Human beings: the self-contradictory animal

Quoting Fire Ologist

We honest thinkers are deep in the cave. I find it an interesting place to be.

You seem to be at Sartre’s starting point, looking out a world where all the old verities and certainties have been put into question. Sartre’s response reflected the fact that there was one verity he was not prepared to question, that of the self-conscious subject. As a result, his attitude was one of mourning the loss of those old certainties. By contrast, Nietzsche was able to destabilize Sartre’s Cartesian subject, and as a result, he could take joy in immersing himself in self-transformative becoming rather than desperately search for ways to secure wisdom for the knowing subject from the rubble of the past through dialectical materialism.

Reply to Joshs
Sartre basically hovered around the starting line just like the rest. "Consciousness of" is a brilliant reformulation of the predicament.

Nietzsche, more honest and brave, abandoned the whole pursuit, and trashed those who didn't get it.

Quoting Joshs

he (Nietzsche) could take joy in immersing himself in self-transformative becoming rather than

If we want to avoid looking like one of Nietzsche's "truth-seekers" take wisdom out of my post and call it "fact" or "reality" or whatever else might motivate progress beyond the depths of the cave. But Nietzsche, like all of us, could only move in self-contradiction. Self-transformation, self-creation, lays out an ontology and metaphysic of self-material, action upon that material, and new self material - these all fall prey to the disconnect between appearance and reality. If you want to use words like desperate and joy, Nietzsche was just as desperate and possibly joyless as the rest of us. I still only get talking the talk from Nietzsche and no walking anywhere.

Reply to Fire Ologist

Quoting Fire Ologist

?Joshs
Sartre basically hovered around the starting line just like the rest.

Is there only one starting point? You dont find that certain philosophers provide you with more clarity than others?

Quoting Fire Ologist

But Nietzsche, like all of us, could only move in self-contradiction. Self-transformation, self-creation, lays out an ontology and metaphysic of self-material, action upon that material, and new self material - these all fall prey to the disconnect between appearance and reality.

There can only be a disconnect between appearance and reality we still take seriously the notion of reality as something independent of our experience. Throw away that notion and we also jettison the concept of mere appearance. And what’s wrong with self-contradiction if it moves us from one meaningful-in-itself value system to another?

Reply to Fire Ologist

This is an interesting, well framed post. But I find myself disagreeing with most of it, so I'll just throw out why.

Philosophical inquiry, try as it may to find some sort of light, has led us deeper and deeper into the questions. At this point in history, we now must immediately be suspicious of ourselves if we ever claim some answer has been made clear - this could give rise to the much maligned "objectivity" or worse, the terror of "dogma".

I would consider what the fear of error presupposes itself.

Meanwhile, if the fear of falling into error introduces an element of distrust into science, which without any scruples of that sort goes to work and actually does know, it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust, and why we should not take care lest the fear of error is not just the initial error. As a matter of fact, this fear presupposes something, indeed a great deal, as truth, and supports its scruples and consequences on what should itself be examined beforehand to see whether it is truth. It starts with ideas of knowledge as an instrument, and as a medium; and presupposes a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge. More especially it takes for granted that the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real; in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true — a position which, while calling itself fear of error, makes itself known rather as fear of the truth.

G.W.F Hegel - The Phenomenology of Spirit §74

If we try to say what identity is, we are stuck battling between some sort of platonic fairy essence, or universal natural kind fairy, and

I am sympathetic to your point here as a big fan of process physics, but I think conceiving of the Platonist's universal as a sort of magical "fairy essence," is a little off the mark. Plato is nondualist in a key respect, in the sense that Shankara, Miester Eckhart, or Plotinus deny real ontic division. Plato and later Platonists like Porphry, Plotinus, and Proclus (P? as I call em) rather embrace an idea of veridical hierarchy where what is "more real" is more real in virtue of being less contingent, less a bundle of external causes, and thus more fully itself and self-determining.

I only point this out because I long dismissed Plato as positing some sort of "spirit realm," of forms as distinct from the world we live in, and only later realized this is a cheapening of what Plato has to offer. It might be better to think of Plato as a sort of objective idealist rather than any sort of a dualist, and his conception of the universal flows from his idealism and anthropology.

