We, Not I, are Ducking the Old Idols

Fighting my own Best/Worst Instincts
Nietzsche, "Will to Power" 481 (1883-1888)

Against positivism, which halts at phenomena--"There are only facts"--I would say: No, facts is precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing.

"Everything is subjective," you say; but even this is interpretation. The "subject" is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is.--Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis.

In so far as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings. --"Perspectivism."

It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.

482 (1886-1887)

We set up a word at the point at which our ignorance begins, at which we can see no further, e.g., the word "I," the word "do," the word "suffer":--these are perhaps the horizon of our knowledge, but not "truths."

483 (1885)

Through thought the ego is posited; but hitherto one believed as ordinary people do, that in "I think" there was something of immediate certainty, and that this "I" was the given cause of thought, from which by analogy we understood all other causal relationships. However habitual and indispensable this fiction may have become by now--that in itself proves nothing against its imaginary origin: a belief can be a condition of life and nonetheless be false.

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We are NOT a-mused (a quodrophenic rant).

ps - When NG rants against "binaries"... I think that this is one of the reasons why. Our instincts are not 1 or 2... they are many. The 1 and/or 2 is a fiction... albeit perhaps a necessary one. This is why I/we "prefer" the Freudian (and evolutionary) "triune brain" models. Id, Ego and SuperEgo merged with evolutionary reptilian (Id), paleo-mammalian complex (limbic)(Intermediary emotional-instinctual processing for subconscious "blind-sight" etc.), and neo-mamalian complex (neo-cortical - conscious/dream state)(L hemishpere Ego, R hemisphere SuperEgo). The result: a "functional" quodrophenia. ;)