See the details in the Announcement box, on the right. Here is the abstract for Rutherford’s talk:
“Nietzsche’s writings offer pointed challenges to received views in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics. One question that is too infrequently raised, however, is how Nietzsche conceives of the activity of philosophy itself. What is the overall goal of philosophy? What does it mean to think and live as a philosopher? I canvass a range of answers to these questions, and argue for the distinctive answers that I believe Nietzsche gives to them. I conclude by describing what I see as the significance of these answers for Nietzsche’s principal philosophical project: the revaluation of all values.”
All are welcome to attend!
Good evening, Professor Huenemanniac.
Indeed, Nietzsche wants the “reevaluation of all values” … with the individual as the ultimate ground. All other grounds are recklessly tossed aside. Nietzsche denies (Descartes just sets aside) that “I” has a parentage (DNA), an inherited history, and a milieu of relations. These are the ground from which we arise. Nietzsche is bravely (insanely) standing alone with a refusal to admit any of his obvious grounds at all. Indeed, he stands self-suspended above the void … with self as ground for self.
“I am my own ground” is flawed from start to finish. “I” do not determine myself. I was given various ‘grounds’ to begin from. “I” can reevaluate all values give to me, but only from my inherited grounds as a starting place, then I can add to my cultural, historical, and relation milieu. But I must begin with what I have received, which is probably most of who I am. Nietzsche wants to burn all these grounds (and the sky) to nothingness except the fabled ground of ‘self’. Nietzsche’s radical denial of all but the groundless self leaves him suspended in the void. His lion ripes the inherited ground and then turns into a baby for a new beginning, but an uberman never evolves from the baby … only a madman. Nietzsche’s project fails when he begins to imagine the uberman. Nz cannot discover who the uberman is and instead returns to exaggerated lashing of the grounds he has already thrown aside.
(As you can tell, I have been reading Heidegger…but I will resist converting to total Heidegger-speak.)
Those who see Nietzsche as heroic give misguided praise to a modern Icarsus. He found only madness. Alas, Nietzsche’s philosophy in the hands of an evil men would probably even offend Nietzsche.
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition… If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascist attitudes and activity… From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it will all the energy of which he is capable. ”
Benito Mussolini
Perhaps there are better ways to ‘reevaluate all values’ than to first rip apart inherited grounding (the lion). Accepting parentage, history, others, self, and a possible Logos as having input into the reevaluation probably demonstrates wisdom and sanity.
Wholistic approach that blends God, facts, feelings, and thinking as a theistic scientific feeling rationalist.
Hi, Vince! I’d say you’re part wrong and part right about Nz. First, you’re wrong that he holds the individual up in a kind of privileged spot. On the contrary! He most ruthlessly explores and uncovers all the cultural, biological, and psychological forces that go into constituting the self. Indeed, he even denies the existence of the self, calling it a mere artifact of grammar. What he puts in its place is a tangled ball of various drives, each trying to gain control of the whole complex so that it can have its way.
But you’re right that, in the end, he thinks it is up to this “artifact of grammar” to impose values upon the world, and your quote from Mussolini does indeed sound like a scary Nzean echo. How can this “ball of snakes” declare there to be values without those values ending up as arbitrary as a fascist’s? Sometimes, I think, Nz tries to bring in “Life” as a kind of deus-ex-machina to solve this problem: the “right” values are the ones that promote Life, the wrong ones are sick. (My essay on “Valuing from life’s perspective” describes how this works.) But other times Nz seems perfectly content to let the relativistic winds blow, and he seems acutely conscious that the consequence of his view will be wanton cruelty. So, in the end, I think you are right to find the view at least worrisome, and maybe loathsome. (As Kleiner says about me: I walk with Nz up to the end, and then I blink!)
Ah yes. In my whipped up frenzy I was forgetting of Nz’s hope for ‘life’ as a guide … which perhaps inspires Schweitzer’s ‘reverence for life’.
It is a problem that Nz can inspire Mussolini and Schweitzer. It is the same problem for Jesus, who inspires the Franciscans and the Inquisition.
[...] an earlier context to one of Hitler’s own, personal hero’s, Friedrich Nietzsche (1, 2, 3, 4). He developed a concept of “man and uberman”, or superman (overman, really) that [...]