Aristotlean essence would likewise not be a "fairy essence." Essence is a facet of nature related to form. For Aristotle, secondary substance is discovered through experience and the process of abstraction (and thought is definitively processual in Aristotle). I don't think this conception of essence is necessarily at odds with "the motions of physics that constantly redefine particular things and deny identity a chance to take hold, ever." Aristotlean essence can be cashed out in information theoretic/pancomputationalist conceptions of physics (which are essentially processual), where the form is just the informational ensemble corresponding to morphisms between "types" abstracted in consciousness. The question of whether such forms truly "exist" would be related to the question of "do numbers exist?" But for Aristotle, forms, number, shape, etc. exist exactly where instantiated in the natural world, so there doesn't seem to be much "fairy" or supernatural about them. Granted, there are also many ways to formulated essence is ways that do clash with physics.

If we try to point out a thing in itself, we can show that we are pointing in the wrong direction, pointing always instead at the phenomenon of our own devise, never at the thing that is the only thing we were seeking.

Doesn't this assertion clash with the above assertion re skepticism and dogma? Certainly many thinkers have challenged Kant's formulation of "phenomenal vs thing-in-itself." The biggest charge against this is precisely that it results from Kant's own dogmatic presuppositions. Aside from that, per Berkeley, Kant is just simply wrong and confused here, positing things he has no reason for positing. Point being, this assertion re the limits of knowledge is itself grounded in its own metaphysical assertion.

If we try to point at our own minds, being the Pointer, as if mental constructs were things in themselves, we spin off into an impossible picture of a self-reflective object that never grasps any object at all, and that is a now immaterial "self", or we spin off into mind/body dualism that is irreconcilable, incapable of physical unity. And we have to invent ghosts or spirit or ego as placeholders without any better grounding than the fairy Platonic forms. More Deus ex Machina to move the plot along.

This seems to be a real problem. This is why a number of thinkers (e.g. Jensen) say the way to avoid "being trapped in the box" of ideas or language, etc. is to simply never get inside the box to begin with. What is required is a paradigm shift. That is, getting trapped in the box is evidence of bad starting suppositions. As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, "sometimes we need to start at the end, with what is most familiar to us." Much of modern philosophy is the denial of this, the assertion of foundationalism and the need to start from the beginning, with what is least familiar to us. It's problems might simply suggest a flaw in methodology.

If we are amazed that my words here have allowed you to read this far in the post, we should be amazed, because the meaning of words is like identity, or essence, or self - a placeholder so that we might use these words at all, and the pursuit of "objective meaning" is a useless pursuit because meaning is more like use in the first place, and "meaning" has no real use anymore. As usual, putting aside what my words here might possibly mean, words themselves do not seem sturdy enough to move us out of the gate. And now I remind myself that all wisdom can only be recorded in words, so even if I found wisdom, why would I think I could communicate it in words?

Should we be amazed? It seems prima facie unreasonable to say words don't mean anything. To quote J.S. Mill, "one must have made some significant advances in philosophy to believe such a thing."

If language is ONLY use in games, what game are we playing with ourselves when we engage in internal monologue? What game are mammals playing when we can almost universally recognize aggression or fear in each other based on facial expressions? It seems to me like a full accounting of language requires that the idea of a "game" and "use" be stretched to the point where they no longer reflect their original content. In PI, Wittgenstein warns against such all encompassing theorizing and reduction. But considering all of PI grows out of a Saint Augustine quote, I find myself wishing Wittgenstein had engaged a bit with the semiotic theory of that author, because I think it would clear a lot up.

The problem might lie in the search for "objective meaning," itself. Words cannot mean things "of themselves." We have a fundementally broken paradigm if we must assert such a thing. But much hay has been made over showing how the positivist paradigm (objectivity approaches truth at the limit) is wrong, and then turning around to claim that this means we must dispense with "meaning" and "truth" entirely. Rocks do not understand words by having them carved into them. Humans understand words.

From the outset with Saint Augustine, semiotics has involved a tripartite model of object known/sign by which it is known/ interpretant who knows. Philosophy of language early in the 20th century largely ignored this model to its own peril. Thus we end up with a formulation where the sign represents an insurmountable barrier between object and interpretant, rather than the very means by which the two are linked, a strange formulation.

And then there is freedom, that base existential condition that is what it is to be a human being, in a world so over-crowded with necessity and determined forces that there can be no room for freedom. Of course the logic that demands we see freedom is impossible, is the same logic that showed us logic itself may be built of the illogical.

