One of the stumbling blocks in this Christian thought is the essential fundamental whose associates leave ahead to the spoken exchange with ‘God,’ and through its substantiated possessions bequeathing to philosophy, and hence the tendency to conceive deities as fixed and removed from interpersonal relations. Teilhard's process cosmology has begun to overcome this by using the term ‘divine’ as an adjective that qualifies its operations. Marxism's naturalistic position is that the only personal Others whom we encounter are other persons like ourselves, and that it is a confusion and reification to identify our interpersonal relations with a supernatural or superhuman being. Nevertheless, Marxism implies that as individual persons we can relate to those concrete interpersonal relations of men whose ‘ensembles’ compose the very essence of humanity as a species-being78 and which are the very creators of history. That is, as individuals, we can either understand and facilitate those creative interpersonal relations or remain blind to them and obstruct them.
In Marxists as in Christian thought, these relations are not entirely of our own doing and thinking; They stand over against us and make and break us. Marxism agrees with Christianity that the true and rightful objects of our human devotion are not merely finite, individual people but the creative, loving relations we are enabled to sustain with them, persons come and go, but this creative relation abides. It is this capacity to enter such relations that we really cherish in others. Dating from Jesus' own teachings, like that on the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 and the parable of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25, there has been a humanistic, pragmatic tradition in Christianity. According to this what counts is, not a person's concepts, but one's responses too human need, that is, one's capacity to relate one’s affirmative others. This is the last judgment under which all stand, humanist and theist, Marxist and Christian.
Because Marxist and Christian agree on the essential nature of the - Other relation, they are already involved in dialogue. Nevertheless, a dialogue presupposes differences within unity, for it would be meaningless between two who are in accord in every respect. The differences between Marxist and Christian are ample enough to furnish vivifying contrast in the context of a basic agreement.
Christians understand the incompleteness, dependence, and receptivity of human nature; Accordingly, on the one hand, they value human humility, gratitude, reverence, submission, obedience, and confession, and, on the other hand, forgiveness, nurturance, succory, solace, and compassion. Marxists understand the phases of human fulfilment, independence, and activity as accordingly they value - reliance, resourcefulness, criticism, struggle, and ‘revolutionizing practice.’ Where Christians believe that a person is and remains a child or a finite creature who derives one's being and fulfilment from beyond one’s history, Marxists hold that the person, while not totally - sufficient, is in essence the maturing creator of history, and that this in turn is both the place and the goal of his fulfilment. Where Christians understand the threat to the in, its own isolation and solitude, and value both man's need of the other and the gift of the other that fulfills that need, Marxists understand the threat to the in the absorption or oppression of the other, and value the integrity of the. Where Christians discern in our fulfilment of grace or power at work beyond our own to generate advantageous favour in one's individual and collective life, Marxists emphasize the power of the person's own body and intellect to maximize ‘all right’ and minimize ‘wrong’. Where Christians see our limitations and alienations and tend to stress the tension between the actual and the ideal, Marxists see our possibilities and stress the conquest of his conditions and limitations.
A creative dialogue would have each participant express candidly, freely, and fully his perspectives, listen sensitively to the perspectives of the other, and differentiate and integrate so far as possible the perspectives thus expressed. The differentiation and integration must occur not only in individual persons, but in their relations one to another. In dialogue people change their perspectives in relation to each other; the very integration of qualities, forms, intentions, etc., which defines their personality is defined by its relation to the perspectives comprising the other. Furthermore, these contents of personality are not inert images entertained by an idle mind, but the very forms of our response to others and to the world; they pertain to the world upon which the personality intends to act. As one is known by one's fruits, the point of dialogue is not only to interpret the world but to change it. Hence, the final situation and test for dialogue between Christians and Marxists must be human society it, with its problems of war, poverty, political tyranny, racism, and cultural deprivation. The forms and extent of the exploitation of people on our planet are urgent enough to destroy us if we do not cooperate in discussion and action to solve them. They are deep and widespread enough to keep us all, theists and hedonist’s coincidingly busy and the human in our dealings with one-another for centuries to come.
Though it has taken different forms, the principle of dialogue is basic to both Christianity and Marxism: the Christian ‘speaking the truth in love’ to friend and opponent alike, and the Marxist engaged in the dialectic of critical practice. In the past, these two forms have sometimes seemed diametrically and irreconcilably opposed. The first did not vaunt it, but were patient and kind, and in suffering took the evils of the world upon it; The second strove strenuously to change and control the material conditions of the world. However, the present crisis of technology, of nuclear and other genocidal weaponry, and of massive poverty and indebtedness, has brought them closer together. Many Christians living in a secularized world can see the impact of material conditions, while many Marxists recognize the limits and dangers of force in human affairs. Not only has the threat of mutual destruction driven them together; they also share a common faith in the saving value of dialogue between people working in a common cause.
Both Christians and Marxists have also recognized the transforming and revolutionary nature of dialogue and dialectic between persons when it touches them not only in conversation but in action as the outcome and test of conversation. To interact expressively, sensitively, and creatively with other persons and the world is an act of great faith, for it means that one considers one's own system of ideas and values to be subject to the transformation that might emerge in such interaction, generating new insights and new ways of doing things. It means that the reality of the creative, transforming power working between persons and their world takes priority over what they as individual persons and institutions desire and conceive. It means that, although one cannot foresee how he or she and others will be changed, the relation of mutual trust in their communication and common labour provides them with a bond of security that will enable them to tolerate frustration, conflict, and suffering and to rejoice in new problems and truth. The demand and opportunity of our age are dialogue and common labour at all levels, between as many persons and groups as possible. We must learn either to live in this way or to die; we must learn either to love with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, or to face a physical and spiritual torment.
The readiness and willingness to enter dialogue and cooperation are growing on both sides. Recalling the influence of ‘that extraordinary figure’ of Jesus Christ on his political faith and his concentration since youth on ‘the revolutionary aspects of Christian doctrine and of Christ's thought’, Fidel Castro has said: In my opinion, religion from the political point of view is not anaesthetic or a miraculous remedy. It can be an opiate or a wonderful cure to the degree that it is used or applied to defend the oppressors and exploiters or the oppressed and exploited--depending on the way in which one approach the political, social, or material problems of the human being who, apart from theology or religious beliefs, is born into this world and must live in it.
From a strictly political point of view-and In believe that In know something about policies In even think that one can be a Marxist without giving up one's being Christian and can work united with the Marxist Communist to transform the world. The important thing is that, in both cases, they are sincere revolutionaries willing to overcome the exploitation of persons by others and to struggle for the just distribution of social wealth, equality, fraternity, and the dignity of all human beings - that is, to be the bearers of the most advanced political, economic and social consciousness, even though, in the case of the Christians, starting from a religious conception.
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops (USA) has called on the educated Christian to engage in ‘seriously studying’ Marxism. The Bishops criticize Marxism's atheism, anti-transcendence, the economic interpretation of alienation, as such is an exclusively human eschatology and hope, and the reduction of moral norms to social, revolutionary practice. For all this, they assert, that still the ideological outlook of the communist movement is not the only factor that determines cooperation on the part of Christians. In some areas of universally human concern collaboration with communist governments or communist parties has become a practical necessity. Due to the socialization that Pope John XXIII recognized as one of the distinctive characteristics of our time, modern life requires the cooperation of all men and women of good will. Citizens of a world united by unrestricted technology and instant communication, yet devoid of an effective international authority, has no choice but to seek common approaches and concerted action in attacking global problems.
As we, the very wide and long procession of people in history, do solve our problems and turn to new creative tasks, we shall know more fully the answers to our present questions about humanity and the divine. The very forms in which we pose the questions are limited by our own perspectives. Love moving into the creative dialectic of practice is the only path by which new positions can be attained and our eyes lifted to new horizons. Mysteries that mislead theory find their ultimate solution, if such can be found at all, in reflective practice: Faith without practice is dead. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart conceived, what is prepared for those who truly practice love, for now we see ourselves and our fulfilment only through a glass darkly, but in the triumphant future we shall see them face to face.
Nietzsche never offers his readers a lengthy, coherent discussion of the role of instinct in human life, but makes brief, frequently contradictory remarks on the subject throughout his works. Additionally, Nietzsche uses the term to refer to two distinct forms of human action - any non-conscious mental process and - created dispositions to act in which the latter are a species of the former and both are related to the instincts found in animals. In order to clarify Nietzsche's comments on instinct, all three of these usages will be examined in turn.
In common parlance, instinct refers to inborn patterns of behaviour in animals that respond to specific external stimuli. A cat playing with a mouse before killing it or a lioness hunting down a fleeing antelope does not seem to arise from the type of conscious, - aware choices possible to humans; they are representations of those animals' innate drives. Nietzsche notices and admires the grace and fluidity found in these unconscious animal actions, qualities that are absent in much of human behaviour, due to the misuse and overuse of reason by humans. Nietzsche regards the voice of reason as halting and uncertain and therefore sees that action arising from a conscious process of relational deliberation as similarly halting and uncertain. As a result, the proper wellspring of moral action for Nietzsche is not rational deliberation but something akin to animal instinct. Thus Nietzsche applies the term ‘instinct’ to human action sharing the grace, certainty, and spontaneity of animal action, i.e., to patterns of action originating in unconscious mental processes and to - created moral dispositions that have become subconscious.
In certain passages, Nietzsche uses the term instinct broadly to describe any unconscious mental processes. For example, in a discussion of the frequently-made distinction between the ‘true world’ and the ‘apparent worlds, Nietzsche writes, appearance is an arranged and simplified world at which our practical instincts have been at work; it is perfectly true for us, which is to say, we live, we are able to live in it.’ Because we created the ‘apparent world’ on a buried, subconscious level, Nietzsche considers it to be instinctual.
However, Nietzsche most frequently uses instinct to refer to a specific type of unconsciously mental process - those - created dispositions that unconsciously give rise to certain types of action. Although these instincts often originate in a conscious process initiated by the individual, they are then internalized and automated, thereby yielding fluid and spontaneous responses to moral situations. Those actions guided by instincts are acted unconsciously on a certain level and are thus deserving of their metaphorical connection to the concept of innate animal drives. It is, of course, this particular moral conception of instinct that is of direct interest to this thesis.
The vast majority of Nietzsche's commentary on instinct is focussed on its relation to rationality and consciousness. However, in, On the Genealogy of Morals, we find a rare explanation of the process of creating instincts embedded within Nietzsche's discussion of the development of the right to make promises. Nietzsche begins this discussion with an examination of the positive force of forgetfulness, which he equates to a door-keeper, a preserver of psychic order, repose, and etiquette’ and without which ‘there could be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no present.’ In opposition to this force is the ‘memory of the will,’ which requires that a man ‘must undergo the fundamentally learnt necessities to distinguish between events from chance ones, to think causally, to see and anticipate distant eventualities as if they belonged to the present, to decide with certainty what is the goal and the means to it, and in general be able to calculate and compute’. This memory of the will, then ‘makes men to a certain degree necessary, uniform, like among like, regular, and consequently calculable. This memory of the will that allows men to make promises is, in fact, a product of the socialization by the herd to the morality of mores, and so it gives the herd neither the right to make promises nor the true responsibility for those promises.
This is the background against which the instinct of responsibility to one's promises is created in the autonomous individual. In that individual, the conflict between forgetfulness and memory of the will that inhabits a turning-side paradigm of being outdone, such that he ‘has his own independent, protracted will and the right to make promises’. According to Nietzsche, there is in him ‘the proud consciousness, quivering in every muscle, of what has at length been achieved and become flesh in him, a consciousness of his own power and freedom, a sensation of humanity comes to completion’. So, ‘the proud awareness of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom more than one and fate, has in this case penetrated to the depths and become instinct, the dominating instinct,’ which he without a doubt calls ‘his conscience’.
The instinct created in the sovereign individual is not a moral principle enjoining him to honour his promises; in fact, that ‘morality of mores’ is precisely that which the sovereign individual has overcome. Being that his responsibility flows from his conscience, rather than from social code of ethics to be deliberated about, the sovereign individual spontaneously honours his promises as a natural expression of his inner character.
In this example of the sovereign individual, three distinct elements can be highlighted in the instinct created - its origin, the process by which it is created, and the results, in action, of possessing the instinct. The instinct begins with the individual's conscious, almost bodily awareness of the unique and valuable capacity to honour promises that he created for him out of the morality of mores. This sense of - responsibility is, over time, deeply integrated into the very ‘soul’ of the sovereign individual to become his conscience, such that he could not separate him from it. In concrete action, this instinct result in a certain type of attitude and certain behaviours toward the promises he makes, without thought or question, he honoured those promises, not because of the opinions of his neighbours or fear of negative consequences, but because to do otherwise would be a travesty against his very person.
These three elements found in the instinct of responsibility, relating to its origin, the processes by which it is created, and the results in action, are also found, although in a more general form, in all Nietzschean instincts. First, instincts originate from within the individual, not in response too outside pressures; they are created, with a certain degree of consciousness, by autonomous agents. Second, over time, instincts go beyond the conscious awareness in which they arise, to the depths of subconscious. Finally, the result of this process is the fluid, spontaneous action characteristic of animals.
A central element in Nietzsche's conception of virtue is that genuine virtues are - created, in the sense that the impetus for their creation must lie within the individual rather than from external circumstance. In a comparison of the ‘higher man’ to the ‘herd animal’ in Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche describes the essential constitution of that higher man. The greatest man will be ‘the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man Beyond Good and Evil, the master of his virtues, the superabundant of will’. He will possess ‘the creative fullness of power and mastery’ and ‘the ability to be different’. This comparison highlights the role of - creation and - mastery in Nietzsche's ideal; the higher man does not acquire his virtues from outside sources such as teaching or socialization; he creates his virtues for him. As a type of virtue, instincts followed the same pattern of being created by an initiated process and directed by the individual, although not necessarily controlled. Although we will want to make room for moral insights that are hastened by external events or individuals in our lives in our account of moral dispositions, Nietzsche's focus on - determination and autonomy will prove useful to that account of moral dispositions.
Nietzsche devotes much attention to the second element of instinct - the process by which instincts are created particularly to the complicated relationship between instinct, consciousness, and the subconscious. In essence, Nietzschean instincts originated in conscious awareness and then transform of becoming validated in the affirmation of the internalized and automated, such that we are no longer particularly aware of possessing or acting on them. The fact that instincts come to reside deep within the individual, rather than on the surface of consciousness makes them far superior to any conscious moral principles. They regulate action better, because they do not depend upon the fumbling deliberation of reason at the moment of moral choice. Additionally, because our instincts contribute to an individual's inner person, they are authentic and genuine in a way that any conscious moral theory adopted or absorbed from others will never be.
Contrary to common thinking, conscious awareness of our motives, for Nietzsche, is not necessarily a virtue. In fact, he regards that which is not consciously intentional in an action as more revealing than an individual's deliberate or professed intentions. In a discussion of the view that the value of an action lie in the intentions behind it, Nietzsche writes, ‘today, when among us immoralists at least the suspicion has arisen that the decisive value of an action resides precisely on that which is not intentional in it, and all that in it that is intentional, of all that can be see, known, 'conscious,' consciously still belongs to its surface and skin - which, increase excessively upon the smooth exteriors, in that it betrays something but conceals still more?’ This perspective on the meaningfulness and value of intentionality even leads to the idea that the reasons for which an instinct was created, i.e., the original intentionality of an instinct, is not particularly important. Because instincts lose much of their intentionality in the process of internalization, they are not subject to the great suspicion Nietzsche accords to consciousness and reason.
The will to power, though related to Freud’s explorations of aggression and destruction, does not contain or imply a death instinct, however, there is a notion of death o sorts involves in the sense of the individual’s creative, expansive growth involving a willingness to die to the in its current form, that is, one’s expansion and may break the boundaries of the as currently constituted and experienced. Zarathustra states that, Yours [is] what it would do above all else, to create beyond it? Also, least of mention, has affinities. We use the realm of Eros. Kaufmann suggests that the will to power have aspects or manifestations that can be described as a creative Eros, and, quoting from Plato’s Symposium, ‘the love of generation and of birth in beauty,’
Of course, Nietzsche recognized the aggression instincts and will to power in various forms and manifestations, including sublimated mastery, all of which ae prominent in Feud’s writings. We can also note in Freud’s description of the power and importance of rational thinking and scientific laws. However ‘bright’ the world of science is and however much reason and science represent the highest strength possessed man, to a withholding enemy that imposes ‘strict discipline with ‘relentlessness and monotony’. However much this language pertains to a description of universal problems in human development, one of reason as relentless, monotonous disciplining force to which he reluctantly (labouriously?) submit.
Nietzsche's views on intentionality and his positive evaluation of instincts are well-integrated into his broader perspective on the role of reason in moral action, such that the former cannot be understood but through the latter. Throughout his works, particularly The Will to Power, Nietzsche adamantly criticizes the common ideal of moral action achieved through a rational, methodical process of deliberation. Nietzsche characterizes this view as the idea that ‘one must imitate Socrates and counter the dark desires by producing the permanence of daylight - the daylight of reason. One must be prudent, clear, bright at any cost; Every yielding to the instincts, to the unconscious, leads downward’. Rational deliberations in moral choice, according to Nietzsche, are ‘merely tentative’ and ‘show a far lower standard of morality’ than thinking and action directed by instincts. Conscious thinking is pained, labourious, and unwieldy; it ought to be considered only a stepping stone toward moral action, as an aspect of human life to be overcome, through the creation of instincts. In fact, at times, Nietzsche advocates that we do more than simply use instincts to go beyond rationality and consciousness, that actually lose our awareness of the reasons for those instincts. Nietzsche writes ‘we must in fact seek the perfect life where it has become least conscious (i.e., least aware of its logic, its reasons, its means and intentions, its utility) the demand for a virtue that reasons is not reasonable’.
Despite this strong language against any intentionality in moral action, Nietzsche is not wholly rejecting the power of reason in moral decision-making. He is vehemently opposed to the ‘return to nature’ advocated by Rousseau, because it constitutes regression rather than its overcoming. In the section of Twilight of the Idols entitled ‘Progress in my sense,’ in which Nietzsche differentiates him from Rousseau, he writes, ‘In too speak of a 'return to nature' although it is not really a going-back but a going-up - up into a high, free, even frightful nature and naturalness’ That ‘going-up’ represents the overcoming of both reason and animality made possibly by - created instincts. In other words, Nietzsche's disdain for reason and conception of virtue as arising from instinct does not constitute ‘a reversion to the level of the 'beast of prey’.
Nietzsche's view that instincts represent an overcoming of reason, rather than a regression into the animality, tempers some of his more extreme denunciations of reason. For example, Nietzsche comments that the ‘absurd overestimation of consciousness’ and the association of the unconscious with ‘falling back to the desires and senses’ and ‘becoming the primordial animal’ by philosophers resultants in the erroneous view that ‘every advance lies in an advance in becoming conscious, whereby every regression in becoming unconscious’ Given his sharp criticism of Rousseau, Nietzsche ought not be understood as advocating the exact opposite perspective, i.e., that blind unreason is necessarily an advance over consciousness. Reminisces for arguing that the process of becoming less conscious through creating instincts is a great advance over attempts rationally to calculate the moral course of action. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Nietzsche's attacks on reason that are deeply troublesome to his account of instincts because they prevent him from distinguishing between emotions and instincts.
Although most of Nietzsche's discussion of instinct focuses on the relationship between instinct and reason, he does occasionally speak of creating instincts through the passions. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, ‘once you suffered passion and called them evil. Nonetheless, it now seems that you have only your virtues left: They grow out of your passions. You commended your highest goal to the heart of these passions: Then they became your virtues and passions you enjoyed’. In this instance, instincts are not created by the usual process of animalizing reason, only the spiritualising of the passions. Thus, Nietzschean instincts are not necessarily created by one and only one process; There are variational possibilities in that their becoming a process of creation
Moving now from the origin and creation of instincts to the final element of instinct, Nietzsche regards the type of action made possible through instincts as the fluid and spontaneous action found in animals. Nietzsche's basic perspective is summed up in his expressed words that genius resides in instinct, as well of belonging goodness also. One acts perfectly when one is to act instinctively. Moral action is the natural outcome of a set of healthy, well-formed instincts.
In his book Nietzsche, Richard Schacht illustrates the animal-like grace of Nietzsche's conception of instinctual action through a comparison between instinct and the body's ‘knowledge’ of a certain set of movements. In learning physical tasks, such as typing or playing musical instruments, Schacht writes, one may be said to know how to do them once one has learned how to execute certain rudiments of them, but so long as one's mastery of them is only partial, one's performance will be halting, tentative, uncertain, and flawed. One is still in the position of having to think about how various procedures are and must be mediated by one's consciousness.
Only when one has been able to ‘dispense with the mediation of conscious deliberation and reckoning at each step of the way’ does ‘one's engagement in the activity [take] on the appearance of complete 'naturalness'’. A person who has made an activity ‘second nature’ or ‘instinctual’ does not lose consciousness, accept, that Schacht points out, often experiences ‘a higher degree of psychic intensity and sensitivity’. Instinct creates this naturalness in action; acting morally becomes second nature, intrinsic to whom we are, rather than something that reasons must force us to do.
Nietzsche's theory of instincts, then, can be summed up as follows. The work of the reason is hesitant and labourious, while animal instincts are blind and lacking in - direction and - control. Instincts unify the spontaneity and beauty of animal action with the intentionality and - mastery of rational action, by internalizing and automatizing certain types of moral actions . . . The result is that, ‘so long as life is ascending, happiness and instincts are one’.
Nietzsche's account of instinct, as compelling at it is, faces serious challenges. To begin with, the moral stratification of men into higher and lower types, which we find throughout his ethics, also permeate his theory of instincts, thus unnecessarily limiting the application of his theory to a few rare individuals. A more significant problem, however, lies in Nietzsche's view that the genuinely moral agent ought not be aware of the reasons, logic, and intentions of his instincts, because it prevents Nietzsche from differentiating between mere emotional responses and genuine instincts, as well as hampers and severely complicates the development of a real method by which old instincts can be overturned in favour of new ones. Although the problems posed by Nietzsche's focus on moral stratification within humankind can be resolved, the unconsciousness that Nietzsche advocates placing between moral action and the reasons for that action will strip Nietzsche's theory of instincts of much of its force and power.
(In) Nietzsche's assumptions of moral stratification depends upon a division of men into higher and lower types, into the master and the slave or into the beast of prey and the lamb. This form of stratification is almost deterministic; The herd and the nobles are set, well-defined groups in which individuals remain. There is no gradual process of moral growth, only perhaps the rare man who breaks free from the ‘morality of mores’ to becomes a higher form of life. This stratification permeates Nietzsche's perspective on instincts, because instincts are so intimately bound up with the ideals of control and - mastery found in the supramoral individual. In the discussion of the sovereign individual who creates an instinct of responsibility in On the Genealogy of Morals, for example, such an individual, clearly rising to overcome the morality of custom, is a rare phenomenon. The creation of such an instinct requires such an attenuated sense of - awareness and - mastery that it be only attainable to a few; the rest, ‘the feeble windbags who promise without the right to do so,’ do not have the power even to create such an instinct for themselves.
This moral stratification is unwelcome essentially because a normative account of moral decision-making ought to have a wider audience than the rare supramoral individual, who, in all likelihood wouldn't need or want a philosopher's judgment of how moral choices ought to be made. Those ‘lower’ individuals who struggle with moral choices might be able to use instincts in order to become more - determined and spontaneous in their actions. Placing Nietzsche’s moral stratification on the periphery of his theory of instincts would not be particularly difficult, however, such that, although the creation of instincts would necessitate some degree of - disciple, sovereignty, and - awareness, an individual would not have to be fully supramoral in order to benefit from the power of moral instincts. The power, efficacy, and authenticity of these instincts would, in all probability, be dependent upon degree to which Nietzschean virtues were present in that individual. Nevertheless, instincts could still be effectively created and used to achieve moral action, even by that Nietzsche would consider being lesser men
Differentiating Nietzschean instincts from simple emotions are found in Nietzsche's ethics, however, is not the most formidable challenge to Nietzsche's account of instincts. It is Nietzsche's view that ‘we must in fact seek perfect life where it has become least conscious, i.e., least aware of its logic, its reasons, its means and intentions, its utility that is most troublesome, emphasis added. Such a gulf between the origin of instincts in consciousness and the unconscious expression of them would prevent individuals from properly and easily differentiating between simple (non-moral) emotional responses and genuine, - created instincts. Because our passions do resemble instincts and, in fact, our instincts can be seen as a particular type of passion, we must remain aware, on some level, of the intentionality behind instincts in order too properly separate instinct from emotional responses that do not provide the moral guidance as instincts do. Additionally, critical examination of the instincts possessed by individuals and the entire process of overturnings old instincts in favour of new ones would be impossible with the separation of instinct from intentionality that Nietzsche advocates.
The passions do not hold the moral weight of Nietzschean instincts. Emotional responses, whether in the form of pleasure or blind rage, do not necessarily reflect an individual's deeply-held moral values; They often arise from socialized beliefs or superficial attitudes. We can often only differentiate instincts form (other) passions by retaining an awareness of the purpose of the instinct, of the reasons for creating the instinct for ourselves. Instincts are consciously created in order to serve a specific moral function, namely enabling spontaneous moral action in response to specific types of situations. It is, however, precisely this critical consciousness and intentionality that Nietzsche believes individuals ought to separate themselves as exampled from its subjective matters and physical theories. Based on his comments in The Will to Power, we ought to become completely unconscious as to the reasons why we have the instincts we do. However, if we do make ourselves unaware of the justification for our instincts, then we cannot determine whether any particular emotional response is the result of caprice, socialization, or instinct. Therefore, although we still may act spontaneously, with animal-like grace and speed, the awareness and intentionality behind our actions vanquish as we no longer have a method of moral decision-making which results in moral outcomes of choices.
It is not the case that an account of moral dispositions requires an individual to be aware, at any given time, of the reasons for the dispositions she has or even to know when she is acting on those dispositions. Still, an individual must have that knowledge available to her consciousness in order to engage in the - reflection required for genuinely - directed moral decision-making.
This position taken by Nietzsche on the distance that ought to arise between instincts and intentionality also would effectively prevent the moral growth naturally resulting from an overturning of old, obsolete instincts in favour of new, life-relevant ones. Although many of our moral dispositions remain constant through changes in our lifetimes, others are refined or completely overhauled. New dispositions are constantly created in the wake of new relationships, new jobs, or simply the fact of growing older. An individual might, for example, realize that she is too argumentative in intellectual discussions, thus impeding good philosophical discussion. In response to this realization, she might try to cultivate an instinct for joint philosophical exploration and jettison the old instinct for appositional debate. These sorts of changes are inherent to life and must be taken into consideration, even promoted, in a normative account of moral decision-making.
If however, the ideal that we are trying to achieve is a lack of awareness of the intentionality behind our instincts, then we have no standard by which to judge whether our instincts are serving us or whether they have put us on the path of descending life. We could not reflect upon what our instincts were created to achieve and whether they are actually achieving results for which they were designed. For example, under Nietzsche's ideal, a woman who was being taken advantage of by ‘friends,’ because of her instinct for benevolence and generosity toward others, would not be able to examine and change what was wrong with the moral situation. Because she had driven her reasons for her benevolence from her consciousness, she would not be able to reflect upon at what end benevolence was aimed to accomplish or examine the ways in which that instinct was harming her. Perhaps she could engage in a long chain of analytical reasoning to determine how best to modify her instinct, but at that point having retained some awareness of the intentionality behind her instincts would have been more useful for her.
Nietzsche could respond to this particular criticism by arguing that old instincts are easily overturned by new ones. Nonetheless, that without any awareness of the intentionality of instincts, it is unclear why new instincts would arise in the first place or how an individual could tell, if they did emerge, whether they were essentially in the service of life than the old instincts.
These criticisms of Nietzsche, which arise out of his strong stand against rationality and conscious awareness in ethically decision-making, do not fully undermine his account of moral dispositions. His insistence that instincts are - created and freely chosen, rather than unconsciously absorbed from society, is essential to an account of moral dispositions that values - determination and autonomy. Additionally, the connection that Nietzsche makes between instinct and the smoothness and spontaneity of animal action is essential for a conceptualization of instinct as integrating rational judgment and emotional motivation. Nevertheless, an alternative to the relationship that Nietzsche construes between moral dispositions and conscious intentionality would greatly strengthen the account of moral dispositions. Aristotle offers such an alternative, for he posits a much stronger connection between moral dispositions and rational deliberation.
The psychological genre as it relates to sociologically and medicinal matter has gained an increasing amount of scientific approval. Impartiality and the scientific method are both integral components to a psychologist's mode of practice. However, even the most esteemed of psychologists can only speculate at what is to understand that the human being is to interaction in the way they do. Absolutes play no function in psychology. Everything is relative and open to conjecture. Theologians give us their visions or thoughts about life. In the field of psychology, there have been many different regions of interest and speculation. Psychoanalysis has been the pinnacle of arenas to examine within the vast field of psychology. Psychoanalysis has been an area that Carl Jung has explored, critiqued and perfected in his lifetime. Jung was not alone in his exploration of the psyche; there were many other psychoanalytic perspectives as well. Carl Jung was said to have been a magnetic individual who drew many others into his circle. Sigmund Freud was Carl Jung's greatest influence. Although he came to part company with Freud in later years, Freud had a distinct and profound influence on Carl Jung's psychoanalytic perspectives, as well as many others. Within the scope of analytic psychology, there exist two essential tenets. The first is the system in which sensations and feelings are analysed and listed by type. The second has to do with a way to analyse the psyche that follows Jung's concepts. It stresses a group unconscious and a mystical factor in the growth of the personal unconscious. It is unlike the system described by Sigmund Freud.
Analytic psychology does not stress the importance of sexual factors on early mental growth. The best understanding of Carl Jung and his views regarding the collective unconscious are best understood in understanding the man and his influences. In keeping with the scope and related concepts of Carl Jung, unconscious is the sum of those psychic activities that elude an individual's direct knowledge of him or her. This term should not be confused either with a state of awareness, that is, a lack of knowledge arising from an individual's unwillingness to look into him or her (introspection), nor with the subconscious, which consists of marginal representations that can be readily brought to consciousness. Properly, unconscious processes cannot be made conscious at will; Their unravelling requires the use of specific techniques, such as free association, dream interpretation, various projective tests, and hypnosis.
For many centuries, students of human nature considered the idea of an unconscious mind as contradictory. However, it was noticed by philosophers such as St. Augustine, and others, as well as early experimental psychologists, including Gustav Sechner, and Hermann Von Helmholtz, that certain psychological operations could take place without the knowledge of the subject. Jean Sharcot demonstrated that the symptoms of post-traumatic neuroses did not result from lesions of the nervous tissue but from unconscious representations of the trauma. Pierre Janet extended this concept of ‘unconscious fixed ideas’ to hysteria, wherein traumatic representations, though split off from the conscious mind, exert an action upon the conscious mind in the form of hysterical symptoms. Janet was an important influence on Carl Jung, and he reported that the cure of several hysterical patients, using hypnosis to discover the initial trauma and then having it reenacted by the patient, was successful. Josef Breuer also treated a hysterical patient by inducing the hypnotic state and then elucidating for her the circumstances that had accompanied the origin of her troubles. As the traumatic experiences were revealed, the symptoms disappeared. Freud substituted the specific techniques of free association and dream interpretation for hypnosis. He stated that the content of the unconscious has not just been ‘split off,’ but has been ‘repressed,’ that is forcibly expelled from consciousness. Neurotic symptoms express a conflict between the repressing forces and the repressed material, and this conflict causes the ‘resistance’ met by the analyst when trying to uncover the repressed material. Aside from occasional psychic traumas, the whole period of early childhood, including the Oedipus situation or the unconscious desire for the parent of the opposite sex and hatred for the parent of the same sex, has been repressed. In a normal individual, unknown to him or her, these early childhood situations influence the individual's thoughts, feelings, and acts; in the neurotic they determine a wide gamut of symptoms which psychoanalysis endeavours to trace back to their unconscious sources.
During psychoanalytic treatment, the patient's irrational attitudes toward the analyst, referred to as the ‘transference,’ manifests a revival of old forgotten attitudes toward parents. The task of the psychoanalyst, together with the patient, is to analyse his resistance and transference, and to bring unconscious motivations to the patient's full awareness. Carl Jung considered the unconscious as an autonomous part of the psyche, endowed with its own dynamism and complementary to the conscious mind. He distinguished the personal from the collective unconscious; the later he considered to be the seat of ‘archetypes’ - universal symbols loaded with psychic energy.
As new approaches to the unconscious came about, Jung introduced the word association test, that is, spontaneous drawing, and his own technique of dream interpretation. His therapeutic method aimed at the unification of the conscious and the unconscious through which he believed man achieved his ‘individuation,’ the completion of his personality. Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's concepts of the unconscious have provided a key to numerous facts in psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, and sociology, and for the interpretation of artistic and literary works. (Ellenberger) Hypnosis has contributed largely to our understanding of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung understood this and utilized hypnosis throughout his many experiments and tests. In recent times, our understanding of the unconscious has been expanded due to experimental hypnosis and as well projective psychological tests. It has been observed that Jung's relations with the other significant people in his life appear to have been as unsatisfactory as his own. It has been observed that Jung despised his pastor father as a weakling and failure and had mixed feelings about his mother. After Jung broke with Freud, his former collaborator and mentor, Jung went on to develop his own psychological system. This incorporated a number of key concepts that included the collective and conscious, the repository of mankind's psychic heritage, and realm of the archetypes - inherited patterns in the mind that exist through time and space. Then there were the anima/animus, the image of contrasexuality in the unconscious of each individual, and shadow, the repressed and wanted aspect of a person. There is also the theory of psychology types, i.e., introverts, and extraverts, which influenced William James' dichotomy of tough and tender minded individuals. Jung also developed his theory of individuation, which holds that each individual's goal in life is to achieve his own potential. These theories on the different approaches to psychoanalysis each have valid points. As such, theories will always have to deal with paradigmatic assumptions. These are ideas that the theorist has taken for granted as facts. An example is Freud's notion that women suffer from a lack of - esteem or worth all their lives because of penis envy. Freud's assumption possibly could have been derived for being merely because of the time when he lived, and it was a time when women were treated as second class citizens. Freud's assumption that sex is the driving force behind everything could also be a product of his times. Sexual feelings were often repressed. The problem with paradigmatic assumptions is that each person grows up in a different culture and some theories do not apply to everyone. The problem with psychology remains that it is not an exact science. Though Jung's ideals may have been moulded by Freud and further critiqued and perfected, it may further be perfected in the future. Such is the arena of science, an ever-changing, dynamic field that undergoes much scrutiny and much refinement.
All we really know about feeling is: it is only expressed within our own minds, the feelings we understand as sensory impressions seem to draw our attention to the material world around us; pain leaves us little choice to focus on anything other than the unique material object in the real world, our own body, and sensibilities that spread off the feeling by equally establishing by its owing reflections that does not endure its own pain nor neurological affiliations, indicate the current emotional tone of our own thoughts and consciousness. While this is probably, all unconscious understandings need immediately to grasp a difference between feelings representing real conditions and their meanings to ourselves, we can only share a model of unconscious thought processes if these differences are translated into rational terms. If we discount moralized rationalizations of feeling experiences to isolate a purely rational conception of what our feelings are trying to tell us, there is no choice in where to look for the meanings that will replace them; we must turn to an introspective evaluation of feeling already recognized as leading to an individuated personal value structure. An awareness of this possibility always seems advisable when considering the worth of unshareable ideas, but there is something a little different about personal rationalizations of profoundly instinctual values - accepting them as true doesn’t entail denial of established rational conceptions there are any conceptions of emotionally felt meanings that meet the standards for shareable rational truth. All we are doing when considering unconscious values as they will be described in this model, is looking for a way to overcome an impasse created when obviously really human experiences are beyond representation in purely rational terms - and if this sound’s familiar, we need look no further than moral values to find an everyday example of already doing it. This is where the risk of individuation in an investigation like this can be found, in individuating our personal perspective on the moral meanings of emotion experiences. It’s an important factor to be sure, but whether one sees the source of our moral sense in an innate human conscience, or ressentiments embedded in our personal value structures during early childhood (as this model does), by the time a mind can understand the complexities of the conception that will follow, if shared moral norms are not believed to be unquestionably necessary in human interactions (as this model’s supports), they will never be. This leaves us with only one real issue to deal with; if we don’t look into our own mind for an understanding of instinctually formulated feeling values, we must live with the conception our rational thoughts will produce - ‘one would like to say: Human mental life can’t be described at all; it is so uncommonly complicated and full of scarcely graspable experiences.’ While this is probably the most reasonable position, a highly rational mind can take when considering the human mental experience, this comment by Ludwig Wittgenstein is not typical of his viewpoint. His carefully considered comments and questions more often point out the rationally understandable aspects of confusing mental experiences; Chosen between the complications and complex relationships is the existent simultaneous presence that await to feelings, experiences, and consciously understandable values, whereby a collection of his observations (quotes without notation of an author) are included in the following. However, understanding unconscious values as this model sees them actually employed in unconscious thought, means each of us must find our own way to grasp them as they are actually experienced in our minds; Which leaves us with the uncomfortable prospect of looking for them in a form that cannot be communicated to, or verified by, anyone else. Science will eventually explain the how, why and what of the mortality will innately assemble by some sorted cognation for life will never exhaust it, and those who have no immediate need for an answer can await the presence to the future, for its careful methods to come up with a clear description everyone can share. In the meantime, those of us with a more pressing need can avoid an entirely personal interim understanding by relating what we find to mental phenomena we can safely assume are, in a general sense, the same in our own minds as they are in others; Like the mental image/feeling relationship Wittgenstein’s comments, and Nietzsche’s idea of ressentiment as well, seem to establish as something we all find in consciousness at times. It would have the course of been comforted by knowing what physical processes are creating the things of our consciousness, and what sensory ability then makes us aware of them, but this model aspires to nothing more than a description of the role mental phenomena play in helping us deal with reality. Consequently, its conception of underlying physical processes can be metaphorical rather than real.
There are any number of philosophical and theological reasons we can find for the existence of feelings in consciousness and yet, if we leave emotion aside for a while, one seems particularly relevant here; Because ‘pain could be regarded as a kind of tactile sensation’, but it is not what we would describe as a tactile experience in the realm of consciousness. All tactile experiences in a given moment - from the pain of a toothache, to sensations arising from a breeze passing over exposed skin - are included in the flood of real time impressions continuously bringing us a comprehensive grasp of current real conditions. Simultaneously representing all of it in the images and feelings of consciousness cannot give us our best understanding of reality however; it would overwhelm our current thoughts with mostly commonplace data; while feeling pain like any other tactile impression would inhibit our ability to isolate an immediate personal threat in current sensory data. A process that edits and separates the sensory impressions coming to consciousness must exist somewhere in our thought processes, because the results are apparent when we compare a recollection with an original visual impression - ‘the tie-up between imaging and seeing is close, but there is no similarity.’ What we actually see is more comprehensive and robust, while recalled images seem clearly to highlight the data we need to understand an object’s meaning in the context of the thought it’s related kin by some sortal formality that is addressed only through and by it. Because the process for accomplishing this is beyond conscious recognition, it’s an unconscious function that presumably would, in a model of thought employing only one thought process, similarly simplify representations for all of this in the language of unconscious thought as well. Whether simplified or not felt values would still be indistinct, distracting and confusing and yet, if the sensory information being confused highlights what’s instinctually important, unconscious thought would then be a medium in which a limited number of currently meaningful feeling values are unavoidably mingled, in essence confused, to establish a combined impression of everything being sensed in a given moment (reality as a whole). This perspective makes what we feel in consciousness much more than an accidental by-product of brain processes; it’s a meaningful representation of current conditions that extends our human cause and effect logic, by juxtaposing values that cannot be quickly related to each other with physically connected memory associations. We can physically connect them if they become consistently relevant to each other, creating another among the countless experience-proven sets of associations existing in our memories, but when unusual conditions arise, we cannot rely on rigidly ordered remembered data; we need sensory qualities tailored to represent unfamiliar conditions. In such circumstances, an ability to find and understand what is currently important is paramount, so both feelings and images alike would be more clearly understandable if they did not include all of the information gathered by our senses, as is actually the case when images in our minds do not include enough information to get confused with concurrent pictures of the world. Whether it’s the difference, we see in actual and recalled visual images, or one we feel between tactile sensations representing a breeze and pain, the mind and brain seem to share a closed-loop representational system for sensory data that is closely related to, but not identical with, the full range of sensations produced by sensory organs.
Individual values in the mind/brain representational system must be created and edited somehow, and without proof of how it really works, the best we can do is represent this process in a way that accounts for what we do understand about these processes. We know the values of consciousness are related to physical brain processes somehow, because people who experience physical brain (memory) damage also experience a change, of one sort or another, in the value mix coming into their consciousness. Our model assumes this mind/brain relationship exists at the level of individual memories - each physical memory being converted into a representation compatible with the intangible things of thought. Whatever information our senses discover begins its existence as personal knowledge when an energetic sensory signal interacts with the living brain tissues this model describes as perceptual memories. As a physical process the assumption is this: sensory information reaches the brain as many specific and separate signals, each of which is an elemental part of a noticeable quality - a vertical line would arrive as a set of specific elemental parts (signals) that in a rational sense, would come together to represent understandable line qualities like width, orientation, duration and colour. Each elemental part of a noticeable quality is stored in a separate perceptual memory site retaining a representation of that part alone; so any sensory quality or object we may require in unconscious thought, or even conscious images, is constructed from an associated set, or pattern of these one-element memory sites. Because individual memory sites can store only a single, very basic elemental part of sensory data in this scheme, any memory in a pattern representing one object can be part of any other object (pattern) that includes the same elemental part - a line element representing part of a curve in the pattern representing our sensory grasp of an egg’s shape, would represent the same part of a curve in all others.
Translating these wholly physical events into the values of consciousness is a role played by feelings that are generated when the tiny energy potentials of physical brain processes stimulate a microscopic memory site. It’s a feeling only strong enough to contribute a consciously indistinct feeling value to consciousness, and to keep descriptions of these representations of memory stimulations clearly separate from familiar, consciously understandable sensory qualities - loud, red, sour, smooth or toothache - the feelings arising from memory stimulations, which this model sees as individually too faint for even an unconscious grasp, are described as perceptual feelings. Because they originate in groups representing the pattern of physical memories needed to store all of the individual elemental parts of a particular sensory quality, the pattern of perceptual feelings produced would, if we could isolate them, represent the same sensory quality as a value in the feeling language of unconscious thought. This conception describes a memory site like any other object; a thing make real through sensory impressions of it, but the sensory ability that detects the feelings we find in our consciousness remains beyond our understanding. Still, whatever eventually does prove to be the mechanism bringing us an awareness of our own feelings and consciousness must conform to a basic truth of human knowledge: in order to communicate the existence of anything we must eventually ground our proof in an ability to grasp its reality with our senses - we must be able to feel it. ‘We learn to describe objects, and thereby, in another sense, our sensations.’ In fact, the only mental values not already represented by feelings of one sort or another are rational images, facts, and ideas. If this outline of how they are created proves to be a valid metaphor only allows one to an alliance with the - gratification. Yet rational values will join everything else in reality and become conceivable as essentially feelings as well. ‘The ground of perception precedes all intellectual things, all philosophy, and it is the first assumption linking inner and outer things simultaneously . . .
