Anti-Intellectualism

[OldScratch]

Sure, I'm familiar with Nietzsche. However, I haven't read any of his works in a couple of years.

Ok, so point me to some relevant passages, unless of course you're expecting me to digest the entire Nietzsche canon in order to comprehend the argument that's supposed to support what Norsemaiden quoted. Can the argument be summed up? Can you sum it up for me? If not, is there somewhere I can look to find a summary of it?

Forgive me if my response was far too general. The "Faith..." quote is from 'The Anti-Christ' section 52. In context, it is clearly an attack on Christian 'faith' specifically(ie. blind faith) which begins with the assertion that, "Christianity also stands in opposition to all intellectual wellconstitutedness..." The central idea being that this "faith" is nothing more than the ecclesiastical or priestly rationale for denying scientific "truths" for instance - for putting obstacles in the path of those who would seek more tangible truths.
I am no scholar, and do not wish to interpret Nietzsche as I am not up to the task. I only responded as I originally noted this quote(in another thread) as a summation of my own view on the mystical and divine - not what Nietzsche meant by it.


[/QUOTE=Cythraul]
That's absurd. A single statement does not constitute an argument. If I told you there was a penguin standing outside of your front door would you take that as constituting an argument for the truth of said claim? I would think not. Most likely, you'd expect me to give you some reason for believing that there's a penguin standing outside of your door.[/QUOTE]


I was certainly not implying that this single quote, out of context no less, constituted an argument at all. My point was more that Nietzsche's body of work, for me anyway, was/is groundbreaking in making an intellectual and philosophical case against religion on the whole(though this is of course only one aspect of his philosophy). Though he specifically focused on Judeo-Christianity, I see no reason that his observations wouldn't apply to all 'Faiths.' This is my observation only.
Arguing the 'truth' of a statement declaring "faith" as an act or theoretically not wishing to know what is true is beyond my philosophical capabilities. It is true to me - I can only explain what it means in that respect. Again, I originally used the quote as another discussion brought to my mind relative to the topic at hand - It wasn't a declaration, but a expression of my belief...or lack thereof, as it were.

 

[Norsemaiden]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true".

I would define "faith" as being a strong belief that requires no evidence for, and also heeds no evidence against that which the faith is invested in. Most religions require faith on this scale. To doubt and question is to lose faith, because you are allowing the possibility that the idea is faulty. Some people adopt a faith, thus having to go through some kind of mental decision process - others are brought up in a faith and never go through any kind of rationalisation before giving their minds up to the idea/s that constitute that faith. Once any mental process has been completed and a decision made to accept a faith - the truly faithful resists any further consideration. The faith is a conviction. The faithful person is closed to attempts to disuade them and has effectively surrendered their mind and shut their eyes to any alternative that could bring into question the accuracy of that which they have faith in. They therefore can be said not to want to know what is true. Yet truth can sometimes force its way where it is not welcome - causing a loss of faith.

Clear now?

Nietzsche also said that truth never clung to the arm of a man with convictions - which is saying the same thing as the initial observation about faith.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Yes, Nietzsche is typically sententious here and, characteristically, the quote is an antilogy. Elsewhere he reasons that any truth that threatens life should be shunned as undesirable or even erroneous. The wisdom of Silenus, 'that it would be better for man to never have been' forms the great despairing nihilism against which the 'in spite of' of Nietzsche's philosophy is set. Questioning and inquiry arise from the death of God; the greatest tragedy of mankind, veneficious to purpose and breeding apathy and nihilism. It is only through the doctrine of eternal recurrence that this tragedy leads to the infinite.

Truth for Nietzsche is only that which loves life. Wisdom should dictate the bounds of knowledge - there are some things that man should not wish to know.

Does Nietzsche ever actually say that there are some things that man should not wish to know - or is that an interpretation?

