The Invigorating Strangeness of Friedrich Nietzsche

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/the-invigorating-strangeness-of-friedrich-nietzsche

by apollinaire • 7 years ago

137 111 7 years ago

prospectmagazine.co.uk

Pimpus• 7 years ago

Isn't this all common knowledge? I don't think anyone has considered Nietzsche a Nazi for a long time. I certainly didn't learn anything new and I have only a cursory familiarity with Nietzsche and his works. This review(?) doesn't even mention some of the more interesting aspects of his life, and the snide comment about Zarathustra was just... strange. I'm sure the biography is great, this review doesn't sell it very well at all.

narag6• 7 years ago

I don't think anyone has considered Nietzsche a Nazi for a long time.

He was hated by all my high school teachers, both the communists and the religion teacher. I bet that he will be called a nazi while there are communists and christians.

I think what they hated most about him is that he likened both groups.

freedomben• 7 years ago

Indeed. Nietzsche provided powerful arguments to explain the origin of religion (particularly Christianity) and even attempted to write his own Bible-style text with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. His explanations include brilliant insights on human psychology, and do a pretty good number on faith. I can understand why the religion teacher didn't like him :-)

boomboomsubban• 7 years ago

I think what they hated most about him is that he likened both groups

Or they read things influenced by early releases of his work, where his antisemitic German nationalist sister took significant liberties in the editing process.

Inu• 7 years ago

I don't think anyone has considered Nietzsche a Nazi for a long time.

A recent example would be Steven Pinker:

"It’s easy to see why his sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-right and neo-Nazi movements today."

https://www.newstatesman.com/2018/08/why-nietzsche-has-once-...

tim3333• 7 years ago

While Nietzsche wasn't actually a Nazi as he died 20 years before the party was formed he did have some handy quotes that proved popular with them eg.

"Man shall be trained for war and woman for the procreation of the warrior, anything else is folly"

That may be the point of view of one of his characters rather than his personal belief but I'm not sure his Nazi follower types were that careful in their literary analysis.

Same with the modern alt-right see eg "The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too." https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/alt-right-nietzsche-r...

armitron3• 7 years ago

“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”

Ecce Homo

tim3333• 7 years ago

Fairly prophetic that. He (and his anti semitic sister) were kind of popular with the Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_and_reception_of_Fri...

armitron3• 7 years ago

Some read this quote as a harbinger of WW2. I think it fits the current zeitgeist much better and is part of what Nietzsche called the age of the last man: The destruction of religion and the complete lack of meaning in modern western societies, leading to consumerism, surrogate activities and finally nihilism [1]. Before the cyberpunk dystopias described by William Gibson and Philip K. Dick, before Aldous Huxley, before George Orwell, there was Nietzsche.

A true genius and like Schopenhauer before him, a powerful initiator in the human condition.

[1] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/nietzsches-...

rhizome3• 7 years ago

The deal is that after he died, his sister compiled his unfinished work in a way to be coherent with Nazism, then sold it into the movement.

sverige3• 7 years ago

I've always thought Nietzsche was the only funny (hilarious more than strange) modern philosopher. Compared to dullards like Kierkegaard, he's a barrel of laughs. I also think he's also the perfect example of the old saw "all modern philosophy is a footnote to Plato and Aristotle."

One of my professors gave a very learned exposition of Nietzsche as the philosophical forbear of Nazism. It was pretty convincing, frankly, and I still think of Nietzsche as fundamentally evil. Funny, but evil. The exposition took days of his lecture time, so I won't try to recreate it here, but lightly dismissing that charge by laying it all at the feet of his sister is a mistake. The playful disassembling of Western philosophy that Nietzsche indulged in had real consequences in the actions of those who studied his works.

BucketSort10• 7 years ago

He's only evil when you see the world as a delusional butterfly. Most of what he talked about, power, is what truly rules the world. I think if all of us understood his lessons, we would be less susceptible to being manipulated and used for evil. I think he was so far ahead of his time that he's even ahead of us in the present. Have we gone beyond good and evil yet? Have we learned how weak those concepts make us? How easily they permit us to be controlled? Just look at how zealous people have become because they are the "good" and others are the "bad." How could such a modern people be so ignorant of the forces that shape their lives, even when we have such great teachers?

1000units3• 7 years ago

Just look at how zealous people have become because they are the "good" and others are the "bad."

