Dostoevsky and Nietzsche

Today we are going to talk about relativism and in two particular incarnations, one person who is an advocate of relativism and the other an ardent popular relativist, these are two of the most important thinkers of the latter part of the 19th century and they remain somewhat established. In addressing the problems of the 20th century, his ideas have a huge impact on thinkers throughout the 20th century, so considering the contrast between them I think can help us understand the type of issues that people struggle with at the dawn of the 20th century before we Coming to those thinkers, we think about relativism alone.

I've been talking about these two-level theories where there is a manifest picture of the world more or less as we find it and of ourselves as we find ourselves, it is one that is characterized by a we conceive of ourselves as rational beings governed by some kind of law. moral taking responsibility for actions because we see ourselves causally responsible for those actions we see ourselves doing the things we are so we see ourselves acting freely we think of ourselves using practical reason discover what means to take to achieve our goals, however, according to the image scientifically, we are actually beings governed by causal laws, which seems to be a completely value-free picture, it makes no sense to ask if it is basic. laws or conditions are right or wrong and it seems that things are purely determined or, at best, determined to a certain extent and then affected with some degree of randomness.

Well, it's easy for theories like that to lead to relevance when one looks at the manifest picture. the values ​​that are expressed there, the conceptions of rationality and you say, look really, that could be correct only given a certain way that things work at the basic level and therefore one is content to think that the truth itself is relative to something or other now. There are many different forms of relativism, you might think that what is true is relative to an individual person, that certain things might be true for you but not me, you might think that things are relative to a society, so what is true depends on a particular society and its concepts, one could think that it depends on a culture or what some authors have called an interpretive community, a community can be much smaller than a given society that adopts a certain conceptual framework and, therefore, it can be much larger than it.

You can think about things in relation to a set of concepts that we use to understand the world. Finally, you can think of things in relation to a certain historical period, a certain epic or historical epoch, and that particular version, as we'll see, is called. historicism, but in any case the idea here is that things are not really universally and absolutely true, they are only true in relation to one thing or another. Now, certain things that people often think are relative to individual people and it is relatively uncontroversial for them to be, for example, if I say that mushrooms are delicious, I think that is true, but you may not agree. , you may hate mushrooms, and in fact, when I was in elementary school I used to switch the kids for mushrooms and peas, they would often serve peas and I would say, I love peas. they're amazing so I trade people desserts and muffins and stuff like that for pee so I make peas and then people say why don't we use pee so I get a lot of peas for free so I have a big mound of peas I thought that was great, okay, now I'm talking about testing.

I love you, but in any case, you know, peas are delicious, mushrooms are delicious, those things are true for being on the other end, they may not be true for you or that. It could be that you love other kinds of things that I despise, like those horrible, rubbery things that are squid. Yes, I don't see eating squid for a long time to know squid. They are disgusting. You could also eat rubber bands and so on at any events like that certainly yes, okay, this is delicious, it's not me, that's relative to an individual person, what we normally think, but there are a lot of things that we don't think are relative to a certain person or a certain society, what are some things? that are candidates for real absolute truth they don't depend on you or me they don't depend on a historical era they don't depend on a particular set of concepts or a particular culture or its framework one of the things that could be absolute truth yes, well, the law of gravitation you might think it's something that's really true at all times in those places, that's not how gravity is true for you, but it's not true for me, I just find myself rising in the air, I put glue on shoes, right, it's not like that, no, it applies everywhere. the board or at least that's what we normally think, yes, math, well two plus two equals four, that's something that seems to be true, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't, two plus two equals four in Austin, but the more you You get closer to Waco, the more it starts to get shadowy no, it's not like that, true, it's true in all the other cabinets, yes, well, the laws of physics in general, it's not just the force of gravitation, it's mass multiplied by acceleration , for example, that seems to be true across the board, true, we don't say it.

Well, you know, forces now are mass times acceleration, but if you go back to the 19th century, it was something else. No, we tend to think that it is something that applies in all times and places, in all cultures, in all historical eras. Are there other things? Yes, you saw, oh. It sucks, we've talked about that thing that could be, although we've already kept it as a counterexample, oh yeah, okay, I guess therefore I exist, that's what we talked about before too and that's something you could consider universal, as we mentioned, it's not really is necessarily true. at all times, in all places, but every time I can say it well, every time I think it or utter it, it is true, so the relativist has a difficult fight to solve, the relatives have to say, look, no.