Perception remains a largely mystical experience when we recognize the impressions of reality we see in our minds are mental images created to represent them in thought, rather than pictures of it. Because the physical process that creates them remains unknown, this proposal for how thought works are limited to the mental representations, we find in our thoughts - one value structure to represent reality, and another for our knowledge of it. Because it is by compatibility with an underlying language that must include both. In the language of unconscious thought proposed by this model, vanishingly faint perceptual feelings represent everything we can sense in the real world of objects, events and ideas - from chemical adjustments in the brain, a change in the quality of light entering the eye, to the softness, weight, taste or pain we feel when in contact with an external object. They represent the truth about reality in a multitude of elemental bits that form patterns unconscious thought processes then employ as for differing sensory value qualities; As a result, the patterns they form don’t represent distinctly different ideas like we find in rational thoughts; they are feelings. If we try to keep track of the feeling value (pattern) representing a particular sensory quality, or the collections of patterns representing different objects in each of many concurrent thoughts, the feeling values of unconscious processes run into the same problem rational processes would if we could think several simultaneous conscious thoughts, all using the same value structure - confusion. Our model’s solution to his problem will eventually dispense with the idea of separate unconscious thoughts and values altogether; in a sense, embrace confusion by mixing everything we can feel into a single pattern representing all of the information currently being gathered from reality, current thoughts, and the endless supervision of body controls carried out in unconscious processes as well. It’s an undivided reality represented by all perceptual memories currently in consciousness, and it feels like the constantly evolving sensory aspect of - aware existence, from the perspective of the sense currently dominating our sensory data stream - a pervasive taste, smell, sound, and particularly pains, can dominate the reality of consciousness; However, it’s usually our current visual image. While this generalized feeling experience must serve as the unconscious representation of reality from this perspective, the memories producing it retain their integrity in associative groups related to individual thoughts in underlying physical processes. When stimulated, these associated physical perceptual memories come into consciousness as a wide variety of sensory qualities, which seems to indicate the individual perceptual feelings creating sensory values might include a range of feeling tones as well. We do not know this to be the case however, and without a need to identify specific elements in this model’s representation of unconscious reality, which will become more apparent later, modelling each perceptual feeling as a different value adds a conceivable imaginary, surely daunting layers of complexity. Instead, the model opts for clarity by simply representing perceptual feelings that are always beyond our grasp anyway, as identical; While the patterns they create account for the describable differences in feeling values, we find in consciousness.
Individual perceptual memories represent an endless variety of sensory elements, each a specific interchangeable part of reality that is routinely incorporated into a wide variety of familiar qualities (patterns), which are then understandable parts in mental images of really remembered events. They can also be elemental parts in images that transcend the truths of any real experience, as in dreams, fantasies, and the creative acts that create something new from existing and familiar parts. Yet most of the time, the feelings arising from perceptual memories aggregate into patterns that simply allow our thoughts to distinguish red from blue, straight lines from curves, horizontal from vertical and, if one has learned to differentiate them, Chenin Blanc from Chablis. Perceptual feelings do not establish which colour or wine we like best or even why they differ, they combine to create distinct values that allow our unconscious thoughts to tell them apart without recourse to rational descriptions. They are faint, nondescript values combining to represent real things unconscious thoughts need for instinctual understandings of causes (objects) that may or may not eventually appear in a conscious thought or noticeable sensory impressions. An unconscious representation like this wouldn’t look like an object as it appears in conscious thought, but it would otherwise unconsciously feel like it through representations of sensory impressions we will invariably experience when we encounter it. They cannot be the values that determine whether we desire or want to avoid an object either because, as Wittgenstein observed about the words we see and hear, they ‘should explain only in the stream of life’. Perceptual memories determine nothing beyond the truth of existence, so whenever we hear a word - red, bright, doctors, down - it can sometimes cause us to feel fear, and sometimes joy. To understand unconscious representations of our changing affinities and aversions to particular truths, we must look to more subjective feelings that have little to do with the shareable realities found by less than of what contained the greater of an equal neurological ability.‘The idea is that although no doubt is possible in the case of what the senses tell us, there is always a doubt possible as to interpretation.’
Subjective feelings are evaluations ultimately based on each individual’s varying reactions to what is sensed rather than its bare truth value - it is the difference between the sensory truth of a person’s existence when we see them, and the feeling of how that person affects our life - affection, jealousy, respect, fear, curiosity a message conveyed by emotion. A real object that has been experienced before is represented by an established pattern of perceptual memories and when current sensory impressions stimulate them, they produce a pattern of feelings to represent it in thought, which means the mind must utilize a clearly different type of feeling value to represent what we think about the prospect of that object continuing to generate effects on us. If the object is far away and sensed only by sight, current sensory data cannot convey pain or any other instinctually meaningful tactile value because there has been no physical contact, but it can bring anticipatory anxiety to consciousness. For this to happen, we must be capable to occasion of our ability to contribute, and as yet, the presence of the unknown (future) experiences within to occur the internationalities that give rise to cause harm or satisfy as needed. When we think rationally, ‘An intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and institutions’; while an unconscious dialogue between one kind of feeling representing external conditions and another representing their personal meanings, cannot symbolize some of these more subtle rational understandings. In the simple language of feeling, if a rock in ones paths are not treated as having an intent to cause harm, it’s likely we will get proof it had one when it trips us - and because experience is the only proof with instinctual meaning. We will have to trip over a few unconsciously to understand their intent. Our instincts eventually determine that rocks intend to force us into the instinctual reactions our experiences prove are necessary to avoid falling afterward, and because the unconscious - realization, producing the immediate reactions that cannot include complex deliberations when they must quickly determine the ill-reasoning implications that guide its course within the unconscious manifestations to endeavour upon that which implicates their application to the actions that best serve the momentary survival needs. The unconscious meaning for a rock in our way, always remains upon the deprivation in reflection to this urgency by being essentially the same as a decision about what action to take, not whether one is desirable or required. This gives us the opportunity to equate the instinctual meaning for an object with our reaction to it - recalling instructions for the body movements that prevent a fall after tripping, produces a feeling to represent these memory stimulations (reactions) in unconscious thought, just as perceptual memories produce perceptual feelings to represent the sensory elements they store. Nevertheless, if we relate all emotionally meaningful feelings to instinctual reactions as this formula indicates, experiencing one that doesn’t accompany a noticeable body movement, means we must answer an important question, ‘could one . . . if to be done, could it achieve something in ones mind or head, which one cannot do perceptibly, for which there is no such thing as a perceptible equivalent?’ Our model says yes; it maintains that emotionally toned feelings originate as stimulations of specialized body control memory sites, each of which codes for a very specific element in the suite of instructions necessary for carrying out a particular action - an external change in body configurations is the most obvious example of an action, but physical brain processes retrieving more information through memory stimulations are also actions in the real world of material things, only different in being confined to the brain. Speaking for example, would result from many separate instructions, each found in a different memory site that, when associated together, control the lung, throat, mouth and facial muscle actuations necessary to say a word or phase. If not speaking for some reason seems best, we might still think what we were going to say (act it out in mind), and each stimulation of a memory site necessary to retrieve memories of words that will not be expressed in this situation, would also produce feelings to represent them in thought, perhaps some of the same ones required for speech. Like the perceptual feelings that aggregate into consciously understandable patterns representing sensory impressions (objects), these feelings combine into sometimes noticeable felt meanings (emotions) built from elemental parts that represent body control memories. Each memory relates to a store of some single instruction for a body change (reaction) that is a part of what we do in specific circumstances, and together they represent a reaction strategy. These unnoticeable components are then, in essence feelings that represent elemental parts of conceptions. Our model describes them as concept feelings, produced by control memories.
Complex animal life must make choices and to make choices, and animals must have an ability to prejudge what is about to happen. Forming abstract notions is perhaps understandable that our human ability (concepts) seems unique to our kind, but it is least that is abstractive by any animal that determines it should avoid something experience proves will be detrimental, without actually experiencing its ill effects again. This judgment to avoid a recurrence of something that was unpleasant in the past (or embrace something proven to be rewarding) is a concept for specific dynamic functioning, a grasp of what is not actually existing at a given moment. An instinctual understanding that knows nothing about concepts can become aware of the success or failure of a remembered action represented in perceptual memories without rational help, if the feeling value in an unconscious thought parallel with a rationalized feeling like anxiety, as our model maintains - a felt concern for what is going to happen if current conditions are not changed to avoid either or embrace what memory tells us might soon be actual. Conscious thought can rationalize such information into specific mathematical probabilities for what will eventually happen, but unconscious thought must also have represented probable effects when we instinctually react to imminent threats because, aside from manners, the unconscious processes that produce immediate reactions often accomplish almost everything rational thought would have. Concept feelings, when they combine to form a pattern we notice as a distinct tone of anxiety, reflect the meaning (effect) a familiar object - a dog for instance is likely to produce through vicariously re-living the reactions usually required when this particular object shows up in our sensory data. ‘If In say ‘In am anxiously awaiting his coming’, this means: In am occupied with his coming (in thought, and one can also say: in thought and action).’ If we see a snarling dog fifty feet away, that sensory image stimulates (acts on) memories of similar experiences, and through associating memories of seeing angry dogs twenty, ten feet and one foot away, together with others representing an actual attack (even a memory of being told it could happen), they create a felt context in unconscious thought something like a god’s eye view of all these memories at once, which feels like fearful anxiety to most of us. By associating, and concurrently experiencing all relevant memories, instinctual understanding is creating a concept to represent what can be expected from an object that has, as yet not produced a senseable effect in the current context. It may not a very refined abstractive idea of what might really happen, not that it is not a very specific possibility, but the only predictably interesting possibilities in instinctual considerations are not very specific either, these entwining threats and intuitive celebrations are met by - gratification. A concept built from feelings we can sometimes notice as anything from fear to affection, has a quality specific to a particular possibility, and this kind of understanding can be applied to represent similar effects produced by a wide variety of objects; even rule structures can become unconsciously apparent when memories depicting how they affect specific behaviours are recalled.
When the memories controlling body functions give rise to concept feelings they serve two purposes. Concept feelings give consciousness mental values that, in aggregate patterns, represent remembered opinions of an object as an undistinguished part of its current context, while the physical memory sites producing them instruct the body to act in an established way for that particular combination of control elements. It is the complete collection of these unconscious physical reactions in a particular moment that determines how we feel, and some become consciously apprehensible. We usually think of body feelings as produced by sensory organs, but before we can actually sense how it feels to carry out a reaction, the instructions for it are felt in consciousness. Even reactions that do no more than seek out new memory associations are changes in external conditions from the perspective of mind altering the existing circumstances (remembered data) our thoughts must take into consideration if they are accurately to represent all we currently know about reality. Until we sense a result, concept feelings represent something like the anxiety that accompanies conscious thoughts while awaiting completion of a pending action. Assuming it our instinctual unconscious understandings also have cause to feel anxious about the still unknown effect of what they have just done seems reasonable or thought about doing (acted out within the mind) - ‘Fear hangs together with misgivings, and misgivings are thoughts.’ The emotional values that bring meaning to unconscious thoughts are then, resentment-like feelings similar to the felt valuations we feel in conscious thoughts; they are anxieties representing the physical effects (personal meanings) of remembered concepts and ideas. If we are to succeed in integrating conscious and unconscious values, this seems to give us reasonable grounds to establish a dual conscious/unconscious need for meaningful resentment-like feelings, and since the range for them has already been established, the extremes of these similarly subjective feeling experiences are the same; Love and fear - feelings that represent our judgment of an object’s worth (meaning). With respect to love we are dealing with a conception implying no more than a very strong affinity for an object that, to avoid confusion will be described as joy, reserving love for the special kind of joy accompanying ecstatic saintly experiences. These seem to be easily understandable as clearly subjective feelings familiar in consciousness, and have the advantage of being recallable by everyone in memories we can nebulously describe as the most fearful and blindly joyful experiences we have ever had. These are strong sensations, readily recognized as permeating our consciousness (mood) and there are other anxiety feelings that are familiar because they represent strong effects in our minds; Feelings that routinely accompany and add meaning to ideas like anger, war, injustice, envy, Hitler, and by comparing with positive feels, as happiness, home, kittens, God and contentment. The feeling representations of these concepts are apparent in our conscious attention, modifying our mood, posture, gestures and tone of voice to include, often even if we choose not to, a message about the feelings we are experiencing. Not all changes in our emotions and body states are senseable however, objects and ideas accompanied, least of mention, by that which is less extreme anxiety feelings are much more difficult, perhaps impossible to apprehend in an adult human mind because they represent moderate physical reactions. Experience and the authorities that held sway at the time of learning have taught us, with varying degrees of success, that personalized reactions to natural laws and culturally enforced rules of behaviour, language, science and even interpretations of God’s will are not required, useful or acceptable. Until we notice their absence, our survival instincts, tempered by consistent experience, can assume these invisible influences are still there, and are not immediately challenged to respond beyond the point of anticipatory reactions like focussing our attention, or perhaps simply sending precautionary messages within the nervous system. This means a wide range of objects and ideas are accompanied by feelings we cannot name because the reaction is slight, and consequently our ability consciously to identify some fact/feeling relationships is poor, or perhaps simply underdeveloped - they are emotionally neutral mental images with resentment-like feelings that are neither good nor bad, happy or apprehensive, angry or content. However, we can give them names by accepting one of the model’s premises: a concept feeling is produced by a reaction that, for emotionally neutral rational ideas, is a search for a perceptual memory needed to create a mental image; and this process gives us an equation of concept feeling = reaction = mental image. This formula allows us to equate any fact we can conceive as a mental image. With a pattern of concept feelings that each represents a physical reaction required to complete the image of the idea in consciousness; a feeling values we cannot sense except as an element of the mental image. It’s a long way from conceiving of anger as rationally communicable idea accompanied by a consciously apprehensible feeling, to a similar understanding of what we experience in obtaining a concise representation of the colour we all describe as red, but in essence they are the same.
When aggregated into anxiety feelings, concept feelings are similar to the ‘somatic markers’ postulated by Antonio Damasio in Descartes Error, body feelings accompanying rational thoughts that ‘have been connected, by learning, to predict outcomes of certain scenarios’, that are by their inductive apprehension of thoughts that stem from their controlling omission by gathering forces that manifest the beginning inclinations through intuitive certainties that succumb with one important qualification. Wherefore, Wittgenstein goes forward to explicate upon its functional contribution: ‘If In say every time In thought about it In was afraid - ill-satisfactions having brought forth the ill’s succumbing to hesitorial anticipations for which accompany my thoughts? - How is one to conceive of separating what does, the accompanying from what is accompanied?’ Our model’s equivalent of a somatic marker (an anxiety feeling) would not be accompanied by, but would represent the stimulus for, an internally generated image of a rational fact. This modulation of unconscious thought into the values of rationality happens only for our sole conscious thought. Perceptual (truth) memories and body control (concept) memories give us a feeling of truth conveyed by our senses (that the object is there) and a feeling of anxiety associated with that object (the effect it usually produces contributes as one stand alone), and whether we notice any of it depends on the quality of the anxiety value. We physically react to all sensory impressions, but we are only aware of them when they produce acts or feelings we can, and actually do, consciously notice. In a simplified scenario, a pattern of perceptual elements we might rationally describe as dryness or a bit of dust, stimulates various body control elements (reactions) we could only notice as a blink, but usually do not. Similarly, the perceptual pattern that indicates a lack of oxygen produces a body reaction sometimes noticeable as an increased rate of breathing and perhaps a little anxiety; a nearby moving object produces reactions that result from control memories involved in maintaining eye contact, and is accompanied by anxious anticipation. While an oncoming bus is a pattern of perceptual elements that consciously feels like fear, and represents very noticeable and usually unanticipated body controls for running or jumping - all happening together with many others and sensed in a complex rational/moral/instinctual totality of understanding that feels like the current state of our consciousness.
The body’s reaction to a particular object is represented in thought as an anticipated effect but, our assessment of what can be expected is not limited to something everyone can understand as right or wrong, it’s based on the unique reactions each of us has learned are appropriate through personal life experiences. To be sure, the one conscious thought that holds our interest usually represents reality according to values maintained by culture, while the concurrent unconscious ‘multiple drafts’ that Daniel Dennett identified in Consciousness Explained, represents possible future conscious thoughts following in the same line of enquiry that, in this model, are allied unconscious thoughts being considered as feeling alone. We have been taught with good reason, which productive thought is rationally thought, and we learn to be obsessed with shared rules and symbols because they bring clearly, shareable understandings that hold the promise of being beneficial to distribute equally among those that are without others. It’s also quite true that this negation of feeling in favour of fact is made easier by realizing that we cannot relate a specific feeling to most conscious images. This limitation does not apply in the opposite sense however; the language of unconscious thought can produce a pattern of concept feelings for every rational fact we have retained in memory, but red is still red, D-O-G still spells’ dog, and good behaviour is still good. The difference is that they are not associated to other concepts based on the logic endorsed for rational thought - as red would be associated with an idea like colour; dog with a shape, word or pet, and good behaviour would not mean emotional contentment or rewards. Unconsciously, one pattern of concept feelings is associated to another, the juxtaposition of which is beyond our knowledge until they are brought to conscious thought and yet, when we hear ourselves speak without first thinking of what we are going to say, or understand a sequence of rational symbols suddenly occurring to us as a logical thought about words or numbers, the underlying unconscious thoughts that produced them seem closely related to coherent and cognitive lines.
That we believe human minds can only think in rational concepts, ideas, and images are a result of our reliance, like all animals, on sensory information to provide the ultimate strand of truth for our actions and thoughts. The model treats our shared rational symbols like all other objects, they exist in the brain as remembered perceptual elements that are recalled to unconscious thought by a specific suite of control memories that, in turn can be apprehended by conscious thought as mental images. In a sense, the phenomenon of mind in this model is the place where we are made aware of the actions of the body and it’s understandably a little difficult to conceive of thinking about dog or red as a body reaction, but if we consider it for a moment, the body is the only part of us that materially exists in the world and its sole aim is to keep on existing. Mind allows us to establish an overview of its ongoing struggle, and when we think rationally (react to rational concepts) we modify its behaviour to conform to agreed upon rules that are unimportant to a solitary animal’s needs. Unconscious thought is the one mental arena in which all of the various concept feelings generated by many concurrent reactions can be considered, combined and sorted to find the one concept that means most to our survival. When we identify it, by becoming aware of the one with the highest anxiety value, we then associate it to experiences in order to experience past reactions mentally and the results they brought. As we have evolved from a simple consciousness of feelings, into an awareness of how others are affected by our actions, we have created special, unchanging patterns of concept feelings (reactions) to represent meanings that are shared, and each particular culture does its best to establish the feelings associated with important ideas as good or bad so we will all react to them in the way we collectively intend. Wittgenstein’s search for the feeling of red was truly a monumental undertaking from this perspective. While we all represent it with more than once are less at the same tine, only can the same perceptual feelings that everyone would experience an anxiety feeling (meaning) solely dependent on the reactions they have learned is necessary to recall the sensory experience we all describe as red. It’s easier to see the personal qualities included in a fact/feeling relationship if we consider an idea like mother, country, or God - these are clearly different feeling experiences in different minds, although most of us believe our personal feeling (idea) is the one that represents objective truth for everyone, or at least should.
When we look into the implications of this model, the survival of rational concepts depends solely on their continual iteration into developing individual minds, through sensing symbols along with instructions as to how they should feel (how we should react to them), and if culture fails constantly to preestablish their validity with rewards and penalties, as European Culture failed to do for many scientific and philosophical concepts during the middle ages, those ideas are lost to that segment of humanity because they cannot enter our perceptual memories (truths) in any other way except a new creative act. If we insist that a moral code would seem like a good idea whether we have lost a rational understanding of its foundations or not, that’s true; our sensory grasp of its existence in human interactions would be the same as long as it remains in use; and the felt meanings (physical effects) of its rules would continue to encourage acceptance of it. We would still experience anxiety feelings, from a conscience perhaps, indicating where and when to apply rules appropriate to familiar situations - though recalling images representing the absence of ill effects when our actions conform to it, is that the usual penalties and punishments that will be felt when it’s violated as well. This is the way young children understand the rules of their proven stability as situated for parental care environments; only once we enter the outside world, the value of a consistent rational understanding shared by culture and one becomes apparent. It’s the only way we can avoid an endless series of trial and error derivations of each rule’s personal meaning to others when conflicts arise. Because each individual’s replacement for a rational foundation, can only be a sense of justice that is unavoidably skewed to their own life experiences. Regardless of the rigour of our objectivity, the basis of its ideas is that each of us exercises for a conscious understanding, are limited to those we have learned. If we have learned that faith in family loyalty, nationalism, or God’s will, not science and ethics, are the foundation of cultural order, any transgression is a violation of felt beliefs - meanings that are, no matter how hard we try to see it otherwise, essentially incommunicable felt understandings that cannot be rationalized in precisely the same way by anyone else.
In the chaotic context of the mind’s many thoughts and feelings, being aware of but one conscious thought at a given moment gives us an opportunity to see an inherent problem this model of unconscious processes brings into the light of reflective rational thought. When internal reactions stimulate memories, the pattern of perceptual feelings representing them in consciousness is an abbreviated copy of what was actually sensed - the difference between consciously looking at an object or event and imaging it in thought; it seems the same but ‘It appears to us as if memory were a secondary experience when compared with experience of the present.’ The real time mental image of an object is generated by all of the information being gathered at that moment, each element of information activating its specific memory site; while a recalled mental image of it is constructed from only those perceptual elements that played a role in causing our original reaction to the object; and here we come face to face with our prejudices and stereotypes. However sketchy our memory is, recalling it to reflective thought seems equivalent to sensing a real object, and it is then the stimulus for a pattern of conceptualized feelings (reactions) directed toward what seems like a real object but is really an object represented by only those sensory elements we considered meaningful (worthy of a reaction) when it was created - some of which were not characteristics of the object it, but a part of the now past context that is largely beyond conscious recall, since much of it was only noticed unconsciously and never symbolized in rational values. Each time the thought moves from generating an imprecise object created from remembered perceptual elements, to a reaction, thoughts follow ones own familiar, trusted associations that are actually reactions to a limited and distorted object; and as a result, we have created a realistic conscious image accompanied by a felt valuation constructed from some rationally valid concept feelings (reactions), together with many rule-poor instinctually formulated allied unconscious thoughts that include unidentified influences from no longer existing contextual factors, obscure associations, and even errors in the perceptual images caused by instinctually unimportant similarities in truth feelings. These movements in thought can easily bring currently irrelevant, rationally invalid anxiety into the conscious values representing an otherwise desirable object or idea. It’s unavoidable if we do not take an interest in understanding feeling values, because they seem like the felt valuations our cultures encourage - resentments.
‘One of the mistakes oftenest committed in human affairs, is that of supposing that the same name always stands for the same aggregation of ideas’ (J.S. Mill). Concept feelings personalize sensory truths, even names, by giving them felt meanings we can only fully understand with complete knowledge of the experiences of the individual who created them and . . . ’the only way to understand someone else would be to go through the same upbringing as his - which is impossible.’ The shared meanings to a word for which, a rational standard and the best we can do insofar as our individualized representation can carry it with a stereotypical meaning that, because it cannot include all of the shared qualities of our original experience, must be prejudicially abbreviate, and regardless of our intent. Without resorting to simplified stereotypes, physical memory sites would have to store not only the whole range of meanings we can find and imagine for words, but the complete images of every recallable idea and object experienced during our lifetime. Even estimates ranging to trillions of cells and synaptic connections in the brain are insufficient for a task like this. Poorly detailed prejudices are solutions to this inconceivable data storage problem and they work very well when confined to survival issues judged by animal (instinctual) values - the only issues and values we were concerned with until a few thousand years ago - and assuming the worst possible intent is almost always instinct’s first solution and quite often its last principle, at least for those of us who survive. When societal forces move to discourage a particular prejudice, they ask each of us to acquire more detailed knowledge to augment what we have previously relied on to represent the specific object or idea being revalued; they ask us to make new associations to old concepts. It might be racial prejudice, ethnic stereotypes, evolving personal relationships or accepting X as a symbol for a number, but the perennial problem is the same, associating new, more detailed, and presumably more enlightened facts to explain away an ingrained and therefore dependable reaction strategy. If an outdated idea is accompanied by a highly anxious feeling tone, the new information, no matter how egalitarian it may be, will be represented by a concept feeling pattern, sharing many elements with the original stereotype because they both deal with closely related subject matter - the real object has changed very little (only invisible rules) and it will be a long time before experience based instinctual understandings are convinced (have enough evidence to prove) the changes are dependable reflections of real conditions. Whether we can actually change an ingrained prejudice remains and open question in this model, because it seems to indicate that the only way to avoid a reliable instinctual prejudice is to begin with a fresh new mind; accept there is always a way to resolve conflict internally if we want it badly enough to think about it. We must add the new knowledge, not as an association to the original subject of the prejudice, but to some other nonthreatening stereotype, and the trick is to do it while culturally approved tastes for entertainment and ethnic diversity are busy drawing ever more stereotypical pictures of the world around us.
The solution will come when we are forced to give up something we think we cannot live without. Emerging science, as represented by Galileo, forced the all-powerful church of his time to justify its most sacred texts without the support of historically unassailable proof they had previously found in Aristotle’s ethics and simple cosmology. Slavery was abolished at a time when millions were willing to die to defend it. It’s a bit more difficult to understand that something as rationally worthwhile and widely enjoyed as ethnically specific foods and lifestyles can provide reinforcement for out-dated rational ideas - and it’s not a problem limited to those who willfully twist good intentions into something else, because they are utilizing the same tools on which we all must rely. The feelings (reactions) we use to prove the worth of conscious ideas are naturally occurring human qualities; some are even encouraged as support for moral and ethical standards, and problems only arise when shared rational meanings are changed, while the unconscious processes of individual minds continue to produce unchanged felt valuations to reinforce the new rational meanings. The solution is to accept the unavoidable fact that human communal life is a unique order imposed on nature: one that can only control violence and deliver what we want when we want it, if shared rules dominate our interactions - some of which produce conflict in consciousness. Shared standards cannot solve these conflicts because rational conceptions don’t include understandings of feeling experiences, so it’s up to each individual to recognize that felt valuation can easily be confused with instinctual inclinations our cultures have simply legislated away. If we make a plea for returning to the essential truths of nature instead, all we know about what naturalized perceptivity would be like, is that we would experience unrationalized feelings and react to external stimuli in a reasonable manner: no symbols, rational understanding, felt valuations, words, or sensory impressions with a meaning extending beyond their usefulness in the present moment. The simple truths of nature often seem appealing in our complex social arrangements, but experiencing them without the support of reason is really inaccessible to humans because, when ‘one thinks one is tracing the outline of the things in nature over and over again, . . . one is merely tracing around the frame through which we look at it’ . . . so you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false? - It is what human beings represent that is true and false, and they agree in the language they use. That is no agreement in opinions but in a form of life.’
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practice’s psychology and who has devised 'a new psychology'. Many aspects of Nietzsche's work are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact that is disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as well as his morbidity and - destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, innate and hereditary psychological elements, defence, protective, mechanism, repression, suppression, overcoming, an overall battle, struggle and conflict between individuals etc. As an illustration, Nietzsche describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, - hatred, hostility and aggression. Moreover, Nietzsche strives to analyse human being, his crisis, his despair and his existence in the world and to find means so as to alleviate human crises and despair.
These aspects of Nietzsche's work elicit a tendency to compare Nietzsche's doctrine with that of Freud and psychoanalysis and to argue that the Freudian doctrine and school (the psychoanalytic theory of human personality on which the psychotherapeutic technique of psychoanalysis is based) and methods of treatment (psychoanalysis) have been influenced and affected by Nietzsche's philosophy and work and the Nietzschean doctrine. As a demonstration from the relevant literature, according to Golomb's (1987) thesis, the theoretical core of psychoanalysis is already part and parcel of Nietzsche's philosophy, insofar as it is based on concepts that are both displayed in it and developed by it - concepts such as the unconscious, repression, sublimation, the id, the superego, primary and secondary processes and interpretations of dreams.
Nevertheless, the actual situation in the domains of psychotherapy, psychiatry and clinical psychology is, by no means, strictly so. While the two savants (Nietzsche and Freud) endeavour to understand man, to develop the healthy power that is still present in the individual and the neurotic patient so as to overcome and suppress the psychological boundaries that repress his vitality and inhibit his ability to function freely and creatively and attain truth, the difference between the psychodynamic school, approach, movement and method of treatment, in general, and psychoanalysis, in particular, and the existential approach to psychotherapy, the existential movement and the existential, humanistic school of psychology and method of treatment that have been stemmed from the doctrines and views of Freud and Nietzsche is profound and significant, as far as the actual psychotherapeutic treatment is concerned. The reason as for these differences lies in the variation in the two savants' view and definition of man and human existence, the nature and character of man and his relationship with the world and the environment, as well as in the variation in the intellectual soil, that nourished and nurtured the two giant savants' views, doctrines (that is, the pundit philosophical and historical roots and influences) and the manners according to which they have been devised and designed.
In fact, Freudian psychoanalysis (as part of the psychodynamic movement and approach) and existential, humanistic, psychotherapy (which is stemmed from the Nietzschean ideas and doctrine, among others) constitutes two totally independent, distinct and rival approaches of psychotherapy, which employ their own method of treatment, doctrine and principles. As an illustration, Viktor. E. Frankl has been expelled from the Psychoanalytic society and organisation because of his views and critic of psychoanalysis, broke away from psychoanalysis and established Logotherapy, an existential, psychotherapeutic method and school in psychiatry, known as the third force in Viennese psychotherapy (after Freud and Adler), which is based upon the Nietzschean doctrine. Thus, Logotherapy and Psychoanalysis constitute two rival types and methods of psychotherapeutic treatment with their own objectives, principles, theoretical core and doctrines.
Hence, as a response and alternative to the works that compare psychoanalysis and the Nietzschean doctrine and maintain that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical core of psychoanalysis, its current paper endeavours to contrast these works and their thesis and demonstrate that the definition and treatment of both its subject matter (as man’s humanly existence) and key concepts in human existence by Freudian psychoanalysis and the principles and essences of Freudian psychoanalysis totally differ both from the treatment of the same subject matter and key concepts by the Nietzschean doctrine and from the essence and principles of the Nietzschean doctrine. Thus, the main thesis of the present paper is that the Nietzschean doctrine by no means constitutes the theoretical core and essence of psychoanalysis.
Accomplishing the objective might that to establish and strengthen its thesis for which would be carried out by doing two things simultaneously. Firstly, depicting Freudian psychoanalysis and the Freudian psychoanalytic doctrine, the historical and philosophical roots of the psychodynamic movement, the Nietzschean doctrine, the existential movement and Frankl's technique and the psychotherapeutic approach of Logotherapy and its doctrine (and showing that the Nietzschean doctrine, in fact, constitutes the theoretical core of Logotherapy, rather than of psychoanalysis). Secondly, displaying the differences between psychoanalysis and existential psychotherapy (when Logotherapy is utilised as an illustration and as a representative of the existential approach to psychotherapy and is labelled existential analysis) in the domain of psychiatry and clinical psychology, in terms of the differences between the Nietzschean doctrine and the Nietzschean philosophy and the Freudian psychoanalytic method of treatment, school and doctrine, while still acknowledging and demonstrating the similarities between the Nietzschean and Freudian doctrines, mainly as far as terminology is concerned.
Nonetheless, while endorsing the difference and rivalry between psychoanalysis and existential psychotherapy, as well as the distinction between the Freudian and the Nietzschean doctrines, it should be emphasised that it was the relation between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche's ideas, which contributed to the development of the understanding of man and his crisis, and Freud's development of specific methods and techniques for the investigation of the fragmentation of the individual - human - being in the Victorian period that has provided the basis for existential psychotherapy. In fact, both practical approaches (Freudian psychoanalysis and existential psychotherapy), coupled with the Nietzschean theoretical work and doctrine, examine the human being, his existence and his crisis, such as despair and misery (both neurosis and psychosis) in an attempt to alleviate them.
Accordingly, since the technique of interacting directly with the given individual and analysing the analysed individual is almost similar for both approaches and schools of psychotherapy, it is the distinguished variation in the essence, nature and character (as far as the view of man and his character and of the human existence are concerned) between the Nietzschean (and the Kierkegaardian, for that matter) doctrine and the Freudian doctrine as well as in the manner in which they have been devised which makes most of the difference and affects the psychotherapeutic treatment. Hence, it is the difference between the Nietzschean (and the Kierkegaardian) theoretical doctrine, endeavours, system and approach and those of the Freudian psychoanalytic school and doctrine that is responsible for the difference between the two approaches of and to psychotherapy.
Both the Freudian and the Nietzschean doctrines (and for that matter the Kierkegaardian doctrine) strive to comprehend man, his existence and his crisis, each of these doctrines possesses a different theory as for the nature and image of man, i.e., what he is and what determines him and makes him what he is, which they employ so as to obtain this understanding and a knowledge of the manner in which this understanding should be achieved. Consequently, the psychodynamic school and movement (namely, psychoanalysis) and existential psychologies are two distinguished and distinct theories of personality that govern and affect the clinical, psychotherapeutic treatment and method of treatment.
Sigmund Freud was a physician, a specialist in neurology, with a wide education in the life sciences and the natural philosophy and sciences. He practised neurology and medicine and focussed on the cure of ill, neurotic, individuals, or at least on an improvement of and in their condition and state of health. He was a brilliant, distinguished and ambitious member of the community of scientists, neurologists and doctors and strived to make a reputation for him in those fields. Moreover, at the beginning, before his becoming famous, he was dependent on a career as an established physician and neurologist so as to make a living and support him and his dear ones and could not allow him the slightest reputation as an outcast and as an eccentric.
As a result, the psychoanalytic school and the psychodynamic movement that have been created and devised by Freud at the turn of the nineteenth century have their roots and have been immensely influenced by the spirit and mood of the second half of the nineteenth century in which Freud lived and commenced his career. The materialist, reductionist, empiricist, positivist and mechanist ideas of the time have created an ambience that asserted that everything in the universe has an indisputable reason, cause and determinant. Accordingly, nothing in the universe is accidental which may occur due to chance or free will. Moreover, the positivist doctrine and movement maintain that the ultimate goal of man is to find the explications, reasons, causes and determinants for every single element in the universe. Consequently, according to this assertion and to doctrines such as reductionism, empiricism and associationism, even such a complex 'object' as a human being can be fully explained by being reduced to human elements, such as personality, character, behaviour, utterances, emotions, mental processes etc., which are induced and well-determined by the entities which cause and generate them and, thus, have reasons as for why they occur.
Consequently, the Freudian method of psychoanalysis, the psychoanalytic doctrine and the psychodynamic movement have, originally, endeavoured to turn the fields of psychology and psychiatry, and the area of psychotherapy, into a science, which is rooted in the fields of biology and mechanist physiology but spreads outwards into sociology, which describes human personality, behaviour and mental and physical condition in dynamic and goal-directed terms in an attempt to explain them. It aims to look for and find the indisputable reasons, causes and determinants for all aspects and forms of human mental events, human personality, human utterances, human behaviour and human emotions, feelings, disturbances, crisis and hardships (illnesses, both neurosis and psychosis, malaise etc.). As a consequence, the emphasis, and presupposition, of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic movement is the search for all those elements that define, design and determine this object, called a person, in order for him to understand him by explaining and analysing him. It, thus, comes up with specific theories as for the structure, makeup, components and features of the human psyche and the reasons as for man's crisis, despair and neurotic/psychotic condition.
Wherefore, Freudian psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic schools are approaches that regard all human beings as a single, homogeneous entity that should be treated in a similar manner by a single, predetermined, homogeneous set of theories and a single technique so as to obtain the desired cure, mainly to an organic, physiological manifestation, the cease of paralysis, the end of vomiting and repulsive sensations of food and liquid and the like. Thus, the development of human personality, human nature and morality and the character and the components of the human psyche are induced, determined, innate, predetermined and the same in and for all individuals and constitute solid explanations for human conduct human feelings, emotions, morals, ideologies and the like.
In addition, the disturbances and the crisis of given individuals are also induced and determined by specific events, experiences and stimuli and interruptions with the normal proceeding of the predetermined development of the human personality and morality. The psychoanalytic treatment is, therefore, also one for all patients. The causes, determinants and reasons as for the patient's illness and condition have to be discovered, explained, analysed treated and cured, using the given doctrine and technique of psychoanalysis. The desired outcome of the approach is the alleviation and elimination of the undesired syndromes and, by consequence, the cure of the condition, crisis and illness.
Accordingly, the psychoanalytic, psychotherapeutic technique strives to take the suffering individual and relieve his condition by searching and finding the sources, reasons and causes for it and to make the analysed individual fully aware of the causes, determinants and reasons for his condition, based on the rigid, predetermined, psychoanalytic theories. The examined, analysed individual may lie on a coach or sit on a chair facing the psychoanalyst. So doing, he talks about the things that annoy, distresses or trouble him as well as about his life history (case study) and whatever comes up into his mind (free association). He recounts his dreams, his most intimate feelings, urges and emotions, events that occurred to him (both disagreeable and agreeable) in the course of his entire life and the like.
The psychoanalyst listens very carefully and attempts to study and examine carefully the analysed individual's utterances and find meaning in them and to employ his (the psychoanalyst's) findings so as to alleviate the analysed individual's crisis, annoyance, distress, despair and illness. Thus, the psychoanalyst strives to find the reasons, causes and determinants as for the crisis, distress, neurosis and psychosis of the analysed individual and attempts to cure them and ameliorate the analysed individual's condition and state of being by virtue of finding connections and relations between the analysed individual's life story (events that occurred to him) and his distress, neurosis and psychosis, analyse those sources and causes of the neurotic/psychotic condition and make sure that the analysed individual is fully aware of them and whatever feelings, urges, emotions and sensations that they involve - hatred, frustration, aggression, anger, fear, terror, attraction attractiveness, love and the like.
Hence, the psychoanalytic, psychotherapeutic sessions focus on and work away at the revelation, examination and analysis of these events and items that are, in turn, thought by the psychoanalyst to have induced and determined the distress, neurosis and psychosis in an attempt to scrape and withdraw all the defensives, protective layers, which the analysed individual creates and employs so as to protect him and prevent him from suffering, and find out as much as possible about them. These defensive, protective layers prevent and suppress the painful information, events and experiences from being aware of and felt and experienced by the individual who has undergone and experienced them in the past. The objective of the psychoanalysis is to discuss and analyse the causes for the patient's condition in a free manner, is without restraints and suppression.
As part of the accounting endeavour to find reasons, causes and determinants for everything and every human aspect, in general, and for the patient's condition, in particular, an important aspect and element in the Freudian psychoanalytic doctrine and in the Freudian technique of psychoanalysis is the search for symbolic meanings that are meant to have significant meaning as symbolic representations of other matters, far essential for the understanding of the patient's life and condition than the given, original, items. This technique is normally applied in Freudian dreams interpretation where the unconscious has to be revealed and analysed. With that, a complete innocence, and ordinary, everyday image and object can represent something far more significant, as far as the patient's condition is concerned. As an illustration, an image of a comb may represent a penis and combing one's hair can represent and mean a hidden, subconscious sexual urges that are directed toward a given person and which is taken to be the source of the particular neurosis/psychosis. Likewise, in the famous case of little Hans' phobia of horses (1909), a big horse and Hans' fear of it have represented Hans' father and Hans fear of being castrated by him, the Oedipus complex.
The psychoanalyst, therefore, places meaning into every single word and item that the analysed patient has uttered in her recalling of her dreams by using a series of formerly activated definitions and preconceived theories and explanations (which are likely to involve sex, the Oedipus Complex, for instance) so as to find the reasons and explanations as for the patient's condition. To be fair, Freud has demanded that the interpretation of dreams would be carried out by a professional psychoanalyst who is well trained in this technique.
As a clinical, practical illustration as for the psychoanalytic doctrine and the technique and method of psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst may conclude from the analysed neurotic patient's utterances during free association, her recounting of her dreams and fragments of memories of events in her life and by virtue of applying symbols and symbolic representations to her utterances and images in the patient's dreams that the patient's inability to have someone touching, grabbing or holding her head and her feeling of severe stress and terror while this action is being carried out is the result and direct consequence of a sexual abuse that occurred during early childhood, in the course of which the abuser has forced the abused child to have oral sex with him by holding and grabbing the young child's head, and was regressing and suppressed by the patient from her consciousness so as to protect her from suffering as part of her defence mechanism.
The psychoanalytic therapy is based on the presumption that once the adult neurotic patient overcomes and overpowers the defence mechanisms and becomes aware of the event and experience that are viewed as the reason as for her neurosis and the feelings, emotions and sensations that these experiences and events induce the patient and, thereby become as a consequent. The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis.
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practice’s psychology and who has devised 'a new psychology'. The many aspects of Nietzsche and the neurotic patient's feelings and emotions toward the abuser, toward her parents and other family members, any feelings of guilt, shame, humiliation etc. The psychoanalytic sessions, thus, endeavour to scrape and remove the protective layers that suppress those feelings and emotions and the traumatic event and experience, it, in order to be able to analyse them and discuss them freely.
Consequently, the sources, causes and determinants of the neurosis/psychosis are, therefore, suppressed, repressed and regressed and buried deep in the human psyche and are obscure and hidden from one's awareness, although active in his psyche. This given neurotic patient holds to some latent causalities, which he has regressively suffered the horrendous, traumatic experiences from an ever vanquishing consciousness, however as part of her defence mechanism so as to defend and protect her and was not conscious of it. Nevertheless, the traumatic experience was embedded and active in her psyche, unaware of by her. It influenced her conscious mental feelings, emotions, utterances, dreams and actions and came up in the form of her neurosis and inability to have her head held, touched or grabbed. The objective of the psychoanalysis is, thus, to crush and overcome the defence mechanisms and have the sources of the neurosis/psychosis released and come up to the surface, where it is aware of by the patient and can be revealed, analysed, explained and observed freely.
The reason posted as for those doctrines, approach and technique lies in the fact that Freud, in his objection to the fact that some of the human mental aspects and human conduct would remain unexplained, obscure and incoherent to the psychoanalyst and his possession of the need to search for means of avoiding this situation and to both explain beyond any doubt for the reason as to the uncertainty might that the human condition may have latently been lost to that of any expressive linguistic utterance, in that of turn, is given to some interpretation or finds to some given or explanation, however lucid, comprehensive ones, maintains both that the essence of regression of information is of information being restrained and withheld from becoming conscious, by the defence mechanism where stress, grief and anguish are involved and by lack of interest and stimulation when no stress is involved, and, thus, forms a part of unconsciousness, a condition of latency that is not perceived by the mind, and that unconscious information becomes known, in the course of psychoanalysis, merely by being translated into consciousness (the objective of psychoanalysis), as merely conscious things are perceived and known? Thus, Freud defines the unconscious as whatever is not conscious and vice versa, whereas the preconscious is defined by him as a screen between the unconscious and consciousness and forms a part of consciousness for the sake of this specific definition. Accordingly, Freud regards all conscious information as unconscious information that became conscious.
Consequently, Freud maintains that since "the data of consciousness are exceedingly defective" (Freud's, The Unconscious, 1915) mental acts can often be explicated merely by assuming and referring to other processes that are outside consciousness. In other words, one is not aware of some of his mental experiences that, nevertheless, affect his actions, bodily, physical, performances (repulsive sensations, paralysis and the case illustrated above of the neurotic patient), dreams and utterances and, thus, these mental experiences are found outside his awareness/consciousness and influence those experiences of which he is aware. Therefore, the individuals fulfill actions and utter utterances that are obscure, unclear inexplicable and unexplainable on their own, by being observed directly by those given individuals, and need to look outside direct observation in order to explain them and make them utterly lucid.
The neurotic patient illustrated in the present paper has not been aware of the real reason (the sexual abuse) as for her inability to let her head be held and taken hold of which, nevertheless, has led to this mental disability, the neurosis. Once this awareness has been achieved by the method, described above, the patient has become cured. Hence, according to psychoanalysis, when the given patient becomes aware of her sexual abuse by her father or another adult that she had to regress as part of her defence mechanism so as to defend and protect her and is able to analyse it and discuss it freely then she is cured.
