Auto-SummaryThis forum post explores the merging of idealism and skepticism in modern culture, drawing parallels to Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. The author argues that Nietzsche's concept of the "dualism of Apollonian and Dionysian" in art can be seen as a metaphor for the tension between idealists and skeptics. The post also examines Nietzsche's critique of modern philosophy, particularly the role of subjectivity and the need to confront tradition and culture. It concludes by suggesting that the philosophical act of destruction, as Nietzsche and Heidegger advocate, can lead to a positive understanding of ontology and the underlying values of modern society.
So some of you take the notion then, cool. Well I didn't expect I'd be alone.
There is something markable in these words, I'd say. I do think that a merging of idealism and skepticism can be seen in modern culture. I am wondering if it is possible to hit the nail on the head. What does this mean?
For sake of argument, consider it in philosophical terms, as said. Haven't these perennial oppositions of dialogue always merged together? Hegel even arrogated to call philosophical dialectic a "logic": thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This dialectic is what we generally expect, as philosophers, and no doubt in some sense follow along with as a pursuit or will-to-truth.
Yet in the words God is dead..., what is this bringing together, of idealists and skeptics? Talk seems to go on, yet provisions in words, are what we presently contemplate in this strange uncanny sense.
One thing I like about Nietzsche is he doesn't give a shit for formality! Maybe that is the first positive thong to say here. Lets say he has some distance from the dialectics, a philosophical culture's pursuit of truth as he wrote. That is reasonable to suppose, so maybe this paradox is possible to contemplate a bit, from a different perspective, rather than amidst what is being commented on (although hopefully not to conveniently "above"). Personally, I don't think it was either just logic, or simple melancholic negativity being expressed (although I do think psychologism is important in Nietzsche, as some of you bring up.) My own suggestion would be in looking to Nietzsche's aesthetics to find what could be in that melancholy.
Maybe some of you are familiar and recall his first book "The Birth Of Tragedy". This was his first anti-dialectical expression, I'd call it. What was the meeting of values between Apollonian and Dionysian, he spoke of?
Quote:
We will have achieved much for scientific study of aesthetics when we come, not merely to a logical understanding, but also to the certain and immediate apprehension of the fact that the further development of art is bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, just as reproduction similarly depends upon the duality of the sexes, their continuing strife and only periodically occurring reconciliation. We take these names from the Greeks, who gave a clear voice to the profound secret teachings of their contemplative art, not in ideas, but in the powerfully clear forms of their divine world.
With those two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we establish our recognition that in the Greek world there exists a huge contrast, in origin and purposes, between the visual arts, the Apollonian, and the non-visual art of music, the Dionysian. These two very different drives go hand in hand, for the most part in open conflict with each other and simultaneously provoking each other all the time to new and more powerful offspring, in order to perpetuate in them the contest of that opposition, which the common word “Art” only seems to bridge, until at last, through a marvellous metaphysical act of the Greek “will,” they appear paired up with each other and, as this pair, finally produce Attic tragedy, as much a Dionysian as an Apollonian work of art.
Was it war? Not exactly. Nietzsche excludes that easy answer. Sex? Surely. And yet these are not simple and perfectly polite aeathetic-philosophical values, or explanations exactly. To paraphrase, he says this meeting of opposite values is of "art impulses without the mediation of a human artist." Thus Nietzsche attributes the blossoming of attic tragedy, and the impulses behind it, to oppositions of greek dieties, the temperate apollo, and the lusty Dionysus.
My thought, is perhaps this tension in the aesthetic values which Nietzsche spoke of, (of course only lightly touched) could serve as an analogy to what we ourselves presently look to, which is something more serious and real. The death of god is certainly about oppositions of values, I would say, even in the continued semblence of how idealists and skeptics meet. They meet as they must, in the same terms of just another dialectical branch outward, and forward, to the light of the Platonic sun. The idealist/skeptic opposition seems to keep talking, without any sense of consequence, and this is what is difficult to comment on, outside of a will-to-truth, without being called a "nihilist"
Perhaps in this sense, it is possible to extrapolate that Nietzsche's sensibility toward dialectics and a culture's pursuit of truth, is not just "negative" or a reaction. That is usually how Nietzsche is interpreted - namely, as himself or as his character. Of course, this would be hard to clarify just in his aesthetics because as fundamental as aesthetic experience is, it is not reality that is looked to there. This aesthetically pleasing tragedy is not the same kind of tragedy we speak of in a death of God. (Yet read: death of Dionysus is a death of a god to the Athenian people, even if it happens on the stage).
But here is a possible clearing I think, by allegory. It is no solution, but the question. Could there be something behind, and more fundamental than "philosophy" while also essentially informing the basic dialectical provisions of philosophical positions at the same time? Do we entertain this possibility, in its openness - or apparent closure that it seems suggested in here?
