Value Philosophy

Subject: Value Philosophy Fri Aug 21, 2015 8:32 am

I have been following with interest Sauwelios' work with value ontology. This morning I saw a post of his on ILP in which he touched on the limits to the certainty given by "value philosophy" which is what he has called his thinking based on value ontology; a thinking that has VO (of course as he understands it - there still are no philosophies, only philosophers), at its center.

For a while now, he has maintained the following signature:

Quote :: Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

This in itself gives almost infinite ground to discuss. Seemingly, the category "Value Metaphysics" serves to denote the ontology (the logic) itself, whereas the Axiology carries distinct traces of the same logic. The "Value Logic" as defined here is very different from what I have called "Self-valuing logic", which is simply the logic of value ontology "itself"; a logic which describes being as well as itself as being. Anyway, first of all I wish to address a comment Sauwelios made in a thread called "A criticism of KT philosophy" (&), the contents of which are only interesting to me in as far as they involve these Sauwelian metaphysics, investigations into the nature of being.

I will now quote the post that triggered this one, and address Sauwelios directly, which should not be a reason for others not to get involved; though I certainly do not mean this as an invitation for "Satyr" to blubber some more cattleshit from his orifices; I mean "others" with the capacity for abstract thought.

Quote :: Satyr thinks, or writes, in terms of objects: single particles, atoms, elements... That's where he stops thinking, in his writings if not in his head. At least Chopra thinks in terms of subjects, of "spirit". But he seems to universalise this spirit, as though it's not just his limited, evolved human spirit (like his human mind, or human reason), but universal spirit. Value Philosophy does this too, but not without insisting that that universality is its own insistence, that it's a value and not necessarily a fact. Both VP and Chopra recognise a hierarchy of kinds of consciousness, from the most rudimentary or primitive to the most intricate; but VP does not claim to spring from the most intricate, let alone from the absolute; it does not claim that it cannot be mistaken. Perhaps Value Philosophy is wrong. But at least it begins with the only thing we ("laymen") know from the inside: our own inner world.

I wish to expand this discussion to this site, because it is valuable and the chances of it getting much deeper than where it is on ILP now are slim. I wish to ask you first off: which part of Value Philosophy is perhaps wrong? Do you mean to include the ontology, that is to say the logic (what I have called the "self-valuing logic" above)?

If not, in which way could the other components of the philosophy theoretically be invalidated?

If so, in which way can VO theoretically be invalidated?

As far as I can reason, there is no way to discern, physically or imaginatively, any 'existent' (any being, thing, object, subject, entity, etc) that escapes the activity of "self-valuing" as VO puts it forth. A thing, in as far as it exists, must interact with its environment in such a way as to keep existing, which is to say it must keep attaining itself.

The notion of "value" is attached to this seemingly circular reasoning because this is the only way in which such circular reasoning actually applies to reality. It is, as Nietzsche discerned, a beings valuing (which is to say its acting on and thus 'having' and specific values) that determine what this being is; what the being of this being entails.

Valuing is not an arbitrary notion, it can not be replaced with another; it is not the case that every circular self-referent definition also refers directly to existence in such a way as to make it understood. It is only through observing our valuing that we can understand what we are, what we do, why we do it and when we're going to do it, as well as other beings responses to that doing. The term "existing" or "being" is in fact hollow until this insight has been attained - the insight into what it is precisely that beings 'spend their time doing'; responding to either non- or to other being to the effect of continuing a similar responding; this very particular form of responding is what entails being. Any other type of response would amount in the end of that responding. And we happen to have called this self-perpetuating form of responding valuing.

This is the notion that, even when I am addressing it myself, proves very elusive; it is not that from now on every dead entity has to be reinterpreted in terms of what we understand as valuing (e.g. choosing, selecting, and doing so consciously) but that from now on every human action has to be reinterpreted in terms of the same kind of necessities that drive 'dead being'' i.e. unalterable behaviors.

Value Ontology does away with the idea that humans can be changed, that there's anything we can do about what we are, or that we can look at our motivations and interpret our actions as if from a higher vantage point than from our self-willing - there is nothing more 'objective' than this willing to power, and our consciousness is merely a by-product of it, and so are our definitions, and so is our very capacity to define.

The very notion of a definition requires a self-valuing standard; thus, in as far as a definition can be truthful to what it is, beside to what it represents (and thus represent cleanly), it must to begin with include its own capacity as a self-valuing.

Further, every definition posits an 'unchangeable' - this is the whole reason why (the lie) "A" = "A" can be stated at all; a definition is supposed to represent an unalterable thing - but we know there isn't actually a completely similar "A" to any "A", be it a symbol (each equal symbol exists in a different context, if ever so slightly, and is thus a different object with a different 'meaning' (effect)) or a physical entity; the only unalterable thing about such things is that they self-value. As soon as they stop doing that, their being is altered to become either non-being or a very different entity. Say, for example, that a written "A" exists in a world where man works with different alphabet, or with no symbols at all. In this case, the self-valuing "A" does not exist, the "A" does not exist, what exists is a few diagonal lines that no one man will discern in the same way as the next man. The "A" only comes back into existence as "A" when a man discerns it as such. It is thus unchangeable only in as far as it is involved in certain interactions. The same goes for man, or any kind of living species. Whatever can be fixed by a definition, relies on an often unfathomably complex context, within which there is not one single constant except this necessary form of relationship between things, which is called self-valuing.

In mathematics and formal logic, such a context spreads out in 'instantly into eternity'; that is to say, as long as one thing is completely valid (positively existent), everything must valid (positively existent). But in life, and in the physical world in general, such contexts spread out gradually in time; each instance of self-valuing is phenomenologically different from the next; no single "implication" (effect) can be reproduced in another instant. From this we can gather that formal logic and mathematics aren't actually referring to the physical world; "A" is never actually "A"; a symmetrical equation like this always refers to an artificial world, one that exists out of time; and yet even here time operates on it as man works the equation, and bends it in such a way that variables are included, and the first "A" becomes, by conditioners, distinguishable from the other "A", and a picture of reality begins to shine through. The most basic example: Action = - (Reaction).

A mathematics of being would depart from the notion that in as far as there are abstract notions applicable together in a system, they must on some level be fundamentally equal to each other, since they are representing things that can be computed with one another; and in as far as there are notions that represent reality, they can never ben fully abstract, and never be perfectly represented, and never quite fit in the same system as which supports fully explication of another notion.

Reality is asymmetrical, must fundamentally appear to us as such - or rather, every instance of reality that can be discerned, which is to say, any situation with different entities relating to each other, must appear to us as asymmetrical. Will to Power is the primordial way of designating this asymmetry, it its referral to rank and difference.

The ultimate question about metaphysics is what we can say. The veracity of any metaphysics relies on its own notion of truth. Is value ontology true or not? That depends whether or not truth is connected to reality; whether or not, in short, we assume that reality can be truthfully expressed at all.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:32 am

Fixed Cross wrote:

I have been following with interest Sauwelios' work with value ontology. This morning I saw a post of his on ILP in which he touched on the limits to the certainty given by "value philosophy" which is what he has called his thinking based on value ontology; a thinking that has VO (of course as he understands it - there still are no philosophies, only philosophers), at its center.

For a while now, he has maintained the following signature:

Quote :: Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

This in itself gives almost infinite ground to discuss. Seemingly, the category "Value Metaphysics" serves to denote the ontology (the logic) itself, whereas the Axiology carries distinct traces of the same logic.

Yes, I've chosen "Value Metaphysics" instead of "Value Ontology", because metaphysics encompasses a bit more than ontology (and as we've discussed in private, entire universes may be considered self-valuings, for example). Of course, I mean "metaphysics" in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense and not in the popular sense.

What I now call "Value Axiology" is actually something I thought of before I ever heard of VO.

What I call "Value Philosophy" is prior even to Value Metaphysics, because--though it would follow from the latter in any case--it need not follow just from that. In other words, Value Metaphysics is Value Philosophy's sufficient cause but not necessarily its necessary cause: if VM then VP, but not necessarily if VP then VM. Compare when Nietzsche says philosophy is a will to power: others may counter that, although his philosophy may well be a will to power, that need not go for other philosophies at all. (If however the world is in fact the will to power and nothing besides, then all philosophies, and not just Nietzsche's philosophy, are of course will to power.)

This self-relativization is repeated by my listing what I call "Value Logic" directly after Value Axiology. And the last item, Value Ethics (which also except for the name stems from before I ever heard of VO), is of course a paradox in itself.

Quote :

The "Value Logic" as defined here is very different from what I have called "Self-valuing logic", which is simply the logic of value ontology "itself"; a logic which describes being as well as itself as being. Anyway, first of all I wish to address a comment Sauwelios made in a thread called "A criticism of KT philosophy" (&), the contents of which are only interesting to me in as far as they involve these Sauwelian metaphysics, investigations into the nature of being.

I will now quote the post that triggered this one, and address Sauwelios directly, which should not be a reason for others not to get involved; though I certainly do not mean this as an invitation for "Satyr" to blubber some more cattleshit from his orifices; I mean "others" with the capacity for abstract thought.

Quote :: Satyr thinks, or writes, in terms of objects: single particles, atoms, elements... That's where he stops thinking, in his writings if not in his head. At least Chopra thinks in terms of subjects, of "spirit". But he seems to universalise this spirit, as though it's not just his limited, evolved human spirit (like his human mind, or human reason), but universal spirit. Value Philosophy does this too, but not without insisting that that universality is its own insistence, that it's a value and not necessarily a fact. Both VP and Chopra recognise a hierarchy of kinds of consciousness, from the most rudimentary or primitive to the most intricate; but VP does not claim to spring from the most intricate, let alone from the absolute; it does not claim that it cannot be mistaken. Perhaps Value Philosophy is wrong. But at least it begins with the only thing we ("laymen") know from the inside: our own inner world.

I wish to expand this discussion to this site, because it is valuable and the chances of it getting much deeper than where it is on ILP now are slim. I wish to ask you first off: which part of Value Philosophy is perhaps wrong? Do you mean to include the ontology, that is to say the logic (what I have called the "self-valuing logic" above)?

If not, in which way could the other components of the philosophy theoretically be invalidated?

If so, in which way can VO theoretically be invalidated?

As far as I can reason, there is no way to discern, physically or imaginatively, any 'existent' (any being, thing, object, subject, entity, etc) that escapes the activity of "self-valuing" as VO puts it forth. A thing, in as far as it exists, must interact with its environment in such a way as to keep existing, which is to say it must keep attaining itself.

I'm quoting such a long passage because it starts with a reference to what you call the "Self-valuing logic", but only begins to formulate this logic in the last quoted paragraph. And I'm interrupting you at this point because the last quoted paragraph already enables me to explain why Value Philosophy--including Value Ontology--may be wrong.

You begin with: "As far as I can reason". This is actually already an expression of non-dogmatism. It grants that there may be a faculty of reason that can go further than yours--perhaps a non-human reason, or a superhuman reason. As far as you can reason, there is no way to discern etc. "Physically or imaginatively"--perhaps there are more ways than just these two?

Ironically, it's precisely my "Value Logic" which most undercuts your "Self-valuing logic". If logic's self-identical "A" is only a value, and not a fact, then--there is no "then". Or maybe there is. Or maybe there both is and is not. Or maybe neither. But I think that, rather than undermining it, this actually supports it.

Quote :: The notion of "value" is attached to this seemingly circular reasoning because this is the only way in which such circular reasoning actually applies to reality. It is, as Nietzsche discerned, a beings valuing (which is to say its acting on and thus 'having' and specific values) that determine what this being is; what the being of this being entails.

Valuing is not an arbitrary notion, it can not be replaced with another; it is not the case that every circular self-referent definition also refers directly to existence in such a way as to make it understood. It is only through observing our valuing that we can understand what we are, what we do, why we do it and when we're going to do it, as well as other beings responses to that doing. The term "existing" or "being" is in fact hollow until this insight has been attained - the insight into what it is precisely that beings 'spend their time doing'; responding to either non- or to other being to the effect of continuing a similar responding; this very particular form of responding is what entails being. Any other type of response would amount in the end of that responding. And we happen to have called this self-perpetuating form of responding valuing.

This is the notion that, even when I am addressing it myself, proves very elusive; it is not that from now on every dead entity has to be reinterpreted in terms of what we understand as valuing (e.g. choosing, selecting, and doing so consciously) but that from now on every human action has to be reinterpreted in terms of the same kind of necessities that drive 'dead being'' i.e. unalterable behaviors.

I find the last quoted paragraph especially interesting. I may have focused too much on reinterpreting lifeless entities in terms of valuing lately. But I disagree that that is not part of it, too.

Since at least when I started my "The Rebirth of Classic Natural Right" thread in early 2012, I conceived of the Nietzschean Übermensch as the nonteleological man (that is, as the man who considers himself nonteleological)--until I was impacted by the Picht passage I quoted in the very beginning of my "Logic as self-value" thread.

This nonteleological Übermensch is basically what Seung has called the Spinozan Übermensch. But he says there is also the Faustian Übermensch, who is equally ineradicable. The Faustian Übermensch believes in free will whereas the Spinozan Übermensch believes in determinism. But the antithesis of nonteleology is not necessarily free will but just will. Yet are "will" and "free will" not a tautology?

On page 99 of his Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Laurence Lampert quotes Nietzsche:

"My mission: the dehumanization (Entmenschung) of nature and then the naturalization of the human after it has gained the pure concept 'Nature'" (KGW V 11 [211] Spring-Fall 1881).

But, as I already implied at the end of my "The 4 Aeons" OP, Nietzsche does not end there. The humanization or anthropomorphosis of nature was an act of man's will to power, of his self-valuing--his bestowing value in terms of himself. And perhaps VO will be the link between the Machiavellian age and a new pre-Homeric age: from modern natural science to a new natural religion.

Quote :: Value Ontology does away with the idea that humans can be changed, that there's anything we can do about what we are, or that we can look at our motivations and interpret our actions as if from a higher vantage point than from our self-willing - there is nothing more 'objective' than this willing to power, and our consciousness is merely a by-product of it, and so are our definitions, and so is our very capacity to define.

The very notion of a definition requires a self-valuing standard; thus, in as far as a definition can be truthful to what it is, beside to what it represents (and thus represent cleanly), it must to begin with include its own capacity as a self-valuing.

Further, every definition posits an 'unchangeable' - this is the whole reason why (the lie) "A" = "A" can be stated at all; a definition is supposed to represent an unalterable thing - but we know there isn't actually a completely similar "A" to any "A", be it a symbol (each equal symbol exists in a different context, if ever so slightly, and is thus a different object with a different 'meaning' (effect)) or a physical entity; the only unalterable thing about such things is that they self-value. As soon as they stop doing that, their being is altered to become either non-being or a very different entity. Say, for example, that a written "A" exists in a world where man works with different alphabet, or with no symbols at all. In this case, the self-valuing "A" does not exist, the "A" does not exist, what exists is a few diagonal lines that no one man will discern in the same way as the next man. The "A" only comes back into existence as "A" when a man discerns it as such. It is thus unchangeable only in as far as it is involved in certain interactions. The same goes for man, or any kind of living species. Whatever can be fixed by a definition, relies on an often unfathomably complex context, within which there is not one single constant except this necessary form of relationship between things, which is called self-valuing.

In mathematics and formal logic, such a context spreads out in 'instantly into eternity'; that is to say, as long as one thing is completely valid (positively existent), everything must valid (positively existent). But in life, and in the physical world in general, such contexts spread out gradually in time; each instance of self-valuing is phenomenologically different from the next; no single "implication" (effect) can be reproduced in another instant. From this we can gather that formal logic and mathematics aren't actually referring to the physical world; "A" is never actually "A"; a symmetrical equation like this always refers to an artificial world, one that exists out of time; and yet even here time operates on it as man works the equation, and bends it in such a way that variables are included, and the first "A" becomes, by conditioners, distinguishable from the other "A", and a picture of reality begins to shine through. The most basic example: Action = - (Reaction).

A mathematics of being would depart from the notion that in as far as there are abstract notions applicable together in a system, they must on some level be fundamentally equal to each other, since they are representing things that can be computed with one another; and in as far as there are notions that represent reality, they can never ben fully abstract, and never be perfectly represented, and never quite fit in the same system as which supports fully explication of another notion.

Reality is asymmetrical, must fundamentally appear to us as such - or rather, every instance of reality that can be discerned, which is to say, any situation with different entities relating to each other, must appear to us as asymmetrical. Will to Power is the primordial way of designating this asymmetry, it its referral to rank and difference.

