Nietzsche & Nihilism

>Nietzsche
>a Nihilist

Oh look this thread again...

Pure ideology.

Maybe. I don't think he completely subscribed to his own ideology but like the other guy said, he was just putting it out there. Possibly for money but more likely because he enjoyed doing it.
Yeah, he was very unspooked. However the people who do subscribe to his ideology are spooked. Being the unspooked lad that he was, Nietzsche wouldn't even care.

Logical positivism and existentialism are subsets of nihilism.

Literally not a single correct answer in this thread. Nietzsche understood nihilism as an inevitable current which would unravel out Christianity (or slave morality), which itself unraveled out of Socratic dialectic. Nihilism is an inevitable seed which was to sprout out into the world with or without him.
His whole stuggle and shtick was against nihilism and in overcoming nihilism.

Furthermore he knew nihilism would get picked up in its insipid "hurr do wtvr i waaant" form immediately after Zarathustras revelation. Btw both Foucault and Deleuze, his postmodern inheritors, understood this fact quite clearly.

Thanks for the summary of Nietzsche's wikipedia article. This thread desperately needed that banality.

My bad I thought the question asked whether his answer was nihilism.

He found the answer to the question
>Did he actually find a solution to nihilism or just plunge us further into its depths?

this actually made me laugh out loud

>His whole stuggle and shtick was against nihilism and in overcoming nihilism.

I know, my question was whether he actually accomplished that with his philosophy (or if he just toar down he values of christianity without offering a viable replacement).

Nietzsche was trying to overcome nihilism not support it. He even claims himself that he had managed to surpass it in the will to power but really he just invented another God. I.e. the will to power.

Does being spooked mean denying any truth exists at all? Dose it mean being unable to stand by a decision resolutely, without revision or backpedaling of any kind? Does it mean supporting an ephemeral view of reality, where since everything repeats an endless cycle of coming into being and passing away, no knowledge of things can ever be properly stated or claimed, since it would be nearly relative in its authority? And why is this a good thing?

There is no solution

bump

Neither. He just stated it presence.

>it's another "I haven't even tried to read Stirner but still like to post arguments against him" type post

I'm not going try to explain a 350 page book in a single post.

A spook is an abstraction. Think if someone wants to steal money from a store but there's a cop standing next to it; you don't do it because the cop who arrest you. Now imagine the cash register is unattended and there is no one to see, no cameras etc.
You want the money but you don't take it because that's the wrong thing to do. That idea that it's wrong to steal is controlling your behavior in the same way the cop would. In reality there is nothing stopping you. The idea (the spook) is controlling you like the cop would, the difference is the cop is real and the spook is all in your head. So free your mind from all control. The ideas only promote themselves and only stop you from doing what you want.

The argument for being despooked writes itself if you understand the concept. Being despooked doesn't mean you're obligated to steal. People like Ayn Rand are extremely spooked as are people who like Marx.

Now before you try to refute the concept, go read the actual book. It gets frustrating trying to argue with people on Veeky Forums about Stirner because it is not an argument at all but instead one person trying to explain Stirner to the other whist the person who should be learning acts hostile to the other.

>The ideas only promote themselves and only stop you from doing what you want.

False. Keep your ill-informed nonsense for your diary, will ya?

Just read the book, man. I wish it was just my ill-informed nonsense because I'd be able to write a great book with that nonsense.

I'm not going to try and refute him, because I haven't read the book, you're right. And I don't mean to come off as hostile...

But do you have zero awareness of the genealogy of ideas from ancient philosophy to Stirner? Does someone proposing we revert back to our most base animal drives not set off red flags in your mind, no matter how sexy the argument is on paper? Do you see no correlation between ideas and the material universe? Do you think the only constant in the human discovery and creation of ideas has been to restrain behavior for some spurious motive?

This is where these people who dare to question you might be coming from. I will read the book, don't worry. But it's understandable to think you should encounter opposing views and have to defend what you know to people who may not be familiar, or who may have a general idea but not all the details.

