Morality and Intelligence

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Belindi
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Belindi »

Nick_A wrote:

Matthew 4:
8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

10Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'[d]"

11Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

So Jesus chose to serve the Father rather than be served by Man. Naturally for the Atheist or secularist, this goes over like a lead balloon. Our goal in the world is "prestige" and the ability to exert power for our own benefit. It appears ludicrous that one capable of doing so would intentionally avoid it.


Nietzsche apparently felt that the Overman was king of the world. Such a person is not bothered by fears and inabilities that stifle the normal person. The Overman is the ultimate human machine that can manipulate the world to serve its purposes. But it requires shedding all sorts of illusory fears that enable a person find satisfaction in mediocrity:
You are putting in your path towards truth a totally unnecessary obstacle, a straw man, when you so accuse those of us who may be called "Atheist or secularist". The Bible and its interpretation doesn't belong only to believers .

No matter, the main point is the status of Satan vis a vis God. What I as unbeliever and you as believer both believe is Satan as trickster who leads men astray. "Jesus chose to serve the Father" is true. However for me who am a 21st century person the Father stands for the ineffable high god who is not to be confused or abandoned in favour of worldly idols. For you apparently, Nick, it seems that the Father is in opposition to human reason, overrules human reason, and reveals a truth which is opposed to human reason, human reason which is one worldly idol.

According to my interpretation of the Gospel story above Jesus supports human reason which stands opposed to Satan the trickster, and this is because the ineffability of the high god, i.e. "the Father" is reasonable. There is no contest between the high god on the one hand and human reason on the other.

According to your interpretation as it seems to me the high god i.e. "the Father" denies human reason and demands of Jesus faith in despite of human reason, and human reason is Satanic.

-- Updated March 13th, 2017, 5:33 am to add the following --

"The Christ", Nick, is a moving icon. It was politic at one time in the human past for people to believe that faith took precedence over reason. That time has been over for approximately four or five centuries. If the ethical message of Jesus is to survive, man's will to power must take account of man's intelligence and reason. Nietzsche saw this and was explaining that the age of faith was dead . Nietzsche therefore supports the continuation of the ethical message and carries it forward into the age of reason. The will to power, for Nietzsche, is man come of age. Overman is not some sort of Nazi but is the man who has freed himself from blind faith and is engaged heart and soul in the quest for truth as a reasoning adult.

-- Updated March 13th, 2017, 5:47 am to add the following --

Nick_A wrote:
That is why we cannot be considered intelligent and regardless of popular opinion, are not becoming more intelligent. When Nietzsche and Simone agree, I prefer to be open minded rather than argue for the sake of righteous indignation. The advantage of Christianity and the other great teachings initiating with a conscious source is that they admit and begin with the reality of the human condition.
I don't claim we are becoming more intelligent. I claim that we with our limited intelligence have been living in , not the age of faith, but the age of reason for hundreds of years now and will continue to live in the age of reason for the foreseeable future. The human condition includes that we change our world views and our political regimes. The human condition also includes that we can lose our most revered ethics if we are not very careful. In order to hang on to those revered ethics as exemplified by Jesus we need to stop the blind faith business and engage with state of the art knowledge and reason.

The advantage of Christianity over other religions is that Christianity's icon is a man, not a holy book or a set of rituals. A man moves through the ages and is not static like a set of rituals or a holy book of rules. The man Jesus is a man for our times if we understand him as such.

The "conscious source" is an idea from the superstitious past an idea which is now well past its function of social control.
Gertie
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Gertie »

I like Nietzsche's boldness, it's invigorating and opens doors to let fresh thinking in, something much needed in his stultifying Christian world.

The thing is, we're continually getting a more informed picture of what human nature is actually about, why it is the way it is, and that it's incredibly complex, a mash up of different, sometimes contradictory predispositions, sculpted 'on the hoof' by evolution with the material available. The understandable desire to see us in simplistic terms doesn't do the kludgy messiness of the reality justice, and philosphies which pick one aspect of of human nature to form an all encompassing theory are always going to fall short imo. We aren't all essentially about 'the will to power', or 'the good', or anything else.

That doesn't mean you can't create meaning and purpose from it all for yourself (people always do), or that we can't craft ways of relating with each other which are more beneficial than others. But a realistic understanding of the human material you're working with can only help, and past philosophers were handicapped in that respect, as we are handicapped in comparison to future generations. Nietzsche had the science of his day to guide him, plus his own internal self-reflection, and he was a bit of a nutter. His macho sounding conclusions simply don't chime with some of us, because he's universalising from dodgy science and his own nature.

