Intro
The below is a response to Sean Mead, who asked via Facebook
how would anti-realism and anti-nihilism go together? there's very little ground left, maybe 'higher men' and that's about it...
The discussion in question resulted from consideration of two articles:
What follows is a quick write-up of a response I began as a comment on Facebook but which grew much too long for a comment. It should be noted here: Sean Mead’s question came as a response to an assertion I had made that Nietzsche was not a nihilist but indeed sought a way out of what he construed to be an emerging trend toward nihilism; thus, the appearance of “anti-realism” in Nietzsche’s writings would need to be correlated with “anti-nihilism.” I am addressing this concern as well as information contained in those two sources with the assumption that all who read the following will have read those sources as well.
The only warning I would give, beyond the fact that this is a quick write-up, is that I’m not a student of Nietzsche, having read only Beyond Good and Evil sometime in my early twenties and nothing else but criticism and selected quotes since. I am using the Stanford summary linked above quite heavily, reacting more to the ideas there and my own independently-formed ideas about various abstractions relating to the topic. The following may also shed some light on some recent debates I’ve had re: Jared Loughner and culpability for his actions on January 8, 2011.
Anti-Realism and WOODA
Reading the article posted to the Stanford site, I'm under the impression that Nietzsche's "anti-realism" such as it is involves the problem of what I would call "The Worldviewer in the World." This actually relates to much of my writing on the OODA, which I have taken to calling the WOODA, including "W" for World.
Most people tend to separate themselves (and others) from the World, so that they can imagine a) a purely objective and b) a purely subjective dynamic which are separate while also supposing the existence of c) a person viewed entirely separated from the World, able to make decisions with "free will" that is not subject to being a part of, or greatly determined by, the World.
In my earliest conceptualizations of the WOODA, —

which I draw as two interlinking OODA processes — one, the concrete OODA, and the other, the abstract OODA which is actually the Orient of the Concrete OODA — I stressed the idea that the "new information" feeding into the Abstract OODA comprises not only the sense data the individual receives from his 5 senses while living his life but also his genetic data. (See: Original, expanded diagram.) Genetic data, indeed all the physical "data" constituting an individual, is always new data affecting the abstract process, even if the genetic data feeding into those abstract processes rarely changes or changes with less frequency than received sense data. Why is this genetic data always new data? Because persons are dynamic, living organisms; a change to the body (such as disease or injury) will alter the abstract processing; and, we are nearing the point when actual genetic manipulation will one day affect those processes as well.
Additionally, I have always stressed the fact that I do not separate the individual from the World. I.e., we are within the World viewing that World. This is a dynamic process, a part of being alive within the World with a consciousness capable of being aware (on some level) of the dynamic process. Generally, mostly for lack of a better conceptualization, I consider consciousness to be an emergent quality of the World, or of the physical, concrete processes of the World. The dynamicism I reference is not meant to refer only to 1) us, as living creatures, but also to 2) the World as a whole and, importantly, to 3) us & the World interacting. #1 & #3 could really be an alteration of #2, because we are of the World not merely in It and the World is dynamic; but I add #1 & #3 for emphasis because I believe most people do not appreciate the dynamicism of the World and tend to view sharp delineations between the human individual and “the rest of the World.” 1
The "genetic data" I included in the WOODA diagram (which perhaps could use a different name besides “genetic data”) — appear to be related to what the article at Stanford refers to as Nietzsche's "type-facts" about individuals. I am guessing that the relatively unchanging and quite "near," perhaps therefore quite “strong,” genetic data feeding into the abstract processing greatly predetermines the individual's abstract processing of other received data. All else may change, and change frequently, but this genetic data follows him around, continuously feeding into – and, in that sense, continuously prefiguring — his abstract processing. Because the person's physical being is so common to him, constant, near, etc., and in fact precedes all other new data feeding into the abstract processing, the individual is unlikely to be able to account for it in his philosophy of himself and his philosophy of the World as a whole. This genetic data can not be separated from the rest of the data, or sense data, determining the individual’s processing, within his philosophy; thus, these "type-facts" bias individuals, leading them to develop their philosophies, or worldviews, along certain predetermined routes.