The ultimate question about metaphysics is what we can say. The veracity of any metaphysics relies on its own notion of truth. Is value ontology true or not? That depends whether or not truth is connected to reality; whether or not, in short, we assume that reality can be truthfully expressed at all.

By us, yes. And I think we cannot entertain the concepts of "equality" and "inequality" by themselves, without the other.

From my point of view, VM is the most probable M. But I think that, lest analytic philosophers and the like accusingly yell "M! M!" at us, we'd better emphasize its non-dogmatism, at least for the time being. In other words: "Yes, it is M! Yes, it is interpretation! Yes, it is a value!" The times demand that we insist on our own insistence, our own injustice; if we just insist on being right, we'll probably be dismissed as ranters--at least until our dismissers, say, read Picht...

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:22 am

Sauwelios wrote:: I've chosen "Value Metaphysics" instead of "Value Ontology", because metaphysics encompasses a bit more than ontology (and as we've discussed in private, entire universes may be considered self-valuings, for example). Of course, I mean "metaphysics" in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense and not in the popular sense.

I can make no general objection here, but must note that in the manner in which I approach it, ontology is identical to metaphysics; the latter both meaning 'about physics' and 'pan-physics' (rejecting, indeed, 'beyond-physics'); contemplation of being-as-such.

Quote :: What I now call "Value Axiology" is actually something I thought of before I ever heard of VO.

It is a notably sound thought.

Quote :: What I call "Value Philosophy" is prior even to Value Metaphysics, because--though it would follow from the latter in any case--it need not follow just from that. In other words, Value Metaphysics is Value Philosophy's sufficient cause but not necessarily its necessary cause: if VM then VP, but not necessarily if VP then VM. Compare when Nietzsche says philosophy is a will to power: others may counter that, although his philosophy may well be a will to power, that need not go for other philosophies at all. (If however the world is in fact the will to power and nothing besides, then all philosophies, and not just Nietzsche's philosophy, are of course will to power.)

Thus also, if N's philosophy is will to power it is so (to N) under the conditions that the universe is will to power; one can not call N's work will to power and claim ones own work is not, or at least not when one has understood what N meant.

Quote :: This self-relativization is repeated by my listing what I call "Value Logic" directly after Value Axiology. And the last item, Value Ethics (which also except for the name stems from before I ever heard of VO), is of course a paradox in itself.

Indeed, it goes a bit further than the Presocratic idea that existence is per definition good, following from a similar understanding of 'good'. I will stick with the Presocratics, as I am no God, and for me, it is not true that all things are good, thus not bad to call some things bad.

I am human, and this is precisely what VO is about: relinquishing the pretense of being linked to an absolute consciousness (in the absurd case that there may be such a thing in the first place).

Thus, the slaying of the original Zoroaster, who as I believe you showed me, introduced the concept of moral duality, which is the form of metaphysics that we both reject.

I could say that in as far as there is a god, he/it can have no notion of evil or wrong; in as far as there is a god that has such a notion, he does not pertain to this world.

Quote :

Quote :: [...]

As far as I can reason, there is no way to discern, physically or imaginatively, any 'existent' (any being, thing, object, subject, entity, etc) that escapes the activity of "self-valuing" as VO puts it forth. A thing, in as far as it exists, must interact with its environment in such a way as to keep existing, which is to say it must keep attaining itself.

I'm quoting such a long passage because it starts with a reference to what you call the "Self-valuing logic", but only begins to formulate this logic in the last quoted paragraph. And I'm interrupting you at this point because the last quoted paragraph already enables me to explain why Value Philosophy--including Value Ontology--may be wrong.

You begin with: "As far as I can reason". This is actually already an expression of non-dogmatism. It grants that there may be a faculty of reason that can go further than yours--perhaps a non-human reason, or a superhuman reason. As far as you can reason, there is no way to discern etc. "Physically or imaginatively"--perhaps there are more ways than just these two?

Ironically, it's precisely my "Value Logic" which most undercuts your "Self-valuing logic". If logic's self-identical "A" is only a value, and not a fact, then--there is no "then". Or maybe there is. Or maybe there both is and is not. Or maybe neither. But I think that, rather than undermining it, this actually supports it.

Note that self-valuing logics does not use the concept "if=>then" at all. And also,
"A"="A" is outright invalidated by self-valuing logic, which is value ontology, which commands (as normal logic commands its own ways) that all situations are interpreted as composed of self-valuings which must always in part defy each others standards, rather than as objects which can be sufficiently equated to one another in terms of external standards and thus perfeclty comply with each other (the possibility of "=")

Per VO, there is no equality. Literally: the value of the "=" sign is put into question.

Quote :

Quote :: […]

This is the notion that, even when I am addressing it myself, proves very elusive; it is not that from now on every dead entity has to be reinterpreted in terms of what we understand as valuing (e.g. choosing, selecting, and doing so consciously) but that from now on every human action has to be reinterpreted in terms of the same kind of necessities that drive 'dead being'' i.e. unalterable behaviors.

I find the last quoted paragraph especially interesting. I may have focused too much on reinterpreting lifeless entities in terms of valuing lately. But I disagree that that is not part of it, too.

Nor did I mean to assert this; I meant to suggest that the reverse has the more drastic implications, represents a more fundamental transvaluation of values, namely of valuing itself; but of course it works only in concord with the view that lifeless matter is valuing, which is the first premise. In concord, these two 'ends' (implications) of the logic help to redefine "consciousness", a term which has misled man into believing that it is what separates us from the rest of nature, whereas it is simply our way of doing what all of nature does.

Consciousness is a form of (self-)valuing, not vice versa. I think we agree here.

Note that the now refuted idea of consciousness has much to do with the moral dualism of Zoroaster and the Abrahamic religions: consciousness was defined as the gift whereby man could distinguish right (gods will) from wrong (the devils will).

In this sense "consciousness" is the very same illusion as "free will" (and belongs to the non-Aristotelean meaning of "metaphysics" that rule somewhere "beyond").

Quote :: Since at least when I started my "The Rebirth of Classic Natural Right" thread in early 2012, I conceived of the Nietzschean Übermensch as the nonteleological man (that is, as the man who considers himself nonteleological)--until I was impacted by the Picht passage I quoted in the very beginning of my "Logic as self-value" thread.

This nonteleological Übermensch is basically what Seung has called the Spinozan Übermensch. But he says there is also the Faustian Übermensch, who is equally ineradicable. The Faustian Übermensch believes in free will whereas the Spinozan Übermensch believes in determinism. But the antithesis of nonteleology is not necessarily free will but just will. Yet are "will" and "free will" not a tautology?

Yes. And "freedom" means the same as well.

I can not speak to the Faustian and Spinozean types except in broad strokes, for example, I connect the Faustean to Blake, and the Spinozean to Schopenhauer. But the highest path is to lose sight of the difference between the two, between a deterministic universe and free will; to understand will (as in a relatively strong will to power) as that which is both determinator of the world, and bestower of freedom on that determinator.

Crucial insight: determinating is being-free (to oneself).

Quote :

On page 99 of his Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Laurence Lampert quotes Nietzsche:

This, exactly, is what VO accomplishes.
Nietzsche accomplished the first part, the dehumanization of nature, and VO is the naturalization of humanity into this new form.

The latter is the "more fundamental" (or one might say, in this light, further progressed, completed) transvaluation of valuing, to which I referred above.

Quote :: But, as I already implied at the end of my "The 4 Aeons" OP, Nietzsche does not end there. The humanization or anthropomorphosis of nature was an act of man's will to power, of his self-valuing--his bestowing value in terms of himself. And perhaps VO will be the link between the Machiavellian age and a new pre-Homeric age: from modern natural science to a new natural religion.

It certainly provides the means for that - and there is no other idea that provides this.
After all this is the fruit of all philosophy, continental an analytical alike, and brings us back to a Heraclitean ethics, but with a refined idea of "fire".

We had an interesting exchange about plasma and music recently. We need to talk about this more when we sit down again.

Quote :

Quote :: The ultimate question about metaphysics is what we can say. The veracity of any metaphysics relies on its own notion of truth. Is value ontology true or not? That depends whether or not truth is connected to reality; whether or not, in short, we assume that reality can be truthfully expressed at all.

By us, yes. And I think we cannot entertain the concepts of "equality" and "inequality" by themselves, without the other.

I am not so sure of that. In fact, I think "inequality" is better represented as "difference", which again is represented as "interaction" and so on, as "will to power" - the very logic that prohibits the conception of one thing without its antithesis is I think what needs to be questioned (in terms of its appropriate places and applications) very rigorously.

Quote :: From my point of view, VM is the most probable M. But I think that, lest analytic philosophers and the like accusingly yell "M! M!" at us, we'd better emphasize its non-dogmatism, at least for the time being. In other words: "Yes, it is M! Yes, it is interpretation! Yes, it is a value!" The times demand that we insist on our own insistence, our own injustice; if we just insist on being right, we'll probably be dismissed as ranters--at least until our dismissers, say, read Picht...

I have not been dismissed, but only respected by the wise and imitated by the envious. But yes, this is precisely because I make no secret about what I am: a lord of mind (Mannaz, Man), an incarnation of world-fire. It is I, a being of all consuming passion and royal honor, who have forged this, not some anonymous lab-coat.

No mediocre man could address the concept of value in such a majestic, naturalizing fashion. In this sense VO is a selecting device and only fit for our people -- who are thereby defined.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Wed Aug 26, 2015 3:12 pm

I wanted to add this, that "A" = "A" is false in as far as "A" corresponds to anything besides "self-valuing".

The only self-identical notion includes that of an equal difference to itself.
Hegel, bite me.

(I first wrote "bit me", which may also be the case.)

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Wed Aug 26, 2015 6:52 pm

Quote :: Note that self-valuing logics does not use the concept "if=>then" at all.

This can easily be taken in the wrong way; VO hardly precludes conceptualizing causes and consequences. Still, it makes it abundantly clear that it is very hard to frame consequences without taking into account an infinity of reference frames. Chaos theory follows from VO; in the core of every minuscule entity is a negation of the hearts of all the others.

This is, I feel, why the English methods are sound in practical terms, as they are not aiming for true order, which would require an objective frame of judgment (in practice, an autocratic monarch), but for a state of lesser chaos, by recognizing the basic chaos at the heart of the human condition, and at the heart of monarchs.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:52 pm

In this I am reminded of Charles Peirce's thought that causal determination is only an approximate measure and not an ontological truth, that where we see "causality" in fact exists only more and less likely outcomes that, in themselves, aren't "deterministic". Even chaos theory can account a deterministic worldview, it's simply that it becomes impossible to trace a cause and its effects with total accuracy and quickly becomes impossible to isolate any reliable causes after a given amount of time and change have passed; chaotic systems may be "hard deterministic" but too complex for that determinism either to be traced by the system itself or to be traced by another system. True randomness can appear in the gaps between adequately-different self-valuings' inabilities to measure/respond to each other.

In terms of self-valuing itself the logic reminds me of daemonic logic: two monadic beings would interact in fundamentally two different ways, 1) in terms of their overflow and excessivity, namely they "slide around" each other "a-causally" as Parodites notes and each more individual subjective excess reaches a threshold of absolute indeterminacy in the subjective excess of others; and 2) in terms of the middle terms of the self-valuings, their shared values, such as ideas, biology, history, space and time, etc. By far the largest causal field is represented by the latter of these two options, but the former is the more essential.

Now let's explode this setup a bit (I'm aware of the danger of straying from the topic, so I'll keep it brief and please re-interpret this back in light of the OP and subsequent dialogue here) and imagine that every self-valuing is amalgamating many others, that derivative being has countless tiers and layers of shared values-spaces and values-times and at every point of intersection we can find those two basic methods I mentioned above, with the former the fundament around which the larger revolves as a kind of negativity or impossibility-field. How is all this immense complexity worked out in reality? How do derivative beings even exist? More so how is a being like man possible?

Mediations work themselves out within a 'Kitaroan' grid logic-space where both axes are irreducible to each other and form shadows, implicit conditions for those substances of the other. Time collapses into space, space into time, self collapses into other, other into self, and the consequence of that binary grid-like logic is what we call determinism and indeterminism, simply events that make sense or don't make sense given an established or supposed frame of reference, given a self-valuing. Thus the larger aspects are always acting as standards for establishing the "causalities" of lesser aspects, in short we have a new daemonic logic appear whereupon as being moves upward toward complexity and scope/comprehensivity it becomes more "certain" to itself and its existence simply because it is enfolding more of its own facets and external world-factors by virtue of simple overlaying the lesser fields with new grid lines; likewise as we look inward at being down to its minutia we find less certainty, not simply because these being are "smaller and simpler" but because they exist in relatively contracted states having been overcoded by those more extensive beings of which they are a part.

I think the increasing "certainty" of being as it ascends the continua of existence is reflected in two main ways, first by that being becoming more active in shaping its world environments and second by becoming more "arbitrary" to itself, that its own certainty absent an adequately developed world in which to ground that certainty being becomes off-balanced by its own sheer breadth and power having nothing else, no object by which to delimit that breadth of being and so is like a massive ball balanced on a small point, the more massive the ball becomes the more "sure of itself" it is but also the more insufficient its own circumstances become to ground it, to move it. Too much being without a world in which to lay that being is a curse, out of which comes another representative idea for us, namely freedom, and conceives a whole new parallel indeterminacy at the far end of the physiological-causal, a "greater indeterminacy" that has now a moral value and reality and which kind of mirrors the "lesser indeterminacy" down in the bowels and minutia of existence.

But only the greater-indeterminate can be a proper philosophical object or have moral worth to us, for this greatness encompasses all lesser realities (the body, physiology, history, psychology, and the lesser-indeterminate) and offers itself as a shapeable limit to those realities.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Thu Aug 27, 2015 2:06 pm

Maybe one of you can relate this idea back into the value-categories mentioned in the OP.. If not I'll give it a try sometime later.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Fri Aug 28, 2015 11:57 am

Regrettably I don't have the time to adequately work through the posts so far and get up to speed entirely, so first I'd like to state my understanding of the basic categories at work here, to make sure I get what this is about.

Quote :: Quote :
Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Value philosophy designates an introductory state of philosophizing whereby one conceives one's thought within the horizons of a metaphysical system or belief; this metaphysics, I am imagining could be either more or less well-defined and articulated (may at first consist only of a small number of metaphysical ideas in conjunction with a strong feeling of association/attraction to those beliefs), then would be a reflection of "what one values the most", so perhaps at the time a person values the feeling of independence-freedom and also aspires to success in some way, ergo their metaphysics would firstly consist of a number of beliefs that reflect these values (maybe in this case they posit a metaphysics of will to power qua "success in one's relations" and the value of effort/work to achieve goals; also by the first value the metaphysics at include notions of freedom and independence I.e. a "free will" or emancipatory undercurrent associated necessarily to reality)?

Value metaphysics is stating the basic idea of self-valuing as FC conceived it. To be is to value oneself, to not value or to inadequately value oneself leads to no longer existing; "to exist" is defined simply as "successfully valuing in such ways as that which is doing the valuing is held in existence as itself, as such and such entity we say is that from and of which values are coming", or perhaps also "to value means to exist".

Value axiology indicates the logic or rationale of valuing to be that of reality in so far as valuing oneself is necessary (to not value oneself leads to a loss of this "to not value"). All values are therefore and at their root or base, rational.

Value logic, this one is more complex. I like this progression of categories into the idea of value and self-valuing, now we're at a threshold it seems - "logic's self-identical A is a value" means perhaps that the logical truisms and necessities such as A is A must be thought of not as "facts" but as "values" meaning they exist in the terms of the former categories here, namely that value is rational and self-necessitating because to not value (to not value well enough) precludes oneself from existing at all, thus precludes those values which one held from also existing. Logical postulates and truistic premises must be seen as the most basic, most universal or most necessary values, then.

To say these premises are "facts" would presumably, in the terms of the OP here, be to assert that they exist independent of the consequences which follow or do not follow from themselves; this would be an error, then. Even logic's most necessary and undeniable premises must not be reified to a supposed status of objectivity or absolute independence-universality, in other words these logics are not primary but instead they represent something even more primary: the valuing consequences and conditions out of which those self-identical logics gain their presumed universal status.

Unless I've misunderstood that entirely...

Last one, value ethics: this seems to describe a culmination of the preceding categories, drawing a moral structure from the self-identical logic which we have previously grounded in the logic of self-valuing. That is just which follows from self-valuing, so what upholds one's self-value through valuations adhering to the axiological structure and self-identical emergence; is morality then seen as deriving from self-identical logic and successful self-valuing? There is a distinction between saying that something is moral because it flows from a self-valuing proper self-identicalness, and saying that self-valuing requires that considering just things is just. How is morality understood in this categorical system?

