Hey Veeky Forums i had a thread a few months ago about Nietzsche that gained some attention...

Hey Veeky Forums i had a thread a few months ago about Nietzsche that gained some attention. I'm a 5th year grad student wrapping up my dissertation on Nietzsche.

I have a couple of hours to spare if anyone wants to ask me questions.

Explain "schwache Moral" and "starke Moral" (weak and strong moral) to me.

What books did Nietzsche like? I've seen some authors that he liked thrown around a bit but not much into what he actually read of them or liked.

I'd have to know in what context you've found these terms.

I can tell you about how Nietzsche conceived of morality per se and why he was opposed to it. A distinction would need to be made between an ethos and morality for this to make sense. Before I start, however, I'd want to know what portion[s] of text you're asking me to explain.

He LOVED Emerson. He also Like Montaigne, Stendhal, Pascal, Plato, Schopenhauer, Lange. He also read some Dostoyesky and liked him a lot.

Apart from that, there's the usual ancient Greek and Roman authors. There's probably more, but if you give me a name, I could maybe tell you what Nietzsche more or less thought about them.

why did u waste ur time on nietzsche?

Rousseau

Because I think Nietzsche is right both in his diagnosis and in his prescription.

Apart from that, It's impossible to understand the 20th century without him. He fertilized all the great men of the 20th century.

He did not like him, though he respected him. Saw him as a rabble rouser and one of the enablers of the Enlightenment. He saw a slave's revenge in his motives. See his "Skirmishes" section 3 in Twilight of the Idols.

What writers (fiction or philosophy) follow in Nietzsche footsteps that you think are worth reading or looking into?

What exactly do you believe his perscription is? That we should return to the days of Roman political dichotomy (the rich and the poor)?

Don't totally spoil it for me, but give me some hints. Is there a difference between Nietzsche's conception of the mask and his conception of the actor? It seems that he would encourage disguising oneself but simultaneously despises the rabble for disguising themselves

Heidegger, Weber, Schmitt, Derrida, Foucault. I can't speak for fiction from personal experience.

There is no going back, not only because its impossible for Nietzsche, but also because he doesn't want to. Christianity, he says, has done work on the human being (the way that sculptor handles his stone), and that work cannot be wasted. It needs to be incorporated into a new plan, a new goal. The stone needs a new ideal.

His prescription is eternal return. He thinks that if it is believed, then the human being will fundamentally change. Let me be clear here about what N thought about eternal return.

We already believe something about time. We may not think about it, and we may not even be aware of what we think about time. It's something we may need to do some self-investigation. Nevertheless, we believe in a linear time, and that sense of time affects the way in which we structure our reality, our lives, our day, and even the moment.

If we were to believe in eternal return (without even being aware of it), then Nietzsche thinks that we would consider every moment as incredibly important, because we'd have to relieve it for all eternity. We would just be attuned to the moment in this way. No effort would be spent to try to be this way. And, in thinking of time, of reality, of the year, the day, the moment in this way, we'd love what this life has to offer, and not seek happiness in some place beyond this and the now like we currently do.

Plato (and his childish religious followers, Christians, Muslims, and even Jewish people) think happiness resides in a place beyond time. So, the now, this life has to be lived with an eye to getting there. This life has to be merely endured. Secular Christians, Socialists, think that happiness exists in this world, but not in this life. It exists some time in the future, after a revolution. In any case, the tendency within a worldview that sees time as linear is to push off happiness beyond this life. Hence, you hardly live. You live for the nothing.

Here's a hint. You have a self when you're speaking to your boss, another when you're speaking to your friends, your mom, and even to yourself looking in the mirror. There is no face behind the masks. There is only another mask.

Would you be willing to share what you think everyone should know/what you discovered/the things that have affected you the most?

As far as politics is concerned, Nietzsche does not care for what he calls "petty politics." He is more concerned with the concepts, the ideas, the values that then find their expression in various political regimes. Were eternal return to be believed, it would make possible a whole new range of political regimes.

Think of it this way. Political regimes put into place laws that enable the expression of the values adhered to. So, Spartans valued honor, glory, etc., and so they set up a political regime that would make human beings embody and exhibit those values. We value (as a rough sketch) liberty, fraternity, equality, and in order to see them in our society, we construct this government, we pass these or those laws. The petty little fight between capitalism and communism, for instance, is not over which things are valuable. It is over which political arrangement will best bring them about. For Nietzsche, this difference is negligible.

If you're wondering, and I bet you are, then I'll just tell you quickly that his views of democracy and of the demos are no different than Plato's. He has nothing but contempt for the great masses of men.

