I think he was a bad man because that is my opinion.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.

It always seemed to me that one of the main problems with Nietzsche was that he lacked perspective. Right on cue.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.

Before I grew bored with it, I spent some time with one of his books circling all the way he defined the overman and contrasted him with Mr, Goodmench and it was both bizarre and digusting... And the way he attacked Paul and the Church; the church because they did not exclude, as if that were the point, and Paul because he put forward the notion of human equality in the eyes of God, where is just as far as it went for a thousand years, or more, thanks to Plato, who appealed more to the church fathers who accepted their own superiority as a given..

If you read his aphorisms he talks as one who knows, but they are, to any one with life experience, so much garbage...For example: he talks of women; but who were his women??? His mother and sisters were loyal to him, but he held women in contempt... Not one bit of respect for women comes through his words...Easy enough to feel when the darling of ones family; but what of other women??? What did he know of them??? That they all too easily dismissed him??? The closest he ever came to an actual relationship with actual sex with women was not a loving relationship, but a financial relationship, and there is a big difference... And yet he talks like an expert...

Well, no man who ever thought to master the ins and outs of love would ever hold women in such contempt, and from my experience, they are the smarter, the more honorable, insightful, and more naturally philosophical of the species...One must be philosophical when the natural victim of a class that is stonger, and more inclined to rely on strength instead of mind, who by nature are quick to anger, sure to do violence, and way short on socially redeeming characteristics... Such are men to women, and women have provided the bulk of our genetic selection just by deciding who would be decent enough to breed with...Which only goes to prove that no choice is no choice, and no amount of philosophy can make a choice out of no choice...Women made a choice with Nietzsche, and a good one...

There is a particular situation, of being raised without father that leads boys to remain boys, never maturing, never able to supplant their fathers with a test of wills, never able to fully respect their mothers, or become their fathers, and I have seen it often; though I do not pretend to understand how it works... But I do know that Nietzsche's attack on the morals of society and on church, and even on God were all part and parcel of a sainted father he could never discover was human...

Well, no man who ever thought to master the ins and outs of love would ever hold women in such contempt, and from my experience, they are the smarter, the more honorable, insightful, and more naturally philosophical of the species...One must be philosophical when the natural victim of a class that is stonger, and more inclined to rely on strength instead of mind, who by nature are quick to anger, sure to do violence, and way short on socially redeeming characteristics... Such are men to women, and women have provided the bulk of our genetic selection just by deciding who would be decent enough to breed with...

As for the impact of his pious father's death, I agree that it played a huge role in his perspective on the Christian god, the church, and maybe even the conventional morals of society. This, however, does not invalidate his arguments against them. That would be committing the genetic fallacy.

Now we can blame some of the skewed perceptions of Nietzsche on his aphoristic style of writing or his complex ideas. Afterall, he did attempt to weed out certain individuals with the way he delivered his ideas. However, some of the commentary on Nietzsche, especially in this section of the forum, are clearly more than a result of Nietzsche's relative ambiguity. From the mocking comments on his idea of the overman to the claims that he shared fascist views and viewed the Jews as inferior to the Nazis, some seem intent on not trying to understand the man's ideas. Now I have my theories on why some react this way, but why do think this is so?

I can already see the jesters waiting to perform.

You have provided some description of the skewed perception of Nietzsche.
What is the correct perception of Nietzsche?

You have provided some description of the skewed perception of Nietzsche.
What is the correct perception of Nietzsche?

Actually, the very title of his book The Geneology of Morals itself reflects all the genetic fallacies contained within it. N- explicitly disparaged logic over and over again, and wasn't afraid to do that either. He might have been insightful about culture, hermeneutics, and people's personal character up to a point in some matters, but only at the cost of being incredibly illogical, so this turned what could have been a fruitful "objective" perspectivism into a degenerating subjective projectionism. I just see a wealth of ad hominems, strawmans, hasty generalizations, and personal attacks on people in Nietzsche's works. One turns into a lazy-minded fool if one thinks Nietzsche's so-called "arguments" are good arguments, for I know so many academically well-respected atheists who are embarrassed by what Nietzsche's arguments "say"--if one can even call his aphorisms "arguments" at all, which are undoubtedly NOT arguments.