Does this change if we instead consider ourselves "powerful" and "weak"?

btilly4• 7 years ago

Given the long-standing decline in violence over recent centuries, the real "delusional butterflies" are the ones who think that their ideas shouldn't be called evil because might inevitably makes right, and therefore everything from slavery to genocide is simply the natural order that we shouldn't try to escape.

tarsinge• 7 years ago

I disagree. Sure, power rules the world, everyone knows it and knew it before Nietzsche, "good" and "bad" are the results of the choice of people to tune up or down their desire for individualistic power over other's people good. I fail to see how Nietzsche is innovative on our understanding of this, I mean that's even the core teaching of christian philosophy.

What's original in Nietszche thought is not that power rules the world and that people are longing for it, it is the challenge of the western and christian values that power and individualism is "bad".

1000units3• 7 years ago

Can you explain how he's evil? Simply associating him with Nazism and then condemning him as evil is rather unenlightening and cliche. Zionists also liked Nietzche, my mother likes Nietzsche, &c. Are these people evil?

sverige3• 7 years ago

It has been at least twenty years since I read anything by him, so my cliche statement is based on the conclusions I came to over time (I had another period of reading him about 35 years ago) and the judgments I made about those conclusions.

I'm frankly unwilling to reread him at this stage of my life, so I don't have any details for you, but my strong overall impression was that he essentially despised all that went before him, rejected Western values of good and evil (obviously, and as some here do), and left the reader with nothing beyond the essence of an Aleister Crowley "do what thou wilt" disregard for the idea of objective good and evil.

Others here have said that violence has declined, which is ridiculous in light of the many genocides perpetrated over the last century. The two atom bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII likely killed more people in a couple of days than most despots did in a lifetime. And those barely register on the timeline of mass killings in the 20th century.

btilly4• 7 years ago

You can find a similar case against Nietzsche near the end of Enlightenment Now.

The key point being that Nietzsche believed that superior people should rule over inferior people, and should achieve that rule through violence and war. Which are uplifting activities for those who engage in it. And once it is established who is superior, what is done to the inferior doesn't matter.

This was an inspiration to the Nazis who, of course, decided that Germans were superior, should establish this through war, and inferior people should be killed or enslaved as the Germans saw fit.

armitron3• 7 years ago

That book contains so many outright falsehoods and misrepresentations that it belongs in a garbage bin. Even the guardian [1] thrashed it not to mention titans like John Gray [2].

It doesn't surprise me to learn that Pinker also manages to misrepresent and malign Nietzsche.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/14/enlightenment-...

[2] https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight...

keiferski• 7 years ago

I used to see Pinker’s name and ideas around and thought he had something interesting to say, so I picked up this book.

What a complete waste of time. It feels like his knowledge of intellectual history comes from skimming Wikipedia articles.

apoph3nia2• 7 years ago

Kierkegaard is pretty hilarious too tbqh

sverige3• 7 years ago

Well I had a hard time finding those parts, but maybe I was too young when I read him in my late teens / early 20s. He seemed more dolorous than most to me at the time. Perhaps he's worth revisiting.

interfixus• 7 years ago

If your moniker is anything to go by, you are Swedish, and should be able to read Kierkegaard in the original Danish. You proabaly ought to if you believe him a dullard. He's funny alright, at times bordering on laugh out loud, but it possibly does take some localised context to quite get it. His content is vapid nonsense, of course, but that's a different matter.

minecrafter6561• 7 years ago

kierkegaard isnt funny

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.” - K

you've got no sense of humor if you think kierkegaard is a dullard. either/or is basically one long stand-up special, especially the bit about the trophonean cave

apoph3nia2• 7 years ago

Failure in loving, failure in living from everyone's favourite pre-quantum either/or philosopher of the 0/1 binary. Let's give it up for Søren Kierkegaard!

andreilys6• 7 years ago

Reading Nietzsche is like breathing in cold mountain air. Some people can handle the cold, others can't. He's not for everyone, as he makes it intentionally clear.

He was a stark individualist that put into question a lot of the building blocks of liberal democracy, such as the notion that all men are equal. I don't agree with all of what he puts forth but he is without a doubt one of the most dynamic and influential thinkers of the 19th century and still relevant to read even today.

If you're interested in reading him, start with Twilight of the Idols and Beyond Good and Evil. If you like those two then you can delve into some of his other work such as the Antichrist, On the Geneaology of Morals, Human, All Too Human, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra

joe_the_user5• 7 years ago

He was a stark individualist

Nietzsche is by no means an individualist. He had no interest in any current of thought talking of "individualism". Moreover, while he was no doubt interested in certain individuals, he made it clear that the individuals he was interested were the product of entire cultures - the most refined possible people.