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Fri Aug 28, 2015 8:36 pm

Fixed Cross wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:: I've chosen "Value Metaphysics" instead of "Value Ontology", because metaphysics encompasses a bit more than ontology (and as we've discussed in private, entire universes may be considered self-valuings, for example). Of course, I mean "metaphysics" in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense and not in the popular sense.

I can make no general objection here, but must note that in the manner in which I approach it, ontology is identical to metaphysics; the latter both meaning 'about physics' and 'pan-physics' (rejecting, indeed, 'beyond-physics'); contemplation of being-as-such.

Metaphysics in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense is about beings as a whole or the Being of beings. In other words, it's cosmology and ontology. This is the reason I gave above. Moreover, epistemology may also be regarded as metaphysics. Consider that passage from Cox' Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation I recently quoted to you (http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5x0nb3sz&chunk.id=d0e14443&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e14443&brand=ucpress, section 5.3.2).

Quote :

Quote :: What I now call "Value Axiology" is actually something I thought of before I ever heard of VO.

It is a notably sound thought.

Thanks!

Quote :

Quote :: What I call "Value Philosophy" is prior even to Value Metaphysics, because--though it would follow from the latter in any case--it need not follow just from that. In other words, Value Metaphysics is Value Philosophy's sufficient cause but not necessarily its necessary cause: if VM then VP, but not necessarily if VP then VM. Compare when Nietzsche says philosophy is a will to power: others may counter that, although his philosophy may well be a will to power, that need not go for other philosophies at all. (If however the world is in fact the will to power and nothing besides, then all philosophies, and not just Nietzsche's philosophy, are of course will to power.)

Thus also, if N's philosophy is will to power it is so (to N) under the conditions that the universe is will to power; one can not call N's work will to power and claim ones own work is not, or at least not when one has understood what N meant.

I disagree. Thus in my Why I'm not a feminist thread, in my last reply to Uccisore, to which he never replied, I wrote:

You mention evidence, argumentation, and axioms as possible grounds [for moral stances]. But what would evidence be? Would it not have to be being spoken to by God or finding something written in the stars or something like that? As for argumentation, arguments ultimately rest on premisses, and those then have to be grounded on evidence or axiomatically. Lastly, an axiom is either just a postulate or a self-evident truth; and self-evident truth by definition depends on evidence: namely, self-evidence. So unless you have something good to offer instead of "or whatever" [he wrote: "evidence or argumentation or axiomatically or whatever"], the only alternative for morality's being a matter of preference is revelation. This is exactly what I said in my OP.

Now as I said in that OP, whoever claims such revelation is in my view probably a madman or a liar or both. This is because I have, as far as I know, not experienced any such revelations whatsoever. In fact, I don't see how a revelation would not require an infinite regress: each revelation would logically require another revelation to reveal that one's interpretation of one's experience as a revelation is not a misinterpretation... Bottom line: you're preaching to a member of the choir, who however insists that we should emphasize our conditionality if we are not to seem pathological.

Quote :

Quote :: This self-relativization is repeated by my listing what I call "Value Logic" directly after Value Axiology. And the last item, Value Ethics (which also except for the name stems from before I ever heard of VO), is of course a paradox in itself.

Indeed, it goes a bit further than the Presocratic idea that existence is per definition good, following from a similar understanding of 'good'. I will stick with the Presocratics, as I am no God, and for me, it is not true that all things are good, thus not bad to call some things bad.

I am human, and this is precisely what VO is about: relinquishing the pretense of being linked to an absolute consciousness (in the absurd case that there may be such a thing in the first place).

Thus, the slaying of the original Zoroaster, who as I believe you showed me, introduced the concept of moral duality, which is the form of metaphysics that we both reject.

I could say that in as far as there is a god, he/it can have no notion of evil or wrong; in as far as there is a god that has such a notion, he does not pertain to this world.

In reliquishing that pretense, as you put it, the danger is that philosophy is reduced to mere Weltanschauungsphilosophie: see the first chapter of Leo Strauss's final work (Weltanschauungsphilosophie means philosophy that is a Weltanschauung). In my "note" on that essay, I wrote:

In his discussion of aphorism 36 [of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil], Strauss says: "Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of the will to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same time an interpretation and the most fundamental fact" (paragraph 8 of the central chapter of the work). This reasoning can be applied as well to the existentialism from the first chapter. A Weltanschauung is literally a view of the world. Precisely if all Weltanschauungen are historical, historicism is at the same time historical and supra-historical: the philosophers are the step-sons of their time (paragraph 30 of the central chapter); philosophy is at the same time Weltanschauungsphilosophie and rigorous science. [The first chapter of the work is titled "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy".]

Value Philosophy is the synthesis of philosophy as rigorous science and Weltanschauungsphilosophie. Insofar as one is a philosopher, one seeks to be just, but also acknowledges or seeks to acknowledge one's own necessary injustice. In fact, necessary injustice is itself just. But the philosopher's necessary--natural--injustice drives him to "do justice" to all things by acknowledging their justice.

Quote :

Quote :: [...]

As far as I can reason, there is no way to discern, physically or imaginatively, any 'existent' (any being, thing, object, subject, entity, etc) that escapes the activity of "self-valuing" as VO puts it forth. A thing, in as far as it exists, must interact with its environment in such a way as to keep existing, which is to say it must keep attaining itself.

I'm quoting such a long passage because it starts with a reference to what you call the "Self-valuing logic", but only begins to formulate this logic in the last quoted paragraph. And I'm interrupting you at this point because the last quoted paragraph already enables me to explain why Value Philosophy--including Value Ontology--may be wrong.

You begin with: "As far as I can reason". This is actually already an expression of non-dogmatism. It grants that there may be a faculty of reason that can go further than yours--perhaps a non-human reason, or a superhuman reason. As far as you can reason, there is no way to discern etc. "Physically or imaginatively"--perhaps there are more ways than just these two?

Ironically, it's precisely my "Value Logic" which most undercuts your "Self-valuing logic". If logic's self-identical "A" is only a value, and not a fact, then--there is no "then". Or maybe there is. Or maybe there both is and is not. Or maybe neither. But I think that, rather than undermining it, this actually supports it.

Note that self-valuing logics does not use the concept "if=>then" at all.

In your addendum to this comment, you say:

Quote :: This can easily be taken in the wrong way; VO hardly precludes conceptualizing causes and consequences. Still, it makes it abundantly clear that it is very hard to frame consequences without taking into account an infinity of reference frames. Chaos theory follows from VO; in the core of every minuscule entity is a negation of the hearts of all the others.

I did not mean it in a causal sense, but merely in the sense of an inference. The "if"-clause of my statement is actually the "major" premiss of a syllogism. The whole syllogism, including its "minor" premiss, can be found in my (Non-)Contradiction Inference" thread.

Quote :: And also,
"A"="A" is outright invalidated by self-valuing logic, which is value ontology, which commands (as normal logic commands its own ways) that all situations are interpreted as composed of self-valuings which must always in part defy each others standards, rather than as objects which can be sufficiently equated to one another in terms of external standards and thus perfeclty comply with each other (the possibility of "=")

Per VO, there is no equality. Literally: the value of the "=" sign is put into question.

In your addendum to this, you say:

Quote :: I wanted to add this, that "A" = "A" is false in as far as "A" corresponds to anything besides "self-valuing".

The only self-identical notion includes that of an equal difference to itself.

I'm not sure that I understand the last part. Do you mean that self-valuings are themselves composed of self-valuings?

I'm also not completely clear about the first part. Do you mean "self-valuing" the gerund or "self-valuing" the (nominalized) participle? In German, "(das) Selbst-Wertschätzen" or "Selbst-Wertschätzendes" (not to mention the uncapitalized options)? Are you saying a self-valuing is or can be identical to itself, or the act of self-valuing?

In any case, how I think Value Logic supports rather than undermines Value Metaphysics can be found throughout my "Logic as self-value" thread.

Quote :

Quote :: […]

This is the notion that, even when I am addressing it myself, proves very elusive; it is not that from now on every dead entity has to be reinterpreted in terms of what we understand as valuing (e.g. choosing, selecting, and doing so consciously) but that from now on every human action has to be reinterpreted in terms of the same kind of necessities that drive 'dead being'' i.e. unalterable behaviors.

I find the last quoted paragraph especially interesting. I may have focused too much on reinterpreting lifeless entities in terms of valuing lately. But I disagree that that is not part of it, too.

Nor did I mean to assert this;

Right, I did not mean to assert that you asserted it. But in any case, I would disagree with it.

Quote :: I meant to suggest that the reverse has the more drastic implications, represents a more fundamental transvaluation of values, namely of valuing itself; but of course it works only in concord with the view that lifeless matter is valuing, which is the first premise. In concord, these two 'ends' (implications) of the logic help to redefine "consciousness", a term which has misled man into believing that it is what separates us from the rest of nature, whereas it is simply our way of doing what all of nature does.

Consciousness is a form of (self-)valuing, not vice versa. I think we agree here.

So do I, and I find this paragraph excellent.

Quote :: Note that the now refuted idea of consciousness has much to do with the moral dualism of Zoroaster and the Abrahamic religions: consciousness was defined as the gift whereby man could distinguish right (gods will) from wrong (the devils will).

In this sense "consciousness" is the very same illusion as "free will" (and belongs to the non-Aristotelean meaning of "metaphysics" that rule somewhere "beyond").

I don't follow this last bit. How is it the same? Couldn't one be able to see the difference yet not be able to resist one's "evil" urges? And couldn't one have free will yet not be able to tell right from wrong?

Quote :

Quote :: Since at least when I started my "The Rebirth of Classic Natural Right" thread in early 2012, I conceived of the Nietzschean Übermensch as the nonteleological man (that is, as the man who considers himself nonteleological)--until I was impacted by the Picht passage I quoted in the very beginning of my "Logic as self-value" thread.

This nonteleological Übermensch is basically what Seung has called the Spinozan Übermensch. But he says there is also the Faustian Übermensch, who is equally ineradicable. The Faustian Übermensch believes in free will whereas the Spinozan Übermensch believes in determinism. But the antithesis of nonteleology is not necessarily free will but just will. Yet are "will" and "free will" not a tautology?

Yes. And "freedom" means the same as well.

Yes, at least in any positive sense I can think of.

Quote :: I can not speak to the Faustian and Spinozean types except in broad strokes, for example, I connect the Faustean to Blake, and the Spinozean to Schopenhauer. But the highest path is to lose sight of the difference between the two, between a deterministic universe and free will; to understand will (as in a relatively strong will to power) as that which is both determinator of the world, and bestower of freedom on that determinator.

Crucial insight: determinating is being-free (to oneself).

Well, it is the co-determinator of the world, which world consists entirely of such co-determinators. And the will is "free" in that, if there were no other wills (if that could in theory be the case), it would be absolutely strong. 'Tis, so to say, a case of many unstoppable forces being resisted by each other...

Quote :

On page 99 of his Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, Laurence Lampert quotes Nietzsche:

This, exactly, is what VO accomplishes.
Nietzsche accomplished the first part, the dehumanization of nature, and VO is the naturalization of humanity into this new form.

The latter is the "more fundamental" (or one might say, in this light, further progressed, completed) transvaluation of valuing, to which I referred above.

I cannot agree with this if you mean that Nietzsche just accomplished the first part. Nietzsche neither just accomplished the first part nor was it just Nietzsche who accomplished the first part. The first part has been accomplished by modern natural philosophy as a whole: consider, for example, BGE 22, where Nietzsche only completes that philosophy, by interpreting the course of nature not as lawful but as lawless. "This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!" (WP) 1067): this is the same order as above.

Quote :

Quote :: But, as I already implied at the end of my "The 4 Aeons" OP, Nietzsche does not end there. The humanization or anthropomorphosis of nature was an act of man's will to power, of his self-valuing--his bestowing value in terms of himself. And perhaps VO will be the link between the Machiavellian age and a new pre-Homeric age: from modern natural science to a new natural religion.

It certainly provides the means for that - and there is no other idea that provides this.
After all this is the fruit of all philosophy, continental an analytical alike, and brings us back to a Heraclitean ethics, but with a refined idea of "fire".

We had an interesting exchange about plasma and music recently. We need to talk about this more when we sit down again.

Sure. Just don't under(e)st(im)ate the refinement of the Heraclituean idea of "fire". We only have fragments left of Heraclitus, after all.

Quote :

Quote :: The ultimate question about metaphysics is what we can say. The veracity of any metaphysics relies on its own notion of truth. Is value ontology true or not? That depends whether or not truth is connected to reality; whether or not, in short, we assume that reality can be truthfully expressed at all.

By us, yes. And I think we cannot entertain the concepts of "equality" and "inequality" by themselves, without the other.

I am not so sure of that. In fact, I think "inequality" is better represented as "difference", which again is represented as "interaction" and so on, as "will to power" - the very logic that prohibits the conception of one thing without its antithesis is I think what needs to be questioned (in terms of its appropriate places and applications) very rigorously.

To me "prohibits the conception" sounds like a loaded way of putting it. In any case, I think that logic is the most fundamental value in Value Ontology: the value-positing formulated by it is the source of even the "self" of "self-valuing".

It doesn't help to rephrase "inequality" in terms seemingly less antithetical. "Unequal" simply means "not equal"; "different" simply means "not the same"; "interactive" means "active but not separately so"; "willing to power" means "not impotent to power". The assertion that life is will to power implies that life is not not will to power.

Quote :

Quote :: From my point of view, VM is the most probable M. But I think that, lest analytic philosophers and the like accusingly yell "M! M!" at us, we'd better emphasize its non-dogmatism, at least for the time being. In other words: "Yes, it is M! Yes, it is interpretation! Yes, it is a value!" The times demand that we insist on our own insistence, our own injustice; if we just insist on being right, we'll probably be dismissed as ranters--at least until our dismissers, say, read Picht...

I have not been dismissed, but only respected by the wise and imitated by the envious.

Are those the only two options? Did I not dismiss you in the past? But does this mean that I wasn't wise and was thereby envious? I can see how I wasn't wise in this regard, but not how I imitated you.

Quote :: But yes, this is precisely because I make no secret about what I am: a lord of mind (Mannaz, Man), an incarnation of world-fire. It is I, a being of all consuming passion and royal honor, who have forged this, not some anonymous lab-coat.

Yes (though it's ironic that it was you who quite brilliantly concluded, a couple of years ago, that the contemporary equivalent to the Medieval philosopher's exoteric guise of the priest was that of the scientist/scholar; you then seemed more inclined than me to adopt that guise, but perhaps it's now the other way round). However, it's precisely this kind of assertion that, when not accompanied by a clear qualification, may well sound pathological: it reminds me of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo. Now of course "clear" is a relative term, and to me it seems clear that you're well aware of how it sounds. I however am now one of the few wise in that regard.

Quote :: No mediocre man could address the concept of value in such a majestic, naturalizing fashion. In this sense VO is a selecting device and only fit for our people -- who are thereby defined.

But what about those in between the mediocre and such exceptions? Those who are potentially exceptional?

By the way, that part about "M! M!" was an allusion to a story about the logical positivists (Russell etc.). A bunch of them had got together and were trying to establish a completely logical philosophy. One of them was given the task of yelling "M!" whenever any of them suggested anything metaphysical. Soon, they changed this to yelling "not M!" when any of them suggested something non-metaphysical.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sat Aug 29, 2015 10:54 pm

Capable wrote:

Regrettably I don't have the time to adequately work through the posts so far and get up to speed entirely, so first I'd like to state my understanding of the basic categories at work here, to make sure I get what this is about.

Quote :: Quote :
Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Value philosophy designates an introductory state of philosophizing whereby one conceives one's thought within the horizons of a metaphysical system or belief; this metaphysics, I am imagining could be either more or less well-defined and articulated (may at first consist only of a small number of metaphysical ideas in conjunction with a strong feeling of association/attraction to those beliefs), then would be a reflection of "what one values the most", so perhaps at the time a person values the feeling of independence-freedom and also aspires to success in some way, ergo their metaphysics would firstly consist of a number of beliefs that reflect these values (maybe in this case they posit a metaphysics of will to power qua "success in one's relations" and the value of effort/work to achieve goals; also by the first value the metaphysics at include notions of freedom and independence I.e. a "free will" or emancipatory undercurrent associated necessarily to reality)?

I think this is correct as far as it goes, though it's not all there is to it. It reminds me of https://youtu.be/LvmSekZu__o 0:57-3:54. Value Philosophy does not designate just an introductory state of philosophizing. One can never completely transcend it; in the decisive respect one can never transcend it.

