To keep the rest of our threads cleanly on-topic, this thread will be used for a discussion of atheism and morality. An Überthread.
Kleiner–I’m going to leave your existing comments in place on their current threads, but any future comments that topically belong here will be moved here, along with their responses.
I’m interested in hearing more about Atheist Morality so I’ll kick off the comment section.
Let me start by somewhat guiltily admitting that I find it easier to trust somebody who identifies themselves with a religion than somebody who says they are an Atheist. In most cases a belief in God implies belief in rewards/punishment and if someone goes further and identifies themselves as Christian, then I have a better idea of the rules that they play by (or should play by). The simple act of not believing in god (Atheism) doesn’t come with any moral guidelines. If somebody says they are a Secular Humanist or something else, then I know that they have given the matter more thought, and my level of trust goes up.
Atheism isn’t accompanied by morals, but I think morals can be determined without appealing to god.
I think most morals can be derived by thinking of how you’d like others to act. If I ask a question, I want an honest answer – honesty is good. I want to come home and watch the tv that was in my room when I left – stealing is bad. I’d prefer if people wouldn’t try to kill me – murder is bad. If something bad happened to me, I’d like it if somebody else would try to help me – charity is good. etc. When I picture the type of society I want to live in, everybody needs to follow guidelines like these, and if I lead by example I’m one step closer to living in that society.
You can call it doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, or you can call it being the change you wish to see in the world, but I don’t see why these conclusions can’t be reached with reason.
Why should I be moral? Why should I be just? This has been my question.
We’ve been given an answer above. Something like an enlightened self-interest. I don’t want others to do ill to me, so I should not do ill to them.
The challenge, though, that I don’t think this view can handle is the challenge of Nz and Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus is a character in Plato’s Republic (he mainly appears in Book I). They are asking about justice, and Thrasymachus proposes that one is best served by doing away with moral constraints altogether, that it is better to be perfectly unjust than to be just. The trouble with justice, Thrasymachus says, it is that it is to the advantage of the weaker. Justice benefits the weak recipient, not the stronger person who restrains himself because of the demands of justice. In other words, the strong man himself is worse off for being just. Justice is a convention created by weak people to try to ensure that they not be taken advantage of by the stronger. In other words, justice is for wimps.
But, Thrasymachus asks, why shouldn’t a strong man be unjust? Why should the strong man submit himself to a slave morality? Thrasymachus argues that, ideally, the strong man would be perfectly unjust though would appear just to others (see the ring of gyges).
Long story short, why should those that are capable of taking advantage of others without being harmed themselves not do so? Why should the strong man say ‘no’ to any of his desires?
One does not have to agree with Plato’s solution (the rest of the Republic develops it), but I think Plato gives the right kind of an answer. One must first do some careful philosophical anthropology, figure out what is the best way to order oneself and why.
My challenge has been as much to the materialist as it has been to the atheist. I think atheists can know moral norms because I think atheists are capable of coming up with an adequate anthropology (after all, I subscribe to the natural law – that morality is writ in to human nature – though I don’t think they’d be able to push the explanation all the way back to the ultimate explanation). But I don’t think a materialist can come up with an adequate anthropology. Absent an adequate metaphysical anthropology, I don’t see that one has a response to the tyrant, to Nz, to Thrasymachus.
I will leave it that. It is my ongoing challenge to SHAFT: articulate your humanism, give an account of human nature, provide a foundation for your moral views that can answer to the gravest challenges to morality: Nietzsche and his ancient counter-part Thrasymachus.
“Long story short, why should those that are capable of taking advantage of others without being harmed themselves not do so?”
I’m at work, so I don’t really have time to go into enormous detail, but I think a reasonable answer to Nietzsche/Thrasymachus could come from a bit of economics and game theory, a branch of mathematics that studies competition and cooperation (specifically, scenarios where the success of your choices depends on the choices of others). Game theory shows that there are almost no situations where a person living in a society would benefit themselves in the long run by being unjust to others. In other words, over a long enough time period, you will be harming yourself by harming others in your society, if you depend on the resources provided by being a member of that society. Long story short (ha), being unjust simply because you’re a “strong” man is irrational, and assumes either that you’ll be able to deceive others indefinitely, or that the cost/benefit matrix is mostly positive (neither of which are true).