I just mean things like peas or something delicious. I'm talking about all of that, everything, truth itself is relative and that's something that at least doesn't seem to be true in our common sense appreciation of the world, so what kind of arguments do relativists give? What can they say? Ultimately this position goes back to According to the Thought of Derek Hale, who wrote in the early 19th century, it is very influential and we would read it if his writings were intelligible, but it is very, very difficult, in any case, it exposes a number of arguments that increasingly moderate evil towards relativism throughout the world. the latter part of the 19th century and then the 20th century now, what are some of these arguments?

The first is that he rejects what is referred to and later authors such as Sellars refer to the myth of the Gibbon, he calls it in the media, he says there. there is no immediacy there is no such thing as simply giving us an experience now what do you mean by that good cut earlier had drawn a clear line between sensitivity and understanding between what we perceive and then the concepts we use to analyze? what we perceive, you could say: what am I doing right now? Well, in a classroom full of people, then you could characterize that maybe in terms of things that have concepts, like a classroom full of people, right, I'm using concepts from people in the classroom, but you might think, Look, I could characterize this in a way that has nothing to do with that.

I could, for example, take a photograph and then I could say this is what I'm looking at, this is what I'm perceiving and that would be something that seems to be free of concepts, however, Hegel says that there is no such clear line to draw. when I perceive all of you. I don't just see this swirling mass. I don't just see a bunch of pixels or something. just a bunch of rods and cones are activated in the retina my mind immediately classifies things into objects I see people I see desks and tables I see a camera I see a variety of things in front of me and I immediately categorize them in terms of concepts So this statement is that there really is no clear line between sensation and cognition in sensing the world in perceiving the world.

I'm already categorizing it. He says that I have already classified things using concepts, so there is a sense in which people who have totally different sense of concepts actually perceive things differently, see things differently because one is seen, say, it simply gives shape, another is seeing people and that is a fundamental difference, so it maintains that our perception of the world is loaded with concepts, even at the most basic levels it does not exist. level that he thinks we are at, we're just perceiving things before we get to analyzing them conceptually or before we think, wait, what am I seeing now?

There is an obvious argument on the other side, wait, sometimes I get it right, sometimes I sense something and don't do it. I don't know what to think about it, so I look at a scene and say what is that or I look at a Jackson Pollock painting and say what is that my father for years had what many people thought was a copy of Jackson Pollock. painting behind his desk in his office at work, in fact the painter on the invoice had just had this table and had spilled paint on it over the years and finally decided to buy a new table, my dad said it was like that table hanging on the wall. people thought it was a Jackson Pollock never Ah, and then you might say yes, you know what it is, well it could just be drops of paint, maybe it's something else, in any case you might think I can look at it and analyze it, caress it in terms.

Well, yes, I don't want to see it, analyze it, I can even tell you what I'm seeing before I have any idea how to categorize what I'm seeing, but Hegel says no, not even the most basic levels, my concepts. are already involved, so it says that we have shaped the concepts into the way we perceive the world, but of course what we perceive is the world, so it follows that our concepts shape what the world is, There is no way to really separate the world as it is from The world as it seems to us, there is no sharp separation between two terms.

The computer uses appearances and things in themselves, yes, to go from the way we perceive the world to that's the way the world is, because you may not perceive it as having gravity. but there is still gravity, I feel like it makes a couple of jumps, oh that doesn't have any kind of logic for what you want okay, yeah how good is this as an argument, actually, Hegel is presenting it as some kind of argument. argument um, I say kind of like an argument because sometimes I think he's giving you arguments, sometimes I think he's really trying to put you through a Gestalt shift.

He is trying to say that you have been seeing the world this way. I want you to see it. this way of the world think about it this way and the arguments don't really leave much of anything if we're careful here we can say, well, there's the first kind of argument that we can't really perceive things in a family of concepts. Concepts shape what we proceed and we can ask if that is true or false, right? Is it true or false? It's a complicated question. You might think it's obviously fake because, after all, we can take pictures and say it is.

What I'm seeing, on the other hand, you might think well if you look at what the brain is doing, maybe there really isn't a moment where information is being transferred from the retina, for example, my conceptual apparatus and parts of the brain. The brain involved is already operating, and from that point of view it seems like a complicated neurophysiological problem, whether it's different components in the brain or whether they're all mixed up and it's not obvious which direction it would actually go. knowing a lot about the brain and how it works to be able to say that there is some evidence that actually these things are intertwined at certain levels.

A good example is a type of case where people show words that denote colors like the word orange, but it is in blue and they ask you to read it out loud, okay, and they keep doing this, there is the word read re D, but it's in green, etc., and it scares people, it's hard for them to do it, it's proof that perception and cognition are kind. of being mixed on some level, but in the end you are right as an argument, which is not a great argument, I would really have to get into neurophysiology. I understand how this works, but now let's look at this step.

