Ivan's devil and Nietzsche

[Fyodorovitch]

hey,
     I just read TBK and i love it. No suprise.  But i was wondering about a resemblance between the old stories that ivans devil repeats and Nietzsche.  The geological Cataclsym to be specific. I think this section sounds a whole lot like Nietzsche's 'thus spoke zarathustra.'
  Suff like 'The new man may well become the man-god" and "old morality of the slave man" sound an awful lot like Nietzsche's overman and slave morality.  Now i know that Dostoevsky couldn't have read thus spoke zarathustra' since it was written after he died.  And i havn'e read a lot of Nietzche so i don't know if the overman and all was echoed in any of his other books.
  But it seems kinda cool that dostoevsky may have anticipated or responded to a whole anti-god theory before it was even published.
 

[Fyodorovitch]

oops, i called 'thus spoke zarathustra an anti-god theory.  Let me correct that. make it 'alternate theory to what man should believe in and aim for'

[underworld men]

Hey (not meaning to kill this thread and all) but I have a question..

Was old Freddy Neitzsche
a pagan
or an
athiest?

[Fyodorovitch]

Huh, i'm not rightly sure. I'm most certainly not an expert on Nietzsche, but i'd say he definitly did not believe in God. i think he thought that religion held men back from their potential, kept them thinking of the next world instead of this world.  

I dunno if i'd call him pagan, he didn't seem to believe in the supernatural.  I'm not sure Nietzche really knew what the superman was, i think he just knew what it wasn't. He offered another set of values not a religion. a purpose not a god. So the term pagan doesn't seem to apply.

But this really isn't my area (can you tell i'm blundering) so please correct me if i'm wrong or jsut don't make sense.

[Fyodorovitch]

oh i forgot, the superman wasn't like clark kent.  It wasn't really clarified, but i don't think that Nietzsche meant that the superman could fly.  I think it more refers to the kind of guy that doesn't care what society thinks of him,  excessively individualistic, and free.  But i really am blundering here, Nietzsche isn't my forte.

But it kinda gets into that without god everything is lawful bit too. Since Nietzsche overman wouldn't care for the values taught by society. but would make his own

[littlefermat]

I'm not much of a specialist in Nietzsche either, but I'm quite certain that he believed in God--for the sake of argument.  In other words, the question of God's existence was more or less worthless to him.  A more appropriate question he would consider would be something along the lines of "What is a healthy way to live one's life?"  

Seen that way, Nietzsche was more concerned with living a full, worthwhile life.  He viewed Christianity as essentially being a religion that is diametrically opposed to that.  That's really where his anti-Christianity views stem from.  

In short, he saw Christianity as simply warping healthy values of life (for instance, Christians value pity, charity meekness and "love of man for god's sake") as key elements in their religion.   But one might ask why "pity" or "charity" as values we should hold?  Why don't we value the individual who has developed his abilities as a human to his fullest attention?  Why not value the artist or the intellectual?  

Bertrand Russell succinctly made this point that "There's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intellectual worth."  i.e. nothing can be found that praises Greek or Roman ideas like "arete," etc.

As for his ideas on the overman.  I understand it to basically consist of three points:

i)  Reject and overcome nihilism.

ii) Reject the old values.

iii) Be determined to create one's own values and live as a "yesman" to the world (read: eternal recurrence?)

Anyways, these are my (very fragmented) thoughts on this.  I don't know too much on Nietzsche though.  As for the parallels between the Devil/Catacycsm and Overman?  

Yeah, I totally agree that Dostoevsky was very prescient.  I mean he does foresee Nietzsche's line of thought to some degree.  Although, I personally don't know if he really appreciated the sort of critique that Nietzsche ended up making (he hadd passed away at this point).  

But yah, I'm always curious to see what would happen if the two would meet!

[underworld men]

So littlefermat what did you think of Geneology of Morals?

Do you believe as Freddy did that Europe was better off before being infected with Semitic and Mediterianian religion?

As for Bertrand I think he is either a really big prankster or an ignoramus.

Look at his argument on if there is a God... If I came from God then where did God come from?

Well then Bertrand should not have been teaching any Greek logic, because this question is addressed over and over and over again. AKA hypostasis and unmoved mover.

If Bertrand is a prankster I have to ignore him because I can not take him seriously.

If Bertrand is an ignoramus I have to ignore him because I can not take him seriously.

If he criticized then he is allowed to be criticized.

If I criticized then I am allowed to be criticized.

Freddy, Bert have one thing in common they were -pompous.

(Hey me too, probably, but I am no one so what difference does it make?)

[littlefermat]

"So littlefermat what did you think of Geneology of Morals?"

