Nietzsche is the Only Important Philosopher
Refining and furthering Friedrich Neitzsche’s project of creating new values and transcending the limitations of humanity by understanding/ creating the Ubermensch is the only interesting or important philosophical project.
My investigation has been limited to this point, but I have yet to find a philosopher who addresses as many tangible and poignant issues as Neitzsche. Nobody else’s work and no other subject or question (that I’ve encountered) offers a project with as much potential for progress in philosophy. Just look at these opinions I have:
- All of metaphysics is more or less inconsequential because irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it.
- All of morality and ethics is subordinate to Neitzsche, because understanding (and shaping) the underlying values which inform morality and ethics is better than asking disconnected questions about people tied to train tracks or trying to come up with/ understand an arbitrary moral strategy like Kant’s Categorical Imperative or J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism.
- Art and Science are both interesting and beautiful pursuits, but it is necessary to articulate the situation of and goals addressed by Art and Science, unless you just want to be aimlessly going after the Art/ Science questions that just happen to interest you (which might be nice for you but useless for philosophy).
- Only post-modernism and the associated questions about epistemology (of which Neitzsche is a grandfather), as well as Feminism (because Neitzsche was pretty sexist) seem remotely relavent to me (and it will be granted that Religeon is a fair alternative to Neitzsche because it also discusses underlying values and whatnot, I just agree with Neitzsche that, in our secular society, we have a chance to take the value structures into our own hands [and so we should, because that’s cool and if we do a good job, more relevant to the human experience]).
With all this bs in mind, I am looking for some objections. Does anybody know of a philosopher or philosophical project/ question that is more interesting or important? Who addresses the above issues better than Neitzsche? Or alternatively, do you think that I just have a bad outlook and want to take issue with any of my opinions in the bullet points?
My investigation has been limited to this point, but I have yet to find a philosopher who addresses as many tangible and poignant issues as Neitzsche. Nobody else’s work and no other subject or question (that I’ve encountered) offers a project with as much potential for progress in philosophy. Just look at these opinions I have:
- All of metaphysics is more or less inconsequential because irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it.
- All of morality and ethics is subordinate to Neitzsche, because understanding (and shaping) the underlying values which inform morality and ethics is better than asking disconnected questions about people tied to train tracks or trying to come up with/ understand an arbitrary moral strategy like Kant’s Categorical Imperative or J.S. Mill’s Utilitarianism.
- Art and Science are both interesting and beautiful pursuits, but it is necessary to articulate the situation of and goals addressed by Art and Science, unless you just want to be aimlessly going after the Art/ Science questions that just happen to interest you (which might be nice for you but useless for philosophy).
- Only post-modernism and the associated questions about epistemology (of which Neitzsche is a grandfather), as well as Feminism (because Neitzsche was pretty sexist) seem remotely relavent to me (and it will be granted that Religeon is a fair alternative to Neitzsche because it also discusses underlying values and whatnot, I just agree with Neitzsche that, in our secular society, we have a chance to take the value structures into our own hands [and so we should, because that’s cool and if we do a good job, more relevant to the human experience]).
With all this bs in mind, I am looking for some objections. Does anybody know of a philosopher or philosophical project/ question that is more interesting or important? Who addresses the above issues better than Neitzsche? Or alternatively, do you think that I just have a bad outlook and want to take issue with any of my opinions in the bullet points?
Comments (88)
The call to embrace a view of the natural is said to be in conflict with the ways we take that idea to mean something beyond our personal experience. As a philologist, FN knows this problem full well. He appeals to the evidence of personal experience while also marking what is possible for us to a limited set of options.
Are these set of options strictly what can be observed as a person or require something else?
I don't think anyone addresses moral questions better than Nietzsche, at least in the West. The one exception may be Aristotle.
But in terms of philosophical questions in general, I would argue his question about morals/values is equalled only by the seinsfrage (especially as analyzed by Heidegger), and perhaps only in terms of "interest." (As far as "important," I don't know -- I think the question of morals is more pragmatic, and perhaps more relevant and pressing.)
Quoting SatmBopd
I think the question of being relates to the question of morals and values, and so to power and politics. Why? Because so much of the moral codes that develop and shape our behavior, and which pervade our cultures, is interconnected with an understanding of what a human being "is."
For example, in the middle ages the pervasive understanding of being was that the world was created, a creation of God. Human beings were thus creatures of God. I wouldn't say that medieval morality "followed" from this, or vice versa, but they certainly co-existed. And out of this view of human being came at least the intellectual grounding and justification for codes of conduct.
So you see how what seems a very abstract, removed, hifalutin question actually permeates every aspect of our lives, although mostly unconsciously (as was true for Christians in the middle ages). Right now we appear stuck in a "technological-nihilistic" understanding of being, according to Heidegger. I think that's right.
Do you know much about outside the west? My first thought would be Confucianism, which I think has some substantial moral insights.
I’m familiar mostly with Buddhism. But Hinduism and Taoism also have many interesting things to say about life and morality.
Quoting SatmBopd
Can you have another go at making this point? I'm not sure what you are saying N is saying.
Quoting SatmBopd
As written this sounds like a draft version of 'existence precedes essence' (Sartre). Personally I don't see how metaphysics becomes inconsequential just because one has to act. One also has to reflect.
Quoting SatmBopd
Can you explain why? If you find the PM perspective useful, why is it more relevant than any other perspective? Could it simply be that it resonates because you live in the era where these ideas have currency and are fashionable? Are you tying this to N as a founder of postmodern anti-foundationalism?
