Nietzsche  

Or to try and be more precise (and yeah I'm aware it might sound challopsy and also the sort of 'old chestnut' dilemma that most people will have gotten over/laughed off years ago) I find it very hard to see how someone can be committed to reducing or removing inequality whilst also accepting central Nietzchean concepts. That's sort of where I'm at - viz a viz my framing of it above I'm not sure I'd even consider myself as progressive or liberal (probably not liberal?) but I do believe in equality. But I'm not sure you can square off commitment to equality with a conception of human beings as naturally divided into the strong and the weak.

I'll acknowledge (in case it wasn't bloody obvious anyway) that the rise of the alt-right has reawakened my concern about these issues, because I do feel there's a strongly Nietzchean flavour to a lot of alt-right discourse (albeit that yes, before anyone jumps in and points this out, it's complicated because alt-right discourse also contains significant elements of ressentiment that Nietzche would have identified and criticised).

For example, the backlash against the discourse of privilege which is strong on the alt-right seems to me to be very similar to Nietzche's framing of and attack on slave-morality.

See also the uncomfortable resemblance between Nietzche's framing of his works as handbooks for the strong to recover and avow their strength and our contemporary culture of PUA and ~alpha male~ self-help guides.

Gorilla Mindset: A Book For Free Spirits

There's probably some dumb psychological test you could do where you get people to read On The Genealogy Of Morals and then ask if they come away from it seeing themsleves as a master or seeing themselves as a slave.

I will probably come to regret all of the above posts very shortly - but sometimes it feels helpful to put my thoughts into writing in this way.

there are tactics for overcoming racism that don't involve using guilt to impose a slave morality on the oppressor class. left wing nietzscheans would probably frame the issue that way.

Freedom of will and isolation of facts. – Our usual imprecise mode of observation takes a group of phenomena as one and calls it a fact: between this fact and another fact it imagines in addition an empty space, it isolates every fact. In reality, however, all our doing and knowing is not a succession of facts and empty spaces but a continuous flux. Now, belief in freedom of will is incompatible precisely with the idea of a continuous, homogeneous, undivided, indivisible flowing: it presupposes that every individual action is isolate and indivisible; it is an atomism in the domain of willing and knowing. – Just as we understand characters only imprecisely, so do we also facts: we speak of identical characters, identical facts: neither exists. Now, we praise and censure, however, only under this false presupposition that there are identical facts, that there exists a graduated order of classes of facts which corresponds to a graduated world-order: thus we isolate, not only the individual fact, but also again groups of supposedly identical facts (good, evil, sympathetic, envious actions, etc.) – in both cases erroneously. – The word and the concept are the most manifest ground for our belief in this isolation of groups of actions: we do not only designate things with them, we think originally that through them we grasp the true in things. Through words and concepts we are still continually misled into imagining things as being simpler than they are, separate from one another, indivisible, each existing in and for itself. A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language which breaks out again every moment, however careful one may be otherwise. Belief in freedom of will – that is to say in identical facts and in isolated facts – has in language its constant evangelist and advocate.

Human, All Too Human, book 3, paragraph 11

http://nietzsche-explains-nlp.org/encyclopedia/fact/

Right on.

he has some good stuff about lol numbers too

does anyone stand behind this guy enough that they want to take some pretty damning [GM] quotes and try to explain why they're not just apologetics for psychopathy? cause i've compiled quite a list and at this pt i suspect ppl who claim nazis or alt-righters misunderstand him are at the v least being disingenuous.

i was reading him yesterday! so was my kid. FN makes my head hurt. or maybe deep voodoo causality talk just makes my head hurt. but he's always good for a laugh or two.

I’m a weirdo who thinks he was pushing toward a new Christianity à la Kierkegaard but you may judge that psychopathy. I don’t “Stan” for him (this is philosophy not fandom) but I think he’s one of the most interesting thinkers there’s been.

His concept of the will to power is where I think he went completely off the rails and utterly fails to understand the nature of the world.

