"The falseness of an opinion," said Nietzsche, "is not for us any objection to it.... The question is...

>"The falseness of an opinion," said Nietzsche, "is not for us any objection to it.... The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving...." [15] When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the "life-giving," the "vital"; it is the final divorce of life from truth.

>Vitalism is a more advanced kind of Realism; sharing the latter's narrow view of reality and its concern to reduce everything higher to the lowest possible terms, Vitalism carries the Realist intention one step further. Where Realism tries to reestablish an absolute truth from below, Vitalism expresses the failure of this project in the face of the more "realistic" awareness that there is no absolute here below, that the only unchanging principle in this world is change itself Realism reduces the supernatural to the natural, the Revealed to the rational, truth to objectivity; Vitalism goes further and reduces everything to subjective experience and sensation. The world that seemed so solid, the truth that seemed so secure to the Realist, dissolve in the Vitalist view of things; the mind has no more place to rest, everything is swallowed up in movement and action.
cont

Other urls found in this thread:

oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=4kC13O-GdMw
youtube.com/watch?v=-4w11kN1lsQ
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

>The logic of unbelief leads inexorably to the Abyss; he who will not return to the truth must follow error to its end. So does humanism, too, after having contracted the Realist infection, succumb to the Vitalist germ. Of this fact there is no better indication than the "dynamic" standards that have come to occupy an increasingly large place in formal criticism of art and literature, and even in discussions of religion, philosophy, and science. There are no qualities more prized in any of these fields today than those of being "original," "experimental," or "exciting"; the question of truth, if it is raised at all, is more and more forced into the background and replaced by subjective criteria: "integrity," "authenticity," "individuality."
cont

>Such an approach is an open invitation to obscurantism, not to mention charlatanry; and if the latter may be dismissed as a temptation for the Vitalist that has not become the rule, it is by no means possible to ignore the increasingly blatant obscurantism which the Vitalist temperament tolerates and even encourages. It becomes ever more difficult in the contemporary intellectual climate to engage in rational discussion with Vitalist apologists. If one, for example, inquires into the meaning of a contemporary work of art, he will be told that it has no " meaning," that it is "pure art" and can only be "felt," and that if the critic does not "feel" it properly he has no right to comment on it. The attempt to introduce any standard of criticism, even of the most elementary and technical sort, is countered by the claim that old standards cannot be applied to the new art, that they are "static," "dogmatic," or simply "out-of-date," and that art today can be judged only in terms of its success in fulfilling its own unique intentions. If the critic sees a morbid or inhuman intent behind a work of art, the apology is that it is an accurate reflection of the "spirit of the age," and it is implied that a man is naive if he believes that art should be more than that. The latter argument is, of course, the favorite one of every avant-garde today, whether literary, philosophical, or "religious." For men weary of truth it is enough that a thing "is," and that it is "new" and "exciting."
cont

>These are, perhaps, understandable reactions to the overly literary and utilitarian approach of Liberalism and Realism to realms like art and religion which use a language quite unlike the prosaic language of science and business; to criticize them effectively, surely, one must understand their language and know what it is they are trying to say. But what is equally clear is that they are trying to say something: everything man does has a meaning, and every serious artist and thinker is trying to communicate something in his work. If it be proclaimed there is no meaning, or that there is only the desire to express the "spirit of the age," or that there is no desire to communicate at all--why, these too are meanings, and very ominous ones, which the competent critic will surely notice. Unfortunately, but very significantly, the task of criticism today has been virtually identified with that of apology; the role of the critic is generally seen to be no more than that of explaining, for the uninstructed multitudes, the latest "inspiration" of the "creative genius." [16] Thus passive "receptivity" takes the place of active intelligence, and "success"--the success of the "genius" in expressing his intention, no matter what the nature of that intention--replaces excellence. By the new standards Hitler too was "successful," until the "spirit of the age" proved him " wrong"; and the avant-garde and its humanist "fellow-travellers" have no argument whatever against Bolshevism today, unless it be that, unlike National Socialism, which was "expressionistic" and "exciting," it is completely prosaic and Realistic.

cont

>But perhaps most revealing of the infection of humanism by Vitalism is the strange axiom, romantic and skeptical at the same time, that the "love of truth" is never-ending because it can never be fulfilled, that the whole of life is a constant search for something there is no hope of finding, a constant movement that never can--nor should--know a place of rest. The sophisticated humanist can be very eloquent in describing this, the new first principle of scholarly and scientific research, as an acknowledgement of the "provisional" nature of all knowledge, as a reflection of the never-satisfied, ever-curious human mind, or as part of the mysterious process of "evolution" or "progress"; but the significance of the attitude is dear. It is the last attempt of the unbeliever to hide his abandonment of truth behind a cloud of noble rhetoric, and, more positively, it is at the same time the exaltation of petty curiosity to the place once occupied by the genuine love of truth. Now it is quite true to say that curiosity, exactly like its analogue, lust, never ends and is never satisfied; but man was made for something more than this. He was made to rise, above curiosity and lust, to love, and through love to the attainment of truth. This is an elementary truth of human nature, and it requires, perhaps, a certain simplicity to grasp it. The intellectual trifling of contemporary humanism is as far from such simplicity as it is from truth.