Thorough look into the procedure in which the unconscious mental information is being revealed and becomes a part of consciousness which permits the awareness of the given individual/patient is beyond the aim of the present paper and should be read in Freud's writings. Here, mentioning that the unconscious information undergoes a main is sufficient censorship, of which if it passes, it goes up to the level of the preconscious, where it is already in possession of consciousness and is being aware of by the agent, although not fully grasped and interrelated within terms of its context (if it does not pass this censorship, then it is occasioned of regressive behaviour that lay back within unconsciousness), then, another censorship awaits to it, of which if it passes, it goes up to the level of consciousness, where it is being directly and fully experienced, related to, sensed and comprehended by the individual. Freud provides clinical illustrations of the hysterics, neurotics, (the classic Interpretation of Dreams, Freud, 1900) so as to demonstrate this theory.
To make sure that the reader who is a philosopher, rather than a psychologist, comprehends the relation between the unconscious and the conscious and consciousness, in The Unconscious (Freud, 1915), Freud asserts that psychoanalysis compares the perception of unconscious mental processes and experiences by consciousness with the perception of the outside, external, world through the sense-organs so as to obtain new knowledge from the comparison. Thus, Freud refers to Kant's work and view of the mind as an activity that manipulates experiences, borrows it for the sake of his argument, takes it out of context, distorts and changes it and comes up with the assertion that just as the external world is not viewed in the way it really is in nature but is subject to the viewer's subjective perception of it (Kant's account of the active mind), so are consciousness and the conscious affected by the unconscious and unconsciousness, manipulated and modified by them and are observed/treated by them.
In devising the Freudian psychoanalytic doctrine and the psychoanalytic technique of psychoanalysis, Freud has devised rigid theories (psychoanalytic theories) as for the nature and character of man and his existence that tailor and fit all individuals and which constitute the basis as for the psychoanalytic treatment, i.e., psychoanalysis. He, therefore, devised his theory as for morality and personality development in both men and women which proceeds through five psychosexual stages in children and adolescents as well as his theory as for the structure of personality and human interaction and moral or immoral conduct, the id, ego and superego. These theories serve as a model for the psychoanalytic treatment of all individuals who undergo psychoanalysis and are meant to be suitable for all individuals - human - beings. Accordingly, the events that occurred in the life of the individual who undergoes psychoanalysis are tailored and fit into these Freudian theories. Thus, the very case of sexual abuse, which is illustrated in the present paper, is tailored and fit into the various aspects of the Electra Complex and the psychosexual stages of personality and moral development and the personality structure, any feelings of guilt and the like.
On the other hand, the existential movement has been formed and devised in the nineteenth century as a protest movement against the established spirit, mood and ambience of the mainstream of the intellectual world - notably of the philosophical domain, natural, moral and metaphysical philosophy, but also of deterministic, rigid theories and schools of thought and movements. The existential movement has protested against the destruction of both the authentic, independent, unreduced and free individual being and the personal, biased, subjective, authentic truth by the established mainstream of the intellectual world, in general, and doctrines such as the Hegelian and the Kantian doctrines, the empiricist doctrine, the positivist doctrine and the psychodynamic doctrine, in particular. Those doctrines have reduced the individual being into metaphysical theories, deterministic, innate, developmental theories, physiological and biological processes, innate releasing mechanisms, information processing devices etc., and made him fit into a single, unified and universal system of truth and reason.
The existential movement in the nineteenth century has maintained that the concept of truth has become unreal, distant, universal, abstractive, and alienated from the individual being him. Accordingly, the concept of truth has become an idea of the manner in which the universe should be like. The individual being has had to make him fit within this kind of truth rather than lead his life in accordance with his own idea of truth and being fully committed to this idea of truth. Thus, the individual being has been swallowed by the idea of whom he should be, which has been dictated to him and forced and imposed upon him by society and deterministic elements, has lost his individuality and uniqueness and has become a part of theories as for whom he should be and why.
Hence, the existential movement objects to the endeavour to reduce the individual-human-being into sets and systems of reasons, explanations, metaphysical and scientific theories and causal determinants as for his nature, his conduct, his mental/inner state (feelings, sensations, emotions and the like) and his mental state of being (neurosis, and psychosis and 'stability/sanity'). Instead, the existential movement endeavours to examine and study the individual-human-being's existence, Being-In-The-World, so as to comprehend it, to have the most agreeable, authentic existence, Being-In-The-World possible and to be able to actualise his personal existence in the world and, as a consequence, him and his life.
As just noted, the existential movement also objects to the notion of universal, objective truth but introduces truth as the subjective, personal entity of the individual who devises it, possesses it and lives his life and designs and determines him as in accordance with it. Thus, according to the existential movement, man is existing of some - determinates, emerging, becoming being who defines him in accordance with his own subjective view of truth and possesses a full responsibility as for his life as well as the capacity and power to choose whatever and whoever he wishes to become and be, his values and ideologies with a view to actualise them and to lead an authentic life and existence.
In other words, man is an individual who determines, designs and realises him in accordance with the choices, deeds and wishes that he makes, rather than a determined entity who is determined by social conformism, genetically hereditary and the environment, i.e., the past and present. Man, according to the existential movement, is, therefore, emerging, proceeding toward the future and becoming being and is defined by his own past and present actions, decisions and choices and by the future outcome of these actions, decisions and choices. That is, man becomes what he is.
The forebears and the devisers of the existential movement, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, were loners who have excluded and isolated themselves from the establishment and from their fellow philosophers and savants and constantly occupied and devoted themselves by spending all their time analysing themselves and studying themselves. Kierkegaard has never had an academic, university post while Nietzsche has been forced, at the young age of thirty-five, to resign of full professorship of philology in Basel, and, therefore, a truly brilliant academic career, due to ill health. The two brilliant savants have lived on their own financial means that freed them from the necessity of having a paid position and from being a part of the establishment and allowed their questioning and critic of the state, society and the establishment and their fellow philosophers and other savants.
Accordingly, the forebears and the devisers of the existential movement, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, devised their doctrines as personal, individualistic, - analytic accounts of their own state of being and as an attempt to solve their personal crisis and to ameliorate their feelings of severe anxiety, depression and desperation (numerous authors also claim that the two were psychotic due to syphilis) and to achieve responsibility as for their lives and realise authenticity and true and to become whoever and whatever they desired to be (authentic individuals, apart from the crowd and the establishment). Nietzsche's writings, unlike those of Kierkegaard who was a tremendous poet (Kierkegaard, in fact has regarded him as nothing other than a poet) and a writer of beautiful, well-structured, literary works, have been written in unorganised note forms, which, many times, constitute beautiful, literary, verse, in small notebooks as part of spills of creativity and ingenuity and an urge to write down his personal thoughts, feelings and sensations so as to alleviate anxiety attacks and to feel better about him. Nonetheless, these two giant savants have written to an imaginary audience to which they wished to preach and inform their teachings as for the authentic manner in which individuals ought to live their lives. In fact, Nietzsche writes as if he were a desperate doctor who suffers the disease and who carries out an analysis and diagnosis in order to propose his views as for a good mental health to his readers and followers with a view to ameliorate their state of being and attain authenticity and truth.
Nietzsche proclaims that "the levelling and diminution of European man are our greatest danger" (as Nietzsche is quoted in May et al., 1958). Nietzsche's ultimate objective is to create a powerful individual who is able to live a true, creative and authentic life and create, construct and reconstruct while in a nihilistic, meaningless world without dogmatic beliefs. Thus, despite an existential vacuum and the need of existential filling, he is able to endure a difficult, authentic, gloomy and tragic truth and actualise him, without succumbing and escaping to the more comfortable option of universal, detached and determined truth, illusive and metaphysical fantasies and consolations, which constitute constant temptations and appeals to him. By doing so he, therefore, avoided destroying him and turning him into a part of this gloomy world and nihilism and of the universal, determined truth and is able to realise him and to lead a meaningful, authentic life.
Accordingly, in the case of this powerful, authentic individual, this gloomy, meaningless world does not provoke the collapse of the, but, the individual manages to resist it and free his creative sources, repressed until then by determined and compelled morality, social norms and psychological, mental, disabilities. Those creative forces lead the individual to destroy the ideologies that have been determined for him and enforced upon him and create and adopt new beliefs and ideologies for him that are, themselves, abandoned and replaced by him once they lose their usefulness for him.
Once obtained in achieving this state of emptiness and blank slate, the individual is able to adopt ideologies as he pleases, rebuild and determine him and renew and reconstruct afresh the temples (morals) which have been imposed upon him. Nevertheless, he always possesses the ability to succumb to the external, determined, imposed ideologies, absorb him in them and, as a consequence, lose and deny him. Thus, the process of The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis.
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practice’s psychology and who has devised 'a new psychology'. Nietzsche's works are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact that is disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. While being a young, frustrated, physically and mentally ill, retired professors of Philology, who has viciously attacked his colleagues, the state, society and the establishment and wrote provocative verses and notes, Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of his own ideologies and his own perspectives and wishes so as to obtain power and authenticity. What is most important, the will to power involves what Nietzsche calls surpass? surpasses, or transcendence, is the process in which the individual is able to achieve control, mastery and responsibility over his own life and to fight the urge to adopt and absorb him in the social, biological, hereditary, external, deterministic ideologies, norms, morals, conventions and generalisations. That is the urge to become a part of the crowd and give up the painful, tormenting process of being the sole responsible for him and his existence and determining, adopting and setting up his own ideologies and norms by him. surpasses, therefore, involves overcoming this urge and create and determine one.
Accordingly, the more will to power the individual manifestations seem more to incline to the qualitative and - given will to power, in is that the higher degree of power, truth and authenticity that the individual attains and realises. Similarly, the less qualitative is the will to power for which is possessed by the given individual the more than there is less that the individual wishes to be determined, misplaced and bound by him, as absorbing him in the crowd and deny him.
Nevertheless, in talking about power 'macht' and the will to power, Nietzsche talks about negative power and positive power. The negative power is really a psychological weakness and constitutes a wish to accomplish and acquire power by committing cruel acts and demonstrating muscles while The Great Theoretical Difference Between the Psychotherapeutic, Existential Application of the Nietzschean Doctrine and Freudian Psychoanalysis.
Consequently, the authentic individual is one who wills to (positive) power while the inauthentic individual is an individual who possesses negative power and does not will to power. The more positive power and will to power the individual possesses the higher level of authenticity he possesses and the more negative power and the less will to power the individual possesses the higher level of inauthenticity he possesses and vice versa.
In fact, Nietzsche's philosophy should be regarded as a means to entice its followers to overcome deterministic elements, to will to power, to determine themselves, to achieve responsibility for their lives, to form and actualise their authenticity, to obtain increasing positive power and true and to direct their efforts toward their own positive power, testing their ability to reach it and activate it in the course of their lives. The Nietzschean doctrine should, therefore, be regarded as the granting of therapies, education and intellectual temptations to the individual with a view to prepare him for assuming responsibility and mastery over his life, leading and living an authentic, creative and well worthwhile life and to free his creative resources and realise and actualise him in a nihilistic, meaningless world without dogmatic convictions.
The individual is, thus, enticed to be directed and direct him toward his positive power and a powerful, spiritual, creative resource, to examine whether or not he is able to achieve them and absorb them and to obtain as much positive power, will to power and creativity as possible. Nevertheless, it is merely the individual, him, who is able to actualise his power, facing bravely the numerous temptations to succumb to the easy, comfortable manner of living in accordance with the external, deterministic norms and convictions that surround him, let him be determined by them and deny him and resisting these temptations in an attempt to actualise and fulfil his existence and him. Accordingly, the Nietzschean doctrine mainly intends to entice the individual to will to power.
Hence, enticing the individual's will to power, surpasses and authenticity and truth are the real purposes of the Nietzschean doctrine. Nietzsche employs the method of writing short notes and verses and utilises a provocative, refined, poetic, arrogant language and a manner of writing, full of daring slogans, swaggers, paradoxes, myths and scepticism so as to raise consent and profound emotions and feelings in his readers with a view to obtain enticement and assist him in this process of enticing his readers. This reason joins the reasons that are mentioned above as for the unique type of writing which Nietzsche adopts and employs.
Furthermore, the more qualitative will to power which the individual possesses the more he possesses the enticement to will to power and the wish to obtain increasing power so as to become more authentic, true, perfect and powerful being. Thus, the individual who possesses a weak will to power is likely to deny the enticement to will to power and succumb to continue with the external and, deterministic, norms and convictions that are determined for him and are imposed upon him and, therefore, to possess a negative power and be a weak, unactualized individual. An individual with higher degree of qualitative will to power can and is likely to be enticed to will to power and, thus, to obtain positive power, authenticity and true and to overcome the negative power. Nonetheless, the individual can also be a superman whose level of qualitative will to power is convincing, that he does not need to be enticed to will to power. As a superman, he can, therefore, create him and his ideologies and perspectives on his own without this enticement and without the need to be enticed.
Nietzsche asserts that man is distinguished from the primordial animal in his potentiality to cultivate his nature and image (i.e., who he is, his own ) and his true nature and to create his ideologies, norms and conventions as he pleases, rather than have him and his ideologies and conventions are determined, designed and created for him. This ability raises man above the other animals and permits man to overcome the inclination to deny him and be absorbed and determined and, instead, to surpass him, to realise him and to assume full control and mastery over his existence and life. Nevertheless, the vast majority of men never realised themselves but succumb to the conformism and to society and its norms and ideologies and let themselves be absorbed in them and determined by them.
Thus, according to Nietzsche, man's task and role are to surpass, overcome and transcendent those impediments that suppresses, repress and prevent the mental powers from freeing, creating and realising the (those mental powers are rooted in man). Man has to activate those mental powers in the manner described above so as to obtain increasing power and mastery over his life, his existence and him and, by consequence, increasing authenticity, realisation and true. If man does not do so then he is degraded to the degree of beast (monkey, as influenced by Darwinism that has been devised and was very popular and rigorous in that corresponding period of time). Nonetheless, if man does so then he gains ever more power and mastery over his life, personal existence and him and, in a world where God is dead, man becomes closer and closer to the degree of God, the creator of man, truth, ideologies, norms and the, by virtue of adopting for him God's role of creating and determining him, man, (his image and nature), his own ideologies and his own truth and morality. In fact, man's greatest ambition and possibility is to assume increasing power and perfection and to become closer and closer to the degree of power and perfection of God.
Man, according to the Nietzschean doctrine, is, therefore, responsible for his own existence and life and is free to design, determine and create him and his ideologies freely in accordance with his own ideologies and with whom and what he desires for him to become and be. The purpose of living is, therefore, to detach the living individual from biological, social and mechanical restraints (which determine his image and nature) and take on and follow the difficult, exhaustive and tormenting road and journey of analysis and learning and knowing and changing, with a view constantly to grow, construct and create him, realising him and becoming more independent, powerful and authentic being. Hence, man is an emerging and becoming being who emerges toward the future and becomes. Man is defined and determined by his emergence toward the future and by his becoming. He is, therefore, defined and determined by his choices and actions and their outcome. He, therefore, becomes what he is. In fact, the subtitle of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo is 'How One Becomes What One Is'.
From reading the two accounts, those of Freud and Nietzsche, it is very easy to conclude that the essence of the two doctrines, in terms of the actual psychotherapeutic treatment, is virtually similar. In both doctrines, man has to suppress and overcome a psychological, mental, boundary that has to be scraped and shattered so as to obtain truth, allowing the individual as the neurotic/psychotic patient, to function freely and establish a grasp of the given individual, the neurotic/psychotic patient. This fact has misled readers and researchers into maintaining that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical core of the psychoanalytic technique (psychoanalysis), methodology and approach.
Nevertheless, while according to Freudian psychoanalysis, man is a determined entity that follows universal, successive stages of morality and personality development, which are deterministic, common to all men and according to which all men behave, act, experience, feel and live their life, and have his neurosis/psychosis and crisis induced and determined by specific past events and experiences in his life, the Nietzschean doctrine views to man as an entity that is responsible for him and for his existence in the world. The 'Nietzschean man' possesses the power and ability to choose and determine his ideologies and actions, who and what he wishes to become and be and strives to overcome all boundaries, to surpass him, realise him and become a powerful, authentic individual.
According, to the Nietzschean doctrine, man is neither good nor evil. 'Man is beyond good and evil' asserts Nietzsche and has named one of his important works 'Beyond Good and Evil'. The ability of man to assume control and responsibility for his life and existence, to determine him, to realise him and to achieve his truth and authenticity is suppressed and prevented from doing so by both an inner, psychological, need (such as cowardliness) and external deterministic elements, the state, the establishment, society and the like. Nonetheless, man possesses the power and capacity to overcome and free him from these puissant constraints, surpass, transcendent and overcome him and realise his will to power, his power and him while living in a nihilistic, meaningless, world. Alternatively, he also possesses the ability to succumb to those constraints, than to attempt to overcome them, to absorb him in them, not to will to power only, to adopt a negative type of power and be determined and weak and inauthentic. Accordingly, the psychological, mental, elements and aspects of the Nietzschean doctrine are both ones that prevent man from his - realising ness, that the ones that lead to his will to power, surpasses and realisation.
Freudian psychoanalysis, on the other hand, views the defence mechanism as an element that the given individual has had to construct so as to prevent and suppress painful and stressful information from entering the individual's memory and consciousness in order to protect him from stress and suffering. The patient, with the aid and guidance of the psychoanalyst, has to overcome it so as to find the sources and determinants of his neurosis/psychosis and the feelings and emotions that are induced by those sources of the illness and bring them to the patient's consciousness/awareness, where they can be revealed, analysed and examined freely. The psychoanalyst endeavours to explain the individual patient in accordance with the achievement of comprehension of what determines him, his conduct, his malaise, his illness (neurosis/psychosis) and crisis, as well as his ideologies and morals, in terms of the rigid and predetermined theories, as for the elements that determine the nature of man and his conduct and morality, of the psychoanalytic approach.
Accordingly, despite the fact that both the Freudian, psychoanalytic doctrine (and Freudian psychoanalysis) and the Nietzschean doctrine endeavours to overcome suppressive boundaries so as to both obtain truth and cure, the two constitute two different approaches that vary completely one from the other in terms of essence and by definition. Their view as for their subject matter (Man, and the human prerequisite are within him to exist) and the nature and image of man are contradictory. In order to demonstrate the difference between psychoanalysis further, and the psychoanalytic doctrine, and the Nietzschean doctrine in the domain of psychotherapy and display strong, additional evidence in the existential school, technique and approach of and to psychotherapy in the field of psychiatry Logotherapy, which has been stemmed from the Nietzschean doctrine and devised by Viktor. E. Frankl, needs to be described, depicted and illustrated. This way, the reader would be shown the practical application of the Nietzschean ideas in psychotherapy and psychiatry and be able to compare and contrast it with the psychoanalytic method and with Freudian psychoanalysis.
While crediting Freud with new insights into human nature, Frankl felt that Freud's ideas had hardened into rigid, predetermined ideas that determine the nature of man and the analysed individual and, as a consequence, dehumanise and reduce man. What was needed, according to Frankl, was the understanding of the human-individual-being in his totality as a whole, unreduced, independent, free and - determining to be who emerges toward the fulfilment of a given goal, objective and task in his life and personal existence and who defines and determines him in accordance with those objective and goal and their realisation, rather than focussing on the specific event and experience that the psychoanalysts regard as the cause, reason and determinant of the given crisis and condition and analyse and examine them. Frankl, thus, set on a career in psychiatry in which he introduced the concepts of meanings and values and their realisation into psychiatry. The essence of his doctrine is that all reality has meant (logos) and that the individual never ceases to have fabricated meaning.
Logotherapy is the search for the unique meaning and purpose in one's life in an attempt to design and reveal his particular journey in life and his role and task to do whatever it takes to actualise and realise his meanings, potentials, potentialities and him, determines him, gives him and his experiences and actions and identity and existential meaning and become somebody, a true, actualised and authentic individual being. The Greek word 'logo’, in fact, denotes meaning. Thus, Logotherapy regards the individual's striving to find meaning and purpose in his life (which logotherapists call the will to meaning), as well as a personal identity that would make his life meaningful, fully actualised and worthwhile, as the motivational force in man and as the element that defines and determines the individual, his life and his existence.
For the need of comparison with the rival approach of Freudian psychoanalysis and as an illustration of the motivational force, the primary motivational force in the Freudian doctrine and psychoanalysis is the urge and inclination to seek satisfaction and pleasure, normally in the form of the most brutish and primitive, basic sources of pleasure (sexual pleasure and urge, satiating hunger and thirst and sleeping). This Freudian motivational force plays a crucial role in the Freudian deterministic theory of personality and morality development, which was depicted above, as constituting the motivational force for this development of human personality and morality. For its part, Logotherapy focus man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as well as his morbidity and - destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, in and instincts or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of the id, ego and superego or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment and has him determined by them. Man is, thus, free and responsible for his life and personal existence and defines, creates and determines him by his willing to meanings, purposes and values and striving to surpass him and his existence and actualise those meanings and values and, as a consequence, him, his life and personal existence in the world. Nevertheless, he can always succumb to the world of willing to mere pleasure and its satiation, determinism by others, conformism, genetics and hereditary, mass crowds, industry etc., absorb in it and give up the inclination to search for meanings and values in his own existence and life and actualise them. The destructive result of such a deed is described below Man's life, according to Logotherapy, ought to be a journey of surpassing his everyday existence, situations and existence and realising the meanings and objectives that he sought, searched, found and set to him to actualise.
The process of finding meanings is one of exploring all human values for those that fit best with the given treated individual's own, unique life experiences and that he can most profitably pursue as a surge for meaning. Actually, Frankl teaches that merely through the process of education and through the acceptance of full responsibility as for his personal, individualistic and unique choices of meaning by the treated individual, the treated individual can build an integrated personality with a special life task that will give direction and sense of purpose to his own existence.
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practice’s psychology and who has devised 'a new psychology'. Nietzsche's works are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact that is disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as well as his morbidity and - destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, innate and hereditary psychological elements, defence, protective, mechanisms, repression, suppressionals, and so forth. As an illustration, Nietzsche describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, - hatred, hostility and aggression. Moreover, Nietzsche strives to analyse human being, his crisis, his despair and his existence in the world and to find means so as to alleviate human crises and despair.
These aspects of Nietzsche's work elicit a tendency to compare Nietzsche's doctrine with that of Freud and psychoanalysis and to argue that the Freudian doctrine and school (the psychoanalytic theory of human personality on which the psychotherapeutic technique of psychoanalysis is based) and method of treatment (psychoanalysis) has been influenced and affected by Nietzsche's philosophy and work and the Nietzschean doctrine. As a demonstration from the relevant literature, according to Golomb's (1987) thesis, the theoretical core of psychoanalysis is already part and parcel of Nietzsche's philosophy, insofar as it is based on concepts that are both displayed in it and developed by it - concepts such as the unconscious, repression, sublimation, the id, the superego, primary and secondary processes and interpretations of dreams.
Nevertheless, the actual situation in the domains of psychotherapy, psychiatry and clinical psychology is, by no means, strictly so. While the two savants (Nietzsche and Freud) endeavour to understand man, to develop the healthy power that is still present in the individual and the neurotic patient so as to overcome and suppress the psychological boundaries that repress his vitality and inhibit his ability to function freely and creatively and attain truth, the difference between the psychodynamic school, approach, movement and method of treatment, in general, and psychoanalysis, in particular, and the existential approach to psychotherapy, the existential movement and the existential, humanistic school of psychology and method of treatment that have been stemmed from the doctrines and views of Freud and Nietzsche is profound and significant, as far as the actual psychotherapeutic treatment is concerned. The reason as for this difference lie in the variation in the two savants' view and definition of man and human existence, the nature and character of man and his relationship with the world and the environment, as well as in the variation in the intellectual soil, the tasks, roles, endeavours, relationships and encounters and actualising set and determined (by the individual patient her) objectives and tasks make the old event a matter of the past and the life of the patient too full, excited and actualised so as to analyse and experience the problem and cause of the neurosis/psychosis and, therefore, influence and alleviate the psychosis/neurosis. Frankl and Lukas recount and provide numerous clinical illustrations so as to demonstrate this point.
This has shown that the Nietzschean doctrine may be regarded as a personality theory and, as such, may be employed as the foundations for the devising of a psychotherapeutic approach. The Nietzschean doctrine defines man as a being who is fully responsible for his life and personal existence and possesses mastery over his fate, life and existence as well as his conduct, his nature, identity and image. As such, he possesses the power to determine, create and organise his ideologies, values and morals and, as a consequence, him, who and what he is. Nevertheless, the individual has to suppress and overcome the psychological inclination to have his ideologies and values be determined for him. Then, he has to realise the power to determine him so as to gain as much power as possible and become a powerful, individual being.
In order to demonstrate the applicability of the Nietzschean doctrine in psychiatry and psychotherapy, Frankl's existential approach of Logotherapy was displayed, briefly outlined, described and illustrated. Logotherapy guides the treated patient in overcoming the inclination to conform and be determined and help her seek and realise meanings and purposes throughout her life and personal existence with a view to create, actualise and determine her, to lead a meaningful life and existence and to become whoever and whatever she wishes to become and be.
With that, in the course of Logotherapy, the treated individual must assume power, responsibility and mastery over his own life and personal existence and create and design his life and existence and, as a consequence, him in accordance with his own set values and purposes. Once the individual has found the reasons, meanings and purposes to living and in all aspects of his life and personal existence (the painful ones and the happy ones) he is able to lead a more meaningful life and put up with almost any living conditions. In fact, Frankl employs Logotherapy by two famous quotes from Nietzsche - "whatever does not kill me makes me stronger" and "Man can have the how if he has the why.” Thus, according to Logotherapy, the individual's entire state of being and mental and physical conditions are likely to be ameliorated, alleviated and sometimes even cured once he has established meanings and purposes into, to and in the human existence, as a whole, and his own life and personal existence, in particular, and is able to lead a meaningful, purposeful and actualized life.
Once establishing that the Nietzschean doctrine has many psychological aspects and elements in it and, therefore, possesses the ability and the potentiality to provide the core and essence of a psychotherapeutic approach in psychiatry and clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, which is the most popular and known psychotherapeutic approach (in as well as outside the relevant fields of psychiatry and psychology), immediately comes up to one's mind. In fact, the present paper was commenced by stating the similarity in terms of the terminology and the concepts that are employed in both the Nietzschean doctrine and the Freudian, psychoanalytic, doctrine and psychoanalysis. Moreover, the present paper has described the inclination to compare the Freudian doctrine with the Nietzschean doctrine and the Nietzschean doctrine to the psychoanalytic method and approach of psychotherapeutic treatment (i.e., psychoanalysis). Presently, as far as quoting Golomb's clear and bold assertion that the Nietzschean doctrine, in fact, constitutes not less than the theoretical core of Freudian psychoanalysis. In fact, the present paper has set it the task of examining this assertion by Jacob Golomb.
Nevertheless, it was the present paper's primary objective to refute this assertion and to show that the Nietzschean doctrine does not constitute the theoretical core of psychoanalysis. Both the theoretical, conceptual, and the practical, applied psychotherapeutic, differences between the Freudian doctrine and its method of psychotherapeutic treatment (Psychoanalysis) and the Nietzschean doctrines were displayed, outlined, illustrated and depicted in the present paper in some length. On the other hand, this has demonstrated that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical core and essence of the existential approach to psychotherapy, which, in fact, constitutes the most vicious rival to psychoanalysis.
Moreover, the existential approach of Logotherapy is depicted as a rival approach to psychoanalysis in the same field as psychoanalysis (that is psychiatry and clinical psychology) it is described as the one that really employs the Nietzschean doctrine as its true theoretical core and essence and as its foundation. It seems less feasible to ignore and skip on the similarities in and between the 'will to power' and its realisation and the 'will to meaning' and its actualization, the ambition to surpass and overcome all that prevents and suppresses the will to power/meaning and the individual existence, the idea of free will, the notion of full responsibility for and mastery over one's life and the idea of the freedom to determine and create one. Those last three concepts constitute key concepts in the Nietzschean doctrine, the existential movement and Logotherapy. The existential movement was described in the present paper and Nietzsche have been to forebear and deviser of the existential movement, together with Soren, Aabye Kierkegaard.
The Freudian, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic doctrines, for their part, regard human personality, morality, ideologies, feelings, emotions and conduct as deterministic ones that are either innate or determined by events and other types of stimuli. The Freudian doctrine, therefore, maintains that the best manner to alleviate human crisis and despair (both neurosis and psychosis) is to search and find the reasons, causes and determinants for them. The psychoanalytic method of treatment is, therefore, really a technique of searching and finding and analysing and examining thoroughly and freely the events, experiences and stimuli that it assumes to be the causes and determinants of the neurosis/psychosis.
The process of searching and finding significant stimuli and events in the individual patient's life and of analysing the individual patient's life and existence freely applies the shuttering and overpowering of a defence mechanism that represses those events and stimuli from being revealed and aware of by the given analysed individual who has undergone them and regressed them to his subconscious. This process, therefore, strives to make the stimuli and events, which are assumed to be the cause, reason and determinant of the neurosis/psychosis, come up to the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient's consciousness and become fully aware of by the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient and, thus, revealed and analysed freely and thoroughly by both the patient and the psychoanalyst.
While overcoming the defence mechanism and fully revealing the reasons and causes as for the neurosis/psychosis and exposing them to the patient's consciousness enable their analysing freely and without any restraints. Once the patient is fully aware of the event and stimulus that have generated his illness, crises and despair and those events and stimuli are analysed and examined thoroughly and freely the neurosis/psychosis is cured.
A tendency to assert that the Nietzschean doctrine influences the Freudian, psychoanalytic doctrine and approach and the Freudian method of psychoanalysis and that the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the theoretical essence and core of Freudian psychoanalysis is erroneous and misleading. The Nietzschean doctrine, on the other hand, is the theoretical basis and core of the existential movement, existential, humanistic psychology and the existential approach to psychotherapy. Specifically, the Nietzschean doctrine constitutes the foundations of Logotherapy, also known as existential analysis.
The two movements, schools and approaches are rival ones and so are Logotherapy and Psychoanalysis. While there are some similarities in their shared ambition to alleviate man's crises and despair, in the terminology that they employ and in their shared endeavour to suppress and overpower the psychological boundaries that repress the individual patient from attaining truth and true and to free truth and the true, the representational notion of what man actually is, an individual being, the, the true, actualisation and the like, which constitute key issues in theories of personality and which define human personality, vary immensely and cannot differ more, in terms of their treatment and definition by the two movements and approaches.
In fact, other movements and schools such as Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence also employ concepts such as the, consciousness, unconsciousness, memory, recall, morality, revelation, human nature, personality and character. Nevertheless, attempting to compare them with psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic movement would be an absurd task. Their view and definition of those concepts vary immensely from the definition of those concepts by Psychoanalysis and their application and application of those concepts differs greatly from the utilisation of those concepts by psychoanalysis, although Cognitive Psychology has created cognitive psychotherapy and talks about the recall and storage of information by and in the mind and the access and revelation of information - that is the representational model of Cognitive Psychology and the cognitive revolution and movement, which dominates cognitive psychology.
It is, thus, the overall designing, devising and depiction of the approach, doctrine and theory, and of what they endeavour to do and achieve - their definition of their main subject matter (Man, and his existence in the world, his personality, nature, image and character) and of key concepts; Combining of those key concepts by them, their manner of applying those definitions in practice - which make up a given doctrine, approach and method of treatment and applicability and enable the comparison of the particular doctrine (approach) with other doctrines, approaches and methods of applicability and treatment of a similar type. Comparing selected aspects, components and elements of two or more doctrines and approaches may lead to the omission of important features and constituents that, in fact, vary and are contrasted significantly in the two doctrines and approaches and, therefore, to the adoption of the erroneous conclusion that the doctrines and approaches are similar and comparable when they are, in fact, totally different and contrasted. The Nietzschean/Freudians, thus, shown how careful one should be so as not to be misled in comparing two doctrines, theories and approaches and claiming that one doctrine, theory and approach affect and influences another doctrine, theory and approach and constitutes its theoretical core.
According to Nietzsche, tragedy began in the musical, undifferentiated Dionysian chorus and only later developed the discursive and discrete Apollonian action and characters in which Aristotle had located the essence of the genre. Real tragedy, according to Nietzsche, depicts the doomed efforts of the Apollonian heroes to rise above the constraints of their individuality. It celebrates those efforts as a characteristic human gesture in the face of the ultimate irrationality of the world, and in the chorus, which always remains on stage after the hero's destruction, it offers, of The Birth of Tragedy, the "metaphysical comfort . . . that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.”
Nietzsche resigned from the university in 1879, and, though Schopenhauer and Wagner ceased to be the dominant influences on his thought, many of the questions addressed in The Birth of Tragedy continued to occupy him throughout his life; the book it, despite its many problems, has remained one of his most popular and well-known works.
Too such "dogmatic" or "metaphysical" thought Nietzsche opposed his "perspectivism," a view he once expressed by writing that "facts are precisely what there is not, only interpretations.” He believed that the emergence of the possibility of perspectivism was due in part to the fact that Christianity had provided it’s very own undermining. This is the sense of his notorious dictum, "God is dead.” By this he meant that faith in God, which involves a total commitment to truthfulness, has finally led to the gradually emerging realization that God does not exist after all and that therefore there can be no objective, absolute values.
“God is dead” - and man, in his heart of hearts, is incapable of forgiving him for having done away with Him, he is bent upon punishing him for this, his “greatest deed.” For the time being, however, he will take refuge in many an evasive action. With the instinct of as born hunter, Nietzsche pursues him into all his hiding places, cornering him in each of the morality without religion? Not so: “All purely moral demands without their religious basis,” he says, “must needs end in nihilism.” The time, Nietzsche predicts, is fast approaching when secular crusaders, tools of man’s collective suicide, will devastate the world with their rival claims to compensate for the lost Kingdom of Heaven by setting up on earth the ideological rules of Love and Justice that, by the very force of the spiritual derangement involved, will lead to the rules of cruelty and slavery, and he prophesies that the war fair global domination will be fought on behalf of philosophical doctrines.
Was he, having lost God, capable of truly believing in anything? “He who no longer finds what is in God will find it nowhere - he must either deny it or create it.” Only the “either-or” does not apply. All his life Nietzsche tried to do both. He had the passion for truth and no belief in it. He had the love of life and despaired of it. This is the stuff from which demons are made perhaps the most powerful secret demon eating the heart out of the modern mind. To have written and enacted the extremist story of this mind is Nietzsche’s true claim to greatness.
What, then, is the final importance of Nietzsche? For one, lies in his example that is so strange, profound, confounded, alluring, and forbidding that it can hardly be looked upon as exemplary, but it cannot be ignored either. For it has something to do with living lucidly in the dark age of which he so creatively despaired.
Obnoxious as Nietzsche found the specific values of Christian morality, he reacted even more negatively to its universalism. Christian morality, he believed, prevents the few people who do not belong to "the herd" from going in good conscience against the majority's values and from fashioning their own way of life - a way of life that will differ from one type of person to another and will make no claim to universal validity. Nietzsche constantly praised such creativity and claimed that the only difference between the Christian and the type of character he praises as the Übermensch, the "free spirit" or "new philosopher," is that while both are creators of values, only the latter remains aware of this fact and actually takes pleasure in it.
That Nietzsche believes about life he also believes about interpretation - hence his immense importance for literary theory and criticism. As certain values come to appear binding, so many interpretations cease to display their interpretive status and begin to appear as fact about the texts they concern, which means that they no longer appear as interpretations at all. Just as Nietzsche's "genealogical" method aims to show how the particular interpretations of life that created the moral values of Christianity came about, so literary criticism must turn to an unmasking of what we take for granted in connection with every text. Such "facts" are the products of earlier, accepted, and therefore unacknowledged interpretations. Just as there is not a single mode of life, good for all people, so there can clearly ever be a single, overarching interpretation of a particular text that everyone will have to accept. "The" world and "the" text are equally indeterminate.
All interpretation, moral or literary, is an expression of what Nietzsche calls "the will to power." Much that he wrote about this idea sounds as if he believed in some sort of crude overpowering of "the weak" by "the strong" and has seemed too many to align him with fascist theories of political power. Nevertheless, the idea that interpretations manifest the will to power is the idea that no interpretation is a pure objective mirroring of the facts, since there are no facts to be mirrored in the first place. All the same, it is an effort to fashion a mode of life, or a reading of a text, through which the type of character each interpreter constitutes can best be manifested: "One seeks a picture of the world in that philosophy in which we feel freest, i.e., in which our most powerful drive feels free to function.
Nietzsche therefore urges those who are able to do so not to remain in the grip of dogmatism and to fashion instead interpretations and lives of their own. In his view, being important is much more important than to be good. Even if the interpretation of life we are in the process of fashioning cannot but seem binding to us - because conceiving of another is impossible, at that time, - he still urges that we retain the generalized awareness that there is nothing necessary about it. Any such construct is our own creation. Nietzsche, furthermore, wants his readers to revel in their difference from everyone else, if they are, of course, capable of being different in the first place. However, he cannot possibly convince his readers to be different: one either is or is not capable of that. Accordingly, the nature of his intended audience and the mode of address appropriate to them remain for him questionable throughout his writings.
In doing so, Nietzsche also made the form of his writing essential to its content and thus raised profound questions about the relationship between philosophy and literature. The consequences of his views and of his overall project are still being pursued in philosophy, literature, and criticism. If his perspectivism is, after all, true, then, in appropriately paradoxical fashion, this pursuit will never be finally over.
Nietzsche’s apropos question, it turns out, is a good place to begin regarding his subject. For the Problem of God cannot be defined by any single question but is more an umbrella term covering a variety of ancient and more overshadowing terminological varieties in reassembling the covering umbrella of
modernity and the postmodern questions regarding God. Does God exist? What is the nature of God? Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Although a slight ray of light is obscured but implicitly within these are questions about our own meaning and purpose in the world. If God does exist, why has humanity been created? If God is dead, what is the right way for us to go about conducting our lives?
It is in defining and examining the (for him historical) phenomenon of nihilism that Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity sets in, and it has remained the only truly subtle point that, within the whole range of his more unrestrained argumentativeness, this Antichrist makes against Christianity. For it is at this point that Nietzsche asks (and asks the same question in countless variations throughout his work): What is the specific qualifying that the Christian tradition has instilled a cultivated in the minds of men? They are, he thinks, two fold: on the one hand, a more refined sense of truth than any other civilization has known, an almost uncontrollable desire for absolute spiritual and intellectual certainties, and, on the other hand, the ever-present suspicion that life on this earth is not a supreme value, but in need of a higher, belief transcendental justification. This, Nietzsche believes, is a destructive, and even - destructive alliance, which is bound finally to corrode the very Christian beliefs on which it rests, for the mind exercised and guided in its search adversarial consciousness by the most sophisticated and comprehensive supreme beings that the world has ever known - a theology that through Thomas Aquinas has assimilated into its grand system the genius of Aristotle was at the same time fashioned and directed by the indelible Christian distrust of the ways of the world. Consequently, it ought to follow, with the utmost logical precision and determination, a course of systematically “devaluing” the knowable real.
This mind, Nietzsche predicts, will eventually, in a frenzy of intellectual honestly, unmask a humbug what it began by regarding as the finer things in life. The boundless faith in that, the joint legacy of Christ and Greek, will in the end dislodge every possible belief in truth of any faith. Souls, long disciplined in a school of unworthiness and humility, will insist upon knowing the worst about themselves, and only be able to grasp what is humiliating. Psychology will denigrate the creations of beauty, laying bare the wangle of unworthy desires of which they are “mere” sublimation.
All new knowledge about the soul, knowledge about a different soul, can it ever happen that the freely discovering mind says to the soul, “This is what you are, “is it not quite as if the mind said to the soul: “This is how In wish you to see your. This is the image after which In create you. This is my secret about you: In shock you with it and, shockingly, at once wrest it from you.” Worse: having received and revealed it secret, their soul is no longer what In was when it lived in secrecy. For there are secrets that are created in the process of their revelation. Worse still, having been told its secrets, the soul may create to be a soul. This step from modern psychology to soullessness is imperceptibly distanced from that of modern physics, just as dissoluble the concept of “Matter.”
This valuing quantification is manifest in today’s world, which we live in an age during which many of us have experienced the death of God. Its well-known phrase is recounted as, "God is dead” which was made famous by the 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he was by temperament and atheist, Nietzsche’s controversial statement was more a realization on his part than a pronouncement. He simply weighed the astonishing German military power of his day and the incredible advances in modern science (including Darwinism) and technology against the declining belief in the Christian God. For Nietzsche, human ingenuity and power had reached such heights as to make God psychologically irrelevant. Although he has often been ridiculed and scorned by right-wing fundamentalists who have misunderstood his meaning, Nietzsche him felt great ambivalence concerning the death of God. On the one hand, he feared and predicted humanity, with no system of moral guidance, would plunge it into wars and disasters the likes of which have never been seen. On the other hand, he was hopeful the life denying ethics of Christianity might be replaced with a new life affirming philosophy. "At last," he wrote, "the sea, our sea, lies open before us. Perhaps there has never been so open a sea." If Nietzsche only gave voice to a thought concerning the relevancy of God that was increasingly on the minds of many in his day, it was the horrific Holocaust a few years later that would nail the lid on God’s coffin. In the face of such horror and suffering it became impossible for many to believe in the existence of a just and loving God. As the German Theologian and pacifist, Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote while imprisoned for plotting to assassinate Hitler, ". . . everything evidently gets along without ‘God,’ and just as well as before." In this statement, like Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer realized that humanity had come of age, no longer needing faith in God when it could rely upon its own inventiveness to determine its fate and control the forces of nature. However, the concentration of human suffering and evil displayed during the Holocaust touched upon a nerve essential to the human condition and much older than recent advancements through science and technology. More than a century before both Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer, philosopher David Hume asked "Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? From what place then is evil? Theologians as renown as C.S. Lewis and thinkers as ancient as Epicurus have voiced similar questions. For many the facts of human suffering is proof enough that God cannot exist. Nonetheless, the problem of suffering has proven such a stumbling block for theologians over the centuries that a range of differing solutions has been proposed. In specific regard to the Holocaust, for example, Robert L. Rubenstein argues in his book After Auschwitz, "To see any purpose in the death camps, the traditional believer is forced to regard the most demonic, antihuman explosion in all history as a meaningful expression of God’s purpose. He goes on to say, "A God who tolerates the suffering that become more even that one single innocent child, may that is either infinitely cruel or hopelessly indifferent. For Rubenstein the reality of such evil proves that even if God does exist, such a being cannot be all-powerful.
Other solutions to the problem suggest suffering is a divine test of some sort, such as the biblical character Job went through. Unfortunately this solution also implicates God in the malicious and intentional suffering humans experience. Some blame humanity it for evil and suffering, through the doctrines of original sin and free will. This argument has several problems. Firstly, if God is omniscient, all-knowing, why create a world that would fall so utterly from its original perfection? Furthermore, even if God is bound by some imposed guideline of non-interference, as Creator such a God must take some, if not full, responsibility for the outcome of Creation. Finally, blaming human beings for the existence of evil and suffering in the world may explain moral evils, but it doesn’t explain the presence of natural evil such as disease, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes, etc., etc., events’ human beings have no control over. Finally, some theologies give God a get-out-of-jail-free-card by simply concluding the ways of God are incomprehensible to human beings. That is, God may appear indifferent, malicious, uncaring, but this is only because we, in our limited capacity, cannot understand the mind of God. All of these arguments, however, may be last ditch efforts to cling to the belief in God even amid what some have concluded is overwhelming evidence that such a God does not exist.
