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This also skips on how his sister edited his yet-unpublished works after his death, to include her German ultranationalist and antisemitic views, while he was opposed to them.
A kinda similar situation to that of Kafka, wherein Max Brod, who was supposed to burn all of Kafka’s manuscripts, instead e.g. rearranged the chapters of ‘The Trial’ for no good reason, such that it probably reads way more surrealistically. I’ve recently listened to some kinda restored edition that attempts to put back the intended order, and while it’s still a mess at times, the happenings are pretty understandable.
i’m pretty sure gods and religions were invented exactly because of people were thinking there is “no higher meaning”
meaning that religion had to be a response to nihilism
If you have an interest in philosophy or Nietzsche, Rick Roderick is one of my favorite, and most charmingly relatable commentators. He has a whole series on Nietzsche which is very good. But he covers Nietzsche in the first episode in his “Self Under Siege” philosophy series
Highly, highly recommend!
Fuck yeah I am. I’ve got a living playlist of lectures I can add this into, thank you!
Actually I see a yt video at the top of the page here, can I watch all the episodes there as an option?
Here’s a playlist of his Self Under Siege lectures.
These videos were such a good foundation for my own learning! And Rick Roderick was a real one. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks 😁
“Must be exhausting!”
Lol what even is this?
Anon after reading nihilist philosophy.
Oh no. It turned him into anime
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach you 'bout the raising of the wrist. (Socrates himself was permanently pissed).
Spitting fire!
Not mine. Monty Python “The Bruce’s Philosophy Song”.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy little beggar Who could think you under the table David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya 'Bout the raising of the wrist Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed John Stuart Mill, of his own free will On half a pint of brandy was particularly ill Plato, they say, could stick it away Half a crate of whiskey every day Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart “I drink, therefore I am” Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed
I always found his frantic fear of nihilism to be a little adolescent, like “how could humanity possibly survive the death of God? How will we live a life without inherent existential or moral purpose?” You just do, Freddy.
You just do, Freddy.
A lot of people don’t.
There’s a whole superstructure to religion - culture, ethics, public infrastructure, social networks, financial networks, a common history and language - that you need to supplement as you dispose of the older system.
What the European socialists discovered at the turn of the 20th century was that you can’t just burn down all the churches and start over from scratch. Anarchism without some new common social foundation just ends in civil war and foreign occupation.
Subsequent generations still need a scaffolding to cling to as they mature. And if that scaffold isn’t rooted in some new existential or moral foundation (or if it’s rooted in a rotten one) you end up with ultra-nationalism, or Victorian mysticism, or whatever paint Ayn Rand was huffing.
And yet in almost every one of those examples the problem was people sticking to the existing religions and culture being too terrified to let go or incapable of accepting that others have moved on.
the problem was people sticking to the existing religions
“The problem with religion is that people won’t stop being religious” is circular and thought-terminating
culture being too terrified to let go or incapable of accepting that others have moved on
How do you sooth public anxieties at a national level?
How do you foster egalitarian social habits?
Seems like you’d need some kind of broad social project or moral imperitive for a nation’s worth of people to align with.
There is a quote from Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits that I think of every time this comes up.
“You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren’t cut out for this. But deep down you’ll know. You’ll know that humans aren’t cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, with a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to die and you’re going to stand at the gates of judgment and you’re going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, ‘I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to you to give it meaning.’”
“You really think God uses that kind of language?”
“Yes.”
Love me some quality David Wong.
my take on life is that yeah it doesn’t have inherent meaning, but you don’t need a meaning for everything you do. you can just enjoy being alive despite the meaninglessness, it actually gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want to do for the sake of it.
for the morals: just don’t bring in needless suffering, nobody choose to be here and nobody wants to suffer, the only thing we can do is to make the existing lives better
Yet here we are, celebrating people whose moral purpose is nonexistent at best and usually completely evil.
Yeah and Kierkegaard already solved this decades before him, in exactly the way you describe (although he didn’t personally think it was possible).
He should have tried warning people not to look into the abyss or something.
hedonistic meaningless living
As if a life embedded in asceticism was supposed to be any more meaningful
I mean, hedonism isn’t the only option, what about Epicureanism?
