AMA Nietzsche

only the eternal return changes your life since it means that as soon as you accept dukkha over and over as in a samsara, as soon as you stop despising life, as soon as you stop being a nihilist, your existence changes in accessing a different perspective on existence. the eternal return is a surrender, an abdication of your self before your sufferings and joys stemming form your failure to fulfil your wish to live in hedonism, in avidity towards pleasures and aversion towards pains. once you abdicate, you destroy (mundane) hedonism.

the uberman is cannot be hedonistic

WAS HE REDPILLED ON WOMEN?

What did Nietzsche believe about truth? If he is right in saying that "there are no facts, only interpretations", then what in Nietzsche's view privileges his own perspective on Truth?

thanks freddy

1.You're having these questions and uncertainties about what to do with your life because your culture is decadent and has not furnished you with a goal for life, and so now all your energies, your will is scattered in every which direction, mostly turning inward and harming yourself. Pursue art, if you want, but know that it'll be like that cow out in the pasture, who sees some land to graze upon in the near horizon. Once you're there, you'll get bored of it and want more.
>read kierkegaard's either/or, and take the advice the ethical gives to the aesthete.
2. women are not merely indecisive about what to eat. That's merely a symptom of underlying uncertainty. The most prominent and unbearable way in which it manifests itself is in taht they cannot decide about which NARRATIVE about the world to believe. Because of that, they need man. They need a man to make decisions, to command (to use N's language). But the only way they can rely on your decisions is if they trust your judgment. The only way they'll trust your juddgment is if they think you have info they don't have (b/c if they thought you had the same info they did, then they wouldn't be able to see why you'd be certain where they are not). The only way they'd have to think that you have info they don't is if they think you're special.
>Moses made going up the mountain punishable by death to anyone but himself. It is in that way that he ensured that he was the sole provider of wisdom, of knowledge of good and evil. People HAD to rely on him. Essentially, then, create a mountain within yourself from which you tell your woman you get your info on the basis of which you make decisions. Do not let her climb that mountain or know what you know, otherwise she'll distrust your commands--which she needs and wants.

3. yes.
4. i like gods must be crazy i and ii, solaris, stalker (despite it's heavy religious undertones), probably more that i can't think of right now.

it's not metaphorical. Our sense of time is not metaphorical. We in fact don't consciously even know it is affecting us or that we believe in it, but we do. We all think time is linear. Nobody had to convince us of it. We've not seen the proofs, or really thought out the implications of it. We just believe it because we were born into it.

Because we believe it, our hopes for the future are conditioned to be a certain way. Our understanding of the present and past is conditioned in a certain way as well. Because of this, we are limited in the sort of world-views we can come up with, philosophically, or religiously, or even scientifically.

Linear time is a background thing. It manipulates us into thinking in this or that way. We believe it.

N wants ER to be the same thing at some point in the future. He thinks, in fact, it WILL be that.

2. N did address it, and doesn't buy it, because he doesn't think it accounts for a variety of phenomena in which organisms willingly sacrifice themselves. He thinks wtp accounts for these much more.

This guy will answer most of the questions you seem to have.

Moles 1989 (Moles, Alistair.1989. "Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence as Riemannian Cosmology;'International Studies in Philosophy 21: 21-35

How did his views of truth evolve through out the years?

What did he get wrong?

Why all the aphorisms? why not use more indirect story instead of all this direct denouncing? (all the anger really infects one's mood as thought that was his aim)

Thanks a lot, buddy

>Once you're there, you'll get bored of it and want more.
I dont see nothing wrong with that freddy

Where do you think most of N's misrepresentation comes from? A while back we had a Chesterton thread and some guy kept claiming N was a christian. I've also seen people claim he is a feminist, there is a book of it at my university.

>Where do you think most of N's misrepresentation comes from?
Retards (normies)

I would accept that but it is also pretty big in academia.

what makes you think the academia isnt retarded?