By the way, "first philosophy" is what Aristotle called metaphysics.

Quote :: Value metaphysics is stating the basic idea of self-valuing as FC conceived it. To be is to value oneself, to not value or to inadequately value oneself leads to no longer existing; "to exist" is defined simply as "successfully valuing in such ways as that which is doing the valuing is held in existence as itself, as such and such entity we say is that from and of which values are coming", or perhaps also "to value means to exist".

Yes. And note that Value Metaphysics is itself, following Value Philosophy, a metaphysics posited by those who value it more than any other metaphysics.

Quote :: Value axiology indicates the logic or rationale of valuing to be that of reality in so far as valuing oneself is necessary (to not value oneself leads to a loss of this "to not value"). All values are therefore and at their root or base, rational.

Actually, the only rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself. But insofar as valuing oneself means valuing oneself as a self-valuing and thereby valuing self-valuing itself, one's self is indeed a rational value for oneself.

It may be helpful to note that, by "a value", I mean "something one considers valuable".

Quote :: Value logic, this one is more complex. I like this progression of categories into the idea of value and self-valuing, now we're at a threshold it seems - "logic's self-identical A is a value" means perhaps that the logical truisms and necessities such as A is A must be thought of not as "facts" but as "values" meaning they exist in the terms of the former categories here, namely that value is rational and self-necessitating because to not value (to not value well enough) precludes oneself from existing at all, thus precludes those values which one held from also existing. Logical postulates and truistic premises must be seen as the most basic, most universal or most necessary values, then.

To say these premises are "facts" would presumably, in the terms of the OP here, be to assert that they exist independent of the consequences which follow or do not follow from themselves; this would be an error, then. Even logic's most necessary and undeniable premises must not be reified to a supposed status of objectivity or absolute independence-universality, in other words these logics are not primary but instead they represent something even more primary: the valuing consequences and conditions out of which those self-identical logics gain their presumed universal status.

Unless I've misunderstood that entirely...

To the contrary, I think you've understood it quite perfectly.

Quote :: Last one, value ethics: this seems to describe a culmination of the preceding categories, drawing a moral structure from the self-identical logic which we have previously grounded in the logic of self-valuing. That is just which follows from self-valuing, so what upholds one's self-value through valuations adhering to the axiological structure and self-identical emergence; is morality then seen as deriving from self-identical logic and successful self-valuing? There is a distinction between saying that something is moral because it flows from a self-valuing proper self-identicalness, and saying that self-valuing requires that considering just things is just. How is morality understood in this categorical system?

Well, let me first point out that my list is by no means meant to be exhaustive: there may well be more than five items, there might even be less than five. The last item is in multiple ways a half-joke--one way being that I present it as a universal statement while it's really a very personal statement (though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Anyway, I think I can illuminate it a bit. From the "fact" that valuation is a rational value, I conclude that all things are just, as all things are valuation and nothing besides. You may want to compare my "The Philosopher King" thread's OP, where I first formulated the fifth item: Heraclitus' fragment 102 implies an equivocation of "just" and "beautiful" (or "noble") and "good". Everything is valuable, whether ethically or aesthetically or whatever other way. But one cannot live like that; or at least a human being cannot; or at least I personally cannot. How do I understand morality? As springing from one's highest values. And one of my highest values is considering all things just. Therefore, I value the god extremely high and the wretch among human beings extremely low. The love of philosophy may be at odds with the love of wisdom.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:39 pm

So as I see it then, inserting strong values-standards into all manner of our (at least more significant) conceptual differentiations. As you see all things as just, because everything is self-valuing and to self-value is just (because to not self-value leads to non-existence) then justice (or goodness, or beauty) is seen to be enfolded directly into the essential reality of all things, the philosopher's just task it then becomes to discover those moral relations and values-differentials.

Ill add more later, just wanted to get that down quick.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:00 am

Sauwelios wrote:: Metaphysics in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense is about beings as a whole or the Being of beings. In other words, it's cosmology and ontology. This is the reason I gave above. Moreover, epistemology may also be regarded as metaphysics.

I generally consider epistemology to be metaphysics, yes - keep in mind that VO is concerned with right (irrefutable) knowledge of being, not being without knowledge about it, or without knowledge of knowledge about it. See https://beforethelight.forumotion.com/t1-ontology ; the last paragraph of the OP in particular.

In principle, "value metaphysics" is an accurate term for value ontology.

Quote :

Quote :: Thus also, if N's philosophy is will to power it is so (to N) under the conditions that the universe is will to power; one can not call N's work will to power and claim ones own work is not, or at least not when one has understood what N meant.

I disagree. Thus in my Why I'm not a feminist thread, in my last reply to Uccisore, to which he never replied, I wrote:

Now as I said in that OP, whoever claims such revelation is in my view probably a madman or a liar or both. This is because I have, as far as I know, not experienced any such revelations whatsoever. In fact, I don't see how a revelation would not require an infinite regress: each revelation would logically require another revelation to reveal that one's interpretation of one's experience as a revelation is not a misinterpretation... Bottom line: you're preaching to a member of the choir, who however insists that we should emphasize our conditionality if we are not to seem pathological.

I have never given myself to conceive of a moral philosophy. For this reason mainly: I know that what is right for me is wrong for many, and vice versa.
What I can do is praise that which I think is good, do what I think is good, and this will be my morality, and others may or may not follow me. This is highly simplistic, but it is risky, for me, to venture into prescriptions for beings I may not understand.

See, a human is not principally different to my mind that, say, a cat. Like some one you know well, I generally trust cats more than I trust humans. A cat is a very accomplished form of self-valuing. If I set out to form a morality for humans, I might as well set out to form a morality for all animals. I can't imagine I'd be fit for that.

Value philosophy, you say, is the practice of choosing the metaphysics that one values most. As a philosopher, my criterium for valuing a metaphysics is a) that I can not refute it (first condition) and b) that it applies effectively - i.e. that it grants power over what it analyzes.

Because I had found a flaw, something unexplained (perhaps you'll recall our email discussion end 2010 "about love under will", which was a prelude to the formation of the idea of self-valuing) in the will to power theory. VO makes the WtP hermetically, unquestionably true. This is why I value it primarily; my value philosophy is this: I am a philosopher, have intellectual consistency as my highest value, and thus am forced to value value ontology.

Quote :

In reliquishing that pretense, as you put it, the danger is that philosophy is reduced to mere Weltanschauungsphilosophie: see the first chapter of Leo Strauss's final work (Weltanschauungsphilosophie means philosophy that is a Weltanschauung). In my "note" on that essay, I wrote:

Which is precisely why it is a fundamental fact; the two aren't different aspects; it recognizes of itself that it is an interpretation, but recognizes it in such a way that this does not refute its absolute (human, verifiable, falsifiable) applicability.

Quote :

Value Philosophy is the synthesis of philosophy as rigorous science and Weltanschauungsphilosophie.

I do not acknowledge the difference. VO is a rigorous science and thus a reliable Weltanschauung. This is what matters to me as a thinker; now whether or not VO is a Weltanschauung, but whether or not it is a reliable one.

Quote :: Insofar as one is a philosopher, one seeks to be just, but also acknowledges or seeks to acknowledge one's own necessary injustice. In fact, necessary injustice is itself just. But the philosopher's necessary--natural--injustice drives him to "do justice" to all things by acknowledging their justice.

Here you get into a terrain I have never ventured. I see no necessary relationship of prescribed morality and natural behavior, except that it is (apparently) natural behavior to prescribe morality. Morality emerges from self-valuing, but not necessarily so. Knowledge comes first, but without perfect knowledge it would be impossible to produce a truly sound knowledge-based morality. So before VO, it was impossible to form a true philosophical morality. Perhaps with VO it is still impossible; the farthest I have come is my "self-valuing ethics", which, as I now am finding out with the help of your books, is very much akin to the theories of Heraclitus and Anaximander. I am pleased to find this out - I am pleased to move beyond (back before) Socrates towards thinking trends of people that I value, whom I might like to "imitate" - Socrates represents to me the decay of philosophy into a plebeian art.

I know we have some battles to fight over that. Maybe we can use the Pentad to that end at one point.

Quote :

In your addendum to this, you say:

Quote :: I wanted to add this, that "A" = "A" is false in as far as "A" corresponds to anything besides "self-valuing".

The only self-identical notion includes that of an equal difference to itself.

I'm not sure that I understand the last part. Do you mean that self-valuings are themselves composed of self-valuings?

Rather that their (id)entity is negatively reflected in their counterparts, and that this reflection is part of their (id)entity because it determines their environment. Basically it is saying that the positing of an entity only makes sense if there are entities amongst whom it is posited, an outside world. It is an argument for a pluralistic worldview. I.e. there is not one singular "will to power", there is a general willing-to-power. The monster of energy has no heart. It would have to have an outside for that. I wonder if this clears that up.

Quote :: I'm also not completely clear about the first part. Do you mean "self-valuing" the gerund or "self-valuing" the (nominalized) participle? In German, "(das) Selbst-Wertschätzen" or "Selbst-Wertschätzendes" (not to mention the uncapitalized options)? Are you saying a self-valuing is or can be identical to itself, or the act of self-valuing?

The self-valuing of a self-valuing, qua self-valuing.

As you can see, there's a reason I suggested you'd ignore that post in your response, it's cognitive style is very much different and references Parodites. But, now that we're there, the confusion is a result of being in the process of killing grammar so that god can be put to rest.

It is a superstition that nouns represent metaphysically different things than verbs. There is only activity. Any noun represents a 'petrified verb'.

E.g.: A tree trees. A self-valuing self-values. Part of tree-ing is growing, and dying. But nothing, besides self-valuing itself, is necessarily part of self-valuing. It is the minimal notion, the only notion (that I know of) that is both sufficient and not prescriptive.

The notion only includes itself, but it includes more than one of itself. Thus the notion contains an 'inner tension', as Parodites might say.

Quote :

Quote :: I meant to suggest that the reverse has the more drastic implications, represents a more fundamental transvaluation of values, namely of valuing itself; but of course it works only in concord with the view that lifeless matter is valuing, which is the first premise. In concord, these two 'ends' (implications) of the logic help to redefine "consciousness", a term which has misled man into believing that it is what separates us from the rest of nature, whereas it is simply our way of doing what all of nature does.

Consciousness is a form of (self-)valuing, not vice versa. I think we agree here.

So do I, and I find this paragraph excellent.

Thanks.

Quote :

Quote :: Note that the now refuted idea of consciousness has much to do with the moral dualism of Zoroaster and the Abrahamic religions: consciousness was defined as the gift whereby man could distinguish right (gods will) from wrong (the devils will).

In this sense "consciousness" is the very same illusion as "free will" (and belongs to the non-Aristotelean meaning of "metaphysics" that rule somewhere "beyond").

I don't follow this last bit. How is it the same? Couldn't one be able to see the difference yet not be able to resist one's "evil" urges? And couldn't one have free will yet not be able to tell right from wrong?

Right, I suppose that possibility accounts for basically the entire history of religion.

The point I might have made better is that consciousness was once framed in moral terms; and that its institution (it being recognized collectively) likely emerged on moral terms as well; that is to say, before it was recognized collectively, it was likely a very terrifying and monstrous phenomenon. Man came a long way out of madness, because mind, it seems to me, must originally have been quite mad.

Not that this is necessary for value metaphysics to apply; this is all speculative.

My theories on consciousness and morality both are speculative; My theory on being is not. This is why I have trouble even conceiving of a bridge between the two.

Quote :

Quote :: This nonteleological Übermensch is basically what Seung has called the Spinozan Übermensch. But he says there is also the Faustian Übermensch, who is equally ineradicable. The Faustian Übermensch believes in free will whereas the Spinozan Übermensch believes in determinism. But the antithesis of nonteleology is not necessarily free will but just will. Yet are "will" and "free will" not a tautology?

Yes. And "freedom" means the same as well.

Yes, at least in any positive sense I can think of.

Good that we agree, as this is a rather crucial point; will = freedom.

I could see this as a working political concept. I suspect that people will appreciate its profundity, even if many will dislike its implications. (It will work better than "might is right", which includes a moral premise, which makes it untrustworthy as an equation).

(I do not believe morality can be formulated using equations. It must be asserted in terms of what people want; "people" both in general and in reference to the thinkers who set out formulating a morality. )

Quote :

Quote :: I can not speak to the Faustian and Spinozean types except in broad strokes, for example, I connect the Faustean to Blake, and the Spinozean to Schopenhauer. But the highest path is to lose sight of the difference between the two, between a deterministic universe and free will; to understand will (as in a relatively strong will to power) as that which is both determinator of the world, and bestower of freedom on that determinator.

Crucial insight: determinating is being-free (to oneself).

Well, it is the co-determinator of the world, which world consists entirely of such co-determinators. And the will is "free" in that, if there were no other wills (if that could in theory be the case), it would be absolutely strong. 'Tis, so to say, a case of many unstoppable forces being resisted by each other…

But absolutely strong - "free" - to do what? If a thing is alone, there is nothing to overpower; there is no way to exist; Hence, again the 'cleaved reality implied by the singular concept' of self-valuing.

In the singular case, the entity is rather absolutely constrained (in non-valuing).

Quote :

Quote :: Nietzsche accomplished the first part, the dehumanization of nature, and VO is the naturalization of humanity into this new form.

The latter is the "more fundamental" (or one might say, in this light, further progressed, completed) transvaluation of valuing, to which I referred above.

I cannot agree with this if you mean that Nietzsche just accomplished the first part. Nietzsche neither just accomplished the first part nor was it just Nietzsche who accomplished the first part. The first part has been accomplished by modern natural philosophy as a whole: consider, for example, BGE 22, where Nietzsche only completes that philosophy, by interpreting the course of nature not as lawful but as lawless. "This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!" (WP) 1067): this is the same order as above.

Interesting, very interesting - I consider N's phenomenology to be a radical break with the natural philosophies up to that point.
I perceive the will to power doctrine as a veritable antithesis of Newtonean cosmology; it does away with the notion of cosmic harmony, of its 'perfect balance and unity (its godly nature); In scientific terms, WtP prescribes to Relativity and Quantum Physics. VO, which is WtP advanced, explains and harmonizes both of these immaculately, if I may say so.

I see VO as the first truly natural science; as the first exact formulation based on a truly natural world-view.

Quote :: Just don't under(e)st(im)ate the refinement of the Heraclituean idea of "fire". We only have fragments left of Heraclitus, after all.

Of course. And what we do have is very much refined, which is in fact why I refer back to it. I suppose what I meant is: with an evolved view of fire; most of all I refer to the gain in knowledge of chemistry, which is a field that would be radically potentiated by VO. (I've considered taking it up as an academic study for this reason)

Bluntly: Self-valuing logic is the logic of fire. All entities are thus "fires", "plasma's".

Quote :: It doesn't help to rephrase "inequality" in terms seemingly less antithetical. "Unequal" simply means "not equal"; "different" simply means "not the same"; "interactive" means "active but not separately so"; "willing to power" means "not impotent to power". The assertion that life is will to power implies that life is not not will to power.

I disagree here - I maintain there is a marked difference in semantic substance between "Not impotent to power" and "willing to power".

In this sense I take language more literally, less logically, less on faith; I do not believe that one can manipulate any phrase without altering its real, synthetic, understood meaning. "This chair is red" is not the same at all as "this chair is not not red". To treat language as if it is mathematics is one of the errors Nietzsche set out to correct - Heidegger represents to me the refinement of the recognition of this task, but VO represents Heideggers never attained goal; an exact formulation of non-mathematical being.

Central to this possibility is the recognition of the central word in all of language - the word that includes the meaning of all other words; "value".

This is probably the most controversial point I've been making, trying to make since 2011: there is a rank order of words. Words are very different species, and I do not mean the categories as we are taught in school. There are very different species among nouns and verbs. "Value" and "Valuing" are, so to say, king-words; their meaning rules over the meaning of other words.

Quote :

Quote :: I have not been dismissed, but only respected by the wise and imitated by the envious.

Are those the only two options?

By no means. But I meant to illustrate that I have no reason to doubt my politics. You are case in point; thew fact that you, of all people, recognize my work and its value (given that it claims Nietzsche's heritage), this means that I can not have made too grave mistakes in how I present my philosophy.

Quote :

Quote :: But yes, this is precisely because I make no secret about what I am: a lord of mind (Mannaz, Man), an incarnation of world-fire. It is I, a being of all consuming passion and royal honor, who have forged this, not some anonymous lab-coat.

