experiencing life through an always-nuanced worldview.

In a previous post on “Convictions, interconnectedness, and getting out of despair,” I wrote about the conflicting rationales of Ivan’s ways of thinking and my own identification with various aspects of Ivan’s philosophy. I was troubled by Ivan’s inability to deal with his suffering and wavering convictions. I have been meaning to follow up with this post on him and my perceived analysis behind his philosophy, because the next paper I did for this existentialism class infused Nietzsche’s “passive” and “active” nihilist views and Ivan’s “convictions.” Whether or not I “correctly” read Nietzsche’s nihilist philosophy is, as always, in question, but it makes sense to me and I am glad I think I resolved this conflict in my mind… So I went back and re-read parts of my paper and am going to share some of them here now…

However, Ivan’s positing of his world as the truth is problematic: the “escape” Ivan creates is one of wavering conviction. In the progression of the novel, Ivan’s convictions come back to haunt him via the Devil in his nightmare. Ivan characterizes the Devil as his “illness…, the incarnation of…only one side of [him]…, the nastiest and stupidest of [his own thoughts]” (Dostoevsky 592). In his self-proclaimed belief of absolute nothingness, much like a passive nihilist, Ivan gets into a feeling of despair. Ivan claims everything to be “disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos” (207-208). Later on, all the worlds of God and Satan are “not proved, to [his] mind” (597). Ivan clings onto the need for proofs, rationality, and logic in order to justify his true world he has created. However, Ivan’s despair and confusion is the natural result of the “escape” that follows from the first two psychological stages of nihilism.

Ivan develops his philosophy by relying on reasoning, logic, and rationality. However, he does not realize that “the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but… on the degree to which it has been incorporated” (The Gay Science; 169). Ivan has not incorporated his knowledge and philosophy into his character and his being. He created his beliefs through logic, on the notion that there exists nothingness and that faith in a higher being cannot and does not provide value for him. Logic and reason, however, prove faulty for the basis of “truth.”

…

What Ivan would have needed was to reach the third psychological state of nihilism. This last state begins with the realization that the reason one must invent and create a new true world is derived from one’s psychological needs (The Will to Power), just as “achieving,” “becoming,” and “aims” are psychological needs. Thus, one then concludes that one has “absolutely no right” to the truth one has created, by which one can then realize that “the reality of becoming…[is] the only reality” and there remains no reason to convince oneself that there exists a “true” world. When aim, unity, and being – the highest values – devaluate themselves, Nietzsche argues that one should become an active nihilist in order to truly grasp and take advantage of life…[Ivan] did not want to discover another world because he became obsessed with trying to find meaning and make sense of the one sun, the one world he was in.

Ivan should have embraced the realization that there is no truth by becoming a free spirit and living life dangerously. When Ivan’s god began to die – began to lose its meaning –  Ivan slipped into further despair and confusion; an active nihilist, in hearing that the old god is dead, would feel “as if a new dawn shone on [him]” and his heart would overflow with “gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation” (The Gay Science; 280). The active nihilist would view the old god’s death as a wonderful opportunity to venture out into the unknown, into the “open sea,” and embrace “what is beautiful, strange, questionable, terrible, and divine” (346).

Herein lies where, in the past 6 months (however long ago it was that I wrote this paper/took this class…) I think I’ve come to my own understanding of “life” and reconciling the seemingly “meaningless” world with an amazing, “beautiful..terrible..divine” life I am living. So this is my new sun, and while I am relishing in this “new sun” I am going to embrace the meaning I derive from it, until one day — if ever — my god/sun/meaning begins to die or devaluate itself…by which point it will be time to venture onto a new sea.

I’m taking a philosophy class this semester in which we discuss great “works of art.” The philosophy course itself is rooted in the belief that something in our modern world has gone wrong. Thus, we study great “works of art” and try to understand the multiplicity of worlds in hopes of fixing or even realizing what is wrong with our world. Because, according to my professor, maybe there isn’t even a “world” in modern times.

This course might just be my favorite course I’ve taken at Berkeley thus far…it reminds me so much of AP Literature, my high school senior year’s English class. The discussions and content of the courses are quite similar, although my current course covers more complicated topics and subjects, which is pretty normal considering this is a college course… But anyhow, we finished reading The Odyssey.

In my discussion section today, we discussed just what it is that Homer is trying to teach us. Here are some lessons we (meaning my section and my GSI) came up with –

1. We should stop trying to climb the ladder and just be good and comfortable in our roles.
2. All possible good lives have to take account of man’s limitation. You can’t be whatever you want to be.
3. Be more committed. Learn how to be passionate to one mood. Throw away the “whatever” attitude, the indifference.
4. Stop trying to calculate and deliberate things in our lives, and allow ourselves to be swept away by mood.
5. In some sense, Odysseus is like us. Like him, we live in cross-worlds. Odysseus can teach us how to be  across-world being and find meaning. The difference between Odysseus and us is that his worlds are interconnected. In our world, we come home from work and we want to forget about it. We come back from a day of school and don’t want to think about it. The meaning of each world in our lives are not connected. We need to have unity in our lives, just like Odysseus’ life consisted of unity despite the many roles he played, including father, king, wanderer, and warrior, all of which fit together.
6. The good of one world is deeply, fundamentally connected with the good of another world.

What is it about the Greek world that is all deeply connected?

It’s the work of art. In our world, we lack this work of art.

The Greek’s lives and society as portrayed by Homer is quite different from our lives and our society… It’s almost admirable to be able to throw away all the plans we seem to have and instead just let ourselves be taken over by instinct, by moods, and be okay with whatever that happens. But it’s not practical. How can we live that way, when there are rules and requirements we must abide by and fulfill? It almost seems like the kind of lives we lead are pointless, but then again are they really? Who defines what is pointless and what isn’t, what’s good and what is not good, what is admirable and what is not admirable?

And then in the end I realize that it really doesn’t matter, because the meaning I find in my life is derived by me and what’s around me, and at the end of the day, that’s enough for me. Regardless of what I believe, though, it’s so interesting and mind-opening to me to study these cultures and societies, attempting to understand the beliefs and thoughts behind such worlds… I am definitely looking forward to reading more of the books for this class and discussing them.

[Site update] — Also, new header image, inspired by this post. Haha. It was time for a change anyway! Also, I’ve added some new favorite quotes.