Ronald Beiner and his book "Dangerous Minds"

[Belinda]

Then is 'nihilism' a word for disrespecting authority ?

[Dubious]

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything."

It wouldn't be the first time something on surface sounds wise but when examined for another instance turns out to be thoroughly wrong and stupid.
But if an irrational belief prevents one from believing something even more stupid and irrational, go for it.

[Dubious]

Nietzsche had no "überfraus." He said, "You go to women? Take the whip."

...and that's when he handed them the whip!

[Alizia]

It wouldn't be the first time something on surface sounds wise but when examined for another instance turns out to be thoroughly wrong and stupid.

Well, in that vein, one of the stupidest men of all time was Plato, no? I think that Plato's ideas were intricately -- inextricably -- bound up in metaphysical ideas, right?

To be a hardcore, dedicated believer in a thorough metaphysics is not -- not necessarily -- a symptom of stupidity.

[Immanuel Can]

Then is 'nihilism' a word for disrespecting authority ?

No. It literally means "belief in nothing," "nothing-ism." Its focus is denial of everyone else's values, not establishing any values of one's own.

[Belinda]

Then is 'nihilism' a word for disrespecting authority ?

No. It literally means "belief in nothing," "nothing-ism." Its focus is denial of everyone else's values, not establishing any values of one's own.

How can anyone live and not value? Either values of one's own choosing or of someone else's choosing. I thought that when Nietzsche said that God is dead he was saying in effect " you're on your own now you have to decide for yourself what to value".

Priests remain the authorities for devotional rituals and theology. I think that values have to be decided upon democratically. I understand Alizia's concern of course! The waters are henceforth uncharted. However all that is lost is authority itself. The Platonic star is intact. If men are to destroy themselves because they cannot agree on values I doubt if religious authority could have saved us anyway.

I mean, to take an extreme example of religious authority, look at the Sultan of Brunei!

[Dubious]

It wouldn't be the first time something on surface sounds wise but when examined for another instance turns out to be thoroughly wrong and stupid.

Well, in that vein, one of the stupidest men of all time was Plato, no? I think that Plato's ideas were intricately -- inextricably -- bound up in metaphysical ideas, right?

I can’t say I agree with this assumption or why you would make the correlation. Plato was a philosopher, a brilliant one which does not imply that everything he thought or wrote was of equal value. The same goes for Nietzsche and everyone in between.

Chesterton was a theist who made explicit by this retarded trite little remark that belief in god is the center of gravity for all human thought. Stray from here and what you may encounter are the cold outer regions of absurdity since now you’re free to believe and think what you like - which in itself is an absurd notion, a total negation of logic and of human behavior.

When you’re no-longer contained and restrained by an assured and comfortable belief in god, unsupervised thoughts now have a tendency to wander beyond their legal limits as pre-determined and devised by theists and those in power. Just think about Christianity, its history and how thought had to conform to its very stringent instruction manual.

Chesterton’s saying is so wrong that only its opposite can be true.

[Dubious]

Then is 'nihilism' a word for disrespecting authority ?

No. It literally means "belief in nothing," "nothing-ism." Its focus is denial of everyone else's values, not establishing any values of one's own.

How can anyone live and not value? Either values of one's own choosing or of someone else's choosing. I thought that when Nietzsche said that God is dead he was saying in effect " you're on your own now you have to decide for yourself what to value".

Priests remain the authorities for devotional rituals and theology. I think that values have to be decided upon democratically. I understand Alizia's concern of course! The waters are henceforth uncharted. However all that is lost is authority itself. The Platonic star is intact. If men are to destroy themselves because they cannot agree on values I doubt if religious authority could have saved us anyway.

I mean, to take an extreme example of religious authority, look at the Sultan of Brunei!

Nihilism has always been the cradle of new values. Nietzsche made this explicit when discussing nihilism which he did at length. It's tantamount to a person, group or nation saying "this isn't working anymore". Or, as stated in Matthew "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee."

Nihilism is not and can never be a belief. As method, it prevents itself from being one. It is instead a force which compels one to reevaluate, creating and adjusting to new ways of thinking by replacing long-existing and worn-out prior ones. Nihilism is both transition and catalyst, a temporary thought purgatory forging new responses to both new and old problems. That, at least, would be its focus. Further to that meaning, nihilism is itself the beginning of an indispensable process within the human psyche. In another way, it's the opposite of Theism which remains static and never changes its wavelength.

[Immanuel Can]

Then is 'nihilism' a word for disrespecting authority ?

No. It literally means "belief in nothing," "nothing-ism." Its focus is denial of everyone else's values, not establishing any values of one's own.

How can anyone live and not value? Either values of one's own choosing or of someone else's choosing. I thought that when Nietzsche said that God is dead he was saying in effect " you're on your own now you have to decide for yourself what to value".

