File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2000/nietzsche.0003, message 112


From: Scott James Simon <sjs0002-AT-unt.edu>
Subject: Re: Tips on how to be an overman
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2000 01:12:24 -0600 (Canada Central Standard Time)


Hi Paul--

I am in perfect agreement with your will to power comments. I think of will to 
power as discovery, not desire. Wasn't N's creative critique of earlier 
philosopher's a reveaing of absurdities already there, but hidden? Doesn't N's 
conception of the "mask" require us to call into question N's personal 
relationship with the multi-perspectival views esspoused in his works. Perhaps N 
himself would have rejected many of the positions inherent in his writings. The 
perspectives are fruitful either way. The danger in N, is the danger in life, 
isn't it? The reality of tragedy. Life creating fear can be 
coped with abstractly, but the danger remains. He explored the so 
called negative emotions such as cruelty and fear and found them alive 
and well in modern man - only they were serving life-denying purposes. 
To affirm life means to spiritualize; love and hate, war and peace, 
pain and pleasure, etc. Of course the dichotomy is our abstraction.

Heidegger is a suspended problem for me. What does he offer that N 
doesn't? I've read the meta essay, tech essay, and I'm currently on BT.
His style is post-Kantian technical. Unnecessarily boring? He does a 
great job of revealing scientific reductionism, but leaves one hanging 
as to where to go next, besides the Being question. Inquiry requires an 
intention. Being as inquiry is religious escapisim? Open minds are 
great for new possibilities but "vision" was N's forte - a revaluation, 
not a devaluation. Mankind is something that must be formed. H's 
philosophy leads to a depersonalization in need of a new direction? Is 
this why H fell for the Nazi's? N warned him. Is H a hyper-relativist? 
How do you fit your N and H views together? If you objectify objectivity
- phenomenology - don't you have something close to H?

