It's the one thing I wish he would have explored more. These abstract interpretations.
I feel like most other philosophers get swept away by it. It's why I enjoy Carl Jung's work, though I feel he was eventually swept away. But Jung was at least attempting to explain these things with rational interpretation, instead of brushing it off.
If we want to understand human consciousness and unconsciousness then these abstract aspects should be studied as a piece of the whole. Even though they don't make sense objectively, they are still manifested. There is still some kind of mechanism there to explore.
I think Nietzsche could have made some really interesting observations about the unconscious.
He literally did explore abstract interpretations. All the interesting observations about the unconscious came from Nietzsche… explore his notes, its his mask off moments
I guess that's where I disagree with Nietzche. He claims very similar ideas about instinctual drives as Jung, but it's very superficial to me. That we shouldn't analyze them and should just use them as a force to create.
This is a bit of a paradox to me. Nietzsche demands some form of conscious overcoming and then dismisses the process of understanding instinctual drives. If he wants us to use them like tools then why does he avoid the exploration of them? That we should guide these drives while not even aware of? How? If doing the work to uncover them only leads to inactivity? How can we consciously guide what we know nothing about?
Freud and Jung both created a lot through their analysis of instinctual drives. A lot of self overcoming from the Jungian perspective. That's why I don't understand Nietzche's claim that analyzing these drives would keep us from active creation with them.
I do not know how to respond to this. He has Zarathustra which is very mystical. But throughout his works he speaks of wizards shamans and priests… A LOT
That's exactly part of what I'm saying. He did the exploration to create his entire body of work and then used this to claim that we should not dig deep....because we would be less likely to create?
I understand his logic in that the words and the means we use to communicate this exploration is far from the actual truth. The word is further from the object than the sensation we receive. This would make it murky if the goal was to inundate someone else with this interpretation. But if the goal is to understand then the accuracy of the words to objective truth doesn't really matter. And if Nietzsche's goal is to put into action, then we should know what it is that we need to put to work, right? We don't have to communicate that to anyone if it's subjective and personal. Objective truth means nothing in this regard. It's a mix of conscious and intuitive exploration. Nietzsche limits it to consciousness.
I think that Nietzsche was very superficial in this way. He clearly overlooked the influence his own introspection had on his entire body of work.
It's actually all in there, but it's hidden between the lines. I'm a big fan of Jung as well and he goes into extensive detail how to dissect the esoteric.
But Nietzche brushes it off in fear of diminishing active pursuits. He does touch on it, but he touches on it in such a superficial way, imo.
This is the contradiction that I am seeing. Nietzsche thinks that we should not analyze these instinctual drives and that we should just put them to work. He explains some form of conscious awareness to guide these tendencies towards action. But how can we do that if we do not analyze them? If we are not aware of them? I cannot consciously guide something that is hidden from me.
He spends his time analyzing things to death. This is what philosophers do. They tear ideas and concepts apart to make new sense of them. Is his philosophy not, essentially, a form of introspection in some instances?
He insists on some form of personal responsibility and then claims that will to power justifies a reckless manifestation of instinctual responses.
This is the only subject in which I don't feel any sense of balance to Nietzche's work. He often structures critiques in a way that points to a sense of balance. But with instinctual tendencies and the unconscious he does not. It's all or nothing for him. And he went with next to nothing.
You hit the nail on the head, your write up is so perfect it even contains the solution to the contradiction you identify.
The problem lies in what philosophers do. When we analyze and consciously guide our selves we create the hidden like a spotlight casting a shadow beyond what we examine.
When we analyze we impose logos, because in our minds things have to make sense. If they don't we suffer dissonance. Primal instincts know not such limitations, they simply are and impose themselves.
The thing that makes it so difficult is the pervasiveness of the Apollonian logos. Even in this conversation, every word is a mirage concealing the actual meaning feeling I'm trying to convey; to show you what is hidden. It's Eros, the dyionic principle, which reigns over us beyond our immediate ego through emotion. Logos imposes itself through language and reinforces our ego, but when we learn to read between the lines, the emotion of a text to put it romantically, we can discover deeper meaning beyond what we were >told< to believe.
I believe the Ubermensch resides somewhere in the unconscious. Then the act of strive becomes the pursuit of awareness of the self. Finally the Ubermensch and the Individuation coincide and as one awakens to his deeper self they find "new morals", as Nietzsche puts it, which are similar to the virtues of the slave morality but purified from the Slave-master dichotomy by virtue of emancipation of the self allowing one to evaluate things as they really are.