Suppose it is true that the concepts. We have shaped the way we perceive the world. Does it follow that there is no difference between the world as it is and the world as we well perceive it? It doesn't seem to work well, that is, you could say, and in fact, here is the The skeptical argument that I think underlies this position The skeptical argument is this: I really can't say to what extent the way I perceive the world reflects the way the world really is and to what extent it reflects the contributions of my own cognitive apparatus.

To what extent is what I'm seeing really a question of how the world is and to what extent is my mind really contributing to it, mybrain, by reconstructing data and then projecting something that may or may not actually reflect the way reality is? Well, the skeptics worried, I can't tell, I can't tell what my own contribution really is and what's really out there in the world, so they said the best thing to do is judge who knows what the world is really like, like Hegel. He's trying to answer that, but he's saying, hey, the world is how I perceive it, he's what's known as an idealist, he believes that everything in the world is mine, he depends on the entire world, he's just a projection of the world. mind, so that's the underlying vision that we have.

We are going to get there and that, in a few words, is his argument. He believes it is the only way to avoid that skeptical argument. Now most philosophers have thought that it cannot be corrected, but it is a constant theme of the course as we move forward. It will be precisely that question the question of realism versus idealism the realist says that the world really is a certain way we will talk a lot more about this next week but the realist says that the world is a certain way regardless of how the mind goes things are the way they are Regardless of what we think about and therefore there are at least some mind-independent facts the idealist says no, in reality everything depends on the mind and therefore there is no such thing as a mind-independent world. .

A fact independent of the mind. Hegel is an idealist, so he is trying to actually say the only way I can overcome the skeptic is to think that appearances and things in themselves are the same, forgetting about worlds that could be regardless of our way of perceiving them. , because in reality there is no such thing, the world is only what we can pass through our The current minds of most people think that there is something deeply wrong with that and that is why we are going to consider the battle between realists and idealists throughout the 20th century, but it becomes an important focus and not only in philosophy but also in literature in the 20th century. arts, to what extent is the artist's job, for example, to reflect what the world is like and to what extent is it simply to project an idea out of the world and can it become a reality simply by being thought about, by being projected?

I see all kinds of people taking different attitudes about that fight, but I think your various oops, I've gone on too long, the iPad says boring now, um, but no, I think it's a very telling point to say look, there's some kind of argument here. in favor. this, but there's also a big jump and it doesn't depend at all on how we're supposed to get there from Babby, but if it's true, we'll be fighting all term, I'm not talking about you and me, but the various thinkers we read . We'll be fighting over whether that kind of work makes sense or not.

Now Hegel has a supplementary argument which is this idea about the social character of thought. He thinks that human thought is essentially social. Why go? Because I learn my concepts from the people around me, I learned it by learning my language and I get that set of concepts, in other words, by learning a certain language that other people teach me, so how did I learn English well? I just grew up in an English-speaking home. really some rough approximations there too I grew up in Pittsburgh so it was just a rough approximation, we said all kinds of weird things, but anyway that's a crucial thing, we've learned our concepts from other people, that doesn't mean we can't then We start doing things ourselves to a certain extent, but we do it with the raw material of thought that is given to us in a certain social context.

He says that by learning our language we learn basic categories of thought and we learn them from other people at a particular time in life. the context of a particular society, then what do earlier philosophers call it generally because it arises from our own nature as knowers and, in that sense, as universal, as applicable to all of us as beings who were rational beings capable of knowledge? as a reflection of a specific social background and again we have a contrast here between people who say, look, there are certain things that are true about human nature regardless of what they are true about human perception, true about human cognition, regardless what, and others say it well.

It depends, maybe people in ancient China really perceived things differently, maybe they really thought about things differently, maybe they reason differently, etc., and one group is going to say, look, all of these Things come from human nature which is pretty constant over time, at least within. The local time maybe in the geological evolution time is different, but others will say no, no, it can change from place to place from decade to decade, so what one group will see is Universal, another group will see is variable and relatively good, one last. So he calls his own view historicism, he says that philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought, what any thinker is really doing is simply giving you an idea of ​​how things look at that particular moment from the point of view. view of that particular society. or culture, then he says that philosophy combines the struggle in the child, the relative and the absolute.

