Notes for Beyond Good And Evils @notes

DONE Beyond Good and Evil - Ch1 Prejudices of Philosophers literatures

1. Nietzsche starts the first chapter of the book by questioning the “Will of Truth” - if there’s a will to truth, why not untruth?

Nietzsche pointed that philosophers devoted themselves to the “Will of Truth” without questioning the origin of the will. He also mentioned such question is Dangerous.

• Sphnix and Oedipus

  Sphnix is a mythical creature with a head of a human, the body of a lion and the wings of a falcon. According to legend, he’s guarded the Greek city of Thebes and fond of asking riddles to travelers. However, Oedipus was able to solve all the riddles Sphnix gave, Sphnix threw herself from her high rock and died.

• The Will to Truth

  The tendency to seek out and believe in the truth even in hard circumstances. (But whether it is the truth that people are seeking, or a desire to believe something as truth/good?)

2. The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in antitheses of values. Metaphysicians hold no doubt of this presupposition. Venturing into questioning such belief is dangerous but inevitable.

• Nietzsche questions the fundamental belief in metaphysics, that things cannot originate from their opposition. The highest values must come into being.
• If we venture to question such belief: virtues might steam from vise. The fundamental values of life might be attributed to the pretense, the will to deception etc.
• Nietzsche believes that such investigation is inevitable and is immerging.

• Need further investigation [0/1]

  • What’s the meaning of antitheses of values?
    • Personal understanding: The dichotomy of values, things are either good or bad, true or untrue but not in between. And there is no room for things might be in between, or fostering each other… That’s why build from this Nietzsche criticizes the foundation the philosophy is built upon - a truth that is absolute and unarguable, built from the philosopher’s own prejudice.

3. The assertion of being conscious of thinking and unaffected by physical condition and value is only an illusion and is maintained to have a definite mode of life.

• Need further investigation [1/2]

  • Where do all the assertions that philosophical thinking is not free from instinctive and decisive sense stem from? Up to this point, the three points seem to talk about the same thing…
  • What’s the meaning of “measure of things” at the end of the paragraph?
    • Suppose a man is not the measure of things: the measure of things means the standard by which everything else is measured. Here, Nietzsche tries to ask people to suppose maybe man is not the standard by which everything else is measured…

4. People needn’t invest in doubting trivial opinions. What matter is to find the opinions that are truly important to the future of humanity. What we preassumed about ourselves only implies a negation of life and to recognize the untruth is the movement that places itself beyond good and evil.

5. The reason people tend to distrust and make fun of philosophers is not that they keep making innocent mistakes or because they seem childish, but because philosophers are not honest about their opinions. Instead of admitting that they might be biased, philosophers pretend that their opinions are based on a logical, reasoning process when they are just defending their prejudices.

• Nietzsche mocked both Kant and Spinoza for their philosophy. For Kant, it’s his dialetics that leads to categorical imperative; for Spinoza, it’s his claims for embedded the mathematical form in his philosophy, and called it “hocuspocus”… (he only used them to scare people away for he himself is not confident about he’s thought)

• [Tartuffery] of old Kant

  • Tartuffery is the practice of pretending to be virtuous or holy in order to deceive others. The term is often used to refer to religious hypocrisy.

• categorical imperative (绝对律令)

  • Imperative: absolute command or order
  • The categorical imperative is an ethical principle developed by Kant. It states that an action is morally good if it can be willed as a universal law, i.e. if it could be applied to everyone without leading to a contradiction.

6. To understand a difficult metaphysical assertion from a philosopher, one only needs to figure out what morality the philosopher is aiming at. For it’s the moral purpose of the philosopher that dictates the shape his philosophy will eventually grow in. There’s nothing in philosophy that is impersonal.

How did he work up to this conclusion?

• Nietzsche doesn’t believe in the “impulse to knowledge” as the father of philosophy. Instead, the impulse to knowledge stems from the need to use them as a tool.
• However, he believes whoever thinks of himself as creative and inspiring and certainly possesses that “impulse” are certainly willing to consider themselves superior to others as it’s what impulse does - imperious and hence tend to “philosophize”.
• Unlike scientific scholars, even though most of their impulses might be driven by material interests, there might be a tiny bit of interests that are purely driven by curiosity and the genuine interest itself. And the fact that most of the interests are in money making or family, is what makes it impersonal. For the actions and what they do usually don’t characterize what they are.
• This is not the case for philosophers. What they choose for their moral compass is the testimony of where their natures stand.