> Hi Scott--
> 
> Sobriety, I think, is a true expression of power.  It
> represents the ascension to the necessity of being
> itself, within which one can survey the field of
> beings manifestations before oneself and actively
> engage them, taking from them what one will, and
> leaving the rest to perish within the force of the
> eternal return.  To turn a Kant, Hume, Spinoza,
> Leibniz, Aristotle, etc., into a monstrosity to
> themselves can be the great creative act.  Moreover,
> the excesses of passion too often become
> manifestations of reaction and ressentiment, rather
> than authentic marshallizations of one's active
> forces.  One must learn to see with the beautitude of
> *a* God's eyes...  And the failure to see in this way
> is what's wrong with so much of the current discourse
> on the ubermensch.  Without such a marshalling of
> forces, one remains within the realm of the fantasy of
> being represented as powerful, without making the
> transition to true active becoming as the true
> expression of power.  This distinction is subtle, but
> one that I hope you see.  One appropriates Nietzsche
> with the hope of legitimating a desire for power that
> they truly do not have, without discovering the manner
> in which the will to power presents itself within
> them.
> 
> Having written a thesis on the works of early
> Heidegger, there's certainly a sense in which I hold
> him in high esteem.  Perhaps you could clarify you
> remarks about taking scientific objectivity to
> extremes.  Giving BT, there's a sense in which he's
> contesting some fundamental claims about the nature of
> scientific obejectivity.  For Heidegger, the question
> of being is one of returning to the manner in which
> exprience presents itself to us.  It is on these
> grounds that Heidegger rejects scientific
> objectivity--not to champion subjectivity --but
> rather, to open the domains of experience as they
> truly manifest themselves for us.  On the question of
> the subject disappearing, it is not so much that there
> is no place for the subject in Heidegger, rather it is
> that we have misunderstood what it means to be a
> subject.  Talk of ideas, sense impressions, the
> internal and the external is inaccurate for Heidegger.
>  Heidegger's point can be readily seen.  When you are
> working with some material, trying to build something,
> there's no sense of a difference between an internal
> self and an external object, rather you simply are
> this working, this interaction.  For this reason,
> Heidegger is led to reject the subject object
> antithesis as it is normally posed.  This also allows
> him to reject a number of questions in philosophy as
> false problems.  Regarding the Greeks...  I'm not sure
> what it means to talk about an improvement over the
> Greeks... We still are very much within a very Greek
> set of questions and Heidegger would readily
> acknowledge this.
> 
> Paul Bryant
> 
> --- Scott James Simon <sjs0002-AT-unt.edu> wrote:
> > Hi Paul. I admire your sober comments. Sounds like
> > Hume in some ways doesn't it?
> > I'm a philos maj at North Texas State. I have an
> > existential class and I'm 
> > wondering what your take on Hiedegger is compared to
> > N. Hiedegger seems to take 
> > scientific objectivity to the point of absurdity -
> > the subject dissapears. No 
> > sense of humor. And this is supposed to be an
> > improvment over the greeks? And 
> > Nietzsche? It makes me think Hiedegger missed the
> > point. My prof. claims N. is a 
> > misogonist. Wrong. That's why N. devoted his life to
> > education right? I'm still 
> > open minded to insights on Hiedegger though. Any
> > comments? 
> > On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 02:19:37 -0800 (PST) Paul Bryant 
> > <levi_bryant-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > > Goethe - "One must BE something in order to do
> > > > something"
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Quite the contrary.  In fact, this is the way
> > popular
> > > herd morality thinks.  I quote:
> > > 
> > > "A quantum of force is equivalent to a quantum of
> > > drive, will, effect-- more, it is nothing other
> > than
> > > precisely this very driving, willing, effecting,
> > and
> > > only owing to the seduction of language (and of
> > the
> > > fundamental errors of reason that are petrified in
> > it)
> > > which conceives and misconceives all effects as
> > > conditioned by something that causes effects, by a
> > > 'subject,' can it appear otherwise.  For just as
> > the
> > > popular mind sepearates the lightining from its
> > flash
> > > and takes the latter for an *action*, for the
> > > operation of a subject called lightning,so popular
> > > morality also separates strenght from expressions
> > of
> > > strenght, as if there were a neutral substratum
> > behind
> > > the strong man, which was *free* to express
> > strenght
> > > or not to do so.  *But there is no such
> > substratum;
> > > there is no "BEING" being *DOING, EFFECTING,
> > BECOMING;
> > > 'the doer' is merely a *FICTION* added to the
> > deed--
> > > the deed is everything*" (GM, First Essay, section
> > > 13).
> > > 
> > > If there is being behind the overcoming that
> > > characterizes the verb of the overman this being
> > is
> > > the being of becoming.( and what's all this
> > > eschatological nonsense of the coming of the
> > > overman...  there's no coming of the overman, of a
> > > thing or person, only perpetual overcoming that is
> > > always effectuating itself in one way or another).
> >  In
> > > other words, there's no difference between being
> > and
> > > becoming.  Being is not something independent of
> > > becoming, nor is there a substratum of identity
> > > beneath becoming.  Such a way of thinking is a
> > fiction
> > > based on a certain moral outlook.  As someone said
> > on
> > > the list, it's an eleatic (Parmenidean) perception
> > > that seeks to undermine the immanence of the
> > sensible
> > > world in favor of an intelligible, unchanging
> > world. 
> > > It's an especially Platonic way of thinking... 
> > For if
> > > we can say that there's a doer beneath the deed,
> > then
> > > we can say that the doer could do otherwise.  And
> > if
> > > we can say that the doer could have done other
> > wise,
> > > then we can catch them within the net of our
> > > ressentiment by shackling them to the notions of
> > > obligation and responsibility.   But there is no
> > being
> > > apart from becoming, no stasis apart from change
> > and
> > > willing, no identity apart from difference.  
> > > 
> > > Paul
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
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> > > 
> > > 
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> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> > 
> __________________________________________________
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