'will to power' is a phrase that he uses a lot I find but the actual book 'Will To Power' was a collection of unpublished notes that his nationalist sister put out to support her national socialism. I dont know if it was written before he went insane though, mark s to thread!

here are a few quotes from GM:

"The Celts, incidentally, were definitely a blond race; we do them an injustice when we associate those traits of an essentially dark-haired population, that are noticeable on the more careful ethnographic maps of Germany, with any kind of Celtic descent and mixed blood, as is still done by Virchow: rather it is the pre-Aryan population of Germany that shows up in these places. (The same is true for nearly all of Europe: essentially the subjugated race in the end regained the upper hand there, in color, shortness of the skull, perhaps even in the intellectual and social instincts: indeed, who is to say whether modern democracy, even more modern anarchism, and specifically that penchant for the "commune," for the most primitive form of society that is common to all socialists of Europe today, does not signify a tremendous retaliation on the whole -- and that the conqueror- and master-race, that of the Aryans, has not succumbed physiologically as well?...)"

"Everything that has been done on earth again "the noble," "the mighty," "the masters," "the power-holders" is not worth mentioning in comparison with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people who in the end were only able to achieve satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors through a radical revaluation of their values, hence through an act of the most spiritual revenge. This way alone was suitable for a priestly people, the people of the most deeply repressed priestly vengefulness."

"'only the miserable are the good, the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good, the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly are also the only pious ones, the only ones blessed by God, there is blessedness for them only -- whereas you, you noble and mighty, you are in all eternity the evil, cruel, lustful, insatiable, godless, you will also eternally be the unblessed, accursed and damned!'"

"That however is how it came about: from the trunk of that tree of revenge and hatred, of Jewish hatred -- of the deepest and most sublime hatred moreover, capable of creating ideals and re-creating values, whose like never before existed on earth -- grew something just as incomparable, a new love, the deepest and most sublime of all kinds of love: --- from what other trunk could it have grown? [...] that in front of the whole world Israel itself had to repudiate as its mortal enemy and nail to the cross the actual instrument of its revenge, so that the 'whole world,' namely all opponents of Israel could unhesitatingly bite into this very bait?""

"Seeing suffering feels good, making someone suffer even more so -- it is a harsh proposition, but an ancient, powerful human, all-too-human principle that, by the way, even the apes would probably endorse: for it is said that in thinking up bizarre cruelties they richly foreshadow and as it were play 'prelude' to humans. Without cruelty, no festival: thus the most ancient, longest period of human history teaches -- and also in punishment there is so much that is festive! [...] back when humankind was not yet ashamed of its cruelty, life on earth was more cheerful than now, where we have pessimists. The darkening of the sky above humanity has always increased in proportion to how humans' shame at humans has grown. The weary pessimistic gaze, the mistrust of the enigma of life, the icy No of disgust at life -- these are not the indicators of the most evil ages of the human race: rather they first come to light as the swamp plants they are, when the swamp to which they belong itself appears, -- I mean the pathological tenderization and moralization by virtue of which the creature 'human being' ultimately learns to be ashamed of all its instincts."

"On their path to becoming 'angels' (not to use a harsher words here) humans have bred themselves that ruined stomach and that coated tongue through which not only the joy and innocence of the animal have become repugnant to them, but even life itself has become distasteful."

"Perhaps back then -- and I say this to console the sissies -- pain did not yet hurt as much as today; in any case a physician could draw this conclusion if he treated Negroes (those taken as representatives of prehistoric people--) for severe internal infections that would drive even the best-constituted European nearly to despair; -- in Negroes they do not do this. (In fact the curve of human capacity for pains seems to drop extraordinarily and almost abruptly as soon as we leave behind the upper ten thousand or ten million of the super-cultured; and for my part I do not doubt that the suffering of all animals taken together that have so far been required to answer scientific questions at the point of a scalpel simply does not merit consideration compared with a single painful night in the life of one little hysterical educated woman.)"