So the perception of Nietzsche's "anti-realism" appears, to me, to be related to his reaction against what may be a kind of Naïve Realism — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism — and, for a metaphorical consideration of Nietzsche's standpoint we might consider the idea from quantum mechanics that merely observing a phenomenon affects that phenomenon, but with an added dimension: we ourselves are changed by observing the phenomenon. This may seem counterintuitive for describing Nietzsche, since Nietzsche appears to have believed in largely unchanging "type-facts" for each individual, but as a metaphor it might suffice. Counter to the claim of "a", "b", and "c" mentioned above, that there exist
- a purely objective [dynamic]
- a purely subjective dynamic [separate from the objective dynamic]
- a person viewed entirely separated from the World, able to make decisions with a "free will" that is not subject to being a part of, or greatly determined by, the World.
— the sense-perceptions people have of the World, from which they make their philosophies and in response to which they act, do not arrive at the abstract processing whole and separate from other data (their type-facts) but are quickly organized according to their type-facts. If the objective world that is not part of the individual could arrive at the individual that is not part of the objective world — if these were two entirely separate fields/existences/processes — then the sense perceptions might arrive entirely intact and neither so-called objective world nor individual would alter. However, the Worldviewer is in the World, or of the World, and he alters in response to observations. His concept of reality alters with the addition or influence of those sensory observations. Let’s call it his "type-fact-complex", or his Mental Constructs, his Worldview. The so-called objective world "alters" within his "reality" rather than remain entirely objective; and, besides which, the portion of the objective world comprising the individual (who is in and of the World) alters when he alters.
The above is not to be construed as an argument for subjectivism, however. Nietzsche does not appear to deny the existence of an objective world nor, as the article at Stanford points out, that we are forever and only trapped within the subjective world of our own minds as some idealists or anti-realists would have it —
To that end [of creating ourselves] we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be creators in this sense [wir müssen Physiker sein, um, in jenem Sinne, Schöpfer sein zu können] — while hitherto all valuations and ideals have been based on ignorance of physics … . Therefore: long live physics! (GS 335)
— but rather seems to insist on the inseparability of the objective and subjective worlds/processes while prescribing a kind of skeptical acknowledgment that we will never be capable of distinguishing anything that is purely “subjective” from anything purely “objective” in our conception of reality — for ourselves as individuals and, importantly, on some universalist basis for all individuals. If there were a word for describing a state of being that is neither subjective nor objective, a state which we might call whatever emerges from the two — so long as we entirely reject concepts of subjectivity and objectivity as distinct approaches to reality once we have found that word — Nietzsche might approve. The Worldviewer being in and of the World, he is an objective fact of the World as are all his interactions with It and all Its interactions with him; thus, what might normally be called a subjectivist conceptualization of reality in opposition to an objective reality may merely be a limited objectivity, limited in scope but not in kind, which bears objective correspondence with all that is not-him.
Interlude: On the Higher Man’s Self-Discovery
The Stanford piece quotes this from Nietzsche:
I never even suspected what was growing in me — and one day all my capacities, suddenly ripe, leaped forth in their ultimate perfection.
I have, in the previous section, skimmed over or blurred the “genetic data” input into our abstract processing and the resultant Mental Constructs (Worldview) that an individual possesses (and we must say, is largely possessed by.) If we take an individual’s material being, or the concrete portion of the individual, and suppose that this greatly informs, via what I have called “genetic data”, all his Worldview…we must still keep in mind how other data in the form of sensory perceptions have, over a lifetime, also informed that Worldview. Using the term given to Nietzsche’s conceptualization, the “type-facts” of any given individual, we might say that these type-facts organize all other learning and data according to those type-facts. The type-facts might be a kind of super-structure to the Worldview, with other, sensory data incorporated according to them, or as evaluated by them. Nietzsche’s understanding of the higher man’s self-discovery, then, may describe this process: whether he will or no, all data are organized according to the super-structure of the type-facts, over a lifetime, but the higher man’s self-discovery is a discovery later in life of the existence of that super-structure. He becomes consciously aware of the super-structure after which all his facts are classified. 2
So, whether we in our modern era consider Nietzsche’s type-facts to be the WOODA’s “genetic data” (material being, in parts and whole) or instead consider them to be the “Mental Constructs” or Worldview within the Abstract OODA which has been largely determined by the ever-constant “genetic data” but also by sensory data received over a lifetime….is a question. I am inclined to view the material person, his physical processes which lead to cognition, as a large factor in the individual’s type-facts; but also, I consider the Mental Constructs w/ their reliance on experiences accrued over a lifetime, including sensory data, to be a great reinforcer of those type-facts. The super-structure and the content reinforce each other; but, the content never exists beyond the bounds of that framework and is thus subservient to the super-structure – except when it is not; see: neuroplasticity. 3
Anti-Nihilism & Anti-Realism
The surest and the safest approach toward answering the question of how, or whether, anti-nihilism and anti-realism may complement one another would be to define anti-realism in terms of a rejection of the universalism of human realities while recognizing that the evaluation (note that term!) of meanings and values is something that each person may do.