-- Updated March 13th, 2017, 12:33 pm to add the following --

To answer the original question, I'd say the best guiding principles are extremely simple - try to be happy and try to be kind.

However they both require emotional intelligence to do well.
Fooloso4
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Fooloso4 »

Belindi:
Is Nietzsche saying that morality and intelligence, or learning to live life, is interminable process, i.e. not achievable finality?
Nietzsche uses the common trope of awakening. Nietzsche advocates a return to the Earth and becoming as opposed to Heaven and Being, living here and now. His revaluation of values is immoral in that it questions Christian afterworldly values and a fixed eternal world order.
As I understand, Nick equates the urge to power with the urge to rule others, but you Fooloso4 equate power with the striving of each living thing to stay alive. Please comment.
Nietzsche was critical of the emphasis on survival. The will to power is not the will to survive but the will to live well, it is about fecundity, growth, vitality, and robust good health. The celebration of spring is the best example. It is a celebration of life, of nature, of potency, of becoming.

Nick_A:
Nietzsche apparently felt that the Overman was king of the world.

Notice that the Overman is "the meaning of the Earth." It is its highest evolution

Nietzsche rejects the Biblical notion of man’s dominion over the earth:

I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
The “meaning of the Earth” means that man is to have an earthly meaning, to be a part of rather than apart from the natural world. It is not an evolutionary development, it is self-determined. The last man or epigone is far more likely than the overman, but both the overman and the last man can be found throughout world history. Without the overman there would be only last men, and today only last men waiting for a god to save them.
He who does not WISH to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground-- and thereby betrays himself. (Beyond Good and Evil “What is Noble” # 275)
Gertie:
His macho sounding conclusions simply don't chime with some of us, because he's universalising from dodgy science and his own nature.
If we are to understand Nietzsche we need to understand his rhetoric, both what it points at and what it hides. We should not take all that he says as his conclusions.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, Chapter 7, “Reading and Writing”)
Belindi
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Belindi »

Fooloso4 wrote:
(Belindi)Is Nietzsche saying that morality and intelligence, or learning to live life, is interminable process, i.e. not achievable finality?


(Fooloso4)Nietzsche uses the common trope of awakening. Nietzsche advocates a return to the Earth and becoming as opposed to Heaven and Being, living here and now. His revaluation of values is immoral in that it questions Christian afterworldly values and a fixed eternal world order.

(Belindi)As I understand, Nick equates the urge to power with the urge to rule others, but you Fooloso4 equate power with the striving of each living thing to stay alive. Please comment.


(Fooloso4)Nietzsche was critical of the emphasis on survival. The will to power is not the will to survive but the will to live well, it is about fecundity, growth, vitality, and robust good health. The celebration of spring is the best example. It is a celebration of life, of nature, of potency, of becoming.
'Becoming' seems like process without implying any end to process. 'Heaven and Being' seem finite in time and space. If Nietzsche does use the common trope of awakening then N must be pretty sure of what human nature is , so N is not any sort of proto- existentialist.

The will, then, is not mere survival but the will to transcend what man has been. "Fecundity, growth, vitality, and robust good health" are attributes of the overman. I can't agree with Nietzsche in that case, because all living things have to die .Job 14.1and2:

Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.


is more true than that the nature of man is everlastingly fecund, growing and, vital etc.

Perhaps Nietzsche wanted the overman to be what we aspire to as a much better option than any worshipping of life after death as a reward for poverty . I can see that it makes sense to discard the Christian rationale for evil that God will make everything okay in the afterlife. I expect that Christian Humanists and Christian existentialists would support the Book of Job and also get rid of supernatural reward for suffering. I think that Job was aware that there would be no reward for him, but nevertheless he loved the good for its own sake. Do you know if Nietzsche commented on Job?
Nick_A
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Nick_A »