From pic related, you can read it all here: oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm

Was he right, Veeky Forums?

bump

I don't get what this is arguing for desu. Care to explain? I don't really want to read the whole book right now.

He's arguing that Nietzsche's antagonism to nihilism forms a dialectic which ends up aggravating to disease rather than alleviating it.

After reading this hes just recapitulating plato.
No new information is being presented here.

What do you mean by disease?

Heres some Alexander Pope for you

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

If you are a spirit that can make your life subscribe inflexibly to a sacrosanct ideal, then by all means pin yourself to it and live life unflinchingly. But the middle ground is more common. Life is varied and resists the dogmatic simplification written here.

No he isn't. Plato's divides reality between truth and the material.

Nihilism., he draws out a "dialectic" of nihilism. Different stages can and do overlap, but they still are broadly reactions against each other. Before the dialectic starts, truth is see as subject, it is God, truth is most ultimately known through revelation, truth revealing himself. The dialectic kicks in with liberalism, which started in the West with the Enlightenment. Liberalism redefines truth as an object, not something which reveals itself, but something discovered purely through reason, albeit still metaphysical. God here is deistic, just used to "tidy things up" and fix the loose ends of the system. Then Realism reacts against that, and says metaphysical truth is nonsense, what matters are material facts, which are found solely in the concrete world, not in gibberish like rights and so on. Then against realism reacts Vitalism, which observes that our perceptions all differ, and if perception of the material is the measure of fact or truth, then all perceptions are equally true, and truth therefore cannot be used to estimate the value of a statement; instead, statements should be valued by how much they affirm life, but even while saying this, vitalism rebels against the sanctity of life and often glorifies violence and evil as life-affirming. In reaction to vitalism comes Destructivism, which ceases to care about creativity, and is concerned only with worship of nothing, expressing itself through destruction (we see a bit of both of the last two movements in Stirner, who literally worships the creative nothing).

YOU'RE ALL MISUNDERSTANDING NIETZSCHE

The Orthodox conception of dogma is something imported wholly by Christ to his Apostles, unchanging. But it is also something experienced rather than codified (since mere writing can't contain it). Dogma is only ever codified as protection against its distortion, never as some exhaustive expression. Dogma comes directly from God in the form of Revelation.

As for Pope, his poetry in this instance is poor, there is no point in his rhymes here; rhyming should be employed to emphasize parallelism of rhymed words (obviously not present here), not for its own sake.

>He was made to rise, above curiosity and lust, to love, and through love to the attainment of truth
To me this just reads as The Symposium.
This guy is asking us to strive for a transcendental good.
You can be pedantic about the metaphysics, but the outcome of their philosophy the same.

I dont quite understand this post.
I assume that if you occupy the position that Fr. Seraphim does, you dont see your capital T truth as dogma.
Because colloquially (as I was using it) dogma describes a process of delusion.
Accepting the Word without asking why.

So the only thing on the table then is whether your truth is The Truth. Then your dogma is justified. With your Revelation and your Enlightenment, Dogma ceases to be a problem because there is nothing beyond it to be gained.
Which is part of the argument in the OP.
Why go forward in this process of doubt and self investigation when we already have the Good Book.
If you have the Word of God then of course you are right.

But then why create this thread and ask us in the first place.
Did you want to see some Stirner worshipping Veeky Forums users come in here and bumble around an ultimate truth that by definition Existential philosophy cant provide.

>Now it is quite true to say that curiosity, exactly like its analogue, lust, never ends and is never satisfied; but man was made for something more than this. He was made to rise, above curiosity and lust, to love, and through love to the attainment of truth. This is an elementary truth of human nature, and it requires, perhaps, a certain simplicity to grasp it. The intellectual trifling of contemporary humanism is as far from such simplicity as it is from truth.

>This guy is asking us to strive for a transcendental good.
It's a commentary on modernism, not a book on spiritual endeavor.

>Because colloquially (as I was using it) dogma describes a process of delusion.
I and he understand dogma to refer to Revelation from God. Dogma is a very specific term in Orthodox theology referring to the teachings Christ himself imparted, as opposed to those imparted by men.

>But then why create this thread and ask us in the first place.
I'm looking for evaluations of his diagnosis of modernism more than a purely religious debate.

