Nietzsche says, "there is no truth," but this is not a "true" statement; it has nothing to do with Reality as such. Rather, "There is no truth" is a healthful utterance--a therapy or cure, over and against a sickness, which is belief in truth.

As the lady in Coffee Talk says, "discuss!"

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), January 30, 2004

Answers

Neiche was arrogant, self-centred, and extremelyt mentally unstavle.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), January 30, 2004.

Hi Zarove,

Yes, I know that, and you know that. Problems with his unusual family upbringing, and then later on a syphilis-induced insanity--but that was after he had stopped writing books.

Of course, I don't support Nietzschianism as such (how could I? No human being could.) but nevertheless he had some thoughts which were necessary for philosophy to get where it is today--which is to say, to come full circle, and be in position to defend faith.

Consider this Parable of the Madman of his authorship. Nietzsche is invaluable to Christians, because he exposes the consequences of atheism. The repulsive thing is that he embraced them, albeit with a pathos that is appropriate to leaving the Lord.

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), January 30, 2004.

"Nietzsche says, ""Out of Chaos COMES Order"""

What is the NEXT line?

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), January 30, 2004.

As far as I know he didn't say there was not truth. He said truth was an illusion, like a dream (see: On Truth and Lie in an Extra- Moral Sense). Yet his declaration is also an illusion, by his definition ;)

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), January 30, 2004.

Frank,

I don't know. I've looked on the Web, but I haven't been able to find anything about "Out of chaos comes order." There is a line, however, from "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," which goes something like "You must have chaos in your heart in order to give birth to a dancing star." That had to do with Nietzsche's 'prophecy' that conventional "culture" would eventually turn into the "last men," who have no great projects, no principles, no lofty visions of the world; i.e., like a goatherd.

Bill,

You're right. However, Nitezche was aware of this. Our traditional idea of Truth is as the correspondence between thought and being. There are numerous problems with that definition, and Nietzsche's solution was to accept the definition but also all of its consequences: since we have no access to Being except through thought, then Truth is an illusion and a mistake of language.

In Nietzche's world, all of our thoughts are disconnected from Being (like you said--a dream). As a philologist, he had a theory of language: the human organism "creates" stability through language in order to survive. The stability is a deception, though, and the "Ubermensch" is the one who can live without the deception.

It actually makes a wicked sort of sense, but of course Nietzche was too presumptuous on numerous counts: how could self-deception possibly have a survival value? What accounts for our lack of absolute freedom, if there is no Being behind our thoughts?

But one thing is important to understand: Nietzche did not try to make "valid arguments." Nothing he says is the conclusion of a line of reasoning. Rather, his books are full of nothing but premises. He has a certain method, or a 'favorite fallacy' if you like: he begins his ideas with the words, "Suppose that...", i.e., "Suppose that all ideas of truth are based on a mistake of language." Again, this is not an argument. But Nietzsche was good at doing something: unabashedly spilling out the brutal consequences of a few innocuous ideas.

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), January 31, 2004.

since we have no access to Being except through thought, then Truth is an illusion and a mistake of language.

Being exists independent of thought therefore truth (that being exists) also exists independent of thought. The only other alternative that I can come up with would be that being does not exist independent of thought. In which case, a world without satient beings would not exist. In other words the Earth did not exist prior to men being on it, or a God creating it. We know that there was an earth before men (there is scientific proof of this), therefore there must be a God.

This is all pretty convoluted though. I suppose he would say everything is a dream. In that case you can do whatever you want since your perception of exisitance is as good as anyone elses. Unfortunately such a would could not exist since two people don't have the same perception of existance. Unless, like in the Matrix, something 'other' is in control.

-bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), January 31, 2004.

Bill,

Again, you're touching on something close to the real meaning of Nietzsche's thought. But you've also crossed the border into Modern Philosophy land, which is to ask the question: what in the heck do we really mean when we say "Being exists?" Is that even a complete thought? "Being be!" The central question of philosophy up until Hegel is: what is "Being" or "the thing in itself" behind what we perceive?

Do we perceive the tree, or do we perceive the mere perception of a tree? Yep, it's the Matrix.