. women are not merely indecisive about what to eat. That's merely a symptom of underlying uncertainty.
women are uncertain because men have invented their fantasy of certainty and women do not even need this

How to combine slave + master morality?

While I agree many normies are tards, I think many of you basement dwellers are far, far more retarded.

People misinterpret Nietzsche because they think he was a 19th century philosopher concerning himself with 19th century ideas, whereas he was in fact an ancient Greek scholar who thought he rose at the level of theorizing...about the issues he thought he discovered in ancient Greece.

Nietzsche's opinions about democracy, for instance, are in essence no different from the ancient's opinions about democracy, specifically Plato's. He even uses the same terms for it, such as "motley/colorful city."

Another feature of ancient thinkers is that they thought BIG, unlike modern thinkers. A philosopher in Greece, for instance, was often called to write up a constitution for a new colony. Read Plato's Laws, for instance, and you'll see that their concern was with beliefs, worldviews, and how these worldviews affect one's conduct in a society.

The question of what is true was sort of left as a big question mark, and was in effect secondary to the question of how to cultivate the people by means of their worldview.

Take the interaction between Socrates and Polemachus in the Republic for example.

Polemachus, a rich stranger in athens, and thus someone in charge with leading, is wondering about the nature of justice, but really he's concerned about how to behave in society as an equal there. Socrates asks, and this should have raised some eyebrows, whether a horse trainer helps a horse when he harms it. And polemachus says no, and the conversation goes on from there.

What needs to be picked up from thsi little interchange is that Socrates essentially tells him to start looking at other [poorer] athenians like animals that need to be shaped. He says your ethics are different from theirs. Your ethics are the ethics of a cultivator. What is right and wrong for you is determined by how you're cultivating the people.

It's worth also noting that the philosopher was defined as the "cultural physician." As in, the person who feels responsible for the welfare of society as a whole.

Nietzsche looks at himself in relation to society in a similar manner. Questions of truth and falsehood are not as important as questions of how some beliefs affect his patient, culture.

Feminism, christianity, all these things are the concerns of the patient itself. Cultivators don't take them seriously, except as a medicine or poison. Their "truth" is not as important.

Hey Friedrich, should I study philosophy or something I can make money with (economics in this case)? Please give me advice, dead man.

Why not study PPE?

Which men in history, before and since Nietzsche's time, have come closest to being Ubermensch, and why?

"Stupidity in the kitchen, woman as cook, the ghastly absence of intelligent thought in taking care of the nourishment of the family and the man of the house! Woman understands nothing about what food means, and she wants to be cook! If woman were a thinking creature, then, as cook for thousands of years, she'd surely have found out the most important physiological facts, while at the same time she'd have had to take ownership of the art of healing! Because of bad female cooks and the complete lack of reason in the kitchen, the development of human beings has been held up for the longest time and suffered the worst damage. Even today things are little better. A speech for fashionable young ladies."

"Woman understands nothing about what food means"!

Fucking legendary. And so true. Woman had one job in the past, and she never once thought to ask about what it fundamentally meant.

Napoleon. Goethe.

>Questions of truth and falsehood are not as important as questions of how some beliefs affect his patient, culture.
Do you mean that truth and falsehood don't matter *at all*, or that they don't matter for the "cultivated"?

From what I gathered, N seems to want his readers - the cultivators - to seek the truth, even if it is painful. With the truth, a cultivator could perhaps make better choices, even if he does not communicate the truth to the "cultivated".

Is that right, or does N mean by truth something like "your way", "your values", "your truth"?

I am also wondering a couple things related to this topic:
1. N addresses his "creators", the ones creating new values, and writes just for them, as far as I can tell. N seems also to be trying to cultivate us, to shape our thinking. Is he really doing both, or am I misunderstanding him?

2. Could one say that a values' creator "level" is dictated by how free he is from ideologies and unfounded influences? This "level" seems necessary to me, because simply creating values and making people believe them doesn't make you one of N's disciples. Some piece is missing here, I can't quite express myself more clearly.