>It was in the spirit of Nechayev and the "Revolutionary Catechism" that Nihilist assassins (they were called at the time "anarchist," but we have adopted the more positive meaning of that word in this book), with their "propaganda of the deed," terrorized the ruling classes--and not only the ruling classes--in Europe and especially in Russia throughout the last quarter of the 19th century. It was in the same spirit that Lenin (who greatly admired Nechayev) assumed ruthless power and began Europe's first successful experiment in totally unprincipled politics. The passion for violence, divorced from the Revolution which rationalized it, helped lead Europe into the first of its Nihilist wars in 1914, and at the same time, in another realm, announced in Dadaist art, "let everything be swept away," "no more of anything, nothing, nothing, nothing. "It remained, however, for Hitler to reveal with absolute explicitness the nature and ends of a pure "Revolution of Nihilism," a revolution committed to the equally Nihilist alternatives of Weltmacht oder Niedergang: world-conquest or total ruin; a Revolution whose Leader could exult (even before he had come to power), even as Stirner would have exulted, that "we may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us--a world in flames." [21]

From the same work.

Stirner says to listen to everything demons whisper to us, trying to get us to do, and to take these coaxings as self-interest

>Stirner says to listen to everything demons whisper to us, trying to get us to do, and to take these coaxings as self-interest

Is there a quote on that by him?

>It's a commentary on modernism, not a book on spiritual endeavor.
Who said transcendental good was a spiritual endeavor.
That response doesnt address my point it just dismisses it.

Same with
>I and he understand dogma to refer to Revelation from God.
If its not related to spiritual endeavor why are you bringing this up.
Also throwing a literal definition of dogma at me does nothing to address my critique.
As I said, I was using the term colloquially in that sentence to refer to philosophies that are uncritical about the basis for their claims.

So are you ever going to actually address the responses.
You sidetracked the Alexander Pope comment with a critique of his poetry.
You brought up an alternate definition of dogma instead of discussing the difficulty of belief without knowledge.
You dismissed the comparison to Plato on the basis that Plato believed in a separate realm of ideas.
And now you say that its just a commentary.
I havent read it so I dont know.
But the text you pasted in the thread is enough to imply a few things.

1. The writer is Christian.
2. He/She does not believe in the project of Enlightenment/Empiricism/Existentialism
3. The process of modernity has led us astray.

Which ALL point to the conclusion that it is preferable to stay in static service to an ideal than to believe in a myth of progress towards a new one.

And this is where the problem has been the whole time.
Do we have this ideal that can capture us in its headlights?

His entire commentary is hinged on the notion that we already have something to believe in.
>The intellectual trifling of contemporary humanism is as far from such simplicity as it is from truth. Is there some capital t Truth we have ignored in our modernist quest?
Because this still just sounds like traditionalist posturing.

Where are the daemons in that? All he seems to be doing in that section is stating the standard criticism made against the overly rationalisitic spock types, who saw anything that came from impulse or emotion as inherently bad or wicked.

>“What am I?” each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star! How am I to obtain a correct answer, if, without regard to God’s commandments or to the duties which morality prescribes, without regard to the voice of reason, which in the course of history, after bitter experiences, has exalted the best and most reasonable thing into law, I simply appeal to myself? My passion would advise me to do the most senseless thing possible. — Thus each deems himself the — devil; for, if, so far as he is unconcerned about religion, etc., he only deemed himself a beast, he would easily find that the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the “most senseless” things, but takes very correct steps.

...

>The Nihilists™ are growing fear and hate into the minds of the well believers!
>I'll show you this is true by putting doomdays and demons into your head!
Because fucking Hitler was totally what Stirner meant by a man without fixed ideas, right? Because he's talking about destroying the world when he talks of a Creative Nothing, right?

You're forgetting user, the body is bad. It just is, okay?

"Good" is both transcendent and immanent, as God himself is (see essence-energies distinction), it's not Platonism.

>You sidetracked the Alexander Pope comment with a critique of his poetry.
There was nothing else to do, since it's just a poem, it's not actual philosophical argument or diagnosis. It's facebook-tier.

>Do we have this ideal that can capture us in its headlights?
Even if you reject Christianity, the Christian conception of truth is still something you can subscribe to, which is truth as subject rather than object.

In that section there he is simply discussing how egoism has quite literally been daemonised by society and by the christian values of his time.

hence the other half of that paragraph states as much

>.But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind so grievously that we are — terrified at ourselves in our nakedness and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved by nature, born devils. Of course it comes into your head at once that your calling requires you to do the “good,” the moral, the right. Now, if you ask yourselves what is to be done, how can the right voice sound forth from you, the voice which points the way of the good, the right, the true, etc.? What concord have God and Belial?

Hitler and Stirner are different fruits from the same tree, and he makes a significant argument for this, but it's too large to post all of. They share a the vitalist idea over truth (as expressed in the first post ITT, by Nietzsche), as well an infatuation with destruction for destruction's sake. They are both reactions against Realism (which in itself is a reaction against liberalism). They come to superficially alternate conclusions (the ego is everything vs. the nation is everything), but in reality they are two sides of the same coin.

Care to enlighten?