He really thinks that at some level you can achieve absolute truth, but it's not at the level of describing what the world is like, but rather he's describing the way these historical progressions of thought happen. go and then he thinks that he could actually give you laws that are universal and absolute, but one level up they are sort of meta-laws, but we'll get to that later, well, the ancient relativist was the protagonist, he was the person who introduced this in Western Philosophy and he very famously said that man is the measure of all the things we talk about, they are the things that are not, are not, he was referring to the way in which each individual person, not humanity , although many relatives have taken it that way, but he really meant no, each individual person is the measure of what he is and what he is not.

Is it hot or cold in this room? It depends, right? Some of you might say I'm actually a little warm, others might say I know, I think he's cool, well, him. He says yes, you are the measure of that, so it could be warm for you and cool for that person and that's just the way things are, there's no way things really are, so for Tigris he argues, well, Oh yes, I repeat what I said. We are going to concentrate on the thought of two figures from the late 19th century, the first of them is Fyodor Dostoevsky, represented there, he is one of the greatest Russian novelists, in fact, one of the greatest novelists of any place in time, Friedrich Nietzsche, who will be our second thinker, described reading Gustav C as one of the most beautiful strokes of fortune of his life and he does so too.

It actually had a significant impact on Nietzsche and we'll look at some specific ways in which that's true. However, they reach completely opposite conclusions. The works were banned in Russia after the communist revolution. They are great works. In some ways they are the pride of Russian literature in Russian culture, but in another way they were considered highly subversive to the paradigm of Lenin and Stalin. Why is TF Ski a concern, what do I mean by conservative? I mean someone who believes in delivering order, what does that mean? Well, they believe in freedom, they believe in freedom, which is a fundamental attraction in human value and therefore there should be freedom for people to follow their own goals.

However, conceptions of the good have to take place within a framework of order within a framework of the rule of law, for example in terms of formal institutional structures but also in terms of an informal structure of social institutions and Ben Burke, unknown Conservatively, he called them small platoons, so things like families, churches, clubs, other voluntary organizations, as well as more formal institutions like universities, businesses, etc., create a type of social structure that is important for the maintenance of order. social, so the idea is, in general terms, that freedom is a fundamental element. human value but not really a kind of license, in fact, John Locke puts it very well, he says that the state of nature is a state of freedom, but not a state of license, and what he means is freedom, but I don't I mean just do what you want.

I'm talking about doing what you want within a certain structure that prevents people from colliding with other people and getting hurt, so that's pretty much what being conservative will mean in this course and so vfc is clearly what he's not conservative in another sense sometimes people use that term it just means don't make any changes where I keep things the way they are and that wasn't his opinion at all in fact he was a young social reformer when he was young he was a socialist and a kind of liberal utopian. He was arrested by the tsar and sentenced to death, he was facing a firing squad when suddenly a strange note arrived commuting his sentence to four years of hard labor in Siberia which destroyed his health and actually for the rest of his life he was ill. most of the time as a result of his experiences there he suffered greatly from malnutrition and other types of problems he was chained for the entire four years when he was not actually working physically the only thing he was allowed to read was the New Testament which ended up having a great impact in his fall, in any case, he attacked feudalism, he attacked Russian society at the time when it tried to break down the barriers between social classes and that sense was seen as an enemy of the tsar, well, what is the positive side?

He argues that Christianity is actually essential to ordered liberty and what we have here is an argument for religious values. His version is really Orthodox Christianity, i.e. the Russian Orthodox Church, but I think a lot of what he says applies only to one religion per se. He thinks it is vital that you have some basis for thinking that people have dignity, that people are valued and, in fact, are equally valuable as children of God. He thinks if you don't have that, you're in big trouble now too. when we get to Nietzsche, he says no, no, you're better off without him, however, the CFC is going to say that that is the basis for, you could say, enlightened conceptions of humanity and human dignity, human freedom and human equality, all of that depends on a certain type of foundation and if it is not there, then you see that there will be a major source of social problems;

In fact, he saw that Christianity at that time was in decline and thought that this presented a serious danger precisely because without it there is no basis for a belief in human dignity or equality, so let's look at a chapter from one of his best novels, The Brothers Karamazov, there is a page if you want to read it in the original, okay, this chapter is known as the Grand Inquisitor Chapter and here is the basic set Jesus returns to earth during the most intense period of the Spanish Inquisition the crowd recognizes him and begins to perform miracles cures a blind man raises a girl from the dead here is a famous painting of Jesus healing the blind man, it is the Spanish Inquisition, he will meet the Grand Inquisitor who burned a hundred people in the bonfire that day and will burn a hundred more the next day.