3. N puts the emphasis on this value creation and world reorientation - but is his teaching still as useful for one who doesn't want to change the world? for one that lives a quiet life? A good chunk of his philosophy is just great life advice, but what about this part?

Doesn't eternal recurrence ultimately fall in the same type of scheme as linear time? After all, both models are recurrent, it's just that in ER it is circular, in LT it is accumulative.

Related somehow, what were his thought on Buddhism, and how did they relate to Schopenhauer's?

If he hates the sheep so much then how can those people be the übermensch?

What was Nietzsche's view on Nationalism?

Nietzsche mastered ancient Greek quite quickly--how does one learn a language as well as Nietzsche did?

and

>I understand you!
What did he mean by this?

Were you projecting when you characterised Christians as men that were impotent and trying to find virtue in their impotence

bump

Is it true that he was influenced by Stirner

lsr-projekt.de/poly/ennietzsche.html

bump for this worthwhile thread

Double bump. I'm annoyed this thread is going well, as now I need to take time to read it carefully before posting.

>He even uses the same terms for it, such as "motley/colorful city."

Can anyone expand on this? I've often wondered why he gave the city such a rubbish name 'Motley Cow'.

bump

plz come bak, freddy

Bump

Oi Fred m8
u gonna reply?

So your interpretation of the ER is one thing, but it's not Heideggerian perse, nor is it explicitly Deleuzian... you've seemingly kept your distance from the ontology.

What do you think of those two ways of grappling with the thought?

pmub

did this special kind of atheist believe in the greek god dionysus, or did he believe himself to be this god

Did N condemn hedonism?

What was Nietzsche's view on the inevitable death of all good threads?

They eternally recur.

Why do Nietzche's opinions matter? Why should I care about what he thought? Genuine question.

Hated it

How is overman different than pure egoism? Does he talks about the value of ideals and having a set of code, even though you can be a psycopath you can justify yourself doing anything if you have a clear set of rules?

And why does he talks about overman to the herd if they cannot be one. He talks about how it is a process, how it is "becoming" but I don't know how one arrives there, or let alone tries it. Can you help on that?

Because he's often right. He sees what you can't see and points it to you while dancing and singing.

Is it true that Nietzsche was gay? What would he think about gay marriage?

>The objection to the philosophical life that it makes one useless to one's friends would never occur to a modern man: it belongs to antiquity. Antiquity lived and reflected on friendship to the limit, and almost buried friendship in its own grave. This is its advantage over us: we in turn can show idealised sexual love. All great achievements on the part of the man of antiquity were supported by the fact that man stood beside man, and that a woman was not allowed to claim to be the nearest or highest, let alone sole object of his love-as sexual passion teaches us to feel. Perhaps our trees fail to grow as high on account of the ivy and the vines that cling to them.

>Perhaps our trees fail to grow as high on account of the ivy and the vines that cling to them.
Schop-senpai would be proud.

What are your thoughts on the validity of Stirners works/ideas with respect to big N?

I don't see any major contradiction, but Nietzsche doesn't openly proclaim his philosophy egoist.

That's interesting. Can you go into more detail about why he hated it?

What would Nietzsche think about feminism?

I've stumbled across this quote a couple of times

>To interpret Nietzsche correctly is to know that power isn't what the will wants but what wants in the will.

what does it really mean?

How can Nietzsche's philosophy teach me to not worry about what others think of me?

It can't. Nietzsche ain't self help crap.

pt. 1
The truth for him is a tricky thing. He says his new philosophers, the ruling caste, will still hold on to "truth" language, but Nietzsche is definitively a perspectivist. There is no trans-perspective truth, apart from perhaps that there is only perspective truth.

Truth seeking is painful because idols are erected to make life easier. In essence, the more idols you destroy, the closer you are to staring into "the abyss." The abyss is realization that there is no foundation for values, no fact about it, no fact about justice, about what the good life is, what justice is, the good man, the evil man, and so on. This is a philosophers truth, by which I mean that it is a truth for only those who can create value in light of realizing that there's nothing but your own will to serve as its basis.

