Nietzsche - understandable?: Philosophy Forums

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Nietzsche - understandable?

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Nietzsche - understandable?

Somatica
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 10/09/06 - 06:23 AM: Subject: Nietzsche - understandable?	#1
Nietzsche was surely one of the most influential and controversial thinkers of the 19th century, and his name hardly ever fails to arouse intense debate. Unfortunately, due to the unsystematic nature of his thought and the controversy aroused by his ideas, a prejudice has become attached to his name that putts many people off this most entertaining and stimulating of writers. My aim here is to stir a serious discussion on Nietzsche with the aim of countering some of that prejudice, because I think that Nietzsche should be read for his insights. Nietzsche is sure to shock and annoy his readers, but he definitely won't bore them. He startles more often with the lucidity of his perceptions than he does with his effrontery. Take, for example, these simple truths expressed brilliantly by Nietzsche in Human, All Too Human (HH): One may promise actions but no sentiments. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. Or this statement, also from HH, which is just funny: We are so fond of being out among Nature, for it has no opinions about us. Then there are statements that are thought-provoking because they're striking and because we struggle to decide whether they're true or not: If she is to become beautiful a woman must not want to be considered pretty. Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. The undissolved dissonances in the relation of the character and sentiments of the parents survive in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner sufferings. One person sticks to an opinion because he takes pride it having acquired it himself - another sticks to it because he has learnt it with difficulty and is proud of having understood it; both of them, therefore, out of vanity. ~~~ Now, to deal with three common prejudices: Nazism, God is dead, and being difficult to read... Nazism Nietzsche loved Wagner's Tristran und Isolde; Wagner loved Nietzsche's ideas on the need for a new morality. They became friends. Hitler also liked Wagner. That is the extent of the link between Nietzsche and Nazism, except for the commonality of their talk about the Ubermensch. However, on closer examination they used this term in ways so different that they can hardly be equated. To quote Tom Griffith: According to Nietzsche, Christian morality is slave morality, a morality created by weak and resentful individuals who encouraged gentleness, kindness, humility, forgiveness because such behaviour gave them some protection against the bold and the strong. Slave morality is essentially a willingness (born of fear) to give up on life in its entirety. By contrast, Nietzsche's superman (ubermensch) is secure and independent. He feels deeply, but his passions are rationally controlled. Concentrating on this world, not on the rewards of the next, the superman accepts and welcomes life, including the suffering and pain that accompany human existence. His superman creates his own values, a 'master morality' that reflects the strength and independence of one who is liberated from all values except those he himself deems valid. The essential thing is the will to power. In its positive sense, this will to power is not simply power over others, but power over oneself, as manifested in the superman's independence, creativity, and originality. It is easy to see how talk of master morality and slave morality can be conflated with Hitler's ideas about the master race and slave races. So it is important to emphasise that this is not the kind of thing Nietzsche is talking about. According to Nietzsche, the superman has not yet appeared, but he mentions individuals who might serve as models: Socrates, Jesus, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Julius Caesar, Napoleon. Two teachers, two painters, two writers, two soldier-statesmen. This is hardly the stuff of racist supremacy or totalitarian dictatorship. God is dead The most famous assertion that God is dead is not made by Nietzsche himself but by his character, Zarathustra, the 'madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours.' Nevertheless, Nietzsche comes very close to saying the same thing: For all occasions where the Christian awaits the immediate intervention of a God, though in vain (for there is no god), his religion is inventive enough to find subterfuges and reasons for tranquillity. - Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions Nietzsche recognised that a pictorial representation of God which was convincing to many people 2000 years ago is unlikely to be convincing to them today, just as the Olympian gods of the ancient Greeks are unlikely to be convincing to many people today. However, he was also aware that even pictorially obsolete gods may represent something real in the world - Dionysus and Apollo just as much as the Judeo-Christian God. Nietzsche saw an opposition between the two philosophical traditions of the ancient Greeks: "the life-affirming, yes-saying irrationalism of Dionysus and the life-denying, no-saying rationalism of Apollo" (Tom Griffith). In the nineteenth century, which saw the Greek world in its cool rationality, the Apolline element predominated to the detriment of the Dionysian element. In Nietzsche's view, the tragedy was that Apolline ideology prevailed, moving via Plato to inform "the gloomy self-denials of Christianity." (TG again). Nietzsche favoured a 'new' morality, which was actually a very old but sidelined morality, as Nietzsche refers to Homer: Whoever has the power of returning good for good, evil for evil, and really practices requital, and who is, therefore, grateful and revengeful, is called good; whoever is powerless, and unable to requite, is reckoned as bad ... the enemy is not looked upon as evil, he can requite. In Homer the Trojan and the Greek are both good. (HH) In Homer we find only heroes and no villains. In Wagner we find both heroes and villains. And in Christianity we are all villains. The idea that we define ourselves more by our enemies than by our friends comes up again in Zarathustra: By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, now by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth! My brethren in war! I love you from the very heart. I am, and was ever, your counterpart. And I am also your best enemy. So let me tell you the truth!... ...I spare you not, I love you from my very heart, my brethren in war! Is Nietzsche difficult to read? Of course this is a matter of personal opinion, but so is the question of whether chess is a good game. I don't think that Nietzsche is at all hard to read. To quote Tom Griffith (sorry to do this so much, but he really puts it much better than I ever could, and he's much more knowledgeable, of course): It is difficult to give a systematic account of Nietzsche's thought, but that is because he is not a systematic thinker. It does not mean the things he says are difficult to understand. And his lack of system can be something of an advantage. It matters much less if you allow your attention to wander while you are reading. You may miss a few things, but you won't miss a vital step in the argument. What is more, Nietzsche offers so many striking insights that if you miss one on this page, there is certain to be another, equally striking, on the next. This makes him, if anything, the easiest of all philosophers to read. Many people read Zarathustra and conclude that Nietzsche is unreadable. This is a pity, because Z is Nietzsche's most unreadable book, and also the least typical of his writing. ~~~ Nietzsche is probably my favourite Western philosopher, and not because I take to heart everything he espouses. I just wanted to go some way toward clarifying what is often unclear in people's opinions of Nietzsche, so if anyone would like to discuss some controversial statements or themes of his, maybe this is the place...

