I can always trust you CLA, to add proportion to any argument. Thank you. I appreciate your questions, though I must admit, I'm no scholar of Nietszche either. Just someone who has read a couple books and developed an appreciation.
"What do you think of his virulently anti-Christian stance?"
I hope you don't regret asking this, because I can tell already, my answer is going to be longer than you would probably care to read.
I think had he been able to discuss the Christianity with bliblical scholars similar to those whom I grew up around, he might not have been so 'virulently anti-Christian.' His struggle with religion was intensely personal, and because he was critically objective, he understood immediately that the church was often used as a politica and social tool, and often times things associated with it were anything but religious in origin. Rougly 90% really.
At the age of twenty, he wrote a poem to "the unknown God:" "I want to know you -- even to serve you." Only 25 years old, he was appointed professor in philology at the University of Basel. Ambitious, intellegent, calculating and critical, is it any surprise he had difficulty embracing a religion which seemed self serving, hypocritical, irrational and emotional based? I think it was that very lack of religion which resulted in his skewed perspective, and eventually led him into mad, if wonderfully genius, lines of though.
Not to get far afield, but it directly lead to Nietzsche’s belief in the transvaluation of all values. The very notion is, of course, impossible, as the only set of circumstances which could make it possible cannot logically exist with contradicting the very thesis it itself supports. Even if it did, transvaluating values would still be meaningless, and much worse pointless, since it would be an illusion.
I had to take my Nietzsche books back to the library some weeks ago, so I'm referencing the text A History of Philosophy, Vol. VII by Frederick Copleston though the words were Nietzsche's own.
Master morality, or aristocratic, is the morality of the noble, of the strong. "For the masters, the good is the noble, the strong, the powerful" "the epithets are applied to men rather than to actions." Slave, or democratic, morality, by contrast, "is a morality common to those people who are weak willed, uncertain of themselves, oppressed, and abused. The essence of slave morality is utility." In slave morality, "(q)ualities such as sympathy, kindness and humility are extolled as virtues." Nietzsche termed slave morality "herd morality," because its "moral valuations are expressions of the needs of a herd." When the "herd," then, starts imposing its own slave values on others, i.e. on the masters, an illusion is created which makes us believe that the herd values are universal and objective moral principles. Now, had he been a Christian, these words would certainly never have been uttered, as close to the truth as they come.
I don't necessarily agree with everything he is saying, but I do see the corrolation between Slave and Master as correct and consistant with reality. The slave provides the means by which the master survives, just as the people are the source of any governments power. The master must therefore protect and meet the needs of his slave in order to ensure his own survival. The government also, must pander to the desires of the people or else it lies in danger of being pronounced illigitimate and being put down. This ties, very directly, into the line of thinking which inspired our Revolutionary War.
The American Revolution was a war of ideas. The new nation which declared itself independent in 1776 was founded upon the "natural rights" philosophy Locke. Following the ideas and values embedded in the Declaration of Independence, America went to war to defend the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the property -the last later being ammended to 'pursuit of happiness'- and that all men were created equal. Underlying this theory of natural rights was the contract theory of government that postulated that government was a voluntary agreement between a ruler and the people and that when the ruler violated that contract the people had the right of revolution.
"What do you think of postmodernist/poststructuralist theorists, e.g. Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard?"
Now here I can be brief since I think very little of them. My passion is politics, not philosophy. There are certain philosophical theories I ascribe to, such as existentialism, but my interest in philosophy is directly related to political implimentation. I'm sorry, but I'm fairly two dimensional in this regard. I go through information, with no mind to its intended point, and evaluate it based solely upon its usefulness to my area of interest. If it refutes something I have come to believe, I give it all due diligence, even more than if it justifies my ideologies.
I like Foucault’s histories, which were inspired by Nietzsche’s anti-idealism, and endeavour to avoid ‘projecting "meaning" into history’. Unlike modern sociologists, I do not believe objectivity is an impossibility, and therefore I believe that even if ultimately unattainable (giving such proponants ofthat fraudulent science the benefit of the doubt), it is to our benefit to at least make the attempt. Derrida was a insignificant and uninsightful, his fundamental criticism of Western Philosophy is that it privileges or favors "lagos," literally meaning "words" but implying rhetoric. He underestimates the profoundity inherent in actions motivated by abstract concepts, and I consider him a fool, if a brilliant and very persuasive one. The only difference between rhetoric and action is that words have the ability to subdue a rival through his cognitive abilities and actions can only do so through the affecting their life, possessions or property. Lyotard concerned himself with the changing nature of knowledge in late capitalist societies, without realizing that that this was only one facet, and the smallest, of western societies. Therefore, like Nietzsche, his work suffers from a lack perspective also.
I suppose, that since they and I all started with Nietsche and ended up travelling largely seperate paths, that gives some relevance to the transvulation of values theory, but I still don't buy it
Hybrid Mode