Some of you propose psychological theories, for the basis of a more mature consideration. I agree, from any easy sensuality of Nietzsches aesthetics, we might proceed to contemplate death just as well, as Icelander says. Markos, you make a great insight I'd say, in marking how Nietzsche shot from the gut. I will have to read your post again, for further insighr, but that definitely resonates with my reading of Nietzsche. Someone between surviving (root values), and loving it...Right around the gut area.
r72rock, I want to respond to your levelheaded commentary in particular. To me the realistic outward implications of these words, indeed pulls us back into a strangely open question. What outward values do we create. In what ground or soil should we find them? Or particularly, when we are dwelling void of essential roots, how do we acknowledge our nullities in any seemingly grounded way? Here is something of a response, to that query, although I don't think it is something that will "save us":
I note there is a notable emptiness of modern philosophy, where idealism and skepticism have essentially seemed to have become the same thing. That is my pursuasion, and I see it as something specifically carried out. Perhaps Divided Quantum has somewhat understood my insistent and barreling critique of the ontological value of subjectivity, (Cartesianism) assumed by both idealists and skeptics, alike.
In that way, I'd mark the idea of modernity a little later than you rock. In the 16th century we were looking for modernity, but I think still in the reneissance partly, which was if anything a much too short search for roots in the classics, and humanism. I'd mark the modern maleise in the 17th century, when Descartes came on the scene, and killed Aristotelianism by writing "I think therefore I am", and this became new, and purportedly fresh grounds of" existence". In fact it was a convolution of Aristotle's notion of an ordinary "subject" of knowledge - hypokeimenon - with speculation.
Less told, than the proposition of "that which cannot be doubted" in modern consciousness, is how he followed this essentially irrelavent statement, and an essential inclination to solipsism, with an offhand and halfhearted argument for the existence of god. Nobody considers this, because of course, we all kind of know that this god is dead. But between doubt and that which cannot be doubted, nobody considers how aside from this, Descartes' ontology (argument of the necessity of God's existence) was principally necessary to get the actual world back, from essential solipsism. Hence we indeed continue on in terms of the same values, only in their convenient nullity. Modern humanity is indeed as Nietzsche wrote, found barreling through nothingness.
But as to this sense of consequence, what if we went through with it? What if what is highlighted for some reason is what already happened? I think following Nietzsche's suggestion, it is possible to recognize the philosophical gesture of destruction, of making explicit, and carrying through something. Following Nietzsche, Heidegger described this formally.
This act is widely carried out, for better or worse, because we still today, seem to dwell in the same values we destroyed. It may be a positive intent to destroy, and be consistent. Yet, outside of whatever profundities attached to it, I would say destruction (de-construction of ontology) is just an attitude of biting through philosophy. It is not disregarding its dialectics, but having completely enough with them, in realizing that we think conditionally the way we do not only because we reach out or progress to truth, but broadly, because of our culture and tradition for whatever it is worth, guides us in what we take as truth.
Heidegger writes (grabbed from wikipedia on destruktion):
Quote:
When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn. Indeed it makes us forget that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going back to these sources is something which we need not even understand. (Being and Time, p. 43)
So to try to explain this (Heidegger is always a wee bit formal) something is at stake in the tradition and culture of philosophy...The "perennial philosophy". What we seek is not necessarily found in the terms truth would be given, or self evident in though. He describes that something happens, and things get generally tangled up, and covered over, (you can only see one layer at a time in this tangle). Or he describes it like branches of a tree, that conceal what they come out of in previous branches, trunk, and roots. His critique is historicist. That is itself dialectical, but also includes a broader consideration of what led us to where we are, and where we are going at the same time.
Quote:
If the question of Being is to have its own history made transparent, then this hardened tradition must be loosened up, and the concealments which it has brought about dissolved. We understand this task as one in which by taking the question of Being as our clue we are to destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology until we arrive at those primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature of Being—the ways which have guided us ever since. (Being and Time, p. 44)
To put it in somewhat paradoxical terms, he speaks to the twofold priority, a kind of "consideration" to what we destroy in philosophy, or "being", if it could possibly be put that way. Are we not concerned, about ontology?
Quote:
it has nothing to do with a vicious relativizing of ontological standpoints. But this destruction is just as far from having the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. We must, on the contrary, stake out the positive possibilities of that tradition, and this means keeping it within its limits...(Being and Time, p. 44)
Finally, I'd also like to add the obvious historical note about german philosophy in general, that could be considered relavent to this present discussion. The death of god may have really happened in the first half of the 20th century.
Since then there have been some oppositions in western culture that have not been brought together to this day. Hence german philosophy and a strong "continental" philosophical tradition, is mistrusted in American universities focused on technical analyses, or "anglo-american" philosophy. These differences are leveled to the terms of being "philosophical" oppositions when it is really just something else that is played out.
It is hardly accurate to call German philosophy "idealism", for instance following Hegel. But sometimes anything that is not one assembly line attitude, is called an idealism. As for german idealism, is shopenhauers acknowledgement of the will, and abnegation considered idealism? As I understand, in a sense Schopenhauer was quite Platonic, but it was pessimism in ideals. Nietzsche's philology, as just discussed? Also a kind of pessimism seeking more robustness. Heidegger's destruction of ontology? Clearly the divisiveness in philosophy today is based on other reasons behind and beyond philosophy, but not just in an ideal.
And this is all I got. Appreciated reading all the responses. Best regards.
Edited by Kurt (01/21/16 02:11 AM)
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