What did Nietsche mean when he said...
"If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss begins to stare back."
Any ideas?
"If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss begins to stare back."
Any ideas?
-
Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
-
CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
F. Nietsche quote
- Thread starter Routerider
- Start date
(It's Nietzsche) 
My interpretation: I think it's a commentary on the human ability to appreciate obective reality. If you glance up at the night sky, generally you see pin pricks of light in darkness. Conceptually, you are basically just seeing a dome above you of little consequence. It's only when you stop and actually look that you realise what you are looking at. Now I don't know the context of this quote, but my guess is for the abyss 'staring back' he is talking about either
a) the realisation of what reality is. That it's not just a collection of objects you define around yourself, ie, car, house, box, sky, but is a matrix of energy patterns on a vast scale that is truly staggering to appreciate.
or
b) that the human inability to comprehened 'nothingness' turns that nothingness into an entity of sorts, such that you feel as if your are looking at 'something', and in doing so, that something takes on particular characteristics that exist only in your interpretation. As such, you are imagining subjectively what you are looking at, and thus this nothingness is personified in staring back at you, when it is in reality, just nothing.
Again, I think I'd need the context of the phrase to know for sure which. There's probably other possibilities also that I haven't thought of.
My interpretation: I think it's a commentary on the human ability to appreciate obective reality. If you glance up at the night sky, generally you see pin pricks of light in darkness. Conceptually, you are basically just seeing a dome above you of little consequence. It's only when you stop and actually look that you realise what you are looking at. Now I don't know the context of this quote, but my guess is for the abyss 'staring back' he is talking about either
a) the realisation of what reality is. That it's not just a collection of objects you define around yourself, ie, car, house, box, sky, but is a matrix of energy patterns on a vast scale that is truly staggering to appreciate.
or
b) that the human inability to comprehened 'nothingness' turns that nothingness into an entity of sorts, such that you feel as if your are looking at 'something', and in doing so, that something takes on particular characteristics that exist only in your interpretation. As such, you are imagining subjectively what you are looking at, and thus this nothingness is personified in staring back at you, when it is in reality, just nothing.
Again, I think I'd need the context of the phrase to know for sure which. There's probably other possibilities also that I haven't thought of.
Upvote
0
burrow_owl
Senior Contributor
- Aug 17, 2003
- 8,561
- 381
- 48
- Faith
- Non-Denom
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Democrat
Sounds a lot like the structural psychoanalist Lacan, who speaks of 'la petit objet a'. I think his explanation of it goes something like this: in standard Freudian dream analysis, there's always going to be some odd object that seems to stick out, yet it's the thing that sutures the meaning of the dream together. It's the moment of uncanny normality. To put it differently: detective stories often have a moment where the detective looks at the crime scene, and there's an object there that's too normal. It's out of place by virtue of it's very normality; it's very 'homeliness' inverts into a weird kind of uncanniness (very often, it's that object that turns out to be the lynchpin of the narrative to which the crime scene attests). This latter explication of la petit objet a is from Zizek, by the by, a great author if you're into wacky post-structuralism.
In these moments of inversion from homeliness (our word 'uncanny' in german is unheimlich = 'unhomely', so that's where i'm cribbing the word from) to uncanniness, the object seems to be looking back at us. Lacan, per his usual strategy, extends this fundamental Freudian insight into the structure of language; 'la petit objet a' becomes the object which is basically unassimilable into the cold logic of language, yet without which that logic couldn't function. So it's a kind of material remainder, that part of the signifier which resists its own negation into the semantic sign. As such, its pretty creepy (which is a reason zombies play such a prominent role in post-modern-ish writings: the zombie is the part of the human that resists assimilation into cultural logic, into language. You can't reason with a zombie.).
Anyhoo, I'd bet dollars to donuts that Lacan or one of his many devotees has appropriated that Nietzsche quote as a discursive concept, an element of language (but not quite an element, since it resists its own negation as element). Baudrillard, for example, has also made use of the idea of the object/signifier staring back at its user.
