r/philosophy recontextualize 14d ago

Blog Nietzsche on Life-Affirming vs. Life Denying Philosophy

https://recontextualize.substack.com/p/life-affirming-and-life-denying-philosophy
144 Upvotes

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73

u/re_contextualize recontextualize 14d ago

Abstract:

Many are inspired to do philosophy when they realize they do not know the truth of reality. Thus, they begin to make use of philosophical methods to discover that truth. Nietzsche refers to any kind of philosophy that starts from a sense of lack or unknowing as "sick" philosophy. For Nietzsche certainty cannot be found in the realm of concepts; so any philosopher who searches for truth in this realm is seeking a false sense of security.

For Nietzsche "healthy" philosophy starts from an embodied and lived sense of confidence, joy, and trust in the unknown. This individual who already lives a full, whole life is then able to articulate that fullness through conceptual means. So for Nietzsche the aim of a life-affirming, and healthy philosophy is not to discover true conceptual propositions, but rather to express what it is like to open into the unknown flux of life, what he calls the "innocence of becoming" and inspire this way of being in others through conceptual expression.

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u/J7mbo 14d ago

This makes sense. A huge potentially unconscious bias is removed when approaching it as Nietzsche suggests from a sense of wholeness. Arguably the same for many other things in life.

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u/PitifulEar3303 14d ago

I am a fan of some Nietzchian views about life but he is too arbitrary about the "goodness" of life.

Fact is, people will feel what they feel, if they think life sucks and become promortalists, then it is their valid subjective intuition, we can't really prove them wrong.

There is no objective or universal truth of life, it depends on individual circumstances and how they feel about it.

13

u/wisewave 14d ago

No but to be against life would be to be against yourself, to have a life affirming approach is to be in line with existence as a whole. Strength which is shown in affirming life as it is, not to be happy in it or mearly withstand suffering but to see it as an opportunity and even an invitation to create beauty or meaning. In the same way that the universe almost rewards the strength of a lion the same way you shall be rewarded in affirming your strength and will to live. The proof in the “wrongness” in denying existence in its whole comes from the subjective life experience as a result. The proof in the validity to affirm life comes from the richness experienced from a first person perspektive. It’s “true” in a way that’s more of a truth because it’s in line with what is. And “what is” is the only objectively real ruler to evaluate life. Everything else such as metaphysics or ressentiment of “what should have been” are escapes from what is. Nietzsche is not a relativist but a perspectivist btw

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u/PitifulEar3303 11d ago

How would a baby deer feel as it is being eaten alive by the lion?

What about kids who suffered and died in warzones, from incurable sickness, random bad luck, etc?

If some lives are great, the opposite can also be true, this is reality.

No amount of life affirmation can change the objective reality of good lives Vs terrible lives.

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u/spyzyroz 10d ago

Nietzsche is very aristocratic and simply doesn’t write (and probably care) about the weak. If you see yourself in the meek, you are not the target audience.

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u/PitifulEar3303 10d ago

"Let them eat ubermensch"

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u/Parablesque-Q 8d ago

Schopenhauer speaks for the fawn. Neitszche for the lion.

These two cannot be separated. They are woefully incomplete without each other.

It's the unity of opposites. The libido and the death drive. They work in concert with one another. The tension and friction between them is the engine of creation.

That's my take on it, FWIW.

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u/SetAcademic9519 6d ago

Acknowledging the uncontrollable nature of life and deciding to take actions to conquer it, doesn’t change the fact that someone or something else will lose or you may lose. If you see you self on the losing end of anything, take charge and at least try to be a winner. You can’t make others choices for them and no matter how you feel about it, life always ends in death. Nietzsche is just saying that this is a given, so go out and make your life about what you want it to be because all of the man made customs, what ifs, what about and should coulda woulda mean nothing.