Only if we assume that determinism and freedom are mutually exclusive. But consider that uncaused randomness also precludes freedom. For our actions to be our own, they must be determined by our memories, desires, beliefs, etc. I think Leibniz makes a very solid case that determinism is a prerequisite for freedom, not anathema too it. Determinism is only a problem for libertarian formulations of free will as "uncaused." I think these are ultimately contradictory. If something is uncaused, determined by nothing, then it is random and arbitrary. Random action isn't free will, although it also isn't determinist.

The other main objections to compatibalist free will tend to be grounded in reductionism and smallism and I find the empirical evidence for these claims to be weak at best. That is, "atoms don't have meaning and purpose and all facts about humans are reducible to facts about atoms, so reason and purpose must be illusory," is not a claim I think is particularly well supported by the sciences. Actual reductions (not the unifications they are often confused for) have been very rare in the sciences and mature fields like chemistry or physics itself have yet to be reduced. Is a century long enough to declare that reductionism shouldn't be the default assumption?

I appreciate the reply, Joshs.

Quoting Joshs

Is there only one starting point? You don't find that certain philosophers provide you with more clarity than others?

My point was that no matter what the starting point is, and there are more than I mentioned, enough holes have been poked in things, that hole-poking deconstruction seems to be the last man standing.

I don't necessarily mind this being the case. I think it's incomplete, but maybe wisdom. Plenty of room to keep wondering though. This is the view deep in the cave. Is there anything with me in the cave, or is my experience really all there is?

And you are right that, "certain philosophers provide you with more clarity", which they definitely do. I love all of them to a degree. Truly. The essentials for me are Plato, Aristotle, Kant of course, Hume, maybe Descartes, and Hegel, but definitely Nietzsche and my favorite, Heraclitus. The classics. But I think Nietzsche or Kierkegaard or Camus would read what I wrote (they basically knew all of the philosophers I know) and say, "You still sound like me 100 plus years later." We haven't been able to really advance the discussion since existentialism (and it's bleed into post-modernism), and Nietzsche already burned most (not all), most of it down.

Quoting Joshs

still take seriously the notion of reality as something independent of our experience

I don't know if I am still taking seriously the notion of reality as distinct from the reality of experiencing, but I am wondering about experience. The phrase "still take seriously" kind of makes my point. The prevailing recommendation is to take philosophy less seriously; there are fewer serious things to take because we've deconstructed them. We get to play in the rubble. I am open for any serious notion, but we've made it hard to make a serious notion.

Quoting Joshs

And what’s wrong with self-contradiction if it moves us from one meaningful-in-itself value system to another

Nothing at all. It's my positive contribution. We reflective minds - contradiction is both the structure of the mind, and what it produces. We become the source of contradiction in this universe, as if enabling matter to reflect upon it's "self" instead of the matter - the first instance where what was becoming, simply is being. We provide a limit at which, by turning back, a reflection, a notion, a contradiction, is made. The word contradiction includes "diction" which places words in our essence, the self-contradictory animal who can speak about nonsense with clarity and poise.

Now I should proceed to deconstruct every last word I just said, remake the very impulse that led me to say it in first place. Or maybe not, because then I might just be contradicting myself, demonstrating my point by refuting it.

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the post. Owe you a big reply.

Reply to Fire Ologist

Quoting Fire Ologist

We become the source of contradiction in this universe, as if enabling matter to reflect upon it's "self" instead of the matter - the first instance where what was becoming, simply is being. We provide a limit at which, by turning back, a reflection, a notion, a contradiction, is made. The word contradiction includes "diction" which places words in our essence, the self-contradictory animal who can speak about nonsense with clarity and poise.

Writers following Nietzsche into postmodern territory, like Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida and Heidegger, reject the idea that reflection simply turns back to gaze at itself. Whenever we attempt to do this we are presented with an Other. Reflecting on ourselves IS reflecting on the matter. That is, the world , including our own consciousness, changes with respect to its prior state every moment. For instance, Delleuze argues that all matter in the universe interacts with other matter such that we can never point to any object that simply continues to be what it was the moment before. This is not the reality of human beings perceiving matter , but how matter ‘is’ in itself. Matter contradicts itself from moment to moment , whether there are people around to reflect on it or not. He was strongly influenced by Nietzsche in forming his perspective, especially where Nietzsche suggests that all ‘matter’ in itself is differential relations among drives.

