Intelligible Freedom.

[Anonymous No.15976671]

This is my first Nietszche, and this systematic reduction of moral responsibility is honestly a punch to a gut, given how rationalistic I tend to be.

It also seems to be dependent on a strongly nativistic approach, which I do not wholly agree with, like most people, I think; given how soul crushing the complete eradication of our own influence is.

What're your guy's stances on the matter? Moral responsibility ye or nay?

[Anonymous No.15976955]

That's Nietzsche? Wow I didn't know he was that heavy handed about it

I see the point of his genealogical deconstruction of morals and ideals, it seems necessary to do so that we're not naive about the origins of our beliefs. But isn't it worth something that we have the capacity for moral feeling whatsoever?

There's an analogous problem in the study of religion. If all our ideas of gods are really just confused misapplications of the idea of force and power to some putative divine being, why did we have the conceptual category for divinity to begin with? If you want to imagine a being without a concept for divinity, imagine a cat or a dog. They simply don't need it. They can't become confused into inventing it. How did primitive humans, even if they were capable of learning new things based on their initial stock of concepts, create an entirely false CATEGORY? Morality and divinity are both categories unto themselves. How can there be an idea of something so distinct, which is a completely false idea with no possible referent?

Even on historical analysis Nietzsche's point seems to break down. Some of the earliest Jews in the Bible had ideas of sin and immorality. You could make an argument that the bronze age was totally pre-moral and based on Nietzsche's good/bad rather than good/evil dichotomy (but even then, does that work with the story of the people crying out for rescue from Gilgamesh? isn't there a sense that what Gilgamesh is doing is "wrong"?). But would Nietzsche want to go back to that level of amoralism, with all its tyranny, child sacrifice, oriental decadence, and so on?

[Anonymous No.15977196]

>>15976955
>But would Nietzsche want to go back to that level of amoralism, with all its tyranny, child sacrifice, oriental decadence, and so on?
That's a good question, and I think posed that way, with the exception of Tyranny, Nietzsche would say no to the rest. The issue has more to do with how morality has changed over time such as to seem more and more against any action whatsoever, leading to a vision of life that's peaceful, but also looks like it eventually is reduced to mere biological living, i.e., no strong passions or goals, no great ambitions, no boldness or courage to endure or suffer anything. Basically, a world built by noble revolutionaries that would potentially be incapable of even producing the sort of revolutionaries that made it, let alone appreciate them. I don't think he would disagree that there would be a lot of ugly and ignoble moral behavior that would result from the rejection of modern morality, but he seems to think the cost is worth it, between some relatively smaller number of people living Great Lives and everyone living like hobbits would wish to live.

[Anonymous No.15977333]

>>15976955

First of all, thanks for the well-written reply. The passage is from Human, all too Human, and a number of his aphorisms are basically him rambling about the complete loss of responsibility.

There certainly is something pretty about our capacity for "moral feeling" as you put it, which I believe will naturally centre around the almost overpowering and unassailable emotions of sympathy and empathy. However, the fact remains that you cannot stave off the rationalist knife. The development of such a capacity can be categorized as an essential function for survival; given that it gave way to the earliest appearance of a tribe-mentality.

The inception of divinity is interesting to think about, but one has to remember that superstition has been a constant throughout the early ages. Man had to ask questions about his environment to ensure his survival, but the lack of the ability to comprehend phenomena to a sufficient degree birthed the superstition that lent them mystique. I've always considered the divine category, as you put it, to have been an inevitable consequence of this superstition, wherein superstition and unknowing beyond the effect was weaponized in order to promulgate the ideas of force and power. Unknowing itself became the all-encompasing entity and therefore synonymous with God.

The only arguments I could use to deter his genealogic reduction was to declare myself and empiricist, and therefore say that ones character was either wholly free of influence from its environment, or suffered under a partial influence. The latter then, grants some semblance of morality, but to what degree? It could vary between a crumb or the all of the loaf save the crumb, and the fact that signs point to the former is frightening.

[Anonymous No.15979037]

Bump for excellent discussion.

[Anonymous No.15979966]

>>15977196
I totally agree with you, but I wonder if the standard reading, that he wants to make the sacrifice and reject modern morality altogether, is correct? Is it possible he was just overstating his case to make it in the starkest clearest terms, but he thinks the real answer will be something more subtle than black and white, keep it or reject it.

>>15977333
Likewise good thread anon, I need to read more Nietzsche apparently instead of just guessing. So you think moral feeling isn't something completely distinct, that has its own mysterious quality in our thoughts, but is just an extension of sympathy/empathy. Which I suppose are themselves just extensions of self-love projected onto another animal in your "tribe".

I can see what you mean about divinity too, it could be a combination of other categories (mystery, the sublime maybe) rather than something distinct. I think you come close to Hume's thesis about the origins of religion in his natural history of religion.

I don't know, I can see how that's an appealing stance but I have this nagging suspicion that it presumes what it's trying to prove just to prove it, the thing to be proved being a naturalistic and reductionist worldview, where everything boils down to animal drives and materialism in the end. Somehow that feels like sleight of hand to me, the fallacy of begging the question. But I can't articulate why.

[Anonymous No.15979987]

>>15979037
Your little pseud discussions mean absolutely nothing.

[Anonymous No.15980071]

>>15976671
Nietzsche strikes me as a madman screaming basic common sense at the top of his lungs. Never saw the appeal. It's not that he's wrong, it's just that everything he's saying is an obvious first-order consequence of understanding the world in a rational manner. Once you're on board with Democritus et al, the rest follows automatically.

[Anonymous No.15981814]

>>15980071
I am not well versed enough with Neechee to comment. His aphorisms, however, have been an absolute delight to read. As for his advocated rationalism being common sense, it's just as much common sense to not scrub the nuance out of everything and reduce it to ideal averages.

[Anonymous No.15981884]

>>15981814
>His aphorisms, however, have been an absolute delight to read.
Absolutely. But no match for Lichtenberg or La Rochefoucauld.

[Anonymous No.15981888]

>>15976671
Language is largely a product of cognitive limitations and the need-ability to construct virtual social worlds, it's not delusional, only learnt conceptualisation of it is.

[Anonymous No.15982114]

>>15981884
I've been planning to read La Rochefoucauld after since Neech-man keeps sucking him off. What's a good starting point?

[Anonymous No.15982156]

>>15982114
'Maxims' - Penguin Classics 014044095X