There's many, but I'll just mention that through Nietzsche I've come to rethink suffering. It's fertilizer for the soul. Without it, you can't grow. Too much fertilizer, and nothing can bloom.

This way of thinking stands in stark contrast to the Buddhist relation to suffering. It is an objection to life and living. As a result of being affected by suffering in this way, N thinks that Buddhists constructed a world in which the best sort of life is one that finally dies. That is to say, the great human being in Buddhist doctrine is one that reaches nirvana, and in having done so, they escape the wheel of reincarnation.

You can think of Nietzsche as the ultimate anti-Buddhist, if you take the response to the idea of coming back into life as the standard for a noble human being. Buddhists say no the circle and value the person who tries to escape it. Nietzsche says yes to the circle and values the person who lives eager to come back.

>Too much fertilizer, and nothing can bloom
How do you find the middle ground?
>There's many
I'm interested if you have time

great post

What would have been his preferred form of government?

OP see:

What would he have thought of memes?

See BGE 61, 62.

Basically, philosophical monarchy or aristocracy. Either direct rule, or indirectly (behind the curtain, so to speak) through kings or priests.

People don't realize how much Nietzsche took from Plato. N reacted against large portions of his works, but he also basically plagiarized him in large measure.

What's the best way to get into Nietzsche, book-wise?

Also, what are some sources that I can use to cross-check Nietzsche? I found that when I wad reading Beyond Good and Evil, I had to google a lot of what N was saying in some paragraph and a dictionary to understand what the words meant

Here's another that comes to mind, and I've loved this in Nietzsche only because I'm not from the US. I'm from some southern European country originally (being vague so I don't recognized), and there we value power, manliness. Weakness is not a virtue. People hide their ignorance, their weakness. They don't exhibit it like they do here as a way of getting props.

When I see homeless people, I empathize with them (see myself in their shoes) and I am embarrassed. I think that I would sooner kill myself than have my neediness be public, to be so humiliated, so powerless, so...little. If I was like that, I would want people to look away. Getting money from people in that state would absolutely crush me. There's no greater insult. There is no greater indication that you are low, and they high. So, I don't give to homeless, but I do it as a sign of respect--if that makes any sense.

I know it probably doesn't, but that's why I liked Nietzsche. He starts from a similar way of thinking. He despises pity. That is not to say that he doesn't think people should be kind to one another, or to not help another when they're in need. Just that they ought not do it from pity. You can help while at the same time not becoming infected by their suffering, and suffer too. If someone in need were not pathetic; if they came to me with some self-respect, as an equal, and asked for help, I would not hesitate. But if they, essentially coerce me into giving--if they seek to make me sick, to feel bad, and then make it implicitly clear that the only way to stop feeling bad is to give them help, then I can't help but be disgusted.

He said that a good friend gives an ailing friend a hard bed to sleep on. This is the only way to better the friend.

>but I do it as a sign of respect--if that makes any sense.
so instead of recognizing a social structure, you give props for them exposing their weakness?
>only way to stop feeling bad is to give them help, then I can't help but be disgusted.
What do you think of depression then?
>an ailing friend a hard bed
Wouldn't you be afraid they'd die from it?

Hey OP, cool thread. Recently I was reading Ecce Homo, in which Nietzsche has some pretty unkind words about Schopenhauer. But if my memory serves, Schopenhauer had a great impact on Nietzsche in his younger years. Could you maybe trace the trajectory of Nietzsche's relationship with Schopenhauer's philosophy, especially what attracted him to it initially and what caused him eventually to reject it?

This next one is pretty edgy.

There's also a deep appreciation for enemies in Nietzsche that resonates with me. I consider religion as a problem. Not because it gives the poor and ailing false hope (there's nothing wrong with that), but because it corrupts the strong, the geniuses of the species.

That said, I have the utmost respect for Christianity for instance. I do all I can to prop it up. What sense would a victory over Christianity have, if I thought of it as a small thing.

This way of thinking, I think, influenced Karl Schmitt and his concept of the political.

>That said, I have the utmost respect for Christianity for instance. I do all I can to prop it up. What sense would a victory over Christianity have, if I thought of it as a small thing.

Why would you do that after acknowledging that religion (Christianity in particular) is slave cuck morality that ruins the potential of great men?

What did he think of Tolstoy? I know that he read some of his work.

He states that it's still nice for the lesser people, people unable to go beyond.
He respects Christianity's failed endeavors: hope, although false.
If an enemy doesn't command respect it's a nuisance.

Look, Nietzsche was a trained philologist, but he wanted to be a philosopher. One year into his tenure as professor philology, the 25 year old asked to transfer to philosophy. He did not get this position. Nevertheless, Nietzsche kept working on philosophy and abandoned philology.

