File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Feb.95.8-15, message 136


Date: Tue, 14 Feb 1995 20:14:23 -0600 (CST)
From: CND7750-AT-UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: Re: Faith and the Death of God


I should emphasize that it is precisely because the world is indeterminate
and not determinate that free will is an illusion. We live in a world
in which everything is thought to be determined. Every event is determined
either by a human will or a natural law. According to Nietzsche, the
eternal return 'overcomes' both of these concepts because it renders
them both--mechanicism and humanistic idealism--as mere 'ideals'.
Efficient cause is the only kind of cause that affirms chance, that is
indeterminate. Nietzsche thought that the idea that the cosmos 'obeyed'
natural laws was no less 'determined' by moralistic values than the
idea of free will. In fact, they both go hand in hand, for most believe
in both. Both beliefs imply the three kinds of cause other than
efficient cause: materially external, formal, and final. I do not
this is recus reductive.

The only way to affirm fate, amor fati and the eternal return, is to
deny the nihilistic values that rest upon formal, final, and exterior
cause. Nothing is determined to happen as it does, there is no reason
for it to happen. To believe that there is is to deny the eternal
return and to be nihilistic. The section on the "Four Great Errors"
in _Twilight of the Idols_ is rather clear on this. This is shy the
eternal return is the hardest thought, and must be 'beared' by those
who think that the loss of the old values implies nihilism. Once it
is realized that the eternal return shows the other values to be
nihilistic, the eternal return liberates, transforms. "The Hammer
Speaks!"

chris
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