Quoting SatmBopd
What does this point mean? Just how is one meant to shape the underlying values which inform morality?
Quoting SatmBopd
So how would this work in practice if everyone wanted to build their own value system? Can we accept those who think murder is a good way to deal with having to line up for concert tickets. If not, why not?
Such people don't go to concerts, they are not the audience. They are the performers.
Why are they standing in the queue, then?
Ah, the wannabes!
Yeah so based on what I find interesting, do you know of anyone who is more conducive to that than Nietzsche? But you also seem to think that there are problems with what I find interesting. Which is also what I was looking for, so thank you.
Quoting Tom Storm
Basically I'm taking issue with art for art's sake, and would prefer that attitudes like Nietzsche's life affirming sentiments be propagated by art. Furthermore, isn't much modern science just science for science's sake? I'm, sure some individual scientists have a grander goal in mind, like arriving on Mars or curing aging or something, but if scientists first articulated, then agreed upon values, then their collective projects could be more focused, interconnected and... I would say beautiful. Like if all artists and all scientists went about specifically trying to celebrate human life instead of merely "seeking knowledge" or "personal expression" or other vague and aims that aren't to extensively thought out. I'm probably oversimplifying Nietzsche there, but hopefully that makes more sense.
Quoting Tom Storm
Okay. So I would need to study this more, but isn't say, Derrida just correct that language forms our understanding of the world, as much if not more than the situation of the world itself does? I think I eventually found that as interested as I am in stuff like morality, I do need an Epistemological basis for my investigation and beliefs, and I think Postmodernism throws a wrench in our understanding of truth-- which I would need to understand and overcome before I had a set Epistemological foundation for my worldview. To be clear, it's not so much that I agree with Postmodernism or even Nietzsche, but that these are the movements/ thinkers that I think I would gain the most from investigating. Hence the purpose of this forum, to see if there is anything/ anyone else I should be investigating instead.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, so for example. There is this "relevant ethical question" about self driving cars where, in the case of an accident, should the car be programmed to protect the life of the passenger inside the car, or the pedestrians/ other passengers outside the car first? In most ethical discussions you would just address the question directly, giving reasons and arguments about why you should do what you should do. But I would argue, that whatever your answer to the question is, its always a result of your underlying value systems. So it would honestly just be more efficient to refine, address, improve, understand and practice implementing our underlying value systems than it would be to ask/ answer individual ethical/ moral questions. And how do you do this? I think that might be the whole project. The million dollar question that Nietzsche didn't even fully answer to my knowledge. This is the pursuit I am considering trying to undertake, but obviously only if it's worth it.
Quoting Tom Storm
I can't confirm that this is from Nietzsche, but I don't see it as a case of each person building their own value system, but as a case of building a new (and hopefully better) value system for everyone. Christianity united Europe in late antiquity/ the middle ages, whereas modern secular culture is comparatively divided for a lot of reasons. Now that we have a chance to make something new, why not deliberately try make it cooler than anything we've seen before? Instead of just falling back to the old values, or haphazardly letting our whims take us where they will.
(sorry for the long reply haha, sort of had to mull this over, thanks)
Yes.
The quote below links to an older post which further elaborates:
Quoting 180 Proof
:fire:
[quote=Buddha (the parable of the poisoned arrow)] Whether the universe is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same.[/quote]
Quoting SatmBopd
Neitzsche comes off as distincly anti-ethics (ethics as a stumbling block for humanity and ergo, bad for us), in no small part due to Darwin (re evolution, survival of the fittest), but Neitzsche's forgotten something important - humans evolved from the tiny shrews that lived among colossal reptiles in the age of dinosaurs) - the weak are basically the strong whose time hasn't come (yet). More to the point, [s]survival of the fittest[/s] survival of the luckiest defines evolution, and Lady luck isn't known for her consistency. So much for übermensch!
That's all from me (for now).
Quoting SatmBopd
Derrida is way more complex, but I am no authority. D was very engaged with N and there is overlap.
Quoting SatmBopd
I wouldn't have thought so. There's no science funding in this. Do you have examples?
Quoting SatmBopd
So does N. A lot of PoMo was influenced by N. N says there are no truths, just perspectives and interpretations. Remember N is anti-foundationalist. So is PoMo
Quoting SatmBopd
N wasn't interested in building new approaches for everyone. He tended to hold that people were sheep and dimwits. He wanted new values but how this relates to betterment of humans I think is unclear.
Quoting SatmBopd
I'm not sure how the car example relates to N. N would probably have said that the self-driving car should protect whomever he loved/regarded most.
Morality is created by humans to facilitate social cooperation in order to achieve our preferred forms of order. Any debate on what is good or bad generally relates to how we (or others) visualise what the social order its values look like.
Quoting SatmBopd
This does not match my understanding of science or what science should be. Science is generally focused on solving problems. It is generally not undertaken merely for kicks or for aesthetic pleasure. Once you start to dictate what art or science should be you're on the fast track to becoming Joseph Stalin.
And there is another problem - who sets the standard for and articulates what 'celebrate human life' looks like? Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler also celebrated human life, they just did it in ways anathema to a lot of other people.
What do you think N tells us about how we can settle disputes about morality between other people?
:up: Good diagnosis.
Quoting SatmBopd
What establishes him as a benchmark against which to judge others?
Quoting SatmBopd
... or 'in addition'? I suggest reading more widely, more carefully and with less prejudice.