This is a critique of Roman Catholic idea of original sin, which has no place in Orthodoxy. The point is that Stirner's solution to this is to heed whatever demons whisper as coming from yourself, when in fact demons deliberately try to trick you into thinking their suggestions are coming from your heart.

>different fruits from the same tree
So is fucking everybody.

>an infatuation with destruction for destruction's sake.
No. Everything Stirner "does" is for HIS own sake; this is the basis of his philosophy. And if you believe you're doing something for God or Truth's sake, you're simply doing the same thing you're condemnin; you're a slave that believes himself free for having a different master, a master you choose because you think he's better, i.e. better under YOUR authority.

>the ego is everything
Again, no. The ego, or rather the thing that is behind the ego (the nothing), is not everything, but the opposite and codependent of everything.

>"Good" is both transcendent and immanent, as God himself is (see essence-energies distinction), it's not Platonism.
Dodging.

>There was nothing else to do, since it's just a poem, it's not actual philosophical argument or diagnosis. It's facebook-tier.
Again dodging.

>Even if you reject Christianity, the Christian conception of truth is still something you can subscribe to, which is truth as subject rather than object.

This is literally taking us nowhere.
All the commentary does is complain about subjectivity and tell us that being Truthful and Simple is good.

Do you understand how stupid and unproductive this is?
When the entire discussion is centred around a vague metaphysical desire for Truth, but not subjective truth, you know, that OTHER truth. The BIG ONE.
This is like a Taoist trying to explain the Tao to you. It is not a conversation you can have.

How about we stop talking about Fr. Seraphim and you can just explain to me what The Way is.
Because then we wont need modernism, or nihilism, just small quietest agrarian towns where humankind will want for nothing.

>This is a critique of Roman Catholic idea of original sin.

Given his evangelical luthern upbringing and life in Northern Germany I think his critique of Christianity is more directed at the Lutheran and reformed varieties of Protestantism. Although I do not know enough about the Orthodox conception of the fall to say how well this transfers over.

>The point is that Stirner's solution to this is to heed whatever demons whisper as coming from yourself, when in fact demons deliberately try to trick you into thinking their suggestions are coming from your heart.

If that is the case that view is certainly not what is meant in the section you have quoted. All that section is about is outlining what he believes to be the christian view of egoism, before going into the problems of that view.

He even goes on to attack the view of fedoras who would hold that God is really the great and evil deceiver and that nature is all good.

Is there another section you got this idea from? I get the sense Constantine that you are making an unfair reading of Stirner.

>So is fucking everybody.
Not that tree.

>And if you believe you're doing something for God or Truth's sake, you're simply doing the same thing you're condemnin; you're a slave that believes himself free for having a different master, a master you choose because you think he's better, i.e. better under YOUR authority.
I don't choose God as my master, God is everyone's master. Some are simply more obedient.

> is not everything,
It is in the sense of being the crux of all cruxes. Stirner worships nothing itself, as in an active way. This is the height of Satanism, the will to nothing.

>Dodging.
No it's not, it's pointing out that saying Plato's conception of good is the same as the one here, is wrong. "Good" here is not some transcendental abstract, it is a subject which is both transcendent and immanent and sustains and permeates existence.

>the entire discussion is centred around a vague metaphysical desire for Truth, but not subjective truth
The assumption that truth is relative is a Vitalist reaction against Realism, which is a reaction against liberalism which is what Father Seraphim illustrates. And the reaction against Vitalism comes with the will to nothing, this is why anytime Vitalism manifests itself in large movements, it is catastrophically destructive.

>Given his evangelical luthern upbringing and life in Northern Germany I think his critique of Christianity is more directed at the Lutheran and reformed varieties of Protestantism
They both take their idea of original sin from Augustine, the same basis for Catholicism. Orthodox Christianity is the only kind that doesn't subscribe to Augustine's doctrine of original sin.

>If that is the case that view is certainly not what is meant in the section you have quoted
It is, specifically
>the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the “most senseless” things, but takes very correct steps.

>Not that tree.
Yes, that tree. You're not special, mr. humble. Don't judge others if you're not going to put yourself on the same level.

>I don't choose God as my master
Yes, you do. If one doesn't, who are you fighting against?

>It is in the sense of being the crux of all cruxes.
No. That it is above everything does not make it "superior", because that priority is dependant on leaving the other thing outside; there's no above without below.

>Stirner worships nothing itself
Read this out loud. Hear how stupid it sounds?

>This is the height of Satanism
I suppose, if we're talking about "Satan" in the most original sense, as "opponent".

Didnt you hear? God is dead.

>Yes, that tree.
No, that tree is Vitalism

>If one doesn't, who are you fighting against?
The enemies of God, but God is still master over his enemies, they only can exist and act because he wills their existence continually with his love.

>there's no above without below.
In this case, the below is creation and God, and the "above", so to speak, is nothing.

And yes, Stirner does take it as superior, since he sees everything as the servant of the nothing.

>Read this out loud. Hear how stupid it sounds?
I don't subscribe to it, he does.

