But Nietzsche wasn't a fiction writer. He was a philosopher. Therefore, he is on philosophy's turf. N- is not immune from criticism.

Every individual is a criminal waiting only for an opportunity... Only as members of a community even if it is the community of humanity can we be moral...

"I am one thing. My books are another." Ecce Homo

---------- Post added 05-26-2010 at 03:54 PM ----------


This is a good point. I would balance it by saying that he was changing the nature of that turf. To define truth as an "army of metaphors" is revolutionary. And he also questions the value of truth. "Why not rather untruth?"

---------- Post added 05-26-2010 at 04:10 PM ----------


I like this. I feel that morality is often considered a bit too much in the abstract. If we think of family and friends, and ask ourselves how much of human decency is grounded in an opening of the self, a denial of the whims of the self....

The self is already a collision of desires/fears. Nietzsche was wise to describe the goal as a harmony of these "selves." He completely exaggerates the novelty of his values. Courage, creativity, independence, grace, intelligence....

What is power? Is it the power to steer other humans? Is it the power to relish life on Earth without the comfort of an afterlife or of perfect justice?
Is his attack on pity justified? Was he just too sympathetic himself to endure compassion?

I still he think was a genius. Period. His best lines are as good as philosophy gets. But his worst lines are as bad as it gets, perhaps. Because he (to quote a friend) spoke as one with authority. And yet he was a sickly professor, largely detached from the world that other humans kept spinning, while spun out his sublime and terrible conceptual poetry....

True, I am psychoanalyzing N. But this isn't hypocracy or a genetic fallacy. I am not bashing N to draw the claim that what he said is false--that would be an ad hominem--the most predominant style of Nietzsche's own approach to philosophy. On the contrary, I am saying what he says is false because it is false: so many of his claims are either empirically incorrect, non-historical, or invalid. I am claiming he doesn't offer very good arguments for establishing the truth about anything at all, and this is a necessary consequence of his psychological condition. I am tired of hearing the stereotypical plasticity of his claims I encounter from amateur philosophers who mouth his doctrines as if they were gospel truth. First learn how to think, then we'll discuss his arguments. I have studied N, I have taken several classes concerning his philosophy in my department, and have written several essays on him. You ought to know that maintstream philosophical academia generally makes fun of him, including other atheists, because everyone is all-too-familiar with what passess as a series of implicit illogical Ideologies by present-day philosophical standards. So I am well within my epistemic rights to discuss the topic of "Nietzsche" since I am well-acquainted with his writings. And there is nothing wrong with evaluating the personality that led to the development of his philosophy. I am confident many psychoanalysts would agree with some kind of evaluation like that, too. His personality is immediately evident in his writings. Do you deny that? After all, N- wrote "in his own blood."

Nietzsche as a person is secondary. Nietzsche as a philosopher is what is at issue. He was a rather disgusting person, but that is not the point. The issue is whether his philosophy is any good. It isn't.

I believe that if you check out a history book, you can find dozens of cases of individuals arguing for justice, while their communities are arguing for injustice. Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Ghandi, John Brown, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, just to name a few.

[...] I work as a community organizer of sorts in my free time for fun, and what I do should not even be required. All I really do is pass on information to those who need it. I will go around to community meeting, help figure out what type of information different groups need, and then pass on the information to them on where to find it. Sure, the information is out there, but it is irrelevant as long as it is buried under the mountain of information overload that is bombarded at automaton human beings like we are doing particle physics experiments.

No one is obliged to helping anyone else, but people are more likely to when they can actually see people suffering. Sure it is nice to say that someone is morally obliged to help save a drowning six year old, but in reality they are not. If they are the parent of the six year old, then they are legally obliged to help their child, but that is different. I feel that there are too many people all ready that I am not going to help the dumb and the weak when they are put in life and death situation. What's the point? It is irrational for me to care about someone that I have no direct link to, and it is irrational for me to feel guilt for not doing anything.

That is nice and all in the confines of a deontological ethicist's body of work, but no one is obliged to help others out for which they are not responsible. I am aware that there are homeless people in my neighborhood, I can do something about it, but the only thing that says I ought to do something about it is myself. The world is cold and brutal. The weak generally suffer and die. Humans are the only creatures that expend so much effort worrying about the weak lame.

Noam Chomsky, to name another.

Nietzsche as a person is secondary. Nietzsche as a philosopher is what is at issue. He was a rather disgusting person, but that is not the point. The issue is whether his philosophy is any good. It isn't.

