Monday, November 15, 2010

Mankinds Needs It

In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Philosophical Writing”, page 96, quoting, “And as a man binds his life to reason and its ideas in order to avoid being swept away and losing himself […]” This quote is intriguing because he basically stated that men are dependent upon reasoning for confronting truth. Reasoning and ideas are constructed impressions of man and man is used as a template for these conceptions. He uses an example such as trees and plants are anthropomorphic, having human characteristics; trees are masculine, plants are feminine. Human perceived them by applying our own perception, quoting, “[…] would be necessary to apply the standard of right perception i.e., to apply a standard which does not exist”. What is the right perception? Is this perception our own that we constructed or some other higher standing. Mostly people think rationally; they need reasons to comprehend the complexities, it is simply easier to understand when something is relatable or have significant to. What made men perceived the whole world as a humanlike thing? Does this relate to how their altruistic behavior, self-centered, egoistical, desired of importance and purpose to their existence?

“Such seekers contemplate the whole world as related to men”. Men are “artistically creative subjects” and are used as templates for all things. He goes off mentioning language was the initially used to construct these ideas that is later “science”. Basically language was to falsely assert what we don’t know. I think he took a light jab at science setting out it is an illusion that human pursuit for knowledge that is build upon, refined and it is finite. Nietzsche also pointed that science is interpretation to understand the world but we don’t really know. He uses a small example of if someone looking through the microscope or telescope and concluding their findings, but these conclusions are all “products of fantasy”. Back to what I mentioned about perception, science is relative if we subject our own thoughts on others. I think what he summing up is that we don’t really have facts; we make it as facts. Man creates them in a way that these scientific ideas are coherent and don’t overlap with one another. Science is not absolute, its not complete and it is subject to change but it is always refined for clarity. I find it difficult to understand clearly on Nietzsche’s perspective on science, arts and mathematics. He mentions a couple of known figures significant in these fields but…