148. Imperfection on the move
While I
sympathise with Nietzsche’s thought on several points, I deviate from it in
several ways, to develop my perspective of imperfection on the move.
Like
Nietzsche, I reject absolutes but take values seriously. I add that most often
values are adopted tacitly, without any question of validity arising at all. I
will return to that in a later item in this blog. But where critical reflection
is possible and relevant, one can legitimately accept values (and truths), as
temporary, currently the best we have, given language and largely tacit
established notions, while remaining open to possible failure of our cognitive
make-up and to the need for revision in the face of new experience, meanings,
or arguments.
Instead of
Nietzsche’s Will to Power I posit a Will to Creation, including art as well as
invention and innovation. That includes the need, and perhaps Nietzschean
enjoyment, of overcoming resistance, but counter to Nietzsche, not as a
fundamental value in itself, but as inevitable in creation. While for Nietzsche
the will to power is primary, with creation as its highest manifestation, for
me will to creation is primary.
Like
Nietzsche I propose that one’s own prejudice also yields a resistance one needs
to overcome. Will to power should apply also to the self. However, Nietzsche
sought that in rivalry with opponents. In contrast with Nietzsche I propose
that instead of vanquishing others, one needs to be receptive and empathetic to
them, to be open to their opposition. This is needed to achieve the highest
form of freedom: the freedom to change what one wants to want, and to overcome
one’s prejudices. I argued this extensively in my book ‘Beyond humanism’, and
in earlier items in this blog (49 and 60)
Here, I oppose enlightenment rhetoric of
autonomous selves, in self-realization, and Nietzsche’s extension of it into
self-affirmation. Even according to Nietzsche himself there is no originary,
unitary, given self to affirm. The self is multiple and in flux, and develops in
interaction with especially the social environment.
As
indicated earlier in this blog, I endorse the fallibilist view of pragmatism,
and the related notion of ‘truth’ as ‘warranted assertability’, but with some
modifications.
How
relativistic is the principle of warranted assertability? The answer to the
absence of absolute, objective values should not be relativistic surrender to
the incommensurability of values from different perspectives but, to the
contrary, commitment to ongoing effort at debate between opposing views.
The
criterion of warranted assertability is not only success in terms of utility,
but also success more widely, in debate, with arguments that mobilize all
relevant knowledge and experience, including facts.
While
accepting the impossibility of achieving certain, objective truth, I
re-institute facts and realism, in a non-absolute, contingent fashion.
Facts are
indeed perspectival and theory-laden, but they are mostly less arbitrary and
more reliable than theoretical speculation. In my practice as a scientist I
have encountered situations where the perception of facts did vary with
differences in theoretical perspective, but also cases where one could agree on
them to settle differences in theory.
I do not
believe in realism in the form of correspondence between ideas or perceptions
with items in reality, but I do endorse realism in the sense that our ideas
develop, mostly tacitly, without our being aware of it, in interaction with
reality, as a function of experienced success, and in that sense somehow
reflect them, though not as in a mirror. What, then, do we ‘have in mind’? I
will discuss that in a later in this blog.
Finally,
how could and why should one adopt the basic value of creation that I propose?
I think we do have the drive and ability to creation as a result
of evolution: it has given the human species an advantage in survival. I think
it is advisable to adopt creation as a value for the flourishing of
one’s own life and lives after that. Why? Does flourishing human life have
absolute importance? I don’t know, but since we have life it seems best to make
the best of it.
How all
this works out in life and society has been the subject of a number of previous
items in this blog.
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