We already have unjust people who appear to be just–they’re called sociopaths. Although if their behavior is a perfect facade of normality, how can we say whether they really are unjust, deep down? Most sociopaths (which, by the way, have been shown to have atypical patterns of neural activation, and are physically incapable of empathy or a well-developed theory of mind) are able to “hide” among normal people without getting into trouble, but occasionally they become serial killers and the like. (There’s also an entire evolutionary/behavioral arms race of lying and the ability to detect lying). Eventually–even if it takes decades–they get caught and removed from society.
In a sense, humanity has already passed through a “will to power” phase in our early evolution (all social animals do), and we’ve evolved a theory of mind, an innate empathy, sense of fairness, and other mental structures that would fall under “morality” as a solution to a common survival problem. Those who cheat and steal food from others and murder the other individuals in their society will be shunned by the group, as a group survival strategy. This is basically a death sentence in pre-modern times. Secondarily, they’d be harming the propagation of their own genes in a society that consisted primarily of direct relatives.
As history progresses, these evolved mental structures lay the foundation for a system of ethics as the circle of your “tribe” extends to more and more people, allowing for towns, cities, nations to all share a single group identity. In modern times, more and more people are coming to identify their tribe as the whole of the human species and our surrounding ecology.
That’s at least what my outline would look like. It would also explain why chimps, wolves, dolphins, elephants, and other social animals also have their own systems of moral behavior within the group.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, Nz was more or less unaware of any of these sorts of developments in mathematics.
James, I don’t think you’ve gotten out of Nietzsche’s dilemma just yet. You’re probably right about our success as social animals relying on an innate empathy etc., and you’re also right to say an unjust-all-the-time person wouldn’t get very far. But what about the times when an unjust person is able to take advantage of others?
Take William the Conqueror, for example. He lied to the pope to get a papal blessing for his invasion of England, and caused the deaths of thousands of Normans and English. Now, William didn’t lie all the time (he wasn’t the unjust-all-the-time person), but he made a land grab and got away with it. You can say that more humans would survive if nobody made decisions like this, and you can use game theory to prove it (you don’t even need game theory to prove it, probably; it seems pretty clear that fewer wars=fewer deaths, although you never know when those Freakonomics guys will show up). What you can’t do, however, is obligate William not to lie and not to land grab without some moral theory beyond this. He might even admit that more people would survive without his lying and landgrabbing ways, but say, “What’s that to me? Those empathetic impulses in my mind are nothing but artifacts of the evolutionary process. I could have evolved some other way, and the universe doesn’t care how I turned out. Why obey the artifacts of evolution? Why not strike out on my own, now that the time has arrived that I can take what I want without troubling consequences?” Even recognizing those evolutionary traits and recognizing the reason for them, someone can point to the amoral universe and claim that these traits carry no moral weight.
Any naturalist materialism is also going to have to wrestle with how freedom is possible. If we are determined, well then there is no point to discussing morality to begin with.
Ultimately the moral absolutist must resort to a “might makes right” stance anyway. There is nothing inherently more righteous in moral absolutism than humanistic morality. If William of Normandy was “wrong” in an absolute sense the only consequence might be his punishment. How is this any more satisfying than the relativistic condemnation of the people under his thumb. This is my primary objection to moral absolutism. It doesn’t solve anything.
@ Hunt: Can you clarify? I don’t think anyone is calling for William’s punishment; he’s dead. All we’re looking for is a way to decide whether his action is right or wrong. Although a wrong action might merit punishment, that seems to me a separate question.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I wonder if you are saying that moral realism (that is, the idea that things are objectively right or wrong) doesn’t give you any more practical application than moral relativism (the idea that things are right or wrong depending on culture, personal preference, or whatever). This might be true; it’s as easy to throw someone in jail for violating a community-specific moral code as it is to throw someone in jail for violating a natural law. I don’t think this reference to practical application answers the bigger question, however. That is, it doesn’t seem to answer why certain things are right or wrong.
“come from a bit of economics and game theory”
If you are at all familiar with the theories put forth by animal behavioral it is quite a lot more than “a bit”. Game Theory has been embraced wholesale to explain such behavior, which is by no means isolated to humans. Altruistic behavior, or really any behavior in which the organism chooses a path that is sub-optimal on an individual level, but more optimal on a greater social level, have Game Theory explanations.