In fairness, it should be noted that the hope for a perfect world without suffering and evil may be typical of modern humanity and not indicative of humanity in general. With the advent of science and the increasing sufficiency of technology, both mechanical and medical, is our latent hope that we will one day solve all our problems by ushering in a techno-utopian world. To do so, however, many have come to the conclusion that we must kill first kill God, which is to say, if we are to advance we must move beyond our antiquated and traditional beliefs. In his book, The Problem of God, Yesterday and Today, John Courtney Murray describes two types of postmodern atheists, the atheist of the communist world Revolution and the atheist of the Theatre, For the Marxist, according to Murray, the goal is to build a new world, free of all misery, by giving human beings their freedom, a freedom from belief in God and from religion it that is viewed as an opium of the people. "He has discovered that it is history, not God, that makes the nature of man." Inscribes Murray, "This discovery was the death of God. When man came to know him through history, when he came to understand that he is the creature of history and not of God, God was dead. He died out of history, leaving man as its master."
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely rational explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of Cartesian dualism with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’ do not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘essences’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily dismissed all pervious philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The problem, claimed Nietzsche, is that earlier versions of the ‘will to power’ disguise the fact that all allege truths were arbitrarily created in and are expression or manifestations of individual ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and mater is more absolute and total than had previously been imagined. Based on the assumptions that there are no real or necessary correspondences between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he declared that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he conceived it, however, it was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new massage of individual existence founded on will.
“Those who fail to enact their existence in this space,” says Nietzsche, “are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialist ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd.” Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. Science, he said, not only exalted natural phenomena and favours reductionistic examinations of phenomena at the expense of mind. It also seeks to educe mind to a mere material substance, and thereby to displace or subsume the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic description that disallows any basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulful mechanistic inverse proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Though a curious course of events, attempts by Edmund Husserl, a philosopher trained in higher math and physics, to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of human consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche. Husserl, of course, was a principal founder of ‘phenomenology’ and from Franz Brentano (1838-1917) inherited the view that the central problem in understanding thought is that of explaining the way in which an intentional direction, or content, can belong to the mental phenomenon that exhibits it. Mental phenomena are founded in sensory data, but whereas for Brentano there is no sharp distinction between ‘intuitions’ and concepts, Husserl reinstates that this way of thinking is that the content is immanent, existing within the mental act, and anything external drops out as secondary or irrelevant to the intrinsic nature of the mental state. The problem is nonetheless of reconciling the subjective or psychological nature of mental life with its objective and logical content preoccupied Husserl from this time onwards. Husserl eventually abandoned his attempt to keep both a subjective and a naturalistic approach to knowledge together, abandoning the naturalism in favour of a kind of ‘transcendentalism’ idealism’.
`Nietzsche, in an effort to subvert the epistemological authority of scientific knowledge, sought to legitimatize a division between mind and world much starker than that originally envisioned by Descartes. What is not as widely known, however, is that Nietzsche and other seminal figures in the history of philosophical postmodernism were very much aware of an epistemological crisis in scientific thought than arose much earlier that, that occasioned by wave-particle dualism in quantum physics. This crisis resulted from attempts during the last three decades of the nineteenth century to develop a logically - consistent definition of number and arithmetic that would serve to reinforce the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality. As it turned out, these efforts resulted in paradoxes of a recursion and - reference that threatened to undermine both the efficacy of this correspondence and the privileged character of scientific knowledge.
Nietzsche appealed to this crisis in an effort to reinforce his assumption that, the absence of ontology, all knowledge (including scientific knowledge) was grounded only in human consciousness. As the crisis continued, a philosopher trained in higher mathematics and physics, Edmund Husserl, attempted to preserve the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality by deriving the foundation of logic and number from consciousness in ways that would preserve - consistency and rigour. Even so, this effort to ground mathematical physics in human consciousness, or in human subjective reality, was no trivial matter. It represented a direct link between these early challenges and the efficacy of classical epistemology and the tradition in philosophical thought that culminated in philosophical postmodernism. Nietzsche’s emotionally charged decence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought.
`Friedrich Nietzsche is openly pessimistic about the possibility of knowledge. ‘We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for ‘truth’: We know (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species: and even what is called ‘utility’ is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we will not perish some day’ (The Gay Science).
This position is very radical, Nietzsche does not simply deny that knowledge, construed as the adequate representation of the world by the intellect, exists. He also refuses the pragmatist identification of knowledge and truth with usefulness: he writes that we think we know what we think is useful, and that we can be quite wrong about the latter.
Nietzsche’s view, his ‘Perspectivism’, depends on his claim that there is no sensible conception of a world independent of human interpretation and to which interpretations would correspond if hey were to constitute knowledge. He sums up this highly controversial position in The Will to Power: ‘Facts are precisely what there is not. Only interpretation’.
It is often claimed that Perspectivism is - undermining. If the thesis that all views are interpretations is true then, it is argued there is at least one view that is not an interpretation. If, on the other hand, the thesis is it an interpretation, then there is no reason to believe that it is true, and it follows again that nit every view is an interpretation.
Yet this refutation assumes that if a view, like Perspectivism, is an interpretation it is wrong. This is not the case. To call any view, including Perspectivism, an interpretation is to say that it can be wrong, which is true of all views, and that is not a sufficient refutation. To show the Perspectivism is literally false producing another view superior to it on specific epistemological grounds is necessary.
Perspectivism does not deny that particular views can be true. Like some versions of cotemporary anti-realism, its attributional approach for ‘truth in relation to facts’ specified internally those approaches themselves. But it refuses to envisage a single independent set of facts, To be accounted for by all theories. Thus Nietzsche grants the truth of specific scientific theories does, however, deny that a scientific interpretation can possibly be ‘the only justifiable interpretation of the world’ (The Gay Science): Neither the facts that science addresses nor the methods it employs are privileged. Scientific theories serve the purposes for which hey have been devised, but these have no priority over the many other purposes of human life. The existence of many purposes and needs relative to which the value of theories is established-another crucial element of Perspectivism is sometimes thought to imply a reason relative, according to which no standards for evaluating purposes and theories can be devised. This is correct only in that Nietzsche denies the existence of single set of standards for determining epistemic value, but holds that specific views can be compared with and evaluated in relation to one another the ability to use criteria acceptable in particular circumstances does not presuppose the existence of criteria applicable in all. Agreement is therefore not always possible, since individuals may sometimes differ over the most fundamental issues dividing them.
Still, Nietzsche would not be troubled by this fact, which his opponents too also have to confront only he would argue, to suppress it by insisting on the hope that all disagreements are in particular eliminable even if our practice falls woefully short of the ideal. Nietzsche abandons that ideal. He considers irresoluble disagreement and essential part of human life.
Knowledge for Nietzsche finds its point reference by the idea of the ‘given’ basis beyond which its conferring material and of a rational defensible theory of confirmation and inference. That it is based on desire and bodily needs more than social refinement’s Perspectives are to be judged not from their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in a specific era. The possibility of any truth beyond such a local, pragmatic one becomes a problem in Nietzsche, since either a noumenal realm or a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims: what gets called truths are simply beliefs that have been for so long that we have forgotten their genealogy? In these Nietzsche reverses the Enlightenment dictum that truth is the way to liberation by suggesting that trying classes in as far as they are considered absolute for debate and conceptual progress and cause as opposed to any ambient behaviour toward the ease of which backwardness and unnecessary misery. Nietzsche moves back and forth without revolution between the positing of trans-histories; truth claims, such as his claim about the will to power, and a kind of epistemic nihilism that calls into question not only the possibility of truth but the need and desire of it as well. However, perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, in a game whose rules are contingent rather than necessary it. The evaluation of truth claims should be based of their strategic efforts, not their ability to represent a reality conceived of as separately autonomous than that of human influence, for Nietzsche the view that all truth is truth from or within a particular perspective. The perspective may be a general human pin of view, set by such things as the nature of our sensory apparatus, or it may be thought to be bound by culture, history, language, class or gender. Since there may be many perspectives, there are also different families of truth. The term is frequently applied to Nietzsche’s philosophy.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, the deconstructionist’s Jacques Lacan, Roland Bathes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, this direct linkage among the nineteenth-century crises about epistemological foundations of physics and the origins of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form.
Of Sartre’s main philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre examines the relationships between Being For-it (consciousness) and Being In-it (the non-conscious world). He rejects central tenets of the rationalalist and empiricist traditions, calling the view that the mind or is a thing or substance. ‘Descartes’s substantialist illusion’, and claiming also that consciousness dos not contain ideas or representations . . . are idolist invented by the psychologists. Sartre also attacks idealism in the forms associated with Berkeley and Kant, and concludes that his account of the relationship between consciousness and the world is neither realist nor idealist.
Sartre also discusses Being For-others, which comprises the aspects of experience about interactions with other minds. His views are subtle: Roughly, he holds that one’s awareness of others is constituted by feelings of shame, pride, and so on.
Sartre’s rejection of ideas, and the denial of idealism, appear to commit him to direct realism in the theory of perception. This is neither inconsistent with his claim as been non-realist nor idealist, since by ‘realist’ he means views that allow for the mutual independence or in-principle separability of mind and world. Against this Sartre emphasizes, after Heidegger, that perceptual experience has an active dimension, in hat it is a way of interacting and dealing with the world, than a way of merely contemplating it (‘activity, as spontaneous, unreflecting consciousness, constitutes a certain existential stratum in the world’). Consequently, he holds that experience is richer, and open to more aspects of the world, than empiricist writers customarily claim:
When In run after a streetcar . . . there is consciousness of-the-streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, etc., . . . In am then plunged into the world of objects, it is they that constitute the unity of my consciousness, it is they that present themselves with values, with attractive and repellent qualities . . . Relatedly, he insists that In experience material things as having certain potentialities - for-me (’nothingness’). In see doors and bottles as openable, bicycles as ridable (these matters are linked ultimately to the doctrine of extreme existentialist freedom). Similarly, if my friend is not where In expect to meet her, then In experience her absence ‘as a real event’.
These Phenomenological claims are striking and compelling, but Sartre pays insufficient attention to such things as illusions and hallucinations, which are normally cited as problems for direct realists. In his discussion of mental imagery, however, he describes the act of imaging as a ‘transformation’ of ‘psychic material’. This connects with his views that even a physical image such as a photograph of a tree does not figure as an object of consciousness when it is experienced as a tree-representation (than as a piece of coloured cards). Nonetheless, the fact remains that the photograph continues to contribute to the character of the experience. Given this, seeing how Sartre avoids positing a mental analogue of a photograph for episodes of mental imaging is hard, and harder still to reconcile this with his rejection of visual representations. If ones image is regarded as debased and the awareness of awakening is formally received as a differential coefficient of perceptual knowledge, but this merely rises once more the issue of perceptual illusion and hallucination, and the problems of reconciling them are dialectally the formalization built upon realism.
Much of Western religion and philosophical thought since the seventeenth century has sought to obviate this prospect with an appeal to ontology or to some conception of God or Being. Yet we continue to struggle, as philosophical postmodernism attests, with the terrible prospect by Nietzsche-we are locked in a prison house of our individual subjective realities in a universe that is as alien to our thought as it is to our desires. This universe may seem comprehensible and knowable in scientific terms, and science does seek in some sense, as Koyré puts it, to ‘find a place for everything.’ Nonetheless, the ghost of Descartes lingers in the widespread conviction that science does not provide a ‘place for man’ or for all that we know as distinctly human in subjective reality.
Nonetheless, after The Gay Science (1882) began the crucial exploration of - mastery. The relations between reason and power, and the revelation of the unconscious striving after power that provide the actual energy for the apparent - denial of the ascetic and the martyred were during this period that Nietzsche’s failed relationship with Lou Salome resulted in the emotional crisis from which Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-5, translates as, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and signals a recovery. This work is frequently regarded as Nietzsche’s masterpiece. It was followed by Jenseits von Gut and Böse, 1887 translates as, Beyond Good and Evil, and Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887 and translates to, The Genealogy of Moral.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85), Friedrich Nietzsche introduced in eloquent poetic prose the concepts of the death of God, the superman, and the will to power. Vigorously attacking Christianity and democracy as moralities for the ‘weak herd’, he argued for the ‘natural aristocracy’ of the superman who, driven by the ‘will to power’, celebrates life on earth rather than sanctifying it for some heavenly reward. Such a heroic man of merit has the courage to ‘live dangerously’ and thus rise above the masses, developing his natural capacity for the creative use of passion.
Also known as radical theology, this movement flourished in the mid 1960s. As a theological movement it never attracted a large following, did not find a unified expression, and passed off the scene as quickly and dramatically as it had arisen. There is even disagreement as to whom its major representatives were. Some identify two, and others three or four. Although small, the movement attracted attention because it was a spectacular symptom of the bankruptcy of modern Theology and because it was a journalistic phenomenon. The very statement "God is dead" was tailor-made for journalistic exploitation. The representatives of the movement effectively used periodical articles, paperback books, and the electronic media. This movement gave expression to an idea that had been incipient in Western philosophy and theology for some time, the suggestion that the reality of a transcendent God at best could not be known and at worst did not exist at all. Philosopher Kant and theologian Ritschl denied that one could have a theoretical knowledge of the being of God. Hume and the empiricist for all practical purposes restricted knowledge and reality to the material world as perceived by the five senses. Since God was not empirically verifiable, the biblical world view was said to be mythological and unacceptable to the modern mind. Such atheistic existentialist philosophers as Nietzsche despaired even of the search of God; it was he who coined the phrase "God is dead" almost a century before the death of God theologians.
Mid-twentieth century theologians not associated with the movement also contributed to the climate of opinion out of which death of God theologies emerged. Rudolf Bultmann regarded all elements of the supernaturalistic, theistic world view as mythological and proposed that Scripture be demythologized so that it could speak its message to the modern person.
Paul Tillich, an avowed anti supernaturalist, said that the only nonsymbiotic statement that could be made about God was that he was being it. He is beyond essence and existence; therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him. It is more appropriate to say God does not exist. At best Tillich was a pantheist, but his thought borders on atheism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whether rightly understood or not) also contributed to the climate of opinion with some fragmentary but tantalizing statements preserved in Letters and Papers from Prison. He wrote of the world and man ‘coming of age’, of ‘religionless Christianity’, of the ‘world without God’, and of getting rid of the ‘God of the gaps’ and getting along just as well as before. It is not always certain what Bonhoeffer meant, but if nothing else, he provided a vocabulary that later radical theologians could exploit.
It is clear, then, that as startling as the idea of the death of God was when proclaimed in the mid 1960s, it did not represent as radically a departure from recent philosophical and theological ideas and vocabulary as might superficially appears.
Just what was death of God Theology? The answers are as varied as those who proclaimed God's demise. Since Nietzsche, theologians had occasionally used "God is dead" to express the fact that for an increasing number of people in the modern age God seems to be unreal. Nonetheless, the idea of God's death began to have special prominence in 1957 when Gabriel Vahanian published a book entitled God is Dead. Vahanian did not offer a systematic expression of death of God theology. Instead, he analysed those historical elements that contributed to the masses of people accepting atheism not so much as a theory but as a way of life. Vahanian him did not believe that God was dead. Still, he urged that there be a form of Christianity that would recognize the contemporary loss of God and exert its influence through what was left. Other proponents of the death of God had the same assessment of God's status in contemporary culture, but were to draw different conclusions.
Thomas J. Altizer believed that God had really died. Nonetheless, Altizer often spoke in exaggerated and dialectic language, occasionally with heavy overtones of Oriental mysticism. Sometimes knowing exactly what Altizer meant when he spoke in dialectical opposites is difficult such as "God is dead, thank God" Apparently the real meaning of Altizer's belief that God had died is to be found in his belief in God's immanence. To say that God has died is to say that he has ceased to exist as a transcendent, supernatural being. Alternately, he has become fully immanent in the world. The result is an essential identity between the human and the divine. God died in Christ in this sense, and the process has continued time and again since then. Altizer claims the church tried to give God life again and put him back in heaven by its doctrines of resurrection and ascension. However, the traditional doctrines about God and Christ must be repudiated because man has discovered after nineteen centuries that God does not exist. Christians must even now will the death of God by which the transcendent become immanent.
For William Hamilton the death of God describes the event many have experienced over the last two hundred years. They no longer accept the reality of God or the meaningfulness of language about him. Non theistic explanations have been substituted for theistic ones. This trend is irreversible, and everyone must come to terms with the historical-cultural - death of God. God's death must be affirmed and the secular world embraced as normative intellectually and good ethically. Doubtless, Hamilton was optimistic about the world, because he was optimistic about what humanity could do and was doing to solve its problems.
Paul van Buren is usually associated with death of God theology, although he him disavowed this connection. Yet, his disavowal seems hollow in the light of his book The Secular Meaning of the Gospel and his article "Christian Education Post Mortem Dei." In the former he accepts empiricism and the position of Bultmann that the world view of the Bible is mythological and untenable to modern people. In the latter he proposes an approach to Christian education that does not assume the existence of God but does assume ‘the death of God’ and that ‘God is gone’. Van Buren was concerned with the linguistic aspects of God's existence and death. He accepted the premise of empirical analytic philosophy that real knowledge and meaning can be conveyed only by language that is empirically verifiable. This is the fundamental principle of modern secularists and is the only viable option in this age. If only empirically verifiable language is meaningful, by that very fact all language that refers to or assumes the reality of God is meaningless, since one cannot verify God's existence by any of the five senses. Theism, belief in God, is not only intellectually untenable, it is meaningless. In, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel van Buren seeks to reinterpret the Christian faith without reference to God. One searches the book in vain for even one clue, that van Buren is anything but a secularist trying to translate Christian ethical values into that language game. There is a decided shift in van Buren's later book Discerning the Way, however.
In retrospect, there was clearly no single death of God Theology, only death of God theologies. Their real significance was that modern theology, by giving up the essential elements of Christian belief in God, had logically led to what was really antitheologies. When the death of God theologies passed off the scene, the commitment to secularism remained and manifested it in other forms of secular theology in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Nietzsche is unchallenged as the most insightful and powerful critic of the moral climate of the 19th century (and of what of it remains in ours). His exploration of unconscious motivation anticipated Freud. He is notorious for stressing the ‘will to power’ that is the basis of human nature, the ‘resentment’ that comes when it is denied its basis in action, and the corruptions of human nature encouraged by religion, such as Christianity, that feed on such resentment. Yet the powerful human being who escape all this, the Ubermensch, is not the ‘blood beast’ of later fascism: It is a human being who has mastered passion, risen above the senseless flux, and given creative style to his or her character. Nietzsche’s free spirits recognize themselves by their joyful attitude to eternal return. He frequently presents the creative artist rather than the warlord as his best exemplar of the type, but the disquieting fact remains that he seems to leave him no words to condemn any uncaged beast of prey whose best to find their style by exerting repulsive power find their style by exerting repulsive power over others. This problem is no t helped by Nietzsche’s frequently expressed misogyny, although in such matters the interpretation of his many-layered and ironic writings is no always straightforward. Similarly y, such Anti-Semitism as has been found in his work is balanced by an equally vehement denunciation of anti-Semitism, and an equal or greater dislike of the German character of his time.
Nietzsche’s current influence derives not only from his celebration of will, but more deeply from his scepticism about the notions of truth and act. In particular, he anticipated any of the central tenets of postmodernism: an aesthetic attitude toward the world that sees it as a ‘text’; the denial of facts; the denial of essences; the celebration of the plurality of interpretation and of the fragmented, as well as the downgrading of reason and the politicization of discourse. All awaited rediscoveries in the late 20th century. Nietzsche also has the incomparable advantage over his followers of being a wonderful stylist, and his Perspectivism is echoed in the shifting array of literary devices-humour, irony, exaggeration, aphorisms, verse, dialogue, parody-with that he explores human life and history.
Yet, it is nonetheless, that we have seen, the origins of the present division that can be traced to the emergence of classical physics and the stark Cartesian division between mind and the bodily world is two separate substances, the is as it happened associated with a particular body, but is - subsisting, and capable of independent existence, yet Cartesian duality, much as the ‘ego’ that we are tempted to imagine as a simple unique thing that makes up our essential identity, but, seemingly sanctioned by this physics. The tragedy of the Western mind, well represented in the work of a host of writers, artists, and intellectual, is that the Cartesian division was perceived as uncontrovertibly real.
Beginning with Nietzsche, those who wished to free the realm of the mental from the oppressive implications of the mechanistic world-view sought to undermine the alleged privileged character of the knowledge called physicians with an attack on its epistemological authority. After Husserl tried and failed to save the classical view of correspondence by grounding the logic of mathematical systems in human consciousness, this not only resulted in a view of human consciousness that became characteristically postmodern. It also represents a direct link with the epistemological crisis about the foundations of logic and number in the late nineteenth century that foreshadowed the epistemological crisis occasioned by quantum physics beginning in the 1920's. This, as a result in disparate views on the existence of oncology and the character of scientific knowledge that fuelled the conflict between the two.
If there were world enough and time enough, the conflict between each that both could be viewed as an interesting artifact in the richly diverse coordinative systems of higher education. Nevertheless, as the ecological crisis teaches us, the ‘old enough’ capable of sustaining the growing number of our life firms and the ‘time enough’ that remains to reduce and reverse the damage we are inflicting on this world ae rapidly diminishing. Therefore, put an end to the absurd ‘betweeness’ and go on with the business of coordinate human knowledge in the interest of human survival in a new age of enlightenment that could be far more humane and much more enlightened than any has gone before.
It now, which it is, nonetheless, that there are significant advances in our understanding to a purposive mind. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to cognition that draws primarily on ideas from cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics and logic. Some philosophers may be cognitive scientists, and others concern themselves with the philosophy of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Since inauguration of cognitive science these disciplines have attracted much attention from certain philosophers of mind. This has changed the character of philosophy of mind, and there are areas where philosophical work on the nature of mind is continuous with scientific work. Yet, the problems that make up this field concern the ways of ‘thinking’ and ‘mental properties’ are those that these problems are standardly and traditionally regarded within philosophy of mind than those that emerge from the recent developments in cognitive science. The cognitive aspect is what has to be understood is to know what would make the sentence true or false. It is frequently identified with the truth cognition of the sentence. Justly as the scientific study of precesses of awareness, thought, and mental organization, often by means of computer modelling or artificial intelligence research. Contradicted by the evidence, it only has to do with is structure and the way it functioned, that is just because a theory does not mean that the scientific community currently accredits it. Generally, there are many theories, though technically scientific, have been rejected because the scientific evidence is strangely against it. The historical enquiry into the evolution of - consciousness, developing from elementary sense experience too fully rational, free, thought processes capable of yielding knowledge the presented term, is associated with the work and school of Husserl. Following Brentano, Husserl realized that intentionality was the distinctive mark of consciousness, and saw in it a concept capable of overcoming traditional mind-body dualism. The stud y of consciousness, therefore, maintains two sides: a conscious experience can be regarded as an element in a stream of consciousness, but also as a representative of one aspect or ‘profile’ of an object. In spite of Husserl’s rejection of dualism, his belief that there is a subject-matter lingering back, behind and yet remaining after each era of time, or bracketing of the content of experience, associates him with the priority accorded to elementary experiences in the parallel doctrine of phenomenalism, and phenomenology has partly suffered from the eclipse of that approach to problems of experience and reality. However, later phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty do full justice to the world-involving nature of Phenomenological theories are empirical generalizations of data experience, or manifest in experience. More generally, the phenomenal aspects of things are the aspects that show themselves, than the theoretical aspects that are inferred or posited in order to account for them. They merely described the recurring process of nature and do not refer to their cause or that, in the words of J.S. Mill, ‘objects are the permanent possibilities of sensation’. To inhabit a world of independent, external objects are, on this view, to be the subject of actual and possible orderly experiences. Espoused by Russell, the view issued in a programme of translating talk about physical objects and their locations into talking about possible experience. The attempt is widely supposed to have failed, and the priority the approach gives to experience has been much criticized. It is more common in contemporary philosophy to see experience as it a construct from the actual way of the world, than the other way round.
Phenomenological theories are also called ‘scientific laws’ ‘physical laws’ and ‘natural laws.’ Newton’s third law is one example, saying that, every action ha an equal and opposite reaction. ‘Explanatory theories’ attempt to explain the observations rather than generalized them. Whereas laws are descriptions of empirical regularities, explanatory theories are conceptual constrictions to explain why the data exit, for example, atomic theory explains why we see certain observations, the same could be said with DNA and relativity, Explanatory theories are particularly helpful in such cases where the entities (like atoms, DNA . . . ) cannot be directly observed.
What is knowledge? How does knowledge get to have the content it has? The problem of defining knowledge in terms of true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the facts begun with Plato, in that knowledge is true belief plus logos, as it is what enables us to apprehend the principle and firms, i.e., an aspect of our own reasoning.
What makes a belief justified for what measures of belief is knowledge? According to most epistemologists, knowledge entails belief, so that to know that such and such is the case. None less, there are arguments against all versions of the thesis that knowledge requires having a belief-like attitude toward the known. These arguments are given by philosophers who think that knowledge and belief or facsimile, are mutually incompatible (the incompatibility thesis) or by ones who say that knowledge does not entail belief, or vice versa, so that each may exist without the other, but the two may also coexist (the separability thesis). The incompatibility thesis that hinged on the equation of knowledge with certainty. The assumption that we believe in the truth of claim we are not certain about its truth. Given that belief always involves uncertainty, while knowledge never does, believing something rules out the possibility of knowledge knowing it. Again, given to no reason to grant that states of belief are never ones involving confidence. Conscious beliefs clearly involve some level of confidence, to suggest otherwise, that we cease to believe things about which we are completely confident is bizarre.
A.D. Woozley (1953) defends a version of the separability thesis. Woozley’s version that deals with psychological certainty than belief per se, is that knowledge can exist without confidence about the item known, although knowledge might also be accompanied by confidence as well. Woozley says, ‘what In can do, where what In can do may include answering questions.’ On the basis of this remark he suggests that even when people are unsure of the truth of a claim, they might know that the claim is true. We unhesitatingly attribute knowledge to people that correct responses on examinations if those people show no confidence in their answers. Woozley has given to acknowledge that it would be odd for those who lack confidence to claim knowledge. Saying it would be peculiar, ‘In know it is correct.’ But this tension; still ‘In know is correct.’ Woozley explains, using a distinction between condition under which are justified in making a claim (such as a claim to know something) and conditioned under which the claim we make is true. While ‘In know such and such’ might be true even if In answered whether such and such holds, nonetheless claiming that ‘In know that such should be inappropriate for me and such unless In was sure of the truth of my claim.’
Colin Redford (1966) extends Woozley’s defence of the separability thesis. In Redford’s view, not only in knowledge compatible with the lacking of certainty, it is also compatible with a complete lack of belief. He argues by example, in this one example, Jean had forgotten that he learned some English history years prior and yet he is able to give several correct responses to questions such as, ‘When did the Battle of Hastings occur?’ since he forgot that the battle of Hastings took place in 1066 in history, he considers his correct response to be no more than guesses. Thus when he says that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066 he would deny having the belief that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066.
Those who agree with Radford’s defence of the separation thesis will probably think of belief as an inner state that can be directed through introspection. That Jean lacks’ beliefs out English history are plausible on this Cartesian picture since Jean does not find him with the belief out of which the English history when with any beliefs about English history when he seeks them out. One might criticize Radford, however, by rejecting the Cartesian view of belief. One could argue that some beliefs are thoroughly unconscious. For example, (1859), according to which having beliefs is a matter of the way people are disposed to behave (and has not Radford already adopted a behaviourist conception of knowledge?) Since Jean gives the correct response when queried, a form of verbal behaviour, a behaviourist would be tempted to credit him with the belief that the battle of Hastings occurred in 1066.
Once, again, but the jargon is attributable to different attitudinal values. AS, D. M. Armstrong (1973) makes a different task against Radford. Jean does know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Armstrong will grant Radford that points, which in fact, Armstrong suggests that Jean believe that 1066 is not the actual date that did occur of the Battle of Hastings. For Armstrong parallels the belief of such and such is just possible bu t no more than just possible with the belief that such and such is not the case. However, Armstrong insists Jean also believe that the Battle did occur in 1066. After all, had Jean been mistaught that the Battle occurred in 1066, and had he forgotten being ‘taught’ this and subsequently ‘guessed’ that it took place in 10690, we would surely describe the situation as one in which Jean’ false belief about te Battle became a memory trace that was causally responsible or his guess. Thus while Jean consciously believes that the Battle did not occur in 1066, unconsciously he does believe it occurred in 1066. So after all, Radford does not have a counterexample to the claim that knowledge entails belief.
Suppose that Jean’s memory had been sufficiently powerful to produce the relevant belief. As Radford says, Jan has every reason to suppose that his response is mere guesswork, and so he has every reason to consider his belief false. His belief would be an irrational one, and hence one about whose truth Jean would be ignorant.
The attempt to understand the conceptual representation that is involved in religious belief, existence, necessity, fate, creation, sun, justice, Mercy, Redemption, God. Until the 20th century the history of western philosophy is closely intertwined with attempts to make sense of aspect of pagan, Jewish or Christian religion, while in other tradition such as Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism, there is even less distinction between religious and philosophical enquiry. The classic problem of conceiving an appropriate object of religious belief is that of understanding whether any term can be predicated of it: Does it make to any sense of talking about its creating to things, willing events, or being one thing or many? The via negativa of Theology is to claim that God can only be known by denying ordinary terms of any application (or them); Another influential suggestion is that ordinary term only apply metaphorically, sand that there is in hope of cashing the metaphors. Once a description of a Supreme Being is hit upon, there remains the problem of providing any reason for supposing that anything answering to the description exists. The medieval period was the high-water mark-for purported proof of the existence of God, such as the Five-Ays of Aquinas, or the ontological argument of such proofs have fallen out of general favour since the 18th century, although theories still sway many people and some philosophers.
Generally speaking, even religious philosophers (or perhaps, they especially) have been wary of popular manifestations of religion. Kant, him a friend of religious faith, nevertheless distinguishes various perversions: Theosophy (using transcendental conceptions that confuses reason), demonology (indulging an anthropomorphic, mode of representing the Supreme Being), theurgy (a fanatical delusion that feeling can be communicated from such a being, or that we can exert an influence on it), and idolatry, or a superstition’s delusion the one can make one acceptable to his Supreme Being by order by means than that of having the moral law at heart (Critique of judgement) these warm conversational tendencies have, however, been increasingly important in modern Theology.
Since Feuerbach there has been a growing tendency for philosophy of religion either to concentrate upon the social and anthropological dimension of religious belief, or to treat a manifestation of various explicable psychological urges. Another reaction is retreat into a celebration of purely subjective existential commitments. Still, the ontological arguments continue to attach attention. Modern anti-fundamentalists trends in epistemology are not entirely hostile to cognitive claims based on religious experience.
Still, the problem f reconciling the subjective or psychological nature of mental life with its objective and logical content preoccupied from of which is next of the problem was elephantine Logische untersuchungen (trans. as Logical Investigations, 1070). To keep a subjective and a naturalistic approach to knowledge together. Abandoning the naturalism in favour of a kind of transcendental idealism. The precise nature of his change is disguised by a penchant for new and impenetrable terminology, but the ‘bracketing’ of eternal questions for which are to a great extent acknowledged implications of a solipistic, disembodied Cartesian ego is its starting-point, with it thought of as inessential that the thinking subject is ether embodied or surrounded by others. However by the time of Cartesian Meditations (trans. as, 1960, fist published in French as Méditations Carthusianness, 1931), a shift in priorities has begun, with the embodied individual, surrounded by others, than the disembodied Cartesian ego now returned to a fundamental position. The extent to which the desirable shift undermines the programme of phenomenology that is closely identical with Husserl’s earlier approach remains unclear, until later phenomenologists such as Merleau - Ponty has worked fruitfully from the later standpoint.
Pythagoras established and was the central figure in school of philosophy, religion, and mathematics: He was apparently viewed by his followers as semi-divine. For his followers the regular solids (symmetrical three-dimensional forms in which all sides are the same regular polygon) with ordinary language. The language of mathematical and geometric forms seem closed, precise and pure. Providing one understood the axioms and notations, and the meaning conveyed was invariant from one mind to another. The Pythagoreans following which was the language empowering the mind to leap beyond the confusion of sense experience into the realm of immutable and eternal essences. This mystical insight made Pythagoras the figure from antiquity must revered by the creators of classical physics, and it continues to have great appeal for contemporary physicists as they struggle with the epistemological of the quantum mechanical description of nature.
Pythagoras (570 Bc) was the son of Mn esarchus of Samos ut, emigrated (531 Bc) to Croton in southern Italy. Here he founded a religious society, but were forces into exile and died at Metapomtum. Membership of the society entailed - disciplined, silence and the observance of his taboos, especially against eating flesh and beans. Pythagoras taught the doctrine of metempsychosis or the cycle of reincarnation, and remained as to remember their former existence. The soul, which as its own divinity and may have existed as an animal or plant, can, however gain release by a religious dedication to study, after which it may rejoin the universal world-soul. Pythagoras is usually, but doubtfully, accredited with having discovered the basis of acoustics, the numerical ratios underlying the musical scale, thereby intimating the arithmetical interpretation of nature. This tremendous success inspired the view that the whole of the cosmos should be explicable in terms of harmonia or number. The view represents a magnificent brake from the Milesian attempt to ground physics on a conception shared by all things, and to concentrate instead on form, meaning that physical nature receives an approachable foundation in different geometric breaks. The view is vulgarized in the doctrine usually attributed to Pythagoras, that all things are number. However, the association of abstract qualitites with numbers, but reached remarkable heights, with occult attachments for instance, between justice and the number four, and mystical significance, especially of the number ten, cosmologically Pythagoras explained the origin of the universe in mathematical terms, as the imposition of limits on the limitless by a kind of injection of a unit. Followers of Pythagoras included Philolaus, the earliest cosmosologist known to have understood that the earth is a moving planet. It is also likely that the Pythagoreans discovered the irrationality of the square root of two.
The Pythagoreans considered numbers to be among te building blocks of the universe. In fact, one of the most central of the beliefs of Pythagoras mathematical, his inner circle, was that reality was mathematical in nature. This made numbers valuable tools, and over time even the knowledge of a number’s name came to be associated with power. If you could name something you had a degree of control over it, and to have power over the numbers was to have power over nature.
One, for example, stood for the mind, emphasizing its Oneness. Two was opinion, taking a step away from the singularity of mind. Three was wholeness (whole needs a beginning, a middle and its ending to be more than a one-dimensional point), and four represented the stable squareness of justice. Five was marriage-being the sum of three and two, the first odd (male) and even (female) numbers. (Three was the first odd number because the number one was considered by the Greeks to be so special that it could not form part of an ordinary grouping of numbers).
It should be noted that Murray wrote his book in 1964 when communism was still perceived by many as the world’s greatest threat. Had he written it a few years later he may have decided to call his atheist of communist world Revolution something else. Evidently, what he is truly talking about is any philosophy that suggests human beings can create a utopian world completely on their own. Nowadays we might refer to this as the atheist of the techno-revolution, or the atheist of humanism-which, again, values our expectation that our own inventiveness will save us.
The second kind of atheist, the atheist of the Theatre, refers to the sort of person who simply tries to exist in a godless world. The atheist of the Theatre is a tragic character who wants the best for the world but feels helpless to do much about it and is ultimately reduced to a mere spectator. "His mind is full of darkness," writes Murray, "it is oppressed with a sense of the finitude and fragility of existence; it shivers before the un-predictabilities of history."10 Unlike the atheist of the Revolution who links freedom with freedom from poverty, the atheist of the Theatre wants freedom from the angst of a purposeless and uncertain existence. Such a person can only accomplish this through - invention or - determination. This, however, cannot be accomplished so long as God lives. If God is present, then God is the inventor of the human being who has no choice but to adhere to a predetermined nature and destiny. So, in order for the atheist of the Theatre to gain the freedom to chart one’s own destiny, God must be dismissed.
As different as these two types may appear, Murray suggests they share several characteristics in common. Firstly, they both take the presence of evil as evidence of God’s nonexistence. Secondly, they both accept the death of God, that is, belief in God is irrelevant. Thirdly, atheism is a postulate they feel obliged to express. This is to say that not only do they not believe in God, but they feel such a belief is somehow harmful, primarily because it is detrimental to freedom.
Of course, the deaths of God pundits have not been met without plenty of criticism. Nonetheless, they simply respond by claiming their critics choose to avoid the modern condition by clinging to archaic and meaningless fantasies. As Thomas Ogletree has written concerning The Death of God Controversy, "The refusal of God’s death amounted to a nostalgic desire to avoid the present moment by a flight into a past that is no more. The notion of God’s death has become so prominent and argument that there have been several Deaths of God theologians who have attempted to abstract positive meaning from Christianity while accepting the death of God philosophy. Ogletree’s book introduces us to three such theologians, William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren and Thomas J.J. Altizer.
For Hamilton, the death of God implies that God can no longer be thought of as a "need-fulfiller and problem-solver." He rejects the idea that God is a kind of candy dispenser or "cosmic bellhop," ever ready to attend to humanity’s needs. Unlike those Christians who cling to their idea of God, even in the wake of divine irrelevance, by rejecting contemporary society and holding to tradition, Hamilton seems to have found a way to have his cake and eat it too. For Hamilton, the Christian’s task is to find God by returning to society and becoming active in the alleviation of human suffering. This is not entirely different from the idea expounded by Paul Van Buren who wrote, ". . . . If In understand the nature and development of Christianity, In would want to argue that what Christianity is basically about is a certain form of life-patterns of human existence, norms of human attitudes, and dispositions and moral behaviour."14 For these two theologians there are something in Christianity that presents a viable, even necessary, way of living even in the wake of God’s death.
Thomas Altizer takes the matter as step further by insinuating that God must die in order for Jesus to live. The modern problem of God might best be illustrated in the argument that only God is or only the world is-the sacred or the profane, pantheism vs. materialism. The modern atheist chooses the world, the material, the profane. "If there is one clear portal to the twentieth century," writes Altizer, "it is a passage through the death of God, the collapse of any meaning or reality lying beyond the newly discovered radical immanence of modern man, immanently dissolving even the memory or the shadow of transcendence."15 The loss of transcendence, however, is not understood by Altizer as the loss of the sacred but as the redemption of the profane. God is not killed by modern humanity, but sacrifices God- to humanity by entering into the profane world via the Christ, God made flesh. Although those who cling to Christian tradition will likely consider such a radical notion as heresy, it seems somehow comforting to think that God might somehow dwell among us, in our very suffering and profanity.
So far In have spoken as if the death of God is to be taken for granted, as if it is an undeniable fact of the modern condition. This, however, is a presupposition In am not entirely sure of. Just this week In spent several days in Washington, DC and had the opportunity to hear all of Kentucky’s State Representatives and U.S. Senator Jim Bunning address a large group of their constituents. Without fail, each one of them had something to say about God, mostly in reference to George W. Bush and his intention to go to war with Iraq. Congressman Ken Lucas, the only Democrat among Kentucky’s Washington delegation, asked the group to pray for Mr. Bush and concluded by saying "the Almighty is with him." Congressman Ernie Fletcher, who hopes to become the next Kentucky Governor, spoke of a presentation he attended during the Gideon Bible Society as presented by Mr. Bush in which its one-billionth printed Bible. Mr. Bush responded by assuring those present that the "Will of God" is his top priority. Representative Ann Northup referred to him as a "deeply spiritual man," and Harold Rogers publicly thanked God that Mr. Bush was in office at the time of 911. In regard to war with Iraq, Representative Ron Lewis quoted Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the Civil War by saying "the question is not whether or not God is on our side, but whether or not we are on God’s side." Finally, U.S. Senator Jim Bunning boasted about a Senate resolution supporting the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, thanked God for George W. Bush, and concluded by warning the audience that in light of pressing problems "we must keep our faith in God or we won’t survive as a people or as a nation."
Perhaps you will agree, it doesn’t sound like those who represent the people of at least one State in the Nation are atheists. The fact is that the people of the United States remain highly religious, especially compared with the rest of the Western world. According to an article in The Economist entitled The Fight for God, 47% of the people in the United States regularly attend church services, as compared with only 20% in Western Europe and 14% in Eastern Europe. What is more, is that only 2% of the population in the United States actually claims to be atheists?
Yet these statistics do not necessarily mean all of this talk about the death of God has been for not, but they serve as a framework for reinterpreting the meaning of God’s death. In would suggest that even though the idea of God lives on, the experience of God having died. In this sense the death of God may have begun much earlier than with the rise of science and technology. It was during the Patristic age of the early Church Fathers that the problem became purely ontological, that is, asking the question "What is God?" Rather than "Is God with us?" This arose over the controversy concerning Jesus’ divinity. Is he human or God? If he is God, what then is God? Tertullian tried to solve the problem with a biological and an anthropomorphic answer, claiming the Father and the Son are both part of a single organism and share the same mind and will. Origen claimed the Son (Logos) emanates from the Father in a diminished capacity. Arius taught that there was a time "when he was not," which is to say Jesus, although a perfect creature is nonetheless a creation of God. All of this became heresy after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, after it was determined that the Father and the Son are of the same substance (homoousios), relying heavily upon Athenasius of Alexandria’s credo that the Son is like the Father in every way except for the name Father. The Nicene Creed ushered in the age of Christian scholasticism that gave birth to thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, but it also dramatically altered the nature of the Problem of God.
Before this event the Problem of God had always been about the living God and whether or not such is God who dwells with us, rather than the distant and abstract God of theological debate. The Problem of God, which is a uniquely western theological term, is rooted deep within the Judeo/Christian tradition, beginning with the Biblical story of Moses’ encounter with the burning bush. When Moses asks God’s name, God replies, "ehyeh ser ehyeh" In am who In am. Murray understands this to mean God is present with the people.
Ancient people did not think abstractly about God. Nor did they wonder why evil and suffering were in the world. They took the existence of both for granted. What they wanted to know was whether or not God would be with them in the midst of their struggles. In Exodus, for instance, the Israelites are reported to have asked, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Murray breaks the Old Testament Problem of God into four questions, the Existential question, Is God here with us now? The Functional question, How will this God who is with us save us? The Noetic question, How is this God who is present to be known? The Onomastic question, How is this God who is present among us to be named? After Jesus came on the scene, these questions remained essentially the same, but were answered through the lens of the Christ.
This sort of question implies a desire to have intimate knowledge of the Divine. They are questions about how we ought to conduct our lives rather than about abstract thoughts and concepts. If there is any value to having a belief in God today, perhaps these sort of question ought to be at the heart of such belief, less we remain as those who would contribute to the pain and suffering of others by making war and poverty while paying intellectual lip service to an abstract notion of God. Perhaps, furthermore, the Problem of God is not a problem that is to be solved or ought to be solved. Early theologians celebrated the fact that God cannot be truly known. As Thomas Aquinas said, "One thing that remains completely unknown in this life, namely, what God is."19 Augustine said similarly, "If you have comprehended, what you have comprehended is not God." Or as Cryil of Jerusalem said, "In the things of God the confession of no knowledge is great knowledge." "It is by this ignorance, as long as life lasts, that we are best united with God," wrote Aquinas, "This is the darkness in which God dwells."
So the Problem of God remains today very much the same as it has throughout history. Even in our limited understanding and modern disbelief in the relevance of God, we want to know, in the midst of the turmoil, suffering and evil we face today, is it possible that God is with us? Or are we left alone to deal these problems completely on our own? Are we creatures of purpose and destiny, or must we choose our own way? Do we need God? In their book The Invisible Landscape, Terrence and Dennis McKenna write; Western humans have lost their sense of unity with the cosmos and with the transcendent mystery within themselves. Modern science has given us a picture of human beings as accidental products of random evolutionary processes in a universe that is it without purpose or meaning. This alienation of modern humans from the numinous ground of their beings has engendered the existentialist ethic and the contemporary preoccupation with the immediate historical situation. Humans are regarded as leading a wholly profane existence within a wholly profane time, which is within history; the reality of the sacred is denied or reduced to the level of psychology.
