Friday, August 22, 2008

Nietzsche was Wrong

...but only partially so. There's a great description of Nihilism at this site. Here are some tidbits.
Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the façades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent. "Every belief, every considering something-true," Nietzsche writes, "is necessarily false because there is simply no true world" (Will to Power [notes from 1883-1888]). For him, nihilism requires a radical repudiation of all imposed values and meaning: "Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; one destroys" (Will to Power).

The caustic strength of nihilism is absolute, Nietzsche argues, and under its withering scrutiny "the highest values devalue themselves. The aim is lacking, and 'Why' finds no answer" (Will to Power). Inevitably, nihilism will expose all cherished beliefs and sacrosanct truths as symptoms of a defective Western mythos. This collapse of meaning, relevance, and purpose will be the most destructive force in history, constituting a total assault on reality and nothing less than the greatest crisis of humanity...
I'm pressed for time this morning, so I won't go as far into this as I'd like, but here's my argument. Modern secularism has indeed swept much of the Western world and is the embodiment of nihilism in the form of moral relativism where there is no truth and no concrete morality. "Deciding if babies born alive during an abortion should be saved is above my pay grade." While moral relativism may have replaced the absolute morality of the past in some places, it has not led to utter destruction. Instead, we now worship at the altar of self-indulgence. Our appetites must not be obstructed.

Anarchy won't work for us. You can't download all your Internet porn if you don't have an Internet. You can't drink your liquor if you don't have liquor stores. You can't spend money on a whim without credit cards and the financial infrastructure behind them. Nihilism leads to chaos and destruction only if the population is made up entirely of philosophers who follow the logic of nihilism down to it's final conclusions. We are not a world of philosophers. At our core, in the absence of a higher moral purpose, we are animals.

We are party animals, to be precise.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

'My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati (love of fate) : that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary — but love it.'

understand? the point is not what you can or can't do but how you percieve it. thats nietszche... the rest of the human race is still catching up.

'To recognize untruth as a condition of life — that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil...'

K T Cat said...

Actually, the rest of the human race doesn't care. They're not trying to catch up at all. They're partying on, dude.

K T Cat said...

"our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives"

One bong hit with that or two? Why couch this in all that fancy mumbo-jumbo? You want to get high and get laid and you don't want anyone or anything telling you it's wrong. Just say it.

Kevork said...

Excuse me... but your argument leads to consider your own nihilism exactly as Nietzsche describes it, only that hopefully you will never have to find out. Are you sure about such moral relativity nowadays? I would rather call it moral failure. Think again: this has to lead to consecuences, such the ones history already shows. Even in Physics, such relativity aims to science's truth being only one among other truths. Hence, there is no truth in science, only describing possibilities, many of them, totally different, with different aims, conceptions and processes.

online pharmacy said...

I think YOU are wrong, Friedrich Nietzsche was a brilliant ideologist and I couldn't ignore his books and the term nihilism is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms. I am a philosopher too and I think you're completely wrong, dear colleague.

xlpharmacy said...

Friedrich Nietzsche was just a male chauvinist pig that love his own sister! for that reason I agreed with you, take that you pig!!!

Anonymous said...

Nietzsche is best interperted with your own descretion, most of his points can lead a person to validate their own perspective. The rest of his quotes (such as those you bring up, might i add from a text he actually had published) are unfortunately usefull primarily to those who already understood them and enjoy his mastery of the aphorism

Derby said...

Nietzsche disdained those who constrained themselves with a moral compass as having a slave mentality, at least if they were Christian, and that envy was a good thing. He seemingly would have admired a person who envied a Duke or some such wealthy person, and did not let morality abate his desire for power, wealth, materialism, women, etc... and so went about setting up a plan to become such a person, even if that meant murdering, thieving, deceiving, etc, perhaps following in the very footsteps of the person one is envious of. Own up to envy? Sometimes envy might be harmless, but what if envy, or what we want is not really good for us or others? Should we ignore such points and embrace envy because Nietzsche feels that the opposite is some sort of weakness? Not all desires are good desires and I don't care if that disqualifies me from becoming an Ubermensch. I mean, envy spawning an ambition for personal growth and material acquisition can have some good effects regarding a number of things from technologically rendered conveniences to medical breakthroughs, etc.. however, it can also have tremendously bad effects, such as insatiable greed, mass manipulation, mass murder of innocents, gross abuses of power, and many other injustices that if left unchecked could lead to humanity's destruction... He believed that Christianity was set up as a means of creating a false sense empowerment; that forgiveness was due to an inability to achieve retribution, that obedience was out of fear and lacking the courage to resist, etc.. However, religion in general, for all the dogmatic, docility it yields and intends, has been known to bring with it its fair share of strife and war, and continues to do so today. One such person that springs to mind was William Wallace, who was extremely religious, but did not let his faith make him a slave to its doctrines. That kind of demolishes Nietzsche's Christian slave mentality theory... In short, I don't like Nietzsche because when you get right down to it, his views support that if 'right' exists, might is its maker... It was right of me to kill your mother, even though you hated her, Friedrich, because well, I simply could. I didn't know her, she never wronged me in any way at all, but I was bigger, I was stronger, and I felt like taking her life. What's that, Friedrich?! You agree? Why that's..disgusting!