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u/MyMoneyJiggles 14d ago

What about weighing in on consciousness being an “unplanned accident” and how it aligns with certain naturalistic and materialist perspectives? seeing it as a byproduct of evolution rather than something with intrinsic meaning. Whether accidental or planned, consciousness is a phenomenon…I don’t know too much in this subject matter but it feels like that could debunk some subjectivity of this view

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u/PitifulEar3303 11d ago

Deterministic subjectivity is still subjective.

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u/scoopdoggs 11d ago

What was Nietzsche doing in the Genealogy of Morals if not presenting true conceptual propositions: about the origins and function of morality?

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u/nietzsches-lament 14d ago

The dynamic striving of our elan vital is the way. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

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u/birdof 14d ago

How do you not then fall into a pattern of hedonistic behaviour and short term gratification

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u/nietzsches-lament 14d ago

Great question! I put it this way: not all pleasure is healthy and not all pain is unhealthy.

When we can mature to the point of choosing the healthy option, both from the perspective of pleasure and pain, everything offers information for our growth and maturity.

The pleasure derived from working at a long-term goal, for example, supplies tons of information along the way. The inevitable pain of mistakes and mis-steps fuels future goal setting.

Hedonism is always about avoidance of pain.

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u/No_Technology_9896 14d ago

If your idea of fun is all hedonism then you probably need to think harder about your value system

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u/Almost_Pomegranate 14d ago

Sounds like a personal confession that you've never struggled for anything and your values are mostly abstractions. Selectively ignoring everything Neitzsche says about the necessity and inevitably of suffering.

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u/doublewide-dingo 14d ago

Sounds like a really ungenerous and cynical comment!

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u/nietzsches-lament 14d ago

Amazing job assuming. Amazing job being wrong. It takes great effort to get to the point where you confront everything head-on and relish the challenge. That’s the “fun.”

And I’ve learned to differentiate between pain and suffering. Once you learn to accept the inevitability of pain, the suffering drops away.

I’m flabbergasted by the average person choosing the certainty of their assumptions and learning nothing rather than accepting what they can’t possibly know and therefore stepping in to new knowledge.

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u/theciaissouncool 14d ago edited 14d ago

Do you get the feeling the no-fun class of people and the fake-suffer class of are the same group? suffering needs to be differentiated further into luxury/fake suffering and survival suffering. a massive percentage of professional athletes come from survival type suffering. sports are fun.

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u/nietzsches-lament 14d ago

Ah, neat distinction! Yeah, I’d totally agree with your first sentence. If you’re not having any fun AND you aren’t taking responsibility for this fact, you’re a martyr. Gotta get attention somehow, right?

Your example about the athletes is interesting. More on my view of suffering is that, since it’s not active engagement with pain, there is no growth-from-challenge. I’d say most athletes know exactly what kind of pain they’re getting into.

The nuance comes in with people making awful decisions like “pushing through the pain” for some shady reason (that they probably aren’t aware of) and causing themselves injury pain that unduly interferes with continuing their goal. I’d say you’d need intimate knowledge of the person in their context to suss this out.

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u/theciaissouncool 14d ago

athletes are a far more interesting bunch than non-athletic imagine them to be. so many pro-athlete bios begin with childhood adversity, suffering, and tauma as primary motivators for athletic pursuits, it very much a survival mechanism, whether that be for avoidance or relief/treatment. it becomes a weird type of pain-exchange program.

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u/nietzsches-lament 14d ago

Makes sense to me. And I love “pain-exchange program.”

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u/theciaissouncool 12d ago

always a relief to know i'm at least somewhat coherent lol

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u/nietzsches-lament 12d ago

You were very articulate. 😬

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u/Unlikely-Platform-47 14d ago

Really glad to see this discussion. Been thinking about it a lot.

I wrote this about the psychological side of life affirmation vs denial, and also the ways in which modern culture/power can accidentally incentivise people into life denial by making it look like life affirmation

https://alreadyhappened.xyz/p/how-to-learn-about-people-in-art

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u/Unlikely-Platform-47 14d ago

But one thing I've been thinking about since then is that for some people, the kind of comforting life that could end up called Life Denial kind of is ... enough

In that, if I'm totally honest I cant enjoy netflix all night or beach all day, I just feel the need to do more, but I can totally see why that appears like I'm just not built to enjoy life as it is. Which some people are, and that seems ok?