• Need further investigation [0/1]

  • In Ch1-6, Nietzsche said the “impulse” is imperious and tends to philosophize itself. What does making philosophy do with impulse? (see quote ¹)

7. Philosophers can be malicious. Taking Epicurus for example, he called Plato and he follows “ACTORS” but there’s no geniuenity in himself but jealousy over Platonians’ ability to be grandiose. It took Greek hundred of years to figure out who truly have more superior knowledge and intelligence.

• Need further investigation [0/1]

  • I actually don’t know what’s Nietzsche’s opinion of Plato… Need more investigation.

8. “The ass arrives, beautiful and most brave”.

Adventavit asinus, Pulcher et fortissimus.

• Nietzsche made reference to the religious story from old testament, which narrates about a donkey’s words upon granted speech by god.²

9. What Stoics claim to “live according to nature” is only “live according to life”. The fact that people dedicate their morality to nature proves again that people can only make out of what they are. Stoicism is self-tyranny, so it also tries to tyrannize nature.

• Stoics

  The Stoics were a school of thought founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BCE. They believed that the best way to live was in accordance with nature, and that the goal of life was to achieve virtue and wisdom.

• causa prima

  The first cause, the cause of all the causes.

10. People in Europe are eager to figure out what’s the truth and are even willing to resort to a sure nothingness than accept a world with the possibility (Nihilism). For Nihilists, they seem to be otherwise, they speak a lot of “perspectives” but even disbelieve the most obvious. Who knows if they are not secretly looking for something as sure as the old religion and even something as sure as immortal? Their disbelief towards the modern world is the lack of courage to face the true world.

• The paragraph is a criticism of nihilism?
• Don’t quite understand the paragraph… the language is too complicated T.T
• Here seems to have a convincing interpretation.

11. German theologians love Kant using a means and his Synthetic judgment a priori. But none of these buy Nietzsches. The way Kant justifies the existence of a prior is at best cyclical. In Nietzsches’ view, the more pressing question to be answered is: why do we must believe an a prior to be true? The belief in “Virtus Dormitiva” is a mere antidote to the overwhelming sensualism overflowing in German.

• Summary: Kant was proud of having discovered a new faculty in man, the faculty of synthetic judgment a priori, and the development of German philosophy was due to his pride. However, his answer to his own question of how synthetic judgments a priori were possible, was unsatisfactory. This led to a period of exuberant discovery of new faculties, which eventually gave way to a more sober view. The influence of German philosophy was due in part to its ability to provide an antidote to the sensualism of the previous century.

• Table of Categories

  Immanuel Kant’s Table of Categories is a categorization of the twelve fundamental concepts of the understanding (Verstand) that Kant believed to be necessary for any meaningful experience. The Table of Categories consists of four sets of three categories each, representing the four primary functions of the understanding: quantity, quality, relation, and modality.

• Synthetic judgment a priori

  Synthetic judgment a priori is a term used to refer to a type of judgment that is based on an innate knowledge or ability of the human mind. It is a judgment that does not rely on empirical evidence or experience and is instead based purely on the logical reasoning of the mind.

• By means of a means (faculty)

  • faculty refers to the mental powers or capabilities of an individual or group, such as the ability to think, reason, or make decisions.
  • the most important faculty Nietzsches is unhappy about the faculty of “transcendental”: the faculty allows one to have a direct, intuitive understanding of the world beyond what can be seen and experienced through physical senses. It’s referred to by Schelling as intellectual intuition, and is associated with a naturally pious inclination.
  • Kant’s idea was happily received by theologians belongs to the Tubingen institution: The Tübingen School, also known as the Tubingen institution was a German theological movement in the 19th century that aimed to interpret the Bible in a historical-critical manner. It was led by theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, and Adolf von Harnack.
  • However, to Nietzsche, the claim of a “by means of a means” is a cyclical statement. To demonstrate this point, he made an example of a person asking a doctor, how opium induces sleep, and the doctor answers, there’s a power in it that induces sleep, and the nature of that power is to make sense to become drowsy. It’s immediately seen that the statement lacks any substance in it but only comical.