No, Nietzsche didn't think things became worthy of value merely because you decided to value them. If it did, then traditional and conventional values would be as good as any other set...simply because people choose to value them.

His view was really that no values exist, save "the will to power." Ironically, he has no evidence for that value either. He just insists upon it. So how do we know that his kind of "mensch" is really "uber"? We don't. And why, if there are no real values, is it "wrong" in Nietzsche's view to choose to embrace phony values? It can only be because he thinks there's some value in hard-nosed realism (his kind, of course), but he makes no case for that either. And why are women contemptible, and strong men admirable? Again, no real reason: just a lot of high rhetoric that is supposed to carry that one.

So Nietzsche smuggles back in his own arbitrary set of values, even while saying that none of the others that are authentic or objective.

That being said, I do think there's value in some of what Nietzsche says; but I find you've got to pick through him carefully, being discerning about when he has something really to say, and when he's just being a stylist. And in some passages, there's a lot of style without a whole lot of substance.

[Belinda]

No. It literally means "belief in nothing," "nothing-ism." Its focus is denial of everyone else's values, not establishing any values of one's own.

How can anyone live and not value? Either values of one's own choosing or of someone else's choosing. I thought that when Nietzsche said that God is dead he was saying in effect " you're on your own now you have to decide for yourself what to value".

Priests remain the authorities for devotional rituals and theology. I think that values have to be decided upon democratically. I understand Alizia's concern of course! The waters are henceforth uncharted. However all that is lost is authority itself. The Platonic star is intact. If men are to destroy themselves because they cannot agree on values I doubt if religious authority could have saved us anyway.

I mean, to take an extreme example of religious authority, look at the Sultan of Brunei!

Nihilism has always been the cradle of new values. Nietzsche made this explicit when discussing nihilism which he did at length. It's tantamount to a person, group or nation saying "this isn't working anymore". Or, as stated in Matthew "And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee."

Nihilism is not and can never be a belief. As method, it prevents itself from being one. It is instead a force which compels one to reevaluate, creating and adjusting to new ways of thinking by replacing long-existing and worn-out prior ones. Nihilism is both transition and catalyst, a temporary thought purgatory forging new responses to both new and old problems. That, at least, would be its focus. Further to that meaning, nihilism is itself the beginning of an indispensable process within the human psyche. In another way, it's the opposite of Theism which remains static and never changes its wavelength.

I accept that Nietzsche meant as you explain, and I think of nihilism as a springboard to an alternative. I also accept , with reference to Immanuel Can's, that power is the motive force . I combine the two claims and it's reasonable to do so. The ethic that intervenes to justify power as motive is that every person should be empowered. That would be democratic, and would be fulfilled by welfare socialism. The corollary of clinging to authoritarian ethics is authoritarian political rule. As I said earlier, look at the Sultan of Brunei to see what authority can do.

[Alizia]

You responded: "I can’t say I agree with this assumption or why you would make the correlation. Plato was a philosopher, a brilliant one which does not imply that everything he thought or wrote was of equal value. The same goes for Nietzsche and everyone in between.:

To what I said: "Well, in that vein, one of the stupidest men of all time was Plato, no? I think that Plato's ideas were intricately -- inextricably -- bound up in metaphysical ideas, right?"

Certainly Plato was a philosopher, but he was also in essence a theologian: a theist or perhaps a proto-theist (?) In his works he gives form to what appears to me to be a highly metaphysical understanding of the Kosmos. He certainly 'believed in god' in the sense of understanding that there was a profound Order that stood behind, perhaps one could say, the world's manifestation.

It seems to me that Chesterton's declaration, to be fully understood, has to be taken more from a metaphysical angle. Obviously, Chesterton had personalized his statement through his own Catholicism and apology for Christian view generally. But his statement (at least in my mind) has a larger application.

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

When the or when a 'metaphysical order' that is a description of 'the world' and of the Kosmos and of life is undermined, and keep in mind that every religious structure presupposes such an order (is a description of 'the world', what it is, what it means, and then where human being came from, how it got here, what it must and must not do, et cetera), when the metaphysical order is undermined the structure through which men and society 'visualized their existence' within a system of meanings collapses. Or becomes broken, if you will, in certain parts. Falls into chaos. Or to concretize it: becomes postmodern. (A mishmosh of competing views).

When men can no longer believe in that Order (the metaphysical order) it seems that this has come about because a new Order of View is being suggested or, perhaps, insisted on. An older order of view is being replaced or displaced. And for us what has replaced it, or what is supposed to replace it, is what we might simplistically call the 'scientific material paradigm'.

Obviously, Chesterton had a 'pony in the race' and felt that when the Christian structure of belief was supplanted (he would say by intellectual error and, ultimately, by demonic influence -- I mention this to be entirely honest about the structure of his views), there is still very much a 'need to believe', which means to still have and still use (if you will) a general metaphysical structure through which 'the world' and Life is explained and understood.