Yes (though it's ironic that it was you who quite brilliantly concluded, a couple of years ago, that the contemporary equivalent to the Medieval philosopher's exoteric guise of the priest was that of the scientist/scholar; you then seemed more inclined than me to adopt that guise,

At that point I was vet much weakened, and I was hypothetically entertaining the idea of such a role in terms of our mutually attempted, tentative framework of political philosophy, which was all in terms of Humanarchy. In my writing I've always represented the head of Zeus, which is to say Pallas Athena; and I will never actually be able to present a lab-coat, and I will also never want to hide myself. If someone ends up killing me for being too dangerous, I'll be in good company.

Quote :

Quote :: No mediocre man could address the concept of value in such a majestic, naturalizing fashion. In this sense VO is a selecting device and only fit for our people -- who are thereby defined.

But what about those in between the mediocre and such exceptions? Those who are potentially exceptional?

Capable and I have concerned ourselves with such people in the first years. Sometimes they turn out to be brilliant, but do so on their own accord, and rather in spite of our intended diplomacies. For the most part, people are nowhere near ready to commit to a form of thinking this comprehensive, a form that draws so much of themselves into their thoughts.

Understanding VO requires a great degree of freedom from hypocrisy. "Our people" are foremost the Frank (and free-to-themselves).

Quote :: By the way, that part about "M! M!" was an allusion to a story about the logical positivists (Russell etc.). A bunch of them had got together and were trying to establish a completely logical philosophy. One of them was given the task of yelling "M!" whenever any of them suggested anything metaphysical. Soon, they changed this to yelling "not M!" when any of them suggested something non-metaphysical.

I will let my imagination wander about what these non-metaphysical suggestions might have been, in good old Vienna, where this philosophy was born.

And really, this is something I want and expect for us - a physical stronghold. I want philosophy to wear a crown. It must inspire envy in the unwashed. Death to the ascetic form of the philosopher as outcast. I want the philosophers to have lovers, to own castles -- I want them to thrive. The Othala of my politics: the luxury wherewith the philosopher may surround and adorn himself, as representing the esteem in which society holds him; this will be the mark of ascending culture. It is precisely the superior role of the philosopher that needs to be recognized if a culture is to be serious at all.

Very central to our task is thus the freedom from shame because of our pride. If I can not speak for you here, then hear this: very central to my task is to not be ashamed of my pride. Let others be ashamed of their lack if it, their lack of reason for it!

And let them withdraw into the shrubbery, and gossip; rather that they stay far away than that they disturb the glorious company I can afford to keep in this exalted condition, which, when explicitly cultivated, is an effective means to keep away the sordid. If I comported myself modestly, I would find myself unbearably pretentious, and a hypocrite. It is nature's way of isolating, selecting.

My antitheses are Hume and Socrates.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sun Aug 30, 2015 12:51 pm

Sauwelios wrote:

Capable wrote:

Regrettably I don't have the time to adequately work through the posts so far and get up to speed entirely, so first I'd like to state my understanding of the basic categories at work here, to make sure I get what this is about.

Quote :: Quote :
Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Value philosophy designates an introductory state of philosophizing whereby one conceives one's thought within the horizons of a metaphysical system or belief; this metaphysics, I am imagining could be either more or less well-defined and articulated (may at first consist only of a small number of metaphysical ideas in conjunction with a strong feeling of association/attraction to those beliefs), then would be a reflection of "what one values the most", so perhaps at the time a person values the feeling of independence-freedom and also aspires to success in some way, ergo their metaphysics would firstly consist of a number of beliefs that reflect these values (maybe in this case they posit a metaphysics of will to power qua "success in one's relations" and the value of effort/work to achieve goals; also by the first value the metaphysics at include notions of freedom and independence I.e. a "free will" or emancipatory undercurrent associated necessarily to reality)?

I think this is correct as far as it goes, though it's not all there is to it. It reminds me of https://youtu.be/LvmSekZu__o 0:57-3:54. Value Philosophy does not designate just an introductory state of philosophizing. One can never completely transcend it; in the decisive respect one can never transcend it.

By the way, "first philosophy" is what Aristotle called metaphysics.

First principles, then.

I listened to that lecture clip.. admittedly I almost stopped listening when he started talking about not knowing how to know the difference between dogs and human beings. Maybe he was being facetious or something.

In terms of "science" never being able to get rid of pre-scientific "common sense" thinking, you are paralleling this to Value Philosophy (VO in your terms) being a ground from which other philosophies or sciences or whatever are unable to ever really remove themselves? If this is the case and you square VO (the idea of self-valuing) with a kind of basic, introductory or "first principles" approach, I would say you have a simple view of what self-valuing means to FC and me. But I am speculating here, it is a stretch for me to engage this and try to understand what you mean.. if you can elaborate that may help.

On his idea of historicism...in the sense that one cannot validate variously different epochal presuppositions or historically-evolved/dependent premises. Sure, if you simply ask "what do political philosophers mean by "a good society"?" it seems like there is a kind of unbreachable abyss between epochal, cultural or even individual ways of ideating philosophy or value. But that is just a very simplistic way of approaching these issues. Everything is a "function of the times", certainly. But the times are also a function of things working beyond those times, we have moments in the world interacting with each other in very complex ways, some of them causal-direct and others more chaotic, random or daemonic in their logic. Even so, any given time/place is not some Gestalt-like existence from which people are supposedly philosophizing and living as if out of some absolute reductivity to that given time/place, as if history and future both reduce to any given present moment culture, society, ideas, technology, or whatever else aspect of the times we want to consider philosophically interesting. At best, this idea of historicism is saying something incredibly obvious as to border on the banal, while at worst is saying something that effectively cuts down the entire possibility of philosophy before it even begins -- reducing man to a mostly empty mere image of philosophy wherein semantic games and mere conceptual reversals or "interesting observations" substitute for authentic philosophical work.

Taking the (in one sense, certainly given and accurate) idea of historicism as a reason to structurally disembowel the entire philosophical task and spirit before it even gets started, even under the guise of a supposedly critical and non-naive intent, is really the opposite of what we ought to be doing. I'm guessing that I probably have a much bigger problem with contemporary philosophy than you do.

Quote :

Quote :: Value metaphysics is stating the basic idea of self-valuing as FC conceived it. To be is to value oneself, to not value or to inadequately value oneself leads to no longer existing; "to exist" is defined simply as "successfully valuing in such ways as that which is doing the valuing is held in existence as itself, as such and such entity we say is that from and of which values are coming", or perhaps also "to value means to exist".

Yes. And note that Value Metaphysics is itself, following Value Philosophy, a metaphysics posited by those who value it more than any other metaphysics.

The problem here is with the concept of value itself, that valuing can be more or less conscious, "intended", also it can be more or less philosophically interesting. The idea of valuing is sort of a catch-all term which prevents it from being exhaustibly understood in any easy way; hence why FC was able to turn the notion upon itself and form a 'vicious circle' like a black hole, a concept able to draw so many things around and into itself. The very vagueness and inexhaustibility of the notion of value is its strength as a philosophically-useful idea. But it requires an equally philosophically-inspired approach, and for that I cannot really do well with statements like "a metaphysics posited by those who value it more than any other metaphysics." I mean no one sits around and draws up a list of all metaphysics they know and then ranks them in terms of which they value more and less, thereby concluding rationally that the one on top is the one most valued by themselves. Not that Im saying you are approaching it in such a crude manner, but the very idea that a metaphysics which one posits is thus posited because one values it more than any other metaphysics, is... almost too trustically simple to really be saying anything interesting, to me at least. But again please elaborate so I can better grasp your position.

Quote :

Quote :: Value axiology indicates the logic or rationale of valuing to be that of reality in so far as valuing oneself is necessary (to not value oneself leads to a loss of this "to not value"). All values are therefore and at their root or base, rational.

Actually, the only rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself. But insofar as valuing oneself means valuing oneself as a self-valuing and thereby valuing self-valuing itself, one's self is indeed a rational value for oneself.

It may be helpful to note that, by "a value", I mean "something one considers valuable".

That's good, because it does seem this is getting lost in linguistic confusions, but if we are talking about concrete valued things we can understand this here. To say a value is rational is to say it has a rationale or logic whereby one is justified to hold that value, justified in one sense or another. It may be rational to value being alive, it may also be rational to value dying; it may be rational to value loving another person, or it may be rational to avoid loving others and live alone; it may be rational to value a successful career and wealth, or it may be rational to value a minimal standard of living and a modest job. The situations, individuals involved and all pertinent contexts dictate which values will fall where and how.

Thus, to me, it makes little sense to say that "the only rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself". I assume by this you mean "the only objectively [non-context-dependent] rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself". But again, what is that really intended to accomplish? What is added to our understanding or conversation-investigation here by this? I would much rather dig into the concrete values themselves and think in terms of individuals, situations, and contexts rather than try to locate some seemingly absolute-objective, purely formal-categorical criterion by which we might semantically ground the term 'value', pertaining to the meaning of rationality and valuing.

I like to move upward, I do not much like to stick to low or simple levels of thinking, and in that sense I don't usually try to search for the "most adequate idea" except as an exercise in formal expansion of my own conceptual categories, an expansion which I put to use in decidedly different and opposite kinds of investigations.

And I realize there is a language barrier between you and I, in terms of how we write (and probably also think) philosophy, so bear with me if that is the gist of the issue here.

Quote :

Quote :: Value logic, this one is more complex. I like this progression of categories into the idea of value and self-valuing, now we're at a threshold it seems - "logic's self-identical A is a value" means perhaps that the logical truisms and necessities such as A is A must be thought of not as "facts" but as "values" meaning they exist in the terms of the former categories here, namely that value is rational and self-necessitating because to not value (to not value well enough) precludes oneself from existing at all, thus precludes those values which one held from also existing. Logical postulates and truistic premises must be seen as the most basic, most universal or most necessary values, then.

To say these premises are "facts" would presumably, in the terms of the OP here, be to assert that they exist independent of the consequences which follow or do not follow from themselves; this would be an error, then. Even logic's most necessary and undeniable premises must not be reified to a supposed status of objectivity or absolute independence-universality, in other words these logics are not primary but instead they represent something even more primary: the valuing consequences and conditions out of which those self-identical logics gain their presumed universal status.

Unless I've misunderstood that entirely...

To the contrary, I think you've understood it quite perfectly.

This distinction between values and 'facts' is not really as interesting to me, because I don't conceive of facts in the same way, it seems. For that matter I probably don't think about value or values the same way either. But I'm glad to know I understood your meaning here.

Quote :

Quote :: Last one, value ethics: this seems to describe a culmination of the preceding categories, drawing a moral structure from the self-identical logic which we have previously grounded in the logic of self-valuing. That is just which follows from self-valuing, so what upholds one's self-value through valuations adhering to the axiological structure and self-identical emergence; is morality then seen as deriving from self-identical logic and successful self-valuing? There is a distinction between saying that something is moral because it flows from a self-valuing proper self-identicalness, and saying that self-valuing requires that considering just things is just. How is morality understood in this categorical system?

Well, let me first point out that my list is by no means meant to be exhaustive: there may well be more than five items, there might even be less than five. The last item is in multiple ways a half-joke--one way being that I present it as a universal statement while it's really a very personal statement (though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Anyway, I think I can illuminate it a bit. From the "fact" that valuation is a rational value, I conclude that all things are just, as all things are valuation and nothing besides. You may want to compare my "The Philosopher King" thread's OP, where I first formulated the fifth item: Heraclitus' fragment 102 implies an equivocation of "just" and "beautiful" (or "noble") and "good". Everything is valuable, whether ethically or aesthetically or whatever other way. But one cannot live like that; or at least a human being cannot; or at least I personally cannot. How do I understand morality? As springing from one's highest values. And one of my highest values is considering all things just. Therefore, I value the god extremely high and the wretch among human beings extremely low. The love of philosophy may be at odds with the love of wisdom.

I understand this, but it isn't the way I look at it. I don't believe in pre-valuingly rationalizing 'what we value' either generally or concretely, I don't think a person is capable of that and, if they were, it would amount to a kind of robotization of consciousness.

Values are spontaneous, irrational, they are excessive in Parodites' sense of the word excess. They point the ways inward.. they are not building blocks on which to create a certain/secure mind. Of course there is a sense in which it is quite true that "everything is valuable" and equally there is a sense in which what you say about not being able to live that way is very true; but what does this tell us about our human psychology, and further about the nature and structure of consciousness generally? I'm not seeking after conveniently irrefutable platitudes (I'm not saying that is necessarily what you are doing, but again, our respective approaches and languages are very different, it seems. That difference is either fundamental, in which case I would say you are merely seeking after conveniently irrefutable platitudes as a substitute for genuine philosophy, or the difference is more superficial and rooted in conversational difficulties in which case I think we can come to some agreement eventually, at least in theory. In any case I'm suspending judgment as to the nature of the differences between our respective approaches, and I hope something useful can emerge).

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sun Aug 30, 2015 3:40 pm

This is where the Pentad can be put to use.
I can hardly believe we've not seen this before.
Why did we try to have discussions different from the more difficult one, of formalizing value ontology canonically? Because I was not ready, for one - and for various other reasons.

But the Pentad is designed specifically to engage as a group of disparate wills and intellectual languages into a coherent process of not dialectic, but something deliberately created as an alternative, - of the same kind, but perhaps more effective in disclosing the sort of truth that is actual truthfulness, not mere observation. To see the perspectives in reference to each other as a representation of a world. Antitheses are required - but lesser, and greater antitheses.

In Chinese Medicine, the Pentadic ordering of the organs (and their intertwining meridians, a system so complex no western man would even muster the patience to make conscious its entire infrastructure, but I give first hand testimony that that system works transformatively like nothing else I've seen) gives rise to two destructive orders and one procreative one. Therefore it seems sensible that we now conclude from these two chemical reactions, that you both - Capable and Sauwelios - should not border on one another in the order.

A definitive and reciprocal No between two members of a larger group could well be the beginning of most Earthly orders. My efforts could be seen as sickly consensus seeking, or as healthy will-to-organism-establishing, but they can best be understood as betraying a love for alchemy. It is somewhat dangerous to take on faith the merit of my faith in the outcome of a molecular bond; it may well turn out to be an explosive.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Mon Aug 31, 2015 12:13 am

1.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:: Metaphysics in the Aristotelian/Heideggerian sense is about beings as a whole or the Being of beings. In other words, it's cosmology and ontology. This is the reason I gave above. Moreover, epistemology may also be regarded as metaphysics.

I generally consider epistemology to be metaphysics, yes - keep in mind that VO is concerned with right (irrefutable) knowledge of being, not being without knowledge about it, or without knowledge of knowledge about it. See https://beforethelight.forumotion.com/t1-ontology ; the last paragraph of the OP in particular.

Knowledge of knowledge about it is what epistemology is about, but that need only be part of metaphysics if the nature of knowing is (co-)determined by the nature of being. Now I do not see how it could not be, but that does not mean that all metaphysicians have seen it like that, and thereby that epistemology is always a part of metaphysics.

Quote :

Quote :: Thus also, if N's philosophy is will to power it is so (to N) under the conditions that the universe is will to power; one can not call N's work will to power and claim ones own work is not, or at least not when one has understood what N meant.

I disagree. Thus in my Why I'm not a feminist thread, in my last reply to Uccisore, to which he never replied, I wrote:

Now as I said in that OP, whoever claims such revelation is in my view probably a madman or a liar or both. This is because I have, as far as I know, not experienced any such revelations whatsoever. In fact, I don't see how a revelation would not require an infinite regress: each revelation would logically require another revelation to reveal that one's interpretation of one's experience as a revelation is not a misinterpretation... Bottom line: you're preaching to a member of the choir, who however insists that we should emphasize our conditionality if we are not to seem pathological.

I have never given myself to conceive of a moral philosophy.

Though that discussion was about moral stances, my quote from it was not necessarily about such stances. Then again, perhaps there is a way in which stances are always moral stances. More on this below.

Quote :: For this reason mainly: I know that what is right for me is wrong for many, and vice versa.
What I can do is praise that which I think is good, do what I think is good, and this will be my morality, and others may or may not follow me. This is highly simplistic, but it is risky, for me, to venture into prescriptions for beings I may not understand.

But don't you claim to understand all beings in their most fundamental nature? As self-valuings? This, then, may be the grounds for a general morality.

Quote :: See, a human is not principally different to my mind that, say, a cat. Like some one you know well, I generally trust cats more than I trust humans. A cat is a very accomplished form of self-valuing. If I set out to form a morality for humans, I might as well set out to form a morality for all animals. I can't imagine I'd be fit for that.

