Was Strauss right?

When philosophy discovers a truth, it moves into a category of science; that is the value of philosophy.

I agree with this. The problem is that it leaves behind a festering, ever-growing remnant of pseudoscience. It’s a shame to cognitively burden oneself with so much rubbish and then come up with these nonsensical kinds of posts.

@baxter, you are a kid

I don’t know why you need to keep repeating ad hominem remarks like this. It doesn’t seem like an efficacious means to reach truth.

Yeah, I’m rude and youcall people racist when you get offended. F****in’ A!

That’s the tu quoque fallacy.

RESPOND TO THE POINTS IN MY last major post to you!

haha, et tu? aut solem me?

mentioning your opponets mom doesn’t strike you as an example of this? Claims of racism do not also? You must see why the vulgar masses and their ethic, their morals; their hypocrisy; their ignorance are looked down upon…

responding to “your mom” by indicating that you are a child is also not ad hominem; it is clarificatory.

I’M BETTER THAN YOU YOU ARE NOBODY, KID! PLAY BASKETBALL, SLAVE!!!

…why won’t you respond to me…

None of what I’ve said is wrong. He just cannot respond. and when passerby point things like what you point out it will only encourage his preteen stage of conscious development to pursue this sort of route. he calls philosophy pseudoscience and cites theoretical time travel machines as proof of concept for his own…I am not wrong in pointing out his depth.

None of what I’ve said is wrong

Is arrogance also an elite value?

The concept of the symmetry of vibrations and sound didn’t lead directly to M STRING THEORY

The connection between music and physics beyond the Standard Model is pretty tenuous. Listening to Wagner or Justin Bieber or whomever won’t help us solve the mysteries quantum gravity.

we cannot know “thing in themselves”… but, your sophomore refutation is example of you ignorance on this subject

I quoted von Mises. Hoppe agrees with von Mises’s 100% on neo-Kantianism and the noumenon from what I have gathered. Are these folks sophmoric? Why not research the argument yourself? Here is a link for the elite who cannot stoop as low as using Google: http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae10_2_4.pdf “THE COMPATIBILITY OF HOPPE’S AND ROTHBARD’S VIEWS OF THE ACTION AXIOM”

@Aristophanes

You made it clear that you evaluations of others re based in aesthetics. Could be more specific about what exactly about the way most people live their life that bothers you? What aesthetic principles are these people not incorporating into their existence?

I read a quick summary of Goethe’s talents, and he is an impressive man. Do you want people to have the following attitude?

…I have found no confession of faith to which I could ally myself without reservation. Now in my old age, however, I have learned of a sect, the Hypsistarians, who, hemmed in between heathens, Jews and Christians, declared that they would treasure, admire, and honour the best, the most perfect that might come to their knowledge, and in as much as it must have a close connection to the Godhead, pay it reverence. A joyous light thus beamed at me suddenly out of a dark age, for I had the feeling that all my life I had been aspiring to qualify as a Hypsistarian. That, however, is no small task, for how does one, in the limitations of one’s individuality, come to know what is most excellent?

I don’t believe there is basic argument behind the NAP. The way I justifry my policy of not hurting others is different than most, and a lot of people don’t even have a justification. I offered my personal justication for the NAP above in my first post.

I don’t believe there is basic argument behind the NAP.

There is. See https://mises.org/daily/5322/ “Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise Guide”

You made it clear that you evaluations of others re based in aesthetics.

In other words he evaluates others subjectively. Just like the 7 billion non-elite human beings do.

@Baxter

Not what I meant. I mean there is not a singular justification given, and that Aristophane should be more specific behind what his problems are with the various justifications that are given for the NAP.

Hairnet, I would like to know too.

If NAP remains valid, then one could use memetic engineering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetic_engineering) to subjugate others and impart his morals on them. Couldn’t an elite person do that, instead of resorting to beast-like violence (e.g. slavery)?

mentioning your opponets mom doesn’t strike you as an example of this?

In addition to truth, I enjoy things like music, games, and humor. It was you who said you avoid “vulgar” things in favor of seeking truth. Apparently, proper spelling and punctuation are also counted as vulgar here.

Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becomes sickness and trouble unto them!

Nietzsche is mistaken here. Ideas are non-scarce, non-rivalrous goods. Copying is not theft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw-MFeR8Frw

Have you read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Masses

I really like Gassett, you may get a kick out of the book, it’s an easy read.

While I don’t think I’m an “elitist” - it is interesting to see how institutions force us under certain expectations and paradigms. We probably do operate under what Nietzsche called “warm heartedness” and other social-democratic / Jacobin ideals in a fairly oppressive way (I suppose the term “modernity” could be used for a decent buzz word).

Elitism, or any type of revolt against “modernity” (and I am probably in some form of revolt against it) is the reaction to it - the problem is, you are still reacting under their paradigm and probably using their tools and their home court. This may very well be why people (mostly Germans) who really pushed things to the fringe or tried to turn things on their head (Weber, Nietzsche, Stirner, Schopenhauer, maybe Mises) are marginilized people who tend to be ignored, there is a form of Quioxtism in the whole affair.

yes, it is the basic problem of philosophers from all time. What is “good”, “virtue”, “truth”? These are what are to be followed. There is none of them present in sports or the tracking of their statistics.

NAP is really a simplified version of Kant’s categorical imperative; the golden rule, do unto others…, etc. [more on this in following post; creativity]

one thing, Kant brought property rights about not by saying you have a right to the things you make (you make them and they are yours), but that you have a right to prevent other people from having them. Rothbard, Locke, etc. simply say you change the tree to a table, now you own the tree in table form. There is one flaw or, maybe not a flaw, but a discrepancy in NAP. “Rights” to things cannot be justified if it is all nature.

it is not individuals in themselves that “bother” me. it is the cultural development, the education system, the ignorance of democracies, etc.

Nietzsche’s conception of slave morals is not the historical account of slavery. it is those who are slaves to morals which constitutes the slave morality. That is what you don’t get and why refuting what is said in the avenue that you are choosing can go nowhere.

Again, you need to look at Nietzsche’s arguments. “stealing” is simply culturally abusing, not theft of property…

and if someone steals a joke from you…they have taken something that was uniquely a part of your mind and conscious. Your unconscious acknowledged an ironic reality and your subconscious acted upon it by blurting out a joke. No one else can claim your subconscious reaction to irony as their own. In this way, ideas are scarce. Or…good ideas are scarce and they rival other’s poor ideas.

And for my International Relations thesis I will develop the theory from the Long Cycle Leadership theory of War that intellectual property should be done away with so as to prevent a war that stems from “cyber-espionage.” Kinsella and Rothbard (and a few others, just on IP) are already taken into account here, my friend.

you will not show me anything from Rothbard that I am not taking into account. Natural law theory is his justification for NAP; Kant was an adherent to those principles. Nothing new.

Hey, you brought Michio Kaku into this. I’m facinated by how close Schopenhauer came to understanding it through his aesthetics.

No, they are not sophomoric (Mises was a genius), it is your use of their arguments points that is sophomoric. Because you are reading what I read 5 or 6 years ago. I take Mises and Rothbard into international relations. I try to prove that central banks are the leading factors in geostrategic state planning, thanks to Rothbartd and his many histories on the subject. i take Mises’ epistemology to international political economy (itworks GREAT within prospect theory).

Here I am simply trying to take Nietzsche’s “ethic” into culture. Strauss tries to take it into politics. The neocons grabbed SO much power through these ideas that one cannot ignore them and say they are refuted. Ideas don’t refute actions, only other ideas. Someone has to stop regurgitating the authors mentioned here and apply their ideas in new and useful ways. This is what creativity is; taking various unrelated propositions and mixing them to form newer ones (The CIA teaches this to analysts).

I know we got off on the wrong foot, but you are not going to deter me by using things I incorporate into my thinking.

@vive, i’ll try to read that this weekend.

Aristophanes,

“Well, I am only criticizing their attempts to use the States as a means to free the ‘free spirits.’ It seems to me that once that road is taken all of the philosophy becomes a giant contrqadiction. and not a good contradiction like the objective/subjective ethic.”