In the early years, he looked at the first philosophers, the Pre-Platonics as well as Plato. He attempted to understand what made someone a philosopher. What did philosophers do. What were their task. Later on in his career, he thought he had become on such philosopher.

He thought of the first Greek philosophers as philosophical ARCHETYPES. He thought they were pure types. They invented types of philosophers. After them, and beginning with Plato, he thought that people simply mixed up their types. So, Plato was a mix of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Socrates and Pythagoras. Nietzsche's contribution, he though, was to create a new ARCHETYPE for the philosopher.

This is all Nietzsche is about. The man is a philosopher and concerned himself with philosophy. This is not to say that he concerned himself with philosophical topics of his time. Nope. He concerned himself with PHILOSOPHY itself. He more or less overlooked all of philosophy from Plato onto his day.

So, if you want to know where to start, then begin with his his early work in which he tries to understand the original philosophers. By having grasped that, you can then see what sort of philosopher he thought he became later on in his life.

Here's a gem for instance to get you started. He says in the Preface of his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, that to the original genuine philosophers, their systems were true only for them; the systems were one big mistake for other genuine philosophers, and a series of errors for all little people.

Why is this? Well, to Nietzsche all philosophy begins with a philosopher's "personal attunement" to the world. In the same way that the same key will make different sounds, different music, if it is attuned differently, a philosopher will make a different world-view, a different philosophy (different music) if they are attuned differently as well. Hence, since they were attuned to the world in such a unique way, their systems of philosophy, their music, could only be entirely "true" to them--or to another who was attuned exactly as them. To another great philosopher who was attuned differently, this previous philosopher would have made one fundamental error, viz., having been attuned as they were.

Other lesser minds do not even see this one root cause of a philosopher's worldview, their "music." All they see is a series of propositions, a series of assumptions, and they judge them individually, saying some are true, others false.

Now, if Nietzsche thought of himself as a philosopher in THIS sense, then it would stand to reason that he also thought that his system was true ONLY FOR HIM, or at least for others who are similarly attuned. This is why in Zarathustra, for example, Zarathustra tells his disciples over and over again what he thinks, and they don't get him. He says after every failure to be understood that "there are no ears for his music" yet.

Those who see little truths and errors in Nietzsche are reading him like he says the lesser minds read the original genuine philosophers.

This is just one thing you could pick up if you read his comments of philosophers before you read him AS a philosopher.

I don't follow. I don't give props to people who take pride in exposing their wounds. These are people who value weakness, and think they are valuable because they're weak, opposed, etc.

>you give props for them exposing their weakness?
I think depression are a result of warrior instincts having found no external enemies, and having thereby turned inward.

>Wouldn't you be afraid they'd die from it?
I'd be more afraid of them living like a sick worm.

Thanks for this thread, OP, really nice explained and easy to understand.

I am pretty stupid, so I will trust what you wrote here, until I get to read Nietzsche myself. I hope you didn't write bullshit, lol.

>I'd be more afraid of them living like a sick worm.
What if your coldness pushes them over the edge?
I deal with people that are so close to killing themselves daily. Time heals all wounds, don't you think?
>I don't give props to people who take pride in exposing their wounds
Would you then explain
>So, I don't give to homeless, but I do 'it' as a sign of respect--if that makes any sense.
What is 'it' in this context?

What is the endgame for Nietzsche? Where does he see humanity going?

I interpreted the eternal return as a rhetorical device in order to persuade potentially great men to not waste their lives. Surely Nietzsche did not literally believe in a recurring cyclic existence?

Assuming eternal return is not to be taken literally, what was the point of anyone's actions, even the ubermenschen, if humanity dies with the universe?

Because I think they're a worthy enemy. There is an awe-inspiring amount of wisdom in the bible (mostly old testament). I obviously don't agree with it, but the men who wrote it stared into the abyss. Read the Ecclesiastes and then tell me what the worth of Camus is? His works read like they were written by a child by comparison.

Upon tempted to transform rocks lying nearby into bread, Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone. He meant that we do not live by penicillin and iphones alone, either, speaking of the value of a disenchanted world.

To "enchant," by the way, simply means to put music to it, to accompany something with music. To disenchant means to strip something of music. To have only bread. You need "wine," too, my nigga. The Christ is merely a proud plebian's Dionysus, a bigger farce than any of the faces of Dionysus had ever been (I'm thinking of Heracles, Zagreus, Pentheus, Orpheus, Prometheus, etc., here).

If you don't even see the human need for wine, for music, for an enchanted world--if, that is, you're on the Dawkins, Hitchens, British enlightenment moralists, in other words, then you're a fucking idiot. Who would want to waste time with enemies like those.