That's pretty depressing, and in general, it's pretty depressing, so I thought you might like it. to rejoice in that here is a famous view of the Spanish Inquisition, okay, the Spanish Inquisition is a surprise, oh yeah, okay, well, anyway, Jesus returns, okay, so we have the second cup. Jesus comes and begins to heal people, and so on until the Grand Inquisitor, who is the head of the church here, the head of the Inquisition sees this and arrests him, takes him to prison and tells him that they will burn him at the stake. the next day and then the same people who were clamoring to see him today will make him throw logs on the fire tomorrow, so this is a pretty grim situation now, why is he doing this?

By the way, there is an artistic representation and an interrogation of the Grand Inquisitor, well, the Grand Inquisitor says look, you are nothing but problems and here is why he gave freedom to the people freedom to believe or not believe have faith or reject it but that does not It has brought the people more than torment that was nothing more than problems because it put the responsibility in the hands of the people. Then the Inquisitor says what the church has done much better than the church, its freedom is taken away by assigning the Pope all authority to determine the Word of God and not even Jesus himself now has the right to change everything so he said look at the church's freedom, but for the sake of happiness people are happier we tell them what to do, they do it, they are like sheep happy, so the contrast throughout this is really freedom versus happiness, to what extent you have to interfere with people's freedom for the sake of happiness and the structure of this really has to reflect the structure. of the three temptations in the best photo here or here and that's why there are three parts to the story as it evolvesJesus is there in the desert and Satan approaches him and offers him three temptations.

The first temptation is, if you are the Son of God, he tells these stones to become bread or dusty keys, which represents that Ivan is the character. who tells the story and Ivan thinks this is an offer to look at, here's a way to make people feed people, okay, you have the power to convert. stones into bread and give the people all the food they want and all the food the child Jesus responded it is written man will not live on bread alone but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God now the inquisitor says look listen you too you gave the people a lot of credit in the end the people are going to put their freedom at our feet and tell us: make us your slaves but feed us now in Ivan's opinion, he is the one who tells the story that is what the people want, they want us feed them, they want to be carried. take care of them they are what freedom they don't want options they don't want responsibility they just want to be like children a child comes into the room says I'm hungry give me food if you say well you want food go get a job, we don't tell that to children, but we could tell them that to adults, so their thinking is what most people want to be my children, they just want to be fed, they just want to be taken care of, Cara, no.

They want freedom, they don't want responsibility, here's a text from ancient Egypt that actually makes this point, very aptly named the instruction of any parent who gives their child advice on how to live, go ahead and give their child all this advice. , the son says well. all your sayings are excellent but doing them requires virtues like your makeup I would have to be a good person I would have to work on this this would be a pain in the ass and the father goes on and says look son, this is what you are supposed to do this, do that and someone gives all the sensible advice and finally the son says look, my father, you were wise and strong of hand, the infinite.

It is his desires for what breastfeeds him he looks at you when he finds his speech he says give me bread and Ivan is basically saying That's right the people are like the son of the story and by the way it ends there you can imagine the father oh but that's how it is give me bread so I say it as in effect saying look the people are like the son in this story they are not like the father they want take care of them there is a saint give me bread oh, there is something Egyptian or people harvesting wheat why is it there?

Because it's really not a trivial point, what's the first thing people do when they become friends? What comes first when you start a romantic relationship? What do people do? Do you feed the other person? right, you go out to dinner or something no, that's not what you said, I'm going to be fine um and so you know that feeding someone is an important way to take care of them and to establish well a certain type of relationship in Anyway, I even think that people are like the sun, they just want to be taken care of, they want to be sheep, they want to be children, they don't want to grow up and as you can see I found many wonderful paintings of sheep, well here they are. the second temptation choose you satan takes Jesus to the roof of the temple and says jump from the angels they will save you if you are a child of God jump from the top of the temple it is written the angels will save you Jesus says it is also written do not put the Lord to the test your God well that's how the Grand Inquisitor takes that he says look you expected too much it's not just that people want to be fed they want to be guided you had the opportunity to become a great religious leader instead of being crucified you could actually show people who perform these miracles right in front of the Pharisees, for example, you could have done this in such a way that you would have been universally hailed as a great leader, but you wanted them to give you love. freely you didn't want the worship of slaves who were simply impressed by miracles you wanted people to make a free choice you wanted too much it was too much to ask and that's why it says look, people are really slaves, they want to be told what to do they don't - for please you will be kinder to them if you have less respect for them the third temptation satan offers all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor in other words you could be a great political leader you can establish utopia on earth and Jesus says far from me Satan now the Inquisitor He says it's a good paint to keep out vermin.