And the third day he rose again

>the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the “most senseless” things, but takes very correct steps.

he is being facetious here, as evidenced by the sections I provided that came directly after or very close to that section.

He is not talking about literal devils here, what he is saying that the Christina view of man being flawed (which you describe as from Agustine and which you disagree with) holds action that is selfish is motivated by daemons.

He then goes on to mock this by showing how belief in God itself is motivated by selfish actions. He goes even further and highlights the problem of those who try and make spooks out of nature or take the fedora "what if God is really the devil line"

Am I correct in assuming you are the Author of the Orthodox FAQ?

"Good" here is not some transcendental abstract, it is a subject which is both transcendent and immanent and sustains and permeates existence.

We finally got down to it :)
When you said in > I'm looking for evaluations of his diagnosis of modernism more than a purely religious debate.
You were lying.

This entire argument is hinged on the idea of a God and debating it is inextricably linked with religion.
If God is Truth and Truth is God what is there to discuss.

Now I know firsthand what a waste of time it is talking to a Christian.
Ill continue to believe in Heraclitus and remain in mercurial accordance to the Logos.
but I wont be so insipid as to create a thread to jerk myself off at whomever expresses doubt about it.

To clarify that because he values selfishness he then says that we should listen to these "daemons"

To use an anaology it would be akin to a Christian when dealing with a Dawkins type saying that

"it would be wise to listen to these delusions of yours"

Some fun from another thread about dealing with the guy(s) spamming threads like this

>the more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The [Orthodox] had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

I know that Stirner doesn't believe in demons and literally advocating listening to them, ffs. I mean that he is saying to listen to them and that their whispers are self-interest, regardless of whether or not he knows he's doing that.

You are correct.

Yes, of course Christ is truth, but you don't need to see Christ as truth to have a conception of truth as transcendent and immanent and subject. This argument is tangentially related to Christianity, but Nietzsche also rejects Christianity, that doesn't mean it's a waste of time seeing his critique of it.

Could you please give concrete examples of the "playing stupid" and "pretending not to understand" referred to here?

Funny, but more grist for his Stirner = Hitler strawman.
I wish I was smart enough to have backed out of this thread entirely instead of posting embarrassingly sincere replies.

>No, that tree is Vitalism
Forget the labels damnit! Are you human or not?

>The enemies of God, but God is still master over his enemies, they only can exist and act because he wills their existence continually with his love.
Please explain this in a way that makes some sense.

>In this case, the below is creation and God, and the "above", so to speak, is nothing.
Yes.

>Stirner does take it as superior
Stirner takes it as proper, which is not the same as better. He centers the self on the self, like God centers on God. That the rest of existence is "subject" to the ego is simply a matter of its point of view, which has it as center; it is its own object, so what it makes its own is also itself. Ultimately, the difference between what's ego and not is a formal one--based on nothing substancial. If there's a thing like God, then separation from Him is only imagined, and so is the case with everything else.

>I don't subscribe to it
That was not my point. What you don't see is that the preposition doesn't make sense, and that is intended. Believing in nothing is not belief; if it is, then it's not an actual nothing that it's believed in.

>I know that Stirner doesn't believe in demons and literally advocating listening to them, ffs.

Well that wasnt clear in your posts.

> I mean that he is saying to listen to them and that their whispers are self-interest, regardless of whether or not he knows he's doing that.

Im getting kind of confused here can you clarify this if my next sentance doesnt answer your point here.

He isnt that blind when it comes to self interest

>I am not unselfish so long as the end remains my own, and I, instead of giving myself up to be the blind means of its fulfillment, leave it always an open question. My zeal need not on that account be slacker than the most fanatical, but at the same time I remain toward it frostily cold, unbelieving, and its most irreconcilable enemy; I remain its judge, because I am its owner.

>You are correct.
Im planning on rereading his work soon and comparing it to your section on his work and seeing if they line up.

It would really help my work if you could tell me any of the other views on Stirner you have outside of that section or this thread.

Are there any question about Stirner you have also?

Whats truly banal about this argument is that you cant occupy the position of an absurdist or an empiricist.
(Or a Realist, Vitalist, whatever Daddy Seraphim wants to call it)
Could it have occurred to you that Truth is not Immanent?
Can you imagine that Empiricists and Absurdists are engaged in truth seeking because they (we?) feel confronted by a mute world where meaning must be excavated..?
If Truth were endemic to our process of living we could all be christ and splash around in it birds in a bird pond.
But instead we have fucktons of existential literature that explores how reality is constructed through haphazard phenomena.
And it has taken us into our great vitalist epoch.

Youre wasting your time friendo.
And I am too.

Stirner is a moral nihilist, literally the only position to critique Hitler from him is, "You killed all those people for your nation instead of simply for fun."