Philosophy is essentially like science, a process. To see only one philosopher is to see only one study, ignore citations and still define the whole of science.
We can say one of the most influential, one of the most prominent, but without everyone else, their work have no context and becomes essentially meaningless.
Exactly. Specifically with Nietzsche, I consider him as the most honest philosopher of all. And yeah maybe the greatest also. But it is just a matter of taste.Nothing else.
And in cases like that, words like "only" are forbidden.
Nietzsche would have been nothing without all that came before as well as all that came after who built upon his philosophy. The actual existence of his work today is not from him but from everyone interpreting and refining his work.
It's like saying that every physicist today is just using Einstein's findings. But that is not true. Every one of them does their own work by utilizing Einstein's findings and building on top of it. All while Einstein couldn't have concluded anything without everyone who came before him.
Even downright false ideas in philosophy trigger someone to think in a new way, to look at something from another angle, and in the end arrive at a true conclusion.
Someone being good at consolidating earlier ideas and refining them into a new context is just as good as someone who comes up with an original idea because they're essentially the same concept.
Nietzsche is one of the best consolidators of past ideas, putting them into a context of examination that was rarely done before him. That is his biggest contribution. But almost any era of enlightenment or change has had one or a few people who backed up and looked at the mess of ideas that came before them in order to cut away the fat and examine them without bias.
This is why I always talk about the necessary ability to fight back one's own biases and fallacies because the only way to get rid of what makes us stuck in old ideas that we never fully examine and re-evaluate, is if we are stuck with our biases and cannot create arguments for ourselves to question them. The inability to think beyond ourselves and the inability to create arguments that bypass our lacking capability for internal logic is what makes us slaves to concepts we prefer, not to concepts of truth.
Nietzsche was someone with a tremendous ability to question himself and everything around him. An outsider who wasn't afraid to question the status quo of ideas, because it was who he was to do so. But he also had the intellect to do so without falling into the temptation of biases and fallacies. This combination of being critical as well as dedicated to a method in thought is something almost everyone lacks and therefore such philosophers are rare occations. They would, however, not be able to exist without everyone else's ideas floating around to be examined.
That's the exact reason why I find him the most honest one. That ability you refer here. But you see?Even great Nietzsche couldn't handle it at the end. He lost himself into the abyssus he created.
So we have to be lenient with people. It's not an easy task to criticize your beliefs and values. In fact it's the most difficult task of all. To shake your own self to the ground by questioning your beliefs and everything you hold for "sacred" . Causing an internal earthquake to yourself.
It's much easier to stick in your preferable "lie" and not seek for the truth,even if the process of seeking truth is what grow us bigger. I don't find it the right thing to do but I can really fully understand why most people don't dare to do it.
His mental issues were not due to his thinking. It could catalyst, probably due to social alienation, but that his philosophy drove him to it is just myth-making.
But he's not alone, there are plenty who lives by the same method. Nietzsche just got much attention due to his way of dismantling the power of religion and enhancing the power of the human being. Existentialists further explored this and most of how this philosophy has been put into practice today has more to do with the refinement the existentialists made rather than what he concluded.
The thing is that free minds weren't accepted much before the end of the 19th century. You could only have a free mind if you first had freedom in society, meaning, you had the means of putting time into thought and then creating methods out of those thoughts. Before the enlightenment era, it was rare that radical thoughts could live and prosper, but after it, the entire world was built upon such radical thinking. The enlightenment era opened the door and enabled people like Nietzche to put to paper what they were thinking and without him, it would have eventually led someone to similar conclusions as Nietzche. Probably one of the philosophers who built on top of his ideas would have been the one who arrived at those ideas, had he not been first.
Today, the world is almost on life support with "radical thoughts". It's easy to be blind to thinkers in modern times because history has not made them into myth yet, but we live in a world that craves "radical thoughts", so we do not see new ideas very much since they might not be radical enough. We turn to science more, since the methods are calmer, more refined. Philosophy today looks like this forum board, people trying to show how radical they are in thinking, but most do not have much to say at all.
Most probably. But his way of thinking also affected them for sure and played its role, imo. Or maybe these mental issues contributed in his radical way of thinking. One way or another they seem to my eyes somehow connected. In Nietzsche's work sometimes you have the sense that he was "urging" himself to go "mad". To fall into the abyssus.
Quoting Christoffer
True story. Though it's 2022. Past philosophers had a vast sea to explore . They had a lottt to say. And damn they did.
Of course there is always something new to say, especially in social matters, but I hope you get my point. So I try to be lenient towards nowadays thinkers also. But yeah I agree, some of them who desperately try to sound "radical" are just full of shit.
I just don't know of anyone else, or enough of their work that is as enticing to me. I'm sure he's not a good benchmark, I just want to know why and how.
Quoting Cuthbert
Yes, reading more widely. I guess I'm just looking for specific suggestions. There's only so much time that I'm going to spend reading, so I don't want to just pick some random bs. My first inclination has been to investigate Schopenhauer, Geothe, and more about antiquity. But those are just influences of Nietzsche, so like, my "wider reading" is still just currently going back to the same sentiments and investigations associated with Nietzsche. I guess I'm almost looking for a completely disconnected strain of thought? One that arguably has as much, if not more merit than the one I'm currently on?
Go back to the text you found so irritating and try it again. Ask yourself : "Why is this person - apparently intelligent and articulate - a well-regarded philosopher - a brain of some weight - in good standing amongst other very bright people - talking disconnectedly about people tied to train tracks? What could that possibly have to do with ethics?"