I'm still on BGE, you had to be awkward and jump to GM leaving sund4r & I behind, didn't you

I always thought it was cool that he admired Emerson for his sunny disposition.

oh Mordy I thought you’d have dug deeper than those, the most obvious ones. What’s to be said about that hasn’t yet been said?

nietzsche is prob not someone who can be fairly judged by taking quotes out of context, even the ones that sound most "damning." and yeah of course nazis and alt-righters misunderstand him, they're fucking morons.

oh Mordy I thought you’d have dug deeper than those, the most obvious ones. What’s to be said about that hasn’t yet been said?

Do you have a link or reference for good commentary on these? It doesn't seem like they've been addressed on the thread.

I don't know much about Nietzsche other than having read a VSI, and just started BGE. So I'd quite like to read what has been said.

yeah i posted them sincerely. i didn't like hit up an anti-nietzsche website. i'm reading through the book and pulling quotes as they strike me. speaking entirely as an amateur who has no right to say this, to "yeah of course nazis and alt-righters misunderstand him," i'm thinking maybe they don't?

like i bet there are good apologetics but i've been thinking about it for a while and i'm not entirely sure what they could be. so if i could be pointed to some that would be cool!

The reason nazis misunderstand him is not because they mistakenly thinks he hated Jews, but because they think he liked Germans.

I'm not sure 'psychopathy' is the right word, but the idea that N was a great genius all the way until january 1889 and completely ill thereafter is simplified imo. It's been a while since I've read anything by him, but there are parts I would consider lucid and insightful, and other parts that seem like pure hateful mania to me. In all I've read. The thing I remember clearest is his calling in Zarathustra for a Copernican turn in philosophy - to me that is achieved by Wittgenstein - and his spot on explanation of why Bizet is a greater composer than Wagner.

I listen to Die Walküre more than Carmen, though.

(Tbf, I'd probably rather go see the latter and would be able to hum a tune from it more easily.)

The reason nazis misunderstand him is not because they mistakenly thinks he hated Jews, but because they think he liked Germans.

a. i don't think he hates jews though he clearly blames them for the slave mentality & christianity. nb that i think he misunderstands judaism (which does not jettison discipline for mercy but takes a moderate path btwn the two).

b. putting aside whether he liked germans, his philosophy clearly resonated w the nazis. maybe the nazis didn't like the german either as having been corrupted by jewish meekness, but insofar as they were executing his program of strength, dominance, power etc (nb to the extent that it could be separated from ressentiment) they're on the same page.

c. "Cowardice is underlined in the word xaxo/v,12 as in deilo/v13 (the plebeian in contrast to the a0gaqo/v): perhaps this gives a clue as to where we should look for the ety- mological derivation of the ambiguous term a0gaqo/v.14 In the Latin word malus15 (to which I juxtapose me/lav)16 the common man could be char- acterized as the dark-skinned and especially the dark-haired man (‘hic niger est –’),17 as the pre-Aryan occupant of Italian soil who could most easily be distinguished from the blond race which had become dominant, namely the Aryan conquering race, by its colour; at any rate, I have found exactly the same with Gaelic peoples, – fin (for example in Fin-gal), the word designating the aristocracy and finally the good, noble, pure, was originally a blond person in contrast to the dark-skinned, dark-haired native inhabitants." i mean what are we talking about here if not the obvious.

sorry the greek c/p got all fucked up

I've never really gotten his theory of the a0gaqo, I have to admit.

for some comparison and sorry i know i'm being as inflammatory as possible making this link but i think it lays out clearly some of the obvious sympathies btwn FN and AD:

"The Ten Commandments have lost their validity. Conscience is a Jewish invention, it is a blemish like circumcision." H. Rauschning Hitler speaks, p.220

"Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear." Rauschning op. cit. p.222

i do nietzsche suggests in other parts of GM that i've read that the jewish innovation into the human complicated but made more interesting the human figure - that in some way it was a contribution to humanity even if ultimately it corrupted humanity and needs to overcome. but by prioritizing and privileging the master (the blond, the powerful, etc) over the slave he is clearly taking sides and lo and behold it turns out to be the exact same side that the fascists took but i'm supposed to believe that they're the ones that are confused!

sorry i'm typing one-handed while holding baby, getting kids ready for bed so so many typos

I'd definitely say he hated Jews. He seems to have hated everyone. Nazis didn't read Nietzsche, they read Nietzsche as edited by his proto-nazi sister, which probably helped the resonance.

but they could've just read GM where all the quotes above appear

He was forever railing against the stupidity of anti-Semitism, so I'm not sure how that tallies with the idea that he hated Jews.

