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Nietzsche - understandable?

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Nietzsche - understandable?

Townes van Zandt
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Posted 08/05/09 - 05:39 PM:	#21
youngphilosophe wrote: In some areas he is quite brilliant but I still can't shake my prejudice when it comes to his idea of the "overhuman". I understand that he simply wanted man to advance and progress as quickly as possible but he did not consider both sides of his vision. Have you ever read Thus Spoke Zarathustra? Or any of his other work -- he was deeply concerned with nihilism and it's corresponding will to nothingness. Which indeed has pervaded the 20th century and beyond, and is in part responsible for it's dictatorships. Simply because there hasn't been a grand goal for humankind, without God, is why the ends have justified the means. Hitler had no idea what the Overman was, or meant, and instead used a vague notion of it to fuel his propaganda. It really is disheartening that people still believe some of this.
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yebiga
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Posted 08/11/09 - 07:31 AM:	#22
Neitzsche is my god there are no other gods before him. Plato inspired Christendom but no one thinks less of him, even thou Christianity is the cause of far greater and more numerous crimes than Hitler. Neitzsche often feared his legacy would one day be associated with great crimes. It may be convenient to pause and linger at this Neitzsche/Hitler conjunction but it displays a pop culture understanding of history and a fundamental naivety of the last 200 years of thought and history. Neitzsche is a power house, who with every phrase raises and liberates our spirit. He has fundamentally redefined philosophy and it has not been and could not be the same ever since. He is neither obscure nor difficult to read unlike his many would be peers of the 20th and 21st century. Although not commonly appreciated his work is a unity. There is one consistent theme that runs through all his work. He approaches this subject from every angle to arm us and liberate us. It is a dangerous subject. A subject embedded in our culture, our thoughts, myths and language: his subject is our culture and more directly our Christian culture. To unravel this Platonic hydra after 1900 years of monkish knitting into our unconscious was not an easy task. His "slave/master morality", "will to power", "superman" "eternal recurrence" "dionysius" "god is dead" are designed as antidotes to the Christian bondage. Each of these themes shakes the foundations of christian belief: its psychology and its prescriptions. His psychological analysis of the ascetic religious mind bares naked it disingenuousness. and for anyone trapped within these thought forms, he is pure liberation! His titles alone make one scream "am I understood?" Twilight of the Idols, Beyond Good and Evil , the anti-christ He reveals the very psychology of this shape shifting hydra and whether it is dressed as Apollo, Plato, Christ, Marx or some contemporary mutation; we are armed with the ability to identify it and if we become infected he has gifted us its anti-dote. Neitzsche the physician philosopher! He is the great destroyer because after him the western edifice from plato to descartes, thru kant and hegel all lie in ruins. Worse, once contemporary philosophers grasp his meaning they all lose confidence in everything. It is Neitzsche who inspires the existentialist escape, various irrational subjectivism, post modernism, etc. It is Neitzcshe who inspires rational thinkers like Russell and his analytic mates to look for further embedded truths in our language. Unfortunately, none of them can write with his clarity or inspiration. Put simply we cannot get past Neitzsche. Well that is not quite true, it is Philosophers who can't get past him. as for Neitzsche's view of woman: he was a fool. He lived at a very paternalistic time. There is no denying it. His only defense is that perhaps his views were not uncommon. There is only so much you can achieve in a life time. That is my take: give it your best shot.

vinra
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Posted 08/12/09 - 08:26 AM:	#23
There are a lot of ways or opinions you can find in his writings, he was controversial! Beside this his philosophy sustains elitism. That is way he is so popular among Satanists. or Hitler

ciceronianus
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Posted 08/20/09 - 07:29 AM:	#24
I won't go into the Nazi thing; others have addressed that quite adequately. I found him to be an entertaining writer, but too excitable, and given to making pronouncements without any kind of extended argument. In that sense, I think he had much in common with certain other 19th century writers, in and out of Germany. I found him quite interesting in my adolescence, and read everything of his I could find. Reading him again later was a disappointing experience.
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

Banno
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Posted 08/20/09 - 12:37 PM:	#25
Doesn't the very existence of this thread indicate that his writing is opaque?
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

yebiga
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Posted 08/25/09 - 08:34 PM:	#26
Banno: Opaque? The man is an arrogant conceited prick. But that is no reason to dismiss him. His philosophical observations must stand for themselves. Whether the Nazi's were inspired by him or Darwins theories likewise are no grounds to dismiss him. Nietzsche's influence on modern philosophy is profound. Opaque! No body says, Descartes, Kant, Hegel,, Spinoza, etc, etc are opaque. Yet Nietzsche says in one line what these guys take a book to clarify. Opaque indeed. To understand Nietzsche you do need an good grounding in western history and thought. Thus you need to know a little about Greek Myths, Greek politics, Plato, Stoicism, Early Roman History, and in particular a grounding in the rise of Christiainity and it connection to neo-platonism, the reformation, the enlightenment, marxism, the nation state, the french revolution; some familiarity with Locke, Hume and the Utilitarianism. Then, if you can imagine the social upheavel caused by industrial revolution, Nietzcshe becomes simple: Here! I present to you your culture and how it mutates us all. Here are my antidotes to the rise of an inane mass culture. Here are these antidotes to the Christian hydra and its slave morality. He is contemptible of the wagnerian glorification so espoused by the Nazis. To suggest Nietzsche is a facist is to entirely miss the point. He does not suggest we should follow one man: a Napolean. He wants us all to become Napolean. He envisages a world were the source of our strength is not some weak mass morality but one we each determine for ourselves. He rejects god, he rejects descartes, he rejects the secular christianity he see rising.

Banno
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Posted 08/26/09 - 01:04 AM:	#27
And his followers are so damn touchy...
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing... Ned: Such is life

ragus
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Posted 08/26/09 - 04:20 AM:	#28
Banno wrote Doesn't the very existence of this thread indicate that his writing is opaque? No. It indicates that some people *find* his writing opaque. IS opaque! What IS it with you, Banno?

ciceronianus
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Posted 08/26/09 - 06:13 AM:	#29
yebiga wrote: His titles alone make one scream "am I understood?" Twilight of the Idols, Beyond Good and Evil , the anti-christ They make me scream, certainly. But, I generally scream "Shut up already! Just live you're life and stop whining!"
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

WolfSkull
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Posted 09/01/09 - 05:45 AM:	#30
In order to read N, you have to start from his first and work your way to his last. He had an amazing ability of encrypting his writing to weed out the lazy. Unless you read chronologically, you will missunderstand him. As far as the other two questions, you should read and find out for yourself. What does it really matter how other people interperet his writings? Does it make you feel better if other people get the same thing out of it as you?
OIIIIO

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