Belindi

You are putting in your path towards truth a totally unnecessary obstacle, a straw man, when you so accuse those of us who may be called "Atheist or secularist". The Bible and its interpretation doesn't belong only to believers .
I am not making any accusations. The truths within the Bible are open to anyone making the impartial efforts to experience them with new eyes to see and ears to hear. It isn’t a matter of blind belief but of awakening to the truths our hearts call us to. What good are the beliefs of sleeping people? The true seeker of truth is called to awaken.
However for me who am a 21st century person the Father stands for the ineffable high god who is not to be confused or abandoned in favour of worldly idols. For you apparently, Nick, it seems that the Father is in opposition to human reason, overrules human reason, and reveals a truth which is opposed to human reason, human reason which is one worldly idol.
While expressions of Christendom proclaim a personal God, esoteric Christianity doesn’t. We consider the ineffable Source as beyond time and space. The universe is governed by universal laws and qualities of consciousness. There is no personal god considering our species to be “wrong” All results are the results of laws. You’ve minimized human reason into dualism. Affirm or deny is animal reason. Human reason includes the vertical third dimension of thought which connects levels of reality. Without it nothing is possible for collective Man other than the eternal argument over opinions. God has nothing to do with this. God is not in the World. It is governed by maya, imagination, and some would say: the Prince of Darkness. Either way it is the same; we live our lives in psychological, captive, imagination.
According to my interpretation of the Gospel story above Jesus supports human reason which stands opposed to Satan the trickster, and this is because the ineffability of the high god, i.e. "the Father" is reasonable. There is no contest between the high god on the one hand and human reason on the other.

According to your interpretation as it seems to me the high god i.e. "the Father" denies human reason and demands of Jesus faith in despite of human reason, and human reason is Satanic.
Reason has nothing to do with it. Jesus was a conscious being. This is a quality of mind we don’t understand. Jesus connection with the father was a conscious connection. Do you really think the Father and Son were having a discussion similar to what goes on at an Interfaith convention? Communication is a bit more than that.

"The Christ", Nick, is a moving icon. It was politic at one time in the human past for people to believe that faith took precedence over reason. That time has been over for approximately four or five centuries. If the ethical message of Jesus is to survive, man's will to power must take account of man's intelligence and reason. Nietzsche saw this and was explaining that the age of faith was dead . Nietzsche therefore supports the continuation of the ethical message and carries it forward into the age of reason. The will to power, for Nietzsche, is man come of age. Overman is not some sort of Nazi but is the man who has freed himself from blind faith and is engaged heart and soul in the quest for truth as a reasoning adult.
Jesus message isn’t about ethics or politics. It is about rebirth. Rebirth is the essential meaning and purpose of the gospels. The more a person’s eyes begin to open and their ears begin to hear, the more the gospels will make sense. One purpose of the planetary level of reality is that it serves for the point of transition between mechanical life and conscious life. Man has the potential to serve a conscious purpose and not be limited to the purpose of animal life on earth in the form of the Great Beast. Simone Weil described it well with her description of the sea.
The "conscious source" is an idea from the superstitious past an idea which is now well past its function of social control.
If there is no conscious source, what is responsible for the origin of universal laws and the devolution of matter? Secularists and tyrants are concerned with social control. Christianity and the other legitimate conscious traditions are concerned with evolutionary consciousness and objective conscience, and not blind conditioned social control. It seems to be a basic difference between us.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Gertie
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Gertie »

Fooloso
If we are to understand Nietzsche we need to understand his rhetoric, both what it points at and what it hides. We should not take all that he says as his conclusions.
So what do you understand to be his conclusions?
Fooloso4
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Fooloso4 »

Belindi:
'Becoming' seems like process without implying any end to process.
Right. He is responding to the Greek notion of being as the telos of becoming, the end or purpose for which something exists.
'Heaven and Being' seem finite in time and space.
Heaven and Being are treated by Nietzsche as transcendent concepts, that is, beyond time and space.
If Nietzsche does use the common trope of awakening then N must be pretty sure of what human nature is , so N is not any sort of proto- existentialist.
Human nature according to Nietzsche is not fixed or universal, but it is not completely plastic either. Our nature is historical or cultural. He talks of second natures becoming first natures. This ties in with his notion of self-overcoming. It is within our nature to overcoming of our nature. He is considered by many to be a proto- existentialist.
I can't agree with Nietzsche in that case, because all living things have to die .
It is a matter of what we do in the meantime.
[Job’s lament] is more true than that the nature of man is everlastingly fecund, growing and, vital etc.
Nietzsche does not say that man is everlastingly fecund, but that life is. Death is not the negation of life, but part of the self-overcoming of life. What lives dies, but life itself does not die.

Do you know if Nietzsche commented on Job?
Good question. I don’t know. It would be an interesting comparison. (See the quote below on suffering). One point that should be emphasized in that in Job the universe is ruled by God’s will rather than reason or universal laws. As the wager with his adversary makes clear, there is something capricious about it. Nietzsche would approve.