Well, by the way, I want to decide that I would grow a beard and I did. I looked like Satan. I imagined he would see me as a fluffy teddy bear and I did. Oh, horrible, it was very, very me. Oh, I got scared and changed it fine anyway. Yeah, the quiz that says Look, you could have done this. You could have established a utopia on earth. Why did not you do it? Because that's what the church is. what I have to do now we are trying to make people happy we have assumed their role the church tells people what to do makes them happy it does not respect them and treats them like children but that is what they want and so everything works very well the church even lets its children sin tells them it's okay, in the end we will all be forgiven and that's why people were happy to give up the freedom to be fed, oh they are even allowed to sin, what else could?

You want them to be happy children, no, well, if that makes everyone happy, the Grand Inquisitor says, well, almost everyone, there are those who actually have to leave the sheep there, the shepherds are the ones who have to act freely, they are the ones who take responsibility, they are the ones who suffer to That others do not have to suffer like this, there will be billions of happy babies who notice children again and 100,000 victims who have taken upon themselves the curse that curses the curse of the knowledge of good and evil, so here we see dust, yes, continue to recognize what I called last time, the vision will be anointed, this idea that there are a few people who are really capable of exercising leadership and taking responsibility for making decisions for everyone else and that everyone would be better off If a few people would lead everyone else well with all that is good and bad, they could recognize that that is what constitutes the fall of man, there is no vision of Illinois, here is the idea, some people are going to fall, they are going to fall.

If they have this knowledge, they will have the responsibility to leave the rest, it must be difficult for them, but then the others can stay in the garden, only a few people will leave the garden, the rest can be happy, the sheep that are in the garden They will follow them. the rules up there do what is tight with that old man although he is still a flock of sheep and that is why he says that really that would be the best, as we mentioned last time, there is a kind of problem here that I called the paradox of the other, the vision cuts. the anointed the leaders those who really lose the knowledge they need to take responsibility and make people happy what will guide their decisions in reality the sheep turn out to be the only ones who have the norms and values ​​they are capable of doing When evaluating what is good and evil, they are the only ones who have standards that could help guide them, so we have a kind of paradox and the way Dostoevsky understands this is that those who pride themselves on having the knowledge of good and evil in They are actually in the lowest position They are good at understanding what they really are They are the least equipped to make decisions They are the least equipped to guide others So the people who think "hey, I could be a pastor" I know what's going on, I understand who the world says are the last ones you should trust, in fact they are in the worst position, right, yes, well, because they have isolated themselves from these values.

The idea is that values ​​are part of the manifest image. They said, "forget the manifest image." the sheep kingdom is an illusion, look at the underlying reality, but in that underlying reality there are no valleys and suddenly how do you make decisions? You want to take the sheep, where are you taking them? Well, my goodness, actually, that's a subject that's only defined in terms of that manifest image and the signals ever given, no, you know, go to physics class and say, but where should the rocket go? ? Now, in practical terms, we can say that we are in favor of shooting this at bars, so it should go to Mars, but that is a question of this the manifest image of our Bulls, our purposes, if you look only at the science, you You say to a physicist, well, where should rockets go?

I mean, in general, just talk to me about rockets like What Roger Tribby Should Do and Where Should We Go? We can ask where human beings should be, what reason should human beings have and how we should live our lives, but if we simply say where rockets should go, that doesn't make any sense, there is no way to answer in terms of the scientific picture. so his point is that very well, as CS Lewis later puts it, the leaders, those self-proclaimed leaders become men without chess, they separate themselves from everything that could have given them any ability to distinguish right from wrong, so that the very people he wants to lead are the least equipped to lead now he thinks it is vital to hold yourself accountable to something outside of yourself to find an anchor outside of yourself and again that means you have to take yourself as defining values ​​or think that something else defines the values, there is no Otherwise, in the entity it is yourself or there is something external to you, whether it is God or something else, there will be something external to you to which you are responsible.

Socialists, he says, think it could be humanity. Ted thinks you could set heaven. earth, but he says that ultimately doesn't work, why well, he really thinks that in the end it's yourself or God, you might think the universe is about you or you might think it's about something higher than you. , why isn't humanity that kind of something in between well, he says, here's the problem today if you think that most people are sheep, what respect do you have for man, you might think this if you really thought that humanity has dignity and is worthy of respect, but if you separate yourself from God, he thinks that you have no reason to think that and he sees this as a collapse.