>I think that I would sooner kill myself than have my neediness be public, to be so humiliated, so powerless, so...little.

Interesting, I would probably do the same, but doesn't that mean that the mental fortitude and the dehumanization that these beggars go through should be commended?

I'd cite where I'm getting things from if I thought there was interest. Ask me where to look to find the things I've said, and I'll give you some places where he says it.

I don't deny that Ecclesiastes is an important piece of writing and by far the most interesting book of the Bible, but parts of it are diametrically opposed to the core of Christianity and that's literally what makes it so interesting. It is a cynical and hopeless treatise wedged between a bunch of books filled with saccharine childish moralizing and Jewish mythology.

In any case your comparison to Dawkins et al is unwarranted. I never denied the importance of the concept of the noumenous, I'm talking strictly about Christianity and how it's a weak religion for weak people and should be abandoned as such.

This will seem like I'm sidestepping your question, but I think it's worth saying anyway.

Nietzsche does not have a system of morality for how to handle day to day little things. He is not like Kant or Mill or any other moralist in that he does not provide some sort of formula people can use to determine what to do.

Look at my post here.
I'll speak metaphorically here to save some time. Think of two gardens. One garden believes in linear time, the other in eternal return.

Nietzsche thinks that this belief about time makes possible a certain set of values for the plants that grow up there. The plants growing up in the garden that believes in linear time will value life-denying things. They will praise plants that are decrepit, weak, ripe for death. They will create a system of government, a system of morality, institutions, customs, religion, etc., in order to better embody those values, and in this way also handle small issues like what to do about abortion, or gay marriage, or slavery, etc.

The garden that believes in eternal return will value life-affirming values. There is no choice here. They will value the here and now, this life, this body, this moment because they'll think this is what comes back for all eternity. As a result, they'll come up with their own values, and as a result a new system of government (or a reformed old one), a new kind of [lower-case-m] morality, new gods, new etc., to see THESE values embodied and exhibited. It's difficult (read; impossible) to say what these sort of people would think about little issues like abortion, gay marriage, suicide, etc. We can imagine, but we would be doing the imagining from the first garden.

Now, Nietzsche thinks that the human plant flourishes in the second garden and withers away in the first.

Questions abou

Abandoned in favor of what, a total embrace of nihilism for the common man? Not the same guy, but Nietzsche had a deep appreciation of Plato, Socrates and Christ because they were doing/did the same thing he wanted to do, revalue morality.

Christianity is flawed to be sure, but it has a power structure and has captivated the hearts of men. Just as when Christianity replaced paganism, it built churches over old sacred places, if we are to move forward from Christianity whatever we build must use the cathedrals as its foundation, whether we like it or not. Unless we choose death by ennui instead, which is what the west is currently doing.

What is the will to/of power ?

Please be clear

You're assuming there is no alternative to Christianity. Why you continue to do this I'm not sure.

And revaluing morality is no guarantee that the new system won't be shit. You can expand by taking what little good parts in Christianity there are and mixing them with something else or build something entirely new.

Well, he sees that the "races" of europe were mixing. He understood "race" as determined by values. A people who has settled and lived in an area for a few generations will value some things and not others. They then become a "race."

Europe is blending together, he says. It wants to be one, but this mixing of the "races," has created a "tension" in the spirit. This tension, these multiple and often opposed valued embodied in a single soul cause a lot of distress in that soul. The soul of the European, he thinks wants peace, harmony.* If it gets its way, if the tension is merely resolved, then you'll get the last man, and you can understand what he means by this by looking at Wall-E. It's a pretty perfect depiction of the last man, in my opinion.

If, however, Nietzsche gets his way, then this tension will be used to bring about the overman. In any case, what's worth pointing out and what will appeal to your delicate western sensibilities, is that for Nietzsche, nothing great can happen without a "mixing of the races." It is what brings us at this crossroad (either last man or overman.)
*[Note that this is what Nietzsche thinks was happening in Greece in the time of Plato, and that Plato found himself in the same position].

I didn't mean to make that sound like a personal attack on you brother.

I meant that I respect Christianity because it recognizes the need for wine and even provides humanity with some. I take issue with the kind of wine it offers. The Grand Inquisitor is, I think, a pretty good defense of Christianity, even though it was clearly meant as an attack of one sect by another.

Best thread in a while, lads.

Not that guy. OP here, but I agree with him. Nietzsche does assume that. He thinks that the available "alternatives" are simply new faces of Christianity.

In any case, lets not narrow our focus too much on Christianity. Nietzsche's attack of it is a veiled attack of Plato, and really above and beyond that, it is an attack on morality itself.

