Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 11:22:47 -0700
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: Interpretation vs. Life


Sam Vagenas wrote:

>This is also in response to Tom Blancato.  Everything is interpretation, or
>everything is art, or everything is a ground.   To say that everything is a
>ground (Blancato)  or that every perspective is a ground (Callihan) is to
>obfuscate our discussion of a ground.  The question is what ground allows us
>to rank perspectives.  Self?  Life?  Will-to-Power?

Well, I am far from making over-extravagant, or even extravagant,
claims for "truth."  I have no particular argument with the
metaphoricity of truth, or that it is, for instance, traceable back to
a bare semiotic, a system of signs, to which "values" are then
assigned.  I just don't think I need a penultimate ground in order to
say anything, that is assert a "truth," or assign a value.  I either
have grounds or I don't have grounds for what I say.  That they are
not absolutely unequivocal grounds is no real matter--I am not God.
Nor does it matter that everything I say is "proven," i.e., traceable
back to an absolutely unassailable ground, shall we say.  Neither the
theory of evolution nor the theory of relativity are "proven."  But
that does not mean they are without "grounds."  Or of no value.
Ultimately, their value to us, their "truth," is in their ability to
explain and predict.

If you want absolute certitude, there is none, except within
absolutely closed systems (but that seems to be what you are
"lamenting," so to speak).

A "ranking" is simply the assigning of a value.

An interesting bit from _Twilight of the Idols_, "Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man," Section 7:

     "A born psychologist [I think Nietzsche is referring to
     himself here] guards instinctively against seeing in order
     to see; the same is true of the born painter.  He never
     works "from nature"; he leaves it to his instinct, to his
     _camera obscura_, to sift through and express the "case,"
     "nature," that which is "experienced."  He is conscious only
     of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does
     not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case."

Not just a free thinker, but a "free spirit," not simply to think
freely, but to have wings.

(Actually, I wrote another very involved post about the distinction
between truth and value, value standards, the Will to Power,
Heideggerian labyrinths, and why a ripe grape wants to fall, but on
second thought felt the above was more apt, and less likely to bore,
to tears.)
=============================================================================
            Steven E. Callihan -- callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com

     "And just as a tyranny of truth and science could increase esteem
     for the lie, a tyranny of prudence could spur the growth of a new
     kind of nobility.  To be noble might then come to mean: to
     entertain follies."  

            --Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Gay Science_, Section 20.

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