It may be important here to note the difference between what is being addressed when we use the terms “realism” and “nihilism.” The first refers to an understanding about putatively “objective” entities, i.e., objects which exist independent of our thinking about them. The second refers mostly to whether those existing items have any inherent meaning or value.
Depending on one’s concept of realism, realism might suggest that objects are perceived as they are perceived due to their inherent qualities or realities. The furthest extension of this notion would be naïve realism, or the belief that we perceive objects exactly as they are without any sort of filtering mechanism or, indeed, any sort of bias in the interpretive mechanism receiving those perceptions. Parallel with this notion of the existence of real objects unaffected by or unchanged by putatively “subjective” ideas about them – they have a being, or a reality, completely independent of our ideas about them — naïve realism involves the notion that whenever we observe, we are in fact observing exact reality, or the real unfiltered and, though occasionally limited in focus, entire. Anti-realism, then, need not be a rejection of all notions of an objective reality nor a rejection of the existence of an objective reality altogether but may be a rejection of philosophical “realism”.
Depending on one’s view of nihilism, the opposite of nihilism may be teleology, insofar as teleology presupposes that objects exist for a predetermined purpose leading to some ultimate fulfillment or end-point. Objects have inherent value regardless of putatively “subjective” ideas about those objects, and those values in conglomeration or collusion determine future events for systems comprising those objects. From a teleological standpoint, objects have meaning because they exist for a purpose, a reason, which is all their own, and however accurately or inaccurately we observe them and interpret their meanings or values, our observation does not alter the inherent meaning or values of objects. Nihilism, then, would be the counterview that objects have no inherent meaning, no inherent purpose, no inherent value. Here, I will insert a caveat: there appears to be no perfect opposite to nihilism; or, the opposite of nihilism may be determined by however one views nihilism since, for example, one can make a claim about all putatively objective reality or one can limit the nihilistic approach to particularly human institutions and human relations without attempting a grand metaphysical rejection of meaning and value.
I offer the above definitions as a baseline for what is to follow.
Anti-/Realism
If anti-realism for this specific consideration is the rejection of a realist philosophy like naïve realism, then a consideration of the implications of naïve realism would be in order. I would link the consideration to section “1.2 Critique of the Descriptive Component of MPS” in the Stanford piece hyperlinked above, although I will take a different approach.
Naïve realism presupposes that objects really are as they appear to us and that our evaluation of them as objects through sense-perception is both perfect and complete; furthermore, such a philosophical standpoint carries with it the belief that all individuals, regardless of any notions of individuality or subjectivity, will view those objects in exactly the same way, barring sensory impairments or mental/physiological impairments. (I.e., by “view” I mean here, sensory perception. I do not mean, subjective “viewing” or imagination and so forth.) From this idea of universal apprehension, objective reality may become a baseline for all other judgments, included moral judgments, prescriptive and proscriptive laws (whether formal or informal), and the like.
In fact, naïve realism follows the schema already mentioned twice above in a, b, & c: a) there is an objective world entirely unchanged and unaffected by subjectivity, b) there may be a subjective world, but it is separate from the objective world, in that its existence does not affect or alter the objective world, and c) all individuals are entirely separate from the rest of the world, view the objective world at a distance but view it accurately, and are able to operate via “free will” on the basis of their sensory perceptions and thus are able to shape themselves and their surroundings entirely as they decide they will.