Nietzsche was explicitly, spitefully against asceticism. On the Genealogy of Morals is largely about how church clerics valorized ascetic lifestyle in order to trick the public into always believing they are not doing good, when actually the church has explicitly created two moralities because the rich, powerful, and aristocratic were not expected to (and Nietzsche was not in favor of) living ascetic lives.
The whole point of this meme is that Nietzsche was a life-affirming philosopher. He absolutely did not advocate for an ascetic lifestyle because he believed the joy was the highest pursuit of human life.
Now, if you find this contradictory, well Nietzsche is an extremely contrary and frustrating writer. His writing is beautiful and prosaic, but he’s endlessly skeptical In one line he is saying something so profound and affirming, and the next line ascerbic and devastating. He flatters you, makes an airtight case for the flattery, then rips it to shreds; then he rips that to shreds and he is back to flattery. I’m sort of unconvinced that he even is a philosopher, but I love his writing and prose.
Right! I’m glad to see someone thinking critically about what hedonism to fundamentslly means, rather than relying on the more pejorative usage of the term.
I realised once that, even tho I was a drug free tee totaller who didn’t party or have sex much, I was still a hedonistic at that time because I played videogames as much as possible.
What would be considered hedonistic back then? Talking a walk in the woods and climbing mountains for pleasure?
Unironically, yes maybe. If it is seen as avoiding your responsibilities, and doesn’t contribute to some area of society (but rather sees-to the “worship” of you yourself) then it is hedonistic
Edit: other guy said it better than me
In the text it means any choice you make that sacrifices long term benefits for instant gratification. Nietzsche was way into promoting things that give you pleasure, just not at the cost of your health and prosperity
Obviously Hedonic Philosophy isn’t about that either but he wasn’t thinking of hedonism as a philosophy, he was describing a problem humans have with how we make choices
To a few philosophers, particularly the hardcore rationalists, Nietzsche’s struggle for self-ownership as meaning was, in modern terms, a truckload of copium
I can see the argument for that. It kind of fits the narrative of
“slave morality”. Can I read these philosophers statements? I kind of want to know what they’re aboutEdit: completely misspoke. Don’t know wtf I was talking about there
On the rationalist hub per excellence, LessWrong: lesswrong.com/posts/NxYgL5nPMT…
Criticism of Nietzsche has been out there for a good while. Bertrand Russell, for example, wasn’t a fan of Nietzsche, calling his ideology “an appeal to the emotions”: reddit.com/r/Nietzsche/comment…
Calling Nietzsche’s philosophy “irrationalist” is still a common trend: monthlyreview.org/articles/on-…
Even Marxists hammer on Nietzsche’s hardcore individualism: queer-bolshevik.medium.com/a-c…
The fact that I know about LessWrong because of Behind the Bastards should say a whole lot about how “moral” their “rationalism” really neither of those things and personally I feel like their thought predecessors would be pretty embarrassed by them
Yeah, rationalism has been twisted into individualism with a lot more steps. If they were truly rational (as in, considering our current knowledge of astrophysics and biology, the heat death of the universe and the origins of survival instinct), they would have probably ended up noticing that attempting to make things better for hypothetical future people is equally as worth(less) as making things better for the people of now - both are merely postponing the unavoidable.
It sounds completely irrational to seriously consider the heat death’s impact on anything when nothing will be alive to experience it, if you ask me
Britt Hartley takes existentialists to the woodshed, pointing out that it’s a fine philosophy if you’re living a comfortable life, but if nothing means anything and your life sucks, might as well put a quarter in the suicide booth if existential philosophy is all you have.
Is that a refutation? I admit, when I consider how my distant ancestors and the majority of humans throughout history lived, I wonder why they chose to go on, and to create new generations who also lived lives like theirs, and the only answer I have is that they lacked perspective. Maybe a philosophy that teaches one to refuse a life without dignity is, in that context, correct philosophy.
Lots more community. Relationships and physical play (e.g. sports, theater, art, ritual, dance etc.) were the primary form of entertainment. Brains were capable of enduring in silence for 10 minutes without exploding in anxiety. Plant medicines were socially acceptable including “drugs”.
Yeah there were diseases, famines, wars, etc. But these weren’t constant threats, often regional until empire developed with (inter)continental trade.
