He does have some valid points, but when he expands on women... I run for cover.
^^^ this is OTM
― ℵℜℜℜℜℜℜℜℜℜ℘! (Curt1s Stephens), Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:01 (fifteen years ago) link
In many cases, to be sure, "peace of soul" is merely a misunderstanding—something else, which lacks only a more honest name. Without further ado or prejudice, a few examples. "Peace of soul" can be, for one, the gentle radiation of a rich animality into the moral (or religious) sphere. Or the beginning of weariness, the first shadow of evening, of any kind of evening. Or a sign that the air is humid, that south winds are approaching. Or unrecognized gratitude for a good digestion (sometimes called "love of man").
^ I still love shit like this tho looool
― ℵℜℜℜℜℜℜℜℜℜ℘! (Curt1s Stephens), Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:05 (fifteen years ago) link
Read Walter Kauffman's book(s) on him(incl. the _Existentialism from Dosteovsky to..._). Kauffman also did the better translations of the guy.
Kauffman's zinger: "Everything Nietzsche knew about women was second-hand and third-rate."
Somewhat unrelated note, but Kauffman taught the guy whose classes on philosophy/existentialism I took as while still a young dorkling at Michigan.
― obama cyber leader (kingfish), Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:05 (fifteen years ago) link
Definitely the Genealogy of Morality. I teach it in my Intro courses almost every semester. Skip Book II on first reading, though; that's not where the action is.
― Euler, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:06 (fifteen years ago) link
there is hell of action in book II--
We Germans certainly do not think of ourselves as an especially cruel and hard-hearted people, even less as particularly careless people who live only in the present. But just take a look at our old penal code in order to understand how much trouble it takes on this earth to breed a “People of Thinkers” (by that I mean the European people among whom today we still find a maximum of trust, seriousness, tastelessness, and practicality, and who, with these characteristics, have a right to breed all sorts of European mandarins). These Germans have used terrible means to make themselves a memory in order to attain mastery over their vulgar basic instincts and their brutal crudity: think of the old German punishments, for example, stoning ( — the legend even lets the mill stone fall on the head of the guilty person), breaking on the wheel (the most characteristic invention and specialty of the German genius in the realm of punishment!), impaling on a stake, ripping people apart or stamping them to death with horses (“quartering”), boiling the criminal in oil or wine (still done in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), the well-loved practice of flaying (“cutting flesh off in strips”), carving flesh out of the chest, and probably covering the offender with honey and leaving him to the flies in the burning sun.
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:08 (fifteen years ago) link
definitely the grossest essay in the book
btw if ur looking for good secondaries i recommend this bad boy highly:
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-New-Nietzsche-David-Allison/dp/0847689794
i like kaufmann a lot, and appreciate what he did for american nietzsche scholarship, but i think he misses a lot of what is totally awesome about nietzsche's thought.
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:13 (fifteen years ago) link
Putting the Bosch back into the Boche up there.
― NickB, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:16 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm pretty fond of the end of Book I, when he quotes Aquinas and Tertullian to the effect that Christians long to see the wicked tortured eternally in hell, and so they're just as fond of power and cruelty as the "beasts of prey" Nietzsche favors. But in 1.5 hours I will teach the part of Book III on the Assassins to our majors, and that is probably my favorite bit in anything N wrote.
― Euler, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:21 (fifteen years ago) link
surprised by the lack of BGE love!
― jackl, Thursday, 23 October 2008 16:25 (fifteen years ago) link
thanks max that looks like a good read!
― ryan, Thursday, 23 October 2008 20:48 (fifteen years ago) link
i like BGE. also i have kaufmann's philosopher psychologist antichrist book and it's v. good and made me smarter
― horrible (harbl), Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:07 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah but u dont like peter gabriel so is ur opinion really worth anything at all
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:11 (fifteen years ago) link
jk like i said i like kaufmann i just think sticking with kaufmann solo is going to give u a very one-sided reading
btw robert allison who wrote "reading the new nietzsche" is also the editor of this way cool little book:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Nietzsche-Contemporary-Styles-Interpretation/dp/0262510340
which i have never finished
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:15 (fifteen years ago) link
Our publisher just quoted Nietzsche in the monthly letter he sends out announcing who won the cartoon contest.
― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:29 (fifteen years ago) link
i agree with u max, no hard feelings about PG
― horrible (harbl), Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:35 (fifteen years ago) link
w/ N skip the secondary lit and go for the source; there are decent translations, and he's such a fun read. Though after 7 years of teaching him I still get nervous doing so.