Do social organisms, not just humans, develop complex social rules. Definitively yes, from apes to hyenas to penguins. Do those organisms choose to adhere to the rules over optimal self interest – again, definitively yes. Do all of those animals get their instructions from the ten commandments – pretty absurd. Is there a clear correlation between the brain configurations of various types of animals and the degree of social behavior they participate in – again, definitely yes. Does game theory provide a supported explanation why adherence to social rules is in the evolutionary benefit of some organisms, but not in the evolutionary benefit of others – to the point of specific beneficial selective tactics – oh yes.
And now another set of questions – outside of very specific particulars (cries about eating pork, or shellfish, or shaving, or homosexuality, for example, which incidentally are all mentioned in the same part of the bible but 3 out of 4 of them get overlooked for some reason), is there a statistically significant trend in any particular belief group to adhere more or less strongly to basic social rules about violence, theft, rape, etc? Are atheists, or Hindus, or Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists statistically more or less inclined for such acts? On the flip side, rather than crimes, are they more or less statistically inclined for acts of compassion to their fellow man (or for that matter, to other living organisms)? Unless you can speak to a statistically significant distinction in behavior among belief groups (controlled for other variables, such as social level, education level, etc since wealthy, educated atheists are more likely to be philanthropic than poor, uneducated baptists and belief likely doesn’t have much to do with that), you can’t assert any correlation between belief and adherence to social rules.
And for a philosophical question of sorts – is it more moral for an individual to do (or not do) something because they feel it is fundamentally a good thing to do, or because they fear repercussions? Is it more moral to be an atheist motivated by compassion or a religious person motivated by fear of reprisal in the afterlife? Is the threat of divine punishment a greater motivator than a threat of material punishment, for those only inclined to follow rules out of obedience or fear, rather than compassion?
Incidentally, William the Conqueror is a BAD example for such discussions, because not only is his personal potential rewards of a magnitude far outside of the average, his decisions did not just reflect his own interests but those of a society. Thats a whole different set of questions than where morality comes from for the common person.
Also, can you define what you mean by “anthropology”? I take it it’s not “the study of hominids”.
Yes, I mean “philosophical anthropology” which is different from the sorts of things they study over in the department of anthropology. In the broadest possible strokes, a philosophical anthropology would explore the human condition and human nature (our experience, essence, capacities, goods, etc). Most philosophers have an “anthropology” (Plato is a dualist, etc etc) that includes not only an account of human nature but also prescriptive claims about what is good for man. The term “philosophical anthropology” arose particularly out of phenomenological and existential methods of inquiring into the human condition.
Do you think the science of anthropology can or ought to inform the particulars of a philosophical anthropology?
I will admit that I have a generally low opinion of the “social sciences” as currently practiced in the academy, but I would not exclude the contributions of the social science of anthropology since it might well have important contributions.
It’s a weird one, because it’s halfway a physical science as well, and intersects with paleontology, genetics, stuff like that.
My primary concern (painting with really broad strokes here) is that many of the social sciences have become dominated by postmodernity and marxism on the “social” side and by positivism (an reductionist epistemology that almost invariably sneaks metaphysical materialism in through the back door) on the “science” side.
I’ve read some Buddhist material, and it asserts that in many ways the distinctions between ourselves and others are an illusion. We aren’t individuals, but part of a larger collective body. I’ve kind of warmed up to the idea as of late, and it seems like trying to benefit “yourself” doesn’t make any sense if “you” don’t exist as a distinct entity.
Hmm. Interesting. Here’s an excerpt from one of Nietzsche’s notebooks (not a final published book)
I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.) The powerful natures dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury themselves in a garden house!
It really doesn’t sound like he’s talking about tyrants here.
Nz is not a systematic philosopher, and one must be very careful in avoiding over-interpreting an aphorism here or there. Nz’s overman is about overcoming and ‘yes saying’ – that may or may not take the form of “tyranny”.
I would encourage SHAFT to invite Prof Huenemann to speak on “Nietzschean Health and Christian Pathology”. I know he is a real busy guy this term, but he can talk for 30 minutes on that without any preparation required. Hell, he could just stand up and read the paper he just published with this very title. This would give SHAFTers a solid introduction to Nz.
If you do invite him, I would selfishly ask that you NOT have it on either Monday or Wednesday evening (the latter being your usual meeting time) since I teach evening classes on both of those days.
I’m all for more Huenemann.
“My primary concern (painting with really broad strokes here) is that many of the social sciences have become dominated by postmodernity and marxism on the “social” side”
This is cause for concern? Personally I think those are the best two places atheists should look for moral grounding! Perhaps we should take more social science classes.
