- May 2015
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shakespeare.mit.edu shakespeare.mit.edu
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Second Witch
Second Witch at 3848..3860
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- Dec 2013
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caseyboyle.net caseyboyle.net
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The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the wo rds, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real.
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Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation.
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They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms." Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things.
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As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey, This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man.
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- Nov 2013
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caseyboyle.net caseyboyle.net
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"the correct perception"-which would mean "the adequate expression of an object in the subject"-is a contradictory impossibility. For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression
So wouldn't this refer to his own observations too, thereby nullifying them?
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such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things,
How else are men supposed to understand the world if not in relation to themselves?
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Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man.
This makes sense. But I'm still waiting for the "so what."
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unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as "honest"
I get what he's saying about words and their origins but applying the concept to abstract ideas is a little...off
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Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth.
Yeah okay this I agree with.
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Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.
And people wonder why reading Nietzsche brings me down so much.
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that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself.
I would argue that one of the great things that puts humans on such a higher level is the fact that we can actually think in terms like this and animals can't.
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But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived D and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells i him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king.
interesting. Different realities?
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e. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one.
imitation?
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As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.
rational vs. unconscious
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Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone.
lying, inherent to society and morality?
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
truth
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He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him.
honesty and trust
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Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation. But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes
Don't know what last clause means, but interesting difference between the individual and social world.
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Moreover, man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power.
The unconscious realm?
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As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey, This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.
I just like this.
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For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.
!!
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And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.
Arrogance?
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For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life.
Mortality.
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He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.
Amazing writer, I could read him all day!
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The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally.
Incredible writing talent and perceptivity.
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It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally.
the stimulus for progress inventiveness
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But we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms.
All that we comprehend exists in context to the forms and concepts we create and the webs we weave.
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A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world.
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For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation:
Hm. Well, that's something, at least. Can we feel or sense or experience things beyond description with our sensory perception?
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and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that "the correct perception"-which would mean "the adequate expression of an object in the subject"-is a contradictory impossibility.
Even if we could glimpse what lies "beyond" we have no context with which to contain or express things objectively.
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Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrifaction and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency.
Brilliant use of imagery and metaphor. The primordial ooze of human constructed reality.
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the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.
A kaleidoscope of impressions derived from subjective projection of metaphors derived from fictitious concepts. "Life is a fantasy" of man's measure of the universe.
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Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind.
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As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things.
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Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water.
and call it "civilization"
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schema
definition: • (in Kantian philosophy) a conception of what is common to all members of a class; a general or essential type or form.
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As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions.
Law as abstraction.
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The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes.
The idea that truth exists only in contrast to its opposite, with no fundamental autonomous, self-determining, independent, or sovereign foundation.
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Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone.
The duty to lie.
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Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
Forgetting the emblematic property of words as concepts, we adhere false "essence" to concepts and call it "truth" for the construction of convention and thus empty rhetoric, metaphors, and illusions. Not that we can actually construct convention that is not void of essence, but we might consider the folly of acting as if "truth" is real.
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For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond o the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite.
An interesting point that "we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond o the essence of things".
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We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.
That which is beyond rhetoric is beyond our conceptual reach
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occulta
Interesting choice of terms.
Definition: "occult": of, involving, or relating to supernatural, mystical, or magical powers or phenomena
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This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven,
When in actuality "leaf" is merely the distinction of singularity, meaning not "leaves". Not based on an "original" model at all, but a distinction what it is related, and not equal to. Concepts and words only create "context"; the water that all distinctions, all rhetoric, and all convention swims in.
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cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.
Concepts can only be constructed in rhetoric in their relationship to other concepts, as when "this" thing is not "that" thing. Says more of what a thing is "not" than what a thing "is".
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In particular, let us further consider the formation of concepts. Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin;
words are concepts and conceptual
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Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.
If language originally evolved as a tool of preservation, its roots are naturally based in self-interest for purposes of survival. That hasn't changed, we still rely on language and its conventions for survival. The point being, that we tend to forget that definitions and conventions are based in, derived from, arbitrary inventions.