Only a few people among the species can create value. Until now, it's been the religious founders (e.g., Mohammed or Moses), but they've been able to create value (read: to establish a new evaluation yardstick by means of which to measure this or that aspect of life, e.g., marriage, friendship, circumcision, and so on) by posing as middle-men. GOD --> prophet --> people. The evaluation yardstick they hand to the people, they claim is based on God's will.

However, the problem nowadays is that God is dead. The prophet is left without a god to which to attribute his evaluation, and he cannot convince himself of what he absolutely needs to believe. Namely, he can't convince himself that he got the evaluation yardstick elsewhere, from the realm of the forms, or from a deified constitution, or the ancestors, the laws, or any such "God" -- keep in mind "god" for Nietzsche is simply that "beyond" which we've used as a foundation for our evaluation. God is dead means we're left with no beyond on which to situate our ways of life, which means that religious founders can no longer create value. They see it as impossible. Only value founded on a beyond is valid, they think to themselves. Any value that's found to have been made up by people is invalid. You see, religious founders hate humanity. whatever they find to have been created by humanity they consider trash. We all think like this too. To say that x is a social construct is to effectively dismiss it. Beauty standards is a social construct means that standard for beauty is created by people---hence, fuck it. Only if it were found to have some "beyond" as a foundation would it be accepted.

Without creators of value, the old values begin to become calcified, dogmatic, decadent. The world changes, but the values remain the same. That's a recipe for disaster. We need creators of value to rejuvenate culture, but with the death of God--the loss of a beyond on which to situate value standards--that prospect seems dim. The only solution N could see is if a new species of philosopher achieves what only religious founders have been able to do, viz., to be able to accept the value they create as their own AND VALID. That requires love of man...keeping in mind that's what Zarathustra says to the old religious hermit in the forest who says he only loves god, and consequently finds people loathsome...with a standard only god could meet, how could he possibly love humanity and what humanity creates.

Anyway, the new philosopher hears "I will" in his ear, instead of "thou shalt." That means that when he puts forth his value standard, he sees it as his own, as his "I will it." He doesn't look at his value standard and think "thou shalt," as if he got it from somewhere beyond, somewhere above, and he is, like the prophet, commanded by god...as if god were telling him "thou shalt."

Pls briefly explain Nietzsche's epistemology/views on language, particularly as described in On Truth and Lies ...

I'm not sure what you mean by "accumulative" with your first comment.

Contrary to what everyone appears to believe, Nietzsche despised Buddhism. Yes, he said it was 100 times more honest than christianity, but that's not much of a compliment when you realize that N thinks that the lies christianity tells is a sign that it still has some fight, some love of life, still left in it.

Both Christians and Buddhists cannot tolerate suffering, but whereas the Buddhist highest ideal, highest goal, is to effectively die, the christian's goal is to escape suffering but continue to exist. The christians have heaven, because they hope and imagine of a world without suffering. The buddhists have nothing.

If you live by the standards of christianity, if you become a christian saint, you'll get to heave, continue to exist forever in a place without pain. That's the christian sales pitch, and it says something about the sort of people it was sold to.

if you live by the standards of buddhism, if you become a buddhist sage, then you get to escape the ring of reincarnation. That is effectively what buddhists introduced to hinduism that made them break off. It's what they pitched to the world-weary, to those who couldn't tolerate the thought that they would come back in this shit-hole, even if as some other creature. And so, they promised the nothing. Be good! Do the shit we tell you to do! And if you do it right, then...you get to just die! What incentive! What a sales pitch! Now think of the kind of people to whom this would seem attractive?

Nietzsche ranked men in terms of their love of life, and he thought he could ascertain their rank by means of eternal return. If you loved your life so much that you were confronted with the thought of doing it all over again, and doing it all over again in the same way, and for all eternity, then obviously you love life the most. Budhists were confronted with a similar criterion. The eternal return of a different life. This criterion is not as harsh as Nietzsche's, but they could not even stomach this much...so they broke from Hinduism and invented a way out. Only then could life be tolerated...