I’m interested in hearing more about Atheist Morality so I’ll kick off the comment section.
Let me start by somewhat guiltily admitting that I find it easier to trust somebody who identifies themselves with a religion than somebody who says they are an Atheist. In most cases a belief in God implies belief in rewards/punishment and if someone goes further and identifies themselves as Christian, then I have a better idea of the rules that they play by (or should play by). The simple act of not believing in god (Atheism) doesn’t come with any moral guidelines. If somebody says they are a Secular Humanist or something else, then I know that they have given the matter more thought, and my level of trust goes up.
Atheism isn’t accompanied by morals, but I think morals can be determined without appealing to god.
I think most morals can be derived by thinking of how you’d like others to act. If I ask a question, I want an honest answer – honesty is good. I want to come home and watch the tv that was in my room when I left – stealing is bad. I’d prefer if people wouldn’t try to kill me – murder is bad. If something bad happened to me, I’d like it if somebody else would try to help me – charity is good. etc. When I picture the type of society I want to live in, everybody needs to follow guidelines like these, and if I lead by example I’m one step closer to living in that society.
You can call it doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, or you can call it being the change you wish to see in the world, but I don’t see why these conclusions can’t be reached with reason.
Why should I be moral? Why should I be just? This has been my question.
We’ve been given an answer above. Something like an enlightened self-interest. I don’t want others to do ill to me, so I should not do ill to them.
The challenge, though, that I don’t think this view can handle is the challenge of Nz and Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus is a character in Plato’s Republic (he mainly appears in Book I). They are asking about justice, and Thrasymachus proposes that one is best served by doing away with moral constraints altogether, that it is better to be perfectly unjust than to be just. The trouble with justice, Thrasymachus says, it is that it is to the advantage of the weaker. Justice benefits the weak recipient, not the stronger person who restrains himself because of the demands of justice. In other words, the strong man himself is worse off for being just. Justice is a convention created by weak people to try to ensure that they not be taken advantage of by the stronger. In other words, justice is for wimps.
But, Thrasymachus asks, why shouldn’t a strong man be unjust? Why should the strong man submit himself to a slave morality? Thrasymachus argues that, ideally, the strong man would be perfectly unjust though would appear just to others (see the ring of gyges).
Long story short, why should those that are capable of taking advantage of others without being harmed themselves not do so? Why should the strong man say ‘no’ to any of his desires?
One does not have to agree with Plato’s solution (the rest of the Republic develops it), but I think Plato gives the right kind of an answer. One must first do some careful philosophical anthropology, figure out what is the best way to order oneself and why.
My challenge has been as much to the materialist as it has been to the atheist. I think atheists can know moral norms because I think atheists are capable of coming up with an adequate anthropology (after all, I subscribe to the natural law – that morality is writ in to human nature – though I don’t think they’d be able to push the explanation all the way back to the ultimate explanation). But I don’t think a materialist can come up with an adequate anthropology. Absent an adequate metaphysical anthropology, I don’t see that one has a response to the tyrant, to Nz, to Thrasymachus.
I will leave it that. It is my ongoing challenge to SHAFT: articulate your humanism, give an account of human nature, provide a foundation for your moral views that can answer to the gravest challenges to morality: Nietzsche and his ancient counter-part Thrasymachus.
“Long story short, why should those that are capable of taking advantage of others without being harmed themselves not do so?”
I’m at work, so I don’t really have time to go into enormous detail, but I think a reasonable answer to Nietzsche/Thrasymachus could come from a bit of economics and game theory, a branch of mathematics that studies competition and cooperation (specifically, scenarios where the success of your choices depends on the choices of others). Game theory shows that there are almost no situations where a person living in a society would benefit themselves in the long run by being unjust to others. In other words, over a long enough time period, you will be harming yourself by harming others in your society, if you depend on the resources provided by being a member of that society. Long story short (ha), being unjust simply because you’re a “strong” man is irrational, and assumes either that you’ll be able to deceive others indefinitely, or that the cost/benefit matrix is mostly positive (neither of which are true).
