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Nietzschean nihilism and the ego's nature therein; a Buddhist synthesis
Joshua
Veteran
The ego is something necessary for survival and self-identification in the conventional, phenomenal world. The conception of the ego itself is something wholly conventional as it is simply a modern, theoretical convention to explain psychology. It is certainly nothing that can be pointed to like a keyboard but rather much like the laws of physics on the basis of convention it is expounded through inductive rational like the solving of some great Sudoku puzzle, and when all the pieces of the puzzle fit from a few original presuppositions, even though the puzzle in its size, shape, colors and description where all just one way to explain away the original enigmas, a working theory has been reached by inventing extended presuppositions in a network of conjecture.
From this skeptical approach to the mere conception of the ego I am desperate to know a Nietzschean concept. When I conceive his Übermensch I generally connotate über, in addition to its etymological English cognate over, as beyond as in to be Beyond-Human, or more popularly Super-Human, as it were. I imagine a person both myself and by interpretating Nietzsche's expoundings as first grating away his attachments to all socializations, then to impulses and passions, then humanity and finally his existence. Nietzsche speaks as though there will be a point that the goal has been reached and so as not to cleave onto despair one must seek purpose and virtue elsewhere through inventions of his own or inspiration from conventional society through his new, liberated eyes. The assumption here being that there is a plethora of options for post-Nihilism, or that one should be able to lower his standards and newfound integrity and pursue values based upon illogicality and convention which themselves are based entirely upon a large network of presuppositions.
It's no wonder this is a fruitless endeavor as Nietzsche obviously never came close to self-actualizing his philosophy. But the fault isn't irrevocable. Nietzsche flourished in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time when Freud was revolutionary and the ego's understanding from a modern, Western approach was still in its nascency. Perhaps if Nietzsche had thought of the ego and its neural makeup as being nothing other than an evolutionary advantage (perhaps I'm being precocious in this remark, as I'm not well versed in Nietzsche) and in the whole as illusory as a minute or an hour is to the gears and cogs of a clock then he'd have used his very expoundings to destroy self-grasping. Perhaps he'd have realized that despite all the pedantries about which I'm speaking the very nature of self-grasping is in itself a misunderstanding which, like all misunderstandings, are loath to be exercised under a rigorous Nihilism. Of course he didn't, for he advocated the Will to Power, he expounded hubris. Was that his great folly, or perhaps the ego, though illusory, is as necessary for existence as the illusory laws of physics are for holding the phenomenal world together?
If a satisfactory answer can be met, I think as Nietzsche called himself the successor of Schopenhauer, so a Nihilism and a Buddhist synthesis could be the successor to Nietzsche when combined with a correct understanding of self-grasping and the intelligent observance of the butterfly effect through the universal, and especially human, causal network.
From this skeptical approach to the mere conception of the ego I am desperate to know a Nietzschean concept. When I conceive his Übermensch I generally connotate über, in addition to its etymological English cognate over, as beyond as in to be Beyond-Human, or more popularly Super-Human, as it were. I imagine a person both myself and by interpretating Nietzsche's expoundings as first grating away his attachments to all socializations, then to impulses and passions, then humanity and finally his existence. Nietzsche speaks as though there will be a point that the goal has been reached and so as not to cleave onto despair one must seek purpose and virtue elsewhere through inventions of his own or inspiration from conventional society through his new, liberated eyes. The assumption here being that there is a plethora of options for post-Nihilism, or that one should be able to lower his standards and newfound integrity and pursue values based upon illogicality and convention which themselves are based entirely upon a large network of presuppositions.
It's no wonder this is a fruitless endeavor as Nietzsche obviously never came close to self-actualizing his philosophy. But the fault isn't irrevocable. Nietzsche flourished in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time when Freud was revolutionary and the ego's understanding from a modern, Western approach was still in its nascency. Perhaps if Nietzsche had thought of the ego and its neural makeup as being nothing other than an evolutionary advantage (perhaps I'm being precocious in this remark, as I'm not well versed in Nietzsche) and in the whole as illusory as a minute or an hour is to the gears and cogs of a clock then he'd have used his very expoundings to destroy self-grasping. Perhaps he'd have realized that despite all the pedantries about which I'm speaking the very nature of self-grasping is in itself a misunderstanding which, like all misunderstandings, are loath to be exercised under a rigorous Nihilism. Of course he didn't, for he advocated the Will to Power, he expounded hubris. Was that his great folly, or perhaps the ego, though illusory, is as necessary for existence as the illusory laws of physics are for holding the phenomenal world together?
If a satisfactory answer can be met, I think as Nietzsche called himself the successor of Schopenhauer, so a Nihilism and a Buddhist synthesis could be the successor to Nietzsche when combined with a correct understanding of self-grasping and the intelligent observance of the butterfly effect through the universal, and especially human, causal network.
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Comments
Sometimes I tend to think that I'm little more than the product of my environment and the culmination of ideas and experiences that my senses have taken in during my lifetime. That's part of the reason I sometimes think that the 'individual' is nothing more than a useful fiction we utilize in order to communicate and make sense of the world in a relative sense, but one that ultimately falls apart on further analysis.
It may all just be a matter of perspective, but having been influenced by social, cultural and other omnipresent conditionings, can the 'individual' really be said to be individual in the first place? Or put another way: Does a closed-system, biological entity truly exist?
In a certain sense, we have what appears to be a certain amount of autonomy. Will, volition or the creative spark in humankind expresses itself in a myriad of ways, and it's difficult to deny the products of that expression. Nevertheless, can an individual ever be considered a closed-system when they continually interact with their surroundings and vice versa? I fail to see how. And what of will? Can we, with any degree of certainty, say that it's truly independent? Again, I fail to see how.