My girlfriend has a highly idealized view of cats. Anyway, what's at issue here is the view of man as "the not yet fixed, not yet established beast" (BGE 62). Surely there is an obvious difference between humans and other animals, as Capable so fervently notes. As I quoted and wrote in my "The West. A Straussian metanarrative" thread's OP, there is

"a humanity that, though it belongs to man as man, is not open to every man, since what he is necessarily he is not necessarily unless he knows that that is what he is necessarily. Without that knowledge he can be enchanted and made subject to perfect rule[.]" (Benardete, The Bow and the Lyre, page 87.)

"What Hermes does with the moly is to show Odysseus its nature (phusis): 'It was black in its root, and its flower like milk; the gods call it moly, but it is hard for mortal men to dig up, but the gods can do everything.' If the decisive action is the showing forth of its nature and not the revelation of its divine name, as if it were a magical charm, then the moly in itself is irrelevant. What is important is that it has a nature, and the gods' power arises from the knowledge of its nature and of all other things. To dig up the moly is to expose to the light its flower and its root; they belong together regardless of the contrariety in their colors. It is this exposure and understanding of the nature of things that is difficult but not impossible for men. Odysseus, then, would be armed with knowledge. This knowledge saves him from Circe's enchantment. Her enchantment consists of transforming a man into a pig, with its head, voice, bristles, and build, but the mind (noos) remains as it was before. His knowledge, then, is the knowledge that the mind of man belongs together with his build. They are together as much as the root and flower of the moly. There cannot be a change in one without a corresponding change in the other. Menelaus's encounter with constant becoming, in which there are no natures, must have been an illusion. 'There is in your breast,' Circe tells Odysseus, 'a mind that does not admit of enchantment' (10.329)." (Benardete, op.cit., page 86.)

As most men do not know this unity, they are basically beasts, but since they can know it in theory, one can housebreak them solely with one's logos.

::

Now Orpheus, of whom Bacon said that he "may pass by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified" (Wisdom of the Ancients, "Orpheus, or Philosophy"), was able to (opera-)housebreak even big cats with his lyre and voice:

"[B]y the [...] sweetness of his song and lyre he drew to him all kinds of wild beasts, in such manner that putting off their several natures, forgetting all their quarrels and ferocity, no longer driven by the stings and furies of lust, no longer caring to satisfy their hunger or to hunt their prey, they all stood about him gently and sociably, as in a theatre, listening only to the concords of his lyre. Nor was that all: for so great was the power of his music that it moved the woods and the very stones to shift themselves and take their stations decently and orderly about him." (ibid.)

To be sure, though, Bacon interprets this as follows:

"[Philosophy,] applying her powers of persuasion and eloquence to insinuate into men’s minds the love of virtue and equity and peace, teaches the peoples to assemble and unite and take upon them the yoke of laws and submit to authority, and forget their ungoverned appetites, in listening and conforming to precepts and discipline; whereupon soon follows the building of houses, the founding of cities, the planting of fields and gardens with trees; insomuch that the stones and the woods are not unfitly said to leave their places and come about her." (ibid.)

This Orpheus did after having failed at natural philosophy; but ultimately he also failed at "philosophy moral and civil" (ibid.). Perhaps we Value Philosophers, then, having succeeded at the former, may also succeed at the latter. (Our success however is the culmination of modern natural philosophy as a whole.) In any case, Bacon interprets Orpheus's second failure as follows:

"But howsoever the works of wisdom are among human things the most excellent, yet they too have their periods and closes. For so it is that after kingdoms and commonwealths have flourished for a time, there arise perturbations and seditions and wars; amid the uproars of which, first the laws are put to silence, and then men return to the depraved conditions of their nature, and desolation is seen in the fields and cities. And if such troubles last, it is not long before letters also and philosophy are so torn in pieces that no traces of them can be found but a few fragments, scattered here and there like planks from a shipwreck; and then a season of barbarism sets in, the waters of Helicon being sunk under the ground, until, according to the appointed vicissitude of things, they break out and issue forth again, perhaps among other nations, and not in the places where they were before." (ibid.)

Quote :: Value philosophy, you say, is the practice of choosing the metaphysics that one values most. As a philosopher, my criterium for valuing a metaphysics is a) that I can not refute it (first condition) and b) that it applies effectively - i.e. that it grants power over what it analyzes.

Well, "choosing" sounds too rational (more on this in my forthcoming reply to Capable). But yes, philosophy, too, is a will to power.

Quote :: Because I had found a flaw, something unexplained (perhaps you'll recall our email discussion end 2010 "about love under will", which was a prelude to the formation of the idea of self-valuing) in the will to power theory.

In BGE 36, Nietzsche says that "will" can of course only work on "will"--and not on "matter". Methinks the explanation you required was how will could work on will--how a will can relate to, or recognize, other wills; you weren't satisfied with the answer, "they simply are compatible".

Quote :: VO makes the WtP hermetically, unquestionably true. This is why I value it primarily; my value philosophy is this: I am a philosopher, have intellectual consistency as my highest value, and thus am forced to value value ontology.

What I would add to this, though, is: you value--are forced to value, necessarily value--seeing yourself as a philosopher, as having intellectual consistency as your highest value. In my view it's only this addendum that perfects the virtuous circle.

Quote :

In reliquishing that pretense, as you put it, the danger is that philosophy is reduced to mere Weltanschauungsphilosophie: see the first chapter of Leo Strauss's final work (Weltanschauungsphilosophie means philosophy that is a Weltanschauung). In my "note" on that essay, I wrote:

Which is precisely why it is a fundamental fact; the two aren't different aspects; it recognizes of itself that it is an interpretation, but recognizes it in such a way that this does not refute its absolute (human, verifiable, falsifiable) applicability.

Yes, I think we agree here.

Quote :

Value Philosophy is the synthesis of philosophy as rigorous science and Weltanschauungsphilosophie.

I do not acknowledge the difference. VO is a rigorous science and thus a reliable Weltanschauung. This is what matters to me as a thinker; now whether or not VO is a Weltanschauung, but whether or not it is a reliable one.

Surely it is more than just reliable. Any Weltanschauung or Weltanschauungsphilosophie is reliable. Thus Strauss writes:

"Yet 'we cannot wait'; we need 'exaltation and consolation' now; we need some kind of system to live by; only Weltanschauung or Weltanschauungsphilosophie can satisfy these justified demands. Surely philosophy as rigorous science cannot satisfy them: it has barely begun, it will need centuries, if not millennia, until it 'renders possible in regard to ethics and religion a life regulated by purely rational norms,' if it is not at all times essentially incomplete and in need of radical revisions. Hence the temptation to forsake it in favor of Weltanschauungsphilosophie is very great. From Husserl's point of view one would have to say that Heidegger proved unable to resist that temptation." (Strauss, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy", quoting from Husserl's "Philosophy as Rigorous Science".)

This is why it is of paramount importance to establish a Value Ethics or Value Religion.

Quote :

Quote :: Insofar as one is a philosopher, one seeks to be just, but also acknowledges or seeks to acknowledge one's own necessary injustice. In fact, necessary injustice is itself just. But the philosopher's necessary--natural--injustice drives him to "do justice" to all things by acknowledging their justice.

Here you get into a terrain I have never ventured. I see no necessary relationship of prescribed morality and natural behavior, except that it is (apparently) natural behavior to prescribe morality. Morality emerges from self-valuing, but not necessarily so. Knowledge comes first, but without perfect knowledge it would be impossible to produce a truly sound knowledge-based morality. So before VO, it was impossible to form a true philosophical morality. Perhaps with VO it is still impossible; the farthest I have come is my "self-valuing ethics", which, as I now am finding out with the help of your books, is very much akin to the theories of Heraclitus and Anaximander. I am pleased to find this out - I am pleased to move beyond (back before) Socrates towards thinking trends of people that I value, whom I might like to "imitate" - Socrates represents to me the decay of philosophy into a plebeian art.

I know we have some battles to fight over that. Maybe we can use the Pentad to that end at one point.

Initially the fifth item in my list said that the philosopher was impelled to act in a certain way--a "just" way--towards all who made him possible--which ultimately means all beings. So it was a morality solely for the philosopher himself. But other people need a morality at least as much as the philosopher does. Therefore, the philosopher must be unjust, not just towards himself but to all other people as well. The perfect synthesis of desired justice and necessary injustice--the perfect imperfection with regard to justice--seems to me to be the paradox expressed in my fifth item: a hierarchical society that (exoterically) holds the Heraclitean god in the highest regard.

I recommend you read Nietzsche's unfinished 1873 book, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. It's included in KSA 1 (Die Geburt der Tragödie u.a.).

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:08 pm

Sauwelios wrote:

Quote :: I know that what is right for me is wrong for many, and vice versa.
What I can do is praise that which I think is good, do what I think is good, and this will be my morality, and others may or may not follow me. This is highly simplistic, but it is risky, for me, to venture into prescriptions for beings I may not understand.

But don't you claim to understand all beings in their most fundamental nature? As self-valuings? This, then, may be the grounds for a general morality.

How? The conundrum is that self-valuings contradict each others "rights".
I think that Ideal Capitalism (The type Ayn Rand envisions and recognized in a certain era) is more or less the definitive "general morality"; namely, 'let everyone try to advance himself' with some fundamental restrictions on infringing on others attempts to do the same.

It being general however, forces it to infringe on many individual moralities.

I wonder if you've read my "self-valuing ethics" threads here and on H. These, so far, represent my attempts to formulate general ethical principles.

As the Presocratics understood as well, "war" (conflict (of interests)) is the only universal agent of "justice".

I do not believe that there can be a morality that protects people from what they'd consider 'evil'; morality is a very dominating kind of will to power and, when it is generalized, always means compromise of individuals.

Imposing morality is thus, as Nietzsche and others have observed, itself immoral.

I could thus only justify a general morality that represents my values, that at least does not infringe upon me. In this sense I would be no different than any tyrant. The difference could be qualitative, not essential; I might be able to rob humans of less integrity than a general law-giver would.

Quote :

Quote :: See, a human is not principally different to my mind that, say, a cat. Like some one you know well, I generally trust cats more than I trust humans. A cat is a very accomplished form of self-valuing. If I set out to form a morality for humans, I might as well set out to form a morality for all animals. I can't imagine I'd be fit for that.

My girlfriend has a highly idealized view of cats.

I'm not so sure that they need to be idealized to be regarded as higher self-valuings than the average human. They are magnificent, cunning and innocent all together, and certainly not without consciousness or sophisticated self-awareness. Regard the cat at 10:13 and tell me that this creature is more alike to the snake it taunts than to the person filming him. If you will, I will not agree. There is perhaps not even a difference between higher consciousness and pride. Philosophy may simply be the highest human pride.

Quote :: Anyway, what's at issue here is the view of man as "the not yet fixed, not yet established beast" (BGE 62). Surely there is an obvious difference between humans and other animals, as Capable so fervently notes.

Surely. And yet, Capable agreed with me before that it makes no sense to speak of a human species. There are too many differences. I think even you may still underestimate the greatness of the differences between human constitutions and inclinations; I would go so far as to say that their being animals is the main thing that connects them.

What human consciousness means in general? Nothing. I know that no one will ever know the sort of experience my consciousness produces. I've never experienced anyone describing something resembling my inner world.

My natural morality would apply to all self-valuings, and in such a way as to rank them in terms of courage, intelligence and beauty and such qualities, rather than 'human' and 'non human'. But this is my personal value set.

Quote :

As I quoted and wrote in my "The West. A Straussian metanarrative" thread's OP, there is

As most men do not know this unity, they are basically beasts, but since they can know it in theory, one can housebreak them solely with one's logos.

This is also what Mannaz means. But can all men, in theory, know this unity? Why? This would assume a top down design of man, where no man is brutish, retarded, uninterested, unwilling to not be beast, ill raised, cowardly, or otherwise impaired; no, Mannaz is the end-aim, and it is not an aim that could be prescribed for all of humanity without doing injustice to most.

But perhaps this is what you are driving at. A general cruelty in favor of a Mannaz-elite.

Yes, sometimes man is adequate to this standard, but it is a rarity. I often feel forced to comport myself as an animal, ape-type, when I interact with humans. Hardly any human is able to communicate with me directly under "Mannaz" - imagine the solace I've found by developing this common speak among somewhat perfected minds - yes this is what value ontology is! A language that can only be learned by experienced, polished and radically confident minds. It is a language in which I can finally speak my mind in terms of the things I have always experienced, but which no one else seemed to be able to conceive.

Now I can push beyond the limits of what people are used to be thinking, using this new metaphysical grammar to rip apart the old perimeter of consciousness.

All the sages that have tried what I have accomplished -- but I listened to them very well. Make no mistake! VO is as much the end product of East Asiatic metaphysics (which require practice of detachment) as it is of Western Natural Philosophy. The Hermetic Kabbalah has culminated in it as well; self-valuing can be read as the formula of Daath; standing forth from the abyss, the way in which "I am that I am" becomes particular.

But let's not go too deep into that here.

Quote :

Now Orpheus, of whom Bacon said that he "may pass by an easy metaphor for philosophy personified" (Wisdom of the Ancients, "Orpheus, or Philosophy"), was able to (opera-)housebreak even big cats with his lyre and voice,

To be sure, though, Bacon interprets this as follows:

This Orpheus did after having failed at natural philosophy; but ultimately he also failed at "philosophy moral and civil" (ibid.). Perhaps we Value Philosophers, then, having succeeded at the former, may also succeed at the latter. (Our success however is the culmination of modern natural philosophy as a whole.) In any case, Bacon interprets Orpheus's second failure as follows:

In all this interpretation I am missing the Lyre. It does not seem right to me at all that this is translated into philosophy, at least not in moral philosophy. There is a strong tie between music and mathematics, but philosophy, until now, has not been exact like that.

Until now - Indeed because of its exactness, it is possible that value ontology can function musically.

If this is the case, it may indeed be possible for it to "command soundness" - and to unite and the spirit of music.

In this sense, I believe in ethical rulership; music touches, is able to touch the threshold between aesthetics and ethics; and aesthetics are directly related to logic, and also more directly than ethics to self-valuing. Aesthetics are generally more objective; this is why advertising works to command and tame people; they are more easily convinced by aesthetically focused messages than ethically focused ones. Ideally of course, the message is both; Ambitious art (often or always) strives to merge aesthetics and ethics; True Detective being a good example of how far the aesthetics can be pushed to emphasize the ethics.

I understand if this last bit does not solicit much of a response from you.

Quote :

Quote :: Because I had found a flaw, something unexplained (perhaps you'll recall our email discussion end 2010 "about love under will", which was a prelude to the formation of the idea of self-valuing) in the will to power theory.

In BGE 36, Nietzsche says that "will" can of course only work on "will"--and not on "matter". Methinks the explanation you required was how will could work on will--how a will can relate to, or recognize, other wills; you weren't satisfied with the answer, "they simply are compatible".

Correct.
Investigating the maxim "Love is the law, love under will" was one of the ways in which I tried to crystallize my evolving position with regard to this problem.

Quote :

Quote :: VO makes the WtP hermetically, unquestionably true. This is why I value it primarily; my value philosophy is this: I am a philosopher, have intellectual consistency as my highest value, and thus am forced to value value ontology.

What I would add to this, though, is: you value--are forced to value, necessarily value--seeing yourself as a philosopher, as having intellectual consistency as your highest value. In my view it's only this addendum that perfects the virtuous circle.

But that speaks for itself; there is no free will involved, I am forced to be what I am by what I am. But I happen to actually be it; that is to say, I actually am capable of producing real thought. I do not agree that this is common to man, not remotely so, and not likely to ever be; I am not a humanist in this sense.

I am rather convinced that in order to improve the moral conditions of humanity, humans need to improve the conditions of the weaker species that rely on their mercy. Because there is no absolute threshold between humanity and animality, and that is putting it very mildly.

Quote :

Any Weltanschauung or Weltanschauungsphilosophie is reliable. Thus Strauss writes:

This is why it is of paramount importance to establish a Value Ethics or Value Religion.

Can you summarize that argument without quotes? As it is I do not see how your conclusion logically follows. I've read it six or seven times.

Quote :: Initially the fifth item in my list said that the philosopher was impelled to act in a certain way--a "just" way--towards all who made him possible--which ultimately means all beings. So it was a morality solely for the philosopher himself. But other people need a morality at least as much as the philosopher does. Therefore, the philosopher must be unjust, not just towards himself but to all other people as well. The perfect synthesis of desired justice and necessary injustice--the perfect imperfection with regard to justice--seems to me to be the paradox expressed in my fifth item: a hierarchical society that (exoterically) holds the Heraclitean god in the highest regard.

I do not think that there is or will or must be such a thing as The people. Peoples need moralities. Arabs need Allah. Teutons need Wotan. Never must these two be reduced to each other, melted into a General Man. That could after all only be the Last Man.