Assuming that our world of desires and passions is the only thing “given” as real, that we cannot get down or up to any “reality” except the reality of our drives (since thinking is only a relation between these drives) – aren't we allowed to make the attempt and pose the question as to whether something like this “given” isn't enough to render the so-called mechanistic (and thus material) world comprehensible as well? I do not mean comprehensible as a deception, a “mere appearance,” a “representation” (in the sense of Berkeley and Schopenhauer); I mean it might allow us to understand the mechanistic world as belonging to the same plane of reality as our affects themselves –, as a primitive form of the world of affect, where everything is contained in a powerful unity before branching off and organizing itself in the organic process (and, of course, being softened and weakened –). We would be able to understand the mechanistic world as a kind of life of the drives, where all the organic functions (self-regulation, assimilation, nutrition, excretion, and metabolism) are still synthetically bound together – as a pre-form of life?

Quoting Fire Ologist

My point was that no matter what the starting point is, and there are more than I mentioned, enough holes have been poked in things, that hole-poking deconstruction seems to be the last man standing… Now I should proceed to deconstruct every last word I just said, remake the very impulse that led me to say it in first place. Or maybe not, because then I might just be contradicting myself, demonstrating my point by refuting it.

You seem to be focusing on only one aspect of seeing the world in terms of a self-transformative, self-contradictory movement of becoming, and missing the other, more important one. Your focus is on incommensurability, loss, disconnection, arbitrariness. It is true that for all these writers difference is more primary than identity. And in deconstructing the traditional metaphysics, they lose the faith in the certainty a God creator provided, and the certainty absolute truth provided. But I would argue they gained something more important. In thinkers like Nietzsche, Derrida. Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault and Wittgenstein, the differential relations that swallow up matter are alway already organized as systems, networks, totalities of relational relevance and a certain internal consistency.

We are never without recourse to such backgrounds making our world intelligible and familiar to us at some level. If one compares the organization of these systems of internal differences with the objective realist models of idealists like Kant, or Enlightenment thinkers like Leibnitz, Hume, Spinoza and Descartes, one finds that they give us a way to understand our connection to the world, and to other human beings , that is more intimate and less arbitrary, allowing us to anticipate the behavior of others more effectively. We gave up the certainty of arbitrary truths in favor of the relativity and becoming of relevant , intricate and intimate relations of meaning. One can even find in postmodern models a certain notion of progress embedded within the becoming of these differential systems.

Quoting Fire Ologist

We haven't been able to really advance the discussion since existentialism (and it's bleed into post-modernism), and Nietzsche already burned most (not all), most of it down.

The discussion is always advancing , albeit slowly, although I admit this seems to be a somewhat stagnant period for great ideas. But if you grant that there has been a progress in the sciences and technology since the existentialists, then you would have to grant a progress in philosophy as well, since the former are outgrowths of the latter and parallel their development.

He goes right to heart of epistemology:

...it is not easy to understand why, conversely, a distrust should not be placed in this very distrust...

And ends the discussion. Beautiful. Then he gives us a reason to go on being reasonable among the objects we might now trust just as much as we just distrusted.

lest the fear of error is not just the initial error.

And then, Hegel's bravery where others still fear delivers:

More especially ...the Absolute stands on one side, and that knowledge on the other side, by itself and cut off from the Absolute, is still something real;

in other words, that knowledge, which, by being outside the Absolute, is certainly also outside truth, is nevertheless true
- G.W.F Hegel - The Phenomenology of Spirit §74

Hegel was brilliant. He's right there in the heart of things, delivering wisdom, with many others. I don't think I'm being clear because you raised Hegel to redirect or even correct what I said, and yet I think, by raising this, you must be right there with me, onto the same thing.

I'm not saying that, the prevailing modern/postmodern state of wisdom, is the only wisdom there is. I am also not saying that postmodernism has no wisdom in it, because it does. But I think at the same time, there is a prevailing wisdom today, and it is stuck. It hasn't gotten past existentialism.

Hegel talks of the "absolute", and the other side, full of "knowledge". These terms are not welcome in postmodern discourse. Yet, as I see it, as I think Hegel saw it, the absolute is essential to all movement, to logic, to knowing. But since we really don't deal in absolutes anymore, discourse cannot move far before it collapses back to the starting point again. Existentialism was a pendulum swing with the force of a wrecking ball. We are still having the conversation that the existentialists started.

The existentialists provided a much needed correction. Existentialism reminded us of the mundane, the raw, the lived, the original (instinctual) inspiration for our notion of "the real" that was once innocently discovered, but for too long was fetishized and distorted. There is wisdom in the hammer and the tuning fork, and real substance in the ironic, the absurd, the terror of destructive will.

