I would not be able to rely on your interpretation of Nietzsche, — god must be atheist

You do very well. For example: I'm not sure what he took from Lamarck's transformism. Learned characteristics? Doesn't fit.

You have given me much valuable insight. Thanks. — god must be atheist

You're welcome. If I find something on the subject, I'll tell you.

It's the same for me with quantum mechanics. I don't understand anything. But I don't blame quantum mechanics, but my lack of understanding. But I avoid deepening my ignorance by claiming that quantum mechanics is this or that. At most, I ask the one who understands and try to learn. Caution is the virtue of wise men. — David Mo

I don't understand quantum mechanics either. I accept its findings, on pure faith.

But I do understand and appreciate Hume's thoughts after interpretation.

The analogy is faulty in this aspect.

Superiority in what way exactly. Economically, physically, intellectually, interesting way of thinking. Would you elaborate please — LuckilyDefinitive

Superiority in life potential. I don't think Nietzsche gave a narrow definition of what he meant by that. You have to look here and there. Superiority in all that it means to be human: pride, desire, strength, freedom of thought. The latter is important: freedom from the rules of the masses. To destroy or "transvalue" the dominant values of the slave society. To be a hero in terms of thought and life. To put oneself above all else by trying to be the best. Never apologize. He was a nihilist in the positive sense: denying everything to create again.
The things that N rejects are the very things we fight for in our society: money, fame, demagogy, business, submission, etc. All the power that comes with filing one's self.

It sounds very attractive, but it has its great dangers.

The analogy is faulty in this aspect. — god must be atheist

Not so much. At a certain level quantum mechanics becomes a topic of interpretation and discussions begin. Which are the interesting thing, in my opinion.

Never apologize. — David Mo

When you are married, and want to stay that way, then exceptions to this rule are allowed.

Do you understand the interpretation of Hume? I do. Do you understand the interpretation of QM? I don't. This is not a trivial difference that makes the analogy break down.

You actually doubted that I could understand Hume. You directly questioned if understanding via interpretation is possible. You gave the analogy that QM is interpreted and you still don't understand it. I said the analogy is faulty, because many things interpreted can be understood, and I insisted Hume's thoughts are one of those things.

Why do you say that the analogy is not faulty?

I understand that you maybe get Hume by directly reading his writings. If that is the case, you are my hero.

If you're associating Nietzsche with the mafia, you've certainly got it wrong. But the insecurity isn't in Nietzsche, it's in your reading. Just because there are some debatable things in Nietzsche doesn't mean that any reading can be admitted. — David Mo

Sorry, I was drawing the similarity of "efficiency" with my mafia example, in an attempt to simplify it. Apologies if you read my comment quite so literally.

But I don't blame quantum mechanics, but my lack of understanding. But I avoid deepening my ignorance by claiming that quantum mechanics is this or that. — David Mo

A wonderful demonstration of humilty leading to wisdom.

I understand that you maybe get Hume by directly reading his writings. If that is the case, you are my hero. — god must be atheist

I read Hume directly, which doesn't mean I always understand him. Sometimes I get stuck. Other times I read a different interpretation than I do.
Many people are irritated by that kind of uncertainty. I like to deal with it. You discover thoughts you never would have thought of. If the book is too dark, I'll quit. And I get irritated sometimes, too. Depends on days.
Philosophy is like that. Take it or leave it.

Sorry, started new thread rather than hijack yours, my apologies.

The context was Nietzsche? I wasn’t throwing around colloquial tidbits. If you look at exactly how he views the term ‘Culture’ - that’s why I referred to TBOT as a good starting point.

The context was Nietzsche? — I like sushi

No. The context was your own comment.

We were talking about Nietzsche.

Basically a person without Culture, inner or outer, is a weak and dangerous person as they’ll look to disrupt others rather than strengthen themselves through toil and stress (life). — I like sushi

This a basic comment on Nietzsche’s view above. He actually has high praise for the Jews - ‘On the Geneaology of Morals’ was written to tie off any particular misunderstandings in BG&E (he pretty much states this himself from what I recall).

Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of Poland, passionately played Chopin's Polonaises while exterminating Poles, especially Jews. I don't think the "Culture" prevents social dangerousness. — David Mo

The tied old attempts to parallel Nietzsche’s thoughts with Nazism are ridiculous for starters. Above you implied a meaning to “Culture” as being something entirely different from what I was referring to in reference to Nietzsche.

Note: Nietzsche actually has high praise for the Jews it was his sister who gave him a bad name - that is common enough knowledge. Well, he wasn’t exactly amiable either so dislike toward his bombastic tone doesn’t go unwarranted (a matter of taste perhaps?).

We were talking about Nietzsche. — I like sushi

But I was referring to a phrase of yours, not Nietzsche's. If the phrase you were quoting is Nietzsche's, you should show the quote. So the misunderstanding would be undone.

Nietzsche actually has high praise for the Jews it was his sister who gave him a bad name — I like sushi

In the last phase of his life, Nietzsche abhorred German anti-Semites who seemed to him to be stupid and like sheep. But he never rectified the many times he accused Jewish race and culture of being mainly responsible for the decline of the Western world. This is a theory that appears in almost all of his mature writings. Would you like us to look for quotes? I'd like to see the ones you have.

