Friedrich Nietzsche:
(http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic100510.files/nietzsche_350_2.jpg)
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
"Truth will have no other gods beside it. - Belief in truth begins with doubt as to all truths believed in hitherto."
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
"I would only believe in a God that knows how to dance."
"The human being might ask the animal: "Why do you just look at me like that instead of telling me about your happiness?" The animal wanted to answer, "Because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say" - but it had already forgotten this answer and hence said nothing, so that the human being was left to wonder."
"Cause and effect. - "Explanation" is what we call it, but it is "description" that distinguishes us from older stages of knowledge and science. Our descriptions are better - we do not explain any more than our predecessors. We have uncovered a manifold one-after-another where the naive man and inquirer of older cultures only saw only two separate things. "Cause" and "effect" is what one says; but we have merely perfected the image of becoming without reaching beyond the image or behind it. In every case the series of "causes" confronts us much more completely, and we infer: first, this and that has to precede in order that this or that may then follow - but this does not involve any comprehension. In every chemical process, for example, quality appears as a "miracle," as ever; also, every locomotion; nobody has "explained" a push. But how could we possibly explain anything? We operate only with things that do not exist: lines, planes, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisible spaces. How should explanations be at all possible when we first turn everything into an image, our image!
It will do to consider science as an attempt to humanize things as faithfully as possible; as we describe things and their one-after-another, we learn how to describe ourselves more and more precisely. Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there is an infinite number of processes that elude us. Any intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality."
"To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modern times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine "love of one's enemies" is possible - supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! - and such reverence is a bridge to love. - For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture "the enemy" as the man of ressentiment conceives him - and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy," "the Evil One," and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a "good one" - himself!"
Alan W. Watts
(http://www.yunchtime.net/misc/alan_watts.jpg)
"Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations."
?The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.?
?I owe my solitude to other people.?
?Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
(http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/goethe.jpg)
"One who is content just to experience life and act accordingly has all the truth he needs. This is the wisdom of the growing child."
"He who doesn't see his lover's faults as virtues is not in love."
"The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources"
"You really only know when you know little; doubt grows with knowledge."
Nietzsche is the Grand Poobah of Nihilists!
Quote from: digbys kid on May 26, 2009, 10:52:06 PM
Nietzsche is the Grand Poobah of Nihilists!
If you think Nietzsche is a Nihilist, then you haven't took the time to read his work. Nietzsche attacks Nihilism in every one of his books, he always stresses saying Yes to life. The first book of "The Will to Power" is all about Nihilism, but not as something to be, but to overcome. Perhaps you should understand a thinker before arbitrarily attaching them with labels?
Look, man, you should try, you know, listening occasionally!
Or at least try reading this board and the spirit in which it is written.
We aren't tryin' to scam anybody here!
Something Nietzsche possessed, all great writers possess, and you ought to consider, is a consciousness of who the fuck is reading.
It's like what Lenin said. You look for the person who will benefit...and uh...you know what I'm trying to say..."
So pour yourself a cocktail (the bar's over there), keep your mind limber (something Fred was sadly unable to do), and for Christ's sake, take it easy!
Like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie. very fragile.
well, dudes, we just don't know.
but digby's kid is right: nihilists have often falsely interpreted nietzsche (and by extension, existentialism) as providing support for their ethos-that-is-not-an-ethos.
thus herr fred can indeed be considered the grand poobah of nihilists, but that's only because they are a bunch of fucking amateurs. similarly, he was also one of the inspirations for the nazis. this was not the fred's intention, of course.
so both digby's kid and yestosayyes are equally right, just for different reasons. but yestosaysyes hasn't learned the preferred lebowskian nomenclature yet. perhaps we should give yestosayright the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just doing his nietzsche impression? it's hard to be funny when doing a nietzsche impression.
I just realized something ironic: if he was the philosopher of yes, why does his name starts with no (in russian)?
Quote from: digbys kid on May 27, 2009, 10:23:24 AM
Look, man, you should try, you know, listening occasionally!
Or at least try reading this board and the spirit in which it is written.
We aren't tryin' to scam anybody here!
Something Nietzsche possessed, all great writers possess, and you ought to consider, is a consciousness of who the fuck is reading.
It's like what Lenin said. You look for the person who will benefit...and uh...you know what I'm trying to say..."
So pour yourself a cocktail (the bar's over there), keep your mind limber (something Fred was sadly unable to do), and for Christ's sake, take it easy!
I'm always taking it easy friend, its your interpretation of my words that needs to be taken easy ;D
It seems I misunderstood what you meant by "Grand Poobah". I read your message as "Nietzsche is the biggest nihilist of them all", but obviously you didn't mean anything of the kind. My apologies!
I gather some information's that I really need.,I think it might help me.,
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Quote from: digbys kid on May 26, 2009, 10:52:06 PM
Nietzsche is the Grand Poobah of Nihilists!
Yes, but even though his legacy has been tainted in an un-Dudely flurry of Hitlerian weirdness, his Nihilism did not extend to pissing upon the holy rug.
Thus - a dude among dudes indeed.
See, personally, I'm of the opinion that The Dude encompasses the entire range of philosophic truth and pursuit...from the stoic ("Will you just take it easy!") to the epicurean ("Mind if I do a J?")...from Dialectical Materialism ("The Dude just wanted his rug back.") to Existentialism ("I'm The Dude...so that's what you call me.").
Look into any philosophy, Nietzsche included, and you find The Dude looking back into you.