I haven't read it.

"Do you believe as Freddy did that Europe was better off before being infected with Semitic and Mediterianian religion?"

I don't know if Nietzsche ever claimed that Europe was better off before Christianity.  He speaks favorably of the "master morality" but at the same time seems to suggest that the most reasonable approach of all is somewhere in between the "master morality" of the Romans and the "slave morality" of Christianity.

"Look at his argument on if there is a God... If I came from God then where did God come from?"

I read Russell's book, "Why I am not a Christian" awhile back but never found that particular argument.  I remember he argued against any belief in God because, as he saw it, belief in God rested on logical inconsistencies or, in his view, psychological issues that were all unacceptable.

With respect to your exact comment, do you mean, the issue of "First Cause"?  For Russell, he presented the argument that religious people tend to favor.  Namely, "Where did Everything come from?"  

The argument would, in the end, force an individual to accept the existence of a first cause, ie. God.  but then all Russell does is apply that principle one more time to ask "Well, okay, where did God come from then?"  IE. forcing the person of faith to recognize that his entire reasoning is incorrect in the first place.

And yah, philosophers almost always tend to be an arrogant bunch--especially Nietzsche and Russell.

[underworld men]

Really I remember reading that part where he was talking about a conversation he had with his father as a youth.

Oh well I find it all rather strange that one would be willing to base their afterlife on pure reason.

I mean think of house of the dead...Every criminal had a rational for their "deeds" somehow though reason alone has never sufficed. Life is not a statement of a task. Life good or bad is rather beyond logic.

The argument would, in the end, force an individual to accept the existence of a first cause, ie. God.  but then all Russell does is apply that principle one more time to ask "Well, okay, where did God come from then?"  IE. forcing the person of faith to recognize that his entire reasoning is incorrect in the first place.

This is my point, by the statement above Russell was attacking Aristotle. I don't and can not find or accept Russell as a satifactory replacement or next best thing to Aristotle. PERIOD. That's like comparing eminem to Beethoven. And Russell ain't no Beethoven.

I don't know if Nietzsche ever claimed that Europe was better off before Christianity.  He speaks favorably of the "master morality" but at the same time seems to suggest that the most reasonable approach of all is somewhere in between the "master morality" of the Romans and the "slave morality" of Christianity.

So what Freddy have you read? I mean this is like the first page of the Anti-christ.

[sadhu]

Hallo all,

Forgive me if you will for a rather lengthy response to this topic, but Dostoevsky has interested me greatly since reading C&P and TBK a couple of weeks ago.  I have contrarily been reading Nietzsche for about 5 years now, on and off, and am particularly interested in contrasting my opinions of the two.

Fyodorovitch, as regards your question on parallels between Ivan's devil and Nietzsche, I have a few observations.

First, noting the 'eternal recurrence', an interesting perspective can be gained which I feel distinguishes Nietzsche's philosophy from Ivan's devil in at least one important way.  Consider if you will the following segment from Will to Power:

"This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses, or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by 'nothingness' as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be 'empty' here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a some of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its course and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my 'beyond good and evil,' without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself--do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? -- This world is the will to power -- and nothing besides!" - Nietzsche

(For anyone interested, more evidence of Nietzsche's own importance given to the subject of a circular fashion to his philosophy, can be recognized best in many of his instinctively-contradictory aphorisms.)

Accordingly, I find contrast between Nietzsche's necessarily climactic overman and the linear ends of Ivan's 'devil', observable in the following passage from TBK immediately following the devil's recollection of Ivan's 'Geological Cataclysm':

"The question now is, my young thinker reflected, is it possible that such a period will ever come?  If it does, everything is determined and humanity is settled for ever.  But as, owing to man's inveterate stupidity, this cannot come about for at least a thousand years, everyone who recognizes the truth even now may legitimately order his life as he pleases, on the new principles." - Dostoevsky

There is further consideration to be given to the topic of Socialism throughout at least C&P as well as TBK.  Socialism, the Grand Inquisitor, etc.; all giving credibility to a linear progression in humanity's development, rather than a circuitous form.

Secondly, as littlefermat has already done well explaining, Nietzsche presents no metaphysical worldview.  This in opposition to the implications of Ivan's devil, or the pious Alyosha - bluntly established as the hero of TBK.

As for similarities, they are even more clear from Ivan's devil to Nietzsche's personal ideals than they are to the relatively few mentions of Nietzsche's 'overman'.

Perhaps the greatest similarity between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky is the depth of each author, and the determination to document their inner-conflicts with such talent and notable results.

sadhu

[underworld men]

OK then sadhu what did you think of geneology of morals?