Read BGE 32 to get a sense of the timeline that Nietzsche's working with, what he's actually criticizing, and what he thinks he's contributed to world history. Read also the 3rd section of Why I am Destiny in which he answers why he choose Zarathustra as his mouthpiece. He thought the historical Zarathustra originated morality, i.e., he envisioned a world in which morality functioned as a cause. So, for instance, Agamemnon blamed the plague that befell his troops on a human failing. Religious idiots in the US blamed Katrina on gay people getting married. These are the obvious ways that people see morality into nature, but Nietzsche thought that it occurs at much more subtle ways as well. Since the historical Zarathustra originated this way of thinking, and this way of thinking spawned countless religions and philosophers (including Plato), it seemed to him appropriate that Zarathustra should be brought up at the end of this era and as the first member of the new one--the supra-moral period.

What does Nietzsche think about Spinoza and about people's freedom of choice. He talks a bit about it in the beginning of "Beyond good and evil"

In his published works (which is where we should primarily look) the best and lengthiest discussion of wtp is in BGE 36. There he begins with a question. "Suppose..." he says.

This is in a book, by the way, which he begins by saying that he will be posing some "questionable questions," some dangerous questions. He asks who is the sphinx here, who is Oedipus? (BGE 1) With this allusion, he refers to the question that the sphinx asked Oedipus. "What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in noon, and 3 in the evening." The answer is of course: man.

The questions that Nietzsche will be posing in this book will pertain to man. How shall we conceive of the human being? In the Preface, he declares that Plato is his enemy. He says that the worst thing to have happened to Europe was Plato's invention of the pure mind, the pure spirit. In other words, Plato conceived of the human being as body and soul. Plato's ideal was a pure soul. If you read the Phaedo, you see that Plato advocates asceticism. His Socrates says that the philosopher, the highest type of human being (the noblest) must purge his soul of all "earthy" elements. He must become as pure soul as possible.

Anyway, this is some background for BGE. In BGE 36, Nietzsche says SUPPOSE we think of causation differently. Instead of postulating many causes, as we have done for ages the stapler (which has a being) caused this, the tree (which has a being, a substance that makes it a tree) caused that, the ant (again, a substance, a "soul" you can think of it) caused this), the human being (with his soul, what makes him a thing) caused that , let's begin by postulating ONE cause and see how much we can explain with it. He says this attempt has never been made.

We went from thinking causally as a species to postulating many causes. But in postulating many causes, we also postulated many THINGS that ARE, HAVE BEING, that cause. The road never taken was one that supposed there was only one cause, will to power. The world as will to power means the world made up of one thing (a becoming thing, instead of a world with many things, all of which ARE).

Again, this is merely an experiment, Nietzsche says. If this experiment does not work, then lets suppose there were two causes, and so on, instead of supposing, as we do and have done, that there are many.

You're trolling me, aren't you ?

>That is not to say that he doesn't think people should be kind to one another, or to not help another when they're in need. Just that they ought not do it from pity. You can help while at the same time not becoming infected by their suffering, and suffer too. If someone in need were not pathetic; if they came to me with some self-respect, as an equal, and asked for help, I would not hesitate.

I have only ever given money in my adult life to one beggar for this reason. In my city there's a shitload of romani beggars, and they are all disgusting with their pliss pliss and too short crutches, I'd rather they all took up thievery rather than begging. There are also the monotone junkies with their collectively rehearsed line, who are just as awful. But this one beggar, a middle-aged white woman, cheerfully walked down the subway car and made jokes and intimate small talk as an equal, with almost no hint of the "beggar spirit", it was fantastic.

No. I'll explain a bit further after I eat. I just read back my comment, and it wasn't that clear. There's a lot more I gotta say about this.

Thank you.

Right. They hold your clear conscience ransom. They make you sick, feel guilty, feel bad, and the only way to get back your good spirits is to give money.

This is actually good for me, since I'm making some things clear for myself.

First thing, the following idea:
To postulate many causes you need to also implicitly also postulate many things that cause. Each thing, in so far as it exists, must have something that persists through the change. Change, becoming, is a fact of observation. Everything changes, but if that's the case, then there IS, strictly speaking no THING that exists. A thing exists and endures existing through change only if there is something, a substance, a substratum, that does not change. There must be a form of the pencil that does not change. This is the logic that led Plato to the realm of the forms.

I mentioned pencils and chairs, but human beings should be placed among these things, too. We persist, are one thing that exists only if there is something that endures over the seconds, hours, years...becoming.

Second.
When Nietzsche rejects multiple causes, he is effectively targeting the idea that there are such THINGS that EXIST. He's targeting the idea of substance. He put's forth flux, becoming, change as fundamental.

