First off, I think Nietzsche is utterly wrong in his assessment, and largely garbage. The idea of an Overman and the idea of some new synthesis based on master morality but without its destructive qualities, is not useful, and again, leads to people like Ayn Rand.

And as you can tell by my handle, I think his inversion of Schopenhauer simply leads to a confusing and manic philosophy of a love of life that I do not see is the case, nor endorse. So you can call me all the names you want, I see what I see in my assessment ..

From Counts own depiction of Randian characters, one can tell they ring hollow when struck with a hammer. They are black and white boring contrasts. You can clearly see Rand is a dualist who doesn't think Beyond Good and Evil. And thus she herself is merely spewing dogmatic trash, which is essentially non Nietzschean. — Vaskane

Great, but since Beyond Good and Evil is ill-defined, it will be reshaped in a sort of "fanfiction" to Nietzsche. Her "Objectivist" philosophy is just one version of it.

All because Malcom X read Nietzsche and influenced Hip Hop to do its own thing, to create for itself a world in its own image. To express the rawness of nihilism and overcoming it through self reliance and self overcoming, rather than falling in line to be the next digital text book expert at Amazon careers! Woah what a cool job. :nerd: In fact, I brought this concept up to PhD Charice Yurbin at UCLA and she absolutely loved the idea of the concept of research I was digging into, calling it "absolutely fascinating." — Vaskane

Sounds great for a thesis, but doesn't ring as some truth of anything. I don't need to read Nietzsche to understand the notion of catharsis, and sublimation. Other philosophers like Zapffe, Freud, have gone over this, and less manically and less self-importantly in their writing styles.

So, if you want to understand master morality, look at Hip Hop as a case study. There are insights that can be utilized to gain power with the masses: but the biggest truth to me is that the masses are waking up from their thousands of years within their labyrinthine slumber to cherish the concepts of the ancient world, the concepts Nietzsche brought back into the light. — Vaskane

I don't know, this actually seems to be a picture of the alt-right ideas that laid out:

Well, IMO, while the modern nu/alt-right certainly shares a lot with/ in some way grows out of more venerable right wing traditions, it is itself something new. It seems to get it's start in the late 1990s and early 2000s, being a phenomena driven by Gen X and Millennials. The biggest cultural examples I could think of would be the emergence of the "Manosphere" blogs, influencers like Andrew Tate, Roosh V, etc., the emergence of "Pick Up Artist" culture, writers like Jack Donovan, and the resurgence of machismo in more mainstream entertainment post 9/11.

A big part of the new movement is its almost total divorce from Christianity, and outright hostility to neoliberalism, particularly the ideals of free trade and free movement. Also, and embrace of post-modernism, despite often vocally decrying it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This needs to be seen within its historical context. It was a way of self-overcoming. It turns inward and makes its weakness into its strength. Their inwardness led to their power. Rather than impose rule on the world they learned to impose their will on themselves and rule themselves. Nietzsche saw this as a great advancement for mankind.

This overcoming now threatens to be man's undoing. — Fooloso4

I mean, Ayn Rand's notion of the industrialist and artist actually fits this description so I think it is more evidence that her vision embodies the Overman of Nietzsche- A sort of of master morality, but refined to a point to smooth the edges to make them maximize their capacities.. A life-affirming philosophy, blah blah.

Nietzsche and Rand had different notions of what it means to be an individual. Rand held to Liberalism's claim of the sovereign individual. Nietzsche thought that only a few are capable of becoming individuals. Rand grounds man on the low value of individual rights. Nietzsche held to the possibility of a higher man. Something achieved not given. — Fooloso4

I think you are actually just reiterating Rand's characters.. Your descriptions of Nietzsche's higher man, seems pretty much in line with Rand's, not opposed or different than it.

It's ill-defined. The fact that you cannot even define it without looking basically like Ayn Rand's characters proves that it's basically that in drag, or vice versa rather.

lmao Ayn Rand characters aren't beyond good and evil dumbass — Vaskane

Again, you haven't defined it. You gave some example that you fit into a thesis- the Hip Hop artist because he is "overcoming" his circumstances. So anytime someone turns a bad situation into something good, he is a Nietzsche Ubermensch now? Okie dokie. I'm glad we can resolve that now.

I have. He is an obscurantist asshole philosopher that is a hotbed for ill-defined ideas for thesis statements so you can then call me an asshole for not reading him on a philosophy forum. He's like continental philosophy's version of the revered analytic Wittgenstein. Overmined, and worshipped.

