What did Nietzsche mean when he said:?
"if truth is a woman what then?" & "my genius is in my nostrils" If someone could please explain it would be a great help, thanks :)
What did Nietzsche exactly mean when he said, "Science is just another perspective?"
That we shouldn’t look up to science as a representation of absolute truth, and that we should take a perspectivist view of life.He didn’t believe in the institutionalised and dogmatic way science is portrayed either, as he argued in Beyond Good and Evil.For example, when looking at music, he thought that there are numerous ways of appreciating it. Dissecting it mechanically or mathematically corrupts its value. Instead, people should strive to immerse themselves in the artistic value of music rather than analysing it scientifically, or to assert the scientific interpretation of music as superior to any other interpretation.This isn’t to say that he was against science entirely, though. He was intrigued by the dynamist school of thought which pervades the natural sciences, such as the law of the conservation of energy, and matter embodying energy and Becoming rather than Being. He was quite fond of physics and physiology; though he did not agree with the mechanical view of the world as comprised of and working with fixed entities that never change (pre-dynamism).At the end of the day, science depends on axioms, which means that its ideas are not something that can be proven: unprovable assumptions are always made for the sake of going further. This puts it at equal level or value as an experiential perspective, for example, towards life. Nietzsche thought that it was not the ultimate resolution to all ‘problems’ as it is sometimes made out to be, not that it lacked value.Here’s a cool paper about Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence and dynamism: Zarathustra, the Moment, and Eternal Recurrence of the Same: Nietzsche's Ontology of Time
What did Nietzsche mean exactly by "downgoing" in Thus Spake Zarathustra?
My translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra might be a little different as the concept you refer to is "going under" rather than "downgoing." Zarathustra feels (during the prologue) that he has overcome something. Then he decides to go down the mountain and share his realization with everyone else. On the mountain he was the "overman" but by going down the mountain back to everyone else, he "goes under" and becomes just a man again. Nietzsche would say that we must do this. It is the essence of life to overcome oneself and once that has been achieved, we must "go under" so that we once again can overcome. edit: Thank you, Christopher.
What did Nietzsche mean when he said "if you go to see a woman do not forget the whip"?
It is important to remember that this was said to Zarathustra by an old woman, so it is not something actually said by Nietzsche. We do not insist that literary authors believe everything that is uttered by a character in their books, and so it is likewise ludicrous to insist that Nietzsche meant "just what it says". The section in which this quote appears contains a discussion on what motivates women, which is love. A whip is used drives horses forward, and the obvious conclusion is that the whip the old lady refers to is love. This is a pretty simplistic reading, but at least it acknowledges the difference between a statement made by a character in a book and a philosophical statement made by a philosopher.
What did Nietzsche meant when he said "live dangerously"?
Full quote by Freidrich Neitzsche in ‘The Gay science'“For believe me! The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!”Live dangerously means burn your life's candle from both ends!Don't get stuck into a pattern,a position ,respectability or what society dearly calls ,” Responsibility”!Experiment with life! Make this existence a laboratory and carry out all kinds of experiments in all possible directions. Move beyond good and evil, good and bad, moral and immoral!Question authority, tradition, modernity, morality, civilization, marriage, family, courtship and all the ideas society considers sacred!(Only sacred things are worth touching.) Don't bend to Society's dictats or fit into it rather look into it fearlessly and if any idea doesn't correspond to your idea of truth , abandon it, burn it up.(Dead ought to be dead!)Create new values for yourself which are life-affirming, which celebrates life! Stop looking for heavenly bliss into some other world as prophets have promised in their “unholy” books!Living dangerously is about killing the Camel like nature within us which is docile, obedient, a beast of burden and coming out in the open fearlessly like a lion roaring your way through life!In the end, it's about being yourself. Living dangerously is the only way you can become who you are!
What did Nietzsche mean when he said "if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"?
The title of the book is “Beyond Good and Evil” and I’m noticing a lot of “evil” coming up in the answers. (I just feel like that’d be taking the words much too literally)"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."Nietzsche was a nihilist, meaning the he believed in the meaninglessness of life, the world, and he rejected moral standards.I think he means that if one is faced with the illusion of truth (or the illusion of the existence of the moral truth; that is, the ugly monster) and is fighting it, sooner or later, he would find himself complying with the supposed “truth” because there isn’t a monster to fight in the first place.In contrast, if one is faced with nothingness (a world with no god, no moral truth, nothing), he or she will start believing the somethingness out of the nothingness. The presence of nothing would seem to be looking back at you (see how I said presence when it should be the lack of presence of even the “nothing”) and the nothing has become a something to you.To put it in easier terms, (we should establish, at least for now, that the world does not contain an ultimate truth) to fill up our void from the lack of “truth,” we’ve started to establish religion and set up moral standards, to strive for a further truth, when in fact, there isn’t a truth or a higher being that looks after us. The void from the nothingness started to feel like something and we’ve established something out of nothing.But again, this is only my interpretation and what would I know? I’m just a highschooler.
What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"?
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” - Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 125 "The Madman").What Nietzsche is expressing this passage (and the two subsequent declarations of God's death in Thus Spoke Zarathustra) is not his belief in the actual death of an actual deity (my understanding is that despite his Lutheran upbringing he was an atheist); rather, he is expressing lament and fear that the world is turning away from an objective foundation for morality. Since, he argues, people no longer believe in God they can no longer recognize absolutes with respect to morality. Of course, he was not a moral relativist, he is not arguing there are no absolutes with respect to morality. He is railing against the rise of moral relativism and nihilism. Nietzsche's realization that faith in God could not survive as the basis for morality and his fear that the loss of faith would lead to widespread nihilism is what pushed him to search for a more reliable, fundamental, basis for objective morality, which he eventually developed into his theories on the will to power.My guess is someone will give a much better answer to this... I'm just a fan of Nietzsche and in continual struggle to understand him but this is my understanding at present.