The Nietzschean would then stress the idea that grounding any ideal of justice is always-already some kind of normative struggle, a social struggle loaded with ideological value, in which the discourses, actions, activities taken and produced in the name of justice, taken on all sides of the political fences, can be disclosed and revealed as mere, all too human instruments of power.

Do you really mean this? I'm really surprised.

I'm not trying to affect moral superiority here; I am in no position to; if anything, I am likely to be your moral inferior, because for instance you do socially useful voluntary work (see above), whereas I do nothing but cower away from the world.

But I do think that the attitude you seem to be expressing here is an immoral one, so I question what you mean, and whether I am reading it correctly.

You're not leaving much room for doubt as to your meaning, I must say!

(Also, I do seem to detect traces of Nietzsche in your words.)

It's a strange thing. When I was embroiled in a thread where I got into hot water for making fun of something Alan posted and then withdrew (I'm sure you remember those shenanigans), you were the one person who confirmed what had actually happened. That may have been because you had access to more information that anyone else - this seems to fit with what you say about the voluntary work you do! - but whatever the reason for it, I appreciated it deeply. That was a case of morality in action: a morality that is related to a concern for the truth, not succumbing to relativism and the confusion of truth with power. I may have read too much into it.

No, K, he was a nice guy. He lived the life of the mind, while not denying the life of the senses. He loved to walk, drank water rather than alcohol, praised "politeness of the heart," rejected Antisemitism, strove for the higher things. The syphilis may have been a rumor, but that's secondary. His bio indicates a good man.

If you want, you are welcome to disregard the relation of biography to a man's philosophy, but Nietzsche himself didn't.

---------- Post added 05-26-2010 at 09:08 PM ----------


Excellent point. The interesting about Nietzsche's philosophy is that it is self-devouring. I don't mean self-refuting, but rather that it he can be read against himself. If truth is an army of metaphors, then this too is one more metaphor. If life is the will-to-power, then to call it so is just another power-play. A light version of the liar's paradox. Nietzsche, who praised golden laughter, would freely admit this, I think.

Someone earlier rightly pointed out that Nietzsche doesn't always concern himself w/ logic. Perhaps he views logic as just another means of persuasion, another rhetoric that presents itself as beyond-rhetoric. I've always liked describing Nietzsche as a vortex.

Nietzsche the person is essential to Nietzsche the philosopher... Did he talk about power??? Without civilization and modern morals his head would have been a footstool..

There are many who picked up on what he said quickly enough, others in a similar vein who with influence said as much as well...He was unique and yet part of a life philosophy movement that was anti rationalist...He put the last nail in the coffin of the age of reason.. After him, reasonable was a dirty word, along with morals...

Morals are about Power...Nothing new there...Power is freedom, and what moral person is not free??? The two qualities are found together...

Still, some of his best lines are tangents.

That's a good line, itself! :a-ok:

Traditional philosophy had posed the important questions, and the answers that traditional philosophy provided hitherto were--- traditional. It was Nietzsche who posed the question whether untraditional thinking might not do better, or at least provide a new approach to their solution. One might do worse than read his works as experiments in approaching questions from non-traditional stances.

If you want, you are welcome to disregard the relation of biography to a man's philosophy, but Nietzsche himself didn't.

---------- Post added 05-26-2010 at 09:08 PM ----------


.

Traditional philosophy had posed the important questions, and the answers that traditional philosophy provided hitherto were--- traditional. It was Nietzsche who posed the question whether untraditional thinking might not do better, or at least provide a new approach to their solution. One might do worse than read his works as experiments in approaching questions from non-traditional stances.

I expect I am missing something important by not even finding him interesting enough to want to read and react against.

Has anyone at the end of the 19th century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration? If not, I will describe it.--If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed --I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, while one's steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders running down to one's toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear, not as an antithesis, but as conditioned, demanded, as a necessary color within such superfluity of light...Everything is in he highest degree involuntary but takes place as a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity.

..the involuntary nature of image, of metaphor, is the most remarkable thing of all; no one any longer has any idea what is image, what metaphor, everything presents itself as the readiest, the truest, the simplest means of expression...

Your points were excellent, but I do feel you are missing the better side of him. Here is something from one of his later stranger books.
I've felt this myself, once especially. But who could live like this? He sounds like a mystic or something related. A complicated man...

One cannot accurately express the phenomenology of thought... What Nietzsche says is reflected well in the beginning of the Illiad, where the poet invokes the Goddess, to sing through him of the wrath of Achilles...
But as a philologists, it is possible that Nietzsche may have heard of the book...