Nietzsche also essentially produced a position that was impossible to realize. Indeed, no one can practically agree with Nietzsche on everything. He wanted an elite but wanted that elite to be aesthetic and removed from ugly character of politics as usual. He hated antisemites and militarists yet these were the most common type to take up his name.

Still, I'd certainly agree Nietzsche is interesting and worth reading.

Edit: Also important is the way Nietzsche refuted the certainties of philosophy yet did not consider himself a philosopher. He called himself a "psychologist" early on and his discussion of philosophy was often "what character would cause a person to believe such a thing".

narag6• 7 years ago

Nietzsche is by no means an individualist. He had no interest in any current of thought talking of "individualism".

He was an individualist and he wasn't interested in any current of thought, talking of individualism or not.

andreilys6• 7 years ago

Yes sorry when I say individualist, I didn't mean in the philosophical sense but more referring to a person who is independent and self-reliant (something that he advocates others become as well with the whole self-overcoming)

RandomInteger43• 7 years ago

Psychologist? Do you mean philologist?

misterdoubt4• 7 years ago

Cold mountain air, yes. Or, as he himself put it:

  Ice
  
  Yes! I manufacture ice:
  Ice may help you to digest.
  If you had much to digest,
  how you would enjoy my ice!

Nietzche's poetry is an underappreciated component of his philosophy.

HNLurker24• 7 years ago

If you're interested in reading him, start with Twilight of the Idols and Beyond Good and Evil. If you like those two then you can delve into some of his other work such as the Antichrist, On the Geneaology of Morals, Human, All Too Human, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What edition should I read? So I stayed true to the early thinkers that interpreted him (to not be fooled by thinkers like Steven Pinker who trash him).

Off topic: for a moment I considered learning German just to really understand this man.

Lunatic666• 7 years ago

I think Nietzsche is one of the writers where it really makes sense to read the German original side by side with your translation. He's a master with words, which you can appreciate a lot more if you understand his play with words. It's like watching the dubbed German version of a Netflix series, if you saw the original you cannot go back anymore.

andreilys6• 7 years ago

The original source is always best. That said, I've read Hollingdale's translations since I don't know German. Amazon has a wide selection of translations so I'd start there to see which is the highest rated one.

rv-de2• 7 years ago

I don't agree with all of what he puts forth but he is without a doubt one of the most dynamic and influential thinkers of the 19th century and still relevant to read even today.

Considering a philosophical model a logically interconnected and consistent system of assumptions, rejecting some of the assumptions/propositions can be an indication that the entire model is to be rejected even if other assumptions seem acceptable.

andreilys6• 7 years ago

He doesn't propose a philosophical model. He's more of a destroyer than a system builder, and explores a wide range of ideas (My favorite being eternal recurrence, beyond good/evil, overcoming oneself and creating meaning in a world where God is dead)

coldtea4• 7 years ago

A philosophical model is not necessarily "a logically interconnected and consistent system of assumptions".

Even math couldn't be that, despite the efforts of Hilbert, Russel, and co.

In the case of Nietzsche in particular, he scoffs at philosophers pretending theirs to be one.

He offers observations, and individual ones, jumping from one to another, and doesn't pretend to offer a model.

But even for those philosophers that do think their work is a "logically interconnected and consistent system", you can still have perfectly good (or, perfectly useful) parts of their overall system, while others might be wrong.

0db532a0• 7 years ago

For those into Nietzsche, it’s worth reading The Ego and its Own by Max Stirner:

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

baron_harkonnen2• 7 years ago

I just wanted to second this. It's astounding that there continues to be a large dispute over the influence of Stirner on Nietzsche.

I personally like Nietzsche's ideas but really don't enjoy his style of writing. Stirner on the other hand touches on many of the same ideas that Nietzsche would later, but is both an easier and genuinely hilarious read. The Ego and its Own is an absolutely brilliant book, that should have at least the level of popularity that some of Nietzsche's works have.

alexpetralia• 7 years ago

I'm excited to read this - I similarly found Nietzsche somewhat excessively cryptic. Thanks for the recommendation.

totemandtoken• 7 years ago

Interesting recommendation. Looking forward to checking this out. I usually hear Schopenhauer or Zapffe as a similar recommendation.

baron_harkonnen2• 7 years ago

You can read everything of Zapffe's that's ever been translated into English tonight[1]! If you want more pure pessimism you shouldn't leave out Ligotti's "Conspiracy Against the Human Race", which also cover's Zapffe a bit. Ligotti is not a traditional philosopher but he makes some great observations about the relative rarity of true pessimism in Western philosophy.