Why? Frankly it seems like it would be more in-line with your more “hard nosed” view that your representing. I would have thought that you would have considered such individuals who refuse to engage in politics as being foolishly idealistic.

Furthermore I don’t really understand how these actions become contradictory when we start talking about things in terms of how we are. We agree that the NAP is not sacred, nor even something inherently worth fighting for. Therefore putting it “on hold” to work through the political process seems rather guiltless. Doctors try to keep their patients alive and healthy, yet in some cases sacrificing a limb through amputation is the best option. Why couldn’t sacrificing liberty for a time be an appropriate method to the seeker of liberty? Indeed, this is ultimately how the vast majority of liberation that has occurred in the last two decades has been achieved. It was an ideological revolution first, yet it has to be implemented politically.

So what’s the problem that you’re pointing to exactly?

"In a way I am asking if there is a justification for anyone (I say us to refer to both free spirits (the ones who can think outside of morality) and the libertarians (who at the same time cannot think outside morality) to impose morality on anyone else. "

You might already know my response, but for whatever its worth I consider myself both of these things and my answer to the question is simply “of course”. Willing that morality be imposed is reason enough to impose it. We live in an ultimately purposeless and valueless universe, and therefore everything is objectively neutral, but subjectively most everything is value-charged, and therefore every reason you can support is reason enough to support such a use of force. I would rarely agree to these, however.

“Liberty is a way for us to escape the chains of vulgar morals.”

What I’m really trying to figure out is how exactly you propose to go about getting to this. I could be wrong, but you don’t seem to really be advocating any way to get to this point. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you seem to be criticizing without proposing any solutions. Now I know you’re not exactly the type to sit in a big circle and talk to people about solutions to the world’s problems, but I’m curious as to whether you actually do advocate anything on this front.

“i take Mises’ epistemology to international political economy (itworks GREAT within prospect theory).”

Could you talk more about this? It sounds really interesting

haha. my method that I propose would be to lie in order to get power then to disrupt the mechanisms of power as much as possible. That way politics becomes humorous. The true work of art that politics is: order out of chaos (allegedly); what better than to catalyze chaos from the point of order?

As above, aesthetic politics would be how I would see things from your perspective. it is not an ethic that you are imposing, but rather you are trying to create art at the highest level possible, philosophic, real-time, human emotional art. Through inventions, music, and maybe through political satire? And when you think about it … trolling is an aesthetic project for subjective enjoyment…

I could, because it is a part of the paper I am writing…but you should give me a few days to get it together. I have a lot of stuff that i need to cover in it. It includes the notion of Austrian “rationality” contrasting with the traditional rational choice theory (the argument between comparative gains or loss aversion being primary psychological motivators). Austrian (Misesian) economics is neutral in its value judgements, so it will not be as precise when used in a predictive manner, but it might be able to advance transnational security threories and prospect theory by (wrongfully or shamefully) using action theory as a theory for state actions in the international arena. Prospect theory weights loss aversion higher (based on empirical research) so I need to place praxeology within that framework (unless I find another more amenable).

I’m goingto run into lots of problems with this, but I think it is doable. (States are sometimes motivated by honor and such things unknowable in any regard to outsiders.)

Neodoxy: every reason you can support is reason enough to support such a use of force

So you’ve found the flaw in Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, have you?

Aristophanes: Here I am simply trying to take Nietzsche’s “ethic” into culture.

Good luck with that.

As far as I can tell, Neitzsche does not provide any kind of knowledge or access to truth, but merely opinions and insane rants. I’m not the only one who thinks this, either:

“several aspects of his philosophy seemingly lacking coherent meaning or being paradoxical. Because of Nietzsche’s evocative style and his often outrageous claims… it has drawn amateurs of all kinds to be heavily involved in the project of interpretation as well. His works remain controversial, due to interpretations and misinterpretations of his work… A long standing assumption about Nietzsche is that he preferred master over slave morality. However, Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann rejected this interpretation” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

Also, per von Mises: “Nietzsche’s concept of a superman is devoid of any epistemological meaning” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p. 2).