There are some truths that I know and that I don't want certain others to know. Not petty things like my pin number of my credit card - but other much more powerful ideas. But I can't think of anything that it would be better for me not to know unless it was something directly affecting one's mood in such a way as to sap the strength and will to live - eg. how and when you are going to die (which may or may not be an unpleasant fact) how long the planet really has left before mankind irretrievably messes up the ecology, for example. But any unpleasant truths that one can act upon and use to focus one's priorities (the very kind of truths that mankind most flees from) - those we really should wish to know. Many of these truths "threaten life" but that is especially why we should know about it in many instances And of course we wish to know all the nice, positive things too if we are psychologically healthy!

Nietzsche is the very opposite of someone who advocates we wrap ourselves in the comfortable cotton wool of the truths that are comfortable, to the exclusion of the truths that are terrifying.

 

[judas69]

It seems to me that you're holding tight to this truth like it's a secret?

If it has to do with faith and God, no amount of logic will convince someone who is not ready and willing to be convinced; and this goes both ways.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Judas69 explain what you mean "this goes both ways" . I don't understand.

 

[judas69]

Well, just as logic won't convince those of faith, faith won't convince those of logic.

That's all I meant by it going "both ways".

 

[Norsemaiden]

Well, just as logic won't convince those of faith, faith won't convince those of logic.

That's all I meant by it going "both ways".

Very true. But really one should guard against being "convinced" at all in the most exact sense of the word. Being "convinced" = "faith"

Christians often say "Knowledge is the enemy of faith" - and they mean they prefer faith. This is like saying "I don't want facts to get in the way of my delusion".

 

[Horus]

Very true. But really one should guard against being "convinced" at all in the most exact sense of the word. Being "convinced" = "faith"

Christians often say "Knowledge is the enemy of faith" - and they mean they prefer faith. This is like saying "I don't want facts to get in the way of my delusion".

It's also like saying "I'd rather be stupid than smart."
It's amazing that people can say something like that, and most likely, not even realize that they're calling themselves stupid.

 

[judas69]

The whole reason believers have faith is because knowledge is incomplete and misleading in their view, that the truth is not something obvious but something unseen (and even unknowable in some respects) so, I think you are belittling their position without making an effort to understand it. The ontological arguement afterall is logically sound.

It's interesting though, when comparing the believer and the skeptic, the skeptic is the one who adheres most to the literal, the established, when in truth it has always been the individual free-thinker who moves beyond the superficialities of what he can touch and see and eventually changes the mindset of the group and established theory.

 

[10293847]

Very true. But really one should guard against being "convinced" at all in the most exact sense of the word. Being "convinced" = "faith"

I don't think that being, "convinced" should be read as something that can't be changed and looked down upon if changed. I think smarter people are aware that change happens, and when this change happens, it will probably change my opinion of what it changed.

But i'm not sure if, "faith" is a good word to describe the thought of being, "convinced" because if something is true at a certain moment, it's solid. It's a foundation to build upon, and one wouldn't see this as faith, but as it being self-evident. I think the word "faith" tends to imply that something is not provable, yet if I am convinced of it as being true, is it faith? I don't think it is, until, and if, shown otherwise.

 

[Norsemaiden]

I don't think that being, "convinced" should be read as something that can't be changed and looked down upon if changed. I think smarter people are aware that change happens, and when this change happens, it will probably change my opinion of what it changed.

But i'm not sure if, "faith" is a good word to describe the thought of being, "convinced" because if something is true at a certain moment, it's solid. It's a foundation to build upon, and one wouldn't see this as faith, but as it being self-evident. I think the word "faith" tends to imply that something is not provable, yet if I am convinced of it as being true, is it faith? I don't think it is, until, and if, shown otherwise.

Good point. At least some kind of analysis must have been entered into (even if it consisted of: should I think this is true? Yes I should because to question it is against the law) before accepting a point and being convinced of it. When people say they have faith or are convinced or believe something they are generally just using the word loosely, because they really mean that they are open to change their mind potentially. But there are others who really won't change their mind come what may.

