Posted on 12/23/2017 1:50:02 PM PST by nickcarraway
Dostoevsky was another answer to this. Nietzsche loved reading Dostoevsky, before he went crazy.
Nietzsche: “God is dead.”
God: “Nietzsche is dead.”
God, the source of ethics, cannot be unethical. It is only our inability to think as God does that creates an apparent paradox.
I think it has been found that people who have a belief in a higher power have less fear and are better able to adapt to changing circumstances. We live in interesting times, full of interesting changing circumstances. Trying to act on the behalf of God to take vengeance on other people for their lack of devotion to God is when you get in trouble, and it is not a thing that Christians are called on to do. We have enough problems with our own shortcomings to be getting so high and mighty as to be acting as judge/jury/executioner to other people.
To my mind, the thing Nietzsche brings to the table is a willingness to recognize the value of creative people. They are often crapped on by the very society that they work tirelessly to benefit. A man like Vincent Van Gogh went his entire life unrecognized. Now when he is no longer alive, and able to benefit from the work he did, he’s famous. Nietzsche kind of fixes that for all of those going forward. So Nietzsche is a mixed bag. He also believed that people’s thoughts had no impact on their actions. It would follow that they would bear no responsibility for their actions. Very un-Republican.
As an erstwhile philosophy major, I would rather chew fish hooks than revisit any of the above mentioned persons.
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel.1
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
‘bout the raising of the wrist,
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart,
“I drink, therefore I am.”
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.
We see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.
Thank you.
I am a thinker. I read constantly as a boy, and I joined several high-IQ societies in adulthood when I got tired of normals telling me I was stupid. When I was in ministry, I was often accused of thinking too much (by existential types).
I thought, as a naive young man, that I would relish philosophers. I did not and do not.
I find them tedious, pompous, simplistic, and errant. Academics - be they philosophers or musicologists, and yes, there is a connection - are always on the prowl for the latest intellectual perversion. The old just will not do.
What I eventually realized is that I found the imaginative writings of a Lewis or a Tolkien far more valuable than any of these touted sophists.
And then, of course, there is someone named Jesus, who spoke as no one before or since. His words - his Word - remain the only reason I persist in the faith after what I witnessed in churchianity.
I do not begrudge any of you your enjoyment of them; I simply refuse to hold any of them in particular awe. (Well, maybe the Greeks, to some extent.)
The problem with a disdain for philosophy is that it robs you of an epistemological framework for proving the other guy is full of crap.
Some of us are just not satisfied with leaving things as “he said, she said.”
“For whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance. But whoever does not have, from him shall be taken away even that which he has”
You’ve been here awhile, remember general_re’s great threads on Introduction to Rhetoric?
It’s been a long time, but I’m sure that was one of my starting points.
Unfortunately, through the years, the thinking on FR has become a mirror of that on the left; the only difference being it’s orientation...hence my tag line.
“God, the source of ethics, cannot be unethical. It is only our inability to think as God does that creates an apparent paradox.”
Well put.
Existensialism, while a refuge for many atheists, is not incompatible with a theistic framework. Many point to the Book of Job as an early, if not foundational expression of existentialism.
“That which does not kill me, makes me laugh...”
“A man like Vincent van Gogh went his entire life unrecognized.”
Yeah, but van Gogh sucks. His scribbles will never stand the test of time. In 200 years you won’t be able to sell a van Gogh for a candy bar and two slices of white bread.
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