It's worth noting that Nietzsche's real work was to find a solution to the inevitable pessimism and nihilism that he feared would inevitably threaten Western culture. Schopenhauer and Zapffe go straight off into pessimistic view of human existence (Schopenhauer deriving some humanistic "we're all in this together" ethics at moments and Zapffe saying we should stop breeding and let the flame burn out). Nietzsche still ultimately rejects nihilism.

[1] https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah

rdlecler14• 7 years ago

It's hard not to see Nietzche's "slave morality" in today's successful backlash against "toxic masculinity" and the "white man".

AntiTechTechie• 7 years ago

Can you explain what you mean by this?

cannonedhamster2• 7 years ago

Seems to me the OP is claiming that people who attack white men are weak willed and only seek to subvert the strong willed white man. Not sure how else one would read that as only white men are strong willed and think like masters and everyone else is a weak willed slave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality

narag6• 7 years ago

I believe that I know what he means.

Nietzsche compared the ethics of classical cultures (Greece, Rome) with Christianism that he called a slave morality, because in its first times it was adopted mostly by slaves.

The former admired strength, bravery and power. The later, summarized in the Beatitudes, was a subversion of those values. Nietzsche believed that Christianism weakened Rome and more or less caused its downfall in favour of barbarian invaders that had a morality more similar to the people that built the empire.

There are indeed many points in common with current situation. Despite their christian roots, current western nations, specially the USA, are based on capitalism, that values competition, strength, bravery, money, knowledge, power... much like classic Rome.

Then there are a number of social movements that attack powerful elites subverting all those values. Do all these movements necessarily weaken western civilization? I don't think so, but I'd say he has a point.

Veen• 7 years ago

People could do worse than considering todays grievance politics in the light of Neitszche’s ideas about ressentiment.

Emma_Goldman4• 7 years ago

Reading Nietzsche definitely changed how I think about the politics of guilt. But it would be unhelpful to apply Nietzsche's psychological narrative to real history.

leoc• 7 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaXigSu72A4

rv-de2• 7 years ago

Nietzsche is probably the most overrated philosopher who ever lived. He was a manic who instead of learning from the world withdrew into a fantasy version built from well-phrased sound bites (or "aphorisms" - which sounds nicer). His ideas primarily serve the purpose of confirming elitist and Darwinian perspectives predominantly popular among people who hold a grudge against society because they didn't get a large enough chunk from the big cake.

eternalban3• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Andreas-Salom%C3%A9

I wonder if there ever have been prolific male philosophers that had a fully satisfying sexual and romantic life ..

zmix• 7 years ago

I wonder if there ever have been any men, that had a fully satisfying sexual and romantic life...

HNLurker24• 7 years ago

Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard all died unmarried and childless

myopicgoat• 7 years ago

I think that may be only partially fair: some people appreciate his writings because they question things which, at the time, (and possibly still now) would have been considered “true” or unquestionable (particularly stuff on moral). One may not like it but I think can still benefit from asking similar questions (while ignoring the answers which are, anyway, often somewhat cryptic). I personally enjoyed Thus spake Zarathustra for that reason, not so much the cake one.

andreilys6• 7 years ago

That's an unfair characterization, and ignores the profound impact he's had on other intellectual giants such as Carl Jung, Herman Hesse and many others.

It seems like you're bone to pick with him is largely his elitist tone, which yes that's the whole point of his writing. He does not write for the masses, but for those striving to break out of herd mentality. To write him off as an elitist manic is to ignore who he was writing for and why.

rixed• 7 years ago

Nietzsche is probably the most overrated philosopher who ever lived.

But also an underrated poet.

kingkawn• 7 years ago

That Nietzsche’s public life ended with him sobbing in empathy for a horse who he saw whipped always felt to me to nullify all his previous philosophical argument.

In other words; His worldview builds until it breaks through recognition of the Other.

gnulinux• 7 years ago

It's interesting that this is a scene from Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. I always wondered if it's a bizarre coincidence or some sort of influence went into the novel, or reports about Nietzche's life.

The Invigorating Strangeness of Friedrich Nietzsche

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