It didn't take a whole lot of reading before I discovered that S. was just a plain 'ol nominalist, albeit an uber-egoistical one. The fact that the lads around here still ask questions about spooks and misunderstand S. in the most comical ways is very silly indeed, we agree on that. Have a mighty fine evening.

I recently heard 'I'm Free' by The Soup Dragons, and a particular lyric made me realize (more than anything else) that we are in the age of the last man:

>"I'm free to do what I want any old time"

bump

Weak answer user. If you truly believe the Nicomachean Ethics solve nihilism, please elobarate, but for the most part it just sounds like you don't know a whole lot about philosophy.

Glad to hear you will be reading it. But to answer your question, Stirner isn't some kind of anarchist and doesn't think we should just act like animals or anything.
Do you think at your very core all you really want to do is eat, have sex or whatever? It's in human nature to relate to others and work together.

If you find chemistry fascinating and want to study it eventually make a living off it, there's no reason not to pursue it. If someone else wanted to study it because they think it is what they should do because their parent's want them to or because they want to give back to society then Stirner would ask why do you feel that.

There's the kind of feeling someone would get if they didn't do something they think they're suppose to do. Like if someone walks past a homeless person begging and they feel kind of bad for not giving anything. Some people would give to a homeless person just so they don't feel bad and that is the essence of the spook; why are you trying to cure yourself of a feeling that comes from you own head by giving to the beggar? You don't really want to give money, you just want to not feel bad.
Stirner suggest you look for the source of the bad feeling which is a moral value that has possessed you and is now causing you to act in a way you normally wouldn't.
If you feel bad at not buying the over priced domestic produce in favor of the import, it's the same deal. The examples are endless.

Now contrast that with a desire for water: The feeling you get from needing water is something that can't be fixed by changing the way you think.
If reading a book is something you enjoy then you should do that. You see, the difference is that you're not reading the book because you feel like you should and therefore feel bad for not doing it, it's because reading it makes you feel something that you like.
The spook could also work to subtract enjoyment. If you grew up thinking reading was evil, then even if you read a book and enjoy it, there would be a nagging feeling like what you're doing is wrong. Stirner would again ask why you let this idea control you. That idea that reading is bad could end up making you stop reading all together, that's the spook altering your behavior in a way that is not what you normally would do.

Stirner's philosophy is away of thinking ad not a way of acting. There are no obligations because feeling obligated is always the result of a spook.
I hope you can see that there is nothing particularly anti-society or anti-progress. An individual may use this thinking to justify being lazy and a hedonist, but it could also be used to justify becoming really successful. Everyone knows there is a kind of satisfaction that you get from doing something hard.
I am studying chemistry in college currently because I love it. Finding answers to difficult questions makes me feel good. That satisfaction is something I can't just make myself feel.

Sorry for being a bit rambly.

Both.

He found a solution, but it was basically Romanticism on steroids.

Yes, he did. It is embedded within Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It's quite simple.

The solution to nihilism is creation.

Read Jung to get the answer. (or Jordan B Peterson)

>The solution to nihilism is creation.

Of what?

of deez nuts!
ha

Yes. His death.

what is his solution to nihilism?

Got em!

nietzsche didn't find nihilism a problem which needed a "solution," nietzsche understood nihilism as the space in which one has freedom

AMOR FATI

>Of what?
A new world.

New values, namely.

There's also the bit about the tarantula and the mountain(?), it's been a while since I read it. If you want to know what else Nietzsche had in mind when it comes to creation, however, think Napoleon/Caesar - two of his favourite historical figures who think for themselves. Two people who defiantly triumphed over the Zeitgeists they happened to be born into, and made something great for themselves. Empires, namely.

>hur dur don't let ideas control you if they don't accord with some amorphous notion of "self"
pleb shit. There is nothing that indicates the "self" (a completely made-up notion) is the best source of morality. This is pathetically simple.