Though I suppose it gave him another good reason to hate Germans.

I'm not quite sure what your argument is, but it's beyond discussion that Nietzsche loathed German nationalism, anti-semitism (while still, as I would say, hating Jews) and Wagner, and that that was toned down after his mental illness by his sister, leading to a much more unequivocal embrace by the nazis. They did very much get him wrong. That does not mean it's particularly wrong to call him a hateful psychopath or whatever you want to call him.

yeah i don't think he hates jews (tho my opinion on this is constantly evolving) but i do think he "hates" judaism but again i think a. he doesn't fully hate it (he appreciates that it forced humanity to change and in some ways that change was not good), and b. he doesn't really get judaism except as the progenitor of christianity. he blames the jews for jesus (and that their hatred of him was feigned in order to get the critique assimilated into hellenism) but he really should see that the reason jews hate jesus is the same reason he does - bc jesus abrogated the covenant and abolished the obligations entirely in favor of redemption/mercy. but judaism is not all that merciful as anyone who has read the OT knows. i thought "he must know this himself" and my conclusion is that maybe he felt like once the kernel of 'slave mentality' was permitted, even moderated and mediated, it is inherently totalizing and christianity was the inevitable conclusion. you can't just have a little bit of kindness/compassion/whatever - even a little bit keeps opening wider. it's kinda the fundamental logic of egalitarianism (there's always someone new to extend equality to) and BTW that nietzsche will not truck w/ equality i think should be troubling for anyone.

xp tldr if you follow nietzsche's breakdown you will come to a place of psychopathic anti-egalitarianism. that psychopathic anti-egalitarians like him should therefore not be a surprise.

have only read the first half of this but it's an interesting read so far:

https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/2397/twilight-of-the-anti-semites/

I'm not sure he does hate Jesus tbh.

again insofar as he appreciates the wrinkle maybe not but idk he really seems to hate jesus

i'm not committed to having a conversation about nietzsche or most philosophical writings anymore, because while i was once interested and invested a lot of time in them, i grew tired of them, but:

Do you have a link or reference for good commentary on these? It doesn't seem like they've been addressed on the thread.

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Sunday, February 11, 2018 2:35 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

try alexander nehamas's book on nietzsche. it goes into how to read him and explains some of his perspectives. i wouldn't spend any money on it, though

also kaufmann is the one translator avid nietzsche readers prefer, at least while i was in university (it's been a very a long time)

anyway the rest of this isn't directed at you sund4r

iirc we spent an extra week reading nietzsche than any other philosopher, for a total of i want to say three weeks, give or take. the first day and a half we went through all the dumb, contradictory, potentially racist/immoral/wacky stuff with our prof saying there was strong indication that he suffered from mental illness and psychotic episodes from very early in life. so this contributed to his unconventional writings, because they weren't treaties or systematic texts, and at one point N actually said his writings weren't supposed to be systematic, which would make his writings professionally unphilosophical for the time, but you know, people got interested

and that's kind of the thing. the wacky stuff is due to him essentially dropping into a subject and taking a quick shit and bailing. he described it as taking a quick cold shower and getting out though, as far as i remember? so he knows what he's doing. and then there's his artist side, so he's not a philosopher in the classical sense

we spent a lot of time discussing his critique on christianity and christian-based morals in 19th c western europe. i thought his anti-semitism was debunked by jewish scholars, but i have never read any of them. we certainly never read N's writings as critique of judaism, and judaism was only mentioned, iirc, when comparing how christianity had strayed far from it, but this part is hazy in my mind

the thing i remember from it is how european society was supposedly built on christian morals but there was not a trace of it anywhere, and it was in a moral decline. and we spent a lot of time discussing why N basically hated christianity as it was practiced in 19th c europe

i also remember how N's erratic and meandering writings could be interpreted the opposite way our prof and the class was interpreting him, and there were pretty big assumptions made, which didn't seem to matter to anyone

meh, always felt bad for N but he is good for memes

Erratic and meandering does sound otm. His arguments are pretty half baked.