Note that Nietzsche's crudeness and violence has been whitewashed by his current followers, who try to be more politically correct than their exalted idol. It is true that Elizabeth Föster-Nietzsche covered up her brother's anti-German writings, but Nietzsche's followers have done a wash in the opposite direction.
Nietzsche was what he was. Great and obnoxious in equal parts.

Could you indicate the specific appointment, please?
Nietzsche didn't write in English.
See:
http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB

I’m happy to get stuck into this more. In short Culture is viewed by Nietzsche as Culture of the Masses and Culture of the Individual as far as I can tell. To call oneself ‘cultured’ - as you alluded to with listening to Chopin - isn’t really anything like what I take Nietzsche to mean about Culture.

He is extremely contrary in places and loved to toy with his readers - call that obnoxious/bombastic or whatever, doesn’t matter to me.

I stand by what I said. TBoT is pretty important to see where he is coming from. I’ve not read everything of his (and probably never will). The core of it runs through the animalistic (dionysus) side of humanity and the rational (apollian) side of humanity. In turn they seem to be sided off against, and complimentary to, each other in terms of individual, uninhibited will and the social aspect of humanity that allows reason to bring us together. The ‘master’ and the ‘slave’ are essential to each other and religions part in this was under some scrutiny from Nietzsche. By this I mean to take what Nietzsche says (rightly or wrongly?) as stating loosely that the ‘norm’ is the destruction of creativity, the passive builds great potential and humanity as one and humans as individuals are under this constant duress whether they notice it or not - the ‘masters’ being those who are willing to face the struggle and whose followers will inevitably become ‘slaves’ to the new ‘norm’ the previous ‘masters’ brought into being. The ‘Beyond’ is recognition of ‘the Good person’ and ‘the Bad person’ as dictated by mass appeal and the haves and have nots, rather than what is actually ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ - hence the use of the term ‘Evil’ - as outlined in the closing part of the first essay of ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’ (the title of that work being a pretty loud call back to The Birth of Tragedy and his view on ancient Greek Tragedy (ill-formed or otherwise).

I think it absolutely necessary to read The Republic, Poetics and The Birth of Tragedy to get to grips with Beyond Good and Evil properly AND then follow it up with On the Genealogy of Morals. From what he himself says ‘Thus Spake ...’ is the best account of his thoughts ... I found it too cumbersome and so I’ve been working my way toward it via the route given (which has been extremely insightful for me along side other works from Schiller, Rousseau and others).

The Poetics cracked it all open for me personally, but I’m sure many others find different routes.

The passage strikes me as a bunch of despicable racist garbage. A good example of the confused romantic tendency to grasp at fiction in anxious reaction to the abuses of a decaying Enlightenment ideology.

When the hatred of instincts dominates, the herd dominates. Then, even leaders are unable to let their instincts rise and they preach the morality of the flock and hatred against strong spirits. — David Mo

Doesn't this metaphor, if that's what it is, seem to neglect the fact that the behavior of herd animals is no less driven by "instinct" than is the behavior of predators and scavengers?

Shouldn't we rather be comparing two different sorts of instinct in comparing herd animals with predators and scavengers, even metaphorically?

Does Nietzsche consistently neglect this asymmetry in his racist psychological poetry, or does he straighten it out somewhere?

the Nietzschean concept of instinct refers to individuals. It is more the triumph of the will of power than a biological mechanism. — David Mo

Does he acknowledge this distinction somewhere? Does he indicate that the term "instinct" has another meaning in ordinary language? Or does the "Nietzschean concept of instinct" seem to conflate the ordinary use with a peculiar use associated with the "will to power"?

Hume, for instance, manages to speak of "instincts" without anything like this sort of confusion.

To summarize: "power", "strong", "lord", "life" refer to individual and vital forces that oppose the concept of species in biological Darwinism or of nation and race in social Darwinism. That's why he hated German antisemitism. — David Mo

How does this jive with the historical account presented in the quotation in the initial post, and with your initial reply to that post?

To judge from those two initial passages, it might seem more accurate to say that in Nietzsche's confused racist poetry, terms like "power" and "strong" are predicates (vital forces, or what have you) applicable to individuals as well as to races; that on Nietzsche's account, in the past there were "pure" races distinguishable from each other in such terms, whereas in the present the races are "mixed", so the terms only function to distinguish some individuals from each other; and that Nietzsche was anxious, delusional, and self-flattering enough to hope and even believe that he was the "prophet of a new race", as you put it, that would be distinguishable from other races in such terms.

Perhaps the "Nietzschean concept of race" is as confused as the "Nietzschean concept of instinct", blurring biological, cultural, and personal attributes with such imaginative and passionate poetic abandon as to make a hash of the whole account?

Your comment does not clarify the author of the phrase about culture we were commenting on -either by Nietzsche or yours-, nor Nietzsche's position on the "Jewish question". You seem to be trying to open up another front, but I'm not clear what it is.