In the end it would seem the Problem of God is ultimately the Problem of Humanity, for it is our suffering that draws us toward the idea of God, and repels us from it.
Friedrich Nietzsche had very different opinions concerning the man known to history as Jesus Christ and his legacy, and the religion called Christianity. As a well-known philosopher of contemporary times, Nietzsche's reputation with Christianity is severely ambiguous, as a result of a "long customary" association with the Nazi Party of Germany, which, as one critic points out, is "like linking St. Francis with the Inquisition in which the order he founded played a major role." Still, despite much misunderstanding and prejudice, Nietzsche's influence on the world remains consistently strong, as "few thinkers of any age equal his influence." Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted in his own interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the history of Christianity, as he considered him the first philosopher of the "irrevocable anti-Christian era" from which all Christian and secular systems associated with Christianity would henceforth bow. Nietzsche, however, does not see this new era in the history of the world as essentially negative; he believes that he is the first of 'the new way'; and "things will be different," positively. Furthermore, one must understand Nietzsche's position on Jesus and Christianity, the most crucial part of his philosophical system, as separate issues, to appreciate completely and comprehend the rest.
To this end, Nietzsche is clear that he has different attitudes about Jesus and Christianity. This distinction is "no less than the distinction between life and death, the great 'Yes' and the decadent 'No.'" Furthermore, there is a "severance" between Jesus and the Christian tradition. This is clearly a result, according to Nietzsche, of the greediness and short-sightedness of St. Paul, who lock up Christianity so much that the religion has little in common with the ideas and teachings that its founder represented. As a consequence, Western society has gone backwards, Nietzsche writes, "everything is visibly becoming Judiazed, Christianized, moblike (what does the words matter)."
Nietzsche considers him "the atheist," whose challenges against Christianity all Christians must now face and consider. Although he admits that he is "an opponent of Christianity de riguer," Nietzsche has a distinct respect for the man Jesus. While Nietzsche does not go so far as to embrace all of the ideas and teachings of Jesus, he clearly draws a clear dichotomy between Jesus and Nazareth and "the Christ of the creeds"Cand what Nietzsche is most concerned with is the historical Jesus. The end of Nietzsche's analysis of Jesus and Christianity is a request for the reassessment of Western culture's values, especially religious values, which call for the eventual expulsion of Christianity as he knew it.
In short, Nietzsche respects and admires Jesus of Nazareth, "but denies that he has any meaning for our age" Nietzsche believes the Jewish contention that Jesus is not the Messiah and that the Messiah has not yet appeared in history. Even so, Nietzsche reveres Jesus as no other character in history, particularly because he came to know Jesus as the very opposite of Christianity. Nietzsche writes as a philologist, "The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding reality there has only been one Christian, and he died on the Cross." While leaving such an impact on the world is admirable (and a good characteristic of a Übermensch), Nietzsche "could know Jesus as the greatest and truest revolutionary in history," despite the sour legacy he left.
Despite all of this hostility, Nietzsche looked upon the symbol of the crucified Christ as “the most sublime of all symbols." Nonetheless, Jesus remains the only Christian in whom will ever have lived, yet he was crucified by mortals. The Christians were making their professed faith a weird comedy. The cross, to Nietzsche, is a "ghastly paradox" that revolves around the idea of "God of the cross." This concept is absurd to Nietzsche, who wonders how it is logical that the "mystery of an unimaginable and ultimate cruelty and - crucifixion of God for the salvation of man?" Furthermore, Nietzsche comments:
God him sacrifices him for the guilt of humankind, God him makes payment to him, God as the only being who can redeem man from what has become unredeemable for man him, the creditor sacrifices him for his debtor, out of love (one can credit that?) Out of love for his debtor-Nietzsche sees this entire concept of a crucified god as utterly ridiculous and ironic for a god to do so "out of love." While "Christianity's - sacrificing God make’s infinite its adherents' guilt and debt," Nietzsche observes, "Jesus had done away with the concept of 'guilt.'" Yet, to Nietzsche, Jesus, like him, had come "too early" and died "too young . . . not 'at the right time.'" They were both revolutionaries who were rebelling against the old ways.
Clearly, Nietzsche is interested in a historical assemblage of Jesus, who, nonetheless, left no writings, as Nietzsche had to go to the next best source, the Gospels, which he despised. Nietzsche writes that the Bible is "the greatest audacity and 'sin against the spirit' that literary Europe has on its conscience." As a result, while Jesus preached and taught about freedom, Nietzsche believed that "it was immediately transformed by those who preached it (and especially by Paul) to assert their own power."
Nietzsche is convinced that Jesus him would deny "everything that today is called Christian." Critic William Hubben argues that Jesus was literally an anarchist, who "attacked the Jewish hierarchy, the 'just' and supreme rulers," and died for these sins, absolutely not for the sins of others. Nietzsche recognized that Jesus had supposedly expelled the world from the concepts of guilt and sin, wondering, "[h]ow could he have died for the sins of others?" Furthermore, while some Christians viewed Jesus as a completely divine judge of 'the quick and the dead,' Nietzsche viewed Jesus as anything but a judge: "Jesus opposed those who judged others, and wanted to destroy the morality existing in his age" (emphasis added). Nonetheless, one can be assured that Nietzsche "reveres the life and death of Jesus." However, it is not in the same way that a traditional "Christian" reveres Jesus; as critic Walter Kaufmann writes, “instead of interpreting it [Jesus' life] as a promise of another world and another life, and instead of conceding the divinity of Jesus, Nietzsche insists: Ecce Homo! Man can live and die in a grand style, working out his own salvation instead of relying on the sacrifice of another." Nietzsche, then, does not 'believe in Jesus' in the creedal tradition, but respects him as a worthy opponent.
More specifically, Nietzsche views Jesus as his only true opponent. He closes, in the last line of his autobiographical Ecce Homo, "Have In been understood? - Dionysus verses the Crucified." In interpret this line as Nietzsche recognizing that Jesus is the highest of competitors to Nietzsche's own "Dionysian ideal for man." This statement is also meant as an ironic contrast; That is, a contrast between "the tragic life verses life under the cross": The roller-coaster, "dangerous" life of the Übermensch (as exemplified by Goethe) verses weakness.
In the sum, Nietzsche's interpretation of the life of Jesus, while suspicious, contrasts his feelings surrounding Christianity; Recognizing a major difference between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the creeds. To this end, the events surrounding Jesus' death, rather than his resurrection becomes pivotal, as Nietzsche writes, "Jesus him could not have desired anything by his death but publicly to offer the sternest test, the proof of his teaching . . . But his disciples were far from forgiving his death." Thus, after Jesus' death, his followers asked, "Who killed him? Who was his natural enemy? This came like a flash of lightning," and their answer was, "Judaism," the ruling class. The offspring of this, Christianity, for Nietzsche became "another in a line of failed attempts to understand the teachings of the great creators and transformers of life"; in other words, the creedal, pre-modern Jesus has no relevance to a contemporary, post-modern society.
Nietzsche has an obvious dislike of Christianity because of its unfaithfulness to the teachings of its supposed founder, Jesus of Nazareth, the flawed morality of Christians, and the warped concept of the Christian God. Nietzsche calls Christianity "the religion of pity," as it represents weakness in every form of which he can think. Furthermore, churches has little influence legitimate justification for influence in the lives of humans today, as Nietzsche asks, "does the church today still have any necessary role to play? Does it still have the right to exist? Or could one do without it? Quaeritur." To this interrogative, Nietzsche answers that the "future of humanity is. Placed in jeopardy" by institutional Christianity, which "destroys the instincts out of which affirmative institutions develop." In other words, Christianity hinders the progress of humanity. What is more, Christian morality is hell-bent on defining the world as "ugly and bad," and has therefore made the world "ugly and bad." To make things worse, "Christianity has created a fictitious world," where nothing is dared to be questioned, and as a result, the world will break down-this way "must vanish" (emphasis added). To Nietzsche, Christianity is little more than an opiate, that is, as mentioned earlier, a weak religion of the herd.
It was stated above that Nietzsche believes that the only Christian died on the cross, and this is 'Christianity' in its purest sense. However, as far as Christians today know, understand, and define Christianity, Nietzsche says that there have never been any Christians: "The 'Christian' that which has been called a Christian for two millennia, is merely a psychological - misunderstanding." Nietzsche blames the 'corruption' of Christianity on the "first Christians," who created the very same institution that Jesus was rebelling against, Judaism, when they founded Christianity and the worst of these "first Christians," was Paul, as Nietzsche writes: "The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the entire Gospel nothing was left once this hate-obsessed false-coiner had grasped what alone he could make use of. Not the reality, not the historical truth!" In fact, Nietzsche argues, it was Paul who condemned Christianity to its present stagnant state by making "this indecency of an interpretation," that is, “'If Christ is not resurrected from the dead our faith is vain.'All at once the Evangel became the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the impudent doctrine of personal immortality."
Since the evolution of the Greek polis in the fourth century BC, man has attempted to live in a civilized society. Society was developed due to the common needs of commerce, and safety of the people in a relatively small geographic area. To create order out of an ancient, chaotic, tribal system, the constraints of laws were needed, and a government to enforce them. Common virtues, ethics, and morals emerged with the establishment of the Greek city-state. This made communication between the people easier and devised a valuation of what was "right" and "wrong." These valuations endured for centuries with little question, until the late nineteenth century.
Friedrick Nietzsche challenged all ideas that had not only come before him, but also those which proliferated during his own period. He "deconstructed" society and its "noble lies" in an attempt to show us that man "is something to be overcome." He attempted to debase all of society by proving values, ethics, and the like are errors of humanity. If you destroy the order of society by destroying everything it values, can any society still exist, or better yet, could the destroyer still exist within society? Would Nietzsche be comfortable in any society? To what extent can we use the hammer and still remain a part of society? These are my "question marks." In order to answer these questions, first it is necessary to determine what Nietzsche found so base in herd morality.
Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science, morality ranks "human drives and actions, [and] always express(es) the needs of a community and herd: whatever profits it." Instead of man creating his own valuations of "good" and "evil," the "herd" gives them to him, denying man of his individuality. Therefore, man becomes a "function of the herd." The word "individual" becomes a profanity, and individualism is punished with exile; "freedom of thought counted as discontentment itself."
When individualism became discontentment, guilt and conscience were created. Anytime an action damaged the "herd," it "created pangs of conscience for the individual." This overabundance of guilt destroyed man's pride and condemned him to become a "camel." The camel bears the load of his master throughout his existence, and stores his own guilt in his humps. He takes away his master's load, and anytime he drops a portion of that load, his hump stores more guilt. Herd morality does this to the individual. It forces the individual to take the burden of existence from the creators of the morality and feel guilt when they do not maintain the burden.
"The spirit of revenge: my friends that up to now, has been mankind's chief concern, and where there was suffering there was always supposed to be punishment." Nietzsche uses Socrates as primary proof of revenge, resentment, and ressentiment in morality. The poor, ordinary, construction worker received word from the Delphic oracle that "none is smarter than Socrates." Using dialectic as his method, he proceeded to question the men of Athens; "the dialectician lays on his opponent the burden of proving that he is not an idiot. He infuriates and at the same time paralyses" according to Nietzsche. Socrates used dialectic to enact his revenge on the nobility of declining Athens, and prove himself worthy of nobility. The same nobles he resented, he desired to become. He took his resentment inward and expressed it as revenge-ressentiment-and subsequently applied this universally as a virtue. Thousands of years later people are still using his methods. Why should one person's idiosyncratic virtue be applied to everyone? Zarathustra also speaks of the revenge in morality.
In the first discourse of Zarathustra, he tells the town of the Motley Cow, "fire of love and fire of anger glow in the name of all virtues." This is not love of man, or even humanity, that Nietzsche is speaking of. Rather, it is obedience and rule that are the "fire of love." The "fire of anger" is the resentment of the "good" against what has been done to them in the past. They have suffered therefore, everyone must, since "they knew no other way of loving their God than by nailing men to the cross." This suffering, due to resentment, is passed down the generations as tradition.
All herd morality is based in tradition. The "strength of our knowledge" doesn't lie in truth, but tradition and old mouldy volumes. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (one of my favourite lines) "even mold ennobles." The older a morality, virtue, or value is, the more revered it becomes. People accept postulates without proof. Why? Because it is tradition, "We have done this for generations. Therefore, it is the Truth. How can so many generations be wrong?" This attitude, based out of laziness, causes sleep.
People want the easiest road in life. So, rather than question preconceived beliefs, they simply believe for the sake of believing-they Sleep. Zarathustra speaks of the herd, "they are modest even in virtue-for they want ease." Either they go through motions and, rather than believe strongly in anything, believe "modest(ly)," or they are the martyrs, who take the burdens from everyone, "[and] go along, heavy and creaking, like carts carrying stones downhill."
Herd morality's most common basis is religion. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "God is a supposition: but I want your supposing to be grounded by conceivability." He goes on to say, "unfortunately, how weary I am of all the unattainable that is supposed to be reality." When belief in an "unattainable supposition" is the basis of a morality, isn't the morality also then unattainable, and based in supposition? And if this is true, then there is no "true" morality, and the Truth itself is then concealed from the masses.
The concealment of truth is the worst enemy of man. All of morality is based on lies. Nietzsche writes in the autobiographical Ecce Homo, "the lie of the ideal has been the curse of reality, by means of it, man's most basic instincts have become mendacious and false." Values that are "antagonistic" to the nature of man, the Dionysian nature, have been denied and labelled "evil." This "evil" of man is the "Truth." Nietzsche writes, "men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven." "Evil" is not evil, rather a variation of good, there is no such thing as evil, it is a category created by man to provide a purpose to his existence-to be "good." Zarathustra states, "man first implanted values into things to maintain himself-he created a meaning of things, a human meaning." We created the values of the world, and in so doing gave it our own interpretation. We created the world in our own image. These lies have been fabricated to seal the truth of existence; existence is chaos.
Nietzsche saw that the noble lies of herd morality were set in stone, along with the error they were based upon. The error of these lies resulted in the destruction of individualism and freedom of man. This in turn, indicated the need for destruction of the stone tablets of herd morality. When men destroy these base values, transvaluations can follow. As Nietzsche says through Zarathustra, "he who has to be creator, always has to destroy." For the transvaluations to take place, Nietzsche needed to define how we should destroy and create and what type of values should be created.
To understand how the destruction should take place, Nietzsche speaks of his "hammer [which] rages fiercely against its prison." The "lion" destroys herd morality with his "hammer." The "hammer" is pure Dionysian-pure nihilism. However, an overflow of Dionysian intoxication will annihilate everything; a balance is required. Nietzsche adds the reason and wisdom of Apollo to create this balance. This reason and wisdom allows man to destroy the right moral enemies and create the right values. In this way, reason and will destroy together. Once we destroy all of man's enemies, there is one more thing to be destroyed. Zarathustra tells his disciples, "you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame." We must sacrifice ourselves because we are only prophets of the "child," or "Ubermensch," and are still in some ways decadents ourselves.
In Zarathustra's third discourse, Nietzsche gives man guidelines for the type of new values he should create. Zarathustra tells his followers, " 'This is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For the way-does not exist!" Nietzsche wants no "parasites" or "disciples." These take the new table of values and make them universal, everyone is able to understand them and they become popular. Nietzsche wants man to create and "place above" himself his own values. In this way the values stay individual, but Nietzsche does provide, what appears to be, a general outline of the type of values we should create
"Do not spare your neighbours! Man is something that must be overcome!" Nietzsche is attacking the common Christian virtue: "love thy neighbour as thyself." This virtue is a show of the weak "will to power." He wants us to overcome this stale virtue and "destroy" even our neighbour. This is not to be taken literally as a killing, or mauling of our neighbour. Rather, he wants us to destroy our neighbour's values and in this sense we destroy him, showing him that man is something to be overcome
Nietzsche wants us to always "consider what [we] can give in return." We cannot desire anything for free, therefore we must fight and work for our morality. When people work hard for anything, they usually keep it close to them, and thus value it more than anything else. He expects us to do the opposite, "everything is in flux . . . [do not] firmly fix" your values and tables. We are still overcoming, and life itself is constantly overcoming, do not write your values in stone.
I will not deceive even myself," this affirmation of the will to truth is at the heart of Nietzsche's new morality. If we deceive ourselves, it is easy to fall back into the role of the "camel" and its herd morality. If we do not deceive ourselves, we shatter the "good" and the "just." They need our belief to survive, without our belief, they can't justify their existence. This is why "they hate the creator most," he destroys all that is "holy" to them.
We need to realize we will never become the"Ubermensch." We can only be prophets of his coming. As with all prophets, we must die to make way for the saviour, or as Nietzsche puts it , the "child." Unlike the "old-idol priests," who preserve their existence, Nietzsche wants us to die at the right time to prepare for the coming of the "child." The prophet can't enter the promised land, he must "go under," that is six feet under, to prepare for the coming of the "Ubermensch."
In order to create new values, the past has to be redeemed. To redeem it, a transformation of every "'It was,' until the will says: 'But I willed it thus! So shall I will it.'" is necessary? We have to "make amends to [our] children for being the children of [our] fathers”; and become yea-sayers, saying yes to all that has happened and will happen. This is Nietzsche's way of redeeming man of his facility. If we can't redeem our facility, everything we create becomes tainted by it, and reeks of the herd. The transformation releives the guilt of what has passed and transforms it into an act of the will; causing man to love life as it is, was, and will be-amor fati. Nietzsche's doctrines of eternal return and amor fati combine to redeem man's past and future, but are also the most apparently contradictory doctrines of his philosophy.
Nietzsche writes in Zarathustra, "all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us." It is necessary to keep in mind that this is not reincarnation; "I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life in the greatest things and the smallest." The "Ubermensch" becomes an impossibility-Nietzsche's own noble life due to his doctrine of eternal return. If we return eternally, our lives are already created and there is no transvaluations. How can we create new values when our lives have already been mapped out? There is no original thought just like there is no original text. As Stanley Rosen says, we are who we are "under the illusion that we have been transformed into something 'beautiful and new.'" We cannot avoid our fate, nor change it, the decision we make at every step has already been made countless times.
These doctrines devaluate the entire world, and all Being within it. Nothing is greater than another because the fate of Being is already decided. Therefore, if Nietzsche wants man to create, man has to assign his own value to the world. Man is free to create out of the chaos. The valuation becomes our own perspective, but at the same time we also create a new noble lie because the world is, in itself, worthless. Therefore, if man creates his own value in the world, why does Nietzsche assign guidelines for the creation of these values? Assigning guidelines only creates a new herd morality. Denying man of his freedom and individuality, the same things Nietzsche fought against (or so it seems) he creates. Nietzsche is attempting to relay two separate messages in one philosophy. This explains the apparent contradiction. He is trying to relay a message to the new noblemen, the strong willed, to create their own system of values, including a new noble lie. At the same time, he is attempting to speed up the decadence of the Enlightenment by preaching deconstruction. Rosen calls these different teachings Nietzsche's esoteric, or higher, and exoteric, or lower public, teachings.
The exoteric truth, the speeding up of decadence, is a "return to the cruel creativity of the Renaissance city-state or to the polis of Homeric Greece." This exoteric truth is a type of horizontal heroism, in other words, not transcendental experience, but experience for the masses. This speeds up the deconstruction of decadence, in turn making the new nobility's mission much easier.
The esoteric, or higher teaching of Nietzsche is "nature is . . . chaos, there is no eternal impediment . . . to the will to power." The will to power is defined in nature as a "natural order of rank." This rank is the expression of power as chaos, which we misperceive in order to make life "livable"- our noble lies. Yes, rank, Nietzsche created a ranking of values to replace the old ranking of the herd. Nietzsche even admits:
Its philosophy aims at an ordering of rank: not an individualistic morality. The ideas of the herd should rule in the herd-but not reach out beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their own actions.
It is only the new nobility who can "triumph over the truth precisely because [they] know that Being is chaos." As we can now see, Nietzsche did not want the populous to trans-valuational values, he wanted them to accelerate the degeneration of society. He desired a new nobility of "gods, but no God" to perform the transvaluation. These two requirements help to explain the superficial contradictions in Nietzsche's philosophy
An evaluation of Nietzsche's own life will show how he applied these philosophical differences to himself. The first thing we need to remember is, Nietzsche is a Zarathustra, not the Ubermensch, the Ubermensch was his noble lie. In his autobiographical work, Ecce Homo, he writes, "Zarathustra himself as a type, came to me-perhaps I should rather say-invaded me." As I have explained before, the Ubermensch is a becoming, but Zarathustra does not become the Ubermensch, he is the prophet, destroyer, and must die before the coming of the "child."
Nietzsche writes, "social intercourse is no small trial to my patience." He needed and enjoyed his solitude, just as Zarathustra. He had an "incontestable lack of sufficient companionship," and his "loathing of mankind . . . was always [his] greatest danger," but he needed this companionship. He wrote in 1882, following a loss of his relationships with his mother, sister, sometime girlfriend Lou Salome, and friend Paul Roe: attempts "to return 'to people' was resulting in my losing the few I still, in any sense, possessed." In his later years, Nietzsche was the ultimate "loner." He had little contact with anyone, and when he finally went mad in 1888, he was committed to a sanitarium.
Before the madness finally took total control of him, he destroyed the last few relationships he had. His delusions of grandeur had become intense. On a visit to Turin in 1888, he wrote "here in Turin I exercise a perfect fascination." Hayman writes in his biography of Nietzsche: "he thought people were reacting to him preferentially and lovingly." These delusions of grandeur caused Nietzsche to be "peremptory with friends and acquaintances." He identified himself as "the foremost mind of the period." When a fellow scholar wrote a concrete agreement against his position in The Problem of Wagner, he replied, "On questions of decadence, I am the highest court of appeal there is on earth." Finally, in a letter to his sister Elizabeth, he signed himself, "your brother, now quite a great person."
These delusions of grandeur not only destroyed any relationships he may have had, but destroyed any possibility of life within society. Nietzsche believed himself the only person of the new nobility in the age of decadence. This caused his madness.
To answer the questions I have raised regarding Nietzsche's existence in society, I have to first define society. A society is a group of people organized for some common purpose. Wherever people gather for a common purpose, they form a society. This society purports common values and judgements which are not necessarily the judgements of any other society. Society only exists as the herd, therefore there is no individual morality, but only herd morality. Even if new values are created, the powerful, or strong will to power, only create a new herd morality with new noble lies.
Nietzsche destroyed the common values of the society he lived in during the late nineteenth century, but this does not necessarily mean he can't exist in a society. He was unable to live in the society of decadence, but surely Nietzsche could live in a society based upon his noble lie, the Ubermensch. A noble lie bounded by conceivability, and ruled by "gods," his new nobility. Since he could not create his noble lie and new nobility in a period of decadence, he sacrificed himself for the coming of his children, the Ubermenschen. Since Nietzsche conceived a new society, he is not a pure nihilist, nor is he a sociopath, he is only sociopathic to what he considers a decadent society, not one he would create.
There is no creating out of the self, since the world itself has no inherent value, only inherent activity. All values based on our creation of value are illusions-our own noble lies. These are only our perception and interpretation of reality, certainly not reality, because reality is composed of infinite interpretations. We have only one. We create out of chaotic activity within the world and within ourselves. This is the only form of creation and therefore, assignment of value available to man. Therefore, each man has a different ranking of value, and society in the common sense of the word, can't exist. Due to the infinite interpretations of value. The only common thread available is man's freedom to create.
We are still a part of the Enlightenment that Nietzsche was attacking over a hundred years ago. The difference today is we know more, and are more willing to purport it, because of philosophers like Nietzsche. We scream what only others whisper. God is dead, but we have created new gods for ourselves, and these are not ourselves as Nietzsche would have wanted it. Our new gods are consumerism, money, power-all new forms of horizontal heroism. We buy clothes off a rack to look "cool”; the more money you make the better person you are; and everyone wants to control someone else, whether it is at work or in a relationship: "the omnipresence of power
Today's society does however realize the problems Nietzsche was speaking of regarding society and its herd morality. White and Hellerich, two postmodern philosophers, write in their essay "Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee”: "This is to be a history of immanent activity not transcendent verities . . . the self-writing of a new generation of Ubermenschen and Ubermadchen." We know that actions are inherent in our being; far more valuable than espousing higher truths, "transcendent verities." Which can not even be truths because there is no universal truth because of the infinite interpretations of Truth. We become our own gods by creating our own truths. We realize the "hammer" must still be used. Deconstruction is still a common philosophy. Generation X (though I hate to use this label) has deconstructed the old herd morality to some extent, though not necessarily in the fashion which Nietzsche would have desired. Portrayed in everything from art and music to the Internet. As we close in on the twenty-first century, we are still in an age of decadence. Nietzsche's Ubermensch was and still is an unattainable possibility for society. We are still decadent
Immortalities, provincializede unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the “universal spirit.” Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Christianity has become, in turn, exactly what Jesus had rebelled against. In the Gay Science Nietzsche asks "And the Christians? Did they become Jews in this respect? Did they perhaps succeed?" The answer is 'yes,' as Nietzsche observes that "Christianity did aim to 'Judaize' the world."
All that happened has happened, came within the accordance with James Mark's reading of Nietzsche, as a result of Paul and the other "first Christians'" "need for . . . power" over others, forming a priestly caste, like the Jewish priestly caste before them, that has the "authority to pronounce that forgiveness, and thereby control the herd that feels the need of it." Nietzsche even goes so far to hint that Christianity was invented by the "first Christians" in revenge, by "their ignorance of superiority over ressentiment. For Nietzsche, this is the beginning of the downfall of Christianity: All the sick and sickly instinctively strive after a herd organization as a means of shaking off their dull displeasure and feeling of weakness. Moreover, Nietzsche blames the corruption of all churches, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, on their institutionalization, as he observes that Christians are an unphilosophical race, that demands its [Christianity's] discipline to become 'moralized and comparatively humanized’. Further, Nietzsche asks, that if this is true, "How could God have permitted that?" Answering, [F]or this question the deranged reason of the little community [of early Christianity] found a downright terrifyingly absurd answer: God gave his Son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice. All at once it was over with the Gospel. Nietzsche responds, "what atrocious paganism.”
Next Nietzsche's most structured problem with Christianity is the ethical system that it promotes. Nietzsche's words show no mercy to Christianity, writing "In Christianity neither morality nor religions come into contact with reality at any point.” Even worse, he ranks liquor with Christianity as "the European narcotics." Nietzsche observes that Christians are "the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal." Following this, Nietzsche's psychology was broken into existential categories, like Aquinas and Kierkegaard before him, which ranked the beast of burden as the lowest form of human being, one who 'follows the crowd' and lives life according to the status quo, that is, a waste this is the Christian to Nietzsche. For example, the Christian has become, as a result of this institutionalized Christianity, "a soldier, a judge, and a patriot who knows nothing against non-resistance to evil"; in other words, the life Christians live, "under the cross," is fake, counterfeit, and gilded; that is, the way of life against which Jesus rebelled. Christian morality, then, is a twisting of "Jesus' teachings into a doctrine of morality."
What Nietzsche finds most unsettling about Christian ethics is its concern for denying the pleasures of life. "A Christian's thinking is perverted," Nietzsche critic William Hubben writes, “even when he humbles him, he does so only to be exalted," citing Luke 18:14 . . . “for everyone that exalts on him shall be abased. He that humbles him shall be exalted." Concluding that Christians' "only great delight is the mean and petty pleasure of condemning others." Further, critic John Evans states that Nietzsche was "disturbed" that "out of ressentiment and revenge, the early Christians sought power to perverse concepts of life denial and 'sin.'" Nietzsche's writings support these claims, writing on sexuality, the highest of pleasures: "Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated into a vice." Again, "[I]t was only Christianity, with its ressentiment against life in its foundations, which made sexuality something impure: it threw the filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of life." According to Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche interpreted all Christian morality into the statement, "suffering is supposed to lead to a holy existence," and he could not accept this way of living. Furthermore, Nietzsche observed that only "martyrdom and the ascetic's slow destruction of his body were permitted" by Christianity as acceptable forms of suicide. In the end, Nietzsche gives up all hope of finding any good (qualities of the Übermensch) in Christianity, which has "waged war to the death against this higher type of man" and teaches "men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful." To Nietzsche, then, the institution of Christianity was "a radical betrayal of the life view that Jesus had espoused." Jesus, as a man, had "attempted to go 'beyond good and evil," however, his ideas were corrupted following his death.
Nietzsche will perhaps be remembered most of all for his philosophy of God, and more specifically, the Christian God. To Nietzsche, the Christian God like Christianity-is the God of the sick and the weak. Still, Nietzsche distinguishes the God of Christianity as the opposite of the God of Jesus, so far as to say that there cannot be any true God found in Christianity. To the Christian God, man is "God's monkey," whom God in his long eternities created for a pastime. As a result, Nietzsche concludes that "the Christian concept of God . . . is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on this earth." Nietzsche was obsessed, above all, with this area of philosophy, like "no other in history, and his obsession was entered on the death of God."
The "death of God" motif that was popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre in the twentieth century "harks back to Nietzsche, who first coined the expression." The following is Nietzsche's famous story of the "madman": Have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? : "In seek God! In seek God!" - As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter . . . The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Where is God?" he cried; "In will tell you. We have killed him as you and me. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? . . . Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
This, according to Nietzsche, is a message for the future, concluding "In have come too early, my time is not yet." Nietzsche puts this message into the voice of a madman, "whose message falls on deaf ears," as what he has to say is too shocking and comical for the crowd ('herd') to take seriously, but the madman has the last laugh, according to Nietzsche, as the madman is correct in what he has to say. Does this mean that God has literally died? Philosophers and theologians answer this question in many different ways, often dodging the answer. Critic John Mark answers, "it is really something that has happened to man; God has died because we no longer accept him." Existentialist Karl Jaspers wrote that "Nietzsche does not say 'There is no God,' or 'In do not believe in God,' but 'God is dead.' Many academic scholars, believe that Nietzsche was an atheist, who says that the idea of the Christian God, like Zeus and other Gods before, has died, in that humanity must find something more stable to rest and reassess its values upon. Episcopalian Bishop John Spong interprets Nietzsche's declaration that ‘God is dead’ as a sign that the Christian religion needs to declare their traditional theistic God dead or ‘unemployed’. Theologian Thomas Altizer answers that in the false Pauline ‘Christianity’ that Nietzsche has exposed, its centre, Jesus "is a dead and empty Christ who is the embodiment of the determining nothingness"; refusing to allow the living Jesus to arise as the nihilist that he was two millennia ago. Another theologian, Don Cupitt, writes that the death of God means that the characteristics of the God that has relevance to some post-modern society that shares characteristics of a human corpse and the dead's affect on human life. What is more, Zen monk and Buddhist theologian Nhat Hanh answers that the death of God is the essential ‘death of every concept we may have of God in order to experience God as a living reality directly’. While these possible interpretations may have been what the ‘death of God’ meant to Nietzsche, theologian Paul Tillich has gone so far as to call Nietzsche "the most candid of the Christian humanists." Their indirect effectuality seems less than are to what is seemingly unambiguously discontinued, as they are a comprehensive answer to be offered from neither theology nor philosophy.
In do not wish to baptize Nietzsche, least of mention, is that, In conclude that while Nietzsche's personal theological convictions are moot and many have debated what Nietzsche's statement "God is dead" means for Christians in the twentieth century, his opinions on Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian religion remain clear. The salient notion is that Nietzsche's treatment of the theistic Christian God is as an absurdity, the enemy of what the philosopher believes to be 'the good life.
In conclusion, Nietzsche clearly has pronounced separate judgements upon the man Jesus of Nazareth and the religion that is believed to be loosely based on Jesus' life, Christianity. To Nietzsche, Jesus was a great man worthy of respect, perhaps evens a Übermensch; Christianity, however, is corrupt insofar as the fathers of the church institutionalized the teachings of Jesus in an act of hostility toward the Jews. Furthermore, Nietzsche believes that Christianity has become the very establishment against which Jesus rebelled in Judaism: an already corrupt, stagnant, static, hierarchical religion. Finally, it cannot be deciphered whether Nietzsche accepted a god or not. If there is a God to Nietzsche, it would be above morality, would not impose ethics upon humans, would not judge on the basis of its own sacrifice, and would not deny human nature into - denial that is, the opposite of the Christian God. Nietzsche simply foresees him as the one who is replacing Jesus in a manner of successive revelation, predicting correctly that he, like Jesus, is a madman who has "come too early," who has and will continue to be misinterpreted and institutionalized incorrectly.
Once, again, have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, then running to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? "In seek God! In seek God." As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another, or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Where is God?" He cried; "In will tell you. We have killed him - you and In. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives, who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners. They, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "In have come too early," he said then; "My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder requires time; The light of the stars requires time; Deeds, are though done, but it still requires time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most-distant stars and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem as antiquatedly set. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepultures of God?" (The Gay Science 1882, 1887).
In his book, The Antichrist, Nietzsche sets out to denounce and illegitimize not only Christianity it as a belief and a practice, but also the ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited from it. This book can be considered a further development of some of his ideas concerning Christianity that can be found in Beyond Good and Evil and in The Genealogy of Morals, particularly the idea that the present morality is an inversion of true, noble morality. An understanding of the main ideas in the latter works is therefore quite helpful in understanding and fully appreciating the ideas set forth in The Antichrist. One of the most important of these ideas is that Christianity has made people nihilistic and weak by regarding pity and related sentiments as the highest virtues. Here, just as in the Genealogy, Nietzsche traces the origin of these values to the ancient Jews who lived under Roman occupation, but here he puts them in terms of a reversal of their conception of God. He argues that the Jewish God was once one that embodied the noble virtues of a proud, powerful person, but when they became subjugated by the Romans, their God began to embody the "virtues" (more like sentiments) of an oppressed, resentful people, until it became something entirely alien to what it formerly had been.
Further in the book, after Nietzsche devotes a few passages to contrasting Buddhism with Christianity, he paints a picture of the Jesus of history as actually having lived a type of "Buddhistic" existence, and lambastes Paul particularly for turning this historically correct Jesus, for, Jesus, the "Nazarene," into Jesus the "Christ." Also, Nietzsche argues that the Christian moral and metaphysical principles he considers so decadent has infiltrated our philosophy, so much that philosophers unwittingly work to defend these principles even when God is removed from the hypothesis. The purpose of this paper is to expound and assess some of these important reproaches that Nietzsche raises against Christianity, in order to glean from them those elements that can be considered to have lasting significance. It should also be noted that The Antichrist is predominantly aphoristic work, so this paper will not attempt to tie these ideas of Nietzsche's together into a coherent system. To do so, in my opinion, would not do Nietzsche justice. Instead these ideas will be presented and examined as they appear in the work - ne by one and loosely associated.
Nietzsche begins by criticizing Christianity for denouncing and regarding as evil those basic instincts of human beings that are life-preserving and strength-promoting. In their place, Christianity maintains and advocates value which Nietzsche sees as life-negating or nihilistic, of which the most important is pity. Nietzsche writes: Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions that heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.
Pity, according to Nietzsche, is nothing less than the multiplication of suffering, in that it allows us to suffer along with those for whom we feel pity. It depresses us, sapping us of our strength and will to power. It is interesting to note that the German word for pity it, Mitleid, literally means "suffering with" (leid = pain, suffering + mit = with). So to feel pity for someone is simply to suffer along with them, as Nietzsche sees it. It also promotes the preservation of those whom nature has selected for destruction, or in other words, those who Nietzsche calls "failures." This preservation of failures, he argues, makes the overall picture of life look decadent, in that it becomes filled with weak and retrograde individuals. Pity, then, has a twofold effect for Nietzsche, since it both multiplies suffering and leads to the preservation of those who would cause us this suffering as the objects of our pity. Ultimately, pity is nihilism put into practice, according to Nietzsche, since it makes life simply seem more miserable and decadent and therefore more worthy of negation it. Nietzsche does not really develop this conception of pity any farther. As it stands, it seems to be explicitly problematic. Does his conception of pity mean to include compassion and sympathy as well? Can these words be used interchangeably? The German word for compassion is Mitleid as well, so it is possible that Nietzsche is using them interchangeably. The German word for sympathy, however, is Mitgefhl, which means "feeling with." Perhaps Nietzsche is confusing pity with compassion and sympathy. Pity would seem to have a more negative connotation, in that it is a suffering-with that does not achieve anything; a waste of emotional energy toward those who are beyond help, in other words. Sympathy and compassion, as In understand the terms, seem to lean more toward having an understanding (a "feeling-with") of what someone is suffering through and being in a position to help that person. In take Nietzsche to be using (maybe misusing) these terms interchangeably, however, since he uses the word sympathy (Mitgefühl) in other works in very similar contexts.
To Nietzsche, the Christian conception of God is one of the most decadent and contradictory of any type that has ever been conceived, he writes: The Christian conception of God-God as god of the sick, God as a spider, Godas spirit-is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever acquired on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God-the formula for every slander against "this world," for every lie about the "beyond" God-the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness means more than nothingness it and therefore is pronounced metaphysically. Nietzsche is interested in showing how the God of Israel, that is, the God of the Old Testament, was at the time a God of a very proud and powerful Jewish people. This is a sustaining conception of God, than the Christian one, according to Nietzsche, in that it was the Jew's own God-for them only. This God was conceived of as a being to whom some proud people could give thanks for their power and. Assuredness, and it was a manifestation of the Jews' own - proclaimed virtues. The ancient Jews ascribed both the good and the bad to their God, and in that respect it was consistent with nature, both helping and harming. When the Jews found themselves oppressed by Rome during the occupation of Palestine, however, with their freedom, power, and pride stripped from them, their God required a change that was reflective of their predicament. Instead of having a God that embodied the noble virtues of some proud and powerful people, as it once did, the God of the Jews developed into one that embodied the sentiments of an oppressed, resentful, and ineffective group.
It became a God of people who were trying to preserve themselves at any cost, even if that cost were the inversion of their own noble values. They transformed their God into a God of the weak, the poor, and the oppressed, making a virtue out of the necessity of their own condition. Want of revenge on their enemies, by any and the only means possible for them psychologically prompted the Jews to elevate their type of God to the point at which it became a God for everyone. That is to say, that their God became the one, true God, to whom everyone was held accountably. It also became a God that was all good, incapable of doing anything harmful, while the God of their enemies and oppressors became evil-in effect, the Devil. This is a very unhealthy type of God, according to Nietzsche, in that it "degenerates step by step into a mere symbol, a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the God of the poor, the sinners, and the sick better than anyone else, and the attribute ‘Saviour’ or ‘Redeemer’ remains in the end as the one essential attribute of divinity . . . .”
A God such as this can thus have an appeal to any group of people who are in a state of subjugation. Yet unlike the pagan Gods of strong, proud people, this type of God, as Nietzsche points out, remains in the state in which it was conceived (a God of the sick and weak), despite how strong a following it receives. It receives such a strong following because those who are from the ghettos, slums, and hospitals of the world, are the masses (There was no middle class in ancient Palestine; there were only the more elite subjugator and the subjugated masses). The God for ‘everyone’, is overwhelming among those who live in conditions of powerlessness and misery, in that it allows them to deny their present existence in favour of a better one that is to come, in an appeal to "redemption" in a world beyond. Therefore, this God-type becomes a life-denying one, in that it represents a denial of "this" life, as opposed to the healthy yes-saying, life-affirming, consistent-with-nature God of the ancient Jews. This particular type of God is therefore one that is ultimately nihilistic, involving the denial and rejection of the world and everything in it as sinful and decadent. Nature, flesh, and instinct thus become ever more devalued until they reach a point at which nature is seen as a cesspool, the flesh is mortified, and instincts are put in terms of evil "temptations." The concept of God continues to "deteriorate," as Nietzsche terms it, until what ultimately remains are a conception of God as "pure spirit," or in other words, as something to be aware among the integrally immaterial and non-corporeal, just as this is held up as an ideal form of existence. Nietzsche simply thinks of this idea of pure spirit as pure "nothingness," in that it is merely an absurd, contradictory-to-nature postulation. To him, it ultimately represents nihilism and nothing less.
These claims of Nietzsche's are difficult to argue against, because Nietzsche does not really use much in the way of an argument here to arrive at these claims. One is to concur of what has already confronted the reading scribes of his Genealogy of Morals in order to understand better what is going on in these passages. The Genealogy actually does have a sustained argument for claims that are intimately related to the ones above that are found in The Antichrist. This argument deals with how the slave class (Jews), out of hatred and resentment, got their revenge on the noble class (Romans) by shaming them into accepting the slave class' morality. This is one of Nietzsche's most important claims, and it is essential to an understanding of The Antichrist. Nietzsche argues for this claim in the Genealogy by giving an account of the origins of the words ‘good' and ‘bad' and ‘good' and ‘evil'. In their etymological senses, the terms "moral" and "ethical" mean literally "common" and "ordinary." The etymological origin of the word "good," according to Nietzsche, reveals that it once meant "privileged," "aristocratic," "with a soul of high order," etc., and that "bad" originally meant "common," "low," and "plebeian." Even the German word schlecht, which means "badly," is akin to schlicht, which means "plain" or "simple." Furthermore, the word’s schlechthin und schlechtweg literally means "simply" or "downright." This was the language of the aristocratic upper classes in classical times, whom Nietzsche calls the noble, or master class. The word "bad" was used by the master class, without any moral or ethical connotations, simply to refer and to differentiate them from common people, whom Nietzsche refers to as the slave class. The master class calls them "good," due to their apparently superior social standing, or in other words, "good" was simply a term for those things that they were, fierce, proud, brave, and noble. The lower class, or the slave class, on the other hand, developed their own moral language, which is that of the language of "good" and "evil." The anger and hatred that the slave class had for the master class had no outlet, or in other words their anger was impotent, due to their physical and political powerlessness. Nietzsche calls this the anger of ressentiment. The only way the slave class could get their revenge on the master class was to accept nothing less than a complete revaluation of the master class' values. The Jews, who epitomized the "priestly" way of life, according to Nietzsche, were the ones who began what he calls the "slave revolt in morality," which inverted the "aristocratic value equation (good=powerful=beautiful =happy=beloved of God)," to make a good out of their own station in life, and an evil out of the station of their enemies - he objects of their impotent anger and revenge. The slave class accomplished this effect by turning "good" and "bad" into terms which not only made reference to one's political station in life, but also pointed to one's soul and depth as a person.
Thus, the language of "good" and "bad," which was originally used for the purpose of amorally denoting one's station in life, was reevaluated into the language of "good" and "evil," in which what is "good" is common, ordinary, poor, and familiar, and what is "evil" is damnable, unfamiliar, cruel, godless, accursed, and unblessed. In effect, the master class, over the last two thousand years, has been "poisoned" and shamed by the slave class and its language of "good" and "evil" into accepting the inversion of their own noble values, and thus the morality of the slave class, namely that which is "common," "ordinary," and "familiar," is the one that prevails today. From the above argument, understanding how Nietzsche claims that the subjugated Jews transformed their once yes-saying God into the nay-saying God of ressentiment and hatred is easier. This argument seems to ring true in many ways, but it is nevertheless based on the psychological presupposition that human beings are always seeking power and mastery over others, or in other words, that they are always exerting their "will to power," as Nietzsche calls it. In this way, Nietzsche sees the Jews as cunningly having found a way to regain power over their oppressors psychologically by shaming them with the use of the language of good and evil. This assessment goes for what is to follow below as well.