Quoting SatmBopd
Then use the library. Leave the internet till later.
Well, get to it then.
Not necessarily. My reading of your interpretation of Nietzsche is that you see him within the existentialist camp rather as a postmodernist. According to a postmodernist reading Nietzsche isnt searching for the best value system. On the contrary , hei is against this kind of thinking about values. There is no better or worse value system for Nietzsche. What he advocates is the endless movement from one value system
to the next , without ending up at any final
ideal system.
I think you might find Marx , Sartre, Kierkegaard , Schelling and William James beneficial.
...because they're a product of a stale philosophical tradition? I really am just spit-balling there, don't mean to be snarky or anything, it's a possibility isn't it?
Quoting Cuthbert
It has plenty to do with ethics. And they're interesting thought experiments, it's just that I don't think it's really addressing the root of morality or ethics. It's like brain popcorn at least compared to the conscious addressing of values that a more interesting moral/ ethical would (in my current estimation) entail.
Quoting Cuthbert
Once in the library, what do you think I should read? I'm not gonna read everything there. (Maybe some more Nietzsche? His influences? idk)
I don't think Frantic Freddie was a philosopher. I think he was an insightful, interesting, passionate critic of art and culture, who never had the patience or the inclination to make an argument or analysis. Instead, he issued proclamations; declarations, sometimes vehement, often absolute, accompanied by rhetorical questions and exclamation points. A voice crying in the wilderness, similar in some respects to a religious figure, come to condemn us for our inadequacies. Someone who did not think as much as emote.
Guess I’ll have to burn all the papers I wrote about his philosophy. Where were you when I needed you? We’ll have to keep in close touch from now on. Could you draw up a list of all the other non-philosophers I can stop studying?
It seems to me that Freddie the Frenzied had a unique style and way of thinking which was declarative rather than reflective, or analytic. He's righteous, he bears witness rather than explains. He floods us with his thoughts. His writing is an avalanche of opinions.
This is unusual in a philosopher (I suppose I should say those I've read), and seems to me to be unphilosophical. That's not to say he's unintelligible, or lacking in insight, but he doesn't explain--he doesn't argue, which is what the philosophers I've read do.
Perhaps philosophers you've read are similar to him.
He certainly isn't tedious or dry, which is to his credit, but neither are poets or prophets, or passionate critics of our lives. I don't think of them as philosophers, though. One doesn't have to be a philosopher to be insightful and profound.
My favorite passages of Nietzsche are not his aphorisms but paragraphs like the one below, which is as complex a philosophical explanation or argument as any I have come across by a philosopher. And there are many, many other passages like this throughout his writings that add up to a consistent philosophical thesis.
“Now another word on the origin and purpose of punishment – two problems which are separate, or ought to be: unfortunately people usually throw them together. How have the moral genealogists reacted so far in this matter? Naively, as is their wont –: they highlight some ‘purpose' in punishment, for example, revenge or deterrence, then innocently place the purpose at the start, as causa fiendi of punishment, and – have finished. But ‘purpose in law' is the last thing we should apply to the history of the emergence of law: on the contrary, there is no more important proposition for every sort of history than that which we arrive at only with great effort but which we really should reach, – namely that the origin of the emergence of a thing and its ultimate usefulness, its practical application and incorporation into a system of ends, are toto coelo separate; that anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose by a power superior to it; that everything that occurs in the organic world consists of overpowering, dominating, and in their turn
overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' [Sinn] and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated. No matter how perfectly you have understood the usefulness of any physiological organ (or legal institution, social custom, political usage, art form or religious rite), you have not yet thereby grasped how it emerged: uncomfortable and unpleasant as this may sound to more elderly ears,– for people down the ages have believed that the obvious purpose of a thing, its utility, form and shape, are its reason for existence, the eye is made to see, the hand to grasp. So people think punishment has evolved for the purpose of punishing. But every purpose and use is just a sign that the will to power has achieved mastery over something less powerful, and has impressed upon it its own idea [Sinn] of a use function; and the whole history of a ‘thing', an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random. The ‘development' of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost, – instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] even more so . . . It is no different inside any individual organism: every time the whole grows appreciably, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] of the individual organs shifts, – sometimes the partial destruction of organs, the reduction in their number (for example, by the destruction of intermediary parts) can be a sign of increasing vigour and perfection. To speak plainly: even the partial reduction in usefulness, decay and degeneration, loss of meaning [Sinn] and functional purpose, in short death, make up the conditions of true progressus: always appearing, as it does, in the form of the will and way to greater power and always emerging victorious at the cost of countless smaller forces. The amount of ‘progress' can actually be measured according to how much has had to be sacrificed to it; man's sacrifice en bloc to the prosperity of one single stronger species of man – that would be progress . . . – I lay stress on this major point of historical method, especially as it runs counter to just that prevailing instinct and fashion which would much rather come to terms with absolute randomness, and even the mechanistic senselessness of all events, than the theory that a power-will is acted out in all that happens.”
On the contrary, I think it’s safe to say most people think too little.
Quoting SatmBopd
I don't know which particular set of train tracks has bored you so quickly but there is a famous set of tracks that was designed to test our intuition about this problem -
Is letting a person die as bad as killing them?
Which is part of a wider problem:
Can we be credited or blamed as much for omissions as for actions?
That is again part of a wider problem:
How should we interact with the universe?