People had joy and fulfillment, a bit of boredom, and many lacked effective contraceptives, so kids happened.
Correct, but maladaptive and evolutionarily unfit…
If you want to be entertained, you can watch True Detective Season 1. Someone brought up Rust, already.
If you want to ruin your life in ten pages, the source is The Last Messiah by Zapffe.
Rust Cohle explains why pretty well I think. Instinct, it’s burned into enough of us that the few who come to that conclusion don’t have any effect. And I agree with his solution
The fact that, evolutionarily speaking, it’s easier to find lifeforms that have a strong survival instinct than lifeforms that question or reject it can be explained with two main reasons. First, assuming that evolution is performed by random adaptations that are then tested by the environment to see if they survive and their wielders reproduce, a lifeform that prioritizes a single task is more statistically probable to develop first than one that performs complex analysis of the environment and then chooses a reaction. Which is to say, dogmatic behavior developed long before critical thinking was even possible, and by the time the latter appeared, the survival instinct was already well baked into the very structure of the brain. Second, beings that prioritize survival tend to live longer than those that end up questioning the survival instinct, as the latter die more often for obvious reasons.
when the world starts to really collapse in a few years we wont have to wonder
people will be rationally offing themselves left and right
governments response will be to make suicide extra illegal lol
It’s sort of paradox that a government that is actively looking to liquidate its excess population would put the kabosh on suicide, but I think it would. Cruelty and control.
Existentialism is a response to essentialism though. It isn’t that life has no meaning but that people can be free to choose the meaning and path of their lives. An acorn can only become an oak tree but a person is not born with their future path preordained. The idea is existence before essence instead of essence before existence.
Yes, read Simone Beauvoir along with Sartre. Sartre is kind of a comically privileged white man. As you say people can be free to choose the path of their lives, but some more than others.
An acorn can only become an oak tree but a person is not born with their future path preordained
modern people love thinking this but most people never move even 50 miles from where they were born and the single largest indictor of ‘success’ in life is your parents income
for example being born in gaza or ukraine right now is pretty damn bleak
if it were my choice to be born there or not, i’d pass
Yes me too. But that same baby born in Gaza could be born 15 miles away and live an entirely different life. That is the whole point. The gazan child is not essentially a victim by virtue of being born in Gaza. The gazan child is likely to be a victim not because she has to be (is essential to her nature) but because someone has chosen to victimise her. What modern people miss is that that distinction was lacking for the first couple thousand years of philosophical thought.
You’re both correct, but the underlying point is it’s not guaranteed if you’re a human in Ukraine vs an acorn in the forest. HUGE difference, and only a clown would pretend they’re equivalent.
who’d actually choose to roll the dice?
there is nothing glorious about suffering and the human condition being what it is means very few will end with a charmed life
vastly more of existence has been and will be without me existing, I think i’d been fine skipping it entirely
Just quick short thoughts before I continue reading because I really thought these are immediately striking without further dissection:
Philosophy aside, the comment on LessWrong that said “Nietzsche is a great source of aphorisms, and may be able to trigger some Deep Thoughts in readers, but a lot of his writing seems more like a sort of performance art to me. At least on a superficial level, he’s much easier to read than Kant or Hegel, but that also means he does not even try to argue his point in a rigorous way”. Spot on, this is like the main barrier to his books. I see this as the first problem you’ll encounter before getting to how fascists twisted his words into justifications for doing fuck-all
Then, I REALLY like this Monthly Review article. This passage pointed out a perspective of the problem initially sounding like a misread about how “this is just doing barbarism but with extra steps” but actually pretty accurately describes how greater powers in the world will take almost anything we try to do and turn it into barbarism: The liberalization and deregulation of the most intimate sphere of the person will completely achieve the fetishism of the commodity. And the sole revolt which will from here on be permitted to the Nietzschean by power, when an irreducible part of his disarmed consciousness has, through misunderstanding, fomented some insurrection, will be total annihilation, bestiality towards the other animal which his masters will have brought into the neighbouring cage.
I still need to finish it and get to the Marxist critique but thank you for this
Philosophy aside, the comment on LessWrong that said “Nietzsche is a great source of aphorisms, and may be able to trigger some Deep Thoughts in readers, but a lot of his writing seems more like a sort of performance art to me. At least on a superficial level, he’s much easier to read than Kant or Hegel, but that also means he does not even try to argue his point in a rigorous way”.