As he demonstrates, Nietzsche is careful not to confuse Buddhism with Christianity in his criticisms. Though he believes that both religions are nihilistic and decadent, he regards Buddhism as a far healthier and more realistic approach. In contrast to the Christian, who is always trying to avoid sin, the Buddhist's main goal is to reduce suffering it. The latter does not fall into the same trap as Christianity does, according to Nietzsche, do not carry any moral presuppositions. It has long abandoned them, seeing them as mere deceptions. The Buddhist is therefore not engaged in the practice of moralizing and making judgments about others. A Buddhist achieves this reduction of suffering by living a passive, non-combatanting lifestyle. He does not become angry or resentful, no matter what transgressions someone has assertively enacted against him. Neither does he worry about him nor others. He takes measures that will help him to avoid exciting his senses, while the Christian, on the other hand, does just the opposite through living an ascetic lifestyle and maintaining an emotionally charged relationship with his God through prayer. The Buddhist, in his avoidance of suffering, simply aims to maintain its steady state of peace, calm, and mildness in his lifestyle and temperament. It is a very important point that in pursuing this aim, the Buddhist actually succeeds, whereas the Christian does not succeed in removing sin, and is thus always in a state of wanting "redemption" and "forgiveness," never attaining the "grace" of God that he so desires. The Buddhist is therefore able to achieve a sort of peace and tranquillity on earth.
This idea is vital, in that it relates directly with Nietzsche's conception of the historical Jesus. Nietzsche paints a picture of the Jesus of history for being a true evangel, which means that he did not subscribe to the concepts of guilt, punishment, and reward. He did not engage in faith, but only in actions, and these actions prescribed a way of life that Nietzsche sees as Buddhistic. The evangel does not get angry, does not pass judgment, and does neither he feel any hatred nor resentment for his enemies. He rejected the whole idea of sin and repentance, and believed that this evangelical way of life was divine in it, closing the gap between man and God so much that it is God, according to Nietzsche. Therefore, he saw prayer, faith, and redemption as farcical, instead believing that the "kingdom of heaven" is a state of mind that can be experienced on earth by living this type of peaceful, judgment-suspending existence, free from worry, guilt, and anger. Nietzsche argues that this was the life of Jesus and nothing more, and this way of life was the "glad tidings" which he brought. Nietzsche writes: The "bringer of glad tidings" died as he had lived, as he had taught-not to "redeem men" but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to humanity: his behaviour before the judges, before the catch poles, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn-his behaviour on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step that might ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. He begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those, who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible-but to resist not even the evil one-to love him.
This conception of Jesus is entirely alien to the one that the church has given us. For the creation and dissemination of this misconception, Nietzsche blames Paul. He also blames Jesus' immediate followers as well. Once Jesus had been executed, according to Nietzsche, his followers could not come to grips with the shock of his sudden loss. Filled with a want of revenge, they wanted to know who killed him and why. They determined that the rulers of the existing Jewish order had killed him because his doctrine went against that order. Not wanting his death to have been in vain, they saw him as a rebel against the Jewish status quo in the same way that they saw themselves as such. In this way, argues Nietzsche, his followers completely misunderstood him. The truly "evangelic" thing to do, he says, would have been to forgive his death instead, or to die in the like manner without judgment or need of vindication. However, Jesus' followers, resentful about his loss, wanted vengeance upon those of the existing Jewish order. The way that they accomplished this vengeance is the same as the way in which the Jews exacted their revenge on their Roman oppressors. They considered Jesus to be the Messiah of whom they were foretold by Jewish scripture, and in this way they elevated him to divine status--as the Son of God (since he referred to him metaphorically as a "child of God"). Faced with the question of how God could allow Jesus' death to occur, they came up with the idea that God had sent down his own Son as a sacrifice for their sins, as a sacrifice of the guiltless for the sins of the guilty, even though Jesus him refused to engage in feeling guilt. They then used the figure of Jesus and their misunderstanding of his doctrine of the "kingdom of God" for making judgments against their enemies in the existing Jewish order, just as the Jews had turned their God into something universal for the purpose of passing judgment on the Romans: On the other hand, the frenzied veneration of these totally unhinged souls no longer endured the evangelic conception of everybody's equal right to be a child of God, as Jesus had taught: it was their revenge to elevate Jesus extravagantly, to sever him from themselves-precisely as the Jews had formerly, out of revenge against their enemies, severed their God from themselves and elevated him. The one God and the one Son of God-both products of resentment.
The figure of Paul, according to Nietzsche, exacerbated this misunderstanding of Jesus' teachings even further. In fact, that is an understatement. In this immortalized figure of crucified Jesus, Paul, with his "priestly" instincts, saw a way to gain power by forming "herds," as Nietzsche puts it. He completely rewrote the history of Jesus' life and Christianity for his own purposes, adding the doctrines of the resurrection, the immaculate conception, and the idea of personal as a reward. Nietzsche attributes Paul's efforts to the hatred and ressentiment of the priestly class, and refers to Paul as the "dysangelist," or in other words, the "bringer of ill tidings." After Paul, the life of Jesus had been turned into something completely alien and antithetical to what it actually was. Again, this theory of Nietzsche's rests on the assumption that humans are in essence motivated by a will to power. Historical evidence concerning the historical Jesus is quite lacking in Nietzsche's account; in that, it relies on a psychological profile of those who participated in this historical scene. However, this psychological analysis seems to present a scenario that is at least conceivable--especially more so than the idea of an immaculate conception and resurrection. In think Nietzsche takes the Buddhistic element of Jesus too far, however. He provides too specifically an account of Jesus' lifestyle and philosophical persuasions without any evidence. It is still quite possible that Jesus could have simply been a more noteworthy rebel against the Romans and the Jewish status quo. More historical evidence would seem to be in order, but Nietzsche's account remains very compelling without it. Its profound significance lies in the fact that in it, Nietzsche has the courage and honesty to show us what, in his and every non-Christian's eyes, is far more likely to have been the case.
Nietzsche is also concerned with how deeply these decadent Christian values have ingrained themselves in our social practices and presuppositions. He especially laments how it has infiltrated the study of philosophy, particularly German philosophy. As Nietzsche argues, he sees modern philosophy as having "theologians' blood in its veins," saying whom we consider our antithesis is necessary: it is the theologians and whatever has theologians' blood in its veins-and that includes our whole philosophy.
Nietzsche argues that Christianity has poisoned philosophy with this nihilistic rejection of the body in favour of pure spirit. He compares the idealist philosopher with the priest, in that the former reduces everything in the world to idea, so that the physical world does not really exist. Figures such as Georg Hegel have done exactly this sort of thing, and Nietzsche is especially critical of German philosophy, both for its idealists’ tendencies and its conception of morality-both of which can be traced to this theologian's instinct. Nietzsche blames Germany's heavy Protestant tradition for the corruption of philosophy, and he criticizes Kant especially for being the latest, "greatest" philosopher to continue this corruption. Kant denies that the physical world can be apprehended directly (the world of noemenon) by the senses, and in this respect he is not a strict idealist, save a phenomenalist. What is meant by this is that all we can perceive are phenomenon, which appear to us as ideas, and the physical (noemenal) world is something that we can never directly observe. Kant's system does not deny that the physical world exists, but it denies that it exists as we know it, and that is enough for Nietzsche to criticize him. One can understand, however, how Nietzsche sees the theologian's blood running through Kant's veins, in that Kant sees the physical world as mere phenomenon - phantom reality. Nietzsche also criticizes Kant for finding a way to maintain a theoretical justification for morality-the Christian morality-while removing God from the picture, namely the Categorical Imperative. Nietzsche rejects this system as one that turns people into automatons. He claims that a virtue must be one of the people's own inventions, not an abstract "duty" in-it, which must be followed universally for its own sake. If the people do not follow its own virtues and do its own duty, he argues, it will perish. What Nietzsche seems to be getting at is that people simply do what they need to do to thrive and preserve themselves, and as explained earlier, different people find themselves having to adapt to different circumstances, such as the Jews did under Roman occupation. Their virtues and duties had to change according to their situation. This is what Kant means when he says that "Kant's categorical imperative endangered life it!"8 Nietzsche then goes on to denounce Kant's deontologicalism it: An action demanded by the instinct of life is proved to be right by the pleasure that accompanies it; yet this nihilist with his Christian dogmatic entrails considered pleasure an objection. What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure-as an automaton of "duty?” This is the very recipe for decadence, even for idiocy. Kant became an idiot, and this man was contemporary of Goethe! This catastrophic spider was considered the German philosopher-he still is.
Kant, in this way, also goes against nature with his system of morality, according to Nietzsche. It is simply a Christian God's "Thou shalt" disguised by a secular, theoretical philosophy, or as Nietzsche would see it, it is borne of the theologian's instinct. Any philosophy student can see where Nietzsche gets these ideas from, and in most respects, he seems to be right about this. However, not all of the nihilistic elements of philosophy have their roots in Christianity. Western philosophy has a fundamental inheritance from Plato, who also, as Nietzsche is surely aware, rejects the physical world. He does this not because he thinks of it as sinful, but because he thinks it is ultimately only shadows of reality. Instead, Plato favours the world of the Forms, in which the Forms are paradigms of all objects and concepts that can be found in the physical, sensory world in which we presently live. Plato favours this other world because the physical world is in a constant state of flux, he argues. Since we cannot have knowledge of something that is always changing, as he claims, there can be no real knowledge of anything in the physical world. Knowledge then, for Plato, can only be possible in this other world through contemplation of the Forms, since these Forms are unchanging. Therefore, western post-Socratic philosophy began with a rejection of the physical world, and this rejection also constitutes a large, if not major source of the nihilism in western philosophy about which Nietzsche so often complains.
To refute of which is the claim that Plato and Nietzsche are at opposite poles regarding the treatment of the non-rational elements of the soul, and argue that, instead, they share a complex and psychologically rich view of the role of reason toward the appetites and the emotions. My argument makes use of the Freudian distinction between sublimation, i.e., the re-channelling of certain undesirable appetitive and emotional forces toward more beneficial ends, and repression. In show that both Plato and Nietzsche argue in favour of sublimation and against repression of the non-rational elements of the soul.
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is often seen as the antitheses of Plato’s for at least the following reason: Plato’s concept of psychic harmony, i.e., the state that it is best for the soul to be in, is said to involve repression of the non-rational elements of the soul (the thumos and the appetitive part) by reason. This repression, in Nietzschean terms, can be classified as a form of asceticism, and Nietzsche is seen as rejecting all forms of asceticism. In will argue in the following sections that this interpretation relies on a misunderstanding of both Plato and Nietzsche, in that it is neither true that Plato believes repression to be reason’s main way of controlling the non-rational parts of the soul, nor that Nietzsche rejects all forms of rational control over one’s character. In this section, however, In want to highlight these passages in which Plato and Nietzsche say things that could be misinterpreted in the way In have outlined, i.e., what lesser truths would make one believe that the interpretation as a whole is correct.
It would be false to claim that Plato cannot, and has not been interpreted as claiming that reason should repress the appetites. Annas, in her Companion to Plato’s Republic writes the following: [. . . .] Reason as Plato conceives it will decide for the whole soul in a way that does not take the ends of the other parts as given but may involve suppressing or restraining them
The end of the rational part, according to Plato, is to decide on behalf of the whole soul what is good for it, and make sure that it pursues only those ends. In the metaphor of the soul in which the rational part is a little man, the thumos a lion, and the appetitive part a many-headed beast, Plato tells us that "all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man, and make him take charge of the many-headed beast." We may read this as meaning that the rational part should repress the appetitive part, and curb the thumos so that it only acts as reason would have it act. However, as In will argue, in this mis-reading, all we should in fact read in Plato’s proposal, is that reason should control the appetites and the thumos, but control them by means other than repression.
Nietzsche supposed the rejection of asceticism, and all forms of control over the elements of one’s character, can be deduced from many passages. At this point as we occupy of a particular surface in space and time, whose manifesting inclinations of force fields and atomizations are combining quality standards whose presence is awaiting to the future, however, what seems more important and, perhaps, relevantly significant are the contributions that follow: At which time In abhor all those moralities that say ‘do not do this! Renounce! Overcome your: Those who command man first of all and above all to gain control of him thus afflict him with a particular disease; Namely, a constant irritability in the face of natural stirring and inclinations - as it were, a kind of itching. People like St. Paul have an evil eye for the passions: all they know of the passions is what is dirty, disfiguring, and heartbreaking; hence their idealistic tendencies aim at the annihilation of the passions, and they find perfect purity in the divine.
These passages contrive to give us the following impression of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, i.e., that Nietzsche stands up for the passions, and other natural stirrings and inclinations against moralists who want to annihilate them, overcome, renounce, or control them. If we add this up to the above interpretation of Plato, then concluding that Plato is just the kind of philosopher Nietzsche is naturals’ outcry denounces - and in fact there are many passages in which Nietzsche does denounce Plato, sometimes just for this reason.
That this interpretation of Nietzsche as rejecting control of the non-rational parts of the soul is misleading, in that although it is true that Nietzsche rejects repression as a means of controlling those parts, he does not reject all forms of control, quite the contrary. Together with my argument in that Plato does not believe the appetitive part should be repressed, this will refute the claim that Nietzsche and Plato’s treatment of the non-rational parts of the soul are opposed, or significantly different. A need to introduce certain concepts that are useful in ascertaining the proper meaning of Plato and Nietzsche’s claims regarding the control of the soul by reason.
The preceding section highlighted the sources of the interpretations of Nietzsche and Plato’s positions on the treatment of the irrational parts of the soul as opposite. Plato, it has been said, believes that we should repress these elements or else enlist some of them on the side of reason to repress the others. Nietzsche on the other hand is said to have believed that all parts of our character are of equal value, and hence that we should get rid of nothing, but on the contrary, let all our ‘instincts’ rule us. This is an oversimplified view, but it expresses best the common belief among philosophers that Plato and Nietzsche held radically different views regarding the role of reason and of the non-rational elements of the soul. In believe this view is mistaken: Not just in its exaggerated form, but in any form that contains the claim that Plato and Nietzsche disagreed significantly as to whether and how we should gain rational control over the non-rational elements of our souls.
The concept we need most here is that of sublimation (sublimieren in German - a concept that, incidentally, was introduced by Goethe before its meaning was developed more fully by Freud). It means the redirection of forces impinged upon impulses under which are highly objective, that is, if one were taken anthelmintically, than inexpediently, in that to another spells of one, and to society. In order to understand sublimation, however, we need to spell out two more Freudian concepts, of ‘impulse’ and ‘repression’. An impulse (Trieb: Usually erroneously translated as ‘instinct’) is a force, or pressure the goal of which is (sexual) satisfaction of some kind or other (e.g., oral) which it attains by discharging it on some object. The force is the driving aspect of the impulse, ‘the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work that it represents’.
Freud was interested in two types of impulsive behaviours, repression, and sublimation. Both exist as a means of dealing with problematic impulses, i.e., impulses that we cannot live within society, that we are ashamed of, that would be disapproved of by others, that threatens our relationships with others. Repression presupposes two of the simplest: to repress an impulse is to prevent it from achieving its aim, i.e., satisfaction. The impulse is driven back, shut out, rejected, in no particular direction. As Freud argued, this - denial is far from being the most effective manner of dealing with violent unwanted impulse. In that, if we do not look atop to whatever one is to push them, then one will not know from where they are likely to come back. They will come back, just as the heads on the multi-headed monster of the Republic keep growing back with different shapes, as pathological symptoms.
The second mechanism for dealing with troublesome impulses is sublimation. When an impulse is sublimated, it is not prevented from reaching its satisfaction, but it is made to reach via a different route from that which it would naturally follow, i.e., by settling for its satisfaction on a different object. In Freud’s words: [Sublimation] enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find an outlet and use in other fields, so that a considerable increase in psychological efficiency results from a disposition that is it perilous. Here we have one of the origins of artistic creativity - and, according to the completeness or incompleteness of the sublimation, a characterological analysis of a highly gifted individual. Freud saw sublimation as society’s means of achieving impulsive renunciation without appealing to repression. Still, more important, he saw it as the individual’s means of achieving rational control over the dark forces of her unconscious mind. Sublimation is the work of the ego, the rational , and what it achieves is ‘a defusion of the instincts, and a liberation of the aggressive instincts in the superego’. Freud thought sublimation was preferable to repression because it brings about greater rational control.
Much more could be said about Freud’s work on the human soul, and in particular, on his concept of sublimation. However, In shall now leave Freud to return to Plato and Nietzsche, and show how his concepts of sublimation and repression can be used to understand these two philosophers’ moral psychologies not as opposed, but on the contrary, both arguing along similar and very plausible lines.
Let us turn again to the metaphor of the tripartite soul as the joining of a multi-headed beast, a lion, and a little man. In suggested in that reading Plato’s claim that we should aim to achieve was wrong ‘complete dominion’ of reason over the soul as a claim that reason should repress the other parts. Reading the passage in its entirety can vindicate this suggestion in part simply. At 589ab Plato writes, And on the other hand, he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete dominion over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast - like a farmer who cherishes and adapts in the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild - and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will at first make friends, in and of one another and to him, and so foster their growth.
This passage is ambiguous, but what should stand out, as well as the claim that reason must dominate the soul, is to mention that one should care for one’s appetitive part, and foster its growth. This is surely not consistent with the claim that one should repress it. However, Plato’s meaning is unclear, and in order to make sense of the metaphor of the farmer, we need to look at Plato’s other recommendations as to how reason should manifest its dominion. The clearest, In believe, is to be found in Plato’s portrait of the reasonable man at. Nevertheless, when, In suppose, a man’s condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear - consciousness, while he has neither starved nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep and not disturb the better part by its pleasure or pain . . .
The reasonable man - , i.e., the man whose soul is governed by the rational part, in other words, the just man - as he is portrayed in Book Nine of the Republic, does not indulge nor starve his appetitive part. This is why his sleep, unlike the tyrant’s, is undisturbed by violent dreams. If reason is not in control and if the appetites are not lulled to sleep, then the ‘terrible, fierce and lawless broods of desires’ which exists ‘in every one of us, even in some reputed most respectable’ will reveal themselves in our sleep as ‘lawless’ dreams.
This very Freudian analysis tells us the following, appetites, which are not controlled by reason, are likely to come back and disturb us in our sleep as violent dreams. Still, the control that reasons must exert is not repression: we have to make sure that the lawless appetites are neither indulged nor starved, and what is repression but the starving of impulses, i.e., preventing them from ever being satisfied? Repression, or starvation of the appetites, Plato tells us, is as much the cause of tyrannical behaviour patterns as indulging appetites. The ‘lawless pleasures and appetites’ should not be repressed, but ‘controlled by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason.
That the rational control Plato proposes is not a repressive kind is one thing, but what else is it, and do we have grounds for supposing that it is a kind of sublimation? In following, it would not be far fetched to propose that he does believe we should sublimate the appetites that need to be controlled.
Does Plato use the vocabulary of sublimation when he defines psychic harmony? Surely he does in the case of the thumos. The emotions that are so unruly in children ('for they are from their enactable birth cradles - full of rage and high spirits', are brought to 'marshal themselves on the side of reason, and this through 'the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying and fostering the one [reason] with fair words and teachings, and relaxing and sobering and making gently the other by harmony and rhythm' The idea that the appetites should be sublimated is present elsewhere in the Republic "But, again, we surely are aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to any-one thing, they are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been diverted into another channel. So when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel of learning and all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, In presume, with the pleasures of the soul in it, and will be indifferent to those of which the body is the instrument if the man is true and not a sham philosopher."
Plato seems to accept the following: the lawless appetites should be controlled and prevented from ruling the soul, but at the same time, they should not be repressed, i.e., extinguished. Their motivational force should be redirected so that it assists the whole soul in its pursuit of the Good. More precisely, it seems that Plato is arguing that bodily impulses can be sublimated through philosophy, i.e., that sexual desires, for instance, will be replaced, to a degree at least, by desires to acquire philosophical knowledge.
We can conclude this section by answering the initial challenge as follows. It is not the case that Psychic harmony involves the repression of a whole genus of desires: Plato makes it clear that the appetites of the reasonable man must neither be starved nor over-indulged. He believes control is necessary, but preferably, a creative type of control, i.e., not one that seeks to extinguish appetitive or emotional drives, but one that sublimates them, transforms them into drives of a similar but more beneficial nature.
Having argued that Plato does not believe that unruly impulses should be repressed, but instead advocate a kind of control that we can properly refer to as sublimation in the Freudian sense of that term, but we must now turn to the claim that Nietzsche rejects all kinds of control of the non-rational elements of the soul as forms of asceticism, and therefore repression. In shall argue that Nietzsche, like Plato, believes that a kind of control like sublimation is both necessary and beneficial
There is no question that Nietzsche rejects repression as unhealthy - as verily does Plato - nor that he claims that philosophers in general, and Plato and Socrates in particular favour a certain kind of asceticism. However, it does not follow that Nietzsche does not believe some control of the desires is necessary. Although sublimation is incompatible with repression - an impulse cannot be redirected in other channels if it is repressed (a criminal cannot be rehabilitated if he is executed) - it can be seen as some kind of control, and is thus quite compatible with the pursuit of psychic harmony as described by Plato. In particular, one passage from Daybreak shows how close the two philosophers really are regarding the treatment of appetites, which threaten psychic health: one already stands before the irrefutable insight that there exists no essential difference between criminals and the insane [ . . . ] One should place before him quite clearly the possibility and the means of becoming cured (the extinction, transformation, sublimations of this [tyrannical] drive)
That Nietzsche mentions extinction along with sublimation or transformation, does not mean that he sees repression as a good general policy any more than Plato does. Here he is talking about the tyrannical drive of the criminal. Had that drive not been allowed to become tyrannical, (and that this kind of prevention need not appeal to repression but may be achieved through sublimation) it would not need to be extinguished.
Nietzsche also believes that sublimation is the explanation for the existence of asceticism. Cruel impulses are sublimated through ressentiment and bad conscience and give birth to ascetic impulses. Desires to murder, arson, rape and torture are replaced by desires for - castigation. Civilization seeks to prevent the gratification of the cruel instincts (for obvious reasons), and by introducing the ideas of responsibility for one's actions and guilt, helps to turn these instincts against themselves, i.e., transform desires to hurt others into desires to hurt one.
There be of three containing comments on the Genealogy as pertaining to Nietzsche’s concerns with the origins of morality and culturally sublimated expressions of drives as well as Federn’s comment that Nietzsche ‘was the first to discover the significance of abreaction, of repression, of flight into illness, of the instincts - and some comments speculating on Nietzsche’s personality a relevant psychodynamic.
Of the Genealogy, ‘guilt, bad conscience and the like, explores, among other things, how at a critical juncture in the development of civilization an morality, drives that had been more freely expressed were constrained and turned inward. This led to the development of the ‘base conscience’ an the ‘entire inner word’ [which] originally thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended it, acquire depth, breadth, and height. In, What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideas’ were to explore of how bad conscience or quilt is appropriated by the ascetic priest, in the service of comforting, and thus ensuring the obedience of the vulnerable ‘herd’. The ascetic priest exercising his own will to power (such as by imposing his interpretations on the minds of others) provides meaning and justification in for what would otherwise be meaningless suffering. He provides comfort of sorts with a realm of existence that is divine , holy, pure, and true. Nonetheless, the will to power may have had certain cosmological and mythic dimensions for Nietzsche, but the concept is also rooted in psychology.
In addition to Nietzsche writing specifically of the sublimation of the secular drive, the will to power and its vicissitude drives, particularly in the form of appropriation and incorporation. As Staten points out, this notion of the primitive will to power is similar to Freud’s idea in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego according to which ‘identification [is] the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person . . . It behaves like a derivation of the first oral phase for a prize is assimilated by eating. It would appear that Nietzsche goes a step further than Freud in one of his notes when he writes: ‘Nourishment - is only derivative, the original phenomenon is, to desire to incorporate everything.’ Nietzschean will to power never take place without a pleasurable excitation that there is no reason not to call erotic.
Nietzsche condemns those moralities that condemn life,’the morality that would un man’. And we can note that his highest affirmation includes ‘a yes-saying. . . . even to quilt, whereby there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between the growing capacity to say, ‘Yes, thus shall In will it’ it would do above all else, to create beyond it. The will In a creator, and all it was is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident - until the creative will says to it: ‘But thus In shall will it, the creative says to it, ‘But thus In will, thus shall In will it.
In saying ‘yes’ to eternal recurrence as related to Nietzsche’s idea of becoming who one is. It is a saying ‘yes’ to what one is and has stilled: It is to identify one with all of one’s actions, to see hat everting one does (what one become) is what one is. In the ideal case it is also to fit all this into a coherent whole and to want to be everything that one is: It is to give style to one’s character, to be, in becoming, least of mention, one cannot accomplish the Nietzschean redemption without knowing and choosing who one is: To decide that some past event was a benefit presupposes and commits me to certain views as to who In am, what my dominant desires and goals are now. Still to point out, that affirming eternal decree involves an affirmation of life, of the intrinsic whole of life in opposition to the ascetic ideal, in that ‘Nietzsche’s ideals to love the whole process enough that one is willing to relive eternally been those parts of it that one does not and cannot live. That the ‘reason for wishing most fervently the repetition of each’, is that one.
While Nietzsche is quite willing, as in his psychological explorations, to draw distinction between ‘deeper’ realities in relation to ‘surface’ appearances, he also argue that on a fundamental level one cannot draw a distinction between a merely apparent world and a perspective-free true factual world. The ‘deeper’ realities he discovered cannot be regarded as facts-in-themselves or anything else of the kind that would be free of embeddedness in human schemes, practices, theories, and interpretations. Of perspectival seeing and knowing.
Although Nietzsche calls into question the absolute value of truth, vales the illusion (the truthful illusions) of art that a stimulant to life, values. Masks, veils and even the creative lie, he also answers the call of truth. Truth calls to us tempts us to unveil her. If we have integrity we will say ‘Yes’ to the hardest service, surrounding much that we held dear, inclining our wishes ‘not to see . . . [what]. one does’. When the unveiling takes place we come upon not truth (or woman) in-it but an appearance which is reality by way of a particular perspective. One might regard this situation as, among other possibilities, and opportunity for creative play of the interpretive capacities, for the creating and destroying of play, for a creative sublimation of the will to power. But none of this regarded as truth. What it does involve, in the words of Linda Alcoff, is that for Nietzsche ‘neither a noumenal realm nor a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims and perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, Alcoff also suggests that ‘perspectives are to be judged not on their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in specific area. For Alcoff, this entails ‘local pragmatic’ truths even though Nietzsche does posit trans-historical truth claims such as his claim regarding the will to power. Nietzsche is concerned with what corresponds to or fits the facts, but such fact are not established without as human contribution, without interpretation. Of course for those for whom the term ‘fact’ should entail before the ‘factum brutum’ there may be an objection to their use of such terms as ‘fact’, ‘reality’, etc., in such a context.
Justifiably for Nietzsche’s bad conscience offers relief n from as deeper, truer guilt or fear of abandonment but from the hopelessness, helplessness, depression, etc., that would exist in the face of the inability to direct one’s instincts, one ‘s will to power, one’s freedom, outward into an upon the world. But also recall the passage in which Nietzsche suggests that ‘this man of the bad conscience . . . apprehend in ‘God’ the ultimate antithesis o of hoi own ineluctable animal instincts, and he reinterprets these instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God (his hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the Lord, the father, the primal ancestor and origin of the world.) For Nietzsche this bad conscience is not rooted or ground in a primal rebellious and hostile deed, rather, it is grounded in splitting off from the ineluctable animal instinct as guilt before or sin against the father upon who is projected the antithesis of such instincts. This can occur when more spontaneous instinctual expression is blocked in the is substituted for the object of instinctual gratification, particularly aggression. As the aggression turned against the as the object upon which to discharge this drive, this bad can be potentially freed and made good by participating in the power of, the being of, God who is the idealized antithesis of such instincts.
(When God acts aggressively, it is with the believer’s good conscience.) And Freud follows Nietzsche when he states that, ‘the believer has a share in he greatest of his god’. He also follows Nietzsche and others who emphasize the spiritual or physiological sickness that accompanies the achievements of civilization with its foundations in repression and guilt. For both thinkers, guilt, however painful, can provide relief from something more painful, whether a greater quilt or depression.
The relevant concept in Nietzsche’s reflections on control of the non-rational elements of the soul has to ‘- overcoming’ or ‘giving style’ to one’s character. This is discussed at length in Gay Science of which this is an extract: One thing is needful: . . . .to ‘give style’ to one’s character, a great and rare art! It is practised - by these who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. The weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style [and] are always out to form or interpret themselves and their environment as free nature - wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, astonishing. [. . . .] For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with him, whether it is by means of this or that poetry and art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with him is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.
One way of interpreting this passage is to understand it to mean that one must come to accept all of one’s defects and not attempt to eliminate or control them. Something like this can be suggested by the following comment by Staten: His stance toward him is the antithesis of, says, St. Augustine’s; Instead of judging, condemning, and paring away at his impulses, Nietzsche says he has simply tried to arrange them so that they might all coexist. ‘Contrary capacities’ dwell in him, he says, and he has tried to ‘mix nothing’, to ‘reconcile nothing’.
However, Staten's analysis is vague. Granted, Nietzsche does not think, so-called weaknesses should be repressed. We discussed his arguments against repression of instincts earlier in this section, and argued that they were not in fact incompatible with Plato’s views on rational control of the soul. Both Nietzsche and Plato, we saw, advocate some form of control of the impulses that does not involve 'paring away' at them, but insofar as possible, involves their redirection toward an object more suited to the well-being of the soul or character as a whole, i.e., some form of sublimation of the instincts. Does what Nietzsche say at contradicting these arguments in any way? What he suggests we actually do with the undesirable instincts is this: Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable. Unfortunately thee will not of any attempt to explain what each of the transformations described in this passage actually amounts to - unfortunately, but the passage is vague and metaphorical beyond interpretation. What matters here, is that Nietzsche proposes several ways of dealing with undesirable instincts, and that whatever these ways are, they do not amount to leaving them untouched. Maybe Nietzsche does not pair away at his instincts (although the phrase 'the ugly that could not be removed' may suggest that he in fact does.) Yet he does judge them, i.e., he has to decide whether they must be concealed, or transformed, or saved up. There is no suggestion that any instinct is as good as another and that all will hold a place of honour in the character to which style has been given. To 'style' is to constrain and control, and one cannot give style to one's character and thereby render it tolerable to behold, if one is not able to control one's instincts. As Nietzsche writes later on in that passage, 'the weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style'. Weakness is equated with lack of - control, and not, as the quotation from Staten may suggest, with control of one's instincts.
Nietzsche does not reject moral theories that demand that we control our desires. What he does reject is repression as an extinction. On the contrary, he seems to believe that an ideal life would involve sublimation - a form of control - of the appetites for the benefit of the pursuit of one's ideal. It follows from these conclusions that there is in fact no significant difference between Nietzsche and Plato's moral psychology regarding the control of the appetites: Neither is in favour of repression, both advocate a certain creative control involving sublimation.
As far as defending opposite theories about how we should control the non-rational elements of the soul, Plato and Nietzsche in fact hold very similar views. Their views can be explained by referring to certain Freudian concepts, sublimation and repression. According to Freud, impulses lend themselves too more than one kind of control. They can either be repressed, i.e., prevented from attaining satisfaction, or sublimated, i.e., their force can be redirected toward a more beneficial object. The first kind of control is rejected by both Plato and Nietzsche (at least as a general policy) as ineffective and unhealthy. Plato sees repression as one of the paths to tyrannical behaviour patterns (those impulses, which are repressed come back at night as violent dreams). Nietzsche views it as one of the worst manifestations of asceticism, one that prevents the ‘one thing needful’, giving style, i.e., the integration of all of one’s character traits, and makes us ‘continually ready for revenge, bad and gloomy’.
The second means of controlling impulses, sublimation, is one that we found to hold an important place in both Plato and Nietzsche’s moral psychologies. Both believe that potentially harmful instincts can be redirected Nietzsche higher goals, and contribute to the perfection of the character. We saw that Plato used the vocabulary of sublimation in the Republic, where he talks of the appetitive impulses being redirected toward a love of learning. Nietzsche had written of sublimation, an he specifically wrote of the sublimation of sexual dives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use the term as here duffers somewhat from his later and more Nietzschean usage such as in Three Essays o the Theory of Sexuality. But a Kaufmann notes ‘the word is older than Freud or Nietzsche. . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today.’‘. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as one of the most important concept in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy. Nietzsche, we saw, actually uses the term sublimation when he describes the kind of control one must impose on one’s character in order to give style to it.
When two philosophers who are among the more concerned with the question how we should live turn out to hold very similar moral psychologies, then the concepts they use are probably concepts that should hold an important place in any moral psychology. That these concepts are affirming Freudian non-objections. Freud him was deeply concerned with the problem of how best we could live our lives, and how we could deal with the dark forces of our unconscious. These forces are recognised by Plato (even the most respectable of us, he says are subject to them) also through Nietzsche. Should not a central concern of moral philosophy be how best to deal with them, how best to control them rationally? If so, then it seems that we need a moral psychology that explains what role these dark impulses play in the human soul, and how reason might control them. This, In have argued, is exactly what Plato and Nietzsche attempt to do.
One hundred years ago Thus Speak Zarathustra appeared. The most celebrated work of Nietzsche, it has been read and cited by even moderately educated people. The German philosopher has a stormy reputation due to his tirades against Christianity and his aristocratic rejection of conventional moral views. Nietzsche provokes all kinds of reactions. Each reader may have his own Nietzsche, drawing from him a cherished opinion to be worn as a coloured badge with the hope of shocking ordinary folk. In fact in the last one hundred years, everything and anything has been said about Nietzsche.
This absence of professionalism and this facile subjectivism have produced occasionally disastrous consequences. From the beginning Nietzsche's thought has defied systematic construction. Even now the most memorable characteristics of his pioneering work are his ferocious fulminations, his deconstruction, and the acrid stench left by those who have raided his texts. One cannot hope to say finally what Nietzsche really meant. Still, finding a unifying thread may be possible. This requires ignoring abusively and merely subjectivist interpretations while highlighting those of true value. The renewed interest in Nietzsche's works has produced a vast and expanding body of relevant literature, as much as it is pivotal.
In June 1981 Rudolf Augstein, editor of Der Spiegel, stated without qualification that Hitler was the man of action who put Nietzsche's thought into practice. The journalist took for proof the falsifications of some of Nietzsche's manuscripts by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche-Forster, who had shaken Hitler's hand in the twilight of her life. This argument is perhaps a bit thin in view of the many other writings that his sister did not doctor.
Augstein is concerned not just about Nietzsche's revival by a young generation of German philosophers but also by the progressive abandonment among German intellectuals of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School for Social Research. For Germans educated in the wake of "de-Nazification," the Frankfurt School's attack on bourgeois values, though often couched in arcane phrases, represented an effort to come to terms with the German past. Nonetheless, Frankfurt's total rejection of all thought that affirms a given fact has led to an impasse. Negativity cannot be an end in it; no one can progress intellectually or artistically through a permanent process of negation.
For Jurgen Habermas, the last important representative of the Frankfurt School, the Real is bad in that it does not include from the start all the Good existing in ideal form. Confronted by the imperfect Real, one feels compelled to maximize the Good, to moralize ad extremum in order to minimize the force of evilly encrusted in a real world marked by incompleteness. Imperfect reality must call forth a redeeming revolution. However, this revolution runs the risk of affirming and shaping another categorical class of settings that are imperfectly real things. Habermas rejects great global revolutions that initiate new eras. Instead he prefers sporadic micro-revolutions that inaugurate ages of permanent corrections, small injections of the Good into the sociopolitical tissue inevitably tainted by the Bad. Nonetheless, the world of political philosophy cannot rest content with this constant tinkering, but this dogged adherence to reform without limitation, as this social engineering without substance. The suspicions of Nazism weighing heavily on Nietzscheism and the impossibility of keeping philosophy at the level of permanent negation make it necessary to reject the obsession with the proto-Nazi Nietzsche and the Frankfurt School's negative attitude toward any given.
Nietzsche has had his share of Nazi interpreters. Philosophers who fellow-travelled with the Nazis often made kind references to his thought. Yet recent scholarship shows that Nietzsche found not only Nazi admirers but also socialist and leftist ones. In Nietzsche in German Politics and Society 1890-1918 (1983), the British Professor R. Hinton Thomas demonstrates the close relationship between Nietzsche and German socialism. Thomas deals with Nietzsche's impact in Imperial Germany on social democratic circles, on anarchists and feminists, and on the youth’s movement. This produced, on balance more resolute enemies of the Third Reich than Nazi cadres. Thomas shows that Nietzsche helped shape a libertarian ideology during the rise of the German social democratic movement. At the urging of August Bebel, the famed German socialist, the infant Social Democratic Party in 1875 adopted the Gotha Program, which sought to achieve redistributionist aims through legal means. In 1878 the government enacted anti-socialist laws, which curbed the party's activities. In 1890, with the Erfurt Program, the party took on a harder revolutionary cast in conformity with Marxist doctrine. Social democracy subsequently oscillated between strict legalism, also known as "revisionism" or "reformism" because it accepted a liberal capitalist society, and a rhetorical commitment to revolution accompanied by demands for far-reaching changes.
According to Thomas, this second tendency remained a minority position but incorporated Nietzschean elements. A faction of the party, led by Bruno Wille, ridiculed the powerlessness of reformist social democrats. This group, which called it Die Jungen (The Youths), appealed to grass-roots democracy, spoke of the need for more communication within the party, and ended up rejecting its rigid parent. Wille and his friends mocked the conformism of party functionaries, great and small, and the "cage" constituting organized social democracy. The party's stifling constraints subdued the will and thwarted individual self-actualization. Die Jungen exalted "voluntarism," or the exercise of will, which they associated with true socialism. This emphasis on will left little place for the deterministic materialism of Marxism, which the group described as an "enslaving" system.
Kurt Eisner, the leader of the revolutionary socialist Bavarian Republic, devoted his first book in 1919 to the philosophy of Nietzsche. Though he criticized the "megalomania" that he found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he also praised its aristocratic ideals. The aristocratic values found in Nietzsche, he said, had to be put at the service of the people, not treated as ends in themselves. Gustav Landauer (1870-1919), another founder of the Bavarian "Red Republic," emphasized Nietzschean voluntarism in his training of political revolutionaries. Landauer's original anarchistic individualism became more communitarian and populist during the course of his political career, approaching the folkish, nationalist thinking of his enemies. Landauer died in the streets of Munich fighting the soldiers of the Freikorp, a group of paramilitary adventurers who were classified as "rightist" but who shared very much of Landauer's outlook.
Contrary to a later persistent misconception, Nietzsche aroused suspicion on the nationalist Right at the end of the nineteenth century. According to Thomas, this was because Nietzsche mocked many things German, (which offended the pan-Germanists), was generally contemptuous of politics, had no enthusiasm for nationalism, and fell out with the composer Richard Wagner, a fervent and anti-Semitic German nationalist.
Nietzsche's vitalist concepts and naturalist vocabulary may account for his early support on the European Left and for his later popularity on the non-Christian Right. Nietzsche's emphases on will and his affirmation of an ethic of creativity have had diverse appeal. In his concise work, Helmut Pfotenhauer assesses Nietzsche's legacy from the point of view of physiology, a term with a naturalistic connotation. This word appears frequently in Nietzsche's work in the phrase Kunst als Physiologie, art as physiology.
The great French writer Balzac, who coined the phrase "physiology of marriage," said about this neologism: "Physiology was formerly the science dealing with the mechanism of the coccyx, the progress of the fetus, or the life of the tapeworm. Today physiology is the art of speaking and writing incorrectly about anything." In the nineteenth century the term physiology was associated with a type of popular literature such as the garrulous serials in daily newspapers. Physiology was intended to classify the main features of daily life. Thus there was a physiology of the stroller or of the English tourist pacing up and down Paris boulevards. In that sense physiology has some limited relationship to the zoological classifications of Buffon or Linnaeas. In his Comedie humaine, Balzac draws a parallel between the animal world and human society. "Political zoology" is used by various nineteenth-century writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Edgar Allen Poe. Nietzsche was aware of the literary and scientific usage of physiology. He noted that the physiological style was invading universities and that the vocabulary of his time was embellished with terms drawn from biology. One wonders why Nietzsche resorted to the term physiology when he believed that it was often used carelessly.
In Pfotenhauer's view, Nietzsche had no intention of giving respectability to the pseudoscientific or pseudo-aesthetic excesses of the "physiologists" of his day. His intention, as interpreted by Pfotenhauer, was to challenge an established form of aesthetics. He constructed the expression "physiology of the art," insofar as the arts were conventionally approached as mere objects of contemplation. From Nietzsche's perspective, artistic productivity is an expression of our nature and ultimately of Nature itself. Through art, Nature becomes more active within us.
By using the term physiology Nietzsche was making a didactic point. He celebrated the exuberance of vital forces, while frowning on any attempt to neutralize the vital processes by giving a value to the average. In other words, Nietzsche rejected those sciences that limited their investigations to the averages, excluding the singular and exceptional. Nietzsche though that Charles Darwin, by limiting himself to broad classes in his biology, favoured the generic without focussing on the exceptional individual. Nietzsche saw physiology as a tool to do for the individual confronting existential questions what Darwin had accomplished as a classifier of entire phyla and species. He attempted to analyse clinically the struggle of superior individuals for self-fulfilment in a world without inherent metaphysical meaning.
"God is dead" is an aphorism identified with Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that, together with God, all important ontological and metaphysical systems had died. Only the innocence of human destiny remained, and he did
not want it to be frozen in some "superior unity of being." Recognizing the reign of destiny, he thought, involved certain risks. In the river of changing life, creative geniuses run the risk of drowning, of being only fragmentary and contingent moments. How can anyone gladly say "yes" to life without an assurance that his achievements will be preserved, not simply yielded to the natural rhythms of destiny? Perhaps the query of Silene to King Midas is well-established. "Is this fleeting life worth being lived? Would it not have been better had we not been born?" Would it not be ideal to die as quickly as possible?
These questions pick up the theme of Arthur Schopenhauer, the famous philosopher of pessimism. The hatred of life that flowed from Schopenhauer's pessimism was unsatisfactory to Nietzsche. He believed that in an age of spiritual confusion the first necessity was to affirm life itself. This is the meaning of "the transvaluations of all values" as understood by Pfotenhauer. Nietzsche's teachings about the will were intended to accomplish the task of reconstructing values. The creative exercise of will was both an object of knowledge and an attitude of the knowing subject. The vital processes were to be perceived from the point of view of constant creativity.
Though the abundance of creative energy, man can assume divine characteristics. The one who embraces his own destiny without any resentment or hesitation turns himself into an embodiment of that destiny. Life should express itself in all its mobility and fluctuation, immobilizing or freezing it into a system was an assault on creativity. The destiny that Nietzsche urged his readers to embrace was to be a source of creative growth. The philosopher was a "full-scale artist" who organized the world in the face of chaos and spiritual decline. Nietzsche's use of physiology was an attempt to endow vital processes with an appropriate language. Physiology expressed the intended balance between Nature and mere rationality.
Myth, for Nietzsche, had no ethnological point of reference. It was, says Pfotenhauer, the "science of the concrete" and the expression of the tragedy resulting from the confrontation between man's physical fragility (Hinfalligkeit) and his heroic possibilities. Resorting to myth was not a lapse into folk superstition, as the rationalists believed it to be. It was moderately an attempt to see man's place within Nature.
Pfotenhauer systematically explored the content of Nietzsche's library, finding "vitalist" arguments drawn from popular treatments of science. The themes that riveted Nietzsche's attention were: Adaptation, the increase of potential within the same living species, references to vital forces, corrective eugenics, and spontaneous generation. Nietzsche's ideas were drawn from the scientific or parascientific speculations of his time and from literary, cultural, and artistic tracts. He criticized the imitative classicism of some French authors and praised the profuse style of the Baroque. In the philosopher's eyes, the creativity of genius and rich personalities had more value than mere elegant conversation. Uncertainty, associated with the ceaseless production of life, meant more to him than the search for certainty, which always implied a static perfection. On the basis of this passion for spiritual adventure he founded a "new hierarchization of values." The man who internalized the search for spiritual adventure anticipated the "superman," about whom so much has been said. Pfotenhauer's Nietzsche is made to represent the position that the creative man allies himself with the power of vital impulse against stagnant ideas, accepting destiny's countless differences and despising limitations. Nietzschean man does not react with anguish in the face of fated change.