So the 'stale philosophical tradition' may have something to say. You need to get into the detail and give it thought.
It's like cooking. All recipes are about getting the ingredients, combining them in appropriate ways using the best equipment and presenting the result with pride. Ta-da! Now I'm a chef! No, I'm not. I can make sweeping statements about how I ought to interact with the kitchen and its contents. But I have yet to produce a meal.
This (and the two above) questions are answered (probably only?) by consulting a system of values. If you answer the train track question and decide that letting someone die is/ is not as bad as killing them, but you make no other inquiries about your values, when will you do your due diligence to make sure that assertion aligns with all your other values? Investigating individual values, or other influences on social engagement like game theory, and then comparing the train tack problem TO those might actually be useful. I don't mean to completely dismiss the thought experiment, just that I think if you engage in contemplating it without any greater context, it needlessly limits to the scope of the conversation. I was presented this (and similar questions) in introductory philosophy classes without any greater context. I did learn some things from it... so maybe its not bad to like start teaching people concepts, but I don't think that they represent the most interesting questions if that makes sense.
Quoting Cuthbert , probably plenty in fact. But science makes progress in academia while philosophers keep meandering around the same old questions and (probably rightly) attracting less students. I think we're mostly postulating arguments back and forth without pushing the field forward much. More ambitious assertions and apparatuses of thought should be in play I think. Or it would be cooler if they were. Nietzsche had some ambitious ideas, and the only time I've heard him mentioned at my university was in a history class. Once.
I do keep learning lots from my Philosophy profs who don't address Nietzsche. The "stale tradition" thing was a strong remark, partially (though not completely) offered in jest. I guess I just think... why not go forward instead of (mostly only) looking back?
Yeah I feel that sometimes.
It's just hard for me to deny that some of the people who think less than me (or appear to) are doing just as well if not better.
I think you have a reasonable complaint. After WWII there was frustration with moral philosophy. Philosophers had been spending their time dissecting language ever more minutely and discussing Kant and Mill. In the meantime gas chambers were being filled with human beings. After the 2008 financial crisis students were nearly rebelling in economics departments. They were being taught about marginal value and Pareto optimality. Meanwhile the entire banking system was apparently collapsing and nobody seemed to know why.
Quoting SatmBopd
Perhaps we need both. Grand iconoclastic ideas are useless if we trip up on simple fallacies in logic. Nit-picking thought experiments are pointless if we cannot apply the lessons in life. Someone has to build the house and someone has to keep the tools repaired and do the accounts.
Perhaps you've read N. Perhaps, more likely, you've not bothered to study his work. So you'd agree that most (pre-PoMo) non-Anglo-European philosophers during the first half of the 20th c. just wasted their considerable efforts engaging critically / philosophically with N's thinking? And, almost single-handedly, existentialist-analytical philosopher & scholar Walter Kaufmann wasted decades (mostly from 1947-68) translating and reinterpreting N as a philosopher for post-war Anglophone philosophers, intellectuals, et al?
If deductive argumentation and/or conceptual system-building is what you mean by "think", you're quite right, sir. However, N shows that there are modes of thinking other than calculation or instrumentality or justification such as aporetics, reflective inquiry, genealogical hermeneutics & systematicity-without-system building (i.e. aphoristic treatment of interrelated concepts, ideas, values). His seemingly unrelated "declarations" call themselves into question and thereby his readers into question. N makes speculative jigsaw puzzles and says "think for yourself" prompting us to assemble the (often missing) pieces by our own lights in order to gradually uncover, or expose, our own (philosophical & religious) blindspots, biases and irrationality to ourselves (usually) in spite of ourselves. A provocateur for "the examined life", no?
I've read Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Birth of Tragedy, I recall. I may have read The Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols; they seem familiar as they're described. I say "may have" because it was some time ago. It's fair to say I've never studied him.
I may have been too influenced by the Anglo-American philosophical tradition when it comes to my conception of philosophy. In that tradition, I think, we don't encounter writers like N or some others of the more modern "Continentals" as philosophers. We might encounter them as social critics, or satirists or non-philosophical authors, though.
But I don't think this is a purely Anglo-American prejudice. We don't see writers like Nietzsche in the tradition of ancient philosophy, or in Medieval philosophy, or in Enlightenment philosophy. Nietzsche and others like him seem to have appeared in the last two centuries or so, in Europe; I would say Europe of the Romantic tradition, post-Revolutionary and post-Napoleonic France.
Writers like Nietzsche can inspire, can be insightful, can provide new ways of viewing things. So can art, or religion, or mystical experiences. So, I suspect, might Buddhism, or Zen, or Taoism or reading works associated with them. I simply think philosophy is distinct; it isn't the same as those paths, and I think that when it tries to mimic them it fails.
I think that when we find ourselves in a realm of concern where ‘simple fallacies of logic’ have become important to us, we are so far removed from any relevant and significant form of philosophizing that we have in essence substituted calculating for thinking.
Yes, I see. That's interesting. What's that quote from?
So you're a partisan in the "Analytic-Continental" divide to the degree that any discourses which do not meet the peculiar standards of the Anglo-American Analytical tradition (or schools) you consider "anything but philosophy"?
Maybe, because I'm an autodidact with respect to academic philosophy like most on this site, my perspective is somewhat broader and comparative (culturally & historically) and even – gods forbid – more eclectic than the Analytic schools allow. I recognize N to be an anti-Romantic Romantic Hellenist thinker – i.e. classical philologist, poet, composer, depth psychologist, cultural genealogist and philosophical-religious iconclast – and not a logician, political theorist or ethicist. N was a philosopher of 'post-humanity' amid, as he saw it, the ruins (decadence) of modernity, concerns apparently too speculative and grandiose (or anarchic) for mandarin sentential logic-chopping and quotidian utility.