Postmodernism now fetishizes the destruction itself with less focus on what must absolute be there before it can be destroyed, the reconstruction for it's deconstruction. We now are told to distrust trust.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I only point this out because I long dismissed Plato...

You obviously successfully went through your deconstruction of Plato phase, which we all must because we live today, and because everybody encourages it, because they are told to encourage it....BUT you obviously also came out whole:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

(Plato embraces) an idea of veridical hierarchy where what is "more real" is more real in virtue of being less contingent, less a bundle of external causes, and thus more fully itself and self-determining.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

It might be better to think of Plato as a sort of objective idealist rather than any sort of a dualist, and his conception of the universal flows from his idealism and anthropology.

An interesting way to revisit Plato, finding the continuum in an otherwise dualism.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But for Aristotle, forms, number, shape, etc. exist exactly where instantiated in the natural world

Aristotle, another top five brilliant one for me. But he too is subject to much dismissal today. The points you make that Aristotle made are good ones, to allow more positive philosophical discussion.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

The biggest charge against this is precisely that it results from Kant's own dogmatic presuppositions. Aside from that, per Berkeley, Kant is just simply wrong and confused here, positing things he has no reason for positing. Point being, this assertion re the limits of knowledge is itself grounded in its own metaphysical assertion.

Kant's a bear. I see no need to refute the phenomena/noumena distinction, along with the reconstructing mind in between. As I said, there is wisdom buried in postmodern, deconstructionism. Kant was the construction part. Kant is part of it as with the existentialists who tear it back down. Hegel is an important unifier and stark contrast. But me mentioning Kant in my little OP tirade against modern thought, was a bit contradictory.

That brings me back though to the title of this. I called us the contradictory animal, as a positive, not a negation. The negation is contained in it, but I truly mean it as a positive.

Lot's more but I gotta go.

Thanks for the positive mentions of some great ones.

P.s I can summarize my point like this: I've found that at the heart of things, between everything, there is tension. With tension, there is unity and division, at once. Nietzsche came along and showed the danger of embracing too tightly the Apollonian unity. Now, post-Nietzsche, we grasp too tightly at the division. (And Hegel is a great response.). And you see why I call myself Fire Ologist, after the wisest of them all, Heraclitus.

Reply to Fire Ologist

Quoting Fire Ologist

I'm not saying that, the prevailing modern/postmodern state of wisdom, is the only wisdom there is. I am also not saying that postmodernism has no wisdom in it, because it does. But I think at the same time, there is a prevailing wisdom today, and it is stuck. It hasn't gotten past existentialism

In 1997, the philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin held a conference at the University of Chicago titled ‘After Postmodernism’. His aim was not to deny the insights of pomo but to move beyond them. You might be interested in his work.

An enormous gap called postmodernism has recently been created between experiencing and concepts. I want not only to examine the nature of this gap, but also to attempt to move beyond it. Of course there are many strands of postmodernism. It is best known for denying that there is any truth, or that one can claim to ground any statement in experience. Postmodernism is right in that one can not claim to represent or copy experiencing. But this does not mean that what we say has no relationship to what we experience—that there is no truth, that everything we say is arbitrary. In contrast to postmodernism, I show that we can have direct access to experiencing through our bodies (Gendlin 1992). I maintain that bodily experience can not he reduced to language and culture. Our bodily sense of situations is a concretely sensed interaction process that always exceeds culture, history, and language.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a new empiricism, one that is not naive. It will incorporate the insights of postmodernism and move past the dead end where postmodernism seems to stop. It will be an empiricism that does not assume an order that could be represented, and yet this will not lead to arbitrariness.
The rejection of representational truth must lead us to a more intricate understanding, rather than arbitrariness. We assume neither objectivism nor constructivism. The results of empirical testing are not representations of reality, nor are they arbitrary. Our empiricism is not a counterrevolution against Kuhn and Feyerabend, but it moves beyond them.

I maintain that bodily experience can not he reduced to language and culture. Our bodily sense of situations is a concretely sensed interaction process that always exceeds culture, history, and language.

This is an intriguing position and I am sympathetic to embodied cognition. I'm not sure what it means to 'exceed' culture. Does he mean that bodily experince is primary and the others later and derivative? Or is there more of a reciprocal relationship?

It will incorporate the insights of postmodernism and move past the dead end where postmodernism seems to stop. I

Do you agree with Gendlin's account here? Does postmodernism lead to a dead end?