Nietzsche had no desire to inaugurate a worry-free era. Instead, he responded to the symptoms of a declining Christian culture by criticizing society from the standpoint of creative and heroic fatalism. This criticism, which refuses to accept the world as it is, claims to be formative and affirmative: it represents a will to create new forms of existence. Nietzsche substituted an innovative criticism affirming destiny for an older classical view based on fixed concepts. Nietzsche's criticism does not include an irrational return to a historic and unformed existence. Nietzsche, as presented by Pfotenhauer, constructs his own physiology of man's nature as a creative being.
To begin with, there are some obvious general parallels between Nietzsche and Sartre that few commentators would wish to dispute. Both are vehement atheists who resolutely face up to the fact that the cosmos has no inherent meaning or purpose. Unlike several other thinkers, they do not even try to replace the dead God of Christian theology with talk of Absolute Spirit or Being. In one of only two brief references to Nietzsche in Being and Nothingness, Sartre upholds his rejection of "the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene”; That is, the notion that there is a Platonic true world of noumenal being which stand behind becoming and reduces phenomena to the status of mere illusion or appearance. Both thinkers also insist that it be human beings who create moral values and attempt to give meaning to life. Sartre speaks ironically of the "serious" men who think that values have an absolute objective existence, while Nietzsche regards people who passively accept the values they have been taught as sheep-like members of the herd.
When we attempt a deeper explanation of the ultimate source of values, the relationship between Sartre and Nietzsche becomes more problematic. Nietzsche says that out of a nation (or people’s) tablet of good and evil speaks "the voice of their will to power.” For Sartre, the values that we adopt or posits are part of our fundamental project, which is to achieve justified being and become in-itself-for-itself. It appears, therefore, that both thinkers regard man as an essentially Faustian striver, and that grouping Sartre with Nietzsche as a proponent of would not be unfair "will to power.” Clearly, Sartre would object to such a Nietzschean characterization of his existential psychoanalysis. In Being and Nothingness he rejects all theories that attempt to explain individual behaviour in terms of general substantive drives, and he is particularly critical of such notions as the libido and the will to power. Sartre insists that these are not psycho-biological entities, but original projects like any other that the individual can negate through his or her freedom. He denies that striving for power is a general characteristic of human beings, denies the existence of any opaque and permanent will-entity within consciousness, and even denies that human beings have any fixed nature or essence.
However, Sartre's criticisms of the will to power are only applicable to popular misunderstandings of Nietzsche's thought. Like the for-itself, Nietzsche's "will" should not be regarded as a substantive entity. Although it is derived from the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer and is sometimes spoken of in ways that invite ontologizing, Nietzsche's conception of the will is predominantly adjectival and phenomenological. Its status is similar to that of Sartre's for-itself, which should not be considered a metaphysical entity even though it is a remote descendent of the "thinking substance" of Descartes. Thus, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche criticizes the unjustified metaphysical assumptions that are bound up with the Cartesian "In think" and the Schopenhauerian "In will" he says that "willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only as a word.” Although there are passages in the writings of both Sartre and Nietzsche that can be interpreted metaphysically if taken out of context, regarding is better "nothingness" and "will" as alternate adjectival descriptions of our being.
Although Nietzsche's use of the word "power" invites misunderstanding, he clearly uses the term in a broad sense and has a sophisticated conception of power. Nietzsche is not claiming that everyone really wants political power or dominion over other people. Nietzsche describes philosophy as "the most spiritual will to power," and regards the artist as a higher embodiment of the will to power than either the politician or the conqueror. Through his theory Nietzsche can account for a wide variety of human behaviour without being reductionist. Thus, a follower may subordinate himself to a leader or group to feel empowered, and even the perverse or negative behaviour of the ascetic priest or embittered moralist can be accounted for in terms of the will to power.
Nietzsche speaks of "power" in reaction to the 19th century moral theorists who insisted that men strive for utility or pleasure. The connotations of "power" are broader and richer, suggesting that a human being is more than a calculative "economic man" whose desires could be satisfied with the utopian comforts of a Brave New World. Nietzsche's meaning could also be brought out by speaking of a will toward a self-realization, (one of his favourite mottoes was "Become what you are!") or, by thinking of "power" as a psychic energy or potentiality whose possession "empowers" us to aspire, strive, and create.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre presents himself as the discoverer of the full scope of human freedom, contrasting his seemingly open and indeterminate conception of human possibilities with a psychological and philosophical tradition that limits human nature by positing "opaque" drives and goals and insisting on their universality. Such an image of Sartre is widely held, although his insistence that consciousness strives to become in-itself-for-it gives his view of man of the greater determinatives, than a cursory glance at some of his philosophical rhetoric and literary works would suggest. For this reason, Sartre can profitably be related to other theorists who argue that man is motivated by a unitary force or strives for a single goal.
When evaluating such theories, the really essential distinction is between those that are open, inclusive and empirically indeterminate, and those that are narrow and reductionist. This could be illustrated by comparing the narrow utilitarianism of Bentham to Mill's broader development of the theory, or by contrasting Freud and Jung's conception of the libido. While Freud was resolutely reductionist and insisted that "the name of libido be properly reserved for the instinctual forces of sexual life," Jung broadened the term to refer to all manifestations of instinctual psychic energy. Thus, Sartre appears revolutionary when he contrasts him with Freud although he cannot legitimately claim that his view of man is more open or less reductionist than that of Nietzsche. Most likely, Sartre and many of his commentators would take issue with the above conclusion, and from a certain perspective their criticisms are justified. Unlike Nietzsche, Sartre is intent on upholding man's absolute freedom, rejecting the influence of instinct, denying the existence of unconscious psychic forces, and portraying consciousness as a nothingness that has no essence. In comparison even with other non-reductionist views of man, then, it would seem that the radical nature of Sartre's thought is unmatched.
However, in a more fundamental respect Sartre's ontology limits human possibilities by: (1) declaring that consciousness is a lack that is doomed to strive for fulfilment and justification vainly, and by (2) accepting important parts of the Platonic view of becoming as ontologically given rather than merely as aspects of his own original project. It is in this way that Sartre's philosophy becomes shipwrecked on reefs that Nietzsche manages to avoid.
For Sartre, "the for-it is defined ontologically as a lack of being," and "freedom is really synonymous with lack.” 6 Along with Plato he equates desire with a lack of being, but in contrast with Hegel he arrives at the pessimistic conclusion that "human reality therefore is by nature an unhappy consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state.” In other words, the human condition is basically Sisyphean, for man is condemned to strive to fill his inner emptiness but is incapable of achieving justified being. This desire to become in-self-for-it, which Sartre also refers to as the project of being God, is said to define man and come "close to being the same as a human `nature' or an `essence'".8 Sartre tries to reconcile this universal project with freedom by claiming that our wish to be in-it-for-itself determines only the meaning of human desire but does not constitute it empirically. However such freedom is tainted, for no matter what we do empirically we can . . . neither avoid futile striving nor achieve an authentic sense of satisfaction, plenitude, joy, or fulfilment.
In Part Four of Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes how consciousness endeavours to create for its lack of being by striving to acquire and acknowledge the world. With the apparent reductionistic vehemence, he explains a variety of human behaviour in terms of the insatiable desire to consume, acquire, dominate, violate, and destroy. Sartre says that knowledge and discovery are appropriative enjoyments, and he characterizes the scientist as a sort of intellectual peeping Tom who wants to strip away the veils of nature and deflower her with his Look. Similarly, He says that the artist wants to produce substantive being that exists through him, and that the skier seeks to possess the field of snow and conquer the slope. Thus art, science, and play are all activities of appropriation, which either wholly or in part seek to possess the absolute being of the in-itself. Destruction is also an appropriative function. Sartre says that "a gift is a primitive form of destruction," describes giving as "a keen, brief enjoyment, almost sexual," and declares that "to give is to enslave.” He even interprets smoking as "the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world.”
Aside from the sweeping and one-sided nature of Sartre's claims, the most striking aspect of this section is the negativity of its account of human beings. Not only are we condemned to dissatisfaction, but some of our noblest endeavours are unmasked as pointless appropriation and destruction. One is reminded not of Nietzsche's will to power, but of Heidegger's scathing criticism of the "will to power" (interpreted popularly) as the underlying metaphysics of our era that embodies all that is most despicable about modernity. For Heidegger, it is such an insatiable will that occurs of an embodied quest to subjugate nature, mechanize the world, and enjoy ever-increasing material progress.
However, while Sartre speaks of consciousness as nothingness or a lack - a sort of black hole in being which can never be filled - Nietzsche associates’ man's being with positivity and plenitude. His preferred metaphor for the human essence be the will - an active image that allows striving and creativity to be reconciled with plenitude. It enables him to see activity and desire as a positive aspect of our nature, rather than a comparatively desperate attempt to fill the hole at the heart of our being. For Nietzsche, all that proceeds from weakness, sickness, inferiority, or lack is considered reactive and resentful, while that which proceeds from health, strength, or plenitude is characterized in positive terms. For instance, at the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra he likens Zarathustra to a full cup wanting to overflow and to the sun that gives its light out of plenitude and superabundance. Later, he contrasts the generosity of the gift-giving virtue with the all-too-poor and hungry selfishness of the sick, which greedily "sizes up those who have much to eat" and always "sneaks around the table of those who give.”
An even sharper contrast can be drawn between Nietzsche and Sartre's attitudes toward Platonism. While both reject the transcendent realm of perfect forms, Sartre fails to realize that a denial of the truth-value of Platonic metaphysics without a corresponding rejection of Platonic aspirations and attitudes can only lead to pessimism and resentment against being. The inadequacy and incompleteness of Sartre's break with Platonism can be brought out by examining it in terms of William James conception of the common nucleus of religion. James says that the religious attitude fundamentally involves (1) "an uneasiness" or, the "sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand," and (2) "its solution.” Sartre vehemently rejects all religious and metaphysical "solutions," but he accepts the notion that there is ‘an essential wrongness’ or, lack in being. Not only does he regard consciousness as a lack, but in Nausea, Sartre condemns the wrongness of nature and other people in terms that are both Platonic and resentful
Just as Plato admired the mathematical orderliness of music and looked down upon nature as a fluctuating and imperfect copy of the forms, the central contrast of Nausea is between the sharp, precise, inflexible order of a jazz song, and the lack of order and purpose of a chestnut tree. Roquentin enjoys virtually his only moments of joy in the novel while listening to the jazz, but experiences his deepest nausea while sitting beneath the tree. He regards its root as a "black, knotty mass, entirely beastly," speaks of the abundance of nature as "dismal, ailing, embarrassed at itself," and asks "what good are so many duplications of trees?".Nothing could be a more striking blasphemy against nature. Trees are one of the most venerable and life-giving of all organic beings, providing us with oxygen and shade. Many ancient peoples regarded trees as sacred, and enlightenment (from the insight of the Buddha to Newton's discovery of gravitation) is often pictured as coming while sitting under a tree. Roquentin too, experiences a sort of negative epiphany while he is beneath the chestnut tree. He concludes that "every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance".18 In contrast to the pointlessness of the tree and other existing organic beings, Sartre says that a perfect circle is not absurd because "it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities.” In such a Platonic spirit, he reflects:
If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenities were concerned. In another world, circles, bars of music keep their pure and rigid lines.
In Nausea, Sartre reveals a contempt for human beings that surpasses his contempt for nature and even rivals the misanthropy of Schopenhauer. He particularly despises the organic, biological aspect of our nature. He speaks of living creatures as "flabby masses which move spontaneously," and seems to have a particular aversion for fleshy, overweight people. He mocks at "the fat, pale crowd," describes a bourgeois worthy in the Bouville gallery as "defenceless, bloated, slobbering, vaguely obscene," and recalls a "terrible heat wave that turned men into pools of melting fat.” Sartre also feels that people are somehow diminished while eating. Roquentin is glad when the Self-Taught Man is served his dinner for "his soul leaves his eyes, and he docilely begins to eat.” Hugo thinks that Olga offers him food because "it keeps the other person at a distance," and "when a man is eating, he seems harmless.” Sartre also takes a negative view of sensuality. Roquentin says of young lovers in a café that they make him a little sick, and his account of sex with the patronne includes the fact that "she disgusts me a little" and that his arm went to sleep while playing "distractedly with her sex under the cover.” Perhaps his attitude toward sensuality is most uncharitably manifested when he thinks of a woman that he once show had been dining, remembering her as, a "fat, hot, sensual, absurd, with red ears," and imagines her now somewhere - in the midst of smells? - this soft throat rubbing up luxuriously against smooth stuffs, nestling in lace, and the woman picturing her bosom under her blouse, thinking "My titties, my lovely fruits."
Throughout Nausea the narrator's attitude toward people is uncharitable, judgemental, and resentful. Like the tolerably hostile Other of Being and Nothingness, Roquentin transcends and objectifies other people with his Look. He sits in cafes observing and passing judgement on people, and seems particularly to enjoy dehumanizing others by focussing on their unattractive physical features. He sees one fellow as a moustache beneath "enormous nostrils that could pump air for a whole family and that eat up half his face," while another person is described as "a young man with a face like a dog.” He treats the Self-Taught Man (whom Sartre uses to caricature humanism) coldly and condescendingly and does not even deem him worthy of a proper name. His attitude toward the eminent bourgeois portrayed in the Bouville gallery is an almost classic example of ressentiment. While looking at their portraits, he felt that their "judgement went through (him) like a sword and questioned (his) very right to exist" Like Hugo in Dirty Hands, he senses the emptiness of his own existence and feels inadequate and abnormal before the Look of purposeful and self-confident others who unreflectively feel that they have a right to exist. However, he manages to transcend their looks by concentrating on their bodily weaknesses and all-too-human faults. Thus, he overcomes one dead worthy by focussing on his "thin mouth of a dead snake" and pale, round, flabby checks, and he puts a reactionary politician in his place by recalling that the man was only five feet tall, had a squeaking voice, was accused of putting rubber lifts in his shoes, and had a wife who looked like a horse. Roquentin hates the bourgeois, but for him virtually all the people of Bouville are bourgeois:
Idiots. Thinking that In am going to see they are thick is repugnant to me, self-satisfied faces. They make laws, they write popular novels, they get married, they are fools enough to have children. Although Sartre is more insightful than the unreflective and self-satisfied "normal" people whom he judges so uncharitably, he seems unaware that his own thought fails to escape the ancient reefs of Platonism and metaphysical pessimism. Even the upbeat ending of Nausea is comparatively tentative and half-hearted, and does not question or overturn any of the ontological views expressed earlier in the book.
On the other hand, although Nietzsche shares many of the same philosophical premises as Sartre, his view of life and nature is much less bleak because he thoroughly rejects the Platonic world-view and all metaphysical forms of pessimism. First, throughout his writings Nietzsche vehemently opposes the Platonic prejudice that puts being above becoming, idealizes rationality and purpose, and despises the disorderly flux of nature and the organic and animalistic aspects of the body. He admires Heraclitus rather than Parmenides, denies that there is any "eternal spider or spider web of reason," and declares "over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness.” Unlike Sartre, he had a high regard for the vital, superabundant, and non-rational aspect of nature, and loved music for its ability to express emotional depths and Dionysian ecstasy rather than as an embodiment of reason, order, or precision.
In response to Schopenhauer and several religious traditions, Nietzsche refutes metaphysical pessimism. He denies that life or nature is essentially lacking or evil, or that any negative evaluation of being as a whole could possess truth-value. This is in keeping with his sceptical position, which denies that the thing-in-itself is knowable and insists that all philosophical systems reflect the subjectivity of their author and are "a kind of involuntary and incognizant memoir.” If Nietzsche were to speak in the language of Being and Nothingness, he would insist that the desire to achieve the complete and justified being of the in-itself-for-itself be simply Sartre's original project, not an ontological given that condemns every person to unhappy consciousness.
One of the central themes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the overcoming of pessimism and despair through the will. Zarathustra says that "my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing discharges, that which is the true teaching of will and liberty.” At the end of `The Tomb Song,' he turns to his will to overcome despair, referring it as something invulnerable and unburiable that can redeem his youth and shatter tombs. Although the will to power is often associated with striving for the overman (not to mention those who wrongly link it with domination and conquest), it is also essential to such Nietzschean themes as amor fati, eternal recurrence, and the affirmation of life. In order to affirm his existence, Zarathustra says that he must redeem the past by transforming "the will's ill will against time, as it was" into a creative "But thus In will it; Thus shall In will it" It is out of such reflections that the project of embracing eternal recurrence emerges.
In keeping with his desire to affirm life, Nietzsche's attitude toward other people is more charitable and less negative than that of Roquentin and many of Sartre's other literary heroes. Admittedly, Nietzsche makes many nasty remarks about historical figures, but these are often balanced by corresponding positive observations, and most of his polemical fury is directed against ideas, dogmas, and institutions rather than individuals. For instance, Zarathustra says of priests that "though they are my enemies, pass by them silently with sleeping swords. Among them too there are heroes.” While some of his comments on the rabble are comparable to Sartre's comments on the bourgeois, Zarathustra also criticizes his "ape" who sits outside a great city and vengefully denounces its inhabitants, for "where one can no longer love, there must be, at least of One by which should pass.”
God is dead. The terror with which this event - and he did call it an event - filled Nietzsche is hardly understood any more. Yet to that latecomer in a long line of theologians and believers it meant the disapperance of meaning from the sentiment of life. This, as Nietzsche feared, pointed the way to nihilism. “A nihilist,” he wrote, “is a person who says of the world as it is, that it better were not, and, with regard to the world as it should be, that it does not and cannot exist.” And it does not exist because God is no more. Therefore, there cannot be any belief in a beyond, an ineffable life beyond the grave, not even in the possibility of that “godless” peace of Buddha and Schopenhauer that is indistinguishable from the peace of God and attainable only through the overcoming of all worldly desires and aspirations.
Nihilism, Nietzsche believes, is the fate of all religious traditions if along the road their fundamental assumptions are lost. This, according to him, is so with Judaism because of its all-persuasive “Thou shalt not” that, in the long run, can be accepted and obeyed only within a rigorously disciplined community of the faithful; and it is so with Christianity, not only because it was, to a large extent, heir to the Jewish moralism but, at the same time, tended to judge the whole domain of the natural to be a conspiracy against the divine spirit. For the Christian, the Here and Now with its deceptive promises of happiness - all of which promise, when it comes to it, an inevitable loss, and with its illusions of achievement, all of which conceal for a while the imminence of failure - is nothing but the testing ground for the soul to prove that it deserves the bliss of the Beyond. Nietzsche, like many before him, is philosophically outraged by this doctrine that conceives of Eternity as, at some point, taking over from Time, projecting it into endlessness, and of Time for being an outsider to the Eternity and, after the death of God, forever an exile from it. Everything, therefore, exists only for a while in its individual articulation and then never more. From this void, the black hole, there arises Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. It is to cure time of its mortal disease, its terminal destructiveness.
Of those modern thinkers who resolutely face the fact that God is dead and the universe contains no inherent meaning or purpose, and Sartre and Nietzsche follow among the most important. However, although they begin from nearly similar premises, Sartre is both less radical and less life-affirming of a thinker than Nietzsche. It is particularly ironic that he puts so much emphasis on freedom, and yet refuses to grant consciousness the power to overcome its insatiable yearning to be in-itself-for-itself, and fails to question his own Platonic prejudices against nature and becoming. Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’, did not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘existence’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche’s earlier versions to the ‘will to truth’, disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he concluded it, was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists’ ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. “Science,” he said, “is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favoured reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of Phenomenology, wherefor to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
Husserl and Martin Heidegger, were both influential figures of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach’s critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, “relativistic” notions.
In quantum field theory, potential vibrations at each point in the four fields are capable of manifesting themselves in their complemtarity, their expression as individual particles. And the interactions of the fields result from the exchange of quanta that are carriers of the fields. The carriers of the field, known as messenger quanta, are the ‘coloured’ gluons for the strong-binding-force, of which the photon for electromagnetism, the intermediate boson for the weak force, and the graviton or gravitation. If we could re-create the energies present in the fist trillionths of trillionths of a second in the life of the universe, these four fields would, according to quantum field theory, become one fundamental field.
The movement toward a unified theory has evolved progressively from super-symmetry to super-gravity to string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectories of particles, illustrated in the Feynman lectures, seem as if, in at all were possible, are replaced by the two-dimensional orbits of a string. In addition to introducing the extra dimension, represented by a smaller diameter of the string, string theory also features another mall but non-zero constant, with which is analogous to Planck’s quantum of action. Since the value of the constant is quite small, it can be generally ignored but at extremely small dimensions. But since the constant, like Planck’s constant is not zero, this results in departures from ordinary quantum field theory in very small dimensions.
Part of what makes string theory attractive is that it eliminates, or ‘transforms away’, the inherent infinities found in the quantum theory of gravity. And if the predictions of this theory are proven valid in repeatable experiments under controlled conditions, it could allow gravity to be unified with the other three fundamental interactions. But even if string theory leads to this grand unification, it will not alter our understanding of ave-particle duality. While the success of the theory would reinforce our view of the universe as a unified dynamic process, it applies to very small dimensions, and therefore, does not alter our view of wave-particle duality.
While the formalism of quantum physics predicts that correlations between particles over space-like inseparability, of which are possible, it can say nothing about what this strange new relationship between parts (quanta) and the whole (cosmos) cause to result outside this formalism. This does not, however, prevent us from considering the implications in philosophical terms. As the philosopher of science Errol Harris noted in thinking about the special character of wholeness in modern physics, a unity without internal content is a blank or empty set and is not recognizable as a whole. A collection of merely externally related parts does not constitute a whole in that the parts will not be “mutually adaptive and complementary to one-another.”
Wholeness requires a complementary relationship between unity and difference and is governed by a principle of organization determining the interrelationship between parts. This organizing principle must be universal to a genuine whole and implicit in all parts constituting the whole, even the whole is exemplified only in its parts. This principle of order, Harris continued, “is nothing really in and of itself. It is the way he parts are organized, and another constituent additional to those that constitute the totality.”
In a genuine whole, the relationship between the constituent parts must be “internal or immanent” in the parts, as opposed to a more spurious whole in which parts appear to disclose wholeness dur to relationships that are external to the arts. The collection of parts that would allegedly constitute the whole in classical physics is an example of a spurious whole. Parts continue a genuine whole when the universal principle of order is inside the parts and hereby adjusts each to all so that they interlock and become mutually complementary. This not only describes the character of the whole revealed in both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. It is also consistent with the manner in which we have begun to understand the relations between parts and whole in modern biology.
Modern physics also reveals, claimed Harris, complementary relationship between the differences between parts that constitute and the universal ordering principle that are immanent in each part. While the whole cannot be finally disclosed in the analysis of the parts, the study of the differences between parts provides insights into the dynamic structure of the whole present in each part. The part can never, however, be finally isolated from the web of relationships that discloses the interconnections with the whole, and any attempt to do so results in ambiguity.
Much of the ambiguity in attempts to explain the character of wholes in both physics and biology derives from the assumption that order exists between or outside parts. Yet order in complementary relationships between difference and sameness in any physical event is never external to that event, and the cognations are immanent in the event. From this perspective, the addition of non-locality to this picture of the distributive constitution in dynamic function of wholeness is not surprising. The relationships between part, as quantum event apparent in observation or measurement, and the undissectable whole, calculate on in but are not described by the instantaneous correlations between measurements in space-like separate regions, is another extension of the part-whole complementarity in modern physics.
If the universe is a seamlessly interactive system that evolves to higher levels of complex and complicating regularities of which ae lawfully emergent in property of systems, we can assume that the cosmos is a single significant whole that evinces progressive order in complementary relations to its parts. Given that this whole exists in some sense within all parts (quanta), one can then argue that in operates in self-reflective fashion and is the ground from all emergent plexuities. Since human consciousness evinces self-reflective awareness in te human brain (well protected between the cranium walls) and since this brain, like all physical phenomena, can be viewed as an emergent property of the whole, it is unreasonable to conclude, in philosophical terms at least, that the universe is conscious.
Nevertheless, since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite laterally, beyond all human representation or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe be a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptual representation of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, if one does not accept this view of the universe, there is noting in the scientific description of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole, which has long been understood as foundation of religious experiences, but can be dismissed, undermined, or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge.
While we have consistently tried to distinguish between scientific knowledge and philosophical speculation based on this of what is obtainable, let us be quite clear on one point - there is no empirically valid causal linkage between the former and the latter. Those who wish to dismiss the speculative base on which is obviously free to do as done. However, there is another conclusion to be drawn, in that is firmly grounded in scientific theory and experiment there is no basis in the scientific descriptions of nature for believing in the radical Cartesian division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics. Clearly, his radical separation between mind and world was a macro-level illusion fostered by limited awareness of the actual character of physical reality nd by mathematical idealizations extended beyond the realms of their applicability.
Nevertheless, the philosophical implications might prove in themselves as a criterial motive in debative consideration to how our proposed new understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physical reality might affect the manner in which we deal with some major real-world problems. This will issue to demonstrate why a timely resolution of these problems is critically dependent on a renewed dialogue between members of the cultures of human-social scientists and scientist-engineers. We will also argue that the resolution of these problems could be dependent on a renewed dialogue between science and religion.
As many scholars have demonstrated, the classical paradigm in physics has greatly influenced and conditioned our understanding and management of human systems in economic and political realities. Virtually all models of these realities treat human systems as if they consist of atomized units or parts that interact with one another in terms of laws or forces external to or between the parts. These systems are also viewed as hermetic or closed and, thus, its discreteness, separateness and distinction.
Consider, for example, how the classical paradigm influenced or thinking about economic reality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the founders of classical economics - figures like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus conceived of the economy as a closed system in which intersections between parts (consumer, produces, distributors, etc.) are controlled by forces external to the parts (supply and demand). The central legitimating principle of free market economics, formulated by Adam Smith, is that lawful or law-like forces external to the individual units function as an invisible hand. This invisible hand, said Smith, frees the units to pursue their best interests, moves the economy forward, and in general legislates the behaviour of parts in the best vantages of the whole. (The resemblance between the invisible hand and Newton’s universal law of gravity and between the relations of parts and wholes in classical economics and classical physics should be transparent.)
After roughly 1830, economists shifted the focus to the properties of the invisible hand in the interactions between parts using mathematical models. Within these models, the behaviour of parts in the economy is assumed to be analogous to the awful interactions between pats in classical mechanics. It is, therefore, not surprising that differential calculus was employed to represent economic change in a virtual world in terms of small or marginal shifts in consumption or production. The assumption was that the mathematical description of marginal shifts in the complex web of exchanges between parts (atomized units and quantities) and whole (closed economy) could reveal the lawful, or law-like, machinations of the closed economic system.
These models later became one of the fundamentals for microeconomics. Microeconomics seek to describe interactions between parts in exact quantifiable measures - such as marginal cost, marginal revenue, marginal utility, and growth of total revenue as indexed against individual units of output. In analogy with classical mechanics, the quantities are viewed as initial conditions that can serve to explain subsequent interactions between parts in the closed system in something like deterministic terms. The combination of classical macro-analysis with micro-analysis resulted in what Thorstein Veblen in 1900 termed neoclassical economics - the model for understanding economic reality that is widely used today.
Beginning in the 1939s, the challenge became to subsume the understanding of the interactions between parts in closed economic systems with more sophisticated mathematical models using devices like linear programming, game theory, and new statistical techniques. In spite of the growing mathematical sophistication, these models are based on the same assumptions from classical physics featured in previous neoclassical economic theory - with one exception. They also appeal to the assumption that systems exist in equilibrium or in perturbations from equilibria, and they seek to describe the state of the closed economic system in these terms.
One could argue that the fact that our economic models are assumptions from classical mechanics is not a problem by appealing to the two-domain distinction between micro-level macro-level processes expatiated upon earlier. Since classical mechanic serves us well in our dealings with macro-level phenomena in situations where the speed of light is so large and the quantum of action is so small as to be safely ignored for practical purposes, economic theories based on assumptions from classical mechanics should serve us well in dealing with the macro-level behaviour of economic systems.
The obvious problem, . . . acceded peripherally, . . . nature is relucent to operate in accordance with these assumptions, in that the biosphere, the interaction between parts be intimately related to the whole, no collection of arts is isolated from the whole, and the ability of the whole to regulate the relative abundance of atmospheric gases suggests that the whole of the biota appear to display emergent properties that are more than the sum of its parts. What the current ecological crisis reveal in the abstract virtual world of neoclassical economic theory. The real economies are all human activities associated with the production, distribution, and exchange of tangible goods and commodities and the consumption and use of natural resources, such as arable land and water. Although expanding economic systems in the real economy are obviously embedded in a web of relationships with the entire biosphere, our measure of healthy economic systems disguises this fact very nicely. Consider, for example, the healthy economic system written in 1996 by Frederick Hu, head of the competitive research team for the World Economic Forum - short of military conquest, economic growth is the only viable means for a country to sustain increases in natural living standards . . . An economy is internationally competitive if it performs strongly in three general areas: Abundant productive ideas from capital, labour, infrastructure and technology, optimal economic policies such as low taxes, little interference, free trade and sound market institutions. Such as the rule of law and protection of property rights.
The prescription for medium-term growth of economies in countries like Russia, Brazil, and China may seem utterly pragmatic and quite sound. But the virtual economy described is a closed and hermetically sealed system in which the invisible hand of economic forces allegedly results in a health growth economy if impediments to its operation are removed or minimized. It is, of course, often trued that such prescriptions can have the desired results in terms of increases in living standards, and Russia, Brazil and China are seeking to implement them in various ways.
In the real economy, however, these systems are clearly not closed or hermetically sealed: Russia uses carbon-based fuels in production facilities that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming: Brazil is in the process of destroying a rain forest that is critical to species diversity and the maintenance of a relative abundance of atmospheric gases that regulate Earth temperature, and China is seeking to build a first-world economy based on highly polluting old-world industrial plants that burn soft coal. Not to forget, . . . the virtual economic systems that the world now seems to regard as the best example of the benefits that can be derived form the workings of the invisible hand, that of the United States, operates in the real economy as one of the primary contributors to the ecological crisis.
In “Consilience,” Edward O. Wilson makes to comment, the case that effective and timely solutions to the problem threatening human survival is critically dependent on something like a global revolution in ethical thought and behaviour. But his view of the basis for this revolution is quite different from our own. Wilson claimed that since the foundations for moral reasoning evolved in what he termed ‘gene-culture’ evolution, the rules of ethical behaviour re emergent aspects of our genetic inheritance. Based on the assumptions that the behaviour of contemporary hunter-gatherers resembles that of our hunter-gatherers forebears in the Palaeolithic Era, he drew on accounts of Bushman hunter-gatherers living in the centre Kalahari in an effort to demonstrate that ethical behaviour is associated with instincts like bonding, cooperation, and altruism.
Wilson argued that these instincts evolved in our hunter-gatherer accessorial descendabilities, whereby genetic mutation and the ethical behaviour associated with these genetically based instincts provided a survival advantage. He then claimed that since these genes were passed on to subsequent generations of our descendable characteristics, which eventually became pervasive in the human genome, the ethical dimension of human nature has a genetic foundation. When we fully understand the “innate epigenetic rules of moral reasoning,” it seems probable that the rules will probably turn out to be an ensemble of many algorithms whose interlocking activities guide the mind across a landscape of nuances moods and choices.
Any reasonable attempt to lay a firm foundation beneath the quagmire of human ethics in all of its myriad and often contradictory formulations is admirable, and Wilson’s attempt is more admirable than most. In our view, however, there is little or no prospect that it will prove successful for a number of reasons. Wile te probability for us to discover some linkage between genes and behaviour, seems that the lightened path of human ethical behaviour and ranging advantages of this behaviour is far too complex, not o mention, inconsistently been reduced to a given set classification of “epigenetic ruled of moral reasoning.”
Also, moral codes and recoding may derive in part from instincts that confer a survival advantage, but when we are the examine to these codes, it also seems clear that they are primarily cultural products. This explains why ethical systems are constructed in a bewildering variety of ways in different cultural contexts and why they often sanction or legitimate quite different thoughts and behaviours. Let us not forget that rules f ethical behaviours are quite malleable and have been used sacredly to legitimate human activities such as slavery, colonial conquest, genocide and terrorism. As Cardinal Newman cryptically put it, “Oh how we hate one another for the love of God.”
According to Wilson, the “human mind evolved to believe in the gods” and people “need a sacred narrative” to his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world views of science and religion. “Science for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral and religiously sentient. The result of the competition between the two world views, is believed, as In, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Wilson obviously has a right to his opinions, and many will agree with him for their own good reasons, but what is most interesting about his thoughtful attempted is to posit a more universal basis for human ethics in that it s based on classical assumptions about the character of both physical and biological realities. While Wilson does not argue that human’s behaviour is genetically determined in the strict sense, however, he does allege that there is a causal linkage between genes and behaviour that largely condition this behaviour, he appears to be a firm believer in classical assumption that reductionism can uncover the lawful essences that principally govern the physical aspects that were attributed to reality, including those associated with the alleged “epigenetic rules of moral reasoning.”
Once, again, Wilson’s view is apparently nothing that cannot be reduced to scientific understandings or fully disclosed in scientific terms, and this apparency of hope for the future of humanity is that the triumph of scientific thought and method will allow us to achieve the Enlightenments ideal of disclosing the lawful regularities that govern or regulate all aspects of human experience. Hence, science will uncover the “bedrock of moral and religious sentiment, and the entire human epic will be mapped in the secular space of scientific formalism.” The intent is not to denigrate Wilson’s attentive efforts to posit a more universal basis for the human condition, but is to demonstrate that any attempt to understand or improve upon the behaviour based on appeals to outmoded classical assumptions is unrealistic and outmoded. If the human mind did, in fact, evolve in something like deterministic fashion in gene-culture evolution - and if there were, in fact, innate mechanisms in mind that are both lawful and benevolent. Wilson’s program for uncovering these mechanisms could have merit. But for all the reasons that have been posited, classical determinism cannot explain the human condition and its evolutionary principle that govern in their functional dynamics, as Darwinian evolution should be modified to acclimatize the complementary relationships between cultural and biological principles that governing evaluations do indeed have in them a strong, and firm grip upon genetical mutations that have attributively been the distribution in the contribution of human interactions with themselves in the finding to self-realizations and undivided wholeness.
Freud’s use of the word “superman” or “overman”in and of itself might indicate only a superficial familiarity with a popular term associated with Nietzsche. However, as Holmes has pointed out, Freud is discussing the holy, or saintly , and its relation to repression and the giving up of freedom of instinctual expression, central concerns of the third essay of on the Genealogy of Morals, ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals.’
Nietzsche writes of the anti-nature of the ascetic ideal, how it relates to a disgust with oneself, its continuing destructive effect upon the health of Europeans, and how it relates to the realm of ‘subterranean revenge’ and ressentiment. In addition, Nietzsche writes of the repression of instincts (though not specifically on impulses toward sexual perversions) and of their being turned inward against the self. Continuing, he wrote on the ‘instinct for freedom forcibly made latent . . . this instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed. In closing, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material: Zarathustra also speaks of most sacred, now he must find allusion caprice, even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey. The formulation as it pertains to sexual perversions and incest certainly does not derive from Nietzsche (although, along different lines incest was an important factor in Nietzsche’s understanding of Oedipus), the relating freedom was very possibly influenced by Nietzsche, particularly in light of Freud’s reference as the ‘holy’; as well as to the ‘overman’. As these of issues re explored in the Antichrist which had been published just two years earlier.
Nietzsche had written of sublimation, and he specifically wrote of sublimation of sexual drives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use of the term as differing somewhat from his later and more Nietzschean usage such as in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, but as Kaufmann notes, while ‘the word is older than either Freud or Nietzsche . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today’. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as the most important concepts in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy.
Of course it is difficult to determine whether or not Freud may have been recently reading Nietzsche or was consciously or unconsciously drawing on information he had come across some years earlier. It is also possible that Freud had recently of some time earlier, registered a limited resource of the Genealogy or other works. At a later time in his life Freud claimed he could not read more than a few passage s of Nietzsche due to being overwhelmed by the wealth of ideas. This claim might be supported by the fact that Freud demonstrates only a limited understanding of certain of Nietzsche’s concepts. For example, his reference to the ‘overman’, such in showing a lack of understanding of the self-overcoming and sublimation, not simply freely gratified primitive instincts. Later in life, Freud demonstrates a similar misunderstanding in his equation the overman with the tyrannical father of the primal horde. Perhaps Freud confused the overman with he ‘master’ whose morality is contrasted with that of ‘slave ‘ morality in the Genealogy and Beyond Good and Evil. The conquering master more freely gratifies instinct and affirms himself, his world and has values as good. The conquered slave, unable to express himself freely, creates negating, resentful, vengeful morality glorifying his own crippled. Alienated condition, and her crates a division not between goof (noble) and bad (Contemptible), but between good (undangerous) and evil (wicked and powerful - dangerous ness).
Much of what Rycroft writes is similar to, implicit in, or at least compatible with what we have seen of Nietzsche’s theoretical addresses as to say, as other materia that has been placed on the table fr consideration. Rycroft specifically states that h takes up ‘a position much nearer Groddeck’s [on the nature of the, “it” or, id] than Freud’s. He doesn’t mention that Freud was ware of Groddeck’s concept of the “it” and understood the term to be derived from Nietzsche. However, beyond ‘the process itself; as a consequence of grammatical habit - that the activity, ‘thinking’, requires an agent.
The self, as in its manifesting in constructing dreams, ma y be an aspect of our psychic live tat knows things that our waking “In” or ego may not know and may not wish to know, and a relationship ma y be developed between these aspects of our psychic lives in which the latter opens itself creatively to the communications of he former. Zarathustra states: ‘Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage - whose name is self. In your body he dwells, he is your body’. Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s self cannot be understood as a replacement for an all-knowing God to whom the “I-ness” or ego appeals for its wisdom, commandments, guidance and the like. To open oneself to another aspect of oneself that is wiser (an unknown sage) in the sense that new information can be derived from it, does not necessarily entail that this ‘wiser’ component of one’s psychic life has God-like knowledge and commandments which if one (one’s “I-nesses”) deciphers and opens correctly to will set one on the straight path. It is true though that when Nietzsche writes of the self as ‘a mighty ruler an unknown sage ‘ he does open himself to such an interpretation and even to the possibility that this ‘ruler’ is unreachable, unapproachable for the “I.” (Nietzsche/Zarathustra redeeming the body) and after “On the Despisers of he Body, makes it clear, that there are aspects of our psychic selves that interpret the body, that mediate its directives, ideally in ways that do not deny the body but aid in the body doing ‘what it would do above all else, to create beyond itself’.
Also the idea of a fully formed, even if the unconscious, ‘mighty ruler’ and ‘unknown sage ‘ as a true self beneath an only apparent surface is at odds with Nietzsche ‘s idea that there is no one true, stable, enduring self in and of itself, to be found once of the veil in appearance is removed. And even early in his career Nietzsche wrote sarcastically of ‘that cleverly discovered well of inspiration, the unconscious’. There is, though, a tension in Nietzsche between the notion of bodily-based drive is pressing for discharge (which can, among other things, (sublimated) and a more organized bodily-based self which may be ‘an unknown sage’ and in relation to which the “I-ness” may open to potential communications in the manner for which there is no such conception of self for which Freud and the dream is not produced with the intention of being understood.
Nietzsche explored the ideas of psychic energy and drives pressing for discharge. His discussion on sublimation typically implies an understanding of drives in just such a sense as does his idea that dreams provide for discharge of drives. Nonetheless, he did not relegate all that is derived from instinct and the body to this realm. While for Nietzsche there is no stable, enduring true self awaiting discovery and liberation, the body and the self (in the broadest sense of the term, including what is unconscious and may be at work in dreams as Rycroft describes it) may offer up potential communication and direct to the “I” or ego. However, at times Nietzsche describes the “I” or ego as having very little, if any, idea as to how it is being by the “it.”
Nietzsche, like Freud, describe of two types of mental possesses, on which ‘binds’ [man’s] life to reason its concepts, such of an order as not to be swept away by the current and to lose himself, the other, pertaining to the worlds of myth, art and the dream, ‘constantly showing the desire to shape the existing world of the wide-wake person to be variegatedly irregular and disinterested, incoherent, exciting and eternally new, as is the world of dreams’. Art may function as a ’middle sphere’ and ‘middle faculty’ (transitional sphere and faculty) between a more primitive ‘metaphor-world’ of impressions and the forms of uniform abstract concepts.
Again, Nietzsche, like Freud attempts to account for the function of consciousness in light of the new under stranding of conscious mental functioning. Nietzsche distinguishes between himself and ‘older philosophers’ who do not appreciate the significance of unconscious mental functioning, while Freud distinguishes the unconscious of philosophers and the unconscious of psychoanalysis. What is missing is the acknowledgement of Nietzsche as philosopher and psychologist whose idea as on unconscious mental functioning have very strong affinities with psychoanalysis, as Freud himself will mention on a number of other occasions. Neither here nor in his letters to Fliess which he mentions Lipps, nor in his later paper in which Lipp (the ‘German philosopher’) is acknowledged again, is Nietzsche mentioned when it comes to acknowledging in a specific and detailed manner as important forerunner of psychoanalysis. Although Freud will state on a number of occasions that Nietzsche’s insight are close to psychoanalysis, very rarely will he state any details regarding the similarities. He mentions a friend calling his attention to the notion of the criminal from a sense of guilt, a patient calling his attention to the pride-memory aphorism, Nietzsche’s idea in dreams we cannot enter the realm of the psyche of primitive man, etc. there is never any derailed statement on just what Nietzsche anticipated pertinently to psychoanalysis. This is so even after Freud has been taking Nietzsche with him on vacation.
Equally important, the classical assumption that the only privileged or valid knowledge is scientific is one of the primary sources of the stark division between the two cultures of humanistic and scientists-engineers, in this view, Wilson is quite correct in assuming that a timely end to the two culture war and a renewer dialogue between members of those cultures is now critically important to human survival. It is also clear, however, those dreams of reason based on the classical paradigm will only serve to perpetuate the two-culture war. Since these dreams are also remnants of an old scientific world-view that no longer applies in theory in fact, to the actual character of physical reality, as reality is a probable service to frustrate the solution for which in found of a real world problem.
However, there is a renewed basis for dialogue between the two cultures, it is believed as quite different from that described by Wilson. Since classical epistemology has been displaced, or is the process of being displaced, by the new epistemology of science, the truths of science can no longer be viewed as transcendent ad absolute in the classical sense. The universe more closely resembles a giant organism than a giant machine, and it also displays emergent properties that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole in both physics and biology that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted determinism, simple causality, first causes, linear movements and initial conditions. Perhaps the first and most important precondition for renewed dialogue between the two cultural conflicting realizations as Einstein explicated upon its topic as, that a human being is a “part of the whole.’ It is this spared awareness that allows for the freedom, or existential choice of self-decision of determining our free-will and the power to differentiate direct parts to free ourselves of the “optical allusion”of our present conception of self as a ‘partially limited in space and time’ and to widen ‘our circle of compassion to embrace al living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty’. Yet, one cannot, of course, merely reason oneself into an acceptance of this view, nonetheless, the inherent perceptions of the world are reason that the capacity for what Einstein termed ‘cosmic religious feelings’. Perhaps, our enabling capability for that which is within us to have the obtainable ability to enabling of our experience of self-realization, that of its realness is to sense its proven existence of a sense of elementarily leaving to some sorted conquering sense of universal consciousness, in so given to arise the existence of the universe, which really makes an essential difference to the existence or its penetrative spark of awakening indebtednesses of reciprocality?