• Virtus dormitiva

  Virtus dormitiva is a Latin phrase meaning “powers of sleep”. It is used to refer to a faculty or ability that induces sleep. In this document, the author is suggesting that this faculty can be used to achieve the desired effect which could be compared to a “circulus vitiosus deus” (a vicious cycle of God).

Sensualism

Sensualism has its roots in the philosophies of ancient Greek philosophers, who believed that the most reliable form of knowledge was derived from the senses and feelings. This idea was further developed by British Sensualists such as John Locke and David Hume, and British Associationists including Thomas Brown, David Hartley, and Joseph Priestley. Sensualism was also popularized by Victor Cousin, who argued that the gratification of the senses was the highest good. In the 19th century, sensualism was adopted by philosophers such as Wilhelm Wundt, who proposed a scientific approach to sensualism that could be applied to the study of language and cognition.

12. Thanks to Copernicus and Boscovich, the Europeans have largely disregarded materialistic atomism. However, the soul-atomism suggested by Christianity should also be disregarded, or at best replaced by science. Psychologists should pave the way.

• Pole Copernicus

  Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance-era astronomer who developed the heliocentric model of the universe, which suggests that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun. This contradicted the prevailing geocentric model of the universe, which held that the Earth was the center of the universe. He is also credited with being the first scientist to propose a comprehensive system of the universe that was consistent with astronomical observations.

• Pole Boscovich

  Roger Joseph Boscovich was a Croatian polymath and Jesuit priest who made important contributions to physics, astronomy, mathematics, and philosophy. He is best known for his atomic theory, which proposed a system of point-like particles with repulsive forces between them. Boscovich also suggested that the force of gravity is mediated by a field, similar

• Materialistic atomism

  Materialistic atomism is the theory that the universe is composed of small, indivisible particles (atoms) which possess certain properties and possess the power to interact with one another to create the phenomena we observe in the world. These particles are seen as being the ultimate source of all matter, energy, and forces.

13. The instinct of self-preservation should not be seen as the primary instinct of an organic being. Instead, it suggests that life itself can be seen as a “will to power” and that self-preservation is only a result of this. The author argues for economy of principles and cautions against superfluous teleological principles, citing Spinoza’s inconsistency as an example.

• Nietzsche stressed his idea of “WILL TO POWER” and argued against teleological principal

• Teleological principles

  Teleological principles refer to ideas or beliefs that propose a purpose or goal in the natural world. In this document, the author is suggesting that this idea should be avoided, as it may be superfluous.

• Economy of principles

  Economy of principles is the idea of using a limited number of principles to guide decisions, rather than attempting to make a principle out of every individual situation. It is a form of efficiency, where the use of fewer principles can lead to more effective decision-making.

• Will to power

  Friedrich Nietzsche’s “will to power” is a concept which is central to his writings. It is the idea that all people have a fundamental drive to exert power and control over their environment and the people around them. This concept is related to, but distinct from, the idea of ambition or striving for success. According to Nietzsche, the will to power is an all-encompassing and pervasive aspect of human nature which underlies all other motivations and drives. It is an innate part of human nature, and it is only through the will to power that we can achieve any kind of progress or advancement. The will to power is a controversial concept, and one that has been widely debated by philosophers and psychologists.

14. This passage discusses the difference between the two modes of thought in natural philosophy: the plebeian sensualism that relies on what can be seen and felt, and the aristocratic mode of thought of Plato, which resists sense-evidence and instead relies on pale, cold, grey conceptional networks. It suggests that the former approach may be more suitable for a hardy, laborious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, while the latter approach offers a different kind of enjoyment.

15. the sense organs are not phenomena in the idealistic philosophy, and that the external world is not the work of our organs. It suggests that the concept of “causa sui” (the cause of itself) is fundamentally absurd, and that accepting it is a reduction to absurdity.

• Regulative hypothesis

  The regulative hypothesis is a concept in the philosophy of science which states that scientific inquiry should aim to discover laws that regulate nature. This hypothesis seeks to explain why certain scientific theories are accepted by scientists even though they may lack empirical evidence. The hypothesis suggests that the pursuit of such laws is a necessary part of scientific progress, as it allows scientists to more accurately and effectively predict the behavior of natural phenomena. The regulative hypothesis is closely related to the principle of uniformity, which states that the laws of nature remain the same over time and space.