Meh. If rigor were the path to the truth, wouldn’t we have the found the One True Philosophy? At the end of the day, all that matters is if the philosophy vibes with you, which you can discover just as well from a comic book version of the philosophy as painstakingly deriving every point.
I think thinking you’re using your rational mind to determine the capital-T Truth is delusional.
Yeah not so much that. It was kind of refreshing to read something where the author gives up on trying to preempt arguments against him early in the process of creating his work (exhausting, boring, and as time goes on inevitably futile).
I meant more that the prose is full of self-certain trueisms and has that superficiality to it. It doesn’t discount his points to me either, I’m often a vibes person myself. But it offloads a lot of the cognitive work of basically finishing his philosophy onto you as you’re reading it. I think that’s probably the deeper cause of most other problems people have with his philosophy, like how bad actors took and used it for nefarious shit. But, he was a lonely guy in a lot of pain who took to writing to manage it so that’s par for the course.
For all the good it does you. The public will ruthlessly interpret your work however it wants; look at Broicism (neé Stoicism) or Christianity.
Ooh, I have some opinions about Christianity’s potential to be used by bad actors. Honestly I feel pretty similar about it as I do Nietzsche but more like the architecture for doing evil has always been latent in the ideology for as long as it has existed sperate from Judaic and Gnostic faith.
I definitely would like to hear more about how exactly Broicism diverges from Stoicism though, if you have the time. You’re the first person I’ve heard say that it’s different.
Ty! All the criticisms I’ve heard I’ve only really absorbed through cultural osmosis so I want to read some hard stuff
yeah. didn’t he get turned down on a proposal, he had someone else make, and kinda get cucked? he was prob an incel of his time, huh?
The fun thing is that if the universe has no meaning then it has no meaning that it has no meaning so you might as well relax and be positive since that has many obvious benefits. Not that I’m a nihilist
Paganism is good though. Praise wilderness!
(my body is devoid of worldly power but I low-key agree because physically building personal meaning and protecting the wilderness trumps all)
First time? - Epicuros
Partly, he’s neither a nihilist nor that embraced by teenagers afaik.
He is considered more hedonist than he actually is, though.
Some author I read said that nihilism can only be temporary and then natural evolution will be towards stoicism/pragmatism. Later she argued that pragmatism isn’t so awesome either, but no concrete arguments were put forward. Quiet pragmatic
I don’t think nihilism and pragmatism are mutually exclusive
Having kids (one of whom is special needs) plucked me out of the nihilism well that I was drowning in. I’m so thankful for them. Now, I don’t even have time to think or contemplate life. lol
Nihilists can have, and love and care for, children.
It’s all about making your own meaning, and I imagine having kids is one way a lot of people do that.
True
If you accept that caring for the wellbeing of your kids is inherently meaningful then you must also accept there is meaning inherent in taking care of your own self :3
I love this. And this is precisely what I started doing. In my mind, the better I am the better they are, and that’s proven to be true. They’re everything in my world and I’m so freaking happy I decided to have kids, genuinely. My son is 13, and he’s entering that phase of “I’m a good dude and can be so much fun”. He and I are like best friends. We do almost everything together. He’s like the little brother I never had.
That’s awesome, I’m so glad to hear it! And beyond just your own family, people you may never directly hear from might see your perspective here and have their lives improved in turn, in whatever small way. There’s a certain momentum to it that we can all contribute to
only while the kids exist as you forced them into existence thereby incurring the responsibility
for a thought experiment, imagine you could see your entire life and decide to be born or not based in your mind at the point of death
what would be the point of living a ‘bad’ life?
I would personally have chosen No, and it’s a big reason why I’m not going to have a kid. Very grateful that my wife agrees
only while the kids exist as you forced them into existence
Many parents have the same realization about their adopted children. You could argue that both types of parents are delusional but the causality isn’t relevant
imagine you could see your entire life
The capacity for imagining your whole life presupposes that you have already begun living, silly :3 but okay. Why would this primordial spirit be interested in life at all if it’s optional? Is living your life inherently worth considering, or something?
choosing to take on the responsibility is the same imo
biological kid or not once you bring it home it’s then the same, feeling this for random strangers would be odd
acknowledging that a optional life would be skipped kinda is my point
Okay, so it is possible to find inherent meaning in lives you did not create. Yay!