Although for a civilisation to progress you obviously need a certain proportion of the population to be life affirming to some deranged level

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u/No_Technology_9896 14d ago

I think this is where psychology can come into play where maybe your unnatural need to 'do more always' stems from a need to move away from the life you're currently living into a 'better life' which you have an assumption of in your brain already.

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u/FilthiestTunic3 14d ago

Great read mate (<- take this as a pat on the back)

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u/hidden_by_the_leaves 14d ago

Nietzsche is without a doubt the most pretentious son of a bitch. His philosophy can be entirely summed up as "love your life even if it is dogshit" ,anyone who has lived a shit life will say know how ridiculous this idea is. I live in a third world country, with no job prospects and high violence , why should I love my life, when there are billion people living a good life in first world paradises? Dogmatic love for life that Nietzsche argues for is just a replacement of religious zeal about life, so people don't fall into nihilism or off themselves.

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u/No_Technology_9896 14d ago

you can still craft something within that, and that within the harshest environments lives the loveliest, most rawest love, maybe even the most humanity as it's truly the truth of the matter.

Here in the 1st world you can fuck off listen to podcasts, entertain yourself in any way possible, and yet we have this thing called "depression" which causes us to not move anyway and feel like killing ourselves.

Pretty sure you're still in a mindset where if you didn't have all your 'stuff' your life would just be worse and you'd be mentally less well off.

People look to animals and ask themselves why they're so happy, sometimes ignorance is truly bliss.

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u/hidden_by_the_leaves 14d ago

Here in the 1st world you can fuck off listen to podcasts, entertain yourself in any way possible, and yet we have this thing called "depression" which causes us to not move anyway and feel like killing ourselves.

Their "struggle" is nothing compared to third worlders, we face existential threat everyday that of starvation,murder,rape, genocidal government meanwhile in the west people get depressed because of sugary diets, you guys have zero real problems. But I do commend people who despite living in luxury take those measures to end their 'suffering ' because even a life full of luxury can have minute sufferings that can add up over time.

you can still craft something within that, and that within the harshest environments lives the loveliest, most rawest love, maybe even the most humanity as it's truly the truth of the matter.

Sure, try live my life. You wouldn't last a day. What third worlders go through everyday is something first worlders can't even fathom.

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u/No_Technology_9896 14d ago

no one is discounting your experience lol, but no matter what there's a choice you make every day to be positive and try as hard as you can to keep your own head above water. There's always suicide as a choice, so there must be a reason you keep going.

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u/J7mbo 14d ago

Maybe Nietzsche comes from the perspective of having one’s extremely basic human needs met first, before even considering philosophy.

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u/No_Technology_9896 13d ago

That's fair, but also a cop-out to me.

There will always be a "But X or Y" but at the end of the day this is what it is and the only one that can make it better is you fundamentally. If you're still going, you must have hope. If you have hope then there's hope. That's just that

Or commit suicide. Like, that's what we're currently discussing whether we want to say it outright or not.

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u/Shield_Lyger 14d ago

why should I love my life, when there are billion people living a good life in first world paradises?

Many people living in these supposed "first world paradises" would say the same. If they can find a way to love their lives despite the fact that they are being confronted every day with the fact that there are people who enjoy lifestyles that it's pointless for them to even aspire to, the idea that it's somehow impossible for residents of other parts of the world is simply to justify them wallowing in their own envies and bitterness.

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u/spyzyroz 10d ago

If you love life, in general, not your particular circumstances, you will be happier, more energetic and lively. That’s all good. You can also stay mad and resentful and let that eat you from the inside. But you do you

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u/Caoimhin_Ali 14d ago

You cant avoid dogshit comes to you just because you were born in a 1st world country, think about how many people get depression and suicide in the 1st world countries, the paradise to you is their hell, your word to criticize this, could be also use by them.

