per se, but of an extra-cerebral panascopic widescreen vision vertilized by grace. Thus, Aquinas had it, irrespective of how he explained it with reason. And the inverted image of this space is the "infinite unintelligibility" of nihilism. Probably supplemented by diabolical energies.
If the intellect is ordered to the Absolute, then that explains the ceaseless flow of forms. An endless download.
Scientism, according to Schuon, not only imprisons us in the sensory world, but "ignores the gushing forth of our world from an invisible and fulgurant Reality, and its re-absorption into the dark light of the same Reality."
No wonder these modern philosophers are such an uncomfortably tight fit. They need more room in the aseity.
Ontological shrinkage: "Regions shrink as they move farther away from the Principle."
"A man limited to himself is no longer truly human."
Can't help noticing that an unusual number of these modern philosophers are childless incels, like Nietzsche. Maybe all he needed was some ripe honeys.
"ceaseless flow of forms"
Further up and further in!
@ 1:08, Reminds of CS Lewis' "further up and further in," describing what happened after the Last Battle.
Dang it, I can't keep up.
Re. shrinkage & tight fits, maybe they just need a higher quality lube.
I'll show myself out now.
And now, for something completely different (via Ace)
Argh. Once more into the breech
"What is a philosopher? Defined literally, it is someone who disagrees with other philosophers."
Taken actually literally, a philosopher is a 'lover of wisdom', and one of the dangers with starting with something else, like 'communication', is that what you'll be communicating could be unwise. You might of course say that starting with 'wisdom', is ignoring the real starting point, Reality, but as Wisdom requires not only a proper regard for reality, but the humility to realize you aren't going to get the full Truth of it, it makes a good starting point.
Speaking of which, Randy, excellent sketch, but you stopped one short of the misosophist who is responsible for formally taking the live of wisdom out of philosophy, Hegel, without whom few would have mistaken the modernist mud for depth.
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