Apologies, Cicero! (slow day) I'd like to think I'd outgrown my "angry young man's" Nietzscheanism a few decades ago with the calming help of the Hellenes, Enlightenment freethinkers, early pragmatists, absurdists ... and then Spinoza, but much of what N "emotes", as you say, I still think. :fire:
Quoting Ciceronianus
It’s from ‘On the Genealogy of Moraity’
Not substituting - adding. We need both.
Thank you.
No, as that would exclude Dewey. I don't think he can be said to be in the Analytical tradition. And, it would exclude most philosophers in the Western tradition, who were still philosophers though misguided (e.g. Descartes).
I don't think it's a question of exclusion so much as a concern with inclusion. How big is the tent of philosophy? Was Dostoyevsky a philosopher? Timothy Leary? Is Eckhart Tolle a philosopher? What about Deepak Chopra? Erich Fromm? Max Weber?
I find it hard to consider someone a philosopher solely because they think or write about "big questions."
Quoting 180 Proof
You could put "Wittgenstein" at the start and it would fit just as well.
I am inspired by this post to write a post of my own about the ubermensch.
Schopenhauer. Nietzsche tried to turn his one-time teacher on his head (Will-to-live becomes Will-to-power).. Compassion and asceticism become "Master morality over slave morality", and the like. A renouncing of life to a re-affirming of life with all its suffering for eternity.
I think just because a philosopher came later, doesn't mean they "perfected" or "corrected" a previous philosopher, simply because they came later. Nietzsche goes hand-in-hand with individual self-involvement, and so it resonates with the modern man's sensibilities. No wonder he is praised all over this forum and in some other circles...The Randian businessman capitalist, the punk-bohemian, the travelling dilettante, and the dictator can all claim to be an ubermensch and draw from the same well.
I love what Nietzsche did with Schopenhauer's concept, He had a really primal take on it & embraced the harshness of life. I think it resonates with the modern man so much due to the moral grey areas he is constantly faced with if he has a traditional moral code. Nietzsche's philosophy seems to throw out the difficulties of navigating the moral codes & just lays out what the people really want to hear lol
So you blame 'a philosophy' for the fads which misuse and fools who misread it? :roll:
'My Nietzsche' is primarily a cultural diagnotician-poet rather than a romantic individualist-decadent. Consider this old post, schop:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/684298
Lastly,
Quoting 180 Proof
Only Ciceronianous mentioned Dostoevsky, but just to wonder whether he is a Philosopher or not.
Well, I don't know to what extent we can consider the works of Dostoevsky with philosophical content, but his works and characters (Karamazov, Raskolnikov, Svidrigáilov, etc) have influenced the post philosophers on realism, existentialism and pessimism, etc. :flower:
First off, indeed you would have to qualify as "My Nietzschean", because his writing is not amenable to a straightforward or unambiguous interpretation, hence why there are so many "My Nietzschean"s. Schopenhauer can be interpreted in multiple ways, but you are essentially going to be circling around the same core ideas, as his ideas were clearly explicated, whatever you might agree or disagree with in those explications.
Secondly, from what I gather from Nietzsche, the idea of someone embracing the pains of existence eternally, just seems like coked up mania. That is to say, there are truly horrible things about life that are not to be embraced, and that is not how humans tend to live life except in brief bursts of enthusiasm- those peak moments. You can write about it afterwards poetically, "OH look at how my life of suffering is a work of art!".
I stand by what I stated earlier and don't think your appeal to Nietzsche here has countered what I stated earlier:
Quoting schopenhauer1
And yes, because of his manic embrace for "Ceasing the day! and FATE!!!", it does lead to various forms of manic and/or self-aggrandized attitudes and mores- often faddish ones.
He could write in one sentence what others penned in entire books. An example of his masterful work is "Human, All Too Human." Not a single word extra, straight to the heart of the matter! Thus, he mastered both word and script.
"I once saw Bill Brasky wrestle a grizzly bear with his bare hands, while simultaneously reciting Shakespearean sonnets in three different languages. Oh, and did I mention he did it on top of Mount Everest during a blizzard, wearing nothing but a swimsuit? That's just a regular Tuesday for Bill Brasky!"
His aphorisms are masterpieces of world literature, but nothing great happens in Nietzsche's "philosophy". This is what I came to believe :)
But you also said in a previous thread that you have little background in philosophy, having wasted two years attempting to learn it.
You are funny. I probably said that 5 years ago (so now I have been 7 years reading philosophy lol)
Here in the USA, I know they teach Nietzsche at Fordham only, cause Fordham Theologians should know what an atheist said about them. Maybe there are a few, but most of the philosophy programs I have searched do not teach Nietzsche (I don't blame them).
I do like Nietzsche like a writer, but I have serious doubts on his contributions on aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and whatever branches of philosophy are taught in schools nowadays. The reason why Nietzsche might be the most popular "philosopher" in Europe I think is his writing ability, not his philosophy. People love great writers and they think they are enlightened by the books that entertain them the most.
Quoting Eros1982
Don’t believe it. It’s been 135 years since Nietzsche went crazy and his ideas still haven’t been absorbed by most of today’s philosophers. That’s how ahead of his time he was, and a statement of how stagnant today’s intellectual scene is. It has been said that all of today’s philosophy is built on Kant. I would add that all of postmodernist philosophy is built on Nietzsche.
