From: "jamin" <ben2-AT-mail.microserve.net>
Subject: identity crisis
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:59:42 -0800


That last post has brought me to an interesting precipice.  What is the
nature of Nietzsche?  Was he a psychologist, philosopher, or just a
philologist who liked to mingle with intellectuals from across the tracks?
Further, what is the nature of philosophy verses darshana?  I want to take
the latter question first since it might effect the first profoundly.  As I
learned it darshana is vision, or teaching.  It is a seeing within but for
practical purposes.  Siddhartha faced a culture who's solution to suffering
was the pursuit of separation from the world.  His vision was one of
interdependent arising that led to the four noble truths and consequently
the eightfold path.  The standard of proof as I understand it for darshana
is not logical consistency, but practical application.  If you follow the
four noble truths of Siddhartha is your suffering alleviated?  If it is it
is a good teaching.  Socrates seemed to define philosophy as the love of
wisdom, wisdom being a vision of the unchanging ground behind the apparently
changing world.  Philosophy then becomes a compilation of ever more finely
divided categories divvying up the world (epistemology, metaphysics, ethics,
logic, etc.).  Eastern darshana and Western philosophy do not appear to be
similar.  This brings me to Nietzsche.  Does Nietzsche fit into the
definition of darshana or philosophy?  In some ways he almost looks as if he
fits darshana, especially when I include what I inadvertently excluded and
that is the systematic nature of philosophy.  However, Nietzsche does call
for those individuals that would write new values.  This looks like a call
to strong individuals who can create new systems.  Systems capable of
replacing the pessimistic philosophies of Shopenhauer and company.  Systems
also capable of surviving the nihilistic period that will inevitably follow
the loss of those pessimistic systems.  Here Nietzsche looks like an
innovative systematizer, but one more interested in recruiting those who
would do the systematizing, sort of like a philosophical chairman of the
board.  Consequently the ubermensch suddenly looks like a systematizer that
follows Nietzsche's prescriptions for what should follow in the wake of the
pessimism and nihilism that Nietzsche perceived.  Strikes me as a little
grandiose all of a sudden actually.
BenB.



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