Journal of Cogency
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journalofcogency.com
Journal of Cogency
@journalofcogency.com
210 followers 90 following 170 posts
Philosophy, religion, metaphysics, politics.

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Why do I want to do this? I have said this before, too. It’s because these ideas are conservative ideas. They are the conservative justifications for their political agenda. As such, they have no value for those who want real justice. They have less than no value because they make you second-guess the things you would do to achieve justice. They make you wonder whether even if you got a lot of support if it’s “the right thing”, if you are organizing “without ressentiment“, if you are not determining right and wrong through “slave morality”. It serves only to convince people that they should not seek to redress wrongs and it does this through leaps in logic and disguised interest. Holding onto Nietzscheanism is one of the biggest flaws that leftists have currently and its one they absolutely must let go of. I am the man of ressentiment. I am the man of bad conscience. I am the slave who triumphs. Nietzsche put the poison pill down and I am swallowing it, and I will shit it out, too. I refuse to be afraid of being accused of the ideas he made up. I am also the philosopher with the hammer. Nietzsche is the anvil. And I will never stop beating him to produce something better.
February 16, 2025 at 12:11 AM
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But engineers don’t always know what the best design is and don’t always know why a building fails. Sometimes they’re too close to the nuts and bolts, admiring a new technique, and not seeing that it’s caused flaws elsewhere. Philosophers are not always going to simply intuit a problem with philosophy. To Nietzsche’s benefit, philosophy has a quality that engineering doesn’t: philosophy is not actual. It doesn’t exist in the actual world, and effects outside of the mind do not affect it. Where the fascinated engineer will eventually have to face the flaws in their design when it collapses, nothing can force the ideas Nietzsche puts forward to collapse, so we’re free to keep believing in them even if they prove to be inadequate. With things that are actual, we don’t need to worry about the chain of reception. Things happen and that makes the new reality. It doesn’t matter that the most educated engineers say that floating apartments can work; if they don’t float, it didn’t work. Philosophy is not actual so it’s not like that. It does worry about the chain of reception. So the fact that the experts of philosophy still give credence to Nietzsche means that his ideas will keep being studied.
February 16, 2025 at 12:11 AM
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The people who like Nietzsche primarily, in my opinion, like that he made attacks upon philosophy which exposed anxieties that people had about the supposed certainty of philosophical “truth”. There are elements of procedural thought which are compelling, especially as brought out by Deleuze. As one follows those compelling elements, one then sees how they are built up into Nietzsche’s edifices and one assumes that those edifices are well-built. But they are not. I’ve been saying “Just look at the fucking thing” and, to be honest, this suffices for most people. I’ve said it before but Nietzsche isn’t like a popular guy. There’s a reason he has always been “controversial”, why people always have to rescue his work. “Just look at the fucking thing!”
February 16, 2025 at 12:08 AM
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But why should we see the noble’s statement as one that isn’t coming out of reason or contingency? Why should we accept that a noble person would say “I am good” in a vacuum? Why would they say anything about their quality if they have nothing to compare to? Obviously, going by the logic of the argument, the person who says “I am good” is also making a comparison, so if the slave says “so”, the noble must also say “so”. It is this value judgment which is the difference between noble and slave for Deleuze/Nietzsche, not the specific appellations of good or evil, and it immediately falls apart upon inspection. Yes, Deleuze/Nietzsche do assert that “good” does not need comparison, but again: they are just saying things. This is what I mean. Nobody else would say that you can understand “good” without “bad”. They only say this for the purpose of making this specious argument. And it’s upon this argument that the rest of Nietzsche’s philosophy is built, because this is the same distinction as that between active/reactive, critique/ressentiment, re-action/reaction, and so on. The distinctions are false and are introduced purely to support the value judgment.
February 16, 2025 at 12:06 AM
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Possibly the most unconvincing part of Nietzsche’s philosophy is how he constructs the noble and the slave. The noble says “I am good, you are evil”, while the slave says “You are evil, I am good”. I have not stated this exactly, of course. The way that Deleuze/Nietzsche put it, the slave says “You are evil, so I am good”. Why is this? It’s because only if you add that element in can you act as though the second part is contingent on the first part, and by only adding it for the slave, the noble is not making a contingent statement. The noble doesn’t reason, they say, but the slave does.
February 16, 2025 at 12:04 AM
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Because Nietzsche is allergic to checking his work, he never considers how absurd what he says is. He never thinks again about it. If we take his distinction between active and reactive forces, reading through this book, there is never a concrete stated difference between the two. Again, this is said fairly explicitly, but I have to say: lampshading does not eliminate the problem. It is clear that the only difference between active and reactive is perspective. Many times it is stated that the difference is something innate in forces, that this fact about forces is determining, but there are enough hedges that you can see that there is no difference. The point of differentiating them is to make a value judgment about them: namely, calling the active forces “good” and the reactive forces “bad”.
February 16, 2025 at 12:02 AM
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But this leads us towards the fatal flaw of Nietzsche, one which Deleuze gleefully copies and continues. This flaw is what I will call anti-experimentalism. At first, I want to say his issue is anti-empiricism, as empiricism is a trait that Deleuze/Nietzsche specifically decry. The problem with Nietzsche is that he resists being told no. This is an element of his theology of affirmation, obviously, but his affirmations burst past consideration into childishness. There’s a part which I remember, though I won’t bother quoting (I’ll talk about this later), where Deleuze/Nietzsche is saying that the problem with science is that it’s based on testing hypotheses rather than making affirmative claims. I’m likely mangling the message, but the point is, they are taking issue with the scientific method. And the thing is… that’s just how it works. That’s how you do science and confirm that your answers are useful for other people. To be affronted that science doesn’t work the way you think it should, even though the way you think it should work simply wouldn’t work, is puerile.
February 16, 2025 at 12:01 AM
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I'm tired of you fucking idiots who yourselves have not read Nietzsche closely coming up to tell me I didn't get it when you have absolutely nothing. Nietzsche is shit. If you think his ideas are good, you are a fool.
January 29, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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I say "Nietzsche promoted master morality and hated slave morality", people go "but he said we have to get BEYOND our morality", I say "yes, he says our morality now is slave morality and he says it shackled master morality, he is talking about a resurgence of that" and they just splutter.
January 29, 2025 at 5:41 PM
journalofcogency.com
And when I say no one has challenged them, understand me, they don't even venture specific challenges. No one has ever said "this thing you suggested is wrong". They just refer to other shit he wrote which barely supports their point. Fuck you.
January 29, 2025 at 5:40 PM
journalofcogency.com
The idea that a morality of compassion came not out of mercy but out of resentment is the key beginning of Nietzsche's reasoning and there is absolutely no reason to assume that it went that way. And if it didn't, none of what he says about morality makes any sense.
January 8, 2025 at 2:34 AM
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My problem isn't that Nietzsche was mean to religious people or whatever. My problem is that his thinking is bad. His constructions have obvious assumptions and non-assumptions, the "slave revolt of morality" being the most obvious, and his absence of any idea of power-mercy.
January 8, 2025 at 2:33 AM
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Obviously I'm weasel wording a bit but I'm watching this guy's video "Why Everyone Hates Nietzsche" and none of the arguments he makes would hold up against any questions of material analysis, it's all just like "well but it wasn't QUITE as mean as you think it was" and that's not the issue I have.
January 8, 2025 at 2:31 AM