"Beware lest a statue slay you." :zip:
Quoting 180 Proof
I hear the Existentialists are mighty fond of him, too.
What are your thoughts on the existentialist reading of Nietzsche? Is this illustrative of his fecundity, or is it a partial misreading in your assessment?
The USian universities are usually more analytic focused in philosophy departments.
Quoting Tom Storm
To me it’s like interpreting a film on different levels. You can certainly read Nietzsche as an existentialist and get a lot of him that way. Understanding him as a postmodernist doesn’t invalidate the existentialist perspective so much as radicalize it, put it on steroids.
Nothing about eternal return or the ubermensch rings true for me. What do you want me to say? You can give a case for his ideas instead of petty sniping, but doubt what you say isn’t something I haven’t considered and thought that Schop had a better take on.
That's okay, Last Man ... :smirk:
From an old thread Schopenhauer on suffering and the vanity of existence...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/529871
Nothing we ain't eternally said before.
Yeah there’s nothing on there really countering anything. You said N was ill but affirmed life and somehow this proves something or other about his philosophy. Schop didn’t think many people were going to be ascetics or even have the one virtue he thought was truly moral, compassion. Art was more amenable, but not everyone was going to be an artistic genius either- only temporary observers, temporarily stopping the Will.
Perhaps you simply have not broadened your studies enough? This statement of yours can essentially be interpreted as a form of pragmatism. The Metaphysics of Pragmatism by Sydney Hook (a student and successor of Dewey) is a favourite of mine. All in all, if I had to pick one philosopher to idolize, better Dewey than Nietzsche....
I currently look at it all like this: all of the philosophers (and many other types of sages and wise folk, and shaman) were essentially trying to put to words the same object, the same subject, the same experience - human experience. They are all beating around the same bush. So the interesting question is "why would Plato come up with what he said, and Nietzsche come up with what he said, when they were both trying to describe the same experience?" It's like they all looked a sculpture and started arguing "it is essentially form and beauty" and "how can you say that when it is chaos and destruction" or "how can you say 'say that' without saying first what 'that' means?" Why would Berkeley say all we need are ideas, and Lucretius say all we need are atoms and void - what object produces such seemingly opposing pictures?
Can't go on without Nietzsche, but I love the pre-socratics, and we have to deal with Kant and Hegel, and Descartes goes on and on way too long imagining God, but he really did say something when he noticed that he existed. The being for whom being is an issue. So many important worldviews to consider and reconsider.
But I generally agree, prior to Nietzsche ethics was more like a fairy tale that would not admit of reality, and post Nietzsche, ethics as a branch of philosophy should be over, but lingers, like a corpse occasionally moving in place as it decomposes.
Did Nietzsche find Heraclitus dogmatic and boring? Or Montaigne?
Nietzsche said that Plato is boring, and at the same time that with regard to Plato he is a thorough skeptic. (TI,2) So what are we to make of this remark by one ironic skeptic about another ironic skeptic?
These remarks occur within the context of the art of writing. With regard to the art of writing and its counterpart the art of reading Nietzsche suggests, something important has been forgotten. Something known before Nietzsche :
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 30
If one reads Plato, or any higher type, as one higher man reads another, then they will not find what they read boring. In the section "Reading and Writing" from Zarathustra Nietzsche says:
Though he did say it best, it was far from being an original thought. I wrote about it, here it is translated to English:
The first example is St Augustine's si fallor, explained in "Monologues", "The Trinity" and "The City of God":
which Descartes discusses in a letter to Andreas Colvius:
Although Avicenna mentions consciousness and the separation of body and mind, he doesn't establish thought as proof of existence.
Although some claim that the "Upanishad Mandukya" is about the cogito, this is not quite true.
Also, in "Nicomachean Ethics", Aristotle mentions consciousness of consciousness as consciousness of existence, but based on the definition that thought or perception are existence.
Goméz Pereira in "Antoniana Margarita" also presents consciousness as proof of existence, as well as some other parallels with Descartes.
Thomas Aquinas says in "De Veritate": "No one can assent to the thought that he does not exist. For in thinking something, he realises that it exists"; resembling Aristotle's argument.
I am not sure what to make of this.
Surely Nietzsche knew that Hesiod said:
(Theogony 27)
The suspicion is that in reporting what he claims the muses tell him he is lying. He is giving weight and authority to what he says by putting his words in the mouth of the muses.
I do not think he was fooling himself in claiming:
Where they pointed to the gods you point to Nietzsche. As if Nietzsche takes the place of the gods as the authority. It would seem that your frequent appeal to him to the exclusion of others is more like the appeal to monotheism than polytheism.
Now, of course, all of this can be regarded as a bit of rhetorical hyperbole.
Heidegger wrote on Nietzsche in 4 volumes, and they look cool. I am sure Heidegger covers most of the topics listed in the OP in his own philosophy.
nice quote; i googled it to make sure and got this free book chapter.
I sometimes get the sense of Nietzsche only being engaged in refutation (showing that a person claim or theory is wrong), but I would be inclined to think, naively, that he also wants to assert the value of himself etc. and that this is not because everyone was so mean about him (wrong, wrong, wrong). Does it depend on how trivially the two attitudes (creation/destruction) are related: why the unity might slip out from anyone's "purpose"?
