Another (brief) rant about materialism ruining everything

[teguififthzeal]

I'm not sure Coa is a Nietzschean anymore than he's a Rama Krishna, but who knows.

I find the new strain of Anti-Nietzschean thought refreshing. I noticed in the bookstore recently:

Anti-Nietzsche: Malcolm Bull: 9781781683163: Amazon.com: Books

 

Anti-Nietzsche: Malcolm Bull: 9781781683163: Amazon.com: Books

Nietzsche cartoonish view of Christianity came from the era he lived in and also a personal choice to place his bets on the very very wrong threads of thought that, whether he renounced it or not, fell in line with centuries of anti semitism. He could have been an actually helpful cultural physician, and wasted that potential badly.

[Druidic]

Nietzsche’s attitude toward Christianity wasn’t a simple one. I don’t often recommend Wiki but for those unfamiliar with his work the section titled “Death of God and Nihilism” is worth reading. Here’s a chunk of it:

Death of God and nihilism

The statement God is dead, occurring in several of Nietzsche's works (notably in The Gay Science} has become one of his best-known remarks. On the basis of it, most commentatorsregard Nietzsche as an atheist; others (such as Kaufmann) suggest that this statement reflects a more subtle understanding of divinity. Recent developments in modern science and the increasing secularization of European society had effectively 'killed' the Abrahamic God, who had served as the basis for meaning and value in the West for more than a thousand years. The death of God may lead beyond bare perspectivism to outright nihilism, the belief that nothing has any inherent importance and that life lacks purpose. Here he states that the Christian moral doctrine provides people with intrinsic value, belief in God (which justifies the evil in the world) and a basis for objective knowledge. In this sense, in constructing a world where objective knowledge is possible, Christianity is an antidote to a primal form of nihilism—the despair of meaninglessness. As

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Martin_Heidegger

put the problem, "If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the suprasensory world of the ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself."
“A nihilist is a man who judges that the real world ought not to be, and that the world as it ought to be does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: this 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos—an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.” -- Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s tragedy was when he decided to pursue more than the role of a diagnostician. The Overman was an Ideal and like all Ideals had little in common with human nature.
And it required a leap of faith like all religions.

[Coa]

Mark no worry I'm not gonna spam anymore.
Especially because English is not my mother's tongue and I cant never express my views on certain topics as I would like to, never-mind debate. I don't consider my self Nietzsche-an or whatever really, but if it can help here's semi-pathological hint - I did grow up in communist country and that definitely influenced my views on religion/Christianity...

Coa

You're not spamming and although I realise English isn't your first language, the points you made were significant enough for me to think it would be interesting to debate Nietzsche on a thread dedicated to his thought, especially in terms of the vexed question of validity of epistemology in revealed truths.

Mark S.

Something that occurred to me looking back over this thread.

To my mind, the universe is absurd and without meaning in and of itself. Dragging in Creationism or Intelligent Design is beside the point. The universe is absurd in order for our ability to act as free moral agents independent of the Creator to be meaningful. That is, something can only be determined absurd when one has an outside standard by which such a statement could be made. Absolute absurdity would entail that absurdity could not be recognised.

The question is this: is this universe all there is? In my view an absurd reality is not logically self-existent. The universe is contingent and requires an explanation greater than the fact of its own existence.

Mark S.

[Druidic]

I think we perceive the absurdity of the Universe when we realize it doesn’t conform to human desires in the least. Take, for example, Justice, a human concept obviously having no counterpart in Nature. At a bad diagnosis or a car accident that takes a loved one we cry It’s not fair as if expecting the Universe to play by our rules. Ligotti says somewhere This isn’t the Universe we would have made for ourselves and that’s pretty much a restating of Camus who sensed Absurdity in the world’s indifference to Man. When human desire and an indifferent cosmos clash we perceive the Absurdity of life all too clear. But you’re right, it’s not absolute absurdity because we can still rely on unchanging physical laws. And that’s probably why Lovecraft felt a violation of such laws would be absolute horror…

Johnny Cash-The_Man_Comes_Around - YouTube

Mark S.

[Druidic]

The argument that there’s a greater reality behind everyday Life is a fascinating one and writers from Machen to P. K. Dick have taken it with some degree of seriousness. Barlow’s The Night Ocean seems to be a dark riff on the theme, maybe inspired by the Lovecraft commonplace book entry about a nightmare reality lurking behind the mundane world. But really what evidence is there for this? Faith, some mystical experiences (with or without drugs), ‘visionary’ dreams, maybe some of the wilder quantum theories…but, sadly, that’s not evidence at all.

It's a powerful feeling if one believes it emotionally. In fiction I’m all for it but I was never given the gift of Faith.

No empirical evidence at all.

If a man gets away with murder without leaving any evidence, that does not mean he isn't guilty. Conscience, my dear old tiger.

Mark S.

I am referring, of course, to an idea Coleridge held; the term "Higher Reason", neither an irrational nor a merely rational use of the mind, but the integral being of man, the synthesis of will, emotion, conscience and intellect, which brings about the total awareness of the self, its situation and its freedom.

Mark S.