He says lets begin by supposing there is only one cause, WILL [that is geared, aims towards] power. This means will towards appropriation, making one's own, making like oneself. Think of a garden and how a plant will want to take over the whole place, to destroy all other species and make everything like itself. When you argue with someone, you try to convince them, but in trying to do this, you're trying to get them to make them make the same face noises as you. You're trying to make them like you.

You can think of this as a kind of Spinozism, but Spinoza postulated substance as the foundation for all that is, an unchanging something. Nietzsche does away with that, too.

His idea of eternal time is very similar to Zen. The tree doesn't become fire wood then ash. Tree is tree, firewood is firewood and ash is ash. Point of the analogy isto put all weight on to the now and it's beautiful.

I think you're the bullshitter who got called out on this shit the last time, OP. Trial by fire isn't a bad way to learn, but I do wish you'd stop relying on the argument from authority the plebs will buy.

BGE begins, as I've already said, with an open attack on Plato. Nietzsche then says that Christianity is "platonism for the people." Let me explain what this means.

Plato wanted to become the "teacher of Athens." Really, he wanted to be the teacher of Greece. To do this, he had to defeat Homer among the elite classes, and among the rabble as well. Homer was up to that point considered the teacher.

In order to accomplish this, Plato put forth arguments for those who were convinced by arguments, and myths for those who could not follow the arguments and were convinced by myths. He ends the Republic for example, with the myth of Er. It's not merely a thought experiment to make the points he had been making clear. The myths were intended for "the people." They, being retarded, need these myths. This is also the origin of the "noble lie."

Incidentally, Spinoza also says something similar about "the people," in his TTP.

Anyway, when Nietzsche says that Christianity is Platonism for the people, he means that the early Christians, who he considers "the people" (i.e., plebian idiots) they transformed his doctrines into Christian myth. You only need to look at the heavy scholarship the early christian scholars did on the Phaedo for this point.

Moving on, Nietzsche also thinks that all philosophers who wrote during (and after) the reign of Christianity were "philosophical laborers." They labored, in other words, on behalf of Christian doctrine, which was founded on Platonic thought. This includes Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Schopie, etc.

This is why Spinoza appears in BGE's first chapter, entitled "On the Prejudices of Philosophers." Their prejudices, i.e., the implicit ideas that they're advocating for or with.

As a side note, and as a way of giving you a concrete example of “philosophical labor,” lets take the example of Descartes Meditations. The subtitle of the Meditations is “In which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated.” It has this title because the church sent word to philosophers to prove the existence of God and the soul without relying on scripture. By working on behalf of church doctrine, Descartes can be said to be a philosophical laborer, a handmaiden for religion—and Nietzsche would then think that he’s not a real philosopher. For this reason, neither is Spinoza, or Kant or Hegel (see BGE 211).

There is no freedom of choice for Nietzsche. Freedom of choice is merely the means by which you enable guilt. Anyone who advocates in favor of free will does so as a way of making it possible to still impute moral guilt on someone. I know Spinoza railed against this, too, and for this reason (among 3 others) Nietzsche considers him great.

>The tree doesn't become
That doesn't sound like Nietzsche.

I've already said I'm willing to provide citations if asked.

More like Heraclitus than Spinoza. The more Nietzsche I read, with the fragments at my side, the more I realize he truly is continuing that tradition.

Well that's what we have today.

Apologies for asking a question that could be pretty easily answered by Google, but what should I read if I'm particularly interested in the idea of the Last Man? Is it necessary to read all of his work to get the concept in its entirety, or does Zarathustra explain it alone?

Nietzsche did not think there had been a genuine philosopher since Plato. What makes you think we have any today?

Watch Wall-E. Then Read BGE 200, 242, the preface with special attention to his talk about the "tension of the spirit," then "The Problem of Socrates," from Twilight of the Idols.

Really, any time he mentions a tension in the spirit, he has in mind the two outcomes that that tension makes possible. Either to the overman if the tension is preserved, or the last man if it is relaxed.

>provide citations
You can provide the citation of why I think you're vomiting the crap of civilization in a yellow fashion or one why either Socrates or Nietzsche would consider you the problem which will kill us all, but I'm still pretty sure you're that bullshitter. Have a bump.

why are you so angry with him

Great, cheers. Out of curiosity, I'm guessing if you're studying Nietzsche at graduate level you speak German and are reading him in German? Not trying to be one of those
>reading translations
guys, but I'm just curious since I'd probably be reading them in German myself.