― Euler, Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:56 (fifteen years ago) link
theres absolutely no reason not to actually read the ntz--and yes nietzsche happens to be a great a lucid writer for a german philosopher!--but if youre going for it w/ no background and without reading it in a class it can be v. helpful to have a guide to process whats going on--less so maybe with a text like genealogy but if nothing else reading a secondary can help you place n. in a larger historical context which imho is crucial to getting as much as you can out of it
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 21:59 (fifteen years ago) link
sure; there are still some issues in N that I'm really confused above, e.g. N says that we are the will to power and nothing more, but how does that square with our seeming to be flesh-and-blood? Is will flesh-and-blood? It's the sort that's probably talked up in the secondary lit but I think it's good to struggle with it myself, in the spirit of being a yes-sayer.
― Euler, Thursday, 23 October 2008 22:03 (fifteen years ago) link
part of the problem with the secondary too is that there is about 1000000000000000000000000 things written about neech and 90% of it, especially in english, is either 'misogynist/fascist, dont read' or ayn rand-style readings or just straight-up batshit... i recommend allison to ppl i know who want to 'do' nietzsche cause its pretty even-handed, straightforward, and clear (you know, all the things that nietzsche himself isnt)
― max, Thursday, 23 October 2008 22:08 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah i took stuff in undergrad about him but not an entire class and i feel like i need secondary txts once in a while (also i was a math major, so lol). it makes reading the real thing more fun if you have more context.
and i was gonna say what max just said, with most things written about him being wrong people go in with wrong ideas and go "oh yeah i can see why ppl say he is a proto-nazi" and then read the whole thing wrong
― horrible (harbl), Thursday, 23 October 2008 22:10 (fifteen years ago) link
Max, what do you think of dear, departed Robert Solomon?
― sad man in him room (milo z), Thursday, 23 October 2008 22:14 (fifteen years ago) link
anyone read karl lowith on nietzsche? thoughts?
― jackl, Thursday, 23 October 2008 23:58 (fifteen years ago) link
I actually really liked michael allen gillespies book "nihilism before Nietzsche" quite a bit. More of an argument about Nietzsche than trying to explain him tho. Gianni vattimo's stuff is great too, tho again it's an idiosyncratic take.
― ryan, Friday, 24 October 2008 01:02 (fifteen years ago) link
School me on this eternal return business. Isn't it just another afterlife we're being offered?
― NickB, Friday, 24 October 2008 08:07 (fifteen years ago) link
not really, just a lot more of THIS life.
― ryan, Saturday, 25 October 2008 03:22 (fifteen years ago) link
milo i havent read anything solomon's written except for an essay on nietzsche and postmodernism which (imo) is quite a good reading of nietzsche and quite a bad reading of 'postmodernism.'
― max, Saturday, 25 October 2008 15:22 (fifteen years ago) link
i highly recommend this website for the pictures running down the right hand margin: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
― max, Saturday, 25 October 2008 15:24 (fifteen years ago) link
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Universeglass.JPG/144px-Universeglass.JPG
The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Einstein_ring_SDSS_J120540.43_491029.3.jpg/144px-Einstein_ring_SDSS_J120540.43_491029.3.jpg
Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Yggdrasil_axis_mundi_1.PNG/144px-Yggdrasil_axis_mundi_1.PNG
Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.
― max, Saturday, 25 October 2008 15:27 (fifteen years ago) link
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Wushu_dao.jpg/144px-Wushu_dao.jpg
We have no dreams at all or interesting ones. We should learn to be awake the same way — not at all or in an interesting manner.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/BlackHole.jpg/144px-BlackHole.jpg
Only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Blue_star.jpg/144px-Blue_star.jpg
Between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation...
― max, Saturday, 25 October 2008 15:31 (fifteen years ago) link
You have called,Lord, I rushWith circumspectionTo the steps of your throne.Glowing with love,Your glance shines intoMy heart so dearly,So painfully:Lord, I come
I was lost,lurching drunken,Sunken,Tossed to hell and torment - You stood from afar:Your glance met me oftenSo ineffably,So movingly: now I come gladly.
I feel a shudderFrom the sin, theAbyss of nightAnd dare not look backward.I cannot leave you -In the terrible nightsI look at you sadlyAnd must hold you.
You are so gentle,Faithful and sincere,Genuinely earnest,Dear saviour image for sinners!Quell my desire - My feelings and thinking -To immerse myself, to devote myselfTo your love.