Don't get me wrong; this way of thinking that you describe may do wonders for some people with a strong intuition of "who they really are" (i.e. a strong sense of self). But most people don't have a strong sense of self and mistakenly believe that the "self" is there. So what ends up happening is a swirling cauldron of unconscious desires, unresolved conflicts, and just bad ideas in general flood reality under the guise of achieving one's innermost desires, when a person subject to such a process would benefit so much more from simply adopting that morality imposed on them by some higher man/woman (here we enter Nietzsche).

Morality is so much more stupidly complex than Stirner's conception of it that it's not even funny. I don't see how anyone could believe this for more than a day without realizing its flaws.

His solutions cumulated into fascism, and are now considered uncool to talk about.

I mean Nietzsche's still cool in a watered down sort of way; but if you point out that all that the man on the tightrope looks an awful lot like Mussolini in an unbiased light people get uncomfortable.

>His solutions cumulated into fascism

>ahead of his time
He was basically Zeitgeist: the philosopher.

He was a literary genius tho

>>>"I'm free to do what I want any old time"
this is the dream of women, but more importantly, these people want to avoid being blamed once they fuck up

Yeah, Nietzsche is just a dialectical response to nihilism. He's sublated by it, as Father Seraphim Rose illustrates.

>Father Seraphim Rose

Father Seraphim was intensely anti-modernist and Enlightenment, that's pretty far from Kantian.

>Having sex is fucking up and women should be legally forced to bring young thugs and nigger wannabees into existence instead of killing them while their brains are still the size of a walnut.

Ok virgatron9000.

Marxism ended with the same thing though. Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Peron, all great men and women who used the same or at least similar ideas of hero-worship and the state as a new god to lead their countries into greatness.

>Interpreting women fucking up for a point on abortion

Wow, guilty conscience much? Maybe you realize that abortion is the abandonment of responsibility par excellence

It's a Hitler quote about Jews that's been misattributed.

It's called 'death of the author' weakling.

You have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Hero-worship is more Carlyle than Nietzsche. The latter certainly didn't like the former.

>It's a Hitler quote about Jews that's been misattributed.
I know

women are pride
-to kill their menstruation
-to bend over
-to have abortion

which means btw that they are the closest uberman that you can find today.

Compared to women, Men completely fail to create values

I'm pretty sure taking over a country and building up a cult of personality around yourself in order to better exercise your will to power while also inspiring a new race of men is pretty Nietzscheian.

So are poets and journalists creating radical autonomous city states, or overthrowing weak European monarchies to replace them with a new race of aristocratic superman who read ten books a day (I'm pretty sure that's close to what Stalin's 'number' was) while maintaining a perfect physique (look at Mussolini, the guy was jacked), not to mention either hijacking religious institutions for your own political and ideological gain (via Italy), or simply destroying them altogether to replace them with a 'cult-du-moi' (like Germany and Russia).

Just stop.

I'm going to need some elaboration on this.

What was Nietzsche about exactly then?

Nihilism is just metaphysical conjecture based on inflated definitions of meaning, category error and a weird stockholm syndrome like reliance on overarching telos.

Basically you allowed yourself to be spooked by words because of your uncritical and unexamined usage and there is nothing to overcome for any serious intellectual.

bump

youtube.com/watch?v=-7-dAmdy-JE&t=1h44m

>he's really a philosopher of knowledge and of language

what did he mean by this?

garden sheds etc

What solution? Nihilism is a retarded claim.

it's an autopsy, not a claim.

Walt Whitman was a better poet-philosopher

Suck a dick, fatty

Can you qualify this statement?

claim is normative, autopsy is descriptive.

Claim: an assertion of something as a fact.

There are no depths to nihilism.

The premise on which it starts is where it ends.

Then why do some people claim to be "nihilists?" My friend claims to be a nihilist and I have no idea how to respond/argue with that

>Stirner laughs in his blind alley, Nietzsche beats his head against the wall.

