Because that comes a lot closer to describing reality.
Magnificent insight though. He had a lot of those.
Joanna
Miles Jackson wrote:
>The discussion of Nietzsche encouraged me to pull out Twilight of the
>Idols again. Here's a great passage on the concept of free will:
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>The error of free will. Today we no longer have any tolerance for the
>idea of "free will": we see it only too clearly for what it really is —
>the foulest of all theological fictions, intended to make mankind
>"responsible" in a religious sense — that is, dependent upon priests.
>Here I simply analyze the psychological assumptions behind any attempt
>at "making responsible."
>
>Whenever responsibility is assigned, it is usually so that judgment and
>punishment may follow. Becoming has been deprived of its innocence when
>any acting-the-way-you-did is traced back to will, to motives, to
>responsible choices: the doctrine of the will has been invented
>essentially to justify punishment through the pretext of assigning
>guilt. All primitive psychology, the psychology of will, arises from the
>fact that its interpreters, the priests at the head of ancient
>communities, wanted to create for themselves the right to punish — or
>wanted to create this right for their God. Men were considered "free"
>only so that they might be considered guilty — could be judged and
>punished: consequently, every act had to be considered as willed, and
>the origin of every act had to be considered as lying within the
>consciousness (and thus the most fundamental psychological deception was
>made the principle of psychology itself).
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>Whenever people talk about "agency" or "personal responsibility" on LBO
>I think about Nietzsche's argument above: the notion of free will is
>nothing more than a useful fiction that justifies power relations. In
>my view, the usefulness of Fred for leftists, despite Fred's own dubious
>political beliefs, is pretty obvious here.
>
>Miles
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