 

[judas69]

If to be convinced is to be gullible and to take things on faith, then to not be convinced, in much the same way, is to be just as blind though stubborn instead of gullible.

The bottom line is, being convinced about something could both happen for reasons of superficiality or careful study so, to equate "faith" to being "convinced" about something, seems wrong to me.

If it weren't the case and faith = convincability (if that's a word) you'd be implying that Truth is somehow less important than sticking with ones preconceived ideas on a subject, or that our first impulse in what we believe is always correct, and I don't think you mean to imply either.

 

[OldScratch]

It's interesting though, when comparing the believer and the skeptic, the skeptic is the one who adheres most to the literal, the established, when in truth it has always been the individual free-thinker who moves beyond the superficialities of what he can touch and see and eventually changes the mindset of the group and established theory.

True enough. Scientific discovery has often evolved just this way, despite great scepticism.

 

[Norsemaiden]

If to be convinced is to be gullible and to take things on faith, then to not be convinced, in much the same way, is to be just as blind though stubborn instead of gullible.

The bottom line is, being convinced about something could both happen for reasons of superficiality or careful study so, to equate "faith" to being "convinced" about something, seems wrong to me.

If it weren't the case and faith = convincability (if that's a word) you'd be implying that Truth is somehow less important than sticking with ones preconceived ideas on a subject, or that our first impulse in what we believe is always correct, and I don't think you mean to imply either.

I certainly don't imply either! Richard Dawkins says that scientists always have to consider everything as having a degree of probablility over how true it is. It is unscientific to say that anything is true to the extent that it cannot be reconsidered or modified under any circumstances ever. This is also why people with a religious faith make poor scientists - there are certain areas of investigation that they cannot bring themselves to consider. It can be said that it is a human failing to be like this to some extent - but with religous people the amount of illogicality that is given precedence over far more probable truths is higher than in those who attempt to be free thinkers.

 

[judas69]

This is also why people with a religious faith make poor scientists - there are certain areas of investigation that they cannot bring themselves to consider.

So basically you're saying that every PhD holding Math and Physics professor I had in University, who happened to have faith in something greater, somehow managed to fool everyone by hidding their intellectual handicap?

A side note: physics, math and logic afterall, are fundamental to the cosmological arguement.

It can be said that it is a human failing to be like this to some extent - but with religous people the amount of illogicality that is given precedence over far more probable truths is higher than in those who attempt to be free thinkers.

Do you think this post is perhaps a little bit arrogant and short-sighted on your part? I mean, all you're doing here is projecting; attacking the intelligence of all believers on the basis of your own ignorance and even going so far as to consider them failures as human beings.

All I see is unsubstantiated bias and crass over-generalization. For a non-believer, I would have expected more.

 

[Silver Incubus]

I certainly don't imply either! Richard Dawkins says that scientists always have to consider everything as having a degree of probablility over how true it is. It is unscientific to say that anything is true to the extent that it cannot be reconsidered or modified under any circumstances ever. This is also why people with a religious faith make poor scientists - there are certain areas of investigation that they cannot bring themselves to consider. It can be said that it is a human failing to be like this to some extent - but with religous people the amount of illogicality that is given precedence over far more probable truths is higher than in those who attempt to be free thinkers.

This goes onto what I have been thinking about this disscusion. It seems that some people make a religion out of science as being something that has truths, but in face it is only a series of tools that work in the context they are theorized to work in. People who beleive that science is truth put faith into science, and it will cause the same problems religion does.

I really think that people against intellectualism are people who don't think that because they do something or have interests that aren't considered intellecutal, that they are inferior, or any less of a human being. I am all for judging someone by their character, which in most cases both sides have thier good and bad points.
Just as there are some intellectuals who have their head up their ass so far that they beleive their shit doesn't stink, the same way the moronic peoples levels of stupidity, ability to think and make rational decisions can confound and frustrate you.