>Plato did the same thing, by the way, but I'll end this here.

Plato also despised buddhism or Plato also found a way to escape recurrence?

Nietzsche ceased to be a nationalist--if he really ever was one--when he broke with Wagner. After this break, he referred to himself as "the good european." That is to say NOT "the good German."

He despised nationalism in some part because he despised the state, called the state a "cold monster," because the state is this bloodless thing the citizen works to preserve. It does not cultivate genius, explosive geniuses, those who would take over the state and transform it according to their will--no it destroys them by integrating them, by making them into cogwheels into its machinery. At least with the monarchy the work of individuals contributed to the elevation of HUMAN BEINGS (king and nobles), and in their luxury they could discharge their genius to its full extent. They could rise and--this is Nietzsche's criterion for greatness--treat the world like Plato's demiurge. That is to say, they could look at themselves as a sculptor and the world as their marble block...something to take on the form that THEY give it....and to do it NOT FOR GERMANY, or for france, or for whatever little shithole, but for THEMSELVES.

True genius and greatness in Nietzsche's sense needs to see itself not as an instrument of the preservation and growth of a cold bloodless state, like Hitler for example...they need to see themselves as the instrument to their own will, and the people, the world itself (or if not that lofty, then surely Europe as a whole) as their clay.

Obviously the existence of the state cannot afford to let these sort of people exist. Their existence puts their own in danger...and so it makes everyone mediocre as a mechanism of preserving itself. It makes everyone do things on its behalf....a cog in the wheel of a dead monster....

>he was not a fan, basically.

Then what is the whole ubermensch thing about?

You encounter this instinct a lot when dealing with people who read Nietzsche. The instinct for revenge. The instinct that wants to find a hypocrite in him, the same instinct that delights when it hears about a republican senator caught sucking dick in an airport bathroom. That way you--a fellow cocksucker--justify your existence (hey, even your accuser is guilty of your sins) while at the same time elevate yourself above them.

It's possible, but last time I researched this, I couldn't find any solid piece of evidence to justify it.

Overbeck's wife apparently said that in the early 1880s Nietzsche had told her in confidence that they'll accuse him of plagiarising him, but it's not true! She wrote about this a few decades after it happened, when Nietzsche became popular and any story about the man would sell.

In the 8th book of the Republic, Plato calls the democratic city--which falls into existence from the Oligarchic city--the "colorful city." In other words, it's a mix of value standards. It's not unified in it's mission. The predominant value of such a city, Plato says (and N seems to agree) is freedom. That is to say, a grazing cow's sense of freedom...wanting to be free from all legal and social standards that forbid it from grazing here and there, and from shitting wherever it wants, and fucking whatever/whoever, and so on. It's basically the understanding of freedom that modern liberals want...which amounts to "freedom from culture," i.e., freedom from the standards that made the culture what it was...

Think of culture in the way that a biologist thinks of it about his little organisms in a petri dish. They all more or less have the same characteristics, and will be forced in one way or another to be like that. When each little organism demands freedom, it's usually freedom from the cultural norms (and the way the culture enforces them...through legal measures, shame, ostracism, etc.) Soon enough, this petri dish becomes...colorful, so to speak.

You can also think of it in terms of how Freud spoke about civilization can only exist by restricting the libido. The sense of freedom that democracy demands is well, freedom of the libido...but that usually comes at a cost to culture and civilization.

They're too academic, and N didn't give a fuck about academia. He cared about culture, and as he said...somewhere...every wise man knows that it's not what's true that matters, it's what's believed to be true. Nietzsche wanted to affect culture, and he thought by changing their beliefs in time, he would succeed. He's right, in effect.