Those who have this capacity will hopefully be able to communicate their enhanced scientific understanding of the relations among all aspects, and in part that is our self and the whole that are the universe in ordinary language wit enormous emotional appeal. The task lies before the poets of this renewing reality have nicely been described by Jonas Salk, which “man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to the Cosmos, in terms that reflects ‘reality’. By using the processes of Nature and metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing reality as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity or such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphorical and mythical provisions as comprehensive guides to living. In this way. Man’s afforded efforts by the imagination and intellect can be playing the vital roles embarking upon the survival and his endurable evolution.
It is time, if not, only, to be concluded from evidence in its suggestive conditional relation, for which the religious imagination and the religious experience to engage upon the complementarity of truths science, as fitting that silence with meaning, as having to antiquate a continual emphasis, least of mention, that does not mean that those who do not believe in the existence of God or Being, should refrain in any sense from assessing the impletions of the new truths of science. Understanding these implications does not necessitate any ontology, and is in no way diminished by the lack of any ontology. And one is free to recognize a basis for a dialogue between science and religion for the same reason that one is free to deny that this basis exists - there is nothing in our current scientific world view that can prove the existence of God or Being and nothing that legitimate any anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of God or Being.
The present time is clearly a time of a major paradigm shift, but consider the last great paradigm shift, the one that resulted in the Newtonian framework. This previous paradigm shift was profoundly problematic for the human spirit, it led to the conviction that we are strangers, freaks of nature, conscious beings in a universe that is almost entirely unconscious, and that, since the universe its strictly deterministic, even the free will we feel in regard to the movements of our bodies is an allusion. Yet it was probably necessary for the Western mind to go through the acceptance of such a paradigm.
In the final analysis there will be philosophers unprepared to accept that, if a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity, or anything like it, can have a role to play in philosophical accounts of concepts and conceptual abilities. The most obvious basis for such a view would be a Frégean distrust of “psychology” that leads to a rigid division of labour between philosophy and psychology. The operative thought is that the task of a philosophical theory of concepts is to explain what a given concept is or what a given conceptual ability consist in. This, it is frequently maintained, is something that can be done in complete independence of explaining how such a concept or ability might be acquired. The underlying distinction is one between philosophical questions centring around concept possession and psychological questions centring around concept possibilities for an individual to acquire that ability, then it cannot be psychologically real. Nevertheless, this distinction is, however, strictly one does adhere to the distinction, it provides no support for a rejection of any given cognitive capacity for which is psychologically real. The neo-Frégean distinction is directly against the view that facts about how concepts are acquired have a role to play in explaining and individualizing concepts. But this view does not have to be disputed by a supporter as such, nonetheless, all that the supporter is to commit is that the principle that no satisfactory account of what a concept is should make it impossible to provide explanation of how that concept can be acquired. That is, that this principle has nothing to say about the further question of whether the psychological explanation has a role to play in a constitutive explanation of the concept, and hence is not in conflict with the neo-Frégean distinction.
A full account of the structure of consciousness, will need to illustrate those higher, conceptual forms of consciousness to which little attention on such an account will take and about how it might emerge from given points of value, is the thought that an explanation of everything that is distinctive about consciousness will emerge out of an account of what it is for a subject to be capable of thinking about himself. But, to a proper understanding of the complex phenomenon of consciousness. There are no facts about linguistic mastery that will determine or explain what might be termed the cognitive dynamics that are individual processes that have found their way forward for a theory of consciousness, it sees, to chart the characteristic features individualizing the various distinct conceptual forms of consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy of unconsciousness and they, to show how these manifest the Characterological functions can enhance the condition of manifesting services, whereby, its continuous condition may that it be the determinate levels of content. What is hoped is now clear is that these forms of higher forms of consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of non-conceptual representations of thought, which can only expose and clarify their conviction that these forms of conscious thought hold the key, not just to an eventful account of how mastery of the conscious paradigms, but to a proper understanding of the plexuity of self-consciousness might that it be and/or the overall conjecture of consciousness that stands alone as to an everlasting vanquishment into the abyssal of ever-unchangeless states of unconsciousness, as have been subjected to the vacuous underlay of potentent latencies.
Contemporary philosophers of mind have typically supposed (or at least hoped) that the mind can be naturalized-i.e., that all mental facts have explanations in the terms of natural science. This assumption is shared within cognitive science, which attempts to provide accounts of mental states and processes in terms (ultimately) of features of the brain and central nervous system. In the course of doing so, the various sub-disciplines of cognitive science (including cognitive and computational psychology and cognitive and computational neuroscience) postulate a number of different kinds of structures and processes, many of which are not directly implicated by mental states and processes as commonsensical conceived. There remains, however, a shared commitment to the idea that mental states and processes are to be explained in terms of mental representations.
In philosophy, recent debates about mental representation have centred around the existence of propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.) and the determination of their contents (how they come to be about what they are about), and the existence of phenomenal properties and their relation to the content of thought and perceptual experience. Within cognitive science itself, the philosophically relevant debates have been focussed on the computational architecture of the brain and central nervous system, and the compatibility of scientific and commonsense accounts of mentality.
Intentional Realists such as Dretske (e.g., 1988) and Fodor (e.g., 1987) note that the generalizations we apply in everyday life in predicting and explaining each other's behaviour (often collectively referred to as 'folk psychology') are both remarkably successful and indispensable. What a person believes, doubts, desires, fears, etc. is a highly reliable indicator of what that person will do; and we have no other way of making sense of each other's behaviour than by ascribing such states and applying the relevant generalizations. We are thus committed to the basic truth of commonsense psychology and, hence, to the existence of the states its generalizations refer to. (Some realists, such as Fodor, also hold that commonsense psychology will be vindicated by cognitive science, given that propositional attitudes can be construed as computational relations to mental representations.)
Intentional Eliminativists, such as Churchland, (perhaps) Dennett and (at one time) Stich argue that no such things as propositional attitudes (and their constituent representational states) are implicated by the successful explanation and prediction of our mental lives and behaviour. Churchland denies that the generalizations of commonsense propositional-attitude psychology are true. He (1981) argues that folk psychology is a theory of the mind with a long history of failure and decline, and that it resists incorporation into the framework of modern scientific theories (including cognitive psychology). As such, it is comparable to alchemy and phlogiston theory, and ought to suffer a comparable fate. Commonsense psychology is false, and the states (and representations) it postulates simply don't exist. (It should be noted that Churchland is not an eliminativist about mental representation tout court.
Dennett (1987) grants that the generalizations of commonsense psychology are true and indispensable, but denies that this is sufficient reason to believe in the entities they appear to refer to. He argues that to give an intentional explanation of a system's behaviour is merely to adopt the 'intentional stance' toward it. If the strategy of assigning contentful states to a system and predicting and explaining its behaviour (on the assumption that it is rational-i.e., that it behaves as it should, given the propositional attitudes it should have in its environment) is successful, then the system is intentional, and the propositional-attitude generalizations we apply to it are true. But there is nothing more to having a propositional attitude than this.
Though he has been taken to be thus claiming that intentional explanations should be construed instrumentally, Dennett (1991) insists that he is a 'moderate' realist about propositional attitudes, since he believes that the patterns in the behaviour and behavioural dispositions of a system on the basis of which we (truly) attribute intentional states to it are objectively real. In the event that there are two or more explanatorily adequate but substantially different systems of intentional ascriptions to an individual, however, Dennett claims there is no fact of the matter about what the system believes (1987, 1991). This does suggest an irrealism at least with respect to the sorts of things Fodor and Dretske take beliefs to be; though it is not the view that there is simply nothing in the world that makes intentional explanations true.
(Davidson 1973, 1974 and Lewis 1974 also defend the view that what it is to have a propositional attitude is just to be interpretable in a particular way. It is, however, not entirely clear whether they intend their views to imply irrealism about propositional attitudes.). Stich (1983) argues that cognitive psychology does not (or, in any case, should not) taxonomize mental states by their semantic properties at all, since attribution of psychological states by content is sensitive to factors that render it problematic in the context of a scientific psychology. Cognitive psychology seeks causal explanations of behaviour and cognition, and the causal powers of a mental state are determined by its intrinsic 'structural' or 'syntactic' properties. The semantic properties of a mental state, however, are determined by its extrinsic properties-e.g., its history, environmental or intra-mental relations. Hence, such properties cannot figure in causal-scientific explanations of behaviour. (Fodor 1994 and Dretske 1988 are realist attempts to come to grips with some of these problems.) Stich proposes a syntactic theory of the mind, on which the semantic properties of mental states play no explanatory role.
It is a traditional assumption among realists about mental representations that representational states come in two basic varieties (Boghossian 1995). There are those, such as thoughts, which are composed of concepts and have no phenomenal ('what-it's-like') features ('qualia'), and those, such as sensory experiences, which have phenomenal features but no conceptual constituents. (Non-conceptual content is usually defined as a kind of content that states of a creature lacking concepts might nonetheless enjoy. On this taxonomy, mental states can represent either in a way analogous to expressions of natural languages or in a way analogous to drawings, paintings, maps or photographs. (Perceptual states such as seeing that something is blue, are sometimes thought of as hybrid states, consisting of, for example, a Non-conceptual sensory experience and a thought, or some more integrated compound of sensory and conceptual components.)
Some historical discussions of the representational properties of mind (e.g., Aristotle 1984, Locke 1689/1975, Hume 1739/1978) seem to assume that Non-conceptual representations-percepts ('impressions'), images ('ideas') and the like-are the only kinds of mental representations, and that the mind represents the world in virtue of being in states that resemble things in it. On such a view, all representational states have their content in virtue of their phenomenal features. Powerful arguments, however, focussing on the lack of generality (Berkeley 1975), ambiguity (Wittgenstein 1953) and non-compositionality (Fodor 1981) of sensory and imaginistic representations, as well as their unsuitability to function as logical (Frége 1918/1997, Geach 1957) or mathematical (Frége 1884/1953) concepts, and the symmetry of resemblance (Goodman 1976), convinced philosophers that no theory of mind can get by with only Non-conceptual representations construed in this way.
Contemporary disagreement over Non-conceptual representation concerns the existence and nature of phenomenal properties and the role they play in determining the content of sensory experience. Dennett (1988), for example, denies that there are such things as qualia at all; while Brandom (2002), McDowell (1994), Rey (1991) and Sellars (1956) deny that they are needed to explain the content of sensory experience. Among those who accept that experiences have phenomenal content, some (Dretske, Lycan, Tye) argue that it is reducible to a kind of intentional content, while others (Block, Loar, Peacocke) argue that it is irreducible.
The representationalist thesis is often formulated as the claim that phenomenal properties are representational or intentional. However, this formulation is ambiguous between a reductive and a non-deductive claim (though the term 'representationalism' is most often used for the reductive claim). On one hand, it could mean that the phenomenal content of an experience is a kind of intentional content (the properties it represents). On the other, it could mean that the (irreducible) phenomenal properties of an experience determine an intentional content. Representationalists such as Dretske, Lycan and Tye would assent to the former claim, whereas phenomenalists such as Block, Chalmers, Loar and Peacocke would assent to the latter. (Among phenomenalists, there is further disagreement about whether qualia are intrinsically representational (Loar) or not (Block, Peacocke).
Most (reductive) representationalists are motivated by the conviction that one or another naturalistic explanation of intentionality is, in broad outline, correct, and by the desire to complete the naturalization of the mental by applying such theories to the problem of phenomenality. (Needless to say, most phenomenalists (Chalmers is the major exception) are just as eager to naturalize the phenomenal-though not in the same way.)
The main argument for representationalism appeals to the transparency of experience (cf. Tye 2000: 45-51). The properties that characterize what it's like to have a perceptual experience are presented in experience as properties of objects perceived: in attending to an experience, one seems to 'see through it' to the objects and properties it is experiences of. They are not presented as properties of the experience itself. If nonetheless they were properties of the experience, perception would be massively deceptive. But perception is not massively deceptive. According to the representationalist, the phenomenal character of an experience is due to its representing objective, non-experiential properties. (In veridical perception, these properties are locally instantiated; in illusion and hallucination, they are not.) On this view, introspection is indirect perception: one comes to know what phenomenal features one's experience has by coming to know what objective features it represents.
In order to account for the intuitive differences between conceptual and sensory representations, representationalists appeal to their structural or functional differences. Dretske (1995), for example, distinguishes experiences and thoughts on the basis of the origin and nature of their functions: an experience of a property 'P' is a state of a system whose evolved function is to indicate the presence of 'P' in the environment; a thought representing the property 'P', on the other hand, is a state of a system whose assigned (learned) function is to calibrate the output of the experiential system. Rey (1991) takes both thoughts and experiences to be relations to sentences in the language of thought, and distinguishes them on the basis of (the functional roles of) such sentences' constituent predicates. Lycan (1987, 1996) distinguishes them in terms of their functional-computational profiles. Tye (2000) distinguishes them in terms of their functional roles and the intrinsic structure of their vehicles: thoughts are representations in a language-like medium, whereas experiences are image-like representations consisting of 'symbol-filled arrays.' (the account of mental images in Tye 1991.)
Phenomenalists tend to make use of the same sorts of features (function, intrinsic structure) in explaining some of the intuitive differences between thoughts and experiences; but they do not suppose that such features exhaust the differences between phenomenal and non-phenomenal representations. For the phenomenalist, it is the phenomenal properties of experiences-qualia themselves-that constitute the fundamental difference between experience and thought. Peacocke (1992), for example, develops the notion of a perceptual 'scenario' (an assignment of phenomenal properties to coordinates of a three-dimensional egocentric space), whose content is 'correct' (a semantic property) if in the corresponding 'scene' (the portion of the external world represented by the scenario) properties are distributed as their phenomenal analogues are in the scenario.
Another sort of representation championed by phenomenalists (e.g., Block, Chalmers (2003) and Loar (1996)) is the 'phenomenal concept' - , a conceptual/phenomenal hybrid consisting of a phenomenological 'sample' (an image or an occurrent sensation) integrated with (or functioning as) a conceptual component. Phenomenal concepts are postulated to account for the apparent fact (among others) that, as McGinn (1991) puts it, 'you cannot form [introspective] concepts of conscious properties unless you yourself instantiate those properties.' One cannot have a phenomenal concept of a phenomenal property 'P', and, hence, phenomenal beliefs about P, without having experience of 'P', because 'P' itself is (in some way) constitutive of the concept of 'P'. (Jackson 1982, 1986 and Nagel 1974.)
Though imagery has played an important role in the history of philosophy of mind, the important contemporary literature on it is primarily psychological. In a series of psychological experiments done in the 1970s (summarized in Kosslyn 1980 and Shepard and Cooper 1982), subjects' response time in tasks involving mental manipulation and examination of presented figures was found to vary in proportion to the spatial properties (size, orientation, etc.) of the figures presented. The question of how these experimental results are to be explained has kindled a lively debate on the nature of imagery and imagination.
Kosslyn (1980) claims that the results suggest that the tasks were accomplished via the examination and manipulation of mental representations that themselves have spatial properties, i.e., pictorial representations, or images. Others, principally Pylyshyn (1979, 1981, 2003), argue that the empirical facts can be explained in terms exclusively of discursive, or propositional representations and cognitive processes defined over them. (Pylyshyn takes such representations to be sentences in a language of thought.)
The idea that pictorial representations are literally pictures in the head is not taken seriously by proponents of the pictorial view of imagery The claim is, rather, that mental images represent in a way that is relevantly like the way pictures represent. (Attention has been focussed on visual imagery-hence the designation 'pictorial'; though of course there may imagery in other modalities-auditory, olfactory, etc.-as well.)
The distinction between pictorial and discursive representation can be characterized in terms of the distinction between analog and digital representation (Goodman 1976). This distinction has itself been variously understood (Fodor & Pylyshyn 1981, Goodman 1976, Haugeland 1981, Lewis 1971, McGinn 1989), though a widely accepted construal is that analog representation is continuous (i.e., in virtue of continuously variable properties of the representation), while digital representation is discrete (i.e., in virtue of properties a representation either has or doesn't have) (Dretske 1981). (An analog/digital distinction may also be made with respect to cognitive processes. (Block 1983.)) On this understanding of the analog/digital distinction, imagistic representations, which represent in virtue of properties that may vary continuously (such as being more or less bright, loud, vivid, etc.), would be analog, while conceptual representations, whose properties do not vary continuously (a thought cannot be more or less about Elvis: either it is or it is not) would be digital.
It might be supposed that the pictorial/discursive distinction is best made in terms of the phenomenal/nonphenomenal distinction, but it is not obvious that this is the case. For one thing, there may be nonphenomenal properties of representations that vary continuously. Moreover, there are ways of understanding pictorial representation that presuppose neither phenomenality nor analogicity. According to Kosslyn (1980, 1982, 1983), a mental representation is 'quasi-pictorial' when every part of the representation corresponds to a part of the object represented, and relative distances between parts of the object represented are preserved among the parts of the representation. But distances between parts of a representation can be defined functionally rather than spatially-for example, in terms of the number of discrete computational steps required to combine stored information about them. (Rey 1981.)
Tye (1991) proposes a view of images on which they are hybrid representations, consisting both of pictorial and discursive elements. On Tye's account, images are '(labelled) interpreted symbol-filled arrays.' The symbols represent discursively, while their arrangement in arrays has representational significance (the location of each 'cell' in the array represents a specific viewer-centred 2-D location on the surface of the imagined object)
The contents of mental representations are typically taken to be abstract objects (properties, relations, propositions, sets, etc.). A pressing question, especially for the naturalist, is how mental representations come to have their contents. Here the issue is not how to naturalize content (abstract objects can't be naturalized), but, rather, how to provide a naturalistic account of the content-determining relations between mental representations and the abstract objects they express. There are two basic types of contemporary naturalistic theories of content-determination, causal-informational and functional.
Causal-informational theories (Dretske 1981, 1988, 1995) hold that the content of a mental representation is grounded in the information it carries about what does (Devitt 1996) or would (Fodor 1987, 1990) cause it to occur. There is, however, widespread agreement that causal-informational relations are not sufficient to determine the content of mental representations. Such relations are common, but representation is not. Tree trunks, smoke, thermostats and ringing telephones carry information about what they are causally related to, but they do not represent (in the relevant sense) what they carry information about. Further, a representation can be caused by something it does not represent, and can represent something that has not caused it.
The main attempts to specify what makes a causal-informational state a mental representation are Asymmetric Dependency Theories (e.g., Fodor 1987, 1990, 1994) and Teleological Theories (Fodor 1990, Millikan 1984, Papineau 1987, Dretske 1988, 1995). The Asymmetric Dependency Theory distinguishes merely informational relations from representational relations on the basis of their higher-order relations to each other: informational relations depend upon representational relations, but not vice-versa. For example, if tokens of a mental state type are reliably caused by horses, cows-on-dark-nights, zebras-in-the-mist and Great Danes, then they carry information about horses, etc. If, however, such tokens are caused by cows-on-dark-nights, etc. because they were caused by horses, but not vice versa, then they represent horses.
According to Teleological Theories, representational relations are those a representation-producing mechanism has the selected (by evolution or learning) function of establishing. For example, zebra-caused horse-representations do not mean zebra, because the mechanism by which such tokens are produced has the selected function of indicating horses, not zebras. The horse-representation-producing mechanism that responds to zebras is malfunctioning.
Functional theories (Block 1986, Harman 1973), hold that the content of a mental representation is grounded in its (causal computational, inferential) relations to other mental representations. They differ on whether relata should include all other mental representations or only some of them, and on whether to include external states of affairs. The view that the content of a mental representation is determined by its inferential/computational relations with all other representations is holism; the view it is determined by relations to only some other mental states is localism (or molecularism). (The view that the content of a mental state depends on none of its relations to other mental states is atomism.) Functional theories that recognize no content-determining external relata have been called solipsistic (Harman 1987). Some theorists posit distinct roles for internal and external connections, the former determining semantic properties analogous to sense, the latter determining semantic properties analogous to reference (McGinn 1982, Sterelny 1989)
(Reductive) representationalists (Dretske, Lycan, Tye) usually take one or another of these theories to provide an explanation of the (Non-conceptual) content of experiential states. They thus tend to be Externalists (see the next section) about phenomenological as well as conceptual content. Phenomenalists and non-deductive representationalists (Block, Chalmers, Loar, Peacocke, Siewert), on the other hand, take it that the representational content of such states is (at least in part) determined by their intrinsic phenomenal properties. Further, those who advocate a phenomenology-based approach to conceptual content (Horgan and Tiensen, Loar, Pitt, Searle, Siewert) also seem to be committed to internalist individuation of the content (if not the reference) of such states.
Generally, those who, like informational theorists, think relations to one's (natural or social) environments are (at least partially) determinative of the content of mental representations are Externalists (e.g., Burge 1979, 1986, McGinn 1977, Putnam 1975), whereas those who, like some proponents of functional theories, think representational content is determined by an individual's intrinsic properties alone, are internalists (or individualists; cf. Putnam 1975, Fodor 1981)
This issue is widely taken to be of central importance, since psychological explanation, whether commonsense or scientific, is supposed to be both causal and content-based. (Beliefs and desires cause the behaviours they do because they have the contents they do. For example, the desire that one have a beer and the beliefs that there is beer in the refrigerator and that the refrigerator is in the kitchen may explain one's getting up and going to the kitchen.) If, however, a mental representation's having a particular content is due to factors extrinsic to it, it is unclear how its having that content could determine its causal powers, which, arguably, must be intrinsic. Some who accept the standard arguments for externalism have argued that internal factors determine a component of the content of a mental representation. They say that mental representations have both 'narrow' content (determined by intrinsic factors) and 'wide' or 'broad' content (determined by narrow content plus extrinsic factors). (This distinction may be applied to the sub-personal representations of cognitive science as well as to those of commonsense psychology.
Narrow content has been variously construed. Putnam (1975), Fodor (1982)), and Block (1986), for example, seems to understand it as something like dedictorial content (i.e., Frégean sense, or perhaps character, à la Kaplan 1989). On this construal, narrow content is context-independent and directly expressible. Fodor (1987) and Block (1986), however, have also characterized narrow content as radically inexpressible. On this construal, narrow content is a kind of proto-content, or content-determinant, and can be specified only indirectly, via specifications of context/wide-content pairings. On both construal, narrow contents are characterized as functions from context to (wide) content. The narrow content of a representation is determined by properties intrinsic to it or its possessor such as its syntactic structure or its intra-mental computational or inferential role (or its phenomenology.
Burge (1986) has argued that causation-based worries about externalist individuation of psychological content, and the introduction of the narrow notion, are misguided. Fodor (1994, 1998) has more recently urged that a scientific psychology might not need narrow content in order to supply naturalistic (causal) explanations of human cognition and action, since the sorts of cases they were introduced to handle, viz., Twin-Earth cases and Frége cases, are either nomologically impossible or dismissible as exceptions to non-strict psychological laws.
The leading contemporary version of the Representational Theory of Mind, the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), claims that the brain is a kind of computer and that mental processes are computations. According to the computational theory of mind, cognitive states are constituted by computational relations to mental representations of various kinds, and cognitive processes are sequences of such states. The computational theory of mind and the representational theory of mind, may by attempting to explain all psychological states and processes in terms of mental representation. In the course of constructing detailed empirical theories of human and animal cognition and developing models of cognitive processes implementable in artificial information processing systems, cognitive scientists have proposed a variety of types of mental representations. While some of these may be suited to be mental relata of commonsense psychological states, some-so-called 'subpersonal' or 'sub-doxastic' representations-are not. Though many philosophers believe that computational theory of mind can provide the best scientific explanations of cognition and behaviour, there is disagreement over whether such explanations will vindicate the commonsense psychological explanations of prescientific representational theory of mind.
According to Stich's (1983) Syntactic Theory of Mind, for example, computational theories of psychological states should concern themselves only with the formal properties of the objects those states are relations to. Commitment to the explanatory relevance of content, however, is for most cognitive scientists fundamental (Fodor 1981, Pylyshyn 1984, Von Eckardt 1993). That mental processes are computations, which computations are rule-governed sequences of semantically evaluable objects, and that the rules apply to the symbols in virtue of their content, are central tenets of mainstream cognitive science.
Explanations in cognitive science appeal to a many different kinds of mental representation, including, for example, the 'mental models' of Johnson-Laird 1983, the 'retinal arrays,' 'primal sketches' and '2½ - D sketches' of Marr 1982, the 'frames' of Minsky 1974, the 'sub-symbolic' structures of Smolensky 1989, the 'quasi-pictures' of Kosslyn 1980, and the 'interpreted symbol-filled arrays' of Tye 1991-in addition to representations that may be appropriate to the explanation of commonsense psychological states. Computational explanations have been offered of, among other mental phenomena, belief (Fodor 1975, Field 1978), visual perception (Marr 1982, Osherson, et al. 1990), rationality (Newell and Simon 1972, Fodor 1975, Johnson-Laird and Wason 1977), language learning and (Chomsky 1965, Pinker 1989), and musical comprehension (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983).
The classicists (e.g., Turing 1950, Fodor 1975, Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988, Marr 1982, Newell and Simon 1976) hold that mental representations are symbolic structures, which typically have semantically evaluable constituents, and that mental processes are rule-governed manipulations of them that are sensitive to their constituent structure. The connectionists (e.g., McCulloch & Pitts 1943, Rumelhart 1989, Rumelhart and McClelland 1986, Smolensky 1988) hold that mental representations are realized by patterns of activation in a network of simple processors ('nodes') and that mental processes consist of the spreading activation of such patterns. The nodes themselves are, typically, not taken to be semantically evaluable; nor do the patterns have semantically evaluable constituents. (Though there are versions of Connectionism - 'localist' versions-on which individual nodes are taken to have semantic properties (e.g., Ballard 1986, Ballard & Hayes 1984).) It is arguable, however, that localist theories are neither definitive nor representative of the Conceptionist program (Smolensky 1988, 1991, Chalmers 1993).
Classicists are motivated (in part) by properties thought seems to share with language. Fodor's Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) (Fodor 1975, 1987), according to which the system of mental symbols constituting the neural basis of thought is structured like a language, provides a well-worked-out version of the classical approach as applied to commonsense psychology. According to the language of thought hypothesis, the potential infinity of complex representational mental states is generated from a finite stock of primitive representational states, in accordance with recursive formation rules. This combinatorial structure accounts for the properties of productivity and systematicity of the system of mental representations. As in the case of symbolic languages, including natural languages (though Fodor does not suppose either that the language of thought hypothesis explains only linguistic capacities or that only verbal creatures have this sort of cognitive architecture), these properties of thought are explained by appeal to the content of the representational units and their combinability into contentful complexes. That is, the semantics of both language and thought is compositional: the content of a complex representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their structural configuration.
Connectionists are motivated mainly by a consideration of the architecture of the brain, which apparently consists of layered networks of interconnected neurons. They argue that this sort of architecture is unsuited to carrying out classical serial computations. For one thing, processing in the brain is typically massively parallel. In addition, the elements whose manipulation drives computation in Conceptionist networks (principally, the connections between nodes) are neither semantically compositional nor semantically evaluable, as they are on the classical approach. This contrast with classical computationalism is often characterized by saying that representation is, with respect to computation, distributed as opposed to local: representation is local if it is computationally basic; and distributed if it is not. (Another way of putting this is to say that for classicists mental representations are computationally atomic, whereas for connectionists they are not.)
Moreover, connectionists argue that information processing as it occurs in Conceptionist networks more closely resembles some features of actual human cognitive functioning. For example, whereas on the classical view learning involves something like hypothesis formation and testing (Fodor 1981), on the Conceptionist model it is a matter of evolving distribution of 'weight' (strength) on the connections between nodes, and typically does not involve the formulation of hypotheses regarding the identity conditions for the objects of knowledge. The Conceptionist network is 'trained up' by repeated exposure to the objects it is to learn to distinguish; and, though networks typically require many more exposures to the objects than do humans, this seems to model at least one feature of this type of human learning quite well.
Further, degradation in the performance of such networks in response to damage is gradual, not sudden as in the case of a classical information processor, and hence more accurately models the loss of human cognitive function as it typically occurs in response to brain damage. It is also sometimes claimed that Conceptionist systems show the kind of flexibility in response to novel situations typical of human cognition-situations in which classical systems are relatively 'brittle' or 'fragile.'
Some philosophers have maintained that Connectionism entails that there are no propositional attitudes. Ramsey, Stich and Garon (1990) have argued that if Conceptionist models of cognition are basically correct, then there are no discrete representational states as conceived in ordinary commonsense psychology and classical cognitive science. Others, however (e.g., Smolensky 1989), hold that certain types of higher-level patterns of activity in a neural network may be roughly identified with the representational states of commonsense psychology. Still others (e.g., Fodor & Pylyshyn 1988, Heil 1991, Horgan and Tienson 1996) argue that language-of-thought style representation is both necessary in general and realizable within Conceptionist architectures. (MacDonald & MacDonald 1995 collects the central contemporary papers in the classicist/Conceptionist debate, and provides useful introductory material as well.
Whereas Stich (1983) accepts that mental processes are computational, but denies that computations are sequences of mental representations, others accept the notion of mental representation, but deny that computational theory of mind provides the correct account of mental states and processes.
Van Gelder (1995) denies that psychological processes are computational. He argues that cognitive systems are dynamic, and that cognitive states are not relations to mental symbols, but quantifiable states of a complex system consisting of (in the case of human beings) a nervous system, a body and the environment in which they are embedded. Cognitive processes are not rule-governed sequences of discrete symbolic states, but continuous, evolving total states of dynamic systems determined by continuous, simultaneous and mutually determining states of the systems components. Representation in a dynamic system is essentially information-theoretic, though the bearers of information are not symbols, but state variables or parameters.
Horst (1996), on the other hand, argues that though computational models may be useful in scientific psychology, they are of no help in achieving a philosophical understanding of the intentionality of commonsense mental states. computational theory of mind attempts to reduce the intentionality of such states to the intentionality of the mental symbols they are relations to. But, Horst claims, the relevant notion of symbolic content is essentially bound up with the notions of convention and intention. So the computational theory of mind involves itself within some formal circularity: The very properties that are supposed to be reduced are (tacitly) appealed to in the reduction.
To say that a mental object has semantic properties is, paradigmatically, to say that it may be about, or be true or false of, an object or objects, or that it may be true or false simpliciter. Suppose I think that you took to sniffing snuff. I am thinking about you, and if what I think of you (that they take snuff) is true of you, then my thought is true. According to representational theory of mind such states are to be explained as relations between agents and mental representations. To think that you take snuff is to token in some way a mental representation whose content is that ocelots take snuff. On this view, the semantic properties of mental states are the semantic properties of the representations they are relations to.
Linguistic acts seem to share such properties with mental states. Suppose I say that you take snuff. I am talking about you, and if what I say of you (that they take snuff) is true of them, then my utterance is true. Now, to say that you take snuff is (in part) to utter a sentence that means that you take snuff. Many philosophers have thought that the semantic properties of linguistic expressions are inherited from the intentional mental states they are conventionally used to express (Grice 1957, Fodor 1978, Schiffer 1972/1988, Searle 1983). On this view, the semantic properties of linguistic expressions are the semantic properties of the representations that are the mental relata of the states they are conventionally used to express.
It is also widely held that in addition to having such properties as reference, truth-conditions and truth-so-called extensional properties-expressions of natural languages also have intensional properties, in virtue of expressing properties or propositions-i.e., in virtue of having meanings or senses, where two expressions may have the same reference, truth-conditions or truth value, yet express different properties or propositions (Frége 1892/1997). If the semantic properties of natural-language expressions are inherited from the thoughts and concepts they express (or vice versa, or both), then an analogous distinction may be appropriate for mental representations.
Theories of representational content may be classified according to whether they are atomistic or holistic and according to whether they are externalistic or internalistic, whereby, emphasizing the priority of a whole over its parts. Furthermore, in the philosophy of language, this becomes the claim that the meaning of an individual word or sentence can only be understood in terms of its relation to an indefinitely larger body of language, such as a whole theory, or even a whole language or form of life. In the philosophy of mind a mental state similarly may be identified only in terms of its relations with others. Moderate holism may allow the other things besides these relationships also count; extreme holism would hold that a network of relationships is all that we have. A holistic view of science holds that experience only confirms or disconfirms large bodies of doctrine, impinging at the edges, and leaving some leeway over the adjustment that it requires.
Once, again, in the philosophy of mind and language, the view that what is thought, or said, or experienced, is essentially dependent on aspects of the world external to the mind of the subject. The view goes beyond holding that such mental states are typically caused by external factors, to insist that they could not have existed as they now do without the subject being embedded in an external world of a certain kind. It is these external relations that make up the essence or identify of the mental state. Externalism is thus opposed to the Cartesian separation of the mental from the physical, since that holds that the mental could in principle exist as it does even if there were no external world at all. Various external factors have been advanced as ones on which mental content depends, including the usage of experts, the linguistic, norms of the community. And the general causal relationships of the subject. In the theory of knowledge, externalism is the view that a person might know something by being suitably situated with respect to it, without that relationship being in any sense within his purview. The person might, for example, be very reliable in some respect without believing that he is. The view allows that you can know without being justified in believing that you know.
However, atomistic theories take a representation’s content to be something that can be specified independent entity of that representation’ s relations to other representations. What the American philosopher of mind, Jerry Alan Fodor (1935-) calls the crude causal theory, for example, takes a representation to be a
cow
-a menial representation with the same content as the word ‘cow’-if its tokens are caused by instantiations of the property of being-a-cow, and this is a condition that places no explicit constraints on how
cow
’s must or might relate to other representations. Holistic theories contrasted with atomistic theories in taking the relations a representation bears to others to be essential to its content. According to functional role theories, a representation is a
cow
if it behaves like a
cow
should behave in inference.
Internalist theories take the content of a representation to be a matter determined by factors internal to the system that uses it. Thus, what Block (1986) calls ‘short-armed’ functional role theories are internalist. Externalist theories take the content of a representation to be determined, in part at least, by factors external to the system that uses it. Covariance theories, as well as telelogical theories that invoke an historical theory of functions, take content to be determined by ‘external’ factors. Crossing the atomist-holistic distinction with the internalist-externalist distinction.
Externalist theories (sometimes called non-individualistic theories) have the consequence that molecule for molecule identical cognitive systems might yet harbour representations with different contents. This has given rise to a controversy concerning ‘narrow’ content. If we assume some form of externalist theory is correct, then content is, in the first instance ‘wide’ content, i.e., determined in part by factors external to the representing system. On the other hand, it seems clear that, on plausible assumptions about how to individuate psychological capacities, internally equivalent systems must have the same psychological capacities. Hence, it would appear that wide content cannot be relevant to characterizing psychological equivalence. Since cognitive science generally assumes that content is relevant to characterizing psychological equivalence, philosophers attracted to externalist theories of content have sometimes attempted to introduce ‘narrow’ content, i.e., an aspect or kind of content that is equivalent internally equivalent systems. The simplest such theory is Fodor’s idea (1987) that narrow content is a function from contents (i.e., from whatever the external factors are) to wide contents.
All the same, what a person expresses by a sentence is often a function of the environment in which he or she is placed. For example, the disease I refer to by the term like ‘arthritis’, or the kind of tree I refer to as a ‘Maple’ will be defined by criteria of which I know next to nothing. This raises the possibility of imagining two persons in rather different environments, but in which everything appears the same to each of them. The wide content of their thoughts and sayings will be different if the situation surrounding them is appropriately different: ‘situation’ may include the actual objects they perceive or the chemical or physical kinds of object in the world they inhabit, or the history of their words, or the decisions of authorities on what counts as an example, of one of the terms they use. The narrow content is that part of their thought which remains identical, through their identity of the way things appear, regardless of these differences of surroundings. Partisans of wide content may doubt whether any content in this sense narrow, partisans of narrow content believer that it is the fundamental notion, with wide content being explicable in terms of narrow content plus context.
Even so, the distinction between facts and values has outgrown its name: it applies not only to matters of fact vs, matters of value, but also to statements that something is, vs. statements that something ought to be. Roughly, factual statements-‘is statements’ in the relevant sense-represent some state of affairs as obtaining, whereas normative statements-evaluative, and deontic ones-attribute goodness to something, or ascribe, to an agent, an obligation to act. Neither distinction is merely linguistic. Specifying a book’s monetary value is making a factual statement, though it attributes a kind of value. ‘That is a good book’ expresses a value judgement though the term ‘value’ is absent (nor would ‘valuable’ be synonymous with ‘good’). Similarly, ‘we are morally obligated to fight’ superficially expresses a statement, and ‘By all indications it ought to rain’ makes a kind of ought-claim; but the former is an ought-statement, the latter an (epistemic) is-statement.
Theoretical difficulties also beset the distinction. Some have absorbed values into facts holding that all value is instrumental, roughly, to have value is to contribute-in a factual analysable way-to something further which is (say) deemed desirable. Others have suffused facts with values, arguing that facts (and observations) are ‘theory-impregnated’ and contending that values are inescapable to theoretical choice. But while some philosophers doubt that fact/value distinctions can be sustained, there persists a sense of a deep difference between evaluating, or attributing an obligation and, on the other hand, saying how the world is.
Fact/value distinctions, may be defended by appeal to the notion of intrinsic value, value a thing has in itself and thus independently of its consequences. Roughly, a value statement (proper) is an ascription of intrinsic value, one to the effect that a thing is to some degree good in itself. This leaves open whether ought-statements are implicitly value statements, but even if they imply that something has intrinsic value-e.g., moral value-they can be independently characterized, say by appeal to rules that provide (justifying) reasons for action. One might also ground the fact value distinction in the attributional (or even motivational) component apparently implied by the making of valuational or deontic judgements: Thus, ‘it is a good book, but that is no reason for a positive attribute towards it’ and ‘you ought to do it, but there is no reason to’ seem inadmissible, whereas, substituting, ‘an expensive book’ and ‘you will do it’ yields permissible judgements. One might also argue that factual judgements are the kind which are in principle appraisable scientifically, and thereby anchor the distinction on the factual side. This ligne is plausible, but there is controversy over whether scientific procedures are ‘value-free’ in the required way.
Philosophers differ regarding the sense, if any, in which epistemology is normative (roughly, valuational). But what precisely is at stake in this controversy is no clearly than the problematic fact/value distinction itself. Must epistemologists as such make judgements of value or epistemic responsibility? If epistemology is naturalizable, then even epistemic principles simply articulate under what conditions-say, appropriate perceptual stimulations-a belief is justified, or constitutes knowledge. Its standards of justification, then would be like standards of, e.g., resilience for bridges. It is not obvious, however, that there appropriate standards can be established without independent judgements that, say, a certain kind of evidence is good enough for justified belief (or knowledge). The most plausible view may be that justification is like intrinsic goodness, though it supervenes on natural properties, it cannot be analysed wholly in factual statements.
Thus far, belief has been depicted as being all-or-nothing, however, as a resulting causality for which we have grounds for thinking it true, and, all the same, its acceptance is governed by epistemic norms, and, least of mention, it is partially subject to voluntary control and has functional affinities to belief. Still, the notion of acceptance, like that of degrees of belief, merely extends the standard picture, and does not replace it.
Traditionally, belief has been of epistemological interest in its propositional guise: ‘S’ believes that ‘p’, where ‘p’ is a reposition towards which an agent, ‘S’ exhibits an attitude of acceptance. Not all belief is of this sort. If I trust you to say, I believer you. And someone may believer in Mr. Notgot, or in a free-market economy, or in God. It is sometimes supposed that all belief is ‘reducible’ to propositional belief, belief-that. Thus, my believing you might be thought a matter of my believing, is, perhaps, that what you say is true, and your belief in free markets or God, is a matter of your believing that free-market economies are desirable or that God exists.
Some philosophers have followed St, Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), in supposing that to believer in God is simply to believer that certain truths hold while others argue that belief-in is a distinctive attitude, on that includes essentially an element of trust. More commonly, belief-in has been taken to involve a combination of propositional belief together with some further attitude.
The moral philosopher Richard Price (1723-91) defends the claim that there are different sorts of belief-in, some, but not all reducible to beliefs-that. If you believer in God, you believer that God exists, that God is good, you believer that God is good, etc. But according to Price, your belief involves, in addition, a certain complex pro-attitude toward its object. Even so, belief-in outruns the evidence for the corresponding belief-that. Does this diminish its rationality? If belief-in presupposes believes-that, it might be thought that the evidential standards for the former must be, at least, as high as standards for the latter. And any additional pro-attitude might be thought to require a further layer of justification not required for cases of belief-that.
‘Belief-in’ may be, in general, less susceptible to alternations in the face of unfavourable evidence than ‘belief-that’. A believe who encounters evidence against God’s existence may remain unshaken in his belief, in part because the evidence does not bear on his pro-attitude. So long as this ids united with his belief that God exists, the reasonably so-in a way that an ordinary propositional belief that would not.
The correlative way of elaborating on the general objection to justificatory externalism challenges the sufficiency of the various externalist conditions by citing cases where those conditions are satisfied, but where the believers in question seem intuitively not to be justified. In this context, the most widely discussed examples have to do with possible occult cognitive capacities, like clairvoyance. Considering the point in application once, again, to reliabilism, the claim is that to think that he has such a cognitive power, and, perhaps, even good reasons to the contrary, is not rational or responsible and therefore not epistemically justified in accepting the belief that result from his clairvoyance, dispite the fact that the reliablist condition is satisfied.
One sort of response to this latter sorts of objection is to ‘bite the bullet’ and insist that such believers are in fact justified, dismissing the seeming intuitions to the contrary as latent internalist prejudice. A more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a roughly internalist sort, which will rule out the offending example, while stopping far of a full internalism. But, while there is little doubt that such modified versions of externalism can handle particular cases, as well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the usually problematic cases that they cannot handle, and also whether there is and clear motivation for the additional requirements other than the general internalist view of justification that externalist are committed to reject.
A view in this same general vein, one that might be described as a hybrid of internalism and externalism holds that epistemic justification requires that there is a justificatory factor that is cognitively accessible to the believer in question (though it need not be actually grasped), thus ruling out, e.g., a pure reliabilism. At the same time, however, though it must be objectively true that beliefs for which such a factor is available are likely to be true, in addition, the fact need not be in any way grasped or cognitively accessible to the believer. In effect, of the premises needed to argue that a particular belief is likely to be true, one must be accessible in a way that would satisfy at least weak internalism, the internalist will respond that this hybrid view is of no help at all in meeting the objection and has no belief nor is it held in the rational, responsible way that justification intuitively seems to require, for the believer in question, lacking one crucial premise, still has no reason at all for thinking that his belief is likely to be true.
An alternative to giving an externalist account of epistemic justification, one which may be more defensible while still accommodating many of the same motivating concerns, is to give an externalist account of knowledge directly, without relying on an intermediate account of justification. Such a view will obviously have to reject the justified true belief account of knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is true belief which satisfies the chosen externalist condition, e.g., a result of a reliable process (and perhaps, further conditions as well). This makes it possible for such a view to retain internalist account of epistemic justification, though the centrality of that concept to epistemology would obviously be seriously diminished.
Such an externalist account of knowledge can accommodate the commonsense conviction that animals, young children, and unsophisticated adults posses knowledge, though not the weaker conviction (if such a conviction does exists) that such individuals are epistemically justified in their beliefs. It is also at least less vulnerable to internalist counter-examples of the sort discussed, since the intuitions involved there pertain more clearly to justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is supposed to have. In particular, does it have any serious bearing on traditional epistemological problems and on the deepest and most troubling versions of scepticism, which seems in fact to be primarily concerned with justification, and knowledge?`
A rather different use of the terms ‘internalism’ and ‘externalism’ has to do with the issue of how the content of beliefs and thoughts is determined: According to an internalist view of content, the content of such intention states depends only on the non-relational, internal properties of the individual’s mind or grain, and not at all on his physical and social environment: While according to an externalist view, content is significantly affected by such external factors and suggests a view that appears of both internal and external elements are standardly classified as an external view.
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