If you can't see that Stirner and Hitler, despite being distinct, are both vitalist, and that Hitler is an important reference point for Vitalism as a mass-movement, then there is really no where to go because you're more sensitive to your position than I am about my faith

>Please explain this in a way that makes some sense.
I mean that God has total mastery over reality and nothing can exist without him constantly willing it to exist, so he is ultimately master of everything, even those who are his enemies.

>Stirner takes it as proper, which is not the same as better. He centers the self on the self, like God centers on God. That the rest of existence is "subject" to the ego is simply a matter of its point of view, which has it as center; it is its own object, so what it makes its own is also itself. Ultimately, the difference between what's ego and not is a formal one--based on nothing substancial. If there's a thing like God, then separation from Him is only imagined, and so is the case with everything else.
You're diluting the ego down to a mere perspective, whereas Stirner does not see the nothing as merely a perspective, but the very genetive of all, and this is not merely a figurative expression, but seen as real as anything can be real.

>Believing in nothing is not belief
I don't just mean a passive belief, I mean a will to nothing, as in the impulse to annihilate. Belief here is an ideology.

Yes, absolutely.

Not on-topic to this thread but has anyone read "Laurus"?

Any good?

>Stirner would have exulted, that "we may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us--a world in flames." [21]

Let me fix that for you

>Stirner *could* have if he saw it fit at the time exulted, that "we may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us--a world in flames." [21]

Time can only be wasted.

>I mean that God has total mastery over reality
If that's the case then you're not doing anything and it's all God. So it's God fighting with God.

>Stirner does not see the nothing as merely a perspective, but the very genetive of all, and this is not merely a figurative expression, but seen as real as anything can be real.
Why "merely" a perspective? If it's all there is it's all there is, it doesn't matter if you think of it as matter, feeling or cognition.

>I mean a will to nothing, as in the impulse to annihilate.
This is explicitly not Stirner's position.

I love the way you use the word Vitalist now.
Youve lost all pretense of discussion and now wave it around like this grave diagnosis of the modern condition.

You want me to confess that because I dont find fault in Nietzsche or Stirner I am recapitulating the Holocaust.

Actually my beliefs are far more bland than anything described in this thread.
I wholeheartedly believe that humanity is sustained not by deep religious or self knowledge, but platitudes and a colloquial wish to not harm.

Sure its not as sexy as other ideologies, but its not unreasonable to say that people generally dont want to be assholes.
We dont go around killing and raping.
And for lack of a god, we dont all turn into Hitler.

One of the most hilarious things I got from Plato was his argument against Suicide in the Phaedo.
The argument itself is superfluous, what was funny is that he had to justify it on logical grounds.
But you know what? A layperson can understand that they dont wish to commit suicide without Platos rigorous argumentation.

And Im sure that my middling philosophy is horrifying.
The last trite step in a long process of moral degeneracy and degredation.

But thats whats so funny to me.
That in exemplifying Nietzsches Last Man or Philistine mentality, Im committing a grave sin.
I think our collective indifference will vindicate me.

>Im getting kind of confused here can you clarify this if my next sentance doesnt answer your point here.
Stirner takes all passions as emanating from the self, in fact constituting the self.
>“What am I?” each of you asks himself. An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, a chaos without light or guiding star!
A lot of these "desires" are not from you, certainly not you yourself, but ideas suggested to you, which you can act on or not, but you are being deceived if you think their being suggested to you makes them *your* desires.

>He isnt that blind when it comes to self interest
The "zeal" referred to here is a matter of conscious values as opposed to instinctual passions.

>It would really help my work if you could tell me any of the other views on Stirner you have outside of that section or this thread.
I see his biggest flaw as rejecting the soul, and then seeing the ego as conflicting impulses, yet grouping these impulses arbitrarily into a monolithic entity when, by his logic, it would be just as accurate to say each of us is a thousand egos at opposing ends.

>Are there any question about Stirner you have also?
Not really. I've read him many times, and I've seen the understanding of him go from simple and correct on this board, to increasingly baroque in order to sublate objections to his philosophy. In another five years he won't even be recognizable, he will be like Nietzsche, someone who generally defended by either, "You haven't read him," or, "You don't understand him." Really all he is is someone who argues passionately for psychological egoism as the sole yardstick for everything.

>Could it have occurred to you that Truth is not Immanent?
Of course, this was a common perspective of pagan philosophers, but I reject it on the grounds that if we define reality in opposition to truth, we're left with an incoherent situation.

> I reject it on the grounds that if we define reality in opposition to truth, we're left with an incoherent situation.

absurdism doesnt posit reality in opposition to truth, it just doesnt credit reality with truth.

I said mute world. Not untruthful, deceitful, incoherent world.

>If that's the case then you're not doing anything and it's all God. So it's God fighting with God.
No, I'm not talking in a Calvanist sense. God imbues creates with freewill and maintains their existence, so they have the option to betray him, but their betrayal does not change his being their ontological master.