In these moments of inversion from homeliness (our word 'uncanny' in german is unheimlich = 'unhomely', so that's where i'm cribbing the word from) to uncanniness, the object seems to be looking back at us. Lacan, per his usual strategy, extends this fundamental Freudian insight into the structure of language; 'la petit objet a' becomes the object which is basically unassimilable into the cold logic of language, yet without which that logic couldn't function. So it's a kind of material remainder, that part of the signifier which resists its own negation into the semantic sign. As such, its pretty creepy (which is a reason zombies play such a prominent role in post-modern-ish writings: the zombie is the part of the human that resists assimilation into cultural logic, into language. You can't reason with a zombie.).
Anyhoo, I'd bet dollars to donuts that Lacan or one of his many devotees has appropriated that Nietzsche quote as a discursive concept, an element of language (but not quite an element, since it resists its own negation as element). Baudrillard, for example, has also made use of the idea of the object/signifier staring back at its user.
Upvote
0
- May 14, 2002
- 14,990
- 1,520
- 65
- Country
- New Zealand
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Utrecht
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- AU-Greens
Or perhaps he meant that the universe is as interested in you as you are in it?
Kiwimac
Kiwimac
Upvote
0
ZaraDurden
Comfortably Numb
- Aug 5, 2003
- 2,838
- 140
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Single
- Politics
- US-Others
I think its important to also consider the line directly precede that one that goes "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."
I have read a ton of Nietzsche, but almost no commentary by other philosophers on him (except for Walter Kaufmann's notes on his translations) so I could be way off base. Many of Nietzsche's maxims are part of larger themes in his work, but I'm not so sure this is one of them--although it does fit in the grand scheme. Lots of them are simple observations (phrased in beautiful language and metaphors, of course)
I think that here Nietzsche is simply cautioning his readers not to get wholly wrapped up into whatever they are tackling intellecutally. In The Gay Science he tells why he hates of enduring habits, and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he tells us to reject even his own teachings. Here I think Nietzsche is saying that, especially in criticizing something, don't become like that thing yourself.
Many atheists here criticize christianity constantly, but by doing this its very possible they pick up the very habits they are disparaging. It happens all the time in reality, if you think about it. And considering Nietzsche almost always used the dialectic, I think this makes a lot of sense. When two ideas clash, the losing idea always influences the winning one to some extent. Just don't let it influence you to the point where the very thing you hate is what you become without realizing it.
One last note is that Nietzsche urges not to be nihilists, not to question everything all at once... but to simply give nothing permanent immunity against questioning. Be in a static state and watch out for this pitfall.
I have read a ton of Nietzsche, but almost no commentary by other philosophers on him (except for Walter Kaufmann's notes on his translations) so I could be way off base. Many of Nietzsche's maxims are part of larger themes in his work, but I'm not so sure this is one of them--although it does fit in the grand scheme. Lots of them are simple observations (phrased in beautiful language and metaphors, of course
)I think that here Nietzsche is simply cautioning his readers not to get wholly wrapped up into whatever they are tackling intellecutally. In The Gay Science he tells why he hates of enduring habits, and in Thus Spoke Zarathustra he tells us to reject even his own teachings. Here I think Nietzsche is saying that, especially in criticizing something, don't become like that thing yourself.
Many atheists here criticize christianity constantly, but by doing this its very possible they pick up the very habits they are disparaging. It happens all the time in reality, if you think about it. And considering Nietzsche almost always used the dialectic, I think this makes a lot of sense. When two ideas clash, the losing idea always influences the winning one to some extent. Just don't let it influence you to the point where the very thing you hate is what you become without realizing it.
One last note is that Nietzsche urges not to be nihilists, not to question everything all at once... but to simply give nothing permanent immunity against questioning. Be in a static state and watch out for this pitfall.
Upvote
0
Similar threads