Anyway, I don't think he should be considered the final word, the alpha and omega, on nihilism or philosophy, if only because (from the very little I know) the end is also the beginning (*obligatory pic of Ouroboros*).
Post-modernists can't misread a philosopher. They just read different [insert philosopher's name here]s. Protagoras and Gorgias become the heros of the Platonic Dialogues. :cool:
The key "grand system" builders are Plato, Aristotle, Saint Aquinas, and Hegel. You might throw Kant in there as well. Those authors all spawned "traditions" which continue to attract a very large number of devotees. There are worlds to explore in each.
Aristotle and Aquinas are fairly dry. Being foundational thinkers for what would become the "scientific method" and modern thought, a lot of their greatest insights will seem like common sense. We're just used to thinking that way now. Aquinas is also filled with theology, which is generally a turn off to modern audiences. So I might not start with either of those two.
Kant is similarly quite dry, although also a good deal more difficult to read IMO. And based on your post, I don't think you'd like him (granted, that's scant evidence to go on).
That leaves Hegel and Plato. Hegel is famously a slog to read and difficult; Plato's dialogues are often cited as among the best works of literary art from the ancient world. The choice is easy, give Plato a shot.
If you liked Nietzsche, you'll probably like a good deal of Plato because, despite all the railing against Plato that Nietzsche does, he often ends up advancing the same positions. Yet Plato's approach is very different, and his ethics in particular are quite different.
Platonism certainly did become a dogma over the centuries, and this is to some extent what Nietzsche is actually attacking when he rails against Plato, but Plato himself is the opposite of dogmatic in many places.
I would recommend the Apology as a starting point because it's short and sweet. That or you could just jump into the Republic. Or, if you really admire the Dionysian element in Nietzsche, there is the Phaedrus. Just bear in mind that the first speech in the Phaedrus is supposed to be terrible, and the second flawed. It's not until Socrates throws his cloak back in divine inspiration that the real gem emerges.
The Teaching Company's course on the Dialogues is quite good too, and is helpful for getting all the symbolism going on. Just get it through Amazon or Wonderium or something, because they are ridiculously overpriced on TTC's website.
I also really like Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato and Hegel as a secondary source (it's sort of a misleading title as it has as much to do with freedom as the "divine").
Very few philosophers are as fun to read as Nietzsche, but Plato is one of them (Saint Augustine is another). For Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics is worth checking out though. It's more dry, but still quite readable.
(That all said, Hegel is my favorite "big system" guy. It's just tough to say where to start with him).
One important thing that they have in common that helps to put this difference into perspective is that they do not regard philosophy as a set of topics or problems to be addressed as abstractions or as a doctrine of universal truths without regard to the differences between readers and their cultural and historical circumstances. Nietzsche calls attention to something both practice:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree. I think it a mistake not to distinguish between Plato and Platonism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
One of the many double entendres in this erotic dialogue.
I have not listened to Michael Sugrue's Teaching Company's course but since he studied under Allan Bloom and Joseph Cropsey at the University of Chicago he must have learned how to read Plato.
A key passages in the Phaedrus is a guide for how to do this. Socrates says :
(264c)
Just as we cannot understand a living creature without understanding how all the parts fit together to form the whole, we cannot understand Plato without understanding how all the parts fit together to form the whole of the dialogue.
Perhaps I misunderstand something, but Nietzsche seems at odds with himself. He seems to believe in the "overcoming" of oneself, and the embracing of Suffering in some aesthetic appeal to the Ubermensch who thrives on pain in the idea of manifesting one's own values (power) into the world.
In this type of manic idea, I immediately think of Shakespeare's response:
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
:sweat: Yes, you're misunderstanding N completely – put down your dog-earred old copy of Nietzsche for Dummies, schop, and carefully read some of N's books (from The Gay Science onward).
You can claim I misunderstand him all you want, but you don't break down WHY.. only very generally allude to past posts and such which aren't helpful or convincing. So go on being the ninja of sidestepping YOUR responsibility to show why. If you don't show, then don't tell.
Look, I know he is a philosophical hero of yours, so me maligning might hit a nerve with you. I welcome critique.. Hell, recruit someone else to critique what I am saying.. as with another poster who is a huge N advocate, when I "analyze" the critique further it would be a re-wording of my claims of his ideas, and thus the whole "You just don't 'get' him" deflates into simply being unhappy with one's favorite philosopher criticized. You glom onto anything I say negative about him extremely fast, so clearly, this is close to your heart.. Go ahead and explain away.. Take passages, analyze them to your content in regard to how they are NOT what I am characterizing them. We will see and as you say Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Vaskane
Don’t forget Deleuze’s dogmatic image of truth, gifted to Western philosophy by Plato.
:roll: Again, you should know what you're talking about, schop. As I've posted probably hundreds of times on TPF, (if anything more than a freethinker) I'm an Epicurean-Spinozist and haven't been a Nietzsche fanboy since the 1980s. That your statements about N are ignorant, not that they are "maligning", call for a response. I'd do the same if you or anyone spouted uninformed nonsense about e.g. Heidegger or Derrida both of whom I loathe.
I don’t believe it until you tell me how misinformed I am. Also you took one post which was extremely cursory but I’ll let you proceed with that sample.
To add, I don’t agree with ideas around Ubermesch, eternal recurrence, will to power, or master and slave morality. You can use those as jumping points.
Well if you really want to be learn for yourself how misinformed you are ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/876624
Cool, so you offer nothing but repeat. Perhaps eternal recurrence.