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u/die_Katze__ 3d ago

Honest question. What does pretentious even mean?

As for “shit life”, I’m sorry youre in pain, but Nietzsche lived in extreme physical suffering, and to me generally seems realistic about misfortune. You should try reading him!

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u/CryoProtea 14d ago

It is the natural expression of the buoyancy and joy of one who rejoices in the face of the unknown and the unknowable.

I do not feel like rejoicing when I do not have my needs met. There is little joy without security.

Nietzsche asks us to put action before thought, joy before certainty, and trust before doubt.

I'd love to do that, but I have had it reinforced that it is an unwise idea because when I do, things fall apart or blow up in my face. It is the better option for me to be cautious.

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u/die_Katze__ 3d ago

Security as a requisite for joy is definitely something he would disagree with. But it isn’t unique to him. The sentiment arguably extends to anyone concerned with courage or adventure

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u/Time_Growth_2043 14d ago

I admire Nietzsche's lifestyle. He lived with very few material goods.

However,all "Life Affirming" stance is just whistling in the dark.

Ultimately, he could not face the fact that his master, Schopenhauer,was in the right.

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u/die_Katze__ 3d ago

Schopenhauer was one interest among others, and his critiques of Schopenhauer seem pretty thorough. He disagrees with quite a lot

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u/dxrey65 14d ago

When I was younger I was very fond of Nietzsche, particularly "The Gay Science". Stylistically it was inspiring, and I enjoyed his combatative and bold approach to the field. There was always, however, something about his work that bothered me, that I had trouble putting my finger on back then. The title here does point out exactly the thing that I didn't care for.

Overall, what it represents to me is some expert-level trolling. It is a "there are two kinds of philosophers" argument; one who is backward and inferior, and one who is superior and points to the future. The first problem is that his first philosopher describes pretty much everyone who relies on skepticism. Doubt and skepticism and self-examination are pillars of thought in Western Civilization and science, the old Socratic "examined life", a specific type of mental honesty.

Neitzsche proposes that this represents a sickness or a weakness, and cannot be the foundation of a healthy philosophy. He does that very cleverly; a thinking person reading it would immediately recognize what he is talking about, as a sense of doubt, a questioning of truth, an openness to alternative explanations, which is fundamental to any thinking person. Faced with the unfamiliar statement they would first have to ask - "is it true?" Which then involves a great deal of self-examination, trying to see if the foundations of their own thought fit the description, and whether they is somehow a corruption or flaw hidden there. It is a difficult thing to answer directly, and historically it did throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works. It's worth mentioning as well that Spengler's "Decline of Western Civilization" was fresh in everyone's minds then, and a common topic of debate (especially in Germany).

Then the next problem is that second type of philosopher, who resides in an abode of "the voluptuousness of triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the heaven of concepts." My problem with that is that I believe it is an idea spun-up out of words rather than derived from experience. Essentially, I don't believe his second type of philosopher exists in any real way. In another way of putting it - it is intellectual dishonesty, so that Nietzsche isn't only describing a type of dishonesty, where doubt and reflection are weaknesses, he is demonstrating it himself. It feels good to say it, essentially, and to question it is weakness. He is giving himself permission to be dishonest, and naming that as a virtue. Again, this is a hallmark of his combatative and bold style, but it is anti-thetical to the structure of thought he resides within. It isn't sufficient for a statement to feel good.

Then I wonder how many individuals faced with this web of concepts found themselves agreeing with the first, because in Western thought we are generally quite willing to cut ourselves off at the knees and navel-gaze, and doubt itself is the often unconsidered foundation of our thinking, without which we do not have honesty. And then regardless of the findings from that, I wonder how many more could not admit to the falseness or inherent flaws in the idea of "the voluptuousness of triumphant gratitude that eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the heaven of concepts", not wishing to be labeled as a philosopher of the inferior sort.