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Perhaps such a person will gaze with astonishment at Chladni's sound figures; perhaps he will discover their causes in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men mean by "sound."
good use of metaphor to illustrate
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What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing!
selection and choices
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But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation!
Rhetoric cannot be escaped through rhetoric.
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tautology
Definition 3: Logic a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form.
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It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated.
Memory, selection, and choices.
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He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
Whatever is beyond convention, beyond rhetoric, is generally deemed impertinent as it is of no consequence within the conventional/current paradigm.
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It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
"tell me lies. tell me sweet, sweet lies" The maintenance of convention. Truth and/or consequences.
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And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
Linguistic conventions that serve the above stated purposes of "selection" (for desirable rather than undesirable consequences), and not necessarily "truthful" depictions.
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What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception.
Critical distinction regarding the process of "selection"; from his central thesis.
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If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him.
social contract: convention
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That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time.
"... as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things."
Creating the very basis from which a lie, or the act of lying, can become manifest, vis-a-vis, truth telling. The $25,000 question: "What is Rhetoric?"
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This peace treaty brings in its wake something which appears to be the first step toward acquiring that puzzling truth drive: to wit, that which shall count as "truth" from now on is established.
Not actual truth, but a contraction of that which is generally accepted as the place of balance between good and evil, right and wrong, etc., yet is in fact, fluid and contextually based, evolving with human/societal values. convention.
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That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth.
The rhetoric of society
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But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes.
The basis of the internal battle of good and evil.
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Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation.
Seeing the world as a hostile place, we defend with our power to deceive. Competition and survival based in theories of scarcity.
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bellum omni contra omnes
"the war of all against all"
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Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from?
Will seeing behind the myth burst the bubble of ignorance, to tumble perilously down the back of the tiger?
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and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger.
Small, fragile, and tenuously suspended and preserved, encased in ignorance, by the same substance, ego, source of good and ill. It reminds me of the fable of a woman hanging from a cliff by a thin reed, tigers above and tigers below, and spying a ripe strawberry plucks and savors its sweetness, as a parable for life.
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And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness
The "Crack in the Cosmic Egg", Joseph Chilton Pearce
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She threw away the key.
God as Woman. Mother Nature as Creator.
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Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness,
Dissemination and self deception as necessary for survival, innate, not contrived extensions/characteristics of the intellect for purpose of preservation
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Moreover, man permits himself to be deceived in his dreams every night of his life. His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this,
"Self interest" and "self deception" over-riding morality
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Their senses nowhere lead to truth; on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things.
Easily entertained and distracted in a battle of egos on the surface of "forms"
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They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."
Plato's shadow cave.
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a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them
Good point. On the other hand, this "drive for truth" could arise from an innate need to see beyond the constructs of the ego.
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As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of prey, This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man.
The sword of intellect and dissimulation equated to the physical defensive characteristics of all living things for preservation, yet with the unique capacity to be misused. Highlighting the vulnerability of humans and over-reaching amplification of intellect to disguise a deep insecurity that originates in the fundamental physical inferiority of humans among beasts.
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For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing.
Ego
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It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence.
Does this imply existence of a Creator?
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The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence.
The human pride, synonymous with ego.
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And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.
Of Man and God
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Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.
Great use of fable to hyper illuminate his central theme right away. It's colorful, dramatic, poignant, and a little unnerving, altogether engaging.
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One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature
metaphor with the purpose of "perspective"
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And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.
The idea that "truths" are not Big or Little T truths, they are simply an act of perception.
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We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science.
We take a turn here to see how deceptive language can be. It's power to persuade by verbiage, not just by what is being said.
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Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.
A 'snowflake' sort of ideal applied to other words... but a valid point. Our language is imperfect, inaccurate, and vague- every time I read through Nietzche I come around to his thought process a little more.
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In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.
It's fascinating to consider how if our language had been constructed differently... based on, somehow, a logical reasoning of stimuli... mankind would think entirely differently.
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This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors
It would be hard to imagine human language without a humanocentric bent, but a completely fair point nonetheless.
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How far this oversteps the canons of certainty!
