14 posts tagged “interesting”
I found this today. Pretty interesting quote, imo. Looks like I've found another book to read. :)
"My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of truth-teller or truth-telling as an activity … Who is able to tell the truth? What are the moral, the ethical, and the spiritual conditions which entitle someone to present himself as, and to be considered as, a truth-teller? About what topics is it important to tell the truth? … What are the consequences of telling the truth? … And finally: what is the relation between the activity of truth-telling and the exercise of power, or should these activities be completely independent and kept separate? Are they separable, or do they require one another?"
-Michel Foucault, Discourse and Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia (1983)
Bored at work, I'm doing some reading on my buddy, Nietzsche. It's been a while since I've actually been able to read something thought provoking. Today I actually found something interesting.
First, I found this great quote:
There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are -- more humane. Beyond Good and Evil, aph. 295 (1886)
Second, I'm pretty familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy, but every now and then I'll read something and my reaction is, "Wow, now I actually get it." This happened with the following two paragraphs.
With the PARABLE OF THE MADMAN, Nietzsche has established that Christian morality is dead and we ourselves are responsible. There are no higher worlds, no morality derived from God or Nature because "God is dead." There are no natural rights and the idea of progress is a sham. All the old values and truths have lost their vitality and validity. Such an opinion is called nihilism. There are no moral values. Nietzsche said man could rise above nihilism. How could this be done? Well, first, one had to recognize the nihilism produced by everyday life. One had to become a nihilist. One could then rise above and go beyond nihilism by creating new values: man could then become his own master and be true to himself rather than to another. "Du sollst werden, der du bist." Man can overcome uniformity and mediocrity, he can overcome socialism, democracy, trade unionism, progress, enlightenment and all the other ills so consistent with western civilization.
According to Nietzsche, man could be saved by a new type of man, the "Übermensch," the Superman. These are the men who will not be held back by the hogwash of modern-mediocre-industrial-scientific-bourgeois-Christian civilization. The superman creates his own morality based on human instincts, drive and will. He affirms his existence not by saying, with the Christian, "thou shalt not." No. Against the Mosaic law, the new man shouts, "I will." The new man dares to be himself and as himself, traditional, Christian ideals of good and evil have no meaning and he recognizes them as such. His "will to power" means, for Nietzsche, that he has gone "beyond good and evil." The enhancement of the will to power brings supreme enjoyment. The Superman casts off all established values and because he is now free of all restraints, rules and codes of behavior imposed by civilization, he creates his own values. He lives his own life as one who takes, wants, strives, creates, struggles, seeks and dominates. He knows life as it is given to him is without meaning -- but he lives it laughingly, instinctively, fully, dangerously.
I normally give C.S. Lewis a hard time. But, surprisingly, I found this interesting quote:
-C.S. Lewis
I was checking out Jason Mraz's twitter (I gave in and made a twitter) and found a link to his blog .On his blog, he talks about a variety of things: his music, life, and spiritual topics. He even answers questions from his twitter, which I think is pretty cool.
Anyway, I was skimming through his blog and I was surprised to find the following:
Our economy-based society doesn’t make it easy for us to live worry-free lives. Somewhere between the ages of 6 and 16 we pick up all kinds of story and baggage that sit with us our whole lives. Is my job a cool job? Are my clothes cool or appropriate for this place? Do I read the right books? Do I hang with the right crowd? Whatever the answer, it’s just one interpretation of how you THINK life should be. There’s nothing in this Universe that can support the way something SHOULD be other than the honesty and your joyous reaction to it being whole.
Life itself is empty and meaningless. Truly. It’s you who give meaning to something. The world you see before you is entirely defined by your interpretation of it. Otherwise, life just is.
Some people don’t care for sports. They see the game as meaningless. Others see it as the most important activity on the planet. Some people really love fancy cars while others can go their whole lives not caring what kind of box they’re transported around in. You see what I’m saying? Go easy on yourself. Love yourself at 28. Tell the world that it is a peaceful and playful age, not a hard one, and watch it transform around you.
You’ve asked a very serious question and hopefully this brief answer shines some light on the power you have to create endless, beautiful possibility for yourself. Nothing is wrong in your world unless you tell yourself it is wrong. There are no wrong questions. There are no wrong answers.
I bolded my favorite parts. Is Jason Mraz part existentialist? Perhaps. What I find interesting is how he uses "power." I'm pretty sure it's the same usage of the term that Nietzsche intended. How cool!
So I finished Robert Solomon's Living with Nietzsche a few weeks ago. I haven't digested the book completely because there is just so much to dig into and remember. However, over the past day or so, I've been going over certain passages that I've outlined. I’ve been trying to find the main difference between Aristotle’s virtue ethics and Nietzsche virtue ethics in an attempt to understand what makes Nietzsche's take on virtue ethics unique.