>Why "merely" a perspective? If it's all there is it's all there is, it doesn't matter if you think of it as matter, feeling or cognition.
That's true from his perspective too: truth is not to be taken as a worthy consideration (this is the annhilist's contempt for all that is not nothing). Which is why the idea of "beyond it all, everything is one" is not appropriate here, Stirner, unlike Hegel, does not recognize any "beyond it all".

>This is explicitly not Stirner's position.

Oh?
>But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the — finite ego is really I.

>You want me to confess that because I dont find fault in Nietzsche or Stirner I am recapitulating the Holocaust.
No, this has nothing to do with that. If you don't find fault with Nietzsche or Stirner, then of course you cannot see anything *morally* wrong with the Holocaust, but that doesn't mean you can't find it objectionable for personal taste, as booger sandwich. I'm not trying to identify you as a Hitler sympathizer.

I'm thought you were talking about Plato, not absurdism.

Absurdism's expression is in antagonism to reality itself as well, though. Absurdism is repulsed by what it sees as the meaninglessness of reality, and so it says the only point of living is to rebel against the meaninglessness, which it identifies as synonymous with reality. This makes it a very potent nihilism.

>booger sandwich.
Ok you have a sense of humour.
I like you and Im going to bed.

have fun with him stirner bro

Good night

Your reading of it is unduly antagonistic, absurdity doesnt necessitate repulsion.
Repulsion comes from bad faith i.e. the recognition that the narratives you hitherto constructed about it are false.

I think the wisdom of Absurdity is that meaninglessness is a positive feature of reality.
We are given the opportunity to rebel, hence sisyphus smiling.

For instance, I could react to absurdity with quietism. It doesnt need to be revolt.

>Stirner takes all passions as emanating from the self, in fact constituting the self.

But do you think there are any supernatural forces at play here?

>A lot of these "desires" are not from you, certainly not you yourself, but ideas suggested to you, which you can act on or not, but you are being deceived if you think their being suggested to you makes them *your* desires.

That quote was referring to the spooked mindset of Christians who are unable to look at self interest any other way.

Indeed a great many of these desires are the results of spooks and socialisation which is why he cautions from blindly following them.

>The "zeal" referred to here is a matter of conscious values as opposed to instinctual passions.

Which is important when it comes to acting or not acting on those passions.

>I see his biggest flaw as rejecting the soul,
What do the orthodox view the soul as? Thanks for those other views/

>Not really. I've read him many times

How many times out of curiosity and have you read his other work and secondary literature? [Im not gonna try and slam you on this either]

>simple and correct on this board, to increasingly baroque in order to sublate objections to his philosophy. In another five years he won't even be recognizable, he will be like Nietzsche, someone who generally defended by either, "You haven't read him," or, "You don't understand him."

Well you must see how thats understanble given how not only has he only been recently discovered in the English world but up until 2010 there hasn't been any serious secondary discussion on him and the ones available beforehand were heavily flawed like the one we saw from Marx.


That said it is getting better though, more essays are being translated from the German and a new translation of his work is coming out which will probably mean new interest and discussion.


Understanding of him is getting better both in academia and even on Veeky Forums. Likewise I dont think Stirner will ever have the level of controversy and confusion Big N generates given the nature of their works and arguments.

>Really all he is is someone who argues passionately for psychological egoism as the sole yardstick for everything.

Of course, but just like me saying Jesus is just someone who argues passionately for love as the sole yardstick for everything. It ignores the consequences and values that underpin it. This creates all kind of trouble as you yourself would certainly know given your interest in other Christian sects use of him.

What are the biggest misconceptions you see being attributed to Stirner?

Within the context of absurdism, quietism is a sort of revolt against absurdism, which is effectively also a revolt against the absurd. The absurd is only seen as positive in regard to relishing how it is antagonized, and the absurd is not seen as merely a feature of reality, but reality itself.

>dude your opinion is demons lmao
what a terrible excuse

>they have the option to betray him, but their betrayal does not change his being their ontological master.
Then it is a formality.

>truth is not to be taken as a worthy consideration
Stirner isn't a prescriptivist. You can do whatever the hell you want with truth.

>Stirner, unlike Hegel, does not recognize any "beyond it all".
To him everything is ego.

>Oh?
You're taking that passage in isolation. The ego that destroys is also the ego that creates, it's not a separate action, it's consumption of itsef is the way it generates itself to again do the same thing.

Sadly my life is getting in the way so my time here is limited. But good things to you too, friend.

>But do you think there are any supernatural forces at play here?
I do. He doesn't, but that is the whole point: he posits these desires as always of one's own design, when in fact desires are often designed by others and suggested to us covertly until we made to think we generated them ourselves--like that movie Inception.

>Which is important when it comes to acting or not acting on those passions.
Not from Stirner's perspective, see
>the beast, which does follow only its impulse (as it were, its advice), does not advise and impel itself to do the “most senseless” things, but takes very correct steps.