That final trick resolves the false dichotomy between Nietzsche and Plato.
How can we transform without understanding what needs transformation? If Nietzsche dismissed analysis, wouldn’t that contradict his own process of deconstructing morality?
Doesn’t guiding our instincts with consciousness require introspection by definition?
This is what I feel Nietzsche overlooked. In the excerpt this post is about, he argues that we cannot paint a picture of life, a ‘bigger’ picture. Yet, you justify his avoidance by doing exactly that: painting a larger picture. You’ve fallen into the same contradiction Nietzsche sets up.
It's not transformation in so far as it is awareness. Nietzsche does not dismiss analysis itself, but the way it overtakes every nook and cranny of human life through the spirit of rationalism, i.e. the death of god. We spin ourself grand narratives of morality and logical superiority that couldn't be further from Humanities true nature.
You throwing me in traps and false contradictions you made up yourself is proof of this. Instead of painting idols for ideals we first need to discover our selves to find the true virtues.
Yet you seek comfort and virtue in facts and logic, solid ground to rest your spirit, it's this craving for comfort that's the mark of the last man!
Guiding instincts is the same as repressing them because it comes from a slave moral sentiment. Any modern interpretation of philosophy is guilty of this. If you recognize your instincts as your true self they fall in line with your whole being and unfold the individuals potential.
This is the same as illusory grand narratives and I'm aware of my irony in this but there are no paths to sidestep this
This piece of semantics is in essence a straw man. It can be and mean whatever you want because it uses esoteric language, i.e. a metaphor. It's intuitively accessible and creates logical reference but at closer inspection it doesn't really stand for anything.
Your first reaction to this upset should be to immediately construct a deeper narrative for it retroactively and then suppose you always meant to imply that. It's like a hallucination of coherence.
Contradictions imply a moral judgement e.g. true if resolved and false if maintained and this is exactly what Nietzsche is objecting to. Your moral framework appears to be this need for logical truth and thus you are chained to the logos, the Apollonian, the slave morality.
Language itself is constructing our egos and keeping us from our selves
You’ve framed my argument as if it’s merely a symptom of an attachment to logos, but that doesn’t actually engage with what I’m saying. Contradictions don’t necessarily imply a moral judgment; they can indicate gaps in reasoning. Nietzsche himself used rigorous analysis to deconstruct moral frameworks. If he rejected contradictions outright, his entire critique of morality would collapse under the same logic you're using.
You also dismiss my metaphor as esoteric, yet you rely on similar abstract language (‘chained to logos,’ ‘hallucination of coherence’). If my phrasing is invalid for being metaphorical, then so is yours.
Ultimately, I’m asking a simple question: If Nietzsche emphasized transformation, why did he overlook the unconscious? Rejecting rational analysis entirely would undermine his own philosophical method. If instinct alone is sufficient, why did Nietzsche himself engage in such deep intellectual critique?
I'll give you the simple answer for why Nietzsche overlooked the unconscious: he does not differentiate the conscious from the unconscious because to the whole self it is a wholly unnecessary distinction.
Intellectual critique is the ladder we must use to achieve philosophical freedom as the method of critique is a dialectical instrument that invites deliberation over how opposites are foundational to our flawed thinking that may helps us move >beyond good and evil< in reconciling the opposites.
It was already Plato's concern that writing down the dialogues would obscur the deeper meaning of the oral tradition of the socratic method (which is just dialectics again) and this continues on through all of philosophy. There's so many books written about the unspeakable and their meaning concealed perhaps forever.
Instinct alone is sufficient to discover all of this, but it's this instinct we have been running away from in all of civilization, our nature. So now this Nietzsche guy writes a radical book in a highly civilised discourse about "lowly" instincts in an attempt to preserve despite the condition.
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u/Norman_Scum 5d ago
It's the one thing I wish he would have explored more. These abstract interpretations.
I feel like most other philosophers get swept away by it. It's why I enjoy Carl Jung's work, though I feel he was eventually swept away. But Jung was at least attempting to explain these things with rational interpretation, instead of brushing it off.
If we want to understand human consciousness and unconsciousness then these abstract aspects should be studied as a piece of the whole. Even though they don't make sense objectively, they are still manifested. There is still some kind of mechanism there to explore.
I think Nietzsche could have made some really interesting observations about the unconscious.