Yesterday, The Other Philip, Mr. Greenspun, tries to answer the question "what is the point of blogging" and mentions Nietzsche, Everyone can write like Nietzsche or a Marcus Aurelius, even if few people ever come up with enough clever small ideas to fill a 200-page book. This was just a few days after I made a similar inuendo How can these stodgy professors compete who only know continental philosophy with a specialty in Hume and Nietzsche when the blogosphere is churning out mini-Nietzsches everyday? (link)

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From Nietzsche, the best moment of practical philosophy, or rather, practical psychology, was in his discussion of free will. I can't remember where, but he says that there is no free will just as there is no unfree will. There are only weak and strong wills. And a strong will involves a sort of unification of the individual wills within us toward a singular, endorsed objective. This makes tremendous sense and is a good key to achieving happiness, fulfillment, consistency, etc. But, of course, a commons sense guide could have led you there without all the philosophical broo-hah....saying something like, "in everything we do, part of us wants to do it, another part doesn't, so the trick is getting everybody on board." Yay simple thinking.

From Sartre, my favorite moment of practical psychology comes when he discusses action and how actions retroactively determine for us what we think is right. If you want to know what you really want in life, all you have to do is look at what you actually chose to do. For you only let the strongest urges within you win, what reason is there to not endorse everything you do? The practical part is that it gives an argument for not worrying about what you do before you do it for you'll do what is best anyways. My counter-argument is that our "endorsement" will is a separate will outside of what we actually do. i.e. I may end up over-drinking, but I wouldn't be proud of my actions, and as a result, I'd be unhappy about that decision. Sartre would then argue well, your passion for drinking was stronger and by its strength, you chose to drink. Sure, one could say that on a technical level but that's not how we really work. We have guilt and regret and we don't find that everything we do is particularly great. Our sense of "great" does not line up exactly with doing what our emotions bubble up to choose what is great. Also, what if our will to regret is also strong and enforces itself over the desire to believe Sartre? Some people don't have this guilt and they permit everything within them. I presume that these people have a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction. Well, good for them, but I don't think that's the way I'm going to play the game.

There are two three common conceptions of Nietzsche:

1) Nietzsche based his ideas on false assumptions. He just spat random speculations off the top of his insane head.

2) Nietzsche is sooo right. He is a genius and says what everybody knows is true, but is afraid to admit

3) Who the heck is Nietzsche? He's just another darned anti-morality philospher.

I have a separate conception. My conception of Nietzsche is that he was driven by a singular objective, the desire to bare all.

Work and artist.--This artist is ambitious, nothing more. Ultimately, his work is merely a magnifying glass that he offers everybody who looks his way.

(Nietzsche)

From somewhere in Nietzsche: The thing people can't stand more than a bad conscience is a bad reputation.

Thus spoke Nietzsche in the Gay Science, Book III Verse 143:
The greatest advantage of polytheism.— For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own law, joys, and rights—that may well have been considered hitherto as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself; the few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to themselves, usually by saying: "Not I! Not I! But a god through me!" The wonderful art and gift of creating gods—polytheism—was the medium through which this impulse could discharge, purifiy, perfect, and ennoble itself: for originally it was a very undistinguished impulse, related to stubbornness, disobedience and envy. Hostility against this impulse to have an ideal of one's own was formerly the central law of all morality. There was only one norm: "man"—and every people thought that it possessed this one ultimate norm. But above and outside, in some distant overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms: one god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy against him! Here the luxury of individuals was first permitted, here one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen of all kinds, as well as near-men and undermen, of dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons and devils was the inestimable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods one eventually also granted to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, on the other hand, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type— the faith in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods [falsche Lügengötter]—was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity: it threatened us with the premature stagnation that, as far as we can see, most other species have long reached; for all of them believe in one normal type [Ein Normalthier] and ideal for their species, and they have translated the morality of mores definitively into their own flesh and blood. [See 43.] In polytheism the free-spiriting and many-spiriting of man obtained its first preliminary form: the strength to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are even more are own: hence man alone among all the animals has no eternal horizons and perspectives. (url)

Björn's Guide To Philosophy - Nietzsche In 1889 Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin, unable to bear the sight of a horse being flogged, and for the remaining years of his life was clinically insan

Philosophers are just artists + historians. All they do is reflect the current diseases of society combined with the intellectuals' suggested cures. Kierkegaard illustrated the enslavement of Christianity and the suggestion that we intellectualize theology to deal with the holes. Nietzsche illustrated the twilight of Christianity and the suggestion that we should throw out morality at the same time, just for kicks and giggles. Sartre illustrated the anguish of the World Wars and suggested we withdraw to some abstract nonthingnesses about free will to liberate ourselves. So then what do I, a philosophist, not a philosopher, illustrate? I think I illustrate the current frustration that philosophy is nothing compared to science's leadership in the public consciousness. All philosophies and religions are meaningless when it comes to the day-to-day necessities and real exploding dynamic of life. My suggestion is then to throw out philosophy and embrace playful thought... this is, after all, the twilight of man and shouldn't we enjoy it?

Wow, what a way to glorify frivolous fun.

Nietzsche's New Year's resolution is one of my favorite verses in the Gay Science:

For the New Year.— I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum [I am, therefore I think: I think, therefore I am.]. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year—what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of all my life henceforth! I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things:—then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati [Love of fate.]: let that be my love from henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation! And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer! (Kaufmann, 233)

This goes back to a verse in the Bible (Luke I think) which says, "Thank God in everything." The emphasis is on everything which includes chocolate, sex, and Saddam Hussein.

In a theorotecial sense, this does make sense. There's the whole idea that rejecting one part of existence rejects entire existence because everything is all chained up in a intimately connected network of causation. There's also the religion argument that God made everything, even Satan, and since everything God makes is done for a reason, there must be a good in all.

But there's even a psychologically practical justification. if you completly write something off as bad, you reduce the number of positive features you will glean from it to zero. At least if you say yes to everything first, you will always reap a non-zero amount of positivity.

"Oh but Phil, I don't want to be evil. I don't want to sponsor the wrong!"

Please, at least give it a shot before writing it off, that is, after all, the point.

Isn't optimism worth the hassle?

Syn-chro-f'ing-nicity. That's today's tmesis. It's in reference to my previous post and how I coincidentally JUST read about thought origins in Nietzsche. In Book III of the Great Procipher's Lexis the Gay Science, he talks about the Origin of Knowledge and the Origin of Logic. It's almost like my current odyssey through his lexis arranged my neurons to match Nietzsche's state of mind. After our heads were synchronized, our neural networks worked in parallel and then ran into similar subsequent thinking. That's how I'm guessing synchronicity may work. Now imagine that this pattern multiplies out and that my discussions with people set their brains the same way and that they too also start to think the same thing. Or by me posting this on my blog and a hundred people reading about it, having similar thoughts, and then jumping to the next thoughts, further propagating it to their blogs or friends, we can see how the large groups of people can have synchronous thought. Synchronous thought becomes synchronous religion, ad infinitum, yada yada yada....

What would Nietzsche Drive?