Imagine the island from Lord of the Flies, but instead of a few kids, you had 50,000 kids eager for adult supervision. Ignorant about everything, and so malleable in every way. You could give them any sort of govt. you want, any belief about morality, truth, time, and so on. Imagine convincing these kids that time is circular and that they'd have to relieve the life they choose to live for all eternity. Then come back in a few generations and imagine what sort of people you'd find. Nietzsche thought the ones who couldn't live with that thought would die out on their own. Life would seem too much for them. They would be unable to live in any way which they'd be alright with living again and again for all eternity, and so the logic inherent in that framework would make them think it's best to just end it as quickly as possible.

Only those who would find a way to live they'd be fine with relieving forever would survive, and these would be healthy types, those who adore life.

In a metaphorical sort of way...think of dionysus, the child, who was devoured by the titans when he was looking into a toy mirror. He looked into the mirror and he saw himself. Think about that for a second. What a profound thought! The world is reflected in your image. This is what I've been talking about a few posts back with respect to Nietzsche's great types...those who see themselves as sculptures and the world as their marble...giving it their own shape, imposing on their own will.

The second aspect, fragmentation and reconstitution, is also important here. Dionysus is essentially the "god who comes back." Dionysus dies and comes back. He is a physical metaphor for eternal return, which Nietzsche believed was the secret doctrine of the greeks. He says so in a note from the 1880s...something to the effect of "I have discovered the greeks. They believed in eternal return!"

Dionysus, in his later works, is what he otherwise calls "the philosopher of the future," or "the tempter-god," because he thought that genuinie philosophers, like Socrates, were seducers, tempters of the new generation. The genuine philosophers seduce away members of the flock, the young nobles, like Socrates did, and he gives them a new standard of value. Before Socrates, the greeks thought that the good man, the noble man is the one who is physically strong, physically beautiful, politically powerful, and so on. After socrates, i.e., after Socrates got his hands on the noble's sons, they began to think that beauty isn't important, neither is strength or political power. What's important is your mind, your soul. THAT is what makes someone noble.

Essentially, before Socrates, a person like Socrates was considered contemptible. After Socrates, someone like Socrates was considered noble. THAT is the change that he affected in Greece. And think about it, after him, every school of thought came to think of him as their sage, their highest type...the type to emulate, to become. The stoics, the cynics, later on christians, and so on. Be ascetic. Reject the body. It's useless.

Socrates demonstrated his asceticism in two critical moments of his life. First, he demosntrated that he had overcome the instinct for sex when he didn't stick it in Alcibiades even though he was the hottest piece of ass around and he had (many) opportunities. Second, that he overcame the body's instinct for self-preservation when he went willingly into his own death, discussing philosophy, as if nothing was about to happen. THIS image is what he left for posterity to idolize, to seek to become. He made the future pregnant with himself. He made the future of the western world attempt to try to bring this type, what was considered the lowest type, into being. And he succeeded...until Nietzsche effectively killed that type. We now have contempt for it. Life denier, we say.

>It's worth also noting that the philosopher was defined as the "cultural physician." As in, the person who feels responsible for the welfare of society as a whole.

Foucault noted that in his Nietzsche essay. How do you think N reconciled this diagnostic and shepherdic tactic of Greek Philosophy with his account of how the literalism of Socratic skepticism became a causal factor in the decline of what he admired most in Greek Tragic theatre? (as per The Birth of Tragedy).

he'd tell you a tale of why you feel that way loaded with value terms in the hopes that you'll start to be ashamed of feeling that way.

he'd say for instance, as he does, that you care for other people's opinion of you because you cannot trust your own judgment about your own self's value. He'd say that this happened, historically, when the masters were defeated and bred with the slaves.

You see, the masters had the capacity to pass judgment, to evaluate themselves and the slaves. They could say, this is a valuable thing, a good thing, a noble thing. This is bad, base, ignoble. And because they said it, it was believed and accepted. Their word was treated as standard...by the slaves. The slaves, you see, couldn't pass judgment about the value of things, including their own value. They had to wait for the masters to do that. "Good boy," they'd say, and the slave would delight. The slave relied on the master for this judgment, like labrador.