I'm not angry, I'm just sayin bby. If I were angry at him I wouldn't be bumping his thread for other people to point him in better directions; I'm just not up for whipping his ass into shape tonight like I was the last time.

okay but how is he wrong
I mean you don't have to make an essay out of it but give me a hint at least

Working on it. Not proficient, but in about a year I think I should be fine. Currently trying to translate N's lectures on Plato. For whatever reason everyone takes it for granted that Nietzsche turned Plato on his head, so to speak, but nobody ever mentions Nietzsche's actual lectures on Plato.

There's a couple of points people have corrected him in this thread, and most of them are legit. If OP wants to post the last thread, we can find out if he's the guy I'm thinking of and how he was wrong. I'm not going through his posts ITT to nitpick and correct his shit, but he uses these threads to tune up his rhetoric and middling understanding of Nietzsche.

It's not a bad thing, unless you confuse him for an expert; I'm just not doing a line by line tonight and helping him with bumps and quizzing him on random quotes instead.
It is more rhetoric than Nietzsche high scholarship, so people who don't know better shouldn't take him (or anyone else, including me) as gospel.
>tl;dr-- i give his lies a 6/10

Okay, so I guess you were using translations for your dissertation? That'll make me feel better if I have to fall back on the English myself.

>among 3 others) Nietzsche considers him great.

What are the other 3?

I was replying to:

>Basically, philosophical monarchy or aristocracy. Either direct rule, or indirectly (behind the curtain, so to speak) through kings or priests.

What he wanted is essentially the rule we have today.

It was 5 total things. My bad.
“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by “instinct.” Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters:
>he denies the freedom of the will,
>teleology,
>the moral world-order,
>the unegoistic,
>evil.
Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness. Strange! Incidentally, I am not at all as well as I had hoped. Exceptional weather here too! Eternal change of atmospheric conditions!—that will yet drive me out of Europe! I must have clear skies for months, else I get nowhere. Already six severe attacks of two or three days each!! — With affectionate love, Your friend”

Friedrich Nietzsche, found in a postcard to Franz Overbeck in Sils-Maria dated July 30, 1881.

Was Ubermensch meant to be taken seriously? If so, what are the basic qualities (i.e. ideas, convictions, thought processes, ect.) of the Ubermensch?

So how do we reach the second guarden?

So umm who are the 5 thinkers?

yikes

>when you refer to Nietzsche as "N", you know shit's real

>we are REAL MEN in X tier 2 Euro nation

Tell that to Ahmed, the Syrian raping your 12 year old daughter. You greasy skinny olive niggers may be master intellectuals and pussycharmers because you have never worked a day in your life, but you are still emasculated in your own way.

We Americans are fat and stupid, but a real man carries a gun, a knife, and eats well.

You Euros might have a giggle with your dumb girlfriends at pic related. Sure he's fat as fuck, but he's bigger and taller than you and could beat the shit out of you. He probably has a bigger dick too. So don't talk shit and pretend that you are a higher species than us.

A big dick isn't worth much if you can't reach it through all your rolls

>mfw normie animal hindbrain reads this as a hilarious shitpost
>open mind
>Veeky Forumsmode engaged
>prepare to think critically
>mfw I realize that he is right about everything

He says in his notes that the idea of eternal return should not be defended or argued for. It will slowly creep and take hold on its own. Lower-case-p philosophers are in the tendency of merely rationalizing what they already believe, so he thinks those who grow up believing in eternal return will argue on behalf of it. So, we grow up being taught free will exists, and after going to school and attaining a university position, we start defending the idea. Same thing, he thinks, will happen with eternal return.

It need not be pushed or defended in the first place.

>The world as will to power means the world made up of one thing (a becoming thing, instead of a world with many things, all of which ARE).

If the will to power as a singular force is one thing, how is it a becoming when the will to power is a constant and thus "is" i.e. is not becoming? This doesn't really make sense what you are describing there, and is pretty obfuscating.
What you are explaining is exactly where Nietzsche started off with Schopenhauer who did the same exact thing: to posit one cause beyond the principium individuationis as thing-in-itself. What you just described is Schopenhauer's view, not Nietzsche's.
Will to power first and foremost is a psychological thing: it's a feeling of power, of might, Machtgefühl. You can take a look at Daybreak where WP comes up in a discussion about creativity and reason: the genius, and what exactly his tools are, which is WP as a means of (self-)elevation.

>This means will towards appropriation, making one's own, making like oneself.

This would imply that there is no self-overcoming involved.

I know you're trying really hard to explain something like that but you're going about it the wrong way, and one thing contradicts the other (and not in a Nietzschean way.)

I'm not sure about the overman. On the one hand, talk about the overman fizzles out almost entirely after the second book of Z. Whereas in the Preface and first two books Z says he teaches the overman, in the climax of the entire thing (The Convalescent from III), Z says that he now TEACHES eternal return and at one point in the past PROCLAIMED the overman.