This might be one of my favorite lines in this entire work. A great Nietzchan assertion of hyperbole.
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If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.
Perhaps my greatest criticism of Nietzche is not his style, which I adore, or his subject matter, but his apparent attempt to write a philosophical bit as if he were nearly speaking from a pseudoscientific standpoint.
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Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
The ultimate rhetoric question?
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Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception.
Man doesn't hate the liar- he hates the liar whose lies have outwardly hurt them! What I find more interesting is Nietzche essentially stating how society all too eagerly puts up with lies, and liars, in the first place.
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As a means for the preserving of the individual, the intellect unfolds its principle powers in dissimulation, which is the means by which weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves-since they have been denied the chance to wage the battle for existence with horns or with the sharp teeth of beasts of pre
"Dissimulation" as a sort of weapon is interesting. Deceit makes for a valuable tool.
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pride
How does Nietzche define his version of "pride"?
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And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.
Nietzche has a tendency for elegant prose as much as he does unwarranted cynicism, and this sentence is an excellent example of it.
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"If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king," said Pascal, "I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman.
This made me think of the Think-Tank experiment. Would you give up your real life to live in a perfect world that wasn't real. If you do not know of this, watch this clip form The Ricky Gervais show. Even if you do, watch it anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkvkSSfcyVo
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It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does,
I know it's a product of its time, but it's interesting to note that many animals/creature do not recognize themselves. Self representation is not a quality of all living life.
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.
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A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions
This is not his view on truth, just his view of "truth." I wonder what his view on empiricism would be. Probably something terrible...
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never-never lan
Kind of a silly comment: had Peter Pan been written yet? Or was the idea of "never-never land" a popular concept in the day?
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But at the same time, from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant bellum omni contra omnes
This isn't a wish, it's a property of our evolution. We evolved in a social world as well as a physical world. As a social primate, it's something we do naturally. OH SHIT, NATURE!
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What does man actually know about himself?
This is breaking the themes that we've read so far. Not agreeing or disagreeing, but a good twist in the happiness of all-knowingness we've seemed to discuss so far.
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Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.
Nietzsche is quick to point out extreme human flaws. Negative nancy. Really sets the tone for the reading, very dark.
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He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him.
This seems like a punishment, but we are looking at it with our moral lens.
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there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.
(wild) Beasts
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The pride
I like this word, not sure if meant to create a double meaning. Pride as in the feeling, but pride as in the group.
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. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.
This is so darkly true. We tend to praise our impact on the world, but it's very much something we believe to be true, but is not. If human kind disappeared tomorrow, the Earth would be back to awesome in about 500 years (I think, there is a whole book about this. Correct this if you have read the book and recall better than I).
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One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature
ouch. Brutal, but interesting to see that he draws mankind into nature instead of excelling from it.
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That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute.
i like this idea of keeping time and frame in mind. The worst of the worst only lasts moments in comparison to time.
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When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it
wow! again, his writing at times is almost poetic
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-and this is what the honest Athenian believed- then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment
great point!
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waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art
such an interesting way to separate the dream world vs. the awake world
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Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception-if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound-then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree.
Precisely. We can only relate the world to ourselves and our own perspective, because that is all we have
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And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life.
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At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man
Again, this is man relating the world around him to his own self
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his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind
His writing here is almost poetic. Very pretty!
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Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
I'm starting to wonder whether or not this guy thinks there is anything good or beautiful in life. From his opinions laid out so far, it seems like he must live a bleak life, due to his skepticism of anything that enriches existence
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we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things--metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities
And this is exactly what linguists are talking about when they say that words are simply symbols for the things that they represent
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This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors
I can understand his reasoning in this statement. Our language describes the world and things around us in relation to mankind. Kind of ego-centrical if you think about it
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if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions
I think that definitely depends on how one define's truth, and where they believe truth comes from
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Is language the adequate expression of all realities
Great question, and I think the answer is 'no'. Each language has it's own restrictions in expressing certain ideas, emotions, or situations. I definitely think that there are boundaries that can confine our expression in any language
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man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined
This is actually an interesting observation that I can see being true about much of mankind
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What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud
isn't that the same thing?
