Aspies: Beyond Good and Evil?

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Reading Nietzsche's book Beyond Good and Evil has led me to posit many questions vis-à-vis NeuroTypicality and Asperger's syndrome. I contend that we aspies are exactly the sort of philosophers Nietzsche had posited over a century ago. In many ways, the slave-morality dichotomy of good v. evil doesn't even apply to us! We are free spirits of the freest kind and natural-born philosophers: We question even the question mark. Nietzsche believed that the most noble of spirits possessed a sort of master morality: They made values. The most noble of spirits disciplined themselves and were overcharged with the will to power. They did, so it was righteous. They carried themselves only among their peers and looked down upon the rest of existence, which were but the instruments by which these most aristocratic spirits could reach the highest echelons of being. They were the rare, the uncommon, the exotic, the lone; they stood against the barrage of mediocrity and grew strength by their resistence. This sounds exactly like us.

Yea? No?

I don't think anyone is above the struggle of good vs. evil.

ASD or no ASD, we all have the capacity for good and evil. The capacity for humans to do right and wrong is the ultimate way to make us a free spirit.

If the question you are posing is whether or not anyone with AS (or any ASD) can ge either good or evil, then yes. We're not too good to be bad. I don't know how long you've been here, but we've had (and probably still have) our fair share of "aspies" that are anything but free spirited.

I can only say with repetitive and compulsive
tendency can be percieved as either bad of good.

The evil tendency is mute.

This is just my opinion.

Well I know exactly what you are saying I think.
I believe there is a state beyond good and evil, but the good is the only way to reach it. When good is second nature or even your primary nature, then you are there. As you said, these people create morality.
The problem with the dichotomy of good and evil, is that the "good" people are often capable of much greater harm in the world, because they have a feeling of superiority, and self-righteousness. There then arrises the mentality that the ends justify the means. Whereas one who is truly beyond good and evil, is simply saturated with good to such a degree that they no longer despise evil, but treat it with the necessary compassion and wisdom. I think in the west, we need a shift from the dichotomy of good and evil to one of ignorance vs self-awareness.
It really is the same thing, but without all the "right/wrong" stuff.
People only do evil because they do not understand the consequences, not because they are "bad people"

It does seem that the autistic spectrum generates a lot of natural-born philosophers, and deep thinkers in general, but we still have our share of human frailty.

You should check out Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" it is mainly a response to Nietzsche's ideas about good and evil and the "superman". A classic and excellent novel that I could hardly put down.

i don't believe in Good and/or Evil. it all depends on context, appropriateness and intent.

is it a good or evil thing to cut off someone's leg? if you're wandering down the street and just do it for fun, it's wrong. but what if they have gangrene, and amputation will save their life? yes, this is a bit simplistic, but i think sean got halfway there when he talked about free will - choice is the key, i feel. and educated choice, at that.

i do believe in right and wrong, although even those abstract concepts are nebulous and subjective, depending on who's defining them - cultural, chronological, even individual differences of opinion here.

so, to answer the question - people with AS are just as capable of doing right or wrong as anyone else.

i'm sticking to internal and external loci of control, me.

Well Nietschze strikes me as one of us, so he would write about us (himself) as the ubermensch. He had the ego of someone who can't relate to others or to whom others don't seem real...he was always searching for his own people. I don't always agree with him - although he's fascinating and entertaining.

...it's nice that he gave us a 'creation' myth, not many oddballs have a creation myth, but uh as one soon finds out when one meets other aspies, we don't have what it takes to be a dominant breed. We don't 'group' or 'plot' well. He was an ivory tower academic, an egghead, so his theories have the flaws of that distance from 'real life'. He's our prophet I guess, our zarathrustra, writing our bibles for us. Interesting man.

I'd like to think there's no evil, stupid, racist, ignorant or irrational among our kind. But sadly thats not the case, as I have found out in the past month or two.

I disagree. There are shades of evil, I do believe in that, but I also believe that we do not transcend evil.

We are not, by and large, insane in the legal sense of the term: "such unsoundness of mind or lack of understanding as prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or as removes one from criminal or civil responsibility," which almost seems to be the implication.

I have the capacity for evil. I know this, because I have done some pretty d--n sh---y things, and I know they were wrong. We are not amoral. If we were unaware of any evil we would be innocent; however, I doubt that very many people with or without AS are truly innocent. We may have different mindsets of reality, but someone withuout any sense of morality is closer to being a sociopath than being someone with AS.

We are not so virtuous and enlightened that we transcend morality. We are human. We may be oddly wired humans, but we're human.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, I cannot help but consider that 'good' and 'evil' are largely societal constructs that serve to 'legitimate' the dominance of the ruling elite.

Things that are hardly commented upon now were in some quarters considered to be evil. On the reverse of that, things that were unquestioned, unchallenged and considered 'common sense' are now often seen as 'no-go' areas.

It often seems to be the case that the arbitary 'rules and regulations' that others are happy to accommodate to (and I do not must mean simplistic and facile morality dogma), often seem to be utterly capricious and meaningless.

There is a degree of enforced 'normalisation' over time; not because one adjusts, rather it is because the penalties for failure to comply can grind people into the dust.

For my part, I think that from around the age of 23 to about now, I submitted (in many, though not all), respects to prevailing sensibilites. It is only now that I realise the toll this has taken on me and have also begun to realise that the sham and fakey facade that never worked anyway, simply took too much out of me.

What is this "good" and "evil" of which you speak???

I am what I am and that's all what I am...

Many of you seem to be a little confused by the phrase, "Beyond Good and Evil." Nietzsche deliberately chose a provocative title: Beyond Good and Evil: A Prélude to a Philosophy for the Future. I'm not formally trained in philosophy, but I will attempt to clarify the concept from my having just read the book.

What it isn't (necessarily):

• Being above the judgments of good and evil
• Not being responsible for one's actions
• Having no sense of right and wrong (i.e., amorality or legal insanity)
• Ignoring traditional social mores (i.e., defiance)
  

• Moving beyond the simplicity of black-and-white moral judgments: all good or all evil (as if one can even know all the consequences of a certain course of action)
• Rejecting one universal morality for everyone
• Accepting that one person's good may be another person's evil
• Traditionally "evil" thoughts, actions, or circumstances may have an element of "good" to them in that the strife strengthens the will (i.e., triumph over adversity).
• In the most noble spirits, "good" comes from their ability to determine the best course of action (using empathy and intelligence) rather than abiding by simplistic standards of morality (mere conformity).
  

It is up to us (if we are willing) to make our own valve judgements about what exactly is good and evil. The only caveat is that one is fundumentally limited (as are all human beings) to what one understands and knows. It takes real courage and strength to do these things.