For part 2, you’re ignoring my question.
Why would your thought experiment ghost even be considering life? Even before the point of knowing whether it would be “good or bad”. Why does it bother checking that at all?
Put another way: when some dumb loser asks if I want to invest in an NFT, I don’t even need to consider that. I know inherently that what I’m being offered is fundamentally without value to anyone.
The fact that you are evaluating your life at all in your thought experiment implies that the thing you are being offered has the potential to be valuable, yes?
Okay, so it is possible to find inherent meaning in lives you did not create. Yay!
except predication of choice makes it literally not inherent
neither does potential imply inherent either
it’s trivial to imagine simple real world examples that would make any positive aspect of living rather insufficient to the point where dying young and unexpectedly is almost a blessing among alternatives
if aggressive cancer, long lasting stroke or alzheimer’s is in my future let me die sooner in my sleep
to say nothing of famine, massive drought and war
if i knew i’d live to experience alzheimer’s let me never be born
except predication of choice makes it literally not inherent
Things aren’t any less meaningful just because you chose them. For example I’ve been playing the same guitar for over 20 years. That instrument is now inherently meaningful to me in a way that others are not. It’s inherently irreplaceable to me. You’ll find most musicians bond with their instrument in a similar way
neither does potential imply inherent either
Of course it does. Every time a guitar is destroyed on stage thousands of discussions break out about how upsetting and wasteful it is. How it could have been so meaningful to a child who wants to play but doesn’t have the means.
We see these things and we want to connect them with the people who their meaning will most benefit, precisely because they are inherently meaningful.
big list of horrible things
The question of whether or not you will experience extreme suffering is not relevant to the meaning your life possesses. The 5,000 people who were just swept away in Nepal have not had their lives rendered meaningless, regardless of whether or not they would have chosen not to be born if they knew that would be their fate
I’m sure they’ll be grateful for their chance to pick between being a soldier in the Water Wars, or maybe getting lucky enough to find a human job that pays in food and living accommodations.
Sorry to be that nihilist but I am so grateful for finding a partner that agrees that reproduction is wildly irresponsible to both the world, and that future being who you KNOW and cannot deny that existence will likely be worse for in basically the first time in human existence outside of the world wars and the Black Death.
If I were forced to switch places with a child today I would be pretty upset about the future I had been subject too. But they’re just so cute right? And all my friends are having them too!
Downvote away!
What you’re saying sounds more like doomerism to me than it is nihilism. It’ll get better. Hang in there ❤️
You’re the absolute worst and completely useless. Fuck off with your bullshit opinions and grow the fuck up.
Could you maybe put some effort into your response, explaining why you so strongly disagree with an opinion I’ve developed over a pretty long time? Because you’re the one that looks childish responding so emotionally
Oh ouch, my underdeveloped feelings
“That’s Cute.” -Machiavelli
Ooh. Very stigmatized ethos surrounding that one. Guess I need to find out what the heck happened there
The short version is that Machiavelli is a rather profound Stoic philosopher, but everyone misses that in a lot of his work he is being slightly sarcastic to throw the “powers that be” off the scent that he was criticizing them. When you hear how he suggests that “Princes should be feared rather than respected.” he actually calling out the despots of his day. It’s kind of how Stephen Colbert portrayed a right wing pundit on “The Colbert Report” as a way of satirizing right-wing pundits.
Oh, okay. Well with that summary I’m at least interested in reading more and trying to see if I can parse the satire. Thanks for pointing me in that direction
Edit: Jesus this is like way obvious after you read how his career in state politics ended. But we named a dark triad psychological trait after him. That’s so dirty
not a problem. Overly Sarcastic Productions has a wonderful series on YouTube for those looking to get into Machiavelli, and other stoic philosophers.
Sweet. Reading Wikipedia has got me a little unsure on how to interpret him. I’ll check that out next. Stoicism is kind of a personal bugbear of mine but now regardless I really want to know the truth of this guy