You're basically saying I care about humanity, but wait a minute, why should I care about the bad guys if humanity isn't important for anything else? So he thinks that in the end that goes away. simply valuing yourself because your vision is one that disrespects humanity, people's things are nothing in general, so it is based on disrespect and therefore believes that in the end will fall apart so that's his argument for this kind of conclusion so in the end he says this all collapses into narcissism in the end your values ​​may be rooted only in yourself you will have nothing to guide your decisions by your own impulses and your own desires and that is the Network position now yes, well, there are many images that well, it is better not to overlook one more thing, there is a place in the previous novel where Ivan says that if God is dead, then everything is permitted, he believes that God is dead, so he concludes that everything is permitted, in other words, that there are no rules there is no morality there is no such thing as the fact that he can now do whatever he wants which really exemplifies this collapse into the Narcissism If there is no external anchor, Dostoevsky thinks, then we simply become the centers of our own universes and there is no value outside of ourselves, our own impulses, our own desires, so in the end he says that we are sacrificing a part of humanity for the good of the rest, so he believes that the Inquisition is actually the natural result of that line of thinking that he says. we are doing it for the good of humanity for the good of happiness, he says look, that ends in the Inquisition, that ends in the gulag, 100 years, well, not exactly 50 years before the gulag really existed, he sees that that's where that line of thinking is. that's right, anyway I'll skip the rest and let's talk about Nietzsche.

Nietzsche is inspired by this and inspired by this idea of ​​the death of God, but instead of being deeply disturbed by it, he is excited because he thinks that this is dangerous but also exciting and that we are in a position, whether we like it or not, of having to reconstruct our own values ​​from our own resources. Nietzsche is explicitly a historian, he thinks that truth is relative to a historical period and he goes far beyond Hegel in thinking it even at some higher time. At this level, this is true, there is no higher level where we can see the march of history and understand it in absolute terms, so here is a way to get the contrast.

Hegel, as we have seen, defends a historical relativism and believes that the truth of the world is in relation to a time and a place, but who claims to discover these general absolute laws and meta-level dynamics? He says that thought develops in certain ways. The way the Greeks, for example, precede the world is different from the way we proceeded on the other hand. I can tell you a story about how thought progresses and changes, so he thinks that, although the truth of the world is relative to a certain place, the truths of higher thought he believes he can see from his Olympian height. described, so we could describe it inIn this way, there are all these theories that we have about the world, they keep changing and the truth about the world is relative to those, on the other hand, we can build theories about the theories themselves, ask what is the nature of human knowledge, what is the nature of human history and he thinks that there we can arrive at some absolute theory, some absolute truths not about the world but about the way we think about the world.

Nietzsche goes further, oh yes, there is this head, this idea of ​​what logic is like. Logic progresses, we have a thesis, then we realize that it doesn't quite fit the facts, we formulate an antithesis and in the end it doesn't fit either. to the facts, so if we synthesize them into something new, that becomes a new thesis and it keeps happening over and over again in the tables, image of thought, so that is a very quick image of what that universal progression looks like , but wait a minute, what if thought doesn't change in ways governed by rational laws?

What if there is no absolute Absalom? way to characterize this progression of thought, that's what Nietzsche thinks, we have theories about the world that keep changing and the truth about the world is relative to those, but in reality our theories of a theory keep changing too and therefore , even our thoughts about thinking. knowledge about history that continue to change also the Greek conception of history was the same as the medieval conception was that just like our conception of history was the Greek conception of the human mind the same as a medieval conception or the same as our nature of No consumption, in fact, he began as a professor of classics and that is why he is concerned about the contrast between his conception in the 19th century and ancient Greek conceptions.

He says he looks, it's different down or up, if you want to think about it. In that way, it's not just that we had different physics, different theories of the world, we had different conceptions of humanity, different conceptions of knowledge, different conceptions of history, so it says that we are really forced to become relativistic at all times and In fact, he thinks. that if we try to understand how thinking progresses it will not only be relevant, but we will recognize that the pattern is basically irrational. He says that we do not move from a conception of one theory to another theory on the basis of evidence.

Which is why we normally do it. the basis of power and therefore history is governed in your view by the will to power, but that is an irrational force, it is not rational, it is not that we formulate a hypothesis, look at the evidence, say, well , that doesn't work at all. think about the opposite, that's Hegel's image. Nietzsche says no, what happens is that there are people in a theory and eventually their students overthrow them and say that this is nonsense but that it is a power struggle that has nothing to do with reason, so Nietzsche starts from a kind of two-level theory.

