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On March 04 2009 11:24 Liquid`NonY wrote:
can you arrange a meeting with the professor or TA? never hurts to ask for help as long as you've studied the material and it's far enough in advance of the due date. all my best papers involved a 1 on 1 meeting with the prof
im supposed to meet with him when i think of ideas to get approved. Btw I'm writing a critique of dreyfus on foucault in my spare time, that dudes gonna get owned.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
if you can't argue against nietzsche, defend his stuff against critics. i dont know much about that particular work, but one possible topic is whether the metaphysical attitude of man as a free being of some sort conflict with the materialistic, functional metaphysics of neurobiology. then you can talk about whether existentialism relies on a metaphysics or merely express its ideas on human action etc as one. nominalism vs realism stuff.
you might want to read about compatibilism of free will to get a feel of the operating space for the aforementioned metaphysical nominalism vs realism question. some people, like me, think that we can have free will in a substantial way even under determinism, and it is enough to support the existentialist take on being human.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#1.1
if free will is not easy to work with, try something like identity. there should be enough stuff written on that to fill trucks
but i think this direction is far off the path of continental philosophy. or you can examine the political implications like jibba suggested. it depends on the focus of your course
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All this will to make choices shit was invented by Sartre, in what I've read so far Nietzsche does not care at all about the individual.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well as i said i know pretty much jack about nietzschean existentialism, if it is that. but in any case, there should be plenty of controversial stuff, as long as he's writing about things remotely relevant to any philosophical concerns.
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it was certainly controversial when it was first written by nowadays everyone and their mother is nietszchean now
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
well, i dont know if you guys have things like metaethics, but from what i see nietzsche is on the aggressive side of scepticism, and he does not have that good of a control of the line between scepticism about foundational epistemology and nihilistic sounding bites. that is certainly a controversial position, or at any rate an arguable one. not really existentialism per se, but metaethics deals quite a bit with the nature of agency and such. although nietzsche uses different terms, i think it is the basic issue of meaning creation being an action, a positive activity instead of naturally presenting.
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yes exactly the first essay of genealogy is basically nietzsche quoting latin context and showing how our conception of good, bad, and evil has changed along with histoical power conflicts primarily the jews vs the romans. Nothing to argue for or against there except to agree. I mean how do you analytic people argue against skepticism
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
skepticism about "absolutism" is really easy, but then the interesting question is how one gets any positive moral doctrines at all. personally i just say that normativity is a distinct space of reason and while it is not in any way metaphysically guaranteed to exist, any normative arguments must be defended normatively, and we can place scenarios within the space by questioning them normatively, provided that there are appropriate moral agents involved. so it gives you room for all the normative activities you want to do while not making any metaphysical commitments.
it is against nihilism, normative or completely amoral. for a normative nihilism (which is itself a contradiction btw, so it is a vulgar position entertained by noobs) you simply dispute it as any normative assertion. if a guy says "this is ok...because nothing is wrong." or "we should accept this... because nothing is wrong." you simply disregard the second part of his sentence and challenge the former, noting that it is a normative position in itself and thus requires justification by normative arguments. for the amoral kind of nihilism, you are faced wtih a situation in which no positive normative judgment is being advanced, then you simply bring up the normative dimension by asking a normative question, provided that there are appropriate moral agents involved. say the situation is a guy depriving a cute little girl of her candy, and you say "what a douche!" the sceptic then questions your 'right' to pronounce judgment on the situation. the response you are faced with is probably something like "but you can't say that it is wrong because nothing is wrong" here you declare that you are simply exercising your faculty of moral consideration, of putting whatever issue at hand under normative scrutiny. each moment of moral significance is an application of this faculty. (this is more of a faculty of thought, like the ability to think mathematically) it is your liberty to think of the problem normatively, to live a moral life is thus not contingent on the existence of absolute morality but on you taking the time to do so.
at the end of the day, we have a situation in which the god of fundationalism is being destroyed while that destruction is still understood under its shadow. the dissolution of absolute standards leads some to abandon any ethical contemplation at all, which is not a necessary result. the most interesting issue is why a metaphysics, a cosmology indeed, is required at all in order to think ethically, and the relation between our substantive and pragmatic ethical judgements and metaethical theory.
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Are you absolutely locked on sources?
Otherwise I would suggest a compare and contrast with Soren Kierkegaard. Even if you aren't allowed a direct route of comparison because you are locked on sources, Soren can give you some different lines of thought or counter arguments.
If not Soren you can check up on both of their responses to Hegel or Hegels influences. (Contradiction and negotiation as a means of evolution vs Will to Power as a form of advancement in its place maybe)
Either way both will give you a baseline to argue against or for Nietzsche
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Find some books about existentialism in the Genealogy of Morals, go to the sources in their bibliographies, then go to the sources in those bibliographies.
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EPT