What is important here to note is the fact that naïve realism supposes a, b, & c for all objects in the universe, not merely humans, although the terminology we would use to describe non-human objects might need a tweak. The existence of all objects, including humans, is entirely objective and not a matter of subjectivity, and each object is entirely separate from all the rest of the world, can be viewed individually. Instead of “free will”, we might say that non-human objects continue to be what they are as a matter of being what they are, or “according to themselves.” The Stanford article on Nietzsche explores his thoughts on causa sui, and the concept can be applied to inanimate objects, non-human animate objects, and even humans. Free will may enable humans to operate exactly as they wish, creating themselves, but non-humans “create” themselves by always being themselves as a consequence of their objective realities: “according to themselves.”
The anti-realist who opposes the philosophical naïve realism need merely oppose the universalism implied by naïve realism. Nietzsche took one route, at least, in proposing what the Stanford article calls his “type-facts” of individuals according to which all perceptions and understandings are arranged. This is an attack on the perfect, complete, and universally identical apprehension of sensory data, an attack that has as its basis the presumption of a real, objective bias in the interpretive — or, interactive — mechanisms of different individuals. I insert the term interactive here in order to highlight what may be a peculiarly Nietzschean approach, already outlined above, which does not depend upon the notion of a philosophical subjectivity but rather on objective correspondences between what I have been calling the World and distinct Worldviewers.
One might as easily have attacked naïve realism in another way by attacking the perceptual comprehensiveness of our sensory faculties; here, I’ll introduce a diagram I’ve recently used in another related blog post:

When using this diagram in the past, I have also added the caveat: It is not drawn to scale.
An important basis of naïve realism is the assumption that individual objects in the universe can be apprehended in isolation from all other objects and fully understood in isolation. Importantly, naïve realism rejects out of hand any relational qualities of objects or the notion that objects may be what they are in part due to their natural surroundings. Context is unimportant for the naïve realist, at least for understanding the individual objects within that context, since the objects determine themselves by being what they are. It is also possible to say of the naïve realist that dynamicism does not exist except as sporadic and sudden changes to the environment. A whole apple may become an apple split into two halves if someone slices it down the middle, the naïve realist will concede; but not that the apple, as such, is determined to be what it is by a billion or more influences within and outside the putative apple at any given moment during its putative existence. The apple determines itself, only, and by merely being itself.
The naïve realist may concede the existence of context, but for the naïve realist, context has value only insofar as context — so many other objects also existing — may be used to reveal the inherent properties and qualities of an apple being itself.
An anti-realist argument against naïve realism might attack the universalism of naïve realism by pointing out, first, the diagram above (titled “Transparency 101”), and, second, the apparent fact that different people occupy different observational niches and, in any case, only view an extremely small portion of the universe at any given time or even over a lifetime:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— yes, but even given the naïve realist’s admission of various levels of ignorance for every person alive, or perceptual blind spots as real objective realities (to put it bluntly), the programs and schemata prescribed, proscribed, and otherwise dreamt of by naïve realists cannot be easily defended. If blind spots are admitted to exist, or biases in the mechanism interpreting the sensory data are admitted to exist, then the naïve realist’s moralistic, normative, legalistic schemata can hold very little water, from the perspective of this particular anti-realism. Whose limited perceptions are to be the barometer, the super-structure, of a universalist plan of action?
Anti-/Nihilism
On the Broader, Metaphysical Concerns
Meaning requires context. Regarding nihilism, naïve realism’s special problem is its tautological nature, which might be crudely stated as follows:
x=X because it is in the nature of x to be X.
If we use our previous example of the apple, a, we might assign the value to it, A: a=A. That is, from a naïve realist’s point of view (were he to consider his own point of view; see below), the purpose of his perceptions is to deliver to his mind the objective reality of the object he observes, and this alone, without filtering or limitation. Naïve realism’s rejection of context as a modifying feature of an object’s objective existence, the fact (so supposed) that the observer is capable of viewing reality directly and that the reality he observes in objective entities is comprised entirely and completely of their inherent properties and qualities, leads naturally to a rejection of any inherent meaning or value for that object beyond the object’s physical being. So: using a capital variable to distinguish the meaning/value from the objective entity, as I have above, is redundant; a=a will suffice.
