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.

Subjective logic?

Read the last hundred or so sections of On Certainty, finishing up the book. I can't help but feel the book was off-target towards the end. Wittgenstein begins referring more frequently to subjective approaches to certainty - how other people can understand our certainty and what uncertainty means to communication. I don't consider the last sixth of the book to be nearly as well-written or powerful as, say, the middle half. Treating certainty within interpersonal communication as its own subject would require a separate book - weaving it into a discussion on personal certainty just doesn't seem appropriate.

That being said, Wittgenstein is a little hard to get through, but there's a lot to be said for his texts. I will have to reread him when I am better acquainted with logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy in general.

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. 

On Certainty 2

Almost done with Wittgenstein. Despite learning much from his book, there is one thing I think he does wrong. He repeatedly brings up the fact that saying certain simplistic logic statements (atomic facts) is nonsensical. For example, if I said 'I know that is a tree', the person to whom I said it would not get much from it. He might think I was simple, or playing around. Wittegenstein dwells on this, and I think that it has no place in a book on logic and knowledge. The use of language in order to illustrate his points is unavoidable, but I think logic and knowledge can be investigated independently of language and semantics. Just because a language statement well be better or worse received does not make it more or less true. Semantics and language are completely subjective - whereas, in my opinion, logic and knowledge are not. 

On Certainty

After slogging through On Certainty for a while, I found something that really resonated with me. He had already written 'doubt presupposes certainty', but that in itself was not enough.

What can we 'know'? Our knowledge is based on a loose foundation of assumptions, essentially. Even the most unshakeable pieces of knowledge, such as how many fingers I have, are essentially just concretely held assumptions. I can imagine a situation in which people contrived to convince me otherwise - that I had 4 or 6 fingers, perhaps. If they put sufficient effort into their endeavor, they could very well succeed. But if I then doubted the number of fingers I have, then how could I have been said to 'know' that number in the first place? To know is to be infallible, at least philosophically, but clearly then there is not much, if anything at all, that we can know.

I think this is pretty important. We 'know', for instance, that solids do not just disappear. However, is it not technically possible? There is a probability that a given atom will interact with anti-matter or simply release itself from its bonds or any number of other things. On the order of the number of atoms that comprise a macroscopic object, these probabilities fall to zero. Well, almost. There is still a nonzero chance that a tree, for example, could simply vaporize. Empirically, we know this does not practicably happen. So we say, we 'know' it cannot happen. But this is a fallacy.

Logic and knowledge are concepts that I am interested in reading more about. After Wittgenstein perhaps I will try Russell or Moore. 

Stoicism

Just finished Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. It has once again piqued my interest in stoicism. Of course Epictetus' Enchiridion was a little more straightforward, but Aurelius has some interesting takes on the old philosophy and certainly brings something to the table. I don't quite know where to look for more stoic literature, though I don't think it will be too hard to find.

I'm having a bit of trouble trying to apply stoicism to everyday life anyway. I still find myself being angered by the actions of my roommates, mostly. This of course means I need more study and reflection.

I am close to finishing Wittgenstein. I had to cut short reading the Tractatus, as I simply couldn't digest it. Wittgenstein writes about ontology, epistemology, and logic. A little above my grade level, but I'm learning rapidly. His blue book was good, brown book was better, and On Certainty is best. His arguments are giving me a background in epistemology, and I am interested in pursuing that branch of philosophy further.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche is on deck. I swore I wouldn't read him again, but a knowledgeable classmate of mine thought I would like it. I'll read it on faith.

Interesting tidbit of the day: from a commentary on Aurelius by George Long, politics are merely an extension of ethics. They are both the study of correct living, one for the many and the other for the one. I liked this viewpoint.