Back to Stoicism

Well, I finished Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Frankly, I'm glad. There wasn't anything comment-worthy over the last few nights of reading, and now I can move on to bigger and better things. The editor thoughtfully included some critical reviews of Nietzsche in the back of the book - I'm comforted with how many others also agree that there are better philosophers out there. It is not that Nietzsche doesn't have good ideas, it's just that I think his presentation is ineffective.

I ordered six new books , two of which should arrive as early as tomorrow, so I can start on them after I get through Descartes, which has been waiting patiently on my nightstand. I ordered Schopenhauer's Essays, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, all 4 volumes of The Discourses by Epictetus, and a commentary on stoicism. I am quite looking forward to getting back to stoicism - the commentary will perhaps be the first that I pick up.

As I continue to learn Portuguese, though already and perhaps unfortunately I am focusing more on vocabulary and grammar, I am vexed by the thought that I didn't pay Russian enough attention. Perhaps I could develop it more - but do I really have time for two languages? I am barely making progress in Portuguese. At the moment I think all I can try for is to pay a little closer attention to the Russian I expose myself to everyday. If only I had learned to listen, it would be so much easier to maintain...

On Nihilism

"Behold, you are the teacher of the eternal return, - that is now your destiny. ... Behold, we know what you teach: that all things eternally return and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times, and all things with us." - Nietzsche

Everything has been done before. My life has no inherent meaning; what I do has always been done before, even if not in my unique order and combination. What is my purpose then, my reason for being? I suppose this is nihilism. He doesn't write very positively about it either. Sartre's existentialism also teaches the lack of a priori meaning to life, but he then develops an argument for developing our own complete set of values by which to define ourselves. Nietzsche doesn't look as constructively to the problem - instead, it is a depressing resignation that we have been preceded and will be succeeded, at least in a general sense.

My confusion with him is this. It would seem that he looks upon humanity as a means to achieving the Ubermensch. If i read it correctly, the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wants the common man to break his back in order to develop humanity further. Contentment with the absence of pain is a poison which makes us complacent, and unwilling to continue our labors. Well, with this viewpoint, it seems to me every man does have a unique, significant meaning in achieving the Ubermensch. Even if it is true that what I do has been done before, and will be done afterwards, I can still be comforted by the fact that I played a non-trivial part in inching the progress bar towards completion, towards the Ubermensch.

But then, what happens when the higher man arrives? Does our work then stop? Does the meaning of my life hinge retroactively on the achievement of the Ubermensch? These are big questions that I feel Nietzsche does not adequately address. Granted, I have read only a small minority of his works, but I expected a more coherent version of nihilism. 

Look to the Future

"O my brothers, your nobility shall not gaze backward, but outward! You shall be exiles from all father- and forefather-lands! You shall love your children's land: let this love be your new nobility, - the undiscovered country in the remotest seas! For it I bid your sails and search!"


What should be our balance between past and future? Today's SMBC comic joked that we study history to avoid repeating our mistakes - but if we avoid our mistakes, is not the study of history then pointless in retrospect? Nietzsche now makes a related accusation, that our past is meaningless and in fact it is only our future that we should matter. After the passage above, he goes so far as to quip that we should apologize to our children for being our fathers' children. Perhaps a bit dramatic, but is there something to this?

Seems to me that Nietzsche was an existentialist. Far from being a nihilist, he certainly had values, and his Ubermensch is a lofty goal. Although he does not have a defining, a priori set of values for us, it seems clear that Nietzsche does believe in a purpose, in a unifying effort to improve our lot. How can this be nihilism then? Sartre would be proud.

And so, what is the value of our past? I agree somewhat, that the past is of little consequence, and may be a hindrance. The fact that we respect tradition and history often make a response to changing times slow. The 'old guard' isn't always right, and perhaps we should apologize for being our fathers' children. And embracing the land of our children, our future-land, would alleviate much of the overt nationalism and xenophobia that influence Nietzsche in his day. However, I would not go so far as to forget history altogether. We cannot always be in a state of flux, of changing loyalties and values. I unfortunately have nothing else definitive to say on this matter.

Moderation is but Mediocrity

"They have become small and are becoming smaller - but that is due to their doctrine of happiness and virtue. For they are modest even in virtue - because they want comfort. But only a modest virtue is compatible with comfort." - Nietzsche


Murchie's book is not strictly philosophy. Not in the airy, ethics and logic sense. But philosophy used to also include metaphysics - the study of what things are. And that is this book in a nutshell. A broad overview, at least in the first two chapters, of life on Earth in all its forms. It's the type of book I could give to a child and say 'This is all you need to know about the natural sciences.' So while it may not be modern philosophy, it is valuable.