While it might be true that we could expand the crude representation to also include Not-x=Not-x — insofar as any thing that is Not-x remains Not-x as a consequence of x=x rather than x=y — and thereby attempt the creation of a context for x (there is x with everything else that is not x, in the universe), this would not express anything particularly meaningful about x because, from the point of view of naïve realism this could be said of any other thing as well. Whether we say x=x and y=y or Not-x=Not-x and Not-y=Not-y, or all of these together, we are not finding any inherent meaning in either x or y except exclusive self-identity; all we can say of x is that x is x. 4
A cruder and perhaps clichéd method of understanding the lack of meaning in such an imagined context is to say of the collected objects in the universe, O, that, “If all O are self-identical, then no O is self-identical.” This is not to say that no object is self-identical, but only that self-identity loses its meaningfulness — context is fairly exorcised in such a universalism -- and thus, if we are using the tautological x=x for finding meaning in the universe and for all objects within the universe, and using self-identity alone, then self-identity is next to useless. One might reconsider this problem via use of the word value rather than meaning and say that every object has a particular value — is not value-less — and that said value is the value of being itself and having the properties and characteristics it has. Fair enough, but value without context is relatively meaningless, because it is vague: similar to values such as tallness or littleness, if there is no comparison the values may seem arbitrary rather than inherent for any human in a position to evaluate — find out the value — of an object. One must ask whether a vague value is a value; in terms of naïve realism, one must ask how such vagueness corresponds with the naïve realist’s claims that his perceptual abilities are sufficient for identifying objective entities.
One might object to the above characterization of naïve realism’s special problem vis-à-vis nihilism by admitting a different kind of contextual framework within naïve realism; namely, that the co-existence of distinct objects may cause alterations in those objects since it is in the nature of those objects to act upon one another and be reacted upon by one another. The context is, they co-exist; furthermore, because they are self-identical while being distinct from all other objects, distinct interactions may occur whenever they come into “contact” with other objects in various yet particular configurations: i.e., a theory of systems.
Via a theory of systems, objects may be said to have value in relation to other objects within the system and in relation to the system itself considered as a whole. Such an admission might be made, but it would not escape the tautological dilemma. For every configuration of self-identical objects, or every event E characterized by the interactions of a given set of objects, E=E. Why in the first place these particular objects should have the properties they have — why x should be x in the first place rather than y — and why they should have come into contact in the first place, are not answered by E=E. A strong determinist argument might suppose a U, a universe configured as our universe is configured, with all the properties and physical laws our universe possesses, and recursively say that the answer to “Why E=E?” is “Because, U=U.” Beyond the problem of finding inherent value for objects via recursive argument — contradicting the naïve realist’s position that objects possess value inherently on the basis of their own properties or being and are able to be perceived as such via such — a new problem exists for the naïve realist making such claims: philosophical relativism.
On the Human Concerns
The seemingly absurdist metaphysical approach of conflating naïve realism with nihilism has a purpose, however absurd or pedantic it may seem on the surface. Nihilism often takes the form (in the human practicing or practiced upon by nihilism, take it as you will) of “Life is meaningless” or “Government is meaningless” or simply that all human institutions and human interactions are meaningless or without inherent value. Beyond the metaphysical concerns of a strong nihilism, or even in the absence of such a nihilism, this weaker form of nihilism may have greater effect on a greater number of individuals. This is the form of nihilism most often implied by the word, in common usage.
For a consideration of this weaker form of nihilism, we might begin with the metaphysical consideration and say that, for any given “higher-order” reality of human society, for instance a given institution, we might use the variable E to represent a confluence or co-existence of distinct individuals within a small physical boundary relative to U. Why this distinct group should have come together in the first place, to make the distinct and particular institutions that have been made, and work so tirelessly to preserve those institutions, is not answered by E=E. Additionally, an explanation of the values suggested by E via recourse to broader, non-human objective realities would either devolve to recursive argumentation or become relativistic.
There was a time when God stood in for the ultimate Why for the majority of individual humans living within a particular society; but Nietzsche, as messenger not as cause of God’s death, has informed us of the present lack of Why:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
—Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann
We might suppose that the birth of that, er, Gay Science, or the search for intrinsic realities, intrinsic natures of objects — the happy admission of the fact that for every x, x=x, and for every E, E=E — has killed God, mostly as a result of its joyful admission that no God is needed for this search. The objects themselves and the events themselves will provide all that is needed.
