Elmo Recio
Date:
99-08-26
Entry:
I thought that this would be relevant in the journal entries so I will select it from the website.
I can't really explain what came over me today reading Nietzsche (in class.) Everything that i have, until now, believed Philosophy to be . . . rationality, systematic calculated string of events, and explanations, was all debunked. In a fell swoop he has replaced the very reason why I have faith in philosophy.
To me philosophy was the removal of emotion from everyday life. The ability to systematically explain, or attempt to explain, the how's and whys beyond the application of Human Emotion. He has removed my ability to displace and replace my emotions with logical and rationality. Why you ask?
Even more than why, but how. How is it possible for simple words from a mad man to debunk something you have so much faith in?
I reply:
It is not about faith. It is not about what feels right rather what should be. Maybe I am a hopeless idealistic. Maybe I ask too much from life. I want people to be good and do good. Maybe these words that bite, do so because they ring of truth. After all he is correct. There can be no good unless we have some way of binding ourselves together under a common good. Maybe he rings of truth when it comes down to the application of emotion underneath a thinly veiled piece of rationality. Yet i refuse to believe that he is correct!
I refuse to believe what he says. I think of what he says and rationally, logically, it makes no sense, it's unsound. There must be a truth out there, independent of human emotion. There must be. For I turn the tables around and ask: if there is only emotion, in the heart, apart from the basic truths of 2+2=4, then what is life good for. What is the point of life?
It reminds me of the paradox:
``if the meaning of life is to find the meaning of life; Then you have found the meaning of life, by searching for the meaning of life.''
So now, you are stuck in an endless loop of the mundane. The going through the motions; this falling into the world machine.
There must be a separation between emotion, the human savagery (human nature), and rationality. There must be an absolute truth that we must find. If rationality does not bind things together, then we are truly nothing more than animals. If we are nothing more than animals, there is no point to life at all.
God is not dead!
God never existed!
Nietzsche must die