How does this jive with the historical account presented in the quotation in the initial post, and with your initial reply to that post? — Cabbage Farmer

My sentence referred to someone's Darwinian interpretation of the distinction between Nietzsche's "two races": the servants and the lords. I tried to explain that Nietzsche did not understand the will to power in terms of the survival of the fittest. Noble men are strong in excellence not in ability for survival.

The rest of your commentary includes too many questions. Could we limit ourselves to one?

What Jewish question? He praises the Jews and takes digs at them, he does the same for ‘Europeans’. His main concern was the evolution of religious attitudes through human culture with particular emphasis on Christianity (which he was less than fond of).

It will take some time to pick out the relevant quotes where he talks about the ‘masses’ and the ‘individual’. You need them?

I was being brief. I thought it was reasonably common knowledge that Nietzsche compares the ‘masses’ and the ‘individual’ in terms of how moral attitudes wax and wane? Maybe I was wrong.

Talking about race and culture doesn’t make the author ‘racist’. He openly deplores racism and calls the German attitudes of the time something like the ‘lowest’ because they think of groups of people’s as being the same.

He praises the Jews and takes digs at them, he does the same for ‘Europeans’. — I like sushi

Of course, but the sharp criticism against the Jews is at the heart of his writings, while praises are generally ambiguous and circumstantial.

I don't need any quotes, unless we have a disagreement. I'm not always sure with Nietzsche and on some points quotes are welcome.

because they think of groups of people’s as being the same. — I like sushi

I strongly disagree. Nobles and servants, Aryans and Jews, French and German... are not the equals. Nietzsche's thought is extremely aristocratic. He is against any idea of equality: Christianity, socialism, anarchism, democracy and so on.

For example, if the Jewish people had any greatness in the remote past, it was when they placed themselves above all others: as Yahweh's chosen people. As soon as they began to spiritualize their language and preach love, the greatness was over.

He was open about his hatred of nationalism and anti-semitism. Anyone and anything he talked about was with derision and bombast.

The heart of his writings are not about Jews? That’s a strange thing to say. He was concerned with morality and it’s cultural development. Europe is Judaeo-Christian. He hangs far more off ancient Greek mythos than anything else.

Like I said above, he hated nationalism.

He was open about his hatred of nationalism and anti-semitism. Anyone and anything he talked about was with derision and bombast. — I like sushi

So why does he call himself "incorrigible European and anti-Semitic" in a letter to his sister Elizabeth (February 7, 1886)?

The heart of his writings are not about Jews? — I like sushi

The core of Nietzsche's theory is the criticism of morality as an invention of the powerless to undermine the values of the noble. Revenge, not justice, is at the root of morality. The revenge of the weak and spiteful against those who are more noble than they are. And the Jewish people are one of the main responsible for this "poisonous" feat. Read "The Genealogy of Morals",Treatise I, section 7. For example:

It was the Jews who, rejecting the aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy= blessed) ventured, with awe-inspiring consistency, to bring about a reversal and held it in the teeth of the most unfathomable hatred (the hatred of the powerless). — Nietzsche

Nothing that has been done on earth against ‘the noble’, ‘the mighty’, ‘the masters’ and ‘the rulers’, is worth mentioning compared with what the Jewshave done against them: the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction fromits enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge[durch einen Aktder geistigsten Rache]. — Nietzsche

On the other hand, the few times that some text is found against the anti-Semites, when and why does he do it?

Franz Overbeck, who was a commentator and close friend of Nietzsche until his last days, explains it very well:

Nietzsche was an emotional enemy of anti-Semitism as he lived it... This does not prevent him, when he speaks sincerely, from leaving all anti-Semitism far behind in severity in his judgments of the Jews. His anti-Christianity is basically based on anti-Semitism. — Franz Overbeck

You’re obsessed. I’m not. Bye bye

You’re obsessed. — I like sushi

Obsessed with what? I've simply dismantled the idealized vision you had of Nietzsche.

Maybe I was being too harsh.

I’m simply not interested in that stuff. I’m fascinated by what he has to say about religion and culture because I’m interested in how Morality relates to reasoning in general and the role of Art in society.

Everyone’s vision of others is ‘idealized’ to some degree. So what? I adore Bjork’s music - that doesn’t wholly define who I am or why I think the way I think.

In terms of aristocrat and plebeian, I read Nietzsche as stating something about intellectualism and superstition in terms of hierarchy. This echoes back to Dionysus and Apollo in ‘The Birth of Tragedy’. You can disagree, no problem. If I’m ‘wrong’ it certainly isn’t because I’m trying to paint him, or anyone else, in a certain light. It is because I take what I can from what I study and develop my own ideas and thoughts rather than faun over some guy who died hundreds or thousands of years ago - that’s for people with less imagination/time/interest.

Too hard? No. Just too disoriented.

I’m interested in how Morality relates to reasoning in general — I like sushi

If you are interested in the relationship between reason and morality I recommend The Genealogy of Morals. According to Nietzsche, morality is an invention of intelligent men. However, it is not oriented towards justice, but towards resentment and revenge. A hard thesis for good people to swallow.