Even giving credit where credit is due, by allowing the naïve realist’s conception of meaningful observation of the interactions of distinct objects — even so far as allowing the fact that it is in the nature of fire to melt ice and that for every event E of fire + ice, the ice will melt — we may not escape the criticism of naïve realism’s limited scope and applicability when contemplating the higher order context of human interactions. Who shall choose fire; who, ice; who, to combine them, who, to keep them separate; and, why?
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
—Robert Frost
First, the great bugbear in the room may be the fact that “meaning,” like sound in a forest of falling trees, requires a human brain in order to occur. Quite separate from questions concerning the objective reality of objects and the naïve realist’s dictum that those objective realities are not contingent upon an observer, nihilism or its opposite, teleology, as descriptions of stances involving the absence or existence of meaning and/or inherent value beyond mere attributes, will always be contingent upon the existence of an observer. Every observer has a limited existence, a limited observational niche.
Second, the naïve realist resolves on meaning with perfect faith not only in every individual’s sensory perceptions, provided that the individual is not impaired physically or mentally, but also presupposes that whatever is observed is sufficient in itself for understanding its objective reality and ascribing meaning to that observation. He would prescribe courses of action on the basis of his observations, not only for himself but also for others who, it is presumed, have access to the same objective realities. However, for finding meaning in a complex social institution or society, naïve realism is insufficient. The question already asked, “Whose limited perceptions are to be the barometer, the super-structure, of a universalist plan of action?” may be asked of the naïve realist prescribing action on the basis of the meaning he has sussed from a limited observation of a subsection of any given society. 5
In short, naïve realism’s very insistence that the objective reality of any given object is not dependent whatsoever on the observation made of that object by the human observer drives a wedge between objective reality and individual human understanding, not by telling humans that they may not make accurate observations of objective reality but by telling humans a) that objective reality is indifferent to human observations and b) that in any case, human observation is indifferent to objective reality: observe what you wish, or observe everything, or observe nothing, those darned objects will continue to do whatever it is in their nature to do, quite apart from you. The naïve realist may prescribe actions (or proscribe actions) on the basis of observations of objective reality, but explicitly or implicitly, naïve realism entirely breaks the WOODA process in driving a wedge between observer and observed through universalist schemata. Humans are thrown out of the Loop altogether, if not in reality then at least within the conceptual framework of naïve realism: if non-human objective reality is to be the basis of social organization, no humans are needed.
This is not, however, how naïve realists see the matter.
The lack of sensory scope, the lack of omniscience, and the confluence of much objective reality (one feels that Nietzsche would say all reality is real) that is not observed or not observed well, has rarely tripped up the naïve realist who happily ascribes meaning to what he observes. Hitherto I have considered the naïve realist in abstract; but in commonplace, no pure realism exists in the philosophy of any given naïve realist. The basic tenet, that all objective reality has a nature inherent to it which determines it, may lie behind every naïve realist’s interpretation of his observations; but his attempt to avoid the tautological dilemma of pure naïve realism and thus, avoid a resultant nihilism, in conjunction with his utterly limited observational scope, leads him to find meaning beyond that supplied by his five physical senses.
Try as he might, the naïve realist never avoids the pitfalls of naïve realism. First, his insistence on an objective world that is separate from the observer — a Worldviewer outside the World — invariably reduces introspective observation, which in turn leads to a failure to account for personal bias (a la Nietzsche’s “type-facts”) or, in other words, a failure to be objective about himself and thus also about his observations of his surroundings. Second, the attempt to avoid the recursive tautological dilemma of naïve realism invariably leads to a presumption of the existence of an extra-real, because outside the objective reality, first cause or prime mover; i.e., to avoid U=U and its tautological insufficiency vis-à-vis meaning and value, a meaningful G in some form is imagined to exist outside “the rest” of objective reality that will give meaning to the World. These in conjunction will lead to a philosophical idealism in practice, or to philosophical subjectivity misconstrued as objectivity, or else to philosophical relativism — i.e., ultimately to nihilism, since meaning and value, rather than existing inherently in objective reality, will be found in extra-real or imaginary realities, subjective meanings, imagined relationships, and so forth, and these may begin to appear arbitrary. Should the naïve realist come to the same conclusions about himself, he may identify himself as a nihilist; even if he does not self-identify as such, he may become a nihilist. To the degree that he begins to identify these tendencies in other naïve realists, he may call them nihilists or, if not, may nonetheless begin asking the questions, “Whose limited perceptions are to be the barometer, the super-structure, of a universalist plan of action? According to whose ‘free will’?” — and slip into nihilism of the weaker sort, judging social institutions, or human life, to be inherently value-less (since arbitrarily valued.)