If one understands this as, say, a fundamental need of man (of any man, of any person), it would mean that we can, in our own postmodernism, understand why people become 'obsessive' in their replacement-strategy. Without the 'structure of a religious view', attached as it is to a metaphysical order, and to all sorts of ethical rules and regulations, people are cut off from a sense of a larger Order, and careen, as it were, into other, obsessive activities. I think it is fair to notice this even if we do not accept the Christian (or any other metaphysical view, even say Buddhism) as a proper metaphysical structure through which to see ourselves and 'the world'.

Sorry that this is rather long-winded, I have never written it our before. This is my understanding of the present world that we live in: the cultural, social, media, intellectual world.

[Alizia]

I see 'will-to-power' as a declaration about what is left over for man when the metaphysical, determining Order (of God let us say), is seen to be unreal or invented.

When the 'intellectual order' (and this in a Catholic Christian sense means something very specific: nous ) is undermined -- as scientific materialism does undermine it -- what is left is 'biological entity'.

If 'biological entity' is not what is left over -- this means really 'all that there is' -- someone must please explain to me then what is the ground of our being as seen by the scientific view of reality.

Since material science has no other explanation, and everything reduces to material facts and biological entity, and since the 'intellectual order' is seem as being arbitrary, invented: effectively unreal! or perhaps I should say 'with no genuine base', it is at that point that only our biological self really does exist. There is only that and nothing more. Nothing to refer to, no authority, and certainly no 'metaphysical authority'.

OK, so what is left? Biological entity, and the struggle of biological entities in a non-vertical world of competition between all entities for supremacy and domination.

If this is not so someone must provide me with a sound counter-argument!

Will-to-power, as I have understood it, is the realization that all we have, all that we are, and thus all that 'life means', and what we must ultimately come face-to-face with as our driving & determining ethics, is that we have to struggle to dominate through this 'will'.

I do not see any way around this. If you do away with a 'metaphysical' order (normally understood to be super-material, spiritual, or 'angelical') you are left cut off within the mutable world (the sub-lunary world).

This is the condition in which 'we' find ourselves in fact. The conceptual tools (as it were) to refer to a higher, metaphysical order, have been assaulted. We simply cannot think in such terms (unless we are 'crazy').

We are cut off from the former 'higher order' and stuck in our materialism and in our bodies. That is where will-to-power is located.

Note: I do not make this clarification because I 'believe in it'. I make it because this is what is going on in a significant way in the Occidental world. I do believe however that we need to reexamine the entire paradigm of 'life in nous' and 'life within the social and civilizational order' (our Earth-existence) from a revised, renovated perspective. What is 'spiritual life'? What does it mean? What is going on in our societies and what must we do?

[Belinda]

Alizia wrote:

people are cut off from a sense of a larger Order,

and similar references to believing in metaphysical order.

In this connection I find it helpful to use 'believing in' in the sense of trusting in, aspiring to, or having faith in. And I find it remarkably unhelpful to use 'believing in' in the sense of believing in the claim that E= MC(squared), or in the sense believing in the claim that rose fertiliser causes the plant to bloom more.

Believing in , in the sense of trusting, having faith in, or aspiring to is like the common experience of trusting one's nearest and dearest. It may not be founded in facts but it does good.

[Alizia]

In this connection I find it helpful to use 'believing in' in the sense of trusting in, aspiring to, or having faith in. And I find it remarkably unhelpful to use 'believing in' in the sense of believing in the claim that E= MC(squared), or in the sense believing in the claim that rose fertiliser causes the plant to bloom more.

Believing in , in the sense of trusting, having faith in, or aspiring to is like the common experience of trusting one's nearest and dearest. It may not be founded in facts but it does good.

I see your point, but again you are speaking from the position of one who (if I understand correctly) does not 'believe in' a determining, encompassing, conscious shall I say, reciprocal, metaphysical order. To be more precise: you do not 'believe in' the Christian metaphysical order.

Therefore, what you seem to say -- I see no other conclusion -- is that it is only 'scientific facts' that can be 'believed in'. All else is 'supposed' 'intuited' 'imagined' 'dreamed' 'hoped for' or (one must include this:) hallucinated. (Projected would be a lighter term).

If I asked you to describe to me the Order of life in this 'world', I assume that you would have no other option but to reduce the world (our human world) to a biological description. 'Human' would be located there.

Yet, you might still hold to or perhaps I could say 'cling to' the older orders of 'belief' because a) it offers some comfort and b) some 'good' is seen as coming from that.

Yet, you state at the same time that it (a metaphysical order such as Christian belief describes) is essentially, basically unreal.

But as a real metaphysical system? I think that we would have to say that we live in a fractured one. One that is half-dissolved. Or, one that we might say is half-recreated.

[Impenitent]

it was never power for the herd

-Imp