Gadianton wrote: ↑Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:09 am
But I'm curious, what was it that stopped you from being allowed to comment on the blog? Your comments were substantial and you even referred to the apologists as "Dr.", as they demand. What happened?
My last
public comment was on a post about moral relativism and ethical nihilism. For convenience I'll reproduce it here so anyone interested doesn't have to navigate DISQUIS:
SeerOfProvo wrote:I can certainly see how one can look at this paragraph and see Darwinian influence:
“Suppose we measure pity by the value of the reactions it usually produces; then its perilous nature appears even brighter light. Quite in general, pity crosses the law of development, which is the law of selection. It preserves what is ripe for destruction; it defends those who have been disinherited and condemned by life; and by the abundance of the failures of all kinds which it keeps alive, it gives life itself a gloomy and questionable aspect.” (Section 7)
However I feel the context of previous passages rules out such a reading. Let me start with the last sentence in Section 2 as frame:
“What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity.”
So we know from above Nietzsche follows Aristotle in his understanding of pity, believes it has deleterious effect on humanity and then accuses Christianity of turning pity into a supreme virtue. Now how Nietzsche understands pity and his accusations towards Christianity are certainly debatable, but I think we would both agree that Nietzsche is basically asserting that Christianity damages people by encouraging acts and practices that weaken the individual or otherwise harms them.
Now the very next sentence begins section 3 and has some interesting implications:
“The problem I thus pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the sequence of living beings (man is an end), but what type of man shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in value, worthier of life, more certain of a future.”
Notice here that Nietzsche not only signals he isn’t going to discuss what will come after humanity, indeed he even states that humanity is an end. If Nietzsche was invoking the spirit of Darwin’s work during the composition of ‘The Antichrist’ then he is choosing words that cut right across the grain of it. This continues at the very beginning of section 4:
“Mankind does not represent a development toward something better or stronger or higher in the sense accepted today. “Progress” is merely a modern idea, that is, a false idea. The European of today is vastly inferior in value to the European of the Renaissance: further development is altogether not according to any necessity in the direction of elevation, enhancement, or strength.”
Now I can’t help but read that passage and see it as a stark denial of social darwinism and even positivism. Nietzsche outright rejects modern notions of progress; instead of looking to the future and excitedly telling us what could be, he keeps grabbing us by the shoulders to spin us around to point out what humanity once was. Yet the most revealing portion (to me anyways) is that he speaks of a “development” that lacks “necessity” in direction, which is a near complete inversion of “survival of the fittest”.
So in light of the broader context, I’m not sure how this law of development/selection has any distinct Darwinian features to it.
The following post which was composed and posted briefly before the one above flickered into and out of existence by being labeled as spam. Sometimes it shows up and other times it is gone, I brought it to the attention of Dr. Peterson who asked me to repost it. I did and it was also labeled spam:
SeerOfProvo wrote:The apologist I spoke of is you Dr. Peterson and I think you’ve adopted a certain strategy in the development of the Moral Argument that leaves you vulnerable to counter-attack. Fundamentally I think your instincts to include and discuss Nietzsche are ultimately correct, but I would suggest a different deployment than what you have opted for in this post.
To be succinct; I think your characterization of Nietzsche is one that only exists in the industry of Christian Apologetics and that portrayal is one consistently rejected by contemporary philosophers who have made a study of Nietzsche’s writings (both Christian and Atheist alike). This not only leads to easy refutation but you also miss out on the fruitful opportunity to engage Nietzsche from the singular perspective of an intellectual Latter Day Saint.
Your choice of utilizing the text ‘The Antichrist’ for the elucidation of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is going to make informed readers suspicious of your intentions and of your methods. It is often viewed as one of Nietzsche’s poorest works where the author often goes overboard in his rhetoric. Consider this assessment:
“Philosophically, his uncritical use of terms like life, nature, and decadence greatly weakens his case. Historically, he is often ignorant: the two Hebrew words he sticks in for effect do not make sense, and his conception of Jesus—to mention a more important matter—is quite unconvincing, though no more so than most such portraits. That the book is meant to be shockingly blasphemous scarcely needs saying.
Like Nietzsche’s first essay, ‘The Birth of Tragedy’, ‘The Antichrist’ is unscholarly and so full of faults that only a pedant could have any wish to catalogue them.” (Editor’s Preface to the ‘Antichrist’ taken from ‘The Portable Nietzsche’).
These are the words of no less than Walter Kaufmann, the man primarily responsible for bringing Nietzsche to an English reading audience and the first to comprehensively demonstrate Nietzsche was no forerunner of fascism.
A better text for your project here would be the ‘Genealogy of Morals’ because not only are those essays already assumed by Nietzsche in ‘The Antichrist’, the ‘Genealogy’ provides a more robust account of his views on morality. A careful look there would ensure one does make the mistake Frithjof Bergmann (a student of Kaufmann’s) talks about here:
“It is sickening and dismaying, but many still imagine that Nietzsche’s central message was a sermon in praise of ruthlessness...That distortion of Nietzsche may give some adolescent emotions a quick flaring rush, yet it may also be a devious tactic, for nothing makes it easier to dismiss Nietzsche than to first transform him into a crude boor. All the same, it is a travesty.” (Taken from Bergmann’s ‘Nietzsche’s Critique of Morality’).
As of now, any post gets labeled as spam. I am in the dark if this is intentional or not, but I assumed it was a sign I should shuffle on.