He says that almost all philosophical problems once again posed the same form of question as they did 2,000 years ago, how can something develop from autonomy, for example, reason, from the unreasonable feeling of the dead, logic from the illogical and disinterested look of the covens that desire altruism? There is some truth coming from error, what does it mean? she is speaking in the manifest image at that level we talk about truth, we talk about reason, we talk about feelings, we talk about beauty, we think about helping others, yet at that basic level, none of that is really there. there are only particles that move according to laws, there is no reason, there is no evidence, there is nothing like it, there is no appreciation for beauty, everything that is at that level is just particles that bounce off each other, how does it all arise That kind of base? he says. well, it does not happen rationally, it does not happen according to any discernible law, it is ultimately irrational and what we consider remarkable and glorious colors of intellect really arise from despised materials, in other words, simply the interaction of these material particles, so In the end, he says that we have to be historians, but philosophers automatically think of man as an eternal being, as if humanity were always the same.

This is not true, in reality everything philosophers say is true only for a limited period of time, so it ends up being a relativist says that there are no eternal facts, there are no absolute truths, well, the world as we perceive it , it says that after all, it is nothing like this, right, we think that it contains value, it contains people who were free agents, but even apart from that we see it says that it consists of objects, but in reality it says that according to our image The really scientific world doesn't consist of objects, there are these fields that interact in complicated ways; somehow we see continuous objects outside of all that, but it's not clear that worlds are anything like that.

What we perceive of the world we know, he says, is actually nothing more than a bunch of errors and fantasies, so what does this mean about science? Well, he says that it has to be clear, he has to develop new ways of seeing and interpreting the world, but he doesn't actually progress rationally, the best thing an intellectual of any kind, a scientist or a humanist, can do is think of new ones. ways of seeing the world; After all, he says, the world is just a projection which goes back to that point I mentioned earlier about idealism, but now something he's taking directly from Dostoevsky says that God is dead.

Well, this is the most famous pronouncement of his. Actually, after Buddha's death, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave. A tremendous shadow that induces a chill. God is dead, but since humans are there. There may be caves for thousands of years in which a shadow is shown and we still have to defeat the shadow of him now, what do you mean by this statement? God is dead the way this tall magazine finally picked us up in the 60's, it only took them about 80 years to read philosophy but anyway he tells a story that says if you didn't listen to the madman a little flashlight the morning brilliant the random article cried incessantly I'm looking for God I'm looking for missing this is like the story where Diogenes runs looking for an honest man, okay so this crazy man runs towards the square looking for God, there's a painting of him doing that , so try this Scott to the west wall, run there at lunchtime, I'm looking for God, there are actually people saying.

I found a beauty, but hey, what happens in this story? Well, there are many who joined together and started making fun of the boys he lost. Did He walk away like a child or did He stay hidden? Are you afraid of us? He went to see? who emigrated well they laughed and shouted disorder Nietzsche, who by the way was the son of a Lutheran teacher, is here echoing Elijah mocking the priests of Baal, the first kings Elijah says almost the same thing before the pillar of fire even begins on Mount Carmel. and then he scares them away and kills them but anyway the madman jumps between them and Pierceton with his look where is God cried I will tell you that we killed him you and I are all his murderers now at this point they come back and the madman continues god is dead God is still dead and we kill him, how can we console ourselves from the murders of all the murderers?

Is the size too big for us? Don't we have to become gods just to seem worthy of it? Now notice what he is saying, does this idea of ​​God dying make any sense? Well, I am a classical conception. It is not true that God is an eternal being. This idea that God can't really doesn't make any classical sense, but what he's really saying is that he looks, religion is dying like God. a force in human life as a force in human culture is dying he sees that belief in God in Europe is fading and so he looks forward to a few days without religion in reality, in that sense it is very similar to the vision of Dostoevsky of a future without dusty religion FCC Christianity and the decline in Russia and says that is a big problem.

Nietzsche says that I see in Germany. God also made religion a diminishing force in culture and now what does it mean? Don't we have to become gods just to be worthy? And that's a classic idea of ​​sin we actually try to become God, but he says maybe we don't have a choice, so is God dead? Well, Nietzsche says yes, here's a sign. I like it. God is dead. The titanium proves that he is dead. God in any case. Nietzsche says then, what do I believe? In the final analysis, the weight of all things must be determined again.

In other things, we have to start again to discover what is valuable, what is right, what is wrong, what is fair, what is unfair, all of that must be rethought from the beginning. hard foundations and how we do it, what my conscience says, he says you must become the person you are, this is how you must rebuild it, not on the basis of a religion of God that is above yourself and therefore , the main virtue of the people who follow in each one in the 20th century is authenticity, but first we, DFT, would answer, that is to return to that head, return to Narcissus next week we will see a variety of other things and on Wednesday its first article when we do it.