Masters – Observations and Misunderstandings

You can’t study philosophy without dipping your toes into a little morality, or shall we say moralaki. Likely it’ll end up being a lot of morality but the Greek diminutive will make easing in a little less intense. Perhaps ‘The Boss‘ is not the ideal title either; sticking with the Greek theme the boss of western philosophy would likely be Plato or his invention Socrates were a poll ever conducted, and even from a contemporary stance it may not be the man in the picture either, but while reading him now it feels there could only ever be one god of philosophy and it must be Nietzsche. Yet to describe him as such would suggest totally missing the point of his ideas, and while Übermensch – a higher person – would make more sense he never saw himself as one of his own creations, which leaves us with some kind of depressed and insane rock star. Let’s just say he’s a big deal around these parts. So module two, Nietzsche and more precisely his Genealogy of Morality.

It’s early days and I’m just getting my head around some of his concepts. Seemingly he’s not a massive fan of Judeo-Christian morality. It gives power to the slave morality by putting a flawed value on weak concepts likes meekness. He believed this type of morality had a detrimental effect upon the advancement of the the higher person as it thwarted the development of human excellence. Too much focus was put on uplifting the weak herd at the expense of the potential of the higher person. In a sense the need to live by the rules of a morality which pushed empathy, selflessness and equality risked the higher person not fulfilling their potential, as they were forced to reign in their natural instincts. Think of some people who we class as great people, innovative genius’ perhaps, and without a doubt there will be an aspect of them and their single minded drive that falls foul of our sense of the good. Nietzsche’s point is seemingly that we shouldn’t force them to live by our own moral code, this universal moral code of good and evil, because people are quite clearly not universally the same. On the surface it is pretty clear to see why people dislike his non-egalitarian beliefs but it’s not a stretch to say there is an argument to be had for it. How much will become clear as I go through the module.

The influence of the great thinkers throughout history can only really become clear when you see which ideals of theirs have become commonplace within our general thinking. How many times have people reassuringly told themselves or others that if it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger, well Nietzsche came up with that. He believed in the importance of the journey, especially if it involved a little suffering, and undoubtable saw little value in just being given the answer without having to work on it. Much of his life revolved around suffering, at the age of four he watched his Lutheran pastor father die from a devastating brain disease, and it was in these moments of suffering throughout his life he did much of his best work. It can’t be a coincidence that considering his own experience he believed moralities that held suffering to be a bad thing, to be so deeply flawed. Suffering for Nietzsche was a good and he put it to the test enough times.

He said without doubt his work would be misused in the future and seemingly the Nazi’s proved him right. They had a little help from his sister who edited and published some of his notebooks after his death to make him look as equally anti-Semitic and nationalistic as she was. While she may have been an old lady at the time she was a total Adolf fan-girl and he was more than happy to warp Nietzsche’s words to justify some Aryan master race bullshit. The truth was that Nietzsche hated nationalism as much as religion, yet spent the first half of the twentieth century mis-represented as a Nazi. Yet that’s the issue, as I said earlier he is very much open to interpretation to the point one esteemed Nietzsche expert will say he was anti-Semitic and other that he wasn’t. Who am I to know really after a few papers and a couple of podcasts.

Nietzsche spent the last eleven years of his life completely insane and died in 1900. In the late 1880’s just before being committed he wrote much of his best work. He wrote ferociously at this point almost as if he knew what was coming and just wanted to get his words and ideas out before it was too late. It isn’t a stretch to suggest there is a fine line between genius and crazy and seemingly Nietzsche lost that battle. He seems interesting though and while I have already made far more notes that this little introductory ramble would suggest, I look forward to attempting to really form an opinion on him as right now I’m likely just to be repeating the words of others if I try to make sense of the man. I’ll come back next time with something a little more detailed and philosophical, or at least an attempt at such.

The emotions eh, who’d have them. Well most people actually. The suffering and torment of cognitive and physiological reactions that make no sense to us what so ever. More learned people than I am believe similar to me and equally more learned people think differently to me. When something makes little sense trying to form your own argument while being aware of such varied and different ideas simply makes the head spin further. Yet this is philosophy, finding a (temporary) point when you think you get it and being able to bask in your own glorious comprehension gives the self doubt it’s own value and makes it all worth it. And doubt I did, and momentarily bask a little too but only a little of course.

The module is now complete and while there was a lack of posts in here on my progress, or as a means to achieve progress, it feels right before moving on to the next module to cover a little of what I think I learnt. I won’t necessarily give an overview of the Philosophy of Emotions as that is too much of a task and there is not enough space or I suspect appetite for it, mine mainly, but will go over the question I answered for the assignment.

‘Being horrified by the events of the Rwandan genocide or Jewish holocaust justifies you in believing that those events were horrendous atrocities.’ Discuss.

Seems pretty straightforward I hear you say but what if you were to reframe the question using kittens instead as the object. It doesn’t seem quite so justified then, they’re only kittens and kittens are cute, genocide is quite clearly not. Ultimately the question is one of whether our emotions can justify our beliefs. For better or worse I argued not. They may influence our beliefs and help us to understand our beliefs, or help us understand whether our beliefs need deeper contemplation, but they’re on the whole too unreliable to justify what we believe about something. We form our beliefs, I argued, through a continually evolving conscious and unconscious process of reflection. Arguably this would be a form of conditioning, but it also comes down to experience and knowledge amongst other things. As our emotional intelligence and maturity increases, if it does, then we can trust our emotions more. Paradoxically, and this is a new thought, the more they were to increase surely the less likely we would be to trust our emotions as we became more aware of their unreliability and the importance of reasoned reflection. Our ability to use reason is important, and while our reasoning may be flawed for whatever reason it is still integral for the formation of our beliefs. Ultimately I believe kittens to be adorable and genocide horrendous because having learnt about them, what they are as conceptual objects, as well as the conceptual attributes of adorability and horrific, my reasoning relates each object with their corresponding attributing value.

There’s likely more but seeing as I’m not emotionally strong enough to torture myself by reading though my rushed and muddled assignment, whatever other points I made have seemingly drifted off into the ether. Having taken an eternity to get my head around the topic, there wasn’t a great deal of time to complete the essay and while I haven’t got the mark back yet, I’m not one for thinking and telling everyone I’ve done poorly while getting a good result. The most frustrating thing, although it’s also a real positive, is that I know I can do better and don’t believe I did myself justice. We use this and make sure we do better the next time but at the very least appreciate the fact it wasn’t as an unconquerable field of philosophic thought as it felt. In a perverse kind of way, I think I actually kind of enjoyed it in the end. Or at the very least had some kind of an emotional reaction that helped me form such a belief, or perhaps I will after a little more reflection.

Tag: Masters

The Boss

The Emotions