Thread by @deontologistics

Since I've seen this argument made over and over again by Nietzscheans of various stripes over the years, let me address it one final time before sleep takes me.

https://twitter.com/fitchett_adam/status/1367550041699852290

The Real doesn't care about anything. To appeal to this blank indifference in discussions regarding whether you or anyone should care about anything at all is simply to dodge the question: "The universe doesn't care, I'm part of the universe therefore I don't need to care."

You can selectively render yourself into a mere thing if you want, but don't expect applause. This selectiveness is not a strength, but a weakness. A paradoxical form of self-indulgence that undermines selfhood as such: "I merely am what I am, I do whatever I will do."

I'm not asking for hyperbolic self-discipline here, just a willingness to acknowledge that there might be some reasons to choose one action over another, reasons with which you might be able to sway yourself, if no one else. Giving up even this is giving up on autonomy itself.

The standard Nietzschean line is something like: "You cannot force me to accept the force of reasons, therefore it is no force at all! Checkmate!" This simply restates the terms of the disagreement as if they thereby dissolved it. If it were causal force it wouldn't be normative.

If you had no choice but to act in accordance with the norm, then it wouldn't really be a norm now, would it? Even if you chose to act in accordance with it, you might err in your attempt to do so. Without this possibility of error success is meaningless.

To deny the force of the better reason is essentially to deny that one might err, for to recognise the possibility of failure is to accept that one might learn something from it, that one might have to change. Without this, you are not merely inert, you will simply unravel.

Of course, you can be selective. You can deny that there are any reasons whose force sway your actions when challenged, and then steer a rational course for yourself when not. This is a venerable human tradition. I just don't see why anyone would announce it as if I should care.

"I have turned up just to let you know that I don't care and will not listen to a word you have to say as a point of principle."

"Okay, I guess? Can I..."

"No, I really mean it."

"Fine. Can we move on..."

"I double definitely don't care about this whole reasoning malarkey."

If you want to examine motivated reasoning and libidinal investment, the will to power manifest in the drive to speak, start with the need to intervene in discourses whose outcome one loudly refuses to care about.

The usual retort that one is 'just asking questions' is entirely empty if one refuses to acknowledge that questioning can be done well/poorly. This is the foundation of the Socratic tradition: thinking is a craft, and questions are commitments to be seen through to the end.

Anyway, that's as much as I can make myself care about people who don't care about whether I care or not about anything, or at least, people who insist they don't. As ever, you do you. I'll be over here playing with my reasons.🖖