In Conclusion: On Nietzsche's Anti-realist Anti-nihilism
Bootstrapping the above considerations back into a deeper consideration of Nietzsche’s approach, we might say that one begins to see a trend toward the development, in the naïve realist, of a “triune unity” approach toward meaning. I as individual observer entirely separate from U as universe/World, both of which are entirely separate from G as god. Peculiarly, each of these units is often assumed to operate freely, or with entire free will, by the naïve realist. That I as an individual and G as some god may be entirely free to act as he wills seems obvious and commonplace; that the Universe, or U as objective reality outside I and God, operates freely beyond my observation of it and according to its own nature, may be implied in a realist understanding, whether naïve realism or some other form of philosophical realism. Nietzsche’s critique, if it is to be characterized as anti-realism, seems founded upon a skepticism of the universalist tendencies of naïve realism, insofar as so many gaps in real understanding — and understanding of the real — lead the naïve realist to the creation of arbitrary laws, arbitrary moral codes, and the like, in order to fill in the gaps between these freely operating agents; and these filled gaps, or arbitrary connections, in turn, in and of themselves promote nihilism.
So for instance, although I offer up a peculiar consequence of “Gay Science,” above, the real reason God has died, in Nietzsche’s estimation, is not that a purely empirical science has taken God’s place but rather lies in the fact that the religions themselves, particularly Christianity, have become so arbitrary in their attempt to be universally valid and universally applied, they have circumscribed the previously living God, or defined him out of existence. Whereas God was once a powerful though unobserved aspect of the universe, contemplated in trepidation — the name given to a vaguely sensed though tremendously relevant limitation in humans who are all too human with all too human gaps in understanding, the name for a void in our apprehension of the universe — now that God has been replaced by a clearly defined and false god the understanding of which will supply all our cognitive needs/wants/lacking, God is dead. Rather than suggesting that there is no “real” in reality, or no objective reality, Nietzsche’s anti-realism, or critique of realism, is his attempt to replace these false fillings, these arbitrary explanations, with the actual gaps. His anti-nihilism is the attempt to forestall nihilism by suggesting meaningful gaps — as being gaps understood to exist — and he seems to suggest that his so-called “higher men” are those who recognize those gaps to the degree that they withdraw from universalism and universalist programs, focusing instead on the nexus of I-U, or on the objective reality of the intersection of themselves (as objective beings) and the rest of the World.
[Note: made a slight edit to penultimate paragraph’s final sentence to clarify its meaning; added “filled” and “or arbitrary connections.”]
________
1 It has come to my attention, while editing this blog post, that the philosophical idea of dynamism will relate. However, I will instead use the term "dynamicism" throughout because I intend less specificity for the term. For example, dynamism may postulate monads, forces, etc., as the principle vehicles for dynamism, but here I am merely referring to dynamics and a dynamic system without making claims about what, specifically, permits or creates the dynamic systems.
2 Note that here, and actually in many other areas throughout this quick write-up, I've largely forced myself to exclude consideration of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who actually had a great influence on Nietzsche or at least was greatly admired by Nietzsche. On this particular score, Emerson's essay on Circles seems an appropriate segue:
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified.
3 Here again, with neuroplasticity, is an argument for, or at least a consideration of, dynamicism.
4 Here and following, I use ad hoc and (as might be noted) idiosyncratic notation. Given the subject matter of this blog post, perhaps such an approach might be judged meet.
5 Assuming here no omniscient naïve realists are in the mix, although even given the existence of an omniscient naïve realist who possesses a perfect mind capable of interpreting all observations exactly and perfectly, how are the non-omniscient, or limited naïve realists, going to accept the omniscient naïve realist’s communication of observed meaning while remaining true to the precepts of naïve realism themselves? This is more than a flippant question, within the context of our present epoch, given, first, the existence of so many putative experts and, second, the rather material – and we might as well say, with caveats, the objective -- inability of all others to verify the pronouncements made by those experts, due to limited time and means. A great many realists know exactly what to do, even without omniscience.
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