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quotes Barracuda is responding to are taken from: http://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=177148
i get a much different reading of those quotes from N, and don't reach the same conclusion as you have. in fact, i think you misunderstood him almost completely.
he is beginning from his theory that philosophers have sought value in a 'true' world because they have hitherto found this world to be disagreeable; this world pisses me off, therefore the senses lie! recall his 'how truth became a fable' (or whatever he called it) in the twilight of the idols. he lays out the steps that philosophers have taken to reach this conclusion; that 'this' would is only an appearance of a higher, truer world that cannot be known through the senses... therefore, the senses deceive us. but they don't. rather, they give us the 'true' world, which is only an appearance. this means the very conception of a 'real' world beyond the knowledge of the senses is inconceivable.
this steps eliminates the possibility of there being 'value-in-itself' to correspond with 'thing-in-itself', or 'reality-in itself.'
next step. he points out if the above conclusion were not made- if we still believed in this 'true' world- we still couldn't be sure what we thought was truely valuable, what reflected true values grounded in this true world, were actually values. it every well could be the case that our 'moral good' was, in fact, a 'moral bad'. for all we know, we could have it completely backward... and we wouldn't even know it. he makes a very insightful point.
now you suggest that this conception could be reversed. but there is no 'duality' anymore; there is no truth and appearance from which to draw a comparison. therefore, valuing couldn't 'give rise', as you put it, to truth. neither could valuing establish anything more than the fact that we value things in an apparant world. this doesn't ground anything. it only shows a contingency... a case of a certain kind of valuer valuing a certain kind of value... based on the valuer's degree of perceptiveness, strength, and power.
the fact that there is valuing doesn't change anything N proposes, and neither does he exhibit 'moral weakness' for not arriving at the conclusions you make from this misunderstanding. instead, it is perhaps your continual insistence that valuing grounds everything in a world of appearance, that is a symptom of weakness.
you are doing the same thing the philosophers did; distrusting the senses and seeking a higher justification for valuing above and beyond the world of appearance.
VO is just another contingency, just another specific kind of theory that attempts to establish a 'true' world, whether it be platonic or kantian or whatever.
furthermore, it makes little sense to assert that valuing is the ground of being without also being able to show a distinction between correct and incorrect valuing. if everything is valuing, and not-valuing is impossible, then nothing is explained but a tautology.
VO cannot get around this is-ought fallacy, even if it could be substantiated somehow (and it can't). remember, how could you be sure your 'good' value wasn't, in fact, a 'bad' value? how could you know if there was no true world which was the ground of the apparent world? you are stuck at the same euthyphro dilemma socrates and his buddy were stuck at, in front of the court house.
and ask yourself how useful, how pragmatic, a theory is which tells you everything values and everything exists because it is a valuing. okay, let's grant that much for the sake of argument.
now what.... ?
Barracuda wrote:It is a beautiful passage, in which we can distinguish what held Nietzsche back from a comprehensive clarity. He still believed in, at least worked from, the duality of truth and appearance. In this way it could not become apparent to him that the value is not what derives from the truth/appearance of the world/a thing, he was not (morally) strong enough to reverse this conception, as I have done -- to arrive at the far more useful idea that value (more precisely the act of valuing) gives rise to both appearance and truth.
i get a much different reading of those quotes from N, and don't reach the same conclusion as you have. in fact, i think you misunderstood him almost completely.
he is beginning from his theory that philosophers have sought value in a 'true' world because they have hitherto found this world to be disagreeable; this world pisses me off, therefore the senses lie! recall his 'how truth became a fable' (or whatever he called it) in the twilight of the idols. he lays out the steps that philosophers have taken to reach this conclusion; that 'this' would is only an appearance of a higher, truer world that cannot be known through the senses... therefore, the senses deceive us. but they don't. rather, they give us the 'true' world, which is only an appearance. this means the very conception of a 'real' world beyond the knowledge of the senses is inconceivable.
this steps eliminates the possibility of there being 'value-in-itself' to correspond with 'thing-in-itself', or 'reality-in itself.'
next step. he points out if the above conclusion were not made- if we still believed in this 'true' world- we still couldn't be sure what we thought was truely valuable, what reflected true values grounded in this true world, were actually values. it every well could be the case that our 'moral good' was, in fact, a 'moral bad'. for all we know, we could have it completely backward... and we wouldn't even know it. he makes a very insightful point.
now you suggest that this conception could be reversed. but there is no 'duality' anymore; there is no truth and appearance from which to draw a comparison. therefore, valuing couldn't 'give rise', as you put it, to truth. neither could valuing establish anything more than the fact that we value things in an apparant world. this doesn't ground anything. it only shows a contingency... a case of a certain kind of valuer valuing a certain kind of value... based on the valuer's degree of perceptiveness, strength, and power.
the fact that there is valuing doesn't change anything N proposes, and neither does he exhibit 'moral weakness' for not arriving at the conclusions you make from this misunderstanding. instead, it is perhaps your continual insistence that valuing grounds everything in a world of appearance, that is a symptom of weakness.
you are doing the same thing the philosophers did; distrusting the senses and seeking a higher justification for valuing above and beyond the world of appearance.
VO is just another contingency, just another specific kind of theory that attempts to establish a 'true' world, whether it be platonic or kantian or whatever.
furthermore, it makes little sense to assert that valuing is the ground of being without also being able to show a distinction between correct and incorrect valuing. if everything is valuing, and not-valuing is impossible, then nothing is explained but a tautology.
VO cannot get around this is-ought fallacy, even if it could be substantiated somehow (and it can't). remember, how could you be sure your 'good' value wasn't, in fact, a 'bad' value? how could you know if there was no true world which was the ground of the apparent world? you are stuck at the same euthyphro dilemma socrates and his buddy were stuck at, in front of the court house.
and ask yourself how useful, how pragmatic, a theory is which tells you everything values and everything exists because it is a valuing. okay, let's grant that much for the sake of argument.
now what.... ?