Apart from that, the overman is hardly ever mentioned in his works. In Ecce Homo he talks about it again, but only as he's reviewing his Zarathustra.

On the other hand, eternal return is hardly mentioned in any of his other books either, and I know how important that idea is to him. So, for my part, my hypothesis is that the overman is a new human ideal. He is the image that the sculptor uses to shape his block of marble--whereby "marble" I mean society.

The ideal human being of the Spartan lawgiver, for example, was a badass warrior...someone like Leonidas. And so he puts into place a series of institutions, laws, religion, etc., all of which were intended to shape the populace according to this ideal. That is to say, social pressure is put on the coal to transform it into a diamond. The overman, if I am right, is therefore not as important as the lawgiver--the philosopher.

Think of it in this way. Unreal Tournament gives you UnrealEd which allows you to edit the game. You can play the game as it is, and you can win according to what the game considers valuable achievements, or you can make your own new game and create a new "world" so to speak with new set of achievements you make valuable. The one who plays your game and wins according to the rules you've put into place...the one who through playing it is transformed into the kind of person who exhibits the characteristics that allow you to win in that game...is the overman. Your ideal human being.

In our "game," MLK won. He embodied all those characteristics that we value. He "won," in the sense that he became "noble," as we understand that term. Yet, he's not as important as the one who created this game and the achievements that he made valuable in it.

Thanks. Good luck on your dissertation.

Hhhhnn

You're saying that Nietzsche postulates will to power as a substratum, as a fundamental substance, and all that becomes as a mode of this substance, akin to Spinoza. I can buy that objection, but I'll say this in turn. He intended this as a hypothesis, not as a doctrine. Second, would you buy that world as will to power would not need to transform into something else in order for "change" and "becoming" to be the case?

I'm willing to buy that will to power is a psychological thing. The problem is that he doesn't merely talk about the feeling of power like he did in Daybreak and even HA. He expands it to the world itself. We can still, however, hold on to the idea that it's a psychological thing because he says this in a book written, as he makes clear over and over again, by a "psychologist," and, as I'll say once more, as an experiment.

And why is no self-overcoming involved if will to power involves assimilation, appropriation? (he says that this is what it involves btw).

Look, the man I posted is too fat. I'll give you that. (Though he could still beat you up.)

How about having a loving happy family? Is that worth much to you greasy wannabe pickup artist tennisfags?

In America a man and his wife meet as children, stay loyal to one another and grow old together. Superficiality is not necessary when you are in love. You Euros just show off your boyabs to attract women that are literally mental children with gonorrhea. Yet Euro women don't even bother to shave their pussy or legs!

Btw fat is NECESSARY to be strong. Only women and children are skinny. Diets are for pussies. Pic related is a real masculine man. He is the world's strongest man. An American.

Is nietzsche someone that can be read alone or is there a necessary amount of knowledge that needs to be gained first?

>inb4 greeks

Literally the greeks.

Nietzsche stands well on his own but you won't catch all of his dank memes. The core points stand up though. Plato is the only one that I would recommend you know well before going into Nietzsche. If you want to look at his influences, look at Heraclitus, Schopenhauer and Spinoza. If you want to look at who he was responding to, look at Schopenhauer again, Hegel, Kant and to a lesser extent Hume and some of the enlightenment figures. And of course the bible, always gotta know that.

But the whole 'you need x to read y' meme is mostly e/lit/ism, if you want to read something, read it. If you don't get something, read summaries, wiki articles and watch lectures. If those don't cut it then pause and go read primary sources.

I am Frederick Nietzsche's successor

I have about an hour to spare if you want to ask me questions

Carrying a gun and knife are no longer related to eating well or being a man.
I'm sure you can understand that at one point in time being a man meant being a good hunter and resourceful person, that you would use that gun and knife to eat well.
Nowadays you can eat well and own a gun and knife by working for minimum wage at a mcdonalds.
Fuck I'd rather be an olive skin getting pussy and sharpening my mind as an intellectual then a lonely fat american hick who needs a towel wrapped on a stick to clean himself after working a shift at mcdonalds or answering phones at a call center

Was getting caught part of your plan?


What would Nietzsche think of Ayn Rand?

Probably some of the best shit posting I've seen in a while

Still, fuck off
>image.jpg

Much the same as what he thought of George Sand.

Rand was not a philosopher. She had no metaphysics. Objectivism is a moral doctrine couched in the language of economics. Capitalism and Freedom is worth more than her entire oeuvre put together in that regard.

'Let women keep silent' was more or less his verdict near the end of everything.