Nietzsche's "will to power" is descriptive, not prescriptive. Hitler's co-opting of Nietzchean themes as a pretext for committing mass genocide (and the extend to which he did this is rather limited) is no different than Catholics using whatever theistic dogmas to justify the Inquisition.
My last comment wasn't very charitable Ottoman. You definitely add value to every thread you go to and I enjoy your posts. I just get a little bit fired up about this stuff.
Slight aside: I'd argue this all stemming from Rousseau, one way or another - anti-church movements were huge in revolutionary France. Similarly Rousseau's hypocritical and largely unachievable ideology of virtue is highly evident in much of the movement(s) that led up to the third reich.
They are both present. I remember this one passage in Nietzsche where he talks about Aquinas and claims that those in heaven enjoy watching people in hell burn. And then you flip to the passage in Aquinas he's referring to, and not only does he misstate what Aquinas is saying, he completely ignores that Aquinas is saying the exact opposite. My professor argued this was just a place where Nietzsche was wrong. I argue it was intentional. That is the will to power. He doesn't care about the truth or validity of his statement. Because there is no truth. There's only life. This is reminiscent to me of the Nazi's saying just about anything to keep in power and lead the people. So I would say Nietzschean thought is definitely present. Off topic, Garden State seems like a perfect representation of Nietzschean philosophy. I mean they are screaming into a great abyss at the end of the movie.
No argument - I'd simply say that this is all building off the philosophy espoused by Rousseau, in contrast to that of Locke.
That's my exact argument. I'm not a huge Lockeian, but he's definitely the best Enlightenment thinker. Side note: Where do secular humanists locate the cause of human rights? Not trying to provoke an argument, I'm genuinely curious.
Sorry about that. Think of the Declaration of Independence, and the notion that man is endowed by his creator with certain unalienable rights. This is the common notion that there is some inherent dignity in being human that presupposes society/government. Communist dictatorships are big on denying this, and then killing a lot of people or denying rights. So if not from God, where do rights come from for the secular humanist? Are they simply from the government? If so what keeps us from becoming a state where we refuse these rights to people? I think this understanding might explain why a lot of secular humanists really did not like Bush (among other things), because they felt as if their rights were in jeopardy.
I'm not tyring to be obtuse or difficult (shocking, I know :grin: ) but I don't understand the question. Why do they have to "come from" anything?
Well, that's a heavy set of questions. Despite my mere two cups of coffee this morning I'll try... 1) They are inherent in man inasmuch as any/all men(women), acting rationally, acknowledge that all men(women) have an equal character and potential from birth, and that blood lineage or heredity of material wealth lends no bearing on wisdom or other form of merit. In this view, I subscribe to Paine's ideas (which are extended from Locke, I suppose). However, this is an optimistic ideology, and is usually not peacefully enacted (understatement). Furthermore, the philosophies regarding property inevitably tend towards capitalism, which, as Rudolf Rocker noted, "wrecked" both the idea of democracy and liberalism simultaneously. I digress... I suppose, fundamentally, yes I view them as inherent and inalienable. Why? Because the alternative might lead to my own rights being restricted. 2) Per Locke, government has an obligation to protect those rights, and, as Jefferson famously noted, liberty inevitably must be "refreshed" from time to time. Such an action Locke would view as legitimate, and Paine would view as undeniably necessary. In other words, the citizenry keeps the government from taking them away. In theory. Take note, that none of the above is intended to be a "secular humanist" position per say - it's my own take, cited as best as possible where credit is due.
The use of a deity as a foundation for rights is dangerous in its own right. If the source of rights is divine, then so is the justification for excluding certain classes of people from enjoying those rights. Our notion of "rights", which comes from Locke, was highly misogynistic in its origin. It was only when disenfranchised groups organized to demand equality that they gained the protection of some such rights. The fact that rights are gained by political struggles seems to suggest that they aren't imbued in us by an immutable god.
Well, not if they are blanket rights inherent in man. OF course, you need to separate natural rights from civil rights. Locke didn't invent the idea of rights though. Natural rights etc. extend from Aristotle and Aquinas. I think rhad does a good job of explaining secular humanism's understanding of rights despite the desire to distance from the tag. My problem with that is it basically describes positivism, which is ok if you are positing good laws. What happens when a society doesn't? When you have a positivist society that says no, we actually think some people are not as good as others. I think that's when positivism really fails.
You are talking about this: from the Summa Theologiae. Aquinas was not the only one to say such things and they always come back to the idea of those in heaven seeing those in hell as a way to "exalt" god's judgment, right? So it is not that they are happy about the sinners suffering, but they are blissful because they are reminded about his power and judgment, right? Perhaps I am messing that up a bit. I think you are closer but a little off. I don't think it was intentional the way you do because "nothing matters". I think everything with Nietzsche is about duality and struggle. He throws out that Judeo-Christianity is a means for the week to both group together to be stronger and to then attack the "stronger" (whom he saw as the Roman philosphers...leading up to himself). I also think everythig he argues is about and against himself. I am not sure we can trust much of what he said or wrote because he was in a constant struggle for ideas and philosophy with himself. This led to strange arguments, contradictions, etc. As for your last sentence, that predates Nietzschean thought and is more about human nature and power. Napoleon said he was a Republican because he wanted to gain and then keep power, Julius Caesar was a lifelong Democrat and gave populist speeches before weakening the Senate and becoming Emperor for life, etc..
Locke did invent the idea of a rights-based society, though, and he wasn't talking about universal rights. Your choice in language ("rights inherent in man") demonstrates one way that rights can be excluded from a group. Aristotle considered women as deformed, or impotent, men. From a feminist perspective, rights were never a given, and they still aren't. As far as natural rights vs. civil rights, I'll take the latter any day. Natural rights, if they exist, are meaningless without the support of the relevant power structure. They are reducible to civil rights in their application. The same problem you articulate applies doubly to societies that claim to enforce natural rights, which carry a divine justification on top of their being enforced by the dominant political forces.
With the caveat being that a society that recognized natural rights would be more prone to see violations of the natural law in laws that were not just.