We already have unjust people who appear to be just–they’re called sociopaths. Although if their behavior is a perfect facade of normality, how can we say whether they really are unjust, deep down? Most sociopaths (which, by the way, have been shown to have atypical patterns of neural activation, and are physically incapable of empathy or a well-developed theory of mind) are able to “hide” among normal people without getting into trouble, but occasionally they become serial killers and the like. (There’s also an entire evolutionary/behavioral arms race of lying and the ability to detect lying). Eventually–even if it takes decades–they get caught and removed from society.
In a sense, humanity has already passed through a “will to power” phase in our early evolution (all social animals do), and we’ve evolved a theory of mind, an innate empathy, sense of fairness, and other mental structures that would fall under “morality” as a solution to a common survival problem. Those who cheat and steal food from others and murder the other individuals in their society will be shunned by the group, as a group survival strategy. This is basically a death sentence in pre-modern times. Secondarily, they’d be harming the propagation of their own genes in a society that consisted primarily of direct relatives.
As history progresses, these evolved mental structures lay the foundation for a system of ethics as the circle of your “tribe” extends to more and more people, allowing for towns, cities, nations to all share a single group identity. In modern times, more and more people are coming to identify their tribe as the whole of the human species and our surrounding ecology.
That’s at least what my outline would look like. It would also explain why chimps, wolves, dolphins, elephants, and other social animals also have their own systems of moral behavior within the group.
As far as I’ve been able to tell, Nz was more or less unaware of any of these sorts of developments in mathematics.
James, I don’t think you’ve gotten out of Nietzsche’s dilemma just yet. You’re probably right about our success as social animals relying on an innate empathy etc., and you’re also right to say an unjust-all-the-time person wouldn’t get very far. But what about the times when an unjust person is able to take advantage of others?
Take William the Conqueror, for example. He lied to the pope to get a papal blessing for his invasion of England, and caused the deaths of thousands of Normans and English. Now, William didn’t lie all the time (he wasn’t the unjust-all-the-time person), but he made a land grab and got away with it. You can say that more humans would survive if nobody made decisions like this, and you can use game theory to prove it (you don’t even need game theory to prove it, probably; it seems pretty clear that fewer wars=fewer deaths, although you never know when those Freakonomics guys will show up). What you can’t do, however, is obligate William not to lie and not to land grab without some moral theory beyond this. He might even admit that more people would survive without his lying and landgrabbing ways, but say, “What’s that to me? Those empathetic impulses in my mind are nothing but artifacts of the evolutionary process. I could have evolved some other way, and the universe doesn’t care how I turned out. Why obey the artifacts of evolution? Why not strike out on my own, now that the time has arrived that I can take what I want without troubling consequences?” Even recognizing those evolutionary traits and recognizing the reason for them, someone can point to the amoral universe and claim that these traits carry no moral weight.
Any naturalist materialism is also going to have to wrestle with how freedom is possible. If we are determined, well then there is no point to discussing morality to begin with.
Here’s something I googled and skimmed in like two seconds on the free will question.
Ultimately the moral absolutist must resort to a “might makes right” stance anyway. There is nothing inherently more righteous in moral absolutism than humanistic morality. If William of Normandy was “wrong” in an absolute sense the only consequence might be his punishment. How is this any more satisfying than the relativistic condemnation of the people under his thumb. This is my primary objection to moral absolutism. It doesn’t solve anything.
@ Hunt: Can you clarify? I don’t think anyone is calling for William’s punishment; he’s dead. All we’re looking for is a way to decide whether his action is right or wrong. Although a wrong action might merit punishment, that seems to me a separate question.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I wonder if you are saying that moral realism (that is, the idea that things are objectively right or wrong) doesn’t give you any more practical application than moral relativism (the idea that things are right or wrong depending on culture, personal preference, or whatever). This might be true; it’s as easy to throw someone in jail for violating a community-specific moral code as it is to throw someone in jail for violating a natural law. I don’t think this reference to practical application answers the bigger question, however. That is, it doesn’t seem to answer why certain things are right or wrong.
If you are at all familiar with the theories put forth by animal behavioral it is quite a lot more than “a bit”. Game Theory has been embraced wholesale to explain such behavior, which is by no means isolated to humans. Altruistic behavior, or really any behavior in which the organism chooses a path that is sub-optimal on an individual level, but more optimal on a greater social level, have Game Theory explanations.