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Posted 08/09/08 - 11:57 AM:	#2
His writings probably aren't, you need to look for an interpretation of them.
I am not bound to please thee with my answers - William Shakespeare

iamtheother
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Posted 08/14/08 - 04:08 PM:	#3
One should consider how Nietzsche speaks of "Woman" in his works. There exists some decent scholarship on the inherent sexism in his work. Some of which evaluates the very nature of sexism as it is explored in Nietzsche's work. Derrida's Spurs Nietzsche is a very interesting look at how "Woman" is portrayed. One argument is that "Woman" itself represents a kind of anti-truth in Nietzsche's writing. This anti-truth is bound to her apparent focus on dionysian attributes that reject the western ideology of focusing on apollonian notions of reason and logic. She is constantly in flux between this "anti-truth" of passion and desires and that of the dominant truth-as-reason discourse. "Woman" then, in some senses, is a rejection of a reason itself. She is a re-evaluation of all values (to really get to the meat of Nietzsche).

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Posted 09/02/08 - 06:24 AM:	#4
Very interesting...Can you explain what is a master-morality?
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 09/05/08 - 03:15 PM:	#5
"The only link between Hitler and Nietzsche is there love of Wagner"? Modern philosophers MUST separate the two, but to do so (as Walter Kaufmann has done) is to reduce Nietzsche to individual psychology while robbing him of his essential meaning. These are their similarities: 1) Their desire to create man anew, a higher realization. 2) Their love of war. 3) Their hatred of democracy and Christianity 4) Their praise of Promethean spirit 5) Aryan supremacy 6) Their belief in weltanschauung. 7) Interpreting history through the superior man. I could go on and on as Nietzsche is a precurser to the Nazi and was mandatory reading for the Wehrmacht. All the arguments to separate Nietzsche from Hitler are very thin at best. My question is why do we need to separate Nietzsche from Hitler. Why is this necessary?