-- Nietzsche, 1861
― ogmor, Tuesday, 2 June 2009 06:14 (fourteen years ago) link
19th Century German wrote religious poem whilst schoolkid shocker.
― I Got Great Gusto, but Only Some I Can Trust Yo (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 2 June 2009 07:02 (fourteen years ago) link
19th c. German whose Vater was a priest.
― Enemy Insects (NickB), Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:03 (fourteen years ago) link
Old Nietszche the preacher.
― Enemy Insects (NickB), Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:04 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh fuck typo.
― Enemy Insects (NickB), Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:05 (fourteen years ago) link
Have a bone: spot the difference with another 'religious poem' from a 19th Century German youth -
Ah! that life of all the dead,Hallelujahs that I hear,Make my hair stand on my head,And my soul is sick with fear.
For, when everything is severedAnd the play of forces done,When our sufferings fade for ever.And the final goal is won,
God Eternal we must praise,Endless hallelujahs whine,Endless hymns of glory raise,Know no more delight or pain.
Ha! I shudder on the stairLeading to perfection's goal,And I shudder when I hear,Urging me, that death-bed call.
There can only be one Heaven,That one's fully occupied,We must share it with old womenWhom the teeth of Time have gnawed.
While their flesh lies undergroundWith decay and stones o'ershovelled,Brightly hued, their souls hop roundIn a spider-dance enravelled.
All so skinny, all so thin,So aethereal, so chaste,Never were their forms so lean,Even when most tightly laced.
But I ruin the proceedingsAs my hymns of praise I holler.And the Lord God hears my screamings,And gets hot under the collar;
Calls the highest Angel out,Gabriel, the tall and skinny,Who expels the noisy loutWithout further ceremony.
I just dreamed it all, you see,Thought I faced the Court Supreme.Good folk, don't be cross with me,It was never sin to dream.
-- Marx, sometime pre-1837
― ogmor, Tuesday, 2 June 2009 08:28 (fourteen years ago) link
The moment you've been waiting for!
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 14:33 (twelve years ago) link
lawl
― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 14:38 (twelve years ago) link
karl lagerfeld is an intersting guy.
― Introducing the Hardline According to (jim in glasgow), Tuesday, 10 May 2011 14:41 (twelve years ago) link
actual unintentional typo.
can't wait 2 read http://www.aliviastoys.com/popples/puffballt2.gif in its entirety
― am0n, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 14:48 (twelve years ago) link
...and this finally fulfills my prediction of Nietzsche as the favourite philosopher of haidressers and tailors of the new millennium. :)
― Marco Damiani, Tuesday, 10 May 2011 15:47 (twelve years ago) link
rereading him now I wonder whether The Birth of Tragedy is really the most vivid, powerful, and unsettling thing he ever wrote.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 24 May 2012 01:16 (eleven years ago) link
in a career full of vivid, powerful, and unsettling things.
aw, thought this would be a joey barton revive
― pet tommy & the barkhaters (darraghmac), Thursday, 24 May 2012 01:26 (eleven years ago) link
Been wrestling with this guy's ideas and their implications for nearly 10 years now and I think that ultimately although I see the force in a lot of/perhaps all of what he says, I can never bring myself to feel wholeheartedly 'on his side'. I can't help but still hope for refutations of at least parts of his worldview even though I doubt that this is possible (and is certainly not something I'm capable of myself).
― The boy who cried 'wolf' in a crowded theatre (Mr Andy M), Sunday, 11 December 2016 17:29 (seven years ago) link
he wasn't even totally on his side. that's his secret. his final advantage.
― Treeship, Sunday, 11 December 2016 17:31 (seven years ago) link
For the sake of full disclosure I'm not and never have been a Christian, and don't believe in any kind of God, so that's not the direction I'm coming at it from.
Perhaps I can draw it out a bit like... I can't help but suspect that those who avowedly consider themselves progressive/liberal/left-leaning while also proclaiming themselves as Nietzscheans must either be cherry-picking in their readings or else just comfortable living with a hefty dose of cognitive dissonance.
― The boy who cried 'wolf' in a crowded theatre (Mr Andy M), Sunday, 11 December 2016 17:34 (seven years ago) link
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.
― The boy who cried 'wolf' in a crowded theatre (Mr Andy M), Sunday, 11 December 2016 17:41 (seven years ago) link
Mordy did you ever read BGE?
― Oor Neechy, Thursday, 30 July 2020 19:24 (three years ago) link