We need to cultivate (I am perilously cultivating) our type. I do not mean our race, but I do quite literally mean a specific physiological type.

Quote :: I recommend you read Nietzsche's unfinished 1873 book, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. It's included in KSA 1 (Die Geburt der Tragödie u.a.).

That seems like a good idea. I had no idea it existed. These lectures on the Pre-Platonic Philosophers are brilliant. N's earlier work may be superior in its usefulness from now on than his later work, which was the basis for the ontology but presents commands and political views which may not be as sound as his more detached observations coming out of his vigorously fruitful investigations into the ancient world.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Tue Sep 01, 2015 12:33 am

Capable wrote:

Sauwelios wrote:

Capable wrote:

Regrettably I don't have the time to adequately work through the posts so far and get up to speed entirely, so first I'd like to state my understanding of the basic categories at work here, to make sure I get what this is about.

Quote :: Quote :
Value Philosophy: First philosophy is the positing of the metaphysics one values the most.
Value Metaphysics: Being is essentially Self-Valuing: beings exist inasmuch as they value themselves.
Value Axiology: Valuation is a rational value, as its disvaluation would disvalue itself, too.
Value Logic: Logic's self-identical "A" is a value, and not necessarily a fact.
Value Ethics: It is just to consider things just, and unjust to consider things unjust.

Value philosophy designates an introductory state of philosophizing whereby one conceives one's thought within the horizons of a metaphysical system or belief; this metaphysics, I am imagining could be either more or less well-defined and articulated (may at first consist only of a small number of metaphysical ideas in conjunction with a strong feeling of association/attraction to those beliefs), then would be a reflection of "what one values the most", so perhaps at the time a person values the feeling of independence-freedom and also aspires to success in some way, ergo their metaphysics would firstly consist of a number of beliefs that reflect these values (maybe in this case they posit a metaphysics of will to power qua "success in one's relations" and the value of effort/work to achieve goals; also by the first value the metaphysics at include notions of freedom and independence I.e. a "free will" or emancipatory undercurrent associated necessarily to reality)?

I think this is correct as far as it goes, though it's not all there is to it. It reminds me of https://youtu.be/LvmSekZu__o 0:57-3:54. Value Philosophy does not designate just an introductory state of philosophizing. One can never completely transcend it; in the decisive respect one can never transcend it.

By the way, "first philosophy" is what Aristotle called metaphysics.

First principles, then.

I listened to that lecture clip.. admittedly I almost stopped listening when he started talking about not knowing how to know the difference between dogs and human beings. Maybe he was being facetious or something.

Well, it's really easy to take Strauss out of context. (I would, in fact, recommend that you listen to the first segment as well.) Here he is introducing political philosophy and its contemporary status to a class of students. He's not saying he doesn't know the difference between dogs and human beings, but that he doesn't know it scientifically, or not in the first place scientifically. He knows it (in the first place) from common sense.

Quote :: In terms of "science" never being able to get rid of pre-scientific "common sense" thinking, you are paralleling this to Value Philosophy (VO in your terms) being a ground from which other philosophies or sciences or whatever are unable to ever really remove themselves? If this is the case and you square VO (the idea of self-valuing) with a kind of basic, introductory or "first principles" approach, I would say you have a simple view of what self-valuing means to FC and me. But I am speculating here, it is a stretch for me to engage this and try to understand what you mean.. if you can elaborate that may help.

I never said anything about a basic, introductory or "first principles" approach; that's just what you're reading into it. Now in part you're right, as Value Philosophy is all-comprehensive and thereby also encompasses basics. But what I'm saying is that Value Philosophy teaches that one can never really get beyond value-positing. There are not necessarily any facts; there may only be values. And even this is not necessarily a fact, but perhaps only a value.

Quote :: On his idea of historicism...in the sense that one cannot validate variously different epochal presuppositions or historically-evolved/dependent premises. Sure, if you simply ask "what do political philosophers mean by "a good society"?" it seems like there is a kind of unbreachable abyss between epochal, cultural or even individual ways of ideating philosophy or value. But that is just a very simplistic way of approaching these issues. Everything is a "function of the times", certainly. But the times are also a function of things working beyond those times, we have moments in the world interacting with each other in very complex ways, some of them causal-direct and others more chaotic, random or daemonic in their logic. Even so, any given time/place is not some Gestalt-like existence from which people are supposedly philosophizing and living as if out of some absolute reductivity to that given time/place, as if history and future both reduce to any given present moment culture, society, ideas, technology, or whatever else aspect of the times we want to consider philosophically interesting. At best, this idea of historicism is saying something incredibly obvious as to border on the banal, while at worst is saying something that effectively cuts down the entire possibility of philosophy before it even begins -- reducing man to a mostly empty mere image of philosophy wherein semantic games and mere conceptual reversals or "interesting observations" substitute for authentic philosophical work.

Taking the (in one sense, certainly given and accurate) idea of historicism as a reason to structurally disembowel the entire philosophical task and spirit before it even gets started, even under the guise of a supposedly critical and non-naive intent, is really the opposite of what we ought to be doing. I'm guessing that I probably have a much bigger problem with contemporary philosophy than you do.

Yes, this was exactly Strauss's criticism of historicism. For Strauss was for political philosophy and thereby against historicism as well as against positivism. He's just giving an account of these opponents of political philosophy here; he's not endorsing them, to the contrary. Still, I think he chooses--and at any rate I choose--historicism over positivism, because historicism is capable of overcoming itself--in fact, into something more scientific even than positivism. Thus in my second reply to Fixed Cross, I quoted from my own "Note on the First Chapter of Leo Strauss's Final Work":

In his discussion of aphorism 36 [of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil], Strauss says: "Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of the will to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same time an interpretation and the most fundamental fact" (paragraph 8 of the central chapter of the work). This reasoning can be applied as well to the existentialism from the first chapter. A Weltanschauung is literally a view of the world. Precisely if all Weltanschauungen are historical, historicism is at the same time historical and supra-historical: the philosophers are the step-sons of their time (paragraph 30 of the central chapter); philosophy is at the same time Weltanschauungsphilosophie and rigorous science. [The first chapter of the work is titled "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy".]

Husserl opposed positivism with his phenomenology. Heidegger then turned this phenomenology into existentialism or Weltanschauungsphilosophie (philosophy reduced to the attempt to conceptualize a Weltanschauung or to give it a logical elaboration or, more simply, to give it the form of science). But the realization that historicism--the view that all views are relative to their place in space-time--must view itself, too, as a historical view, far from thereby invalidating itself, actually asserts itself as the most rigorously scientific view of which a historical being is capable.

Quote :

Quote :: Value metaphysics is stating the basic idea of self-valuing as FC conceived it. To be is to value oneself, to not value or to inadequately value oneself leads to no longer existing; "to exist" is defined simply as "successfully valuing in such ways as that which is doing the valuing is held in existence as itself, as such and such entity we say is that from and of which values are coming", or perhaps also "to value means to exist".

Yes. And note that Value Metaphysics is itself, following Value Philosophy, a metaphysics posited by those who value it more than any other metaphysics.

The problem here is with the concept of value itself, that valuing can be more or less conscious, "intended", also it can be more or less philosophically interesting. The idea of valuing is sort of a catch-all term which prevents it from being exhaustibly understood in any easy way; hence why FC was able to turn the notion upon itself and form a 'vicious circle' like a black hole, a concept able to draw so many things around and into itself. The very vagueness and inexhaustibility of the notion of value is its strength as a philosophically-useful idea. But it requires an equally philosophically-inspired approach, and for that I cannot really do well with statements like "a metaphysics posited by those who value it more than any other metaphysics." I mean no one sits around and draws up a list of all metaphysics they know and then ranks them in terms of which they value more and less, thereby concluding rationally that the one on top is the one most valued by themselves. Not that Im saying you are approaching it in such a crude manner, but the very idea that a metaphysics which one posits is thus posited because one values it more than any other metaphysics, is... almost too trustically simple to really be saying anything interesting, to me at least. But again please elaborate so I can better grasp your position.

I don't mean it consciously like that. I may, as English is not my native language, unintentionally have given the wrong impression, or you may have projected that meaning into my words; probably a bit of both. In any case, I rather mean it in the "truistically simple" sense--which however I don't consider uninteresting, because I am indeed, as you go on to say, more concerned with basics or foundations than you.

Quote :

Quote :: Value axiology indicates the logic or rationale of valuing to be that of reality in so far as valuing oneself is necessary (to not value oneself leads to a loss of this "to not value"). All values are therefore and at their root or base, rational.

Actually, the only rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself. But insofar as valuing oneself means valuing oneself as a self-valuing and thereby valuing self-valuing itself, one's self is indeed a rational value for oneself.

It may be helpful to note that, by "a value", I mean "something one considers valuable".

That's good, because it does seem this is getting lost in linguistic confusions, but if we are talking about concrete valued things we can understand this here. To say a value is rational is to say it has a rationale or logic whereby one is justified to hold that value, justified in one sense or another. It may be rational to value being alive, it may also be rational to value dying; it may be rational to value loving another person, or it may be rational to avoid loving others and live alone; it may be rational to value a successful career and wealth, or it may be rational to value a minimal standard of living and a modest job. The situations, individuals involved and all pertinent contexts dictate which values will fall where and how.

Well, that's not what I meant. I meant "rational" strictly in the sense of human reason, of formal logic--as you go on to suggest.

Quote :

Thus, to me, it makes little sense to say that "the only rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself". I assume by this you mean "the only objectively [non-context-dependent] rational value I discern is the value of valuation itself". But again, what is that really intended to accomplish? What is added to our understanding or conversation-investigation here by this? I would much rather dig into the concrete values themselves and think in terms of individuals, situations, and contexts rather than try to locate some seemingly absolute-objective, purely formal-categorical criterion by which we might semantically ground the term 'value', pertaining to the meaning of rationality and valuing.

I like to move upward, I do not much like to stick to low or simple levels of thinking, and in that sense I don't usually try to search for the "most adequate idea" except as an exercise in formal expansion of my own conceptual categories, an expansion which I put to use in decidedly different and opposite kinds of investigations.

And I realize there is a language barrier between you and I, in terms of how we write (and probably also think) philosophy, so bear with me if that is the gist of the issue here.

Quote :

Quote :: Value logic, this one is more complex. I like this progression of categories into the idea of value and self-valuing, now we're at a threshold it seems - "logic's self-identical A is a value" means perhaps that the logical truisms and necessities such as A is A must be thought of not as "facts" but as "values" meaning they exist in the terms of the former categories here, namely that value is rational and self-necessitating because to not value (to not value well enough) precludes oneself from existing at all, thus precludes those values which one held from also existing. Logical postulates and truistic premises must be seen as the most basic, most universal or most necessary values, then.

To say these premises are "facts" would presumably, in the terms of the OP here, be to assert that they exist independent of the consequences which follow or do not follow from themselves; this would be an error, then. Even logic's most necessary and undeniable premises must not be reified to a supposed status of objectivity or absolute independence-universality, in other words these logics are not primary but instead they represent something even more primary: the valuing consequences and conditions out of which those self-identical logics gain their presumed universal status.

Unless I've misunderstood that entirely...

To the contrary, I think you've understood it quite perfectly.

This distinction between values and 'facts' is not really as interesting to me, because I don't conceive of facts in the same way, it seems. For that matter I probably don't think about value or values the same way either. But I'm glad to know I understood your meaning here.

Quote :

Quote :: Last one, value ethics: this seems to describe a culmination of the preceding categories, drawing a moral structure from the self-identical logic which we have previously grounded in the logic of self-valuing. That is just which follows from self-valuing, so what upholds one's self-value through valuations adhering to the axiological structure and self-identical emergence; is morality then seen as deriving from self-identical logic and successful self-valuing? There is a distinction between saying that something is moral because it flows from a self-valuing proper self-identicalness, and saying that self-valuing requires that considering just things is just. How is morality understood in this categorical system?

Well, let me first point out that my list is by no means meant to be exhaustive: there may well be more than five items, there might even be less than five. The last item is in multiple ways a half-joke--one way being that I present it as a universal statement while it's really a very personal statement (though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Anyway, I think I can illuminate it a bit. From the "fact" that valuation is a rational value, I conclude that all things are just, as all things are valuation and nothing besides. You may want to compare my "The Philosopher King" thread's OP, where I first formulated the fifth item: Heraclitus' fragment 102 implies an equivocation of "just" and "beautiful" (or "noble") and "good". Everything is valuable, whether ethically or aesthetically or whatever other way. But one cannot live like that; or at least a human being cannot; or at least I personally cannot. How do I understand morality? As springing from one's highest values. And one of my highest values is considering all things just. Therefore, I value the god extremely high and the wretch among human beings extremely low. The love of philosophy may be at odds with the love of wisdom.

I understand this, but it isn't the way I look at it. I don't believe in pre-valuingly rationalizing 'what we value' either generally or concretely, I don't think a person is capable of that and, if they were, it would amount to a kind of robotization of consciousness.

Values are spontaneous, irrational, they are excessive in Parodites' sense of the word excess. They point the ways inward.. they are not building blocks on which to create a certain/secure mind. Of course there is a sense in which it is quite true that "everything is valuable" and equally there is a sense in which what you say about not being able to live that way is very true; but what does this tell us about our human psychology, and further about the nature and structure of consciousness generally? I'm not seeking after conveniently irrefutable platitudes (I'm not saying that is necessarily what you are doing, but again, our respective approaches and languages are very different, it seems. That difference is either fundamental, in which case I would say you are merely seeking after conveniently irrefutable platitudes as a substitute for genuine philosophy, or the difference is more superficial and rooted in conversational difficulties in which case I think we can come to some agreement eventually, at least in theory. In any case I'm suspending judgment as to the nature of the differences between our respective approaches, and I hope something useful can emerge).

Well, you and I may disagree on the nature of genuine philosophy. I consider political philosophy essential to it, and this is one reason why I'm concerned with solid foundations. My current ILP signature is an example thereof.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Tue Sep 01, 2015 9:55 am

Great, I'm glad to know I did miss some of your intended meaning then. The more difficult part is trying to find a common ground between our views and "ways of thinking". I'm more or less extrapolating your position from the limited stuff I've read here. Maybe FC can step in and offer a synthesis whereby our positions can better approach each other, since he knows both our views well enough now.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:43 pm

I don't think I'm qualified to represent either of your positions. One thing I can see in you both that I do not share is your tendency to conceptually isolate the human species, as something which is fundamentally different from other species, due to a type of consciousness. I do not hold to that position, having known humans to be no less automatic in their responses than animals, and seeing in human language an extended jungle. The task of philosophy as I see it is to tame this jungle, to make possible a truly representative conceptuality. Before VO, the existential grammar, the self-valuing logic, in which Heidegger is fully resolved (and for which Heidegger is in no small part responsible) language was only a dream. Nietzsche was like Man who woke up in fits out of that dream, and screamed, as Man to himself: "Wake up!" "Had this dream stopped?" Comparable to Jungs image of early 20th century Europe as Wotan waking up from a bad sleep.

In my case, my family history is instrumental to the suffering I tend to inflict on myself - I have learned early on that the world is war, but also that being in the world which is war brings out infinite kindness. This contrast is the mystery to solve if politics is to matter; the fact of war, cruelty and indifference as general world shaping conditions, in combination with the fact of kindness, love, generosity and such things as world-allowing conditions. The qabala says of this that consciousness resolves them and specifically as the crucified king, the child and the throned king. Where we three are united is the notion of embracing suffering. All three of us have suffered our minds to an extent that binds us, even though we might ultimately never bring more together than the understanding that existence is always positing itself as value, that this is what "value" means. It is not so much vague, as simply covering everything that matters.

Philology is an empirical science, only under the rarest of circumstances compatible with metaphysics; metaphysics ideally results from empirical work with representation, is not to be posited a priori to it. If we cease to posit a object-subject relations, "the world becomes flesh" - we see how humanity evolved by its use of the word, human struggles to use the word in such a way that it works for rather than against them; and this is still in all humans the dominant struggle.

In philosophy, the word "value" has constantly caused confusion and not clarity. It was perhaps the most persistent 'demon'. The hammer wants to always attack the greatest enemy first.

Philosophizing with the hammer, we tore the elusive term value out of the sky, fixed it on the cross, and then saw it resurrected as the image both of the eternal intelligence and the mortal flesh.

Anaxagoras, according to Nietzsche, was the first to not posit an element as the first cause of being. Between Heraclitus and him there lives a dynamic idea of fire, friction, strife as primordial justice; and intelligence itself, which is what Anaxagoras saw as the root and origin of all things. Self-valuing is that primordial intelligence.

