in-the-midst-of-winter:

outofthedarkness:

That’s exactly the problem I have with Nietzsche; I don’t think it’s legitimate to go around imposing your own meaning on things simply because you can. I agree with Heidegger, who said, “man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.” It’s not our job, nor is it our absolute right, to run around interpreting the world in any way we like. As Heidegger says, Being is presented to us, and we have to respect the fact that Being is prior to us.

I think what anon is saying here is that Nietzsche isn’t saying that we should impose a random meaning on things, which he doesn’t actually call for, but that human beings do actually give meaning to things, and some even justify doing this with logic and rational thinking — thus philosophy: the highest manifestation of will to power.

The philosopher, Nietzsche says, is an artist who’s personal prejudices ascertained from experienced are interwoven into their philosophy, and thus he disputes the cold hard dialectic the likes of Kant profess their ideas generated from. In essence, Nietzsche says that philosophers start with their experiences, derive prejudices from these, and perpetuate/justify them with rational thought. To stick with Kant, who had an extremely rigorous upbringing, almost military like, and indeed a pious one; Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer as well actually, says that Kant slipped God in through the back door with “practical reason.” Similarly, Schopenhauer condemns Kant’s almost autistic-esque desire for symmetry, which saw additions to his tables of categories and judgements that weren’t necessary, purely for the sake of symmetry.

Nietzsche doesn’t call for assigning meaning to things at random — the “transvaluation” that Nietzsche progressed towards, but sadly never finished, was to be a total repudiation of all previously esteemed values, but we mustn’t make the mistake that Nietzsche was going to substitute these values with anything but life affirming values, which for him were synonymous with a reason to live.

To quote Dead Poets Society, “And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?”

Further still, Nietzsche wants us not even to substitute values at all, but to live in accordance with, and revel in, the total lack of values. Of course, he’s not saying “anything goes,” which so many people think he is. We can see this is Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s depiction of the Overman, who spares the contentedness of the Old Saint in the forest: “‘What could I have to give you? But let me go quickly lest I take something from you!’ And thus they separated, the old one and the man, laughing as two boys laugh. But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: ‘Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest has not yet heard anything of this, that God is dead!’” Similarly, Zarathustra consoles the tight-rope walker upon his death, evening caring for him and taking with him his body (or figuratively his burden.)

“Anything goes” — against oneself, because domination over others shows only weakness in oneself.

See, I knew I would get myself into trouble talking about Nietzsche. Thanks for setting me straight!