Nietzsche's own felt absence of his father manifests itself in his lonely and frail inability to get close to women, and so turns to an intellectual's Rambo-worship of himself as so superhamanly and defiantly close to the resented Christ as his absent father, which he consistently but unknowingly reveals throughout Zarathustra--Christ being his "only worth enemy" and the "darling" Adriadne, the imagined sexually repressed fantasy (the really existent Salome who married another man instead of him), to whom Nietzsche could never understand or get close in the failed attempt to replace his father's love, the loss of which he consistently resented by attacking Christianity.

His atheism is a 16 year old's caricature of religion, a mock that only succeeded in revealing his own true colors as a scared and fatherless little boy. The Christian's platitudinal charge that atheists deny what they implicitly know exists finds Nietzsche as its poster child. N- being the son of a minister, I only see a cowardly escape from his own personal psychological hangups by derailing precisely where he should not have derailed at all--on real self-introspective honesty--which was the result of the little boy inside him who mistook his own pampered whining as a carefully thought-out deconstructive methodology toward those people and things he didn't actually understand. Completely dissociated from his own self--if there ever was one--his thoughts became so splintered it eventually made him mute. Was it really syphilis or a brain tumor that eventually got the better of him? Sometimes I think he just didn't have anything more "to say under the sun" because he became frozen in time as a result of his own repressed existential terror of failing to take a long, patient, and investigative look at his own personal wounds, which I am confident he never did. He died incredibly lonely, and re-entered the comfort of his mother's womb as an infant with his mother and sister spoiling him until the day he died. Poor man. Perhaps he will recurr again, and give us all the exact same caricature of himself by caricaturizing everyone else.

Just read Ecce Homo again, that last gasping breath of a man suffocating under his own childlike "will to power" gone mad....one can only see a steady degeneration of a very weak and incapable man from the great and youthfully spirited Birth of Tragedy to this allegedly "self-reflective" and truly intellectually plastic so-called "autobiography." Ecce Homo is a caricature of an autobiography, just as Nietzsche succeeded in becoming nothing but a caricature of a man.

It is scaaaary to find myself in agreement with you... Has the world suddenly fallen off its axis and is it rolling toward the gutter???

The only true crime philosophy can be guilty of is certainty, and Nietzsche was too certain...Actually, overman is a caracature... There never was such a man, and you see that, no momma super man or baby superman...The good that one can expect out of new, dynamic societies is lost when one group, the more worthy or powerful put themselves over their fellows because they can...All the overmen do is feed themselves...They don't reap or spin, and they do not create, but live off of others and weaken their societies in the process...Nietzsche and Plato were brothers separated by time...There was nothing new...If one thought wisdom should rule, the other thought rulers were wise...

Morals are just a form of relationship, but an essential form for the workings of society

Throughout your posts, I notice that you see morality as being a strictly interpersonal or social thing. Do you only see morality through the eyes of a collective and not an individual? Would there be a right and wrong action for me to make if I was left alone in the wilderness of Alaska?

Actually, the very title of his book The Geneology of Morals itself reflects all the genetic fallacies contained within it. N- explicitly disparaged logic over and over again, and wasn't afraid to do that either. He might have been insightful about culture, hermeneutics, and people's personal character up to a point in some matters, but only at the cost of being incredibly illogical, so this turned what could have been a fruitful "objective" perspectivism into a degenerating subjective projectionism. I just see a wealth of ad hominems, strawmans, hasty generalizations, and personal attacks on people in Nietzsche's works. One turns into a lazy-minded fool if one thinks Nietzsche's so-called "arguments" are good arguments, for I know so many academically well-respected atheists who are embarrassed by what Nietzsche's arguments "say"--if one can even call his aphorisms "arguments" at all, which are undoubtedly NOT arguments.

