7 ms·

Before ingesting Nietzsche, please first understand Plato.

virmundi 8y ago
Why? Nietzsche gets it right, assuming there is no God. There is no objective morality. There are no forms. The world is entirely material and all things are subjective. Even the uberman is just a subjective fantasy that Nietzche told himself to find meaning in a meaningless reality.
- yonoataraxia 8y ago
  Thus Spoke davidpaulyoung, that's why. Sorry, couldn't resist a good joke. I'm just a mere mortal (although I like ancient philosophy).
- theothermkn 8y ago
  I’m going to chime in to this very rote and dreary conversation only long enough to point out that, even in the unlikely event that “objective morality” is anything more coherent than “nuance makes me uncomfortable,” the existence or absence of “God” does not impinge on its existence. This is one of the more damning things about that whole “conversation”; the psychological need for a moral order is so great that the justification used for it is an utterly unquestioned, utterly absurd non sequitur. I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’m still bored with it.
  - yonoataraxia 8y ago
    > I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’m still bored with it. Thanks, I chuckled. It's true that the conversation contains a big amount of things that are obvious and trivial as soon as somebody understands them. Maybe you could make it more interesting if you start to question your own existence, but it's definitely possible that you don't have the problems that most people have with this topic. In this case you found a shortcut to enlightenment. Congratulations! (this is no sarcasm. I like how you interact with those ideas and still believe they're boring af).
    - Koshkin 8y ago
      > question your own existence Non sum, ergo non cogito?
  - virmundi 8y ago
    I bring up God's existence for this end, without such a being, we are left with a material universe. There is no measure within the universe for right or wrong. People need to accept that since all of your ethics and laws are fundamentally build on it. For example, why is rape wrong? Easily answered with God: because he said so. With out God, well, you don't have an answer. You can say, "Because it impinges on the rights of the victim." To which one will reply, "Why should I care about the victim?" This will cycle until one person is honest enough to admit, "Because if you rape, the force of the masses will descend on you to the point of pains or death." Might makes right (so too for God). With man, the uneasiness is that we are fickle. We will only defend those we wish to. We know that fundamentally we can't trust each other. We know that we are each out for our own. We can lie and say, "She loves me. Or they wouldn't do that." These are all lies. The Germans were fairly good people until they weren't. The Russians and Chinese too. The government was a kind father until it exterminated millions with the, at least, tacit consent of millions more. That, dear friend, is your world. That is why you don't need to read Plato first. Plato is predicated on a world view of constants and moral weight: the Forms. Nietzsche shows those don't exist. The only thing remaining is the stark reality that reality and all its trappings don't matter for all is simply matter. It is neither good nor bad. The only rule is that made of the strongest material to crush the wills of others to submission. Whoever bears that scepter has the right to make moral.
    - ninkendo 8y ago
      I'm about as far from someone who understands this topic as it gets, but here's my explanation for why rape is bad that doesn't invoke god: It's not an evolutionarily stable strategy. [1] By that I mean, if we had a society where rape was normal, and sex was largely a nonconsensual thing, meaning there would be more violence, women would develop adaptations to prevent being raped, and more energy would be spent on the prevention of unwanted procreation, and the the gene pool would be less fit for survival than one without the rape gene. But merely having a society full of non-rapists isn't enough either: the first serial rapist to come along would invade the gene pool by raping others and spreading the gene that encodes this "rape others" behavior, and within so many generations the gene pool would be full of rapists. To have an ESS, our behavior would have to be encoded with a "don't rape others, but also don't tolerate others who do rape" strategy, which would increase a society's fitness for survival, and be more resilient against an invading strategy. Calling rape "immoral" is a good shorthand because "morals" are basically a formal way of defining the whole "don't do this, and don't tolerate others who do" concept in a way that humans can understand. But at the end of the day morals are just an abstraction that we've had to create in order to be more successful as a social species. Religion may have helped as well... to me these things are extended phenotypes for our genes that have been selected for over eons to keep our gene pool at a stable equilibrium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy#Human_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy...
  - svieira 8y ago
    If creation is intended, not accidental, then there is a final end for each and every thing in creation. If there is a final end for creatures then for those who are given free will are given it for the express purpose of choosing their final end ("choosing" as opposed to "determining" - you could also read "accepting" as an ... acceptable alternative). If the Intender did not exist there would be no objective morality because final ends would be merely illusions. All morality would therefore be subjective to the (local) intenders and would involve a "will to power".
- slack_off 8y ago
  And there goes your Reality-circle of 'Greatness'... I hope that it does not sound too offensive but, when somebody ask me: 'What do you want, Freedom... or Control and Orderliness ?" - I may start reasoning, 'The Freedom to break up with all; Traditions, Authorities, Rules, seeing them as Austerities, will get to Normlessness and may lead into Chaos - in Theory, at least for a While - so there are Limits for everything, Some correlate...' /-|