Portuguese is going well tambem. 200 known words so far, and I'm trying to spend a greater amount of time with listening and speaking than I did with Russian. Hopefully that will help gel my understanding as well as my motivation to continue studying it. I was unsuccessful in finding a good Portuguese equivalent of RIA Novosti's twitter feed - a simple 300 post per week newsfeed. The closest I found was oGlobo, but that was about 3000 posts per week. I'll have to find a substitute.

On Redemption

That's the title of one of Zarathustra's speeches, I liked it quite a bit. Finished Part 2 tonight as well.

It was an inverse cripple, who had too little of everything, and too much of one thing.


Nietzsche is commenting on people who are 'inverse cripples', those who instead of lacking something, instead have an excess of something. He uses the grotesque example of a learned man who is, in his eyes, a giant ear supported only by a stalk - the stalk being the man and his soul. This is a rather unorthodox way of looking at those around me - if I could represent them by overabundances and shortages of something. Certainly many people have giant eyes and mouths and bellies, supported by very little. Who among us is truly balanced? We often look at a 'cripple' as if they were lacking something. The hunchback that the chapter mentions lacks a straight and normal spine. But are they any worse off than a fully healthy individual? If a person chooses to neglect their intellect and instead watches TV all day, are they not pitiable? If a person neglects his modesty, or his virtue, or his temperance; is he too any less a cripple?

Punishment is what revenge calls itself.


Also thought-provoking. The second half of the chapter revolves around this topic. We exercise our will to power to address 'it was', rather than 'it will be'. I think this is one of our greatest shortcomings. The 'it was' cannot be corrected; only the 'it will be' may be changed. Until we use our will to power for a purpose above reconciliation, I am not sure what that will to power is good for. 

New language?

I have restarted learning Portuguese on LingQ. We will see if it takes hold this time like Russian did, or falls by the wayside like Latin or Hawaiian or Korean. I probably need to get a critical mass of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation and then add a few Portuguese news sources to my feed to keep me honest. I could see myself understanding a good amount in a month or two, if I work at it.

I am contemplating writing a book, well, more like a short story. Modeled on The Time Machine, which I read this past Sunday. Something sweet, to the point, and that gives me adequate creative license.

I only got around to reading Nietzsche tonight. He railed against poets and, through volcanoes, great events. Both were though-provoking. I get the impression I would get a lot out of reading this book multiple times, but I simply haven't the time for that this early in my philosophical journey.

Thus Wrote Nietzsche

Well, I did start reading Nietzsche again. And I have to say, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is better than I expected. There is much of value in the book, and perhaps I will read more by Nietzsche after this.

The Prologue, basically just the first chapter of the book, is certainly thought-provoking. The Ubermensch (umlaut over the U) are the end-goal of humanity, it seems. Though we will never reach it. Humanity will instead become content with being content; happy with the artifical happiness of removing pain from life. I think this is true. True when Nietzsche wrote it, and even truer now. Though I did not tie the two together a priori, I read The Time Machine last night, or rather, reread. The Eloi are perfect examples of the alternative to the Ubermensch. They live with no aspirations or goals, only ambivalently as cattle for the Morloks. In a figurative sense, can many people today be said to be all that much different? As I read today, Nietzsche supports inequality and war as a method of spurring development and progress towards the Ubermensch. This is certainly unconventional, but I would say it is the only way. As H.G. Wells wrote in explaining the Eloi, humanity only adapts and progresses when confronted with something that our instincts and habits cannot overcome. If all the world were equal and provided for, equal in a philosophical sense, then I can see why the impetus for progress would vanish. 

After the Prologue, the book is written in small, two-page 'speeches' given by Zarathustra to no one in particular. I read two today that stood out. First, pity is a great cause of shame and vengefulness. Accepting kindness and giving kindness results in a sort of moral inequality, which is not rectified as easily as exchanging money or services. I am not sure pity lead to the death of God, as Nietzsche puts it, but I can agree that pity itself is destructive. The other lesson was that virtue is quite hard to identify. Not only is virtue unrewardable and unpunishable, but more importantly everyone has their own concept of it. In accordance with Nietzsche's disdain for dogma, he doesn't give a good definition of 'virtue', at least not in the Aurelian sense. I'm afraid he wouldn't much care for stoicism.

After On Certainty will come The Seven Mysteries of Life, by Guy Murchie. It's an impressively large 650ish page tome, though dust-free. It's somewhat of a hybrid of natural science and philosophy - it looks complex but also very readable and digestible. 