Gertie:
So what do you understand to be his conclusions?
About what?

I see him within a tradition that does not simply provide conclusions but rather prepares us to reach our own.
“This - is now my way: where is yours?” Thus I answered those who asked me “the way”. For the way - does not exist! (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
The following might serve as a conclusion but it might also seem to some as an unsatisfactory one since it leaves so much open to question.
Amor fati: this is the very core of my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it!—To it, I owe even my philosophy.… Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had formerly staked our humanity.” (Nietzsche Contra Wagner)
Gertie
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Gertie »

Gertie:

So what do you understand to be his conclusions?

About what?
Ubermensch? Will to power?
Amor fati: this is the very core of my being—And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it!—To it, I owe even my philosophy.… Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time—forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity,—on which things we had formerly staked our humanity.”
He's right of course that great suffering makes everything else look trivial, and chronic illness and depression are the absolute unrelenting pits. Trustfulness, good nature, mildness (anything but self-absorption) are **** hard when you're consumed with your own suffering. That doesn't make them mediocre, it shows us how difficult they can be. He found a way to embrace suffering and turn it into something meaningful for him. What leaves me cold is making it sound operatically transcendent, deeper, more real. It's an attractive notion, but if this is a conclusion then he's universalising in a way which demeans how others deal with suffering imo.
Belindi
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Belindi »

Fooloso4 wrote, with regard to comparing Nietzsche with Job:
Good question. I don’t know. It would be an interesting comparison. (See the quote below on suffering). One point that should be emphasized in that in Job the universe is ruled by God’s will rather than reason or universal laws. As the wager with his adversary makes clear, there is something capricious about it. Nietzsche would approve.
What Nietzsche wrote about the clarity that his own suffering brought in its train is like Job's modified vision,as I think you imply. Job had a religiously conventional view about God as a dealer of rewards and punishments, until Job proved that Satan lost the wager. So there is a parallel thus far. Do you think that the comparison can be extended as follows? Nietzsche became convinced that man should aim to transcend his sheepish conventionality and grow a pair. Job dismissed the intended comforting of his conventionally religious friends. Both Job and Nietsche were more fulfilled when they realised that they could transcend suffering.

I understand that Job's transcending suffering involved a wider idea of God as the workings of the largely inscrutable whole of nature and not just a god of human ideas of fairness. Nietzsche's transcending suffering involved man's freeing himself from guilt and awakening to increased health and happiness.

I wonder if Nietzsche was influenced by Freud.
Fooloso4
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Fooloso4 »

Gertie:
Ubermensch? Will to power?
I’ve been discussing them. Is there something specific you have questions or problems with?
What leaves me cold is making it sound operatically transcendent, deeper, more real.
Well this does appear in Nietzsche Contra Wagner. It should also be read against the background of the Christian concept of suffering on the one hand and the modern philosophical ideal of abolishing suffering on the other. We should also attend to the fact that he is addressing the philosopher. It is not ordinary suffering but “great suffering … that takes its time” and “forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths”

“[T]o let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity” is to let go of our ways of avoiding philosophical suffering, our ways of avoiding our nethermost depths.

Belindi:
Both Job and Nietzsche were more fulfilled when they realised that they could transcend suffering.
I don’t think either of them transcended suffering except perhaps in so far as they did not suffer from the meaninglessness of the unanswered question of why we suffer.
Belindi
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Belindi »

Fooloso4 wrote regarding Job, and Nietzsche:
I don’t think either of them transcended suffering except perhaps in so far as they did not suffer from the meaninglessness of the unanswered question of why we suffer.
Your summary concludes what I really wanted to say. It's a really important summary. Nietzsche is a modern: Job is a mythical paradigm in an ancient book, yet each of them comes to the same same conclusion :

" they did not suffer from the meaninglessness of the unanswered question of why we suffer."

Nietzsche and Job each managed to answer the theists' problem of evil. That's why it matters that the two stories are comparable.
Nick_A
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Nick_A »

Nietzsche explains Simone Weil’s attitude toward suffering so many find offensive and consider her a complete nut job. Why did Simone invite suffering? It is absurd for the secularist. Now read what Nietzsche wrote about affirming life itself
“I still live, I still think … and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year – what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth? I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati [love of fate]; let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yea-sayer.” (Gay Science IV 276)
If you remember what Simone wrote about war in relation to the beauty of the movements of the sea she is referring to the good behind appearance. They are referring to the essential interactions of laws behind results. This would never go over in the PC crowd. It seems an essential contradiction. Both Simone and Nietzsche came to realize that it is naïve to psychologically wage war against the ugly. It is important to consciously and impartially verify it; to witness it for what it is without all the inner comments which serve only to further imagination.