Why? Nietzsche gets it right, assuming there is no God. There is no objective morality. There are no forms. The world is entirely material and all things are subjective. Even the uberman is just a subjective fantasy that Nietzche told himself to find meaning in a meaningless reality.

yonoataraxia 8y ago
Thus Spoke davidpaulyoung, that's why. Sorry, couldn't resist a good joke. I'm just a mere mortal (although I like ancient philosophy).
theothermkn 8y ago
I’m going to chime in to this very rote and dreary conversation only long enough to point out that, even in the unlikely event that “objective morality” is anything more coherent than “nuance makes me uncomfortable,” the existence or absence of “God” does not impinge on its existence. This is one of the more damning things about that whole “conversation”; the psychological need for a moral order is so great that the justification used for it is an utterly unquestioned, utterly absurd non sequitur. I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’m still bored with it.
- yonoataraxia 8y ago
  > I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and I’m still bored with it. Thanks, I chuckled. It's true that the conversation contains a big amount of things that are obvious and trivial as soon as somebody understands them. Maybe you could make it more interesting if you start to question your own existence, but it's definitely possible that you don't have the problems that most people have with this topic. In this case you found a shortcut to enlightenment. Congratulations! (this is no sarcasm. I like how you interact with those ideas and still believe they're boring af).
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    > question your own existence Non sum, ergo non cogito?
- virmundi 8y ago
  I bring up God's existence for this end, without such a being, we are left with a material universe. There is no measure within the universe for right or wrong. People need to accept that since all of your ethics and laws are fundamentally build on it. For example, why is rape wrong? Easily answered with God: because he said so. With out God, well, you don't have an answer. You can say, "Because it impinges on the rights of the victim." To which one will reply, "Why should I care about the victim?" This will cycle until one person is honest enough to admit, "Because if you rape, the force of the masses will descend on you to the point of pains or death." Might makes right (so too for God). With man, the uneasiness is that we are fickle. We will only defend those we wish to. We know that fundamentally we can't trust each other. We know that we are each out for our own. We can lie and say, "She loves me. Or they wouldn't do that." These are all lies. The Germans were fairly good people until they weren't. The Russians and Chinese too. The government was a kind father until it exterminated millions with the, at least, tacit consent of millions more. That, dear friend, is your world. That is why you don't need to read Plato first. Plato is predicated on a world view of constants and moral weight: the Forms. Nietzsche shows those don't exist. The only thing remaining is the stark reality that reality and all its trappings don't matter for all is simply matter. It is neither good nor bad. The only rule is that made of the strongest material to crush the wills of others to submission. Whoever bears that scepter has the right to make moral.
  - ninkendo 8y ago
    I'm about as far from someone who understands this topic as it gets, but here's my explanation for why rape is bad that doesn't invoke god: It's not an evolutionarily stable strategy. [1] By that I mean, if we had a society where rape was normal, and sex was largely a nonconsensual thing, meaning there would be more violence, women would develop adaptations to prevent being raped, and more energy would be spent on the prevention of unwanted procreation, and the the gene pool would be less fit for survival than one without the rape gene. But merely having a society full of non-rapists isn't enough either: the first serial rapist to come along would invade the gene pool by raping others and spreading the gene that encodes this "rape others" behavior, and within so many generations the gene pool would be full of rapists. To have an ESS, our behavior would have to be encoded with a "don't rape others, but also don't tolerate others who do rape" strategy, which would increase a society's fitness for survival, and be more resilient against an invading strategy. Calling rape "immoral" is a good shorthand because "morals" are basically a formal way of defining the whole "don't do this, and don't tolerate others who do" concept in a way that humans can understand. But at the end of the day morals are just an abstraction that we've had to create in order to be more successful as a social species. Religion may have helped as well... to me these things are extended phenotypes for our genes that have been selected for over eons to keep our gene pool at a stable equilibrium. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy#Human_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy...
- svieira 8y ago
  If creation is intended, not accidental, then there is a final end for each and every thing in creation. If there is a final end for creatures then for those who are given free will are given it for the express purpose of choosing their final end ("choosing" as opposed to "determining" - you could also read "accepting" as an ... acceptable alternative). If the Intender did not exist there would be no objective morality because final ends would be merely illusions. All morality would therefore be subjective to the (local) intenders and would involve a "will to power".
slack_off 8y ago
And there goes your Reality-circle of 'Greatness'... I hope that it does not sound too offensive but, when somebody ask me: 'What do you want, Freedom... or Control and Orderliness ?" - I may start reasoning, 'The Freedom to break up with all; Traditions, Authorities, Rules, seeing them as Austerities, will get to Normlessness and may lead into Chaos - in Theory, at least for a While - so there are Limits for everything, Some correlate...' /-|