From: "J" <matisse22-AT-earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: nil
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 19:15:51 -0500


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I disagree. He says in BGE230 that "the terrifying basic text of -homo natura- must again be recognized."  He goes on to say that "to translate man back into nature; to become master over the many vain and overly enthusiatistic interpretations and connotations that have so far been scrawled and painted over that eternal basic text of -homo natura-......"  This is after telling us of the basic will of the spirit (or mind).  Ontology? a theory? a hypothesis?

Interestingly, the next two aphorism consist of what he calls his truth about  woman as such.

This is the deal for me,  N does not really develop perspectivism to the extent people have written about. The other day i read a whole book on perspectivism and almost all of it was derived from the WP and other obscure aphorism that Nietzsche did not take responsibility for, i.e. the man took every word seriously, by doing so, when things went to the printer, he really meant them. There  are a few aphorism here and there, but for the most part, i don't think "unfinished" work should be a source for idea building, a support, maybe, but not the source.  Hell, i heard somewhere that some of his notes he threw out but the landlord picked them up. I mean, really, he was a philologist and a thinker who took every word seriously. just look at BGE, its interconnectedness, the way each word throws light on another. 


  "on truth and lies in the non-moral sense" is wonderful. But this is not the position Nietzsche latter comes to believe or argue for. And if we take his 1886-88 prefaces seriously, then it is clear that Nietzsche believes all of his thoughts and aphorism are related and relevant to all the rest.  If everything is WILL TO POWER, which is the hypothesis he asks us to consider in BGE, then there is indeed a system here and it is as big as the universe. In fact, it is so big that it even includes us, right now, having this discussion.

 There are similarities between him and Wittgenstein, with perspectivism being a wonderful precursor to the idea of language games,  and Nietzsche, like Wittgenstein, still believes in the capacity for Reason and thereby for TRUTH. By putting man back into the world, by reuniting him with the language that he is and lives in, Nietzsche isn't saying that all is a matter of mere purpose. Rather, he is critiquing a correspondence theory of truth and taking the ground out from underneath Christianity and its companion Platonic Philosophy.  He isn't saying that there is no Truth or Basic Nature, He is just saying that it isn't some IDEAL, and nor does language capture *essences* because *essences* are absurdities.

He has a task, this he makes clear and shouts about from the very beginning of his writing through to the end, and in BGE, when he is fishing, he calls others to the process of going into the abyss to find "the TASK."  One thousand and ONE peoples speaks to this as well.

Nietzsche calls for the 'youngest virtue," honesty. Understanding this is tricky, and I still have no real clue as to what he is doing here. This i do know,  honesty is most likely not a very good translation of the German term, and furthermore, this is a call to overthrow Plato/Socrates and to establish reason as the rightful weapon in the search for Truth without positing another world, without ressentimal about the inability of language to capture TRUTH, without ressentimal against our reason for being unable to find the TRUTH.

It seems clear that BGE and GM, along with Z and TI, EH are continuing Nietzsche's earlier evaluation of Socratic "rationality" in the name of reason herself.

Oh hell, you mentioned system and here i am talking about reason.

 I know this is a read that goes against the grain.  While for every passage i could find, i am sure you could find another, my point is this. only with a systematic reading do we truly take aphorisms seriously. aphorism are insights showing long rumination upon one thing, but they derive their significance or higher meaning from their relation to other insights (a whole).   Think about it, if everything is force, then everything is connected. While one's perspective is going to color the links, all the links point to the same thing.  It isn't just a matter of personal taste and opinion. We are IN the world.  Interacting and interrelated. If you would like, i will provide you with citations. Forgive my current laziness.

Let me put it this way, when Nietzsche says there is -only- a perspective seeing, -only- a perspective "knowing," he also says that "the -more- affects we allow to speak about one thing, the -more- eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our "concept" of this thing, our "objectivity" be."  His use of only (NUR) should make us hesitate here, as should his quotation marks.  What is clear, though, is that he is arguing against the absurd idea of "pure reason" and "knowledge in itself" and not against TRUTH.

I think his perspectivism at the end of the day is best understood as "frameworks," "Reasoning systems," or "language games." They are not interpretations.  These terms all point to the way in which sense making is dependent upon the world we are in (our forms of life) and how sense is in fact more social than individual. N even goes so far as to say that consciousness is language, i.e. the herd (GS:5:?). Pardon my laziness. At the end of the day, Nietzsche wants his perspective, his TRUTH (for every reasoning system has its own criterion of truth) to rule the day. he wants to overthrow the Christian/Platonic Perspective in the name of a perspective that will provide a non-dogmatic, horizon allowing for individual difference, which is shown in "style" and in "interpretation." That will allow for the very search for truth.

Not to think that there is a system from a man who shows the need for a horizon is absurd to me.   Even Z wants his disciplines to go their own way within a horizon provide by Z.   ( second to last aphorism in preface Z). He says something like, "i need comrades that follow me because they want to follow themselves --wherever i want."

In any case, there is my weird read of this issue.

My question then is this, when Nietzsche says there is no Truth, it seems as if he is pointing at Ideals.  But he says this over and over again. Is his postmodern language a rhetorical device to show us the gap to move us into nihilism to then help us out, for the Christian reasoning system to overcome itself?  He knows it first must past through nihilism, but, given the response poor Z receives in the preface, it seems as if no one has already heard the news, "God is Dead."

To what extent is he fishing for a grounding or to what extent is he forcing us to fish for a grounding to complete the overcoming?

I mean, really, all throughout BGE Nietzsche talks about truth. He even says to his friends at times, while you still do not believe in Gods, i do.  He says blatantly that there is a need for Philosophy to rule Religion, that there is a need for religion.

This just doesn't seem to me to be a man that believes that everything is a matter of opinion and taste. And he writes as if the very existence of humanity depends on his teachings. On his TRUTH --which is the result of anthropological, genealogical, philological,  and psychological OBSERVATION.

We are still reading the same phenomena we read when we believed in TRUTH. Its just that we don't know what to do to ground it any more.  We fail to see that WE ground it.

  Return to the earth, return to man, the mere animal.


Matisse

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