• Descartes said God verifies the reliability of our senses. Spinoza said that everything we see is a part of God (panentheism).
• Leibniz said everything we see is the external form of mysterious monads--invisible things with no forms.
• Berkeley said that the essence of being is its perception-- nothing exists unless it is perceived, and "reality" is merely that which is perpetually perceived by God.
• Hume said there's nothing that can explain it and we're silly for trying to.
• Kant said that it is a universal human ability to format being into perceptible forms--time and space.

In that environment, it's not surprising some philosophers after Kant had really crazy ideas about Being. :)

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), January 31, 2004.

Anon,

Thanks for trying, but you were looking in the wrong place. It's actually a line from the Mel Brooks movie "Blazing Saddles". The next line is:

"Oh blow it out your (expletive), Howard".

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), January 31, 2004.

Anon, One thing I know about ontologists, they pretty much can talk themselves into just about anything ;)

I don't think you will find any truth there. It is pretty obvious those going before you haven't.

In Christ, Bill

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@hotmail.com), January 31, 2004.

Truth, no. :) However, it's good to understand them. There are lots of "bright spots" in recent philosophy. Cardinal Henry Newman is an excellent example. I'm focussing on William James now, who was a very good philospher of religion. Marcel was a Christian existentialist. Merleau-Ponty did good work in unifying the body and soul which were split by Descartes.

Existentialism is being replaced by phenomenology; positivism is being replaced by contextualism; everywhere right now, in contemporary philosophy, the old atheists are dying off and making room for philosophy's reconciliation before God.

IMO, the soil is rich for Christian philosophy. In the last couple of years, I've met numerous professors and philosophers who--Catholic or not--constantly emphasize the importance of tradition and traditional religion for human identity and society.

-- anon (ymous@God.bless), February 01, 2004.

"Existentialism is being replaced by phenomenology; positivism is being replaced by contextualism;"

Can you elaborate on this?

-- Emerald (emerald1@cox.net), February 01, 2004.

IMO, the soil is rich for Christian philosophy. In the last couple of years, I've met numerous professors and philosophers who-- Catholic or not--constantly emphasize the importance of tradition and traditional religion for human identity and society.

Good, have them read Thomas Aquinas :) It is time to get back to basics.

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45@Hotmail.com), February 01, 2004.

Hi greenman, you know Im no philosopher- a jack of all trades but master of none. I just love to learn new things so these terms do ring a bell but its all a bit cloudy, heres my take anyway....

"Existentialism is being replaced by phenomenology";

Buggered if I know for sure but Im guessing anon is getting at rather than just saying "I exist" phenomenology is trying to describe that existence. Id like an elaboration as well.

"positivism is being replaced by contextualism"

Being a fan of Popper, postivism is all about ignoring the metaphysical because it cant be falsified. But this approach has been challenged by contextualism.

I quite likr Popper as he speaks in laymans terms and i struggle with some philopsphy writing, pedantic wordgames but Popper seems so real to me. I like to defend falsification as to me it can be adapted to actually support the Catholic faith/reason demarcation as you will see Paul M do often.

ANyway heres a reply from someone to me when I asked a question on the weaknesess of Popper and while I didnt realise it at the time it must be contextualism anon talks of. "Thus any statement is credible for each of us only in the context of some general assumption on the nature of the world and on the credibility of theories and information. We even may fall victim to delusions and errors and misunderstandings. Normally we can clarify these from other evidence. Thus you know that the actions on the screen in the cinema are not "real" since you take into account the fact that you are sitting in a cinema. This is confirmed by the rows of seats and the room and other visitors sitting there etc.. But without such references you may be unsure of what to think of the true nature of "evidence". And this is the main objection to Popper's program: Since we all judge evidences in some context and against some background of assumptions and expectations there often is a situation in which a claim cannot simply be proven or disproven by some single "falsifying" evidence as in the case of Einstein's prediction. Thus the concept of falsifiability is important, but it is not the simple separator of truth from error and lies that it seems to be on first sight."

Basically I think anon may be saying dont trust science/deductive reasoning as much as we are being lead to or at least implying that philosophies questioning of this demarcation will allow philosophy to examine more closely Christian theology as under postivism/ existentialism God doesnt enter the equation.

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), February 02, 2004.