Read more Schopenhauer so you can fix your ideas that Nietzsche perverted :wink:

Umberto Eco is pretty good on this apparent contradiction in political narratives. His "Eternal Fascism," is a good example. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thank you for this reference. Eco's list of 14 features of ur-fascism seems rather general. But I agree, it confirms my intuitive suspicion that there is something fascist about, say, high EU politics.

I find esoterica quite interesting, but this facet of it can make trying to discuss it extremely tedious. "Oh, you don't agree with/love x, well then you absolutely cannot have understood it. It wasn't written for you." Ironic, in the esotericists themselves have a tendency to lambast competitors in stark terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Those who can't, teach" comes to mind.

Someone who is serious about their own spiritual (and other) advancement wouldn't make a point of spending their precious time reading or debating opponents and those who are less than fit.

Is this Nietzsche' s thesis? Aren't they two different outcomes?

Yes, they are two different outcomes. But the need for the Overman seems to be born out of the condition the Last Man to me.

Fukuyama's only point is that the Last Man prediction seems to have missed something. The Last Men aren't content to be bovine consumers. Global, basic recognition at the End of History collapses into being no better than no recognition at all for them. I would just add that this trend has been increased by the collapse of membership in social institutions and "digital balkanization," since Fukuyama was writing 30 years ago.

The Last Men are, in fact, enraged by their state, and yearn for conflict as a means of transforming themselves. This is ressentiment par excellence. Feelings of inadequacy and emasculation get projected on to a society that is seen as degenerate and oppressive, a tyranny of the weak and feeble minded. Hence, in our modern context, the major preoccupation with "cuckoldry," being an "alpha male" versus a "beta male," or the torrent of "Chad versus Virgin," memes. The idea of the latter is obviously that we should identify with the superior "Chad," and yet clearly the audience is also often supposed to identify with the Virgin to some extent. But the larger point is generally that society — gynocentrism, wokism, consumerism, the welfare state, etc — are what have caused us to degenerate into the "Virgin."

Is the nu-right largely a misunderstanding of Nietzsche? To some degree yes. While I agree with that Rand seems to essentially buy into the superiority of "aristocratic morality," I don't see Nietzsche as advocating a return to aristocratic morality. That said, it's easy to read him that way, and he certainly IS often read that way.

But my point is merely that it does not seem accidental that the concept of the Overman would become immensely popular with the Last Men. Nietzsche's life itself, has a lot of the same threads at the very least. A sense of being a genius who is nonetheless unappreciated, dissatisfaction with society and mainstream culture/politics, lack of any romantic success, low social standing but also the rights of a citizen and freedom from any heavy handed oppression or hard labor, starvation, etc. Biographically, we could consider the long hikes, plunging into a wilderness that one isn't actually well trained or prepared to deal with, to represent a sort of dissatisfaction with "safety net
society."

This doesn't necessarily undermine Nietzsche's philosophy. Bad people can write good moral philosophy, good logicians can act illogically. In Nietzsche's case, the unfortunate comments on women suggest he fell short of overcoming ressentiment, but he doesn't need to be an Overman for the concept to hold water.

IMO, the solution doesn't actually hold water, but that's another story.

But postmodern writers
like Nietzsche see negation as a positive, affirmative power. The influence of this thinking can be seen today in the change of language from the disabled to the differently abled, from normal and abnormal neurology to neurotypical and neuro-atypical, from pathologizing schizophrenia to the affirmative message of the Hearning Voices movement. Oliver Sacks’s positive accounts of people with Tourette’s, autism and other alterations in behavior was influenced by Nietzsche.

Yet those very movements get cited as the tyranny of the weak over the strong. I don't see a way for Nietszcheans to adjudicate these sorts of disputes. E.g., is feminism Nietzschean because it affirms woman as woman, not as some sort of defective man, or is it the weak using slave morality as a cudgel, affirmative action the chains weighing down someone like Vonnegut's Harrison Bergaron?

This leads to the "no true Nietzschean" phenomena re moral norms.

I find esoterica quite interesting, but this facet of it can make trying to discuss it extremely tedious. "Oh, you don't agree with/love x, well then you absolutely cannot have understood it. It wasn't written for you." Ironic, in the esotericists themselves have a tendency to lambast competitors in stark terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I find your failure to resonate with narcissists disturbing. :razz: :grin:

but he doesn't need to be an Overman for the concept to hold water. — Count Timothy von Icarus

With Nietzsche, I can never tell what is merely rhetoric and what is it that he really means. Perhaps it was his intention to make a point of this dichotomy.

With texts like his, I always wonder how come the author published them*, or, if the individual author isn't known, how come they've become published.

For example, why did Robert Greene publish The 48 Laws of Power? It seems contrary to those laws of power to publish them. Similar with the Chinese Art of War or Thirty-Six Stratagems.