Existentialism?

Been a while since I posted, I guess. Reading Essays on Existentialism now, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Just as depressing as Nietzsche, but a little more useful. The central tenet so far is that life is what we make it. Existence precedes essence. Man lives his life without anything being decided a priori, so we are free to do whatever we like. In doing things, we implicitly value them, and not only for ourselves but for all of humanity. This is the cause of anguish and despair. That's the real short summary of existentialism.

I think this is a more optimistic and useful philosophy than that of Nietzsche's. True, there are no rigid a priori rules or values. I don't agree with this, and despite Sartre's claim that existentialism can be fully reconciled with religion, I don't see how. There are not even any existentialist reasonings that attempt to persuade man to be kind  to others. It's a useful personal philosophy, in that man is defined by what he does and not what he is merely capable of, but further than that it's downright dangerous. But the insistence on personal responsibility is certainly positive.

Apart from philosophy, I'm now 95 episodes or so into the History of Rome podcast. With each of the 170 or so podcasts being 20-25 minutes long, I figure the whole series is roughly equivalent to a 3 or 4 credit hour class in college. Pretty interesting, though. I'm up through the 12th emperor, Antoninus. Might re-listen after I finish, or perhaps find a different historical podcast. It fits in well with my commute.

Utility

Finished Utilitarianism this morning, I found it a very agreeable take on things and I support Mill's disinterested view of the merit of happiness. His morality is very much subjective, and I like that; perhaps it is even a little too subjective. To begin with, he concludes that happiness is the end of man (end meaning goal) and everything else is but a means to that end. I think this is useful so far as it pertains to the temporal state of man, but when religion is taken into account then happiness is not the true aim anymore. Mill tries to get around this by saying a benevolent God would wish his creatures to be happy, but I'm not sure this is really true. Certainly, happiness is a positive quality in humanity, but virtue must also have a place. For example, perhaps everyone could be made more happy (total happiness increases) if religion were abolished, and hence religiously-inspired strife also ended. But I don't think many people would see this as a good at all. Later in the book, Mill discusses justice, and rights. I have yet to understand his take on how the two meet - what if total happiness could be increased by the seizure of a few rights?

There's an interesting comparison of virtue to money, in terms of their utility. Money is a means to an end, a means to fulfill our pleasures and desires. However, money is often seen as an end in itself; but this is not entirely a bad thing. If money is a source of happiness, instead of a means to it, then the ultimate end of happiness is still achievable, and perhaps moreso. Virtue can be seen in this light. Disregarding the religious ramifications of virtue, it is a means to an end, to achieving a society in spite of our Hobbesian tendencies. However, it has become to many people an end in itself - which if it produces happiness, is all the better. Which brings me to...

The morality of utilitarianism does not distinguish among motives. A man who saves a drowning man altruistically is no different, morally, than the man does that expecting a reward. Intention does matter, so a man who saves a drowning man only to inflict pain on him later is still immoral. But unlike Kantian ethics, actions are evaluated purely on their consequences - this jibes well with Nietzsche.

Finally, my favorite quote. "It is better to be a man dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." Pleasures of the mind are greater than pleasures of the body. I found a similar tenet in the Enchiridion. Bentham believed that all pleasure was equal, which sounds like hedonism. But Mill's utilitarianism does differentiate.

In other news, listened to a podcast on the history of the Roman empire today. This should be useful since so many classical writers refer to Roman figures. And I've been reading much about the Incan empire lately. I was very surprised to learn that the empire only lasted for about 100 years, from 1438 to about 1533. Surprising how advanced they were in some areas and how deficient in others - learning about them at the same time as reading Guns, Germs, and Steel helps shed perspective on those deficiencies as well.

Beyond 'Beyond Good and Evil'

Nietzsche is done. He is... difficult to read. To begin with, he's every cynical. His prose would have you believe he's an optimist, that he knows there will be a class of 'new philosophers' - free spirits who are free of the dogma of the old philosophers. Indeed, however, he betrays himself when he writes "Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is called honesty." I think there is some truth to this. The cynic, not necessarily the pessimist, is by nature rational and discerning.

I took a few things from this book, Beyond Good and Evil.

1. That there is no objective truth. Truth varies from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance. It is only recently that morality has been attached to the action, rather than the consequence. Thus, the Nietzschian view is that the ends always justify the means. Oh, and that the ends are good sometimes and bad sometimes. Towards the end of the book, we learn that morality differs according to a person's station in life. The nobility, the aristocracy, must value intolerance and justice. The baser sort must necessarily value sympathy and charity. This is sort of like the Platonic ideal of each person, that justice is defined as doing what you are to do in the best way you can. Though, don't tell Nietzsche that, because....