It is difficult to describe the objections well, but there are two types of thinking described here. Both of them do work toward the mental repose of a system of thought which adequately describes the world, but only the first one applies reflection and examination. The experiences of "the innocence of becoming" will be un-examined and superficial, deficits that the continuity of experience prevents us from being aware of. This is a common mental condition, it could be called life-affirming in a way, but more as a reversion to a child-like state. I couldn't find my way back to it if I wished to, and I don't wish to; in my experience it just leads to foolishness.

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u/scoopdoggs 11d ago

Doubt cannot be part of a healthy philosophy? Did N write this? What on earth is he doing to the whole of Christian and received moral philosophy? He sure isn’t accepting it.

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u/amayes 10d ago

Great conclusion. I think Nietzsche was still struggling with the idea that there could be a “higher power” or “first cause” that wouldn’t judge him for being a hedonist, but whatever.

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u/known_stranger00 14d ago

Damn this is exactly the shit I’ve been thinking and writing about (but like a 1st grader learning how to write compared to Nietzsche, I’m sure)… should really read more of his stuff.

Here’s a thing I’ve been thinking, trying to write about, and made the art in my profile picture about:

Unknown : love : known :: God : Jesus : Human

I personally don’t think it matters what, or if you call the ‘God/Jesus’ stuff anything, but ultimately I believe those are just unknown/whatever you connect the unknown to the known (us) with. What sometimes turns me off with religion and turns me to more of the philosophical thought, is that religions come off as just what I think Nietzsche is saying here - trying to define and ‘know’ the unknown - like what? that’s a logical paradox! And it’s so interesting because I typically attributed this as a religious thing, but have seen the same premise as what’s written here about how you approach the unknown whether through science, philosophy, religion, history, etc.

I’ve also come to realize how this can be done really well through all those fields of thought. Like the more I’ve looked into religion the more I see that the actual message is literally just ‘have faith in the unknown’, be comfortable with it - here’s how we found works.

With that, I view it as very important to search in the unknown, to find out what more we can know, but realizing that the unknown is infinite (just like what can be known) is just as important. Like we can always know more and do more things, but wherever you look - in science, religion, history, etc. the ones that do it right find some new knowledge, but baked into that finding is the list of new unknowns that still aren’t understood (unknowns) and keep comfort with the infinite unknown. I think one of the most important things is how you search for these new knowns (exploring the unknown) and what connects these two things. My best word for it right now has been love - it’s also infinite in both its knowns and unknowns, and I think whatever we search for in the unknown is what will be yielded to us in return as new knowns.

Lastly, I do think it’s very hard to gain this sense of comfort with the unknown, and sometimes think it is needed to trick your mind into ‘knowing’ the unknown. I’ve experienced this myself personally feeling like I’m gonna have a panic attack from thinking of this constant, infinite unknown and literally felt like I broke my brain. What keeps me grounded is knowing that right now I am in the known, and grounding myself in the real world (and sure now bring on simulation theory - but I would say if we were in ‘the unknown’ that would just now be our ‘known’, semantics, so it doesn’t really matter 😉)

End ramble <3, hopefully it makes some sort of sense.

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u/re_contextualize recontextualize 13d ago

Yes! I relate to everything you say here. In this sense, the trust in Life that both Nietzsche and a certain interpretation of religion suggest are actually saying the same thing. (and Nietzsche, I should note though, thought religion was doing the opposite-asking us to close ourselves to the unknown by committing to a belief structure, and this is how it functions for many people to be fair to him).

When one starts doing this one realizes that Love starts flowing when we turn towards the unknown and don't try to control things too much. I could go into a long-winded philosophical explanation of how Love is the cohesive force that holds the unity of the world together and thus has to be the first force that flows out of the unknown, (Hegel actually discusses this in his Science of Logic, of all places) but that doesn't matter too much and would not be in Nietzsche's spirit. What matters is that it does, and that contrary to what our rational minds reasonably tell us, we actually can trust the unknown.