this book looks cool:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche_and_Asian_Thought

mordy, i've only read GM a little bit, quite a while ago, but a few things come to mind

1. starting at least from GS, i think coincident with his heightened interest in the possibility of knowledge that can be 'incorporated', as well as his overt employment of highly rhetorical personae and tactics (not always the case: compare to the fairly cool restraint of HH), n. starts making what seems to be deliberately ambiguous use of a variety of ethical and philosophical concepts that have, etymologically, physiological or physical 'original' meanings - for instance connected to the roots of virtue in 'strength' as well as excellence, or to 'nobility' and ideas of heredity. but it goes the other way, too, so that he uses concepts with still primarily physiological or physical senses, which he tends to belabor, in senses that appear intentionally not to have repudiated traditional valences they had in religious or philosophical contexts, like the idea of virtue as the health of the soul. the point of the ambiguity is hard to suss out. but

2. in certain ways this makes the overt racialization and biologicalization of the GM genealogies suspicious.

3. i've read, somewhere - i checked a couple books and didn't see it, but perhaps i'm recalling a paper by ken gemes about GM being fairly ironic, which appears in the 'oxford readings in philosophy' collection of papers on nietzsche - a plausible argument that the three essays comprising GM are intentionally internally inconsistent, using among other things the blond beast framing to accomplish... something suitably critical. i forget what. the gemes paper leans on the opening line about how we're strangers to ourselves. the idea would be not that we find out about ourselves immediately from nietzsche's accounts, but that their misleading attractiveness to 'us' for various reasons enables quasi-psychoanalysic possibilities of uncomfortable/unwanted/terrifying self-knowledge.

i think very broadly Nietzsche's attitude towards the monotheistic faiths is similar to an orthodox Marxist's take on capitalism - a necessary evolutionary step in the development of human society which needed to be shucked off as part of the next evolutionary step. when/if he's thinking of humanity as a whole his stance is not the modern atheist's "no God because science". he's only thinking of faith as a human construct and its relations to other human ideological constructs.

how much he understood about the actual experience and meaning of individual people's Jewish/Christian faith in his own time i'm not sure, i think "not that much" and i don't think it mattered too much to him - he deals in archetypes or generalizations. he treats Faith in a similar way to Law - control mechanisms that were outliving their usefulness for the development of the species

the race archetype stuff - Aryans, Celts, Latins etc is indefensible bollocks but was considered reasonably mainstream scientific history at the time, especially in Germany which was the spiritual home of that kind of "science" in the latter 19th century. the notion of waves of racial types subjugating each race that came before them travels a long way into 20th century history, and not just the Nazi variety. which isn't a defence of Nietzsche but an observation of a part of his milieu.

i didn't mean to get into this at this time of the morning but one further thought for me is that there's a constant metaphorical/allegorical element to his work - stuff that can be entirely fairly considered to be political philosophy is always working on at least one level as personal psychological philosophy - "overcoming" and "the will to power" are as much fantasies of personal struggle with state power/ideology as they are blueprints for fascist aggression.

i agree Mordy that it's far too simple to say that right wingers are "misreading" Nietzsche when they find his ideas appealing - but the same is true of the interpreters of the central texts of monotheism - most "bad" actors, even bad faith actors, have based their arguments on defensible - if selective - readings of the texts

sorry i started writing that before j posted so i have to read back what he said too

neh i ain't got much to say, certainly nothing mordy wants to hear ('read slower!')