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bellum omni contra omne
um... ????
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What does man actually know about himself?
I think this is a very good question, actually. On that I think each human being spends their life trying to figure out
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Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men
He certainly doesn't have a very good impression of mankind around him, does he?
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It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence. For without this addition they would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as Lessing's son.
I've never heard or considered this perspective before. I don't necessarily agree, but very interesting and thought-provoking
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And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought
Wow, he certainly has a way with words. This is very lyrical and well-written, but in a snarky, "I hate the world an everyone in it", kind of way
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The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the wo rds, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real.
This shows the power in words. The ability to deceive and the ability to at least describe truth.
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there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.
Reference to beasts; what separates us clever beasts from the other beasts?
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The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions.
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He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness.
a man can control his happiness or sorrow by deceiving himself in different ways
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That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor.
Interesting.
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There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts.
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it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts.
intuition vs. concepts
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The intellect has now thrown the token of bondage from itself. At other times it endeavors, with gloomy officiousness, to show the way and to demonstrate the tools to a poor individual who covets existence; it is like a servant who goes in search of booty and prey for his master. But now it has become the master and it dares to wipe from its face the expression of indigence.
This drive controls us.
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After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature-which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence. All that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them-time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number.
Laws of nature that people know
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it is we who impress ourselves in this way. In conjunction with this, it of course follows that the artistic process of metaphor formation with which every sensation begins in us already presupposes these forms and thus occurs within them. The only way in which the possibility of subsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor.
Because a belief exists within us it is already present in a sensation when we feel it.
Hmmmm...the beliefs we build is a copy of the metaphorical realm of the world, space and numbers.
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spider
more spider webs
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We don't understand the laws of nature but only how we can relate to them
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Bees construct a physical world and man constructs a conceptual world.
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In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.
I'm not sure exactly what he is trying to say here. Is he saying that while language is not pulled from out of know where, words and language are built upon connections to other words instead of the intrinsic nature of a thing?
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We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual
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Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things.
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It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things--metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.
Truth = the original entities
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The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.
Language vs. Truth
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What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus.
The definition of a word.
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And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
Key questions
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Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
Money was originally precious metals, and then signs for precious metals (paper money), and then signs for the signs for precious metals (debit/credit cards), and is now turning into signs for the signs for the signs for precious metals (apps that represent debit/credit cards). Just as money underwent this transition, so did truth. We now take truth to mean something fixed, but we have just forgotten that truth is a sign for a social illusion.
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to wit, that which shall count as "truth" from now on is established. That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth. For the contrast between truth and lie arises here for the first time. The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the wo rds, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real.
Truth vs. lie
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This peace treaty brings in its wake something which appears to be the first step toward acquiring that puzzling truth drive: to wit, that which shall count as "truth" from now on is established. That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth.
Truth without morality. Truth because of social conventions.
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Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from?
Key question.
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What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case?
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What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception.
We think we dislike deception, but we really hate the consequences of that choice. It has not yet gained the moral distinction.
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drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive,
language-learning as an innate characteristic of the human brain
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aesthetic relation:
Reality as defined by aesthetics. That's fun.
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dissolve an image into a concept.
Do we lose something in this dissolution?
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but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as "honest" actions.
Well, how else are people supposed to function in a real world? Nothing's constant, so all we can do is make assumptions and generalizations in an attempt to make sense of our surroundings
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and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things--metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities
definition of language
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copy
Implies that the sound is, somehow, directly related to the perception of something?
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first laws of truth
definitions
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within a proud, deceptive consciousness,
anti-organic - mind as separate and almost entirely unrelated to the real, natural world.
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They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images
Perceptions as world-defining
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A concept becomes a word based on its relationship to other cases.
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as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation!
Truth is subjective
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It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions. What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus.
Truth is an illusion, an imitation of a previously known idea.
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And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? I
I wanted to highlight "Is language the adequate expression of all realities?"
Without language, what exists?
If deception is only deception because of a negative result, is deception without a negative result still deception?
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What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception.