Capable, do you still have that mathematics?

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Tue Sep 01, 2015 2:34 pm

I slightly edited the post above.

I would like to formally state the obvious fact that I do understand the actual difference between what humans are capable of doing and what all other animals are capable of.

My issue is with the assumption that the class of beings that causes technology and culture includes all humans. This assumption obscures very interesting things.

Naturally this is a sensitive subject. It is a subject in which Israelis are quite interested. Ironically, the Jews have been the only ones to continue the discipline of breeding.

I haven't thought about Israel for a long time, which is very healthy. But now that we are in the domain, I must note the relationship between Leo Strauss and Israel.

Different from the German-American-Israeli axis of historical power, the European continental soul allows for slower developments and more rooted, earthed language.

The stars are progressing in their fixed course. Physics is based on astronomy, the science of prediction. Rituals.. always involve the Sun, moon or the visible planets. But let us hold rituals to Uranus!! This planets course is some 84 years, more or less a human lifetime. But also to Saturn.

The hard task master and the rider of the lightning together form the belt of fertility. New rituals, it's the only way. N knew this well. So did Morrison. The only way to get to people, to get into their hearts, is to synchronize these hearts to the same clock of passions. We have Christmas and New Years, we also need summer feasts.

Spring Break!!

But the ancient mysteries were in fact always deeply sexual, perhaps the is simply no other way to collective sensibility than through the collectivized senses; it might explain the ways we have chosen for our collective human endeavors; or rather, in this context, it might be chosen as a purpose for the current trend toward public sexual expression, which itself is non teleological and only the result of less restrictions on the 'mating mind'.

Raw forces are powerful sources, and with an eye to 'all that matters is the quantum of power that one is' - it is cowardice to ignore the elephant in the room. Our world is becoming more and more sexualized, and perhaps this is the very thing we need to kindle into the public mind a sensible thinking. Eros is a heated form of self-valuing, I would say, a plasmic state, which is infectious like fire, living in the loins and wearing the girdle of mirth, joy and thought go hand in hand, this is where we should make our camp.

But it's only a suggestion, in the dark between two worlds.

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:02 pm

2.

Quote :

In your addendum to this, you say:

Quote :: I wanted to add this, that "A" = "A" is false in as far as "A" corresponds to anything besides "self-valuing".

The only self-identical notion includes that of an equal difference to itself.

I'm not sure that I understand the last part. Do you mean that self-valuings are themselves composed of self-valuings?

Rather that their (id)entity is negatively reflected in their counterparts, and that this reflection is part of their (id)entity because it determines their environment. Basically it is saying that the positing of an entity only makes sense if there are entities amongst whom it is posited, an outside world. It is an argument for a pluralistic worldview. I.e. there is not one singular "will to power", there is a general willing-to-power. The monster of energy has no heart. It would have to have an outside for that. I wonder if this clears that up.

Quote :: I'm also not completely clear about the first part. Do you mean "self-valuing" the gerund or "self-valuing" the (nominalized) participle? In German, "(das) Selbst-Wertschätzen" or "Selbst-Wertschätzendes" (not to mention the uncapitalized options)? Are you saying a self-valuing is or can be identical to itself, or the act of self-valuing?

The self-valuing of a self-valuing, qua self-valuing.

As you can see, there's a reason I suggested you'd ignore that post in your response, it's cognitive style is very much different and references Parodites. But, now that we're there, the confusion is a result of being in the process of killing grammar so that god can be put to rest.

It is a superstition that nouns represent metaphysically different things than verbs. There is only activity. Any noun represents a 'petrified verb'.

Not so sure about killing grammar, but other than that, yes, I agree. A being is a Self-Valuing (ein Selbst-Wertschätzen).

The sole counterargument I can think of to the third item in my list is that one's own valuing may be fundamentally different from another's. But insofar as it is, one cannot relate to it at all: this is the basic premise of VO. Thus VO corroborates my third item: as you imply, insofar as "A" stands for "Self-Valuing", "A = A" is true. It is part and parcel of self-valuing to project one's own essence into the other--to epistemically assimilate the other's essence.

Quote :: E.g.: A tree trees. A self-valuing self-values. Part of tree-ing is growing, and dying. But nothing, besides self-valuing itself, is necessarily part of self-valuing. It is the minimal notion, the only notion (that I know of) that is both sufficient and not prescriptive.

The notion only includes itself, but it includes more than one of itself. Thus the notion contains an 'inner tension', as Parodites might say.

How is self-valuing not prescriptive? Or rather, how are growing and dying, for instance, prescriptive? Or, if these aren't, what kind of insufficient prescriptive notions are you thinking of?

Quote :

Quote :: This nonteleological Übermensch is basically what Seung has called the Spinozan Übermensch. But he says there is also the Faustian Übermensch, who is equally ineradicable. The Faustian Übermensch believes in free will whereas the Spinozan Übermensch believes in determinism. But the antithesis of nonteleology is not necessarily free will but just will. Yet are "will" and "free will" not a tautology?

Yes. And "freedom" means the same as well.

Yes, at least in any positive sense I can think of.

Good that we agree, as this is a rather crucial point; will = freedom.

I could see this as a working political concept. I suspect that people will appreciate its profundity, even if many will dislike its implications. (It will work better than "might is right", which includes a moral premise, which makes it untrustworthy as an equation).

(I do not believe morality can be formulated using equations. It must be asserted in terms of what people want; "people" both in general and in reference to the thinkers who set out formulating a morality. )

I think I understand. Freedom is a value but the word does not contain a(n explicit) value judgment; "justice" contains an explicit value judgment but does not necessarily refer to a value (something valuable): I could call something worthless "just" and freedom "worthless" without (explicitly) contradicting myself or otherwise speaking nonsense.

In Zarathustra 2.2, Nietzsche writes:

"All feeling suffereth in me, and is in prison: but my willing ever cometh to me as mine emancipator and comforter.
Willing emancipateth: that is the true doctrine of will and emancipation--so teacheth you Zarathustra."

But in 2.20, he writes:

"Will--so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends! But now learn this likewise: the Will itself is still a prisoner.
Willing emancipateth: but what is that called which still putteth the emancipator in chains?
'It was': thus is the Will's teeth-gnashing and lonesomest tribulation called. Impotent towards what hath been done--it is a malicious spectator of all that is past.
Not backward can the Will will; that it cannot break time and time's desire--that is the Will's lonesomest tribulation." (Common translation.)

According to Seung, the Spinozan Übermensch overcomes this by willing the eternal recurrence, that is to say by embracing absolute determinism. For that the will is a prisoner of the past means that it is determined by the past.

Quote :

Quote :: I can not speak to the Faustian and Spinozean types except in broad strokes, for example, I connect the Faustean to Blake, and the Spinozean to Schopenhauer. But the highest path is to lose sight of the difference between the two, between a deterministic universe and free will; to understand will (as in a relatively strong will to power) as that which is both determinator of the world, and bestower of freedom on that determinator.

Crucial insight: determinating is being-free (to oneself).

Well, it is the co-determinator of the world, which world consists entirely of such co-determinators. And the will is "free" in that, if there were no other wills (if that could in theory be the case), it would be absolutely strong. 'Tis, so to say, a case of many unstoppable forces being resisted by each other…

But absolutely strong - "free" - to do what? If a thing is alone, there is nothing to overpower; there is no way to exist; Hence, again the 'cleaved reality implied by the singular concept' of self-valuing.

In the singular case, the entity is rather absolutely constrained (in non-valuing).

Indeed. But the question is if there is not some way in which the will is irresistible--in which a self-valuing is a self-cause.

Quote :

Quote :: Nietzsche accomplished the first part, the dehumanization of nature, and VO is the naturalization of humanity into this new form.

The latter is the "more fundamental" (or one might say, in this light, further progressed, completed) transvaluation of valuing, to which I referred above.

I cannot agree with this if you mean that Nietzsche just accomplished the first part. Nietzsche neither just accomplished the first part nor was it just Nietzsche who accomplished the first part. The first part has been accomplished by modern natural philosophy as a whole: consider, for example, BGE 22, where Nietzsche only completes that philosophy, by interpreting the course of nature not as lawful but as lawless. "This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!" (WP) 1067): this is the same order as above.

Interesting, very interesting - I consider N's phenomenology to be a radical break with the natural philosophies up to that point.
I perceive the will to power doctrine as a veritable antithesis of Newtonean cosmology; it does away with the notion of cosmic harmony, of its 'perfect balance and unity (its godly nature); In scientific terms, WtP prescribes to Relativity and Quantum Physics. VO, which is WtP advanced, explains and harmonizes both of these immaculately, if I may say so.

I see VO as the first truly natural science; as the first exact formulation based on a truly natural world-view.

N's phenomenology is a radical break with the remnant of Platonism in the natural philosophy of his times.

Quote :

Quote :: Just don't under(e)st(im)ate the refinement of the Heraclituean idea of "fire". We only have fragments left of Heraclitus, after all.

Of course. And what we do have is very much refined, which is in fact why I refer back to it. I suppose what I meant is: with an evolved view of fire; most of all I refer to the gain in knowledge of chemistry, which is a field that would be radically potentiated by VO. (I've considered taking it up as an academic study for this reason)

Bluntly: Self-valuing logic is the logic of fire. All entities are thus "fires", "plasma's".

Quote :: It doesn't help to rephrase "inequality" in terms seemingly less antithetical. "Unequal" simply means "not equal"; "different" simply means "not the same"; "interactive" means "active but not separately so"; "willing to power" means "not impotent to power". The assertion that life is will to power implies that life is not not will to power.

I disagree here - I maintain there is a marked difference in semantic substance between "Not impotent to power" and "willing to power".

In this sense I take language more literally, less logically, less on faith; I do not believe that one can manipulate any phrase without altering its real, synthetic, understood meaning. "This chair is red" is not the same at all as "this chair is not not red". To treat language as if it is mathematics is one of the errors Nietzsche set out to correct - Heidegger represents to me the refinement of the recognition of this task, but VO represents Heideggers never attained goal; an exact formulation of non-mathematical being.

Central to this possibility is the recognition of the central word in all of language - the word that includes the meaning of all other words; "value".

This is probably the most controversial point I've been making, trying to make since 2011: there is a rank order of words. Words are very different species, and I do not mean the categories as we are taught in school. There are very different species among nouns and verbs. "Value" and "Valuing" are, so to say, king-words; their meaning rules over the meaning of other words.

It is true that there is a marked difference in semantic substance between "not impotent to power" and "willing to power". "Impotent to power" is a term Nietzsche's uses for "not willing to power". But I think the rest of what you say is kind of besides the point. You cannot really transcend the law of non-contradiction--the (implicit) concept "not".

Quote :

Quote :: I have not been dismissed, but only respected by the wise and imitated by the envious.

Are those the only two options?

By no means. But I meant to illustrate that I have no reason to doubt my politics. You are case in point; thew fact that you, of all people, recognize my work and its value (given that it claims Nietzsche's heritage), this means that I can not have made too grave mistakes in how I present my philosophy.

Still, that depended on the chance event of my obtaining a copy of Picht's book, which had been recommended to me by Lampert. If you're going to keep depending on such things, you may at least want to sing a hymn to Nemesis.

Quote :

Quote :: But yes, this is precisely because I make no secret about what I am: a lord of mind (Mannaz, Man), an incarnation of world-fire. It is I, a being of all consuming passion and royal honor, who have forged this, not some anonymous lab-coat.

Yes (though it's ironic that it was you who quite brilliantly concluded, a couple of years ago, that the contemporary equivalent to the Medieval philosopher's exoteric guise of the priest was that of the scientist/scholar; you then seemed more inclined than me to adopt that guise,

At that point I was vet much weakened, and I was hypothetically entertaining the idea of such a role in terms of our mutually attempted, tentative framework of political philosophy, which was all in terms of Humanarchy. In my writing I've always represented the head of Zeus, which is to say Pallas Athena; and I will never actually be able to present a lab-coat, and I will also never want to hide myself. If someone ends up killing me for being too dangerous, I'll be in good company.

In Hades, yes...

Quote :

Quote :: No mediocre man could address the concept of value in such a majestic, naturalizing fashion. In this sense VO is a selecting device and only fit for our people -- who are thereby defined.

But what about those in between the mediocre and such exceptions? Those who are potentially exceptional?

Capable and I have concerned ourselves with such people in the first years. Sometimes they turn out to be brilliant, but do so on their own accord, and rather in spite of our intended diplomacies. For the most part, people are nowhere near ready to commit to a form of thinking this comprehensive, a form that draws so much of themselves into their thoughts.

Understanding VO requires a great degree of freedom from hypocrisy. "Our people" are foremost the Frank (and free-to-themselves).

Quote :: By the way, that part about "M! M!" was an allusion to a story about the logical positivists (Russell etc.). A bunch of them had got together and were trying to establish a completely logical philosophy. One of them was given the task of yelling "M!" whenever any of them suggested anything metaphysical. Soon, they changed this to yelling "not M!" when any of them suggested something non-metaphysical.

I will let my imagination wander about what these non-metaphysical suggestions might have been, in good old Vienna, where this philosophy was born.

And really, this is something I want and expect for us - a physical stronghold. I want philosophy to wear a crown. It must inspire envy in the unwashed. Death to the ascetic form of the philosopher as outcast. I want the philosophers to have lovers, to own castles -- I want them to thrive. The Othala of my politics: the luxury wherewith the philosopher may surround and adorn himself, as representing the esteem in which society holds him; this will be the mark of ascending culture. It is precisely the superior role of the philosopher that needs to be recognized if a culture is to be serious at all.

Very central to our task is thus the freedom from shame because of our pride. If I can not speak for you here, then hear this: very central to my task is to not be ashamed of my pride. Let others be ashamed of their lack if it, their lack of reason for it!

And let them withdraw into the shrubbery, and gossip; rather that they stay far away than that they disturb the glorious company I can afford to keep in this exalted condition, which, when explicitly cultivated, is an effective means to keep away the sordid. If I comported myself modestly, I would find myself unbearably pretentious, and a hypocrite. It is nature's way of isolating, selecting.

My antitheses are Hume and Socrates.

I agree with this. Thus in my last psychedelic trip, after reflecting on the question whether Strauss's or Nietzsche's political philosophy is wiser at this point, I wrote this to you (in Dutch):

I think we should risk it and no longer hide philosophy's world-affirmation, as Strauss still thought, but bring it to publicity in its full glory--magnificence, splendour--, even though we thereby risk the most complete wipeout of every trace of there ever having been philosophy on earth--the whole tradition, for example the fragments of Heraclitus. And who knows whether, if we provoke such a cataclysm, there will not afterwards be people who shall embrace the fragments of, for example, Nietzsche's works as sayings, proverbs, folk-lore. I think that, if man is still not ready for the truth regarding philosophy, he may just as well be decimated. But let us initially try not to incite him to envy (invidia) but to jealousy, zealousness--try to incite him to zealously strive for our heights, or at least higher heights than his normal level, and for making such heights possible. In order that mankind may one day, as Nietzsche puts it in I think Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, as a whole look forward to its necessary down-going, just as I now look forward to my down-going.

::

"As the sun set on Homer's world Socrates prepared its rise on Plato's. He knew the immensity of what he was doing; he prostrated himself before Adrasteia knowing that a time would come when Adrasteia would condemn him in order to raise what would succeed him--condemn him as he found it necessary to condemn Homer." (Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, pp. 336-37.)

Subject: Re: Value Philosophy Sat Sep 05, 2015 3:23 pm

Here is the elephant in the room, Baudrillard knew it: humans today are quite capable of worthy earth valuing such as Eros, they do it every day on MDMA in raves. This simply isn't enough.

Nietzsche knew that the reason they go no further is a cowardice more than a blindness.

It is futile to will society to assume worth as human. Most important pop artists tried and the best eventually killed themselves.

Nietzsche knew that old rituals will not do. People are wise to some essential part of them, and anyway, nothing is worthier than evolution.

The elephant in the room has only been called out by Sawelios because only he is naive enough to see it as relatively simple, or thinks it is a matter of willing society to assume worth as human: politics. Actually, there is no political philosophy, philisophy's only politics is to ensure its continuance.

But a politics for the philosophers, this is a task most worthy.

People will be people. This conclusion was wrought out by FC earlier, but I wanted to point out that what a philosopher must do, the reason Capable is so important to me, is ensure the politics of philosophy always supercede the politics for philosophers.

Orpheus civilizing nature is Zarathustra if he had not been up on a mountain but in a forest. Welcome to philosophy, would you like a glass of water?

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