Aristotle is essentially the face of virtue ethics; when one wants to understand virtue ethics, one goes straight to Aristotle. This is mainly because Aristotle actually gives us an extensive list of virtues, whereas Nietzsche does not, not to mention, Nietzsche and his philosophical hammer have a bad reputation. Most people think of Nietzsche as this philosopher that destroys people’s beliefs and as an immoralist that taints the youth’s minds. But it’s important to note that Nietzsche called himself an “immoralist” only because he rejected the morality of his day, namely absolute Christian morality and Kant’s abstract principles, not because he advocated unethical behavior.
Aristotle defines a virtue as the "means between the extremes." To this day, this criterion is used as the basis of our virtuous behavior. We all pretty much agree that between two extremes, the middle is the best place to be. Take my post on pride, for example. I think pride and humility must have a balance. In other words, the best place between the two is the middle. Nietzsche took a different take on things. At the heart of all of his virtues is this since of overflowing or abundance. So, I think the main difference between the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Nietzsche is that Aristotle is focused on having the right amount of something (the virtue), whereas Nietzsche wants no limits. The right amount is an overabundance of the virtue. To illustrate this difference, let’s take the virtue we call courage.
Both Aristotle and Nietzsche consider courage to be their main virtue, but their concepts and applications of the virtue are extremely different. Aristotle sees courage as a function of fear, having just the right amount of fear. Thus, courage resides between recklessness (not having any fear) and cowardice (having too much fear). This is the type of courage that would do one good in the battlefield. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is more concerned with a concept of courage that can be applied to, as Solomon says, “one’s convictions or one’s willingness to go on in the face of pain and illness.”
This is how Solomon describes Nietzsche concept of courage:
For Nietzsche, it seems that having courage means not so much overcoming fear (the standard account) or even having “just the right amount” of fear (the overly quantitative Aristotelian account.) Rather, as in so many of his conceptions of virtue, Nietzsche’s model (or metaphor) is “overflowing.” In the case of courage, I would suggest, it is overflowing with a sense of mission, even duty (but emphatically not in the Kantian sense.) It is a sense of something-to-be-done no matter what (within the bounds of the appropriate context), in the face of obstacles to be overcome, no matter what (within bounds).
Nietzsche’s courage isn’t a function of fear. It’s a function of one’s abundance of determination to complete a grueling task or to say “Yes!” to life, despite all the pain and suffering and the reality of the Absurd. It’s a type of existential courage, one that can be applied directly to your life and not just the battlefield. So, in the end, courage isn’t about having the right amount of fear. It’s about having determination that overwhelms fear. As Solomon puts it, “courage, in other words, is not overcoming fear. It is an overflowing of determination, constituted by an overwhelming and yet skillfully directed cascading of emotion.”
Personally, I find Nietzsche’s take on virtue ethics to be refreshing. Virtuous behavior should be about overflowing action based on one's enthusiasm and style, not some type of restraint. In particular, Nietzsche's concept of courage is more positive, more the way I think courage should be. More on Nietzsche’s virtues later.
In my earlier study, I argued that I did not see any conflict (much less a “paradox”) between Nietzsche’s fatalistic and self-making themes but rather an excellent example of his “perspectivism.” Fatalism and self-making represent two complementary perspectives on ourselves and on human life. On the one hand, there is our familiar view of ourselves as (more or less) autonomous beings, deliberating, making choices, acting on our desires, sometimes reflecting on and weighing our desires, sometimes conscientiously denying our desires (or refusing to be motivated by them). It is from this perspective that we normally hold people (and ourselves) responsible for their (our) actions and declare them (and ourselves) to be the “authors” of their (our) actions. On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that we are all “thrown into” our circumstances, born with (or without) certain talents and abilities to varying degrees and with or without dispositions to certain physical liabilities and limitations. We are all products (“victims” some would say) of our upbringing, our families, our culture. Even without bringing in such spooky words as “fatalism,” we recognize in ourselves and in others the heavy baggage of our backgrounds and the fact that our choices and our socalled autonomy are both quite limited. We take up one or the other of these perspectives, often sequentially, even simultaneously, but I do not see this as a problem or a “paradox.” It is rather just “the human condition.” We see ourselves as both free and constrained, which is not quite (yet) to say “fated.”
-Robert Solomon
There is a level of biological determinism that can't be refuted. So much of who one is is determined by one's biology. Let's go with an obvious example (I stole it from Mithrandir): one's sexuality. I didn't choose to be straight, did I? I'm genetically predisposed to be attracted to females. So much for choosing my sexuality. Consider one's physical state. The children who have inherited genetic disorders and handicaps didn't choose to be this way. If given the option, I'm pretty sure they would've picked a different life. What about one's talents and abilities? Most of those are innate. And we can't forget the impact of one's culture, environment, parents, and friends on who one is. But I think you get the point: we don't freely choose who we are as much as we would like to think. Perhaps we don't get to choose who we are at all. As Mithrandir pointed out in this blog post, the existentialist's maxim --"existence precedes essence"-- becomes invalid in light of determinism. It would seem that one's essence is already determined.
