[Serious] Absolutes and Atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a bit for framing. A shallow reading of nietzsche combined with the ludicrous self-serving premise that god and transcendence of any kind are interchangeable.

Nietzsche didn't think that, he espoused his own transcendent certitudes and absolutes. He believed that the foundations of the culture -then- were undercut by the falsity of the fairytales which supported them. This was mostly informed by his moral nihilism, but he was not an existential nihilist. Even in the moral sphere, he believed that we needed and should create new values that reflected our new secular reality.

If we believe in things like right or wrong - no matter what we put in either category..if we believe that we so much as know our names, these are both absolutes in the philosophic sense. Claims to knowledge, rather than opinion. Truth is a "transcendent value/quality/object/proposition". The dilemma, at least for nietzsche, was that the searth for and valuing of truth of a very specific kind had lead to the suspicion that there were no such thing as claimed - and he was right, regardless of whether or not there were any truth et al - which he continued to believe in like a common philospher, lol. Alot of ink has been spilled about this since, and mostly in criticism of nietzsche coming from a resistant christian culture, as some fundamental incoherence in his worldview - but I don't think it was. At worst, he was extrapolating a larger truth from a smaller claim which couldn't cash it out - though I'm of the opinion that he was just calling it like he saw it, even if what he saw was a confusing mess of contradictory principles and false claims. It would be interesting if we had a time machine (just like with any of the "greats") to see what they would have to say about things as they saw them now. I suspect they would surprise us.

More people today, I think, live as his hypothetical supermen than did in his own time. Taking control, insomuch they can, of the life they've been given rather than allowing the frequent idiocies of religious culture to determine it for them. Seeking out freer expression and a personal fulfillment, rather than doing their godly duties as drones. Even the religious. In that, he'd probably be pleased. I say all this, ironically, as Not A Fan. I think, in the end, nietzsch was himself so hopelessly and fundamentally misinformed by the very culture he criticized that he himself could not escape it even in his own thoughts. I don't think it takes alot of jargon heavy debate or deep research into philosophy to understand where he was at - as alot of us have been in a similar place. Very much wanting to be free of a thing we believed was wrong, but not being able to free ourselves from it. Instead, dreaming of a better future where others -had- freed themselves of it. So I guess we can add that to the list of ways that the judeochristian god concept has poisoned every goddamned thing it's touched. Right down to finding myself defending nietzsche, lol.