From Descartes to Nietzsche: the theoretical-human

Abstract

This course is based on a talk of approximately 6 hours that raises the question of world in the 20th century.

The talk starts where the previous talk (The metaphysics of subjectivity) left us: the question of world.

Here I discuss the modern problem of human decision where value-judgement is typically invoked as the residue of the true or "theoretical-world" of the physico-mathematical representation.

I start with Descartes and his search for truth and reach the problem of world for Nietzsche, a world where all we find is narratives since truth is just a masking of a will to power. Speaking is reduced to searching something other than that which the words say and this other is presented in the form of stories. Still the world of everydayness and the priority of existence provides a rule, even if obscurely, which is still to be questioned.

Descartes

Descartes was influenced by traditional metaphysics and directed his thinking toward a theory of world based on the certainty of physical laws and the physico-mathematical language of representation.  This leaves the subjectivity of the subject outside the world of the physico-mathematical and therefore outside the possibility of being true. The subjectivity of the subject is "valued" as value-judgments.

Einstein, Descartes and the problem of decision

I briefly discuss the problem of world in relation to the writings of Einstein regarding the morality of the scientist and human decision. In the everydayness of everyday decisions we find another world that regulates decisions obscurely but always acting as "higher courts" of knowledge. Here truth is still retained but obscurely and in parallel to the theory of world. The possibility of discovering world in the everyday world of everydayness leads us  to the possibility of existence as the higher court of judgement. This possibility serves to exploit value as "narrative" over against a world of theory. Even here world remains hidden and replaced by a representation of world.