from Wikipedia:Nietzsche, "Will to Power":493 (1885) Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
534 (1887-1888) The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power.
Post-politics refers to the critique of the emergence, in the post-Cold War period, of a politics of consensus on a global scale: the dissolution of the Eastern Communist bloc following the collapse of the Berlin Wall instituted a promise for post-ideological consensus. The political development in post-communist countries went two different directions depending on the approach each of them take on dealing with the communist party members. Active decommunisation process took place in Eastern European states which later joined EU. While in Russia and majority of former USSR republics communists became one of many political parties on equal grounds.
Generated by a cohort of radical philosophers – namely Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek – and their concern with politics as the institution of radical, active equality, this critique claims that the post-ideological politics of consensus has occasioned the systematic foreclosure of the properly political moment: with the institution of a series of new “post-democratic" governmental techniques, internal politics proper is reduced to social administration. Meanwhile, with the rise of the postmodernist "politics of self" comes a concomitant new "politics of conduct", in which political values are replaced by moral ones (what Chantal Mouffe terms "politics in the register of morality").
---
Populism, as the residue of the properly political, is the ultimate symptom of the post-political condition. Firstly, the post-political consensus itself tends towards populist gestures as a substitute for the properly political. Secondly, popular frustration with the confines of consensual politics inevitably gives way to alternatives that, faced with the depoliticising strategies of the consensual order, often take a populist form.
One of the most characteristic features of populism is its invocation of a common, external threat or enemy. The homogenising, unifying effect of this invocation is what produces the mythical – but more importantly reactionary and invariably exclusionary – notion of "the people" that is so central to the populist gesture. Swyngedouw shows that in climate politics "the people" becomes a united "humanity" facing a common predicament, regardless of the differentiated responsibility for and capacity to respond to anthropogenic climate change. Following other scholars who have analysed the alarmist tone of climate discourse, Swyngedouw also underlines that the millenarian, apocalyptic imaginaries called forth by the latter create an external threat, while also giving way to an elite-led, almost crusade-like action (the latter being a further classic feature of populism). The environmental consensus therefore entails a populist dimension.
Meanwhile, as Žižek has shown, disaffection with the consensus tends to favour Far Right movements, whose populist tactics respond to the same need to substitute the properly political described above; and whose violent gestures mimic the properly political impetus towards antagonism. On the other hand, properly political claims that resist both consensual strategies of incorporation and what Žižek has called "the populist temptation" are made audible only as violent or fanatical outbursts. In the environmental arena, media coverage of "resource wars" is a prime example of disputes that may well have a properly political dimension (though may not, of course, necessarily be progressive or without populist dimensions, of course) being neutralised in this way.
15 comments:
OFF-TOPIC, BUT I JUST HAVE TO SAY IT:
Surprisingly I'm really beginning to warm to Mini Mike.
Anyone who calls "Fat Broads" and "Horse-Faced Lesbians" exactly what they ARE is man after my own heart.
It might be a good idea for President Trump to name Mini Mike as his RUNNING MATE in the Big Election.
];^}>
Vice President Pence could do as well or better as Seretary of State or some other high cabinet official.
Down with bossy DemoBitches and aggressive Horse-Faced Lesbos everywhere!
"534 (1887-1888) The criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power."
Interested in your thoughts regarding this. (I note the irony that the sentiment expressed above does not enhance my feeling of power.) My guess is that he's using "truth" differently to how I use it. For him, is truth just any belief that improves life (hiding a lot of complexity behind the single word "improves")?
Nietzsche's truth is a "subjective" truth, as there are no "objective/ absolute" CERTAIN truths. Science recognizes a 6 sigma proximity to truth, but never a "certainty".
Certainty is considered by some, to be the very opposite of truth.
For as Socrates notes, he's considered the wisest man in all the Hellenes by the gods, because he's the only one who acknowledges that he knows nothing.
Nietzsche WtP 512 (1885) Logic is bound to the condition: assume there are identical cases. In fact, to make possible logical thinking and inferences, this condition must first be treated fictitously as fulfilled. That is: the will to logical truth can be carried through only after a fundamental falsification of all events is assumed. From which it follows that a drive rules here that is capable of employing both means, firstly falsification, then the implementation of its own point of view: logic does not spring from will to truth
Fair enough, you can never be sure of premises in any concrete case. But I'm professionally interested in the truth of conditional statements, so although I appreciate him, we are so often at cross-purposes I find it exceedingly hard to be comfortable with Nietzsche's ideas.
ST. PAUL WRITING to the CORINTHIANS
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
~ 1 Corinthians 13 - KJV
The word CHARITY in this famous passage is generally understood –– and ACCEPTED –– as being synonymous with LOVE.
Failure to be able to appreciate the difference between the humor in a bitingly satirical quip and an earnest statement of genuine feeling shows a want of genuine human feeling.
BEWARE the DOCTRINAIRE
Please try not to be so much like the Jews whose "Talmud," I undertand, consists largely of clever, intelligently phrased arguments AGAINST the self-evident truths contained in their very own TORAH.
Nietzsche is contradicting Plato's Divided Line epistemology and Theory/Hierarchy of Forms. He's a skeptic. But that doesn't make him wrong. For as Plato said (Cratylus)
SOCRATES: Nor can we reasonably say, Cratylus, that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known: but if that which knows and that which is known exists ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux, as we were just now supposing. Whether there is this eternal nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heracleitus and his followers and many others say, is a question hard to determine; and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names: neither will he so far trust names or the givers of names as to be confident in any knowledge which condemns himself and other existences to an unhealthy state of unreality; he will not believe that all things leak like a pot, or imagine that the world is a man who has a running at the nose. This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely to be untrue; and therefore I would not have you be too easily persuaded of it. Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me.
CRATYLUS: I will do as you say, though I can assure you, Socrates, that I have been considering the matter already, and the result of a great deal of trouble and consideration is that I incline to Heracleitus.
SOCRATES: Then, another day, my friend, when you come back, you shall give me a lesson; but at present, go into the country, as you are intending, and Hermogenes shall set you on your way.
CRATYLUS: Very good, Socrates; I hope, however, that you will continue to think about these things yourself.
Ever read Kant's "Observations on the Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful?"
It's all touchy-feely...
@JC: I haven't read much of either, but I've looked at much more Nietzsche than Kant, despite liking most of what I've seen of the latter. I should delve.
@Franco I haven't read the Talmud either, but it sounds brilliant.
The Talmud is DEMONIC, Jez. But you'll have to find that out for yourself –– the hard way as most of us do.
Former, fo Heven's Sake! PLEASE get rid of the UGLY UGLY GEEKY with the glasses!
I'm sick to DEATH of looking at her homely decidedly UNfemuine face every time I look into your blog.
THANK YOU –– even if it is more SLAVOJ!
;)
Post a Comment