Eventually though, master and slave interbred, and now we're all muts in that respect. So, when we want and rely on others to evaluate us, that's the slave in us making it's demands. When we want to pass judgment ourselves, it's the masters. Unfortunately, the master's blood has all but been eliminated, so even though we want to pass judgment on others and ourselves and have that be the standard...we can't actually do it.

We want to evaluate ourselves as good/noble/etc., but we simply can't believe our own judgment. And so, what do we do? Well, we know we can believe the others, the crowd, so....well, if we can convince them of how we'd like to see ourselves, then when we see them looking at us in that way, we can then believe it! So, we have facebook, for example. We create a fake image of who we are in an effort so that others will treat us as if we were that...all in order so that we may believe it ourselves. We seduce the crowds into passing a certain value on us so that we can believe it.

pt. 1
The latter. You see, in the myth of er from Republic, and in Phaedo, Socrates puts forth the idea of eternal return. In the myth of er, when you die, you go in the afteworld and for each injustice you have committed you suffer ten times its worth in tartarus, and for every good thing, you enjoy 10 times its worth up above. This math ultimately determines how long you spend above or below, but you come back after you serve your term, and you get to make a big choice, viz., what sort of person you'll be in your next life.

The truly unjust men, the tyrants, when they go in the afterworld,tthey're sent far below, and they can't come back. Anytime they get near the gateway to get back, it screams at them and they're trapped. Socrates, however, posits the philosopher as the opposite of the tyrant. Where the tyrant is totally bad, the philosopher is totally good. And he tells you what happens to the totally bad...stuck below for all eternity, all the while hinting at what happens to his opposite...presumably stuck forever up above...in the good place.

pt. 2

In the phaedo, socrates tells his swan song. you see, swans sing a song on the day they die. they know or something, and they're the bird of apollo. socrates says he's become like a prophet of apollo. in the same way the muses (of apollo) spoke to homer and revealed to him events past, and things in the future, and what's on the other side, socrates thus justifies his knowledge of what's the come.

what's to come?

Well, socrates says that there's the body, earthy heavy stuff, and there's the mind, pure, light, floaty stuff. the goal of life is to shed as much earthy stuff from the soul, so that when it does, it does not get weighed down, and it remains here on earth until it inhabits another body, animal body at times. he says a robber, someone who cares about earthy shit, money and pelasures of the body, would have a soul that lingers on earth and eventually enters into a vulture, or wolf or somesuch. However, if you become a philosopher, then it's because you've shed the earthy shit from your soul. you've become, essentially, pure mind. The whole persona of socrates is supposed to demonstrate and sell you on this point.

Look at this guy. He can drink forever and still keep his wits about him. Why? Because he's effectively severed the connection between his body, the earthy thing, and his mind. the drunk body does not cloud his pure mind. he can stay out all night in the middle of winter just thinking and not even feel cold or care, because, again, his body does not affect his mind. he can, as i've already said, sleep next to the hottest piece of ass in athens, but still not let this powerful instinct (sex drive) affect his judgment. he can ultimately die without any fear, because he knows his soul is leaving this earth...it's not weighed down by his earthy body...he severed that connection....and he's so cheerful, he seems to have figured things out. BE LIKE SOCRATES is the message.

The unexamined life (i.e., the unphilosophical) life is not worth living. Why? Because life itself is not worth living, and if you don't do philosophy, if you don't get your soul to shed it's earthy heavy shit, it'll have to keep living in another body. This is the insidious part of Plato's philosophy that Nietzsche uncovered. This is how he killed Plato, too.

OP, you should make a webpage with all the Q and A, that would be fucking fantastic.

Thank you so much, everything is starting to clear up, finally.

Thank you

I meant to say that dionysus looked into the mirror and saw the WORLD.*

>they're too academic

Dropped.

Because they are shepherds

What do you make of Nietzsche's attitude towards death in the literal sense? Because while he's obviously extremely pro-life and like Stirner seems to offer some criticism of Socrates and his decision to accept death, Nietzsche seems flippant towards it as well at times. I recall in HATH in particular he says that our society shouldn't deny an old man his suicide, and then of course there's the famous "the thought of suicide helps many a man get through the night" statement.