Consciously evolving beyond meaningless suffering requires the confirmation, the affirmation of life itself through developing our potential for conscious attention. We don’t witness life; instead we react to it in accordance with conditioned pre-conceptions. This is the human condition. Nietzsche introduces the concept of eternal recurrence which is the lawful result for Man as a creature of reaction. As I understand it, the same repeating earthly and cosmic influences produce the same results for the Great Beast so its collective being remains the same. Only individuals beginning to awaken to the human condition can consciously affirm it and can begin to become more than a creature of reaction.

Morality, as is normally understood, is really just a conditioned reaction so cannot be considered intelligent. Objective conscience, which is a consciously remembered affirmation reflects human intelligence. A person beginning to awaken can experience the difference.

-- Updated Tue Mar 14, 2017 2:48 pm to add the following --

Is the urge to kill flamingos anything other than the need for prestige?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ldren.html.

Would moral speeches be more or less inclined to kill more flamingos? The truth is that no speeches influence "feelings." The kids were incapable of feeling what they were doing. This is sure to inspire the next video game: "Kill the Flamingos." Who can stone the most to death in two minutes is the winner. A great Christmas gift.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Fooloso4
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
Nietzsche explains Simone Weil’s attitude toward suffering so many find offensive and consider her a complete nut job. Why did Simone invite suffering? It is absurd for the secularist. Now read what Nietzsche wrote about affirming life itself.
To affirm life is to affirm suffering because life is not without suffering, but to affirm suffering is not to invite suffering. Let’s see what Nietzsche said about the ascetic ideal in On the Genealogy of Morals. I think it explains Weil’s attitude quite well:
The sort of self-contradiction which seems to be present in ascetic people, "life opposing life," is—this much is clear—physiologically (and not only physiologically) considered—simply absurd.
Generally speaking, the ascetic ideal and its cult of moral sublimity, this supremely clever, unthinking, and most dangerous systematization of all the ways to promote an excess of emotion under the protection of holy purposes, has etched itself into the entire history of human beings in a dreadful and unforgettable manner.
The ascetic ideal was the only reason offered up to that point. Any meaning is better than no meaning at all. However you look at it, the ascetic ideal has so far been a "faute de mieux" [for lack of something better] par excellence. In it suffering was interpreted, the huge hole appeared filled in, the door shut against all suicidal nihilism. The interpretation undoubtedly brought new suffering with it—more profound, more inner, more poisonous, and more life-gnawing suffering. It brought all suffering under the perspective of guilt . . . But nevertheless, with it man was saved. He had a meaning. From that point on he was no longer a leaf in the wind, a toy ball of nonsense, of "without sense." He could now will something—at first it didn't matter where, why, or how he willed: the will itself was saved.

We simply cannot conceal from ourselves what's really expressed by that total will which received its direction from the ascetic ideal: this hate against what is human, and even more against animality, even more against material things—this abhorrence of the senses, even of reason, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing for the beyond away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, desire, even longing itself—all this means, let's have the courage to understand this, a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a revolt against the most fundamental preconditions of life—but it is and remains a will! . . . And to repeat at the conclusion what I said at the start: man will sooner will nothingness than not will . . .


Nick_A:
Nietzsche introduces the concept of eternal recurrence which is the lawful result for Man as a creature of reaction.
Where does Nietzsche say this? There have been volumes written on the eternal return and no doubt there will be many more, but it is still not entirely clear what it means. A few comments I made in a thread on eternal recurrence:
It does, however, provide a useful way of judging our own lives – live as if the choices you make are not isolated or limited to the moment; that they will be repeated time and again.

His Zarathustra echoes Koholeth’s lament that there is nothing new under the sun.
... it is a rejection of the notions of transcendence and progress. In other word, a rejection of Platonism, Christianity, and the then current Age of Progress. It is a return to here and now rather than an escape to elsewhere. The eternal is the eternal now ...
Nick_A:

Morality, as is normally understood, is really just a conditioned reaction so cannot be considered intelligent.
According to Nietzsche it is an intelligent response to historical conditions, that is, the conditions of one’s life.
Objective conscience, which is a consciously remembered affirmation reflects human intelligence. A person beginning to awaken can experience the difference.
There is for Nietzsche no objective conscience.
Nick_A
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Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4
To affirm life is to affirm suffering because life is not without suffering, but to affirm suffering is not to invite suffering. Let’s see what Nietzsche said about the ascetic ideal in On the Genealogy of Morals. I think it explains Weil’s attitude quite well:

N


The sort of self-contradiction which seems to be present in ascetic people, "life opposing life," is—this much is clear—physiologically (and not only physiologically) considered—simply absurd.