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Posted 09/05/08 - 11:27 PM:	#6
van keister wrote: My question is why do we need to separate Nietzsche from Hitler. Why is this necessary? Because it threatens the very weak and resentful individuals that Nietzsche spoke of, who occupy all of the academic philosophy departments throughout the Western world.

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Posted 09/05/08 - 11:56 PM:	#7
iamtheother wrote: One should consider how Nietzsche speaks of "Woman" in his works. There exists some decent scholarship on the inherent sexism in his work. Some of which evaluates the very nature of sexism as it is explored in Nietzsche's work. Derrida's Spurs Nietzsche is a very interesting look at how "Woman" is portrayed. One argument is that "Woman" itself represents a kind of anti-truth in Nietzsche's writing. This anti-truth is bound to her apparent focus on dionysian attributes that reject the western ideology of focusing on apollonian notions of reason and logic. She is constantly in flux between this "anti-truth" of passion and desires and that of the dominant truth-as-reason discourse. "Woman" then, in some senses, is a rejection of a reason itself. She is a re-evaluation of all values (to really get to the meat of Nietzsche) Where's the sexism?
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Posted 09/06/08 - 03:15 AM:	#8
van keister wrote: All the arguments to separate Nietzsche from Hitler are very thin at best. Nietzsche rejected nationalism (especially German nationalism). Nietzsche rejected socialism. Nietzsche despised anti-semitism. Nietzsche rejected Wagner (and preferred French culture to German culture). Hitler created a fascist regime out of national socialist anti-semitism (with a built-in "Ride of the Valkyries" soundtrack). And Nietzsche is precisely the sort of "judaizing" "Good European" Hitler would have liquidated ... Just because the Nazis plundered German history for cultural icons & symbols to appropriate in no way demonstrates that those icons & symbols were precursors of Nazism. Such arguments as you're making, Herr Keester, are specious & fallacious on their face. Ideas & books cannot be blamed for the cretins or criminals who misuse them. "I want no 'believers' ; I think I am too malicious to believe in myself; I never speak to masses ... I have a terrible fear that one day I will be pronounced holy: you will guess why I publish this book before, it shall prevent people from doing mischief with me ..." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (Why I Am A Destiny) He never imagined, I think, the lengths to which the likes of his sister Frau Förster-Nietzsche, Hitler, Goebbels et al would go to doing murderous mischief to and with his masterworks ... or maybe Nietzsche was just being ironic in the face of futility. As he had previously written: "Perhaps I know the Germans ...,-- I must therefore also state my objections to them. One pays heavily for coming to power: power makes stupid ... The Germans -- once they were called the people of thinkers: do they think at all today? The Germans are now bored with the spirit, the Germans now mistrust the spirit; politics swallows up all serious concern for really spiritual matters -- 'Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,' I fear that was the end of German philosophy ..." (Twilight of the Idols (What the Germans Lack)). Edited by 180 Proof on 09/06/08 - 03:33 AM. Reason: Ja-Sagen!
The question isn't "Which explanations do I believe?" but rather "Which explanations do I least disbelieve?" Absence of evidence THAT MUST BE THERE (i.e. implied by any claim, concept, or (its) predicates, that affects changes in/to the world) entails evidence of absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

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Posted 09/06/08 - 08:34 AM:	#9
Very nice, but very far from the truth. Read Taha's book, Nietzsche: Prophet of Nazism. Or better read Nietzsche auf german and quit reading Kaufmann's translations. Also try to understand what Geist means in german then perhaps you will get a better understanding of what Nietzsche's position on nationalism really was: "the blond beast, the lord of the Earth, a super species of humans meant to command! It is a mistake to try to divorce Nietzsche from Prometheanism, from nationalism, from superman, from the warrior, concquering spirit he extolled. Write in blood, instead of ink mein freund. Herr Keister

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Posted 09/07/08 - 08:46 AM:	#10
Haha, I still can not believe that people think Nietzsche supported, or would have even likened to Hitler. His works became national in Germany during Hitlers reign because his sister published some of his works, and she was the Nazi.

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