“Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those judgments of values, ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’? And what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves? Have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being?”
Looking at this question from Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche, my take on this matter is when we look at Hiroshima, are we actually debating objective ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ or are we just looking at two different power structures justifying their own survival and dominance?
As for which I embrace? I think I would’ve pressed the button too because that is war, and no ‘morals’ exist in war if any exist at all in the first place.
There’s a scene from Godzilla Minus One that keeps coming back to me. At one point, the main character says he wonders if might have been killed and the things he’s seeing are the last images produced by his dying brain. The world he’s in has been reduced to rubble by the atomic bombs. When you’re up close, seeing people who have lost everything, talk of power structures doesn’t mean anything.
I think the conflict I’m talking about in the OP is between a view of earth from outer space, and a view of human life up close. Morality starts with the latter. Do you agree with that?
Well, I agree that proximity to suffering changes how we view moral questions because standing among the victims is very different from viewing the conflict as historical or a geopolitical event. Where I hesitate is saying that morality therefore starts there. Does the fact that something evokes compassion tell us whether it’s “good” or “evil”? Or does it tell us something about how our morals arise? I’m being careful here because I don’t understand whether that judgment is objective truths or historically evolved value systems.
Normally I’m wary of secondary sources, but Daniel Smith is an excellent interpreter of Deleuze. I browsed Deleuze 10 years ago and didn’t think much of him. Then I came back to him through online philosophy groups. One of them made its way through Anti-Oedipus one paragraph a week, taking 6 months to complete the book, and then read it again. One thing that book, and those he wrote with Guattari, are not is superficial or intellectually thin. I may differ with Deleuze over many aspects of his ideas, but there are not many philosophical writers whose texts earn and reward that level of close reading.
Just thinking in terms of acceptance, we may accept things from a broad historical view (the view from outer space), that we couldn’t accept up close.
When we abstract away from real actions, which moral rules are trying to do, we end up with nothing meaningful.
Thinking about events in terms of grief, and rage, and pain, in terms of what we can and can’t accept, doesn’t build a ladder for us to abstract moral truths. But isn’t it the beginning of what most people mean by morality?
Is the Will to power about outgrowing oneself, or about is it about dominating others?
A cancer might be seen as the prefect implementation of the Will to Power, overcoming itself in order to grow and dominate its surrounds, demonstrating creativity by evading the immune system, resisting apoptosis, or inducing blood vessel growth. It breaks away from the constraints imposed on the cells surrounding it, overcomming contact inhibition, growth-factor dependence, programmed cell death, and tissue boundaries.
Only to kill itself along with its host.
The usual retort is that the cancer fails as a counterexample to the Will to Power precisely because it kills itself, it fails to affirm life. But this can be recognised only after the fact, after the death of the host.
Appeals to the Will to Power, then, cannot tell us what to do now, only what we should have done.
Well, psychologically I agree that it’s probably where moral reflection begins for many people. But the origins of a moral value and its justification are different questions.