Generally speaking, the ascetic ideal and its cult of moral sublimity, this supremely clever, unthinking, and most dangerous systematization of all the ways to promote an excess of emotion under the protection of holy purposes, has etched itself into the entire history of human beings in a dreadful and unforgettable manner.
You and N are referring to something different than what Simone practiced. The ascetic practice doesn’t require consciousness. No conscious attention is necessary. Asceticism is just allowing certain reactions.

Simone invited the conscious experience of what is real for the sake of returning to the Source. She invited conscious witnessing. Secularism supports whatever imagination which keeps us oblivious to the reality of the human condition and human conscious potential while keeping us slaves to earthly attachments. This isn’t life opposing life but rather reality opposing imagination. Imagination usually wins.
Nietzsche introduces the concept of eternal recurrence which is the lawful result for Man as a creature of reaction.


Where does Nietzsche say this? There have been volumes written on the eternal return and no doubt there will be many more, but it is still not entirely clear what it means. A few comments I made in a thread on eternal recurrence:
I didn’t mean to suggest that Nietzsche was the only one suggesting eternal recurrence. I learned it from other sources together with the concept of time as repetition and a moment in time as an expression of the fourth dimension and the first dimension of existence. Eternal recurrence was fairly recently made popular with the movie Groundhog Day. Nietzsche didn’t elaborate on the concept as others have.
His Zarathustra echoes Koholeth’s lament that there is nothing new under the sun.

... it is a rejection of the notions of transcendence and progress. In other word, a rejection of Platonism, Christianity, and the then current Age of Progress. It is a return to here and now rather than an escape to elsewhere. The eternal is the eternal now ...
There is nothing new under the sun since it all repeats. We are asleep to reality so are unaware of it. We do not “remember.”

Objective transcendence and progress is awakening rather than turning in circles.
Morality, as is normally understood, is really just a conditioned reaction so cannot be considered intelligent.


According to Nietzsche it is an intelligent response to historical conditions, that is, the conditions of one’s life.
Quite true. Morality is best defined when marching against the enemy. Then moral decisions are crystal clear

“How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy” Nietzsche


Objective conscience, which is a consciously remembered affirmation reflects human intelligence. A person beginning to awaken can experience the difference.

There is for Nietzsche no objective conscience.
Of course. That is why he defined morality as he did.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Fooloso4
Posts: 3601
Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm

Re: Morality and Intelligence

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
Nietzsche explains Simone Weil’s attitude toward suffering

You and N are referring to something different than what Simone practiced.
First you claim that Nietzsche explains Weil’s attitude but when it is pointed out that he opposed it you claim he was referring to something different than what she practiced.
The ascetic practice doesn’t require consciousness. No conscious attention is necessary. Asceticism is just allowing certain reactions.
You either have not read what Nietzsche says on the subject or did not understand it. He says nothing like this.
Nietzsche didn’t elaborate on the concept as others have.
It really looks as though you are just making sh … stuff up and that you have not read Nietzsche. Of course he elaborated on the concept of the eternal return.
There is nothing new under the sun since it all repeats. We are asleep to reality so are unaware of it. We do not “remember.”
It appears you have not read Ecclesiastes either.
Objective transcendence and progress is awakening rather than turning in circles.

Objective conscience, which is a consciously remembered affirmation reflects human intelligence. A person beginning to awaken can experience the difference.
I’ll give Nietzsche the last word:
I grant all honour to the ascetic ideal, insofar as it is honest! So long as it believes in itself and does not play games with us! But I can't stand all these coquettish insects, with their insatiable ambition to smell the infinite, until finally the infinite stinks of bugs. I can't stand these white sepulchres who treat life as a spectacle. I can't stand the tired and useless people, who wrap themselves up in wisdom and gaze out "objectively." I can't stand the agitators who dress themselves up as heroes and who wear a magic hat of ideals on heads stuffed with straw. I can't stand the ambitious artists, who like to present themselves as ascetics and priests, but who are basically tragic clowns.
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