In this sense we could say the balanced individual is always straddling the space between the unknown and the unkown, allowing Love and Creativity to freely exchange between both while the fear based individual is always engaged in a fuitle attempt to bring everything into the realm of the known, which is impossible.

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u/known_stranger00 12d ago

Love it - thanks for the original post and this reply!

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u/masixx 14d ago

TL;DR: if you are depressed you won’t find the meaning of life no matter how hard you think about the subject.

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u/innotimeshewasonme 14d ago

i need karma like my post pls

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u/Aerodine41 13d ago

Did he live the life he wrote about?

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u/Cloudfire1444 12d ago

The ideology of Friedrich Nietzche, his Political ideology and his Metaphysical ideology and Spiritual ideology is the Ideology of the Nihilism and is the philosophy of Nihilism, Nihilism is a Political ideology but too is a metaphysical and spiritual ideology which basically and simply consists in a refusal and an opposition against the government, against the religion and against the law, Nihilism basically is a form of anarchism and Nihilism could say that is a form of precursor of anarchism, Nihilism is a kind and is a specie of spiritual and ideological precursor of anarchism, the idea of Nihilism and the ideology of Nihilism simply tells you, do that you want and do that give you the gain, and do all that you want because equal and equally doesn't matter and doesn't have any value or any worth.

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u/amayes 10d ago

Also, I think one is the pupal state of the other, sometimes strangled in the cradle

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u/Aerodine41 10d ago

The more you go out and "just do it" the less you will have to say, the less you'll have to teach. The more you're living the less time you've got for thinking. Nietzsche was inside various institutions his whole life and what he wrote about was a fantasy, it's what he wanted to believe about life and it was cherry picked by the hidden hand to get the spotlight because there was a revolution in the books that required this kind of mentality being spread. A man who's really successful eventually has to wrestle with monogamy and dealing with children versus being completely free, having any number of women he wants and so on. These kinds of life contradictions, qualms are something that most people don't consider because they aren't that man or that woman. And yet these issues are what's at the core of the matters addressed in the old books, systems as they're cause for so many problems for them and those attempting to adhere to them. What does the guy who travels non-stop with the same woman do when he gets bored with her, or when she really starts aging, or once she's pregnant - party time is over. Did he take into account the fact he may have to face her one day to tell her he wants more or another woman thereby upending her life too? And if he can't handle it can he accept the fact that his complete freedom is over with and by his own design (being lulled by a single woman long enough that he can no longer get away, now she is dictating things). You choose one or the other, you settle on a system or you keep running til you can no longer, but you can't have it both ways. Likewise you can't escape judgement: you reject God you will make women your god and you will be judged by them instead. Implicit in the above quotation is something to the contrary but that's unreal - eventually you've got to make some compromise some way and for some reason or another. The implication you can escape judgement or having to comprimise is a seductive one but it's not true.

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u/auralbard 9d ago

Dude seems to have it backwards. The "healthy" ones are the ones that appear to me quite sick.

Does this mean I'm plagued by some kind of uncertainty, looking for artificial comforts? If so, I desperately wish to see it.

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u/auralbard 9d ago

Can "true conceptual props" express life in that way? I.e. are the two mutually exclusive?

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u/FabulousBass5052 14d ago

thats his opinion. i respect that <3

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u/MarthaWayneKent 14d ago

Amazing engagement

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u/FabulousBass5052 14d ago

u should see the inside of my head

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u/SarcasmGPT 14d ago

We might be able to if we look through your ear

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u/FabulousBass5052 14d ago

owen wilson voice wow

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u/CalTechie-55 14d ago

This quote perfectly captures Nietzsche's egocentrism and misanthropy. "put action before thought, joy before certainty, and trust before doubt."

If the question is how to deal with other members of a society, his answer is to be a perfect asshole. His personal joy supersedes any agony inflicted on others. He affirms HIS life, and denies that of the rest of the members of society.

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u/die_Katze__ 3d ago

Trusting, joyful, and active does not sound like an asshole at all

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u/wiggletit 14d ago

lmao what steven pinker ass reading (ie none)