Reply to Tom Storm Quoting Tom Storm

This is an intriguing position and I am sympathetic to embodied cognition. I'm not sure what it means to 'exceed' culture. Does he mean that bodily experince is primary and the others later and derivative? Or is there more of a reciprocal relationship?

He means that each of us interprets the culture we live in in ways that are unique to us as individuals, and that these unique ways open themselves to creative transformation. It’s not just an inner process, since tapping into the body’s experiential intricacy is being in touch directly with the world of nature and culture.

Quoting Tom Storm

It will incorporate the insights of postmodernism and move past the dead end where postmodernism seems to stop.

Do you agree with Gendlin's account here? Does postmodernism lead to a dead end?

It’s not exactly a dead end, but I do agree with Gendlin that writers like Foucault who emphasize the socially constructed nature of experience leave us with a somewhat arbitrary account of meaning formation. Gendlin’s account
keeps pomo’s relativism while enriching it with an intricacy that they miss. I think Heidegger and Derrida also accomplish this.

Reply to Joshs Appreciated. Thanks.

Reply to Joshs

Of course there are many strands of postmodernism. It is best known for denying that there is any truth, or that one can claim to ground any statement in experience. Postmodernism is right in that one can not claim to represent or copy experiencing. But this does not mean that what we say has no relationship to what we experience—that there is no truth, that everything we say is arbitrary.

Exactly. I never heard of Eugene Gendlin, and I wouldn't say it that way (I. obviously, would use way more words than he did). But it fits right in line with my whole point. So, what do you think about that picture? Is there still room for truth to grow in the current consensus? Can we redirect anyone from error and show someone else something good?

Quoting Joshs

His aim was not to deny the insights of pomo but to move beyond them

I would say, my my aim is not to deny the insights of pomo. We should definitely keep them with us. But if we are to move, at all, we need something more; I think this something more immediately and just as presently calls up the absolute.

The POMO deconstructionist application of existentialism, focuses now too much on the process, making its goal the very process of goal-taking, not the goal, maybe never the goal.
This is neither good nor bad. Process is as real as the goal.
Anything that just is, now being known to me, is just wisdom. Process is the exist in existential. I can know this wisdom by deconstructing. By knowing the changing. POMO teaches us that. But I have still said "knowing" and once I even hint at wisdom or truth at all, there is the absolute raised from the dead just as it always was and has to be.

Like Nietzsche blamed so many post-Socratic truthseekers for focusing too much on content, I blame POMO for focusing too much on process. Oddly, the focus on process leaves us unable to build. Nietzsche left us with a gay science to address the content, the absolute. POMO doesn't like to admit that content remains through all of the deconstruction, the absolute is, always, right here in the becoming.

Quoting Tom Storm

Does postmodernism lead to a dead end?

I'd say it leads us back to a starting point. This may somehow mean the same thing. I guess it actually adds that it's not dead, it lives at the starting point of the conversation. POMO is more like a method.

I think postmodernism has forced a certain honesty and we've learned a lot from it. But postmodern deconstruction does not take enough time to admit that all along the process of deconstruction, fixed buildings stand firm to be deconstructed. They are always there too. We can say "truth" and "absolute" if we want, because we always had to, always have to, just to speak at all. And always will. Just is.

Quoting Fire Ologist

I still only get talking the talk from Nietzsche and no walking anywhere.

Nietzsche did philosophy from the beginning to the end of his sanity. And he abandoned the ivory tower and did it his way. That was his talk. That was his walk. It was lonely and it ended in madness.

Reply to Arne

Looking back I really shouldn't have said that and need to be more clear. I love Nietzsche. The world needed him. Future generations should all read him.

All I meant is that, from what I can tell, one of Nietzsche's points was that philosophy was basically another lie. And all of the talk of truth-seeking was an expression of weakness. That is the "talk" to me that he was laying out - stop bothering with some fetishized version of the truth. But then he went on, to give us the truth, the truth of how wrong we have been. We got it wrong placing all truth in the Apollonian (which I agree was wrong), but now corrected, he gave us the truth in the Dionysian. He didn't want us to call it "truth" anymore, but, from what I can tell, there truth still is. And further, he scolded about how badly we can be wrong, how weakly we can hide and fail to act - so he demanded at least some attention to some sort of ivory tower, a mountaintop perhaps. He ended up still finding good from a position claimed as beyond (or better bereft of) good and evil, so to speak.