2. Every old philosophy is wrong. Because there is no objective truth, every philosophy that preceded Nietzsche's is accordingly incorrect. There can be no dichotomy of true/false, of just/unjust or moral/immoral.

3. There wasn't much of a reference to Nietzsche's raison d'etre, 'nihilism'. It didn't much seem like Nietzsche has a belief in nothing, per se. Certainly he has a healthy skepticism. And a distrust for organized religion, dogmatic philosophy, and the general lethargy of intellectual pursuits in most people. But he does believe in a seemingly arbitrary good. The only caveat is that the good must be defined by us, subjectively, and pursued by the individual exclusively.

So, do I agree? It's hard to disagree with much of what he says. That the general population suffers from an uneducated approach to morality, for one. But I'm not sure what Nietzsche has to say does much to advance the discussion. It's easy to point out the lack of education, but does his work help fix that? I think his skepticism is good for the education of other philosophers, for pointing out to other intellectuals the follies of some well-known intellectuals. But philosophy written for the philosopher only is not of much value. Is there a subjective truth? Yes. Is egoism perhaps the most useful morality? Yes, and within its framework I believe most other philosophies can be better understood. Nietzsche was useful in... directing my views on philosophy, but I'm not sure he directly contributed anything to my foundation. 

If my knowledge of philosophy is a mansion, Hobbes and Plato have so far been building materials - wood and stone. Nietzsche has been a book on the proper assembly of framing. Helpful to ensure the structural integrity of my 'house', but regrettably offers little substance. Hopefully some of his better works will be more useful.

Next up is John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism.

The Republic is almost done. The last part of the last book remains.

Book 7 of The Republic, Nietzsche begins

Listened to Book 7 while doing some work in the yard today. It begins with Plato's famous example of men in a cave. How if a man is locked in a cave since birth, unable to look towards the beginning of the cave, then he will regard the shadows on the wall and echoes within the cave as truths. He who leaves the cave will be blinded at first, but after perseverance will certainly see actual truth. If he reenters the cave to preach to his former cave-mates, he will be blinded by the lack of light and will be though to be stupid. This is a good allegory, it seems, to the study of philosophy or indeed many other worthwhile subjects of study. Plato, or rather Socrates, decrees that guardians of his future state must descent back into the 'cave', in order to be a light unto their citizens. The state is not designed for the happiness of any one class, but for the happiness of everyone. This seems to be in contradiction of the right to 'the pursuit of happiness', for some people's happiness may justly be taken away in order that many others are more happy.

Book 7 then goes on to declare that arithmetic is a vital course of study. This brings the foundation subjects of a warrior's education to gymnastics, music, and arithmetic. I'm not sure that I agree with that sentiment. Perhaps in those days, but things are different now. The justification for music is that 'its harmony will make the listener's life more harmonious'. Gymnastic, or physical ability, is certainly important and basic arithmetic is also essential for understanding of basic military strategy. If I had to add a third course of study for the basic guardian of the state, or for the warrior, I would add international affairs. It is important to 'know thine enemy'.

Finally, a criticism of forced education. "A freeman ought not to be a slave in the acquisition of knowledge of any kind. Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." How apt. You could save a lot of money, time, and broken dreams by educating children in accordance with the desired end-state. It would be nice to have 300 million geologists. But that's unsupportable. So why do we teach every kid about volcanoes and tectonic plates and minerals? Does a janitor need to use algebra? Do mechanics need language classes? Plato saw over two millenia ago what can no longer be said. Not every child grew up to be a guardian, just as not every child grows up to be a marine biologist. Tailor the means to the end.

On another note, began reading Nietzsche. Very anti-philosophy. Or rather, anti-dogma. Disestablishmentariansm, you could say. Included below are some quotes I highlighted.

Of the error of following Plato for 2000 years, "we, whose duty is wakefulness itself, are the heirs of all the strength which the struggle against this error has fostered."

On truth, "granted that we want the truth, why not rather untruth?"

On philosophizing, "the greater part of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly influenced by his instincts."

On philosophers, "They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders also, of their prejudices, which they dub 'truths'."

On living according to nature, "Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavoring to be different? And granted thatyour imperative, 'living according to Nature', means actually the same as 'living according to life' - how could you do differently?"

On philosophy, "It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to 'creation of the world', the will to the casua prima."

He also opines the self-preservation is not the first law of nature, that natural philosophy arranges the world but does not explain it, and that there is no 'I', but only expected obedience of one part to another. Weighty stuff.