If, on the other hand, we are open-systems with, arguably, a number of biological and psychological filters, is there any way to truly pull out the 'individual' as being something separate? I tend to think not. Why? Because trying to do so neglects much of what makes the 'individual' an individual by rejecting the inherent interdependence of their existence. The same also applies to the will of said individual.
Then again, perhaps not. But this line of reasoning has helped me to see that what happens in the world around me does matter to me as an individual, that trying to be active and change things is useful, even important. I quite like how Dr. Anil Rajvanshi puts it, albeit in a different context, when he says that "... each one of us lead our own separate lives which 'dart' randomly depending on the forces acting upon us yet collectively we go forward in a band which is called human evolution" (Free Will, Evolution and Chaos Theory).
What does this all mean? I'm not sure if it means anything; but when I try to piece it all together, here's what I get:
Metaphysics aside, my philosophy has always been that it's up to each individual, as far as they are able, to live their own lives and make their own choices. Nevertheless, as a good friend of mine once said to me, it's not the gods who make the world the way it is; we make the world this way. And we can make it into whatever we desire.
Perhaps Nietzsche was right about the human being who "possesses his own independent and enduring will." Perhaps that's the metaphorical godhead of human evolution, to perfect the skill of consciously creating our reality to the point that we eventually transcend our limitations and experience the world in an entirely new way. Perhaps, then, the problem lies not in the world, but within us, with our desires, our will; self-mastery being the key as well as the goal. But here's were I think Nietzsche goes wrong.
In my opinion, Nietzsche's type of ego-development leads to an unhealthy type of individual who 'transcends' the world in order to lord over it, a hero who's the antithesis of Buddhism's spiritual egalitarianism, e.g., In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he calls the 'lust to rule' a "gift-giving virtue"; proclaims that selfishness is blessed, wholesome and healthy; and suggests suffering can be drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming oneself.
I find that the Buddha's teachings and techniques for developing a healthy ego, on the other hand, ultimately take the opposite approach, switching self-grasping (fueling the fire) for letting-go (removing the fire's fuel), with Buddha's teachings on not-self being a "useful way of disentangling oneself from the attachments & clingings which lead to suffering" (The Not-self Strategy). As Thanissaro Bhikkhu puts it: I don't know if this is coherent and makes any sense at all, but it's the best I've got.
Within the Nietzsche quote it reads, "the autonomous individual [is] beyond morality (for ‘autonomous’ and ‘moral’ are mutually exclusive terms)" which makes him, "proud of what has finally been achieved and has become a living embodiment in him". For those terms to be mutually exclusive would necessitate that there either be no butterfly effect, i.e., that there ought to be no observance of the causal network of humanity or rather that, despite its consideration, it makes no matter as an appeal to the emptiness of morality. Can you argue that morality is essential to progress--to make things interesting, can you destroy LaVeyanism?
I tend to agree exactly with: Although this ignores potential metaphysics, but since they can't be ascertained it is a useless endeavor,
This point: I think could be answered with future advancements in quantum and chaos theories of the mind. The old question of AI, in which, I believe, Douglas Hofstadter specializes, but not me. I do know one thing though, and that your following paragraph: Could be answered with quantum considerations. Classical, mechanistic theories of the mind are necessarily reductionist theories of the mind. This may be part of your plight. It could be that the mind participates in universal quantum network, that "when two quantum systems meet, their wave aspects (potentialities) overlap to form a new, combined system that has properties not possessed by either of its constituents. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." (Who's afraid of Schrödinger's Cat?) Not that this helps advance our preference, but by playing the devil's advocate I may have given Nietzsche a little breathing room so long as we completely ignore the morality issue.
When you say: What do you make of the endeavor to download the mind onto a computer, perhaps this was already covered, at a different angle, by the AI question?
Here: Your hypothetical reasoning is interesting in that it seems to imply that there are qualitative extremes of self-grasping. On one end of the spectrum is the all-thirsty, passion-bound, Gargantua and on the other hand the, apparently, desirable Übermensch; is this more than a matter of emphasis? From Nietzsche's perspective they are a dichotomy. From the Buddhist perspective it seems that they are both anchored to egocentrism and are thus indivisible. What do you think? If they are indivisible he transcends nothing but in believing so he's achieved great narcissistic feats and so becomes psychotic, which, ironically, wasn't so different from Nietzsche's fate. If they are divisible it has heavy implications on Buddhism, for example, either nirvana is the Übermensch in disguise or nirvana and the Übermensch aren't mutually exclusive and are two separate options of liberation. The only reason one would prefer the former is on account of metaphysical convictions, without which, one would certainly choose the latter.
In the same way that you cross-examined the will in relation to the nature of mind, it is also paramount to cross-examine skillfulness, in the following context, as a universal axiology. When I read, "[The Buddha] would have you drop unhealthy and unskillful ways of self-identification in favor of ways that were more skillful and refined," I understand that it be contingent upon morality on one hand and thus forked by that issue and the previous paragraph on the other. The only escape route is the elimination of those two issues, otherwise Buddhism is zugzwanged into faith unless I'm correct that Nietzsche is compelled to direct his own insights onto the ego and when combined with the bastion of a logically infallible morality/compassion-system will thus dissolve the differences between the two expoundings and the synthesis will be self-actualizing.
I don't know if this is coherent and makes any sense at all either, but it's the best I've got too.