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 Originally Posted by wufwugy
I don't know Nietzsche. I know that JP says Nietzsche believed the Judeo-Christian roots of western civilization are dead (or soon to be dead), that this would cause great trouble, and that he spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how the West, that was built on God, could survive without God. Given JP's academic status and interactions with others of high academic status and that I've seen nobody call him on this even though he has said it many times, I just assume it is an accurate representation of Nietzsche. You know much more Nietzsche than I do, what do you think?
I'd say that's an accurate representation of Immanuel Kant.
All the philosophers in the wake of the Age of Enlightenment dealt with that question. Kant famously in the Critique of Pure Reason, Schopenhauer, and obviously Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. I'm going to be super cynical because I'm not really equipped to talk about this. Kant was basically like: how can we do morals without scripture and tried to find moral truths through metaphysics. Nietzsche accuses him of thereby creating a pseudo-religion and claims those universal truths don't exist. While good and bad are useful terms, good and evil are not. Nietzsche goes on to basically say: evil is in the eye of the beholder.
If you want to know why I'm condescending to JP talking about FN as if he was relevant today, just go read a few pages of FN. Thus Spake Zarathustra is FN at his most readable. Beyond Good and Evil tries to expand on the concepts in a more serious manner, but it's still polemical, bombastic and nebulous writing. Anyone who claims to be able to interpret it in absolute ways is most likely talking out of his ass.
These guys came way before modern day genetics, neuroscience and sociobiology. They represent important stepping stones but to go back to them to try to explain morals is like going back to Lamarck to explain evolution.
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