There has to be some form of middle ground. I am a big fan of humility, especially when you know you are smarter, and a more diverse thinker.

 

[Nile577]

Does Nietzsche ever actually say that there are some things that man should not wish to know - or is that an interpretation?

There are some truths that I know and that I don't want certain others to know. Not petty things like my pin number of my credit card - but other much more powerful ideas. But I can't think of anything that it would be better for me not to know unless it was something directly affecting one's mood in such a way as to sap the strength and will to live - eg. how and when you are going to die (which may or may not be an unpleasant fact) how long the planet really has left before mankind irretrievably messes up the ecology, for example. But any unpleasant truths that one can act upon and use to focus one's priorities (the very kind of truths that mankind most flees from) - those we really should wish to know. Many of these truths "threaten life" but that is especially why we should know about it in many instances And of course we wish to know all the nice, positive things too if we are psychologically healthy!

Nietzsche is the very opposite of someone who advocates we wrap ourselves in the comfortable cotton wool of the truths that are comfortable, to the exclusion of the truths that are terrifying.

For Nietzsche: Life > Truth.

His main target is faith. This includes faith in TRUTH. Nietzsche castigates truth seekers, nihilists and atheists as leading a life of veiled asceticism in which truth replaces God and becomes more important that life:

“These nay-sayers and outsiders of today who are unconditional on one point -- their insistence on intellectual cleanliness; these hard, severe, abstinent, heroic spirits who constitute the honor of our age; all these pale atheists, anti-Christians, immoralists, nihilists, these skeptics, ephectics, hectics of spirit, ... these last idealists of knowledge, within whom alone intellectual conscience is today alive and well, — they certainly believe they are as completely liberated from the ascetic ideal as possible, these “free, very free spirits”; and yet they themselves embody it today and perhaps they alone. [...] They are far from being free spirits: for they still have faith in truth.

For him, the 'truth of life' is the wisdom of Silenus (it would be better for man not to be) Wisdom should dictate that we do not wish to know this.

The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live — that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life.To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil.” (Beyond Good and Evil, 333)

The hour is late so I hope you'll excuse me linking you to an article by way of finishing this post: http://atheism.about.com/od/philosophyepistemology/a/Nietzsche.htm

 

[Nile577]

Does Nietzsche ever actually say that there are some things that man should not wish to know - or is that an interpretation?

"I want, once and for all, not to know many things.— Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight Of The Idols, Maxim 5

 

[Norsemaiden]

Thanks for that Nile.

I am continually frustrated by people's fear of knowing certain things. "Yea, ye also, my friends, will be alarmed by my wild wisdom; and perhaps ye will flee therefrom, along with mine enemies." (From Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Nietzsche may well have been one who would flee, ironically.

It seems that the knowlege we can handle is specific to the individual that we are however. Some people need to know things that make them stronger or give them a sense of purpose, but the same knowlege wouldn't do anything to help another person. We all believe in illusions to varying extents, just so we can cope with life.

The "truth" as declared by a religion is supposed to stay as it is permanently. Thus it is often a lie. The "truth" in science can be reconsidered and changed for a new "truth" because science is flexible like that. In fact, a scientist should only deal in assumed truth, but be fully prepared to change their mind in the face of challenging evidence - so there should be no lying, just the occasional misjudgment.

 

[judas69]

Is pretentiousness in philosophy, academia and life, harmless? Potentially harmful? Opening the door to (or maybe a symptom of the door having already been open by) pride, egotism, dishonesty? Maybe you feel this a non-issue or such folk are entitled to their "pompous" disposition? Maybe it's much too rare and unimportant to even bother? Maybe then we should consider it an unfavourable trait like someone who stutters, and instead of letting this sort of thing get in the way their presentation to the reader, the listener, the student, we should instead focus on their ideas and arguements? Maybe the intellectual type is like a member of any other club? Maybe then, they deserve their uniform, their game ..our trust.