How is it that texts praising power, strength, supremacism, cunning get published at all?
The fact that they are published contradicts their content. What gives?


(*Granted, in Nietzsche's case, the publication of his works is convoluted.)

That's a very good point. I didn't mean to portray it as necessarily universal. I wouldn't want to even actually call anyone a "Last Man," as the term is quite derogatory. When speaking of the "Last Men," what I really mean is "the people who are terrified that they are becoming Last Men." This fear is generally accompanied by the belief that most other people, at least in their society, have already succumbed to "Lastmanism." That's what kicks off the drive to struggle.

And I forgot to note in the post above that in recognizing this problem Fukuyama seems to be misreading Hegel. If a contradiction that big truly does exist in society, then it would appear that we actually have not reached the End of History.

But the need for the Overman seems to be born out of the condition the Last Man to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The last man is, as the name indicates, is one out of which nothing is born.

From Zarathustra's prologue:

Alas! There cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Lo! I show you THE LAST MAN.

“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asketh the last man and blinketh.

The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth the last man who maketh everything small. His species is ineradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.

Fukuyama's only point is that the Last Man prediction seems to have missed something. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fukuyama's thesis it that history has come to its end. This stands in stark contrast to Nietzsche's notions of self-overcoming and the eternal return. Whatever his idea of the last man is, it is not Nietzsche's.

Yet those very movements get cited as the tyranny of the weak over the strong. I don't see a way for Nietszcheans to adjudicate these sorts of disputes. E.g., is feminism Nietzschean because it affirms woman as woman, not as some sort of defective man, or is it the weak using slave morality as a cudgel, affirmative action the chains weighing down someone like Vonnegut's Harrison Bergaron?

This leads to the "no true Nietzschean" phenomena re moral norms — Count Timothy von Icarus

We each get to pick our favorite Nietzschean, the contemporary figure we believe best furthers the path of exploration laid out by Nietzsche. My choice is Deleuze. For Deleuze weakness is thinking that binds itself to a fascism of one sort or another, and the strong path is the path of revolutionary thinking, not bound to any telos, but to becoming for its own sake. liberating us from the intolerable and oppressive conventions we gravitate toward and get stuck in. For Deleuze, affirming woman as an entity in her own right is still to remain stuck in a binary that oppresses.

Behold, your overman.

Personally, I prefer the idea of the Nietzsche's Last Man to that of the Übermensch. Comfort, routine and the mundane sound pretty good to me. Needless to say, the inherent complacency it might lead to might usher in our doom (climate change, Trump, etc) but there's no reason to assume that basic quality assurance couldn't be built into our mediocracy? :wink:

I am not sure how or if it fits into the questions surrounding history but there is something visceral about Nietzsche's reaction to Pascal. The idea that another person could have lived a different life.

Such a man indeed shakes off with a shrug many a worm which would have buried itself in another; it is only in characters like these that we see the possibility (supposing, of course, that there is such a possibility in the world) of the real "love of one's enemies."What respect for his enemies is found, forsooth, in an aristocratic man—and such a reverence is already a bridge to love! He insists on having his enemy to himself as his distinction. He tolerates no other enemy but a man in whose character there is nothing to despise and much to honour! On the other hand, imagine the "enemy" as the resentful man conceives him—and it is here exactly that we see his work, his creativeness; he has conceived "the evil enemy," the "evil one," and indeed that is the root idea from which he now evolves as a contrasting and corresponding figure a "good one," himself—his very self!

11

The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the root idea "good" spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material then creates for himself a concept of "bad"! This "bad" of aristocratic origin and that "evil" out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred—the former an imitation, an "extra," an additional nuance; the latter, on the other hand, the original, the beginning, the essential act in the conception of a slave-morality—thesetwo words "bad" and "evil," how great a difference do they mark, in spite of the fact that they have an identical contrary in the idea "good." But the idea "good" is not the same: much rather let the question be asked, "Who is really evil according to the meaning of the morality of resentment?" In all sternness let it be answered thus:—just the good man of the other morality, just the aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules, but who is distorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into a new colour, a new signification, a new appearance. This particular point we would be the last to deny: the man who learnt to know those "good" ones only as enemies, learnt at the same time not to know them only as "evil enemies" and the same men who inter pares were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares, these men who in their relations with each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men are in reference to what is outside their circle (where the foreign element, a foreign country, begins), not much better than[Pg 40] beasts of prey, which have been let loose

16.