>What do the orthodox view the soul as?
Generally it used synonymous with spirit, but it can also mean life in the biological sense (as in the case that we are referred to as flesh, mind and spirit). In this context, I am using it to mean spirit, which is to say pneuma in the Scriptural sense (which is not the same as the Stoic sense, but rather synonymous with the Hebrew conception of ruah). Spirit is subjectivity as a metaphysical property.

>Thanks for those other views/
Sure

>How many times out of curiosity and have you read his other work and secondary literature? [Im not gonna try and slam you on this either]
I've only read his essay on education. Related to him I have read Novatore and Junger a few times.

>Of course, but just like me saying Jesus is just someone who argues passionately for love as the sole yardstick for everything.
Jesus argues passionately for God as the sole yard stick for everything. Love is closely identified with God in Christianity, and they are even spoken of as synonymous at least once in Scripture. So you might well be right in saying that, so long as you have a Christian perspective on what love is, as opposed to, say, a secular perspective.

>What are the biggest misconceptions you see being attributed to Stirner?
His parodies of Hegel's historical dialectic being taken as some serious methodology.

>Then it is a formality.
No, it is an ontological reality, their existence depends on God constantly willing it, and they cannot accomplish anything unless he allows them to.

>Stirner isn't a prescriptivist. You can do whatever the hell you want with truth.
He doesn't acknowledge as anything more than a relative way of sorting things, and is critical of any more concrete conception of it.

Thanks and the final questions

I forgot in my other one by typo to add how many times have you read the ego and its own.

>Generally it used synonymous with spirit, but it can also mean life in the biological sense (as in the case that we are referred to as flesh, mind and spirit). In this context, I am using it to mean spirit, which is to say pneuma in the Scriptural sense (which is not the same as the Stoic sense, but rather synonymous with the Hebrew conception of ruah). Spirit is subjectivity as a metaphysical property.

Could you give me a wiki page or something that has it in terms that dont require an Orthodox background because all those terms have a ton of meanings not just for the German idealists of Spook mans time but also for Christians and as you know the latters terms tend to dominate.

Thanks again for the discussion even if it did get heated and for answering my questions. Im sure it will be much more fun when I finish my readings.

>"The falseness of an opinion," said Nietzsche, "is not for us any objection to it.... The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving...." [15] When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the "life-giving," the "vital"; it is the final divorce of life from truth.

That doesn't make any sense. How do you establish the truth of a claim of "live-givingness"? The claim of life-givingness must itself be life-giving? The whole thing is a pile of nonsense.

>nietzsche wanted to unleash the ubermensch
>he unleashed the SJW instead

This is what happens when you run amock with spooks.

>No, it is an ontological reality, their existence depends on God constantly willing it, and they cannot accomplish anything unless he allows them to.
But are they separate from God or not?

>is critical of any more concrete conception of it.
He's critical in so far as the might of his argument allows him to be. He doesn't care if it can't compell someone to leave truth or not.

>Could you give me a wiki page or something that has it in terms that dont require an Orthodox background because all those terms have a ton of meanings not just for the German idealists of Spook mans time but also for Christians and as you know the latters terms tend to dominate.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 mentions the three parts.

In Orthodox theology, the three-fold nature of man is in the image of God, trinitarian.

"Spirit", in Scripture, both Greek and Hebrew, broadly means unseen force. As such it can mean breath (but rarely does except poetically), wind, or other things. Spirit when used as an element of man is what exists in heaven (heaven and earth are not separate places, but intersection dimensions in Orthodoxy). The spirit has its own senses, distinct from the physical senses (but ideally in harmony). Sin veils the spirit, which is why we can't detect being in heaven, but Christ's blood cleans the veil. The more we develop our spiritual sense, the more we actually experience God, to the point that we experience him every bit as vividly as material reality, and feel his sustaining presence penetrating our every fiber as light (or fire to those who have the veil ripped away and hate God, which happens at final judgement).

>Thanks again for the discussion even if it did get heated and for answering my questions. Im sure it will be much more fun when I finish my readings.
No problem by the way, and enjoy your readings.

He means life-affirming, as in the Nietzschean sense.

>But are they separate from God or not?
No, not fully. They are *distinct* from God though, but they aren't separate from God anymore than your lungs are separate from the air you breathe.

> He doesn't care if it can't compell someone to leave truth or not.
He does, he would take pleasure in his philosophy being adopted.

>He means life-affirming, as in the Nietzschean sense.
That doesn't make any sense. How do you establish the truth of a claim of life-affirmingness"? The claim of life-affirmingness must itself be life-affirming? The whole thing is a pile of nonsense.

>He does, he would take pleasure in his philosophy being adopted.
He would, but if he can't, he won't.

Tell that to Nietzsche, not Father Seraphim Rose. Father Seraphim is criticizing that.

If he can't than he won't, yes. But he endeavors.

youtube.com/watch?v=4kC13O-GdMw

youtube.com/watch?v=-4w11kN1lsQ

bump

bump what? I think this guy

summed up the discussion nicely