Do social organisms, not just humans, develop complex social rules. Definitively yes, from apes to hyenas to penguins. Do those organisms choose to adhere to the rules over optimal self interest – again, definitively yes. Do all of those animals get their instructions from the ten commandments – pretty absurd. Is there a clear correlation between the brain configurations of various types of animals and the degree of social behavior they participate in – again, definitely yes. Does game theory provide a supported explanation why adherence to social rules is in the evolutionary benefit of some organisms, but not in the evolutionary benefit of others – to the point of specific beneficial selective tactics – oh yes.
And now another set of questions – outside of very specific particulars (cries about eating pork, or shellfish, or shaving, or homosexuality, for example, which incidentally are all mentioned in the same part of the bible but 3 out of 4 of them get overlooked for some reason), is there a statistically significant trend in any particular belief group to adhere more or less strongly to basic social rules about violence, theft, rape, etc? Are atheists, or Hindus, or Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists statistically more or less inclined for such acts? On the flip side, rather than crimes, are they more or less statistically inclined for acts of compassion to their fellow man (or for that matter, to other living organisms)? Unless you can speak to a statistically significant distinction in behavior among belief groups (controlled for other variables, such as social level, education level, etc since wealthy, educated atheists are more likely to be philanthropic than poor, uneducated baptists and belief likely doesn’t have much to do with that), you can’t assert any correlation between belief and adherence to social rules.
And for a philosophical question of sorts – is it more moral for an individual to do (or not do) something because they feel it is fundamentally a good thing to do, or because they fear repercussions? Is it more moral to be an atheist motivated by compassion or a religious person motivated by fear of reprisal in the afterlife? Is the threat of divine punishment a greater motivator than a threat of material punishment, for those only inclined to follow rules out of obedience or fear, rather than compassion?
Incidentally, William the Conqueror is a BAD example for such discussions, because not only is his personal potential rewards of a magnitude far outside of the average, his decisions did not just reflect his own interests but those of a society. Thats a whole different set of questions than where morality comes from for the common person.
Also, can you define what you mean by “anthropology”? I take it it’s not “the study of hominids”.
Yes, I mean “philosophical anthropology” which is different from the sorts of things they study over in the department of anthropology. In the broadest possible strokes, a philosophical anthropology would explore the human condition and human nature (our experience, essence, capacities, goods, etc). Most philosophers have an “anthropology” (Plato is a dualist, etc etc) that includes not only an account of human nature but also prescriptive claims about what is good for man. The term “philosophical anthropology” arose particularly out of phenomenological and existential methods of inquiring into the human condition.
Do you think the science of anthropology can or ought to inform the particulars of a philosophical anthropology?
I will admit that I have a generally low opinion of the “social sciences” as currently practiced in the academy, but I would not exclude the contributions of the social science of anthropology since it might well have important contributions.
It’s a weird one, because it’s halfway a physical science as well, and intersects with paleontology, genetics, stuff like that.
My primary concern (painting with really broad strokes here) is that many of the social sciences have become dominated by postmodernity and marxism on the “social” side and by positivism (an reductionist epistemology that almost invariably sneaks metaphysical materialism in through the back door) on the “science” side.
I’ve read some Buddhist material, and it asserts that in many ways the distinctions between ourselves and others are an illusion. We aren’t individuals, but part of a larger collective body. I’ve kind of warmed up to the idea as of late, and it seems like trying to benefit “yourself” doesn’t make any sense if “you” don’t exist as a distinct entity.
Hmm. Interesting. Here’s an excerpt from one of Nietzsche’s notebooks (not a final published book)
It really doesn’t sound like he’s talking about tyrants here.
Nz is not a systematic philosopher, and one must be very careful in avoiding over-interpreting an aphorism here or there. Nz’s overman is about overcoming and ‘yes saying’ – that may or may not take the form of “tyranny”.
I would encourage SHAFT to invite Prof Huenemann to speak on “Nietzschean Health and Christian Pathology”. I know he is a real busy guy this term, but he can talk for 30 minutes on that without any preparation required. Hell, he could just stand up and read the paper he just published with this very title. This would give SHAFTers a solid introduction to Nz.
If you do invite him, I would selfishly ask that you NOT have it on either Monday or Wednesday evening (the latter being your usual meeting time) since I teach evening classes on both of those days.
I’m all for more Huenemann.
“My primary concern (painting with really broad strokes here) is that many of the social sciences have become dominated by postmodernity and marxism on the “social” side”
This is cause for concern? Personally I think those are the best two places atheists should look for moral grounding! Perhaps we should take more social science classes.
of course we would need to ignore the science side of it.
Forget science.