Nietzsche seems to be one gigantic bolus of garbage that the non-syphilitic brain ill needs.

Anyone who doesn’t recognize Nietzsche as genius and an exceedingly insightful author into the human mind, heart, and spirit is either a fool or hasn’t read his work.

“So you’ve found the flaw in Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, have you?”

Argumentation ethics is fundamentally flawed because it presumes an ought from an is. Even if it was wholly consistent with the world it would still ultimately be irrelevant to the area of real human choice and ethical behavior. If you believe in objective and universal morality then a better question to ask is “you’ve found the flaw in praxeology”.

So let’s take person X. Person X wants to kill person Y. We assume this is an isolated case and there are no negative repercussions in the killing of Y that are not inherent in the completion of the act itself. Why shouldn’t X kill Y. Why is it “wrong”? What would it even mean if this were the case? How does argumentation ethics make person X’s behavior wrong?

The Kaufmann translations are the one’s I’ve been using. And even he has his own interpretation of nietzsche which has been heavily criticized. he tries too hard to wipe away Nietzche’s cryptonazi sister’s edits as they are what have caused the confusions about what he stood for. He goes overboard in trying to protect nietzsche and undermines some of his nuances.

Part of the master morality is that you behave in a way that is commendable of a God (particularly Greek). Sure, gods play tricks, but gods also call justice on a case by case basis; punishments fit the crime so-to-speak. you are not supposed to just act like a dick. Neitzsche’s Greek God was Dionysus; Francis Bacon had Prometheus; some people use Pythagoras or Hermes; they are the ones that are concerned epistemology.

It is an aesthetic theory, not epistemological. To Nietzsche words aren’t really that good of descriptors for anything. We use them to describe metaphors that stand for analytic truths (What does Mises say about those?) that are based upon the features of things (Very kantian). Words and concepts are illusions of perception and our strive to rationalize them somehow. Go talk to Ayn Rand about psychoepistemology…

Neodoxy: Anyone who doesn’t recognize Nietzsche as genius and an exceedingly insightful author into the human mind, heart, and spirit is either a fool or hasn’t read his work.

A third possibility is that his writings are the ramblings of a batshit crazy person. Nietzsche also seems to focus on Germany and on Christianity, i.e. a particular location and time in history. It is an example of the impermenance [sic] that Aristophanes spoke of.

Neodoxy: Why shouldn’t X kill Y. Why is it “wrong”?

Assuming it isn’t retribution (e.g. covered by estoppel theory), it is logically unjustifiable per Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. You erred in speaking of willingness as a reason to use force: any such reasoning is incorrect.

Aristophanes: It is an aesthetic theory, not epistemological.

The idea of a non-epistemic theory sounds self-contradictory and alien to me. Is Christian slave morality an aesthetic theory? Why is one better than the other? Isn’t it all subjective? Are you striving for truth, or just trying to be fashionable?

Aristophanes: Words and concepts are illusions of perception and our strive to rationalize them somehow.

Words have meaning. To assert the opposite, that words don’t have meaning, is a self-defeating argument. Also, the phrase “illusions of perception” suggests you are again failing to incorporate the neo-Kantian insights of von Mises and Hoppe that have occured since Plato. Words often refer to real-world objects that offer resistance to people’s plans.

You cannot argue with someone who is familiar with existentialism. they know all about books without reading them.

Neo, Ima PM you a thought I had that is not for this kid.

Don’t know whether Nietzsche had anything profound to say, but from what I’ve seen many people have the following series of thoughts when reading him.

  1. Deep down, I’m insecure and feel inferior.

  2. And look, here’s Nietzsche saying there are Supermen in this world.

  3. Why don’t I hide my feelings of insecurity by telling myself I’m one of the Supermen?

  4. Great idea!

  5. Now lemme see what Supermen can do. Tell me, oh Nietzsche.

  6. Whatever I please? Really? Count me in.

Needless to say, none of the above applies to any folk on the Mises forums. They are all beyond good and evil.