Nietzsche subscribed to a level of determinism, but at the same time believed that we create ourselves (something I'll talk about in a later blog post). There is a sense of this that permeates throughout his works: the strong were born strong, and the weak were born weak. It's almost as if some of us are predisposed to lean towards religion or what have you. Which leads me to this: For those of us who are nonbelievers, did we choose not to believe? It's an interesting question. I'd like to think I did, but I'm not sure.
My mom tells this story about me that I think may illustrate the "interesting" bit of this question. One day, when I was very young, my mom was trying to teach me the color of the apple in her hand, which was red. Every time she would say "red", I would say "blue." So, maybe I was just a dumb baby and was saying the wrong word when I actually meant the color red, but I'm not so sure now. Maybe my natural abilities/talents consist of insubordination and skepticism. I know one of my talents now is being skeptical. Perhaps I was born with this talent? I've always been skeptical of religion, even when I was a "Christian." Maybe it was only a matter of time before I stopped believing. Maybe who I am is a nonbeliever. I don't know.
What I do know is that there is a level of each individual that has been defined for he or she against his or her "free" will. Can you change this fundamental "you?" I don't know, though I'd like to think so. What one does have the free will to do, however, is to choose to create one's self in line with one's talents and abilities.
I recently read that Aristotle thought there were three types of friendships. These three types of friendships differ in their level of deepness. Here they are:
- Friendship of mutual advantage - So long as we are both benefit (money, sex, whatever) from this relationship, we'll be friends.
- Friendship of mutual enjoyment - So long as we are both having fun, we'll be friends. This differs from (1) in that, in this friendship, you aren't really "using" your friend. For example, I hangout with my friends because it is fun, not because I want something from them.
- Friendship of mutual inspiration - A friendship in which both parties are aimed primarily at inspiring the other to perfect his or her self and be the best that he or she can be.
Before bed, I was thinking whether or not this little maxim could be extended to a broader context, namely truths that deal with life and our existence. The maxim is this: the more difficult the belief, the more likely it is to be true. The logical behind this is we almost always prefer the lie over what's true, because the lie is less difficult to swallow. The lie makes us happier. We fear the truth being true, so we pick the lie.
There are numerous examples of this. The girlfriend/boyfriend is cheating on you. You don't believe this to be true, so you lie to yourself to hid the truth of it. While it is hard to swallow, the truth of the matter is that your girlfriend/boyfriend is cheating on you. Going in for surgery? You are told it isn't going to hurt that much because the surgeon doesn't want to scare you. The truth is, depending on your surgery, you are going to experience some substantial pain. Pain is difficult to swallow.
Getting into more existential matters, consider presupposed meaning and nothingness. Given the human tendency to choose a world created by fear, what is most likely to be true: presupposed meaning or nothingness? Absolute truth or truth based on perspectives? An afterlife or definitive death?
Truth may be difficult, but this doesn't mean we can't live with meaning and say "Yes" to life in the face of difficulty. Nor does it mean we should ignore what is most likely to be true.
I began reading The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky a couple of weeks ago. I'm moving slowly through it due to being back at school (bleh). Up until now (the 221st page), the book hasn't really done much for me...maybe because I am reading it in little snippets? I'm not sure. Anyways, I read something interesting last night and need some help trying to understand it. So, if you've read The Idiot, I would appreciate what you think of the passage below.
So, starting on page 218, Rogozhin, somewhat randomly, asks Prince Myshkin if he believes in God or not. (My type of question!) The Prince is about to leave when he turns around and tells Rogozhin about four encounters he has had that day (pg 219). The Prince had met an atheist on the train. The conversation he had with the man was odd because the man wasn't really talking about atheism or his disbelief in God, though I think the reader is suppose to get the message that he actually was talking about "atheism." Confusing, I know. He talks about another story and then in comes the passage I need some help understanding.
Listen, Parfyon, you asked me earlier, here is my answer: the essence of religious feeling doesn't fit in with any reasoning, with any crimes and trespasses, or with any atheism; there's something else here that's not that, and it will eternally be not that; there's something in it that atheisms will eternally glance off, and they will eternally be talking not about that. (pg 221)
Is he essentially saying that atheistic critiques of religion simply miss the boat? That they aren't really critiquing the heart of religion, just simply it's face? That atheism tries to reason with things when religious feeling has nothing to do with reason? Any help would be appreciated!
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