Nietzsche's own felt absence of his father manifests itself in his lonely and frail inability to get close to women, and so turns to an intellectual's Rambo-worship of himself as so superhamanly and defiantly close to the resented Christ as his absent father, which he consistently but unknowingly reveals throughout Zarathustra--Christ being his "only worth enemy" and the "darling" Adriadne, the imagined sexually repressed fantasy (the really existent Salome who married another man instead of him), to whom Nietzsche could never understand or get close in the failed attempt to replace his father's love, the loss of which he consistently resented by attacking Christianity.

His atheism is a 16 year old's caricature of religion, a mock that only succeeded in revealing his own true colors as a scared and fatherless little boy. The Christian's platitudinal charge that atheists deny what they implicitly know exists finds Nietzsche as its poster child. N- being the son of a minister, I only see a cowardly escape from his own personal psychological hangups by derailing precisely where he should not have derailed at all--on real self-introspective honesty--which was the result of the little boy inside him who mistook his own pampered whining as a carefully thought-out deconstructive methodology toward those people and things he didn't actually understand. Completely dissociated from his own self--if there ever was one--his thoughts became so splintered it eventually made him mute. Was it really syphilis or a brain tumor that eventually got the better of him? Sometimes I think he just didn't have anything more "to say under the sun" because he became frozen in time as a result of his own repressed existential terror of failing to take a long, patient, and investigative look at his own personal wounds, which I am confident he never did. He died incredibly lonely, and re-entered the comfort of his mother's womb as an infant with his mother and sister spoiling him until the day he died. Poor man. Perhaps he will recurr again, and give us all the exact same caricature of himself by caricaturizing everyone else.

Just read Ecce Homo again, that last gasping breath of a man suffocating under his own childlike "will to power" gone mad....one can only see a steady degeneration of a very weak and incapable man from the great and youthfully spirited Birth of Tragedy to this allegedly "self-reflective" and truly intellectually plastic so-called "autobiography." Ecce Homo is a caricature of an autobiography, just as Nietzsche succeeded in becoming nothing but a caricature of a man.

Apparently you see yourself as a man of logic, therefore you should know that it is a logical fallacy to say that the title of his book, The Genealogy of Morals, reflects the genetic fallacy.

The title itself doesn't necessarily describe the purpose of presenting a genealogy of morality. It could simply mean that the author is being purely descriptive by presenting the genealogy of morality. However, Nietzsche did use the genealogy as a way to justify an alternative to Christian (or slave) morality.

He wasn't necessarily saying that Christian (herd/slave) morality and its descedents (utilitarianism and deontology) were false because of their origin. Instead he was saying that we should reject them because they weaken the human spirit by entailing an absolute condemnation of suffering.

Suffering, as Nietzsche saw it, is an essential part of life and it strengthens those who do not perish under its weight. It is, therefore, irrational for one to shelter themselves in the belief that nature has a moral order or that the "evils" of this world will be abolished in an afterlife or in a future world where reason and science has cured the human condition.

Once again we encounter hypocrisy. You bash Nietzsche's denial of logic and reason in his arguments and yet now you commit the genetic fallacy with a psychoanalysis.

Wow. This is a very personal attack. A 16 year old's caricature of Christianity, really?

What a surprise. More insults to the man. You're starting to sound, dare I say, just like him!

Nietzsche succeeded in presenting a necessary alternative to the all to popular life negating worldviews of Christianity and Buddhism.

He succeeded by creating tons of literature while suffering from excruciating pain. Last but not least he succeeded in making hypocrites out of his future enemies (you).

Throughout your posts, I notice that you see morality as being a strictly interpersonal or social thing. Do you only see morality through the eyes of a collective and not an individual? Would there be a right and wrong action for me to make if I was left alone in the wilderness of Alaska?