I get the sense that there's more here, unlike Stirner who basically just says that Socrates was spooked out of his mind, Nietzsche seems to respect the act in some ways. In a sense it reminds one of the heroic, Laconic desire for a good death and eagerness to put themselves before the ultimate test even though it was 99-100% likely to kill them.

Herodotus was frequently full of shit but I get the sense that his account of the Persians being utterly dumbfounded at how the Greeks and Spartans in particular acted in the face of death was likely accurate.

That and his entire amor fati formulation seems to suggest that, in accepting pain that come's one's way as ultimately necessary or possibly even desirable one has to embrace his death (or at least the sense of his mortality) if he is to be worthy of life.

Thank you for your answer.

It's interesting that Nietzsche has some very comprehensible mistakes in his understanding of Buddhism. Namely that transcendence isn't supposed to be death or a stop of life, but rather something that exists outside the logical chain of action and reaction--it's not supposed to stop the wheel of reincarnation, but do away with it entirely as a life-myth. As such it can't be conceptualized, and can't be said to be like death because death is simply an opposite to life, with both of them being dependent of the existence of the other; the disappearance of suffering is simply this process applied to attachment: once attachment is taken out of the equation, suffering (which is dependent on it) naturally goes away as well.

As such nothingness in Buddhism isn't an abscence of things, which would be the same opposition game just on a total scale. Rather phenomena are *already* empty and as such there's... nothing to attain or realize. The state we live in is already the "perfect" state; therefore it's not something that one seeks or becomes, to say it is like dying is to call it an event, when nothingness has no events.

When ı asked about time it was this that ı was referring to. In linear time one event leads to another, typically in a progressive fashion, as a straight line; in eternal recurrence events lead to one another as well, but with the addition that, unlike LT which has a terminus, the line in ER is assumed endless and as such it eventually turns back into itself--but the line is still there. Buddhism intents to do away with the line however.

This leads into the issues ı have with what ı've gathered of Nietzsche: he falls like so many others in Stirner's prediction about revolutionaries--that they do not do away with kings but rather replace the king with another. Nietzsche is so attached to life he doesn't seem to be able to enjoy it at all--he wants to enjoy it, but that doesn't mean he does; he wants to promote life, and wisely sees it cannot be without pain, but his model is mortifying and brutal, and easily leads into attachment to pain itself as something that is valuable by itself. He feels like he suffers from severe Stockholm syndrome, in a word, rather than aiming for a healthy relationship with existence.

How's that any better?

How do you feel about Kaufmann's falsificated "translations" of your works?

Very insightful, somehow I never made the connection that Plato effectively denied the ER. Thanks.

Who do you think their audience was? What sort of effect did they hope to have with their style of writing? Who could they even hope to understand them?

bump

How far does Nietzsche go into real epistemology, in a Kantian sense, with his genetic perspectivism?

I only know about his perspectivist analyses of beliefs and habits and stuff like that. Does he go more into modalities of knowledge, reasoning, or perception, anywhere?

Who do you think Nietzsche's biggest philosophical foil is? Plato? Jesus? Kant?

I have read on german idealism, some french enlightment, a bit Hobbes and bit greeks/romans (plato republic and some Cicero)
Am I ready for Nietzsche?
If so should I start with TSZ and what then?

You're not ready. You need to read Schopenhauer beforehand. Schopenhauer requires knowledge of Kant. Kant is his own monster that requires knowledge of empiricism and rationalism. And before any of that read Aristotle and more Plato.

Also for the love of God don't start Nietzsche with TSZ. Read his books in chronological order starting from Untimely Meditations.

Not really that much into Kant, would it be that awful, if I only get second hand knowledge?
I would really like to get to his essential works as soon as possible, is it that devstating if I don't read all his works before TSZ

>There's nothing about where the left wants to take culture into the future, so Nietzsche's not a leftist, either.
He's closest to National Socialism. Or Ludovician Aristocraticism.