Men don't dislike the act of deception, but rather the consequences of deception.
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His moral sentiment does not even make an attempt to prevent this, whereas there are supposed to be men who have stopped snoring through sheer will power.
A man's morals do not prevent him from the illusion and deceptions of the world, is it possible that will power alone will wake his desire for truth.
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They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."
This reminds me of Plato, and illusion of what is real but not the real knowledge.
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The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence. For this pride contains within itself the most flattering estimation of the value of knowing. Deception is the most general effect of such pride, but even its most particular effects contain within themselves something of the same deceitful character.
Is ignorance better than knowledge?
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And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought.
Wow! He has a thing against the philosopher.
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But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived D and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells i him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free;
Our unconscious goal is to deceive ourselves. We don't seek reality
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It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams
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This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts
We limit ourselves by formulation a frame for truth and then filling it, not seeing anything outside it.
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The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself.
Seems excessive, I don't think I buy it
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rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree.
we create the concept of truth and knowledge into which we pour back in these ideas
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"the correct perception"-which would mean "the adequate expression of an object in the subject"-is a contradictory impossibility. For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation:
No absolute truth, all subjective and relative. Reality much more complex
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considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man
Man sees himself in everything
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unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind
Foundation of truth. Society, it is unstable and built on concepts and generalizations meant to only make ourselves feel more secure
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions- they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
Definition--ironic he uses metaphors to define truth as metaphor
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Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects
Modifying Platonic ideas of truth. Truth is the farthest from reality because it conflates individuality and real circumstances and specificity
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the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.
Not even a derivative of reality but a derivative of a fantasy or dream
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To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one
Deaf man metaphor, we can never know the original or truth, but approximate
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The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages
We are only continually approximating out thoughts, not fully communicating
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What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus
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empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusion
Shadows, dreams
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It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
We want only what benefits us. Operant condition.
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That is to say, a uniformly valid and binding designation is invented for things, and this legislation of language likewise establishes the first laws of truth
Truth socially constructed, desire to be part of the "herd"
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"forms
Shadows and objects
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This art of dissimulation reaches its peak in man. Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself-in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity-is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.
We are merely trying to fill roles and hide our true selves because we recognize our insufficiency.
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It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence
Humbling, but I really like this perspective. It's refreshing
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One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature.
Ouch. Do we really know so little? Or in accepting how little we know, do we know more than we realize?
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URL
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caseyboyle.net caseyboyle.net
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? I assert indeed that such a definition of an orator seems to me to be useless and stupid: Why? Because a definition of any artist which covers more than is included in the rules of his art is superfluous and defective.
Takes the moral component ascribed so often by his peers out of the equation, and I can definitely appreciate that.
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In this disputation, however, I shall, as far as I may
I've already found his style to be exceedingly winding, overly wordy, and frivolous. But perhaps I am simply being overly critical
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ordered, organized
A wee bit of alliteration to start things off.
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But we delay too long on the threshold: let us take up the rhetorical controversies.
I can't wait, Ramus, you condescending old bastard.
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And they did not arrange it in a sufficiently fitting order
Syntax and style seem to be his main criticisms over substance, but that might just be my opinion.
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In conse-quence there is such a great difference that Cicero seems to have spoken in an age of gold, Quin-tilian in an age of iron
An elegant insult, if I ever saw one.
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for I address you and those like you, pure-minded judges unclouded by prejudice
An appeal to the possible reader's ego, sly.
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if the arts were taught with greater conciseness they would certainly be more easily understood, and once the true method for their use was revealed, they would be more easy to practice.
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We shall distinguish the art of rhetoric from the other arts, and make it a single one of the liberal arts, not a confused mixture of all arts; we shall sep-arate its true properties, remove weak and useless subtleties, and point out the things that are miss-ing.
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rhetoric.eserver.org rhetoric.eserver.org
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On the contrary, you will find the greater number of men both ready in conceiving and quick in learning, since such quickness is natural to man. As birds are born to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to show fierceness, so to us peculiarly belong activity and sagacity of understanding; hence the origin of the mind is thought to be from heaven.
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