The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

First, note that any response will be necessarily shallow and inadequate. I don't know what your level of familiarity is with Nietzsche, but since you didn't know who Simone de Beauvoir is, I assume you know nothing of mid-20th century French existentialism (Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir). My own understanding of Nietzsche is admittedly shallow, but still probably more nuanced than average. I've at least read some of his work, rather than just broadly-misunderstood pithy quotes like "God is dead".

And of course, I'm summarizing in an online comment, for an overtly hostile audience who obviously doesn't understand even the basics of half the equation. So this will probably fail.

Simone de Beauvoir's criticism of Nietzsche, in the context of The Ethics of Ambiguity, arises from her core premise, which is that our own freedom depends on the freedom of others, so we have an ethical obligation to advance the freedom of others in order to make our own freedom meaningful. Now, existentialists view suffering in a couple of different ways. First, there is suffering from constraints on our freedom. This is what older modernist philosophers like Nietzsche generally mean by suffering. Second, there is suffering from awareness of our freedom, which we find frightening. This idea really starts with Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and is a big part of the difference between existentialism and earlier philosophy.

Nietzsche was generally hostile to compassion, finding it indistinguishable from pity most of the time. He believed that freedom comes from overcoming adversity - by defeating constraints to our freedom through struggle. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger". So to help others achieve their own freedom is to risk pity, which is a useless emotion. Letting them overcome (or fail to overcome) their own adversity, without aid, is the best thing to do for others, and adversity is welcome and vital.

So de Beauvoir's criticism of this is that it leads to a situation where it is okay to harm others, to constrain their freedom for our own selfish desires. That's not Nietzsche's intent, but it's nonetheless the outcome. The fact that Nietzsche is so popular with fascists (which he would have found horrifying) lends credence to this point of view.

For more than this, the only answer I have is to read The Ethics of Ambiguity yourself. I highly recommend it. It's relatively short (under 200 pages) and quite beautiful, and very enlightening. It's the perfect companion piece to Sartre's Being and Nothingness, another brilliant and greatly misunderstood work.

A bit more here... de Beauvoir responds to the idea of fear of freedom with a list of personality types that are responses to our natural fear of freedom - the Sub-Man, the Serious Man, the Nihilist, the Adventurer, and others. Now, if you're still kicking back at me for daring to criticize Nietzsche, I'd suggest you're being a Serious Man. The Serious Man deals with fear of freedom by finding something external to himself to elevate to greater importance than himself. The Serious Man is extremely hostile to any perceived criticism of the thing he's serious about - his religion, his political ideology, his nationality, whatever. It's easy to be Serious about Nietzsche, but it's a mistake. It denies you the freedom to understand Nietzsche better, if you can't take the idea that he's being criticized without attacking the critic.

No, it says the devil and the beast and the false prophet will be “tormented forever and ever” in the lake of fire. Explicitly, the punishment is eternal, not just the fire itself.

> There are many verses worded is ways that are non-specific, and if you take other scriptures into account as well, it's plain no human is condemned to eternal torment.

That's...far from plain. It's certainly a possible conclusion that, while not without problems, isn't particularly less tenable as a resolution of some of the surface contradictions as others.

> For example the idea of a mass resurrection, it's contradictory to be both resurrected to life and be in hell forever.

It's not contradictory to be resurrected and then thrown into Hell, which is exactly what happens in the second resurrection in Revelation. (Equating the lake of fire with Hell, of course.)

Now, unlike the devil, beast, and false prophet, we aren't explicitly told that those in the second resurrection are “tormented forever and ever”, only that they are thrown into the lake of fire, after which the narrative shifts to other topics. So, sure, the text, read literally, admits the possibility that they get only a finite experience of torment, but that's not the natural interpretation, especially in light of the parallel of the two resurrections in Revelation to the two eternal outcomes foretold in Daniel.

But, in any case, my point isn't that the proper interpretation of the Bible involves any particular prevalence of eternal punishment, but merely that the upthread claim that the idea of eternal punishment in a lake of fire in Christianity comes from Greco-Roman mythology by way of Catholic theology and not from the text of the Bible is not correct; the idea is—whether or not it is the best interpretation when viewing the Bible holistically—grounded directly in descriptions in the Bible, including quite literal ones.

When I see a comma, I expect it to have a particular meaning. When it doesn't, I assume I misread.

You're welcome to use commas however you like, but know that others will be re-reading your sentences and wishing they didn't have to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html