The self is not a made-up notion, Stirnet's 'self' is very well defined. Stirner doesn't say you can't adopt the values of someone higher than you if you think it's best for you - but your 'reward system' understanding of morality is the simplistic one. If the moral system doesn't draw its power from a certain ideology/metaphysical truth/general big other, its efficiency is irrelevant.

I bet there isn't one guy on this board who can actually explain Nietzsche's solution to nihilism.

Nihilism solves itself.

(I'm OP) yeah that's what I was really looking for with this thread but no one seems to have a solid grasp on him even. Do you know his solution?

See

you don't even know what you mean

Not as good as a book but I can give it a shot. If this thread is alive in an hour or two i'll type an explanation sure.

He isn't wrong but he only touches the tip of the iceberg.

>a solution to nihilism
just walk it off

/thread

Not gonna lie, this is the closest I've gotten.

I know exactly what I mean.

See my above post.

that's solipsism

I'll give it a shot. Build a new aesthetic that isn't nihilistic. Now, he had a lot of ideas on how one might do this, but this is the soul of the argument.

Dumbest people in the thread. You are either shitposting on a meta-ironic level that I have yet to attain or you are just responding with your blind knee jerk response to anything regarding Nietzsche and nihilism. I suspect the latter.

Nihilism in itself may be 'end where it begins', but the shift of a world from value to lack of value is where depth is created.

Okay, i'll try to summarize it. I'm probably repeating a lot you already know but whatever. It's too much to talk about Nietzsche's definition of will and its place in his ontology, but assume the basic features: it is the force driving men, it is a cause for itself (satisfaction, action, etc only exist through will), its mere satisfaction is devoid of meaning (Schopenhauer's pessimism is the premise here).

For Nietzsche our greatest will (and in many readings, the main force running the world) is the will to power - the will to overcome oppressive forces for the sake of genuine creation. Changing a situation, creating a reality, transforming matter into creation, unleashing unique thoughts, and so on; our default mode is static (or even - decay), we must overcome obstacles to execute our most immaterial desires. It is not the achievement itself we value the most, but the act of overcoming, overpowering. It is the power we crave, and through it we find meaning: the will to power isn't one you repeatedly satisfy through an insipid process - willing in itself, then pursuing, both unpleasant - it is inseparable from the process of its satisfaction, it is the will for the process, for the defeat of the obstacle (not the situation in which the obstacle is defeated). In this sense, it is an everlasting will not for a goal, but for a process, for more of itself - Nietzsche's way to flip Schopenhauer's philosophy on its head: life as a whole is meaningful, because it is not the satisfaction we crave, but the constant move towards it.

So, it is by staying true to our will to power that we make life a meaningful experience in its entirety (as in, during life, not yet in the face of death), and hence the well known call to abandon past morals and values, give the most glorious fulfillment to our uniqueness, and most importantly, unleash our desire to fulfill it.

Nietzsche was well aware this isn't a complete victory over nihilism, but it places us as a 'bridge to the ubermensch' - by pushing away from the last man, we can create a world in which a truly strong, pure man can grow: one who's life affirmation is more complete, who could make death essential to his creation (as a contrast to be defeated, which interestingly is also a source for power), affirming everything about his existence. Through bringing him closer, we can perhaps find even deeper affirmation of ourselves.

>>a solution to nihilism
>just walk it off
Stoicism is pretty good, yeah

Maybe I didn't write enough about the actual 'creation' - basically, you're right. It is not exactly an aesthetic that isn't nihilistic, but an aesthetic which is neither a surrender (nihilism) or enslavement (past aesthetic values, enforced by the current power structure). Creation of both actual material, and values which dictate its existence, unique to you, despite natural and social opposing forces.

for you

>"it's very well-defined"
>doesn't give definition

>This whole post is just abysmal. How old are you?

not the guy you're arguing with (dunno about philosophy to get roped in) but

>hurr durr you're dumb because you didn't spoonfeed me