Let us come to a conclusion.The two opposing values, "good and bad," "good and evil," have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a long time in the preponderance, there are not wanting places where the fortune of the fight is still undecisive. It can almost be said that in the meanwhile the fight reaches a higher and higher level, and that in the meanwhile it has become more and more intense, and always more and more psychological; so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark of the higher nature, of the more psychological nature, than to be in that sense self-contradictory, and to be actually still a battleground for those two opposites. The symbol of this fight, written in a writing which has remained worthy of perusal throughout the course of history up to the present time, is called "Rome against Judæa, Judæa against Rome." Hitherto there has been no greater event than that fight, the putting of that question, that deadly antagonism. Rome found in the Jew the incarnation of the unnatural, as though it were its diametrically opposed monstrosity, and in Rome the Jew was held to be convicted of hatred of the whole human race: and rightly so, in so far as it is right to link the well-being and the future of the human race to the unconditional mastery of the aristocratic values, of the Roman values. What, conversely, did the Jews feel against Rome? One can surmise it from a thousand symptoms, but it is sufficient to carry one's mind back to the Johannian Apocalypse, that most obscene of all the written outbursts, which has revenge on its conscience. (One should also appraise at its full value the profound logic of the Christian instinct, when over this very book of hate it wrote the name of the Disciple of Love, that self-same disciple to whom it attributed that impassioned and ecstatic Gospel—therein lurks a portion of truth, however much literary forging may have been necessary for this purpose.) The Romans were the strong and aristocratic; a nation stronger and more aristocratic has never existed in the world, has never even been dreamed of; every relic of them, every inscription enraptures, granted that one can divine what it is that writes the inscription. The Jews, conversely, were that priestly nation of resentment par excellence, possessed by a unique genius for popular morals: just compare with the Jews the nations with analogous gifts, such as the Chinese or the Germans, so as to realise afterwards what is first rate, and what is fifth rate.

Which of them has been provisionally victorious, Rome or Judæa? but there is not a shadow of doubt; just consider to whom in Rome itself nowadays you bow down, as though before the quintessence of all the highest values—and not only in Rome, but almost over half the world, everywhere where man has been tamed or is about to be tamed—to three Jews, as we know, and one Jewess (to Jesus of Nazareth, to Peter the fisher, to Paul the tent-maker, and to the mother of the aforesaid Jesus, named Mary). This is very remarkable: Rome is undoubtedly defeated. At any rate there took place in the Renaissance a brilliantly sinister revival of the classical ideal, of the aristocratic valuation of all things: Rome herself, like a man waking up from a trance, stirred beneath the burden of the new Judaised Rome that had been built over her, which presented the appearance of an œcumenical synagogue and was called the "Church": but immediately Judæa triumphed again, thanks to that fundamentally popular (German and English) movement of revenge, which is called the Reformation, and taking also into account its inevitable corollary, the restoration of the Church—the restoration also of the ancient graveyard peace of classical Rome. Judæa proved yet once more victorious over the classical ideal in the French Revolution, and in a sense which was even more crucial and even more profound: the last political aristocracy that existed in Europe, that of the French seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, broke into pieces beneath the instincts of a resentful populace—never had the world heard a greater jubilation, a more uproarious enthusiasm: indeed, there took place in the midst of it the most monstrous and unexpected phenomenon; the ancient ideal itself swept before the eyes and conscience of humanity with all its life and with unheard-of splendour, and in opposition to resentment's lying war-cry of the prerogative of the most, in opposition to the will to lowliness, abasement, and equalisation, the will to a retrogression and twilight of humanity, there rang out once again, stronger, simpler, more penetrating than ever, the terrible and enchanting counter-warcry of the prerogative of the few! Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him the incarnate problem of the aristocratic ideal in itself—consider well what a problem it is:—Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and Superman.

17.

Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby relegated ad acta for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old conflagration? Further! Should not one wish that consummation with all one's strength?—will it one's self? demand it one's self? He who at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion,—ground enough for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly mean by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my last book: Beyond Good and Evil—at any rate that is not the same as "Beyond Good and Bad."
Note.—I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the history of morals—perhaps this book may serve to give forcible impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual professional philosophers.

"What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation?"

On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems (of the value of the valuations which have prevailed up to the present): in this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act as the spokesmen and intermediaries in these particular instances, after, of course, they have quite succeeded in transforming the relationship between philosophy and physiology and medicine, which is originally one of coldness and suspicion, into the most friendly and fruitful reciprocity. In point of fact, all tables of values, all the "thou shalts" known to history and ethnology, need primarily a physiological, at any rate in preference to a psychological, elucidation and interpretation; all equally require a critique from medical science. The question, "What is the value of this or that table of 'values' and morality?" will be asked from the most varied standpoints. For instance, the question of "valuable for what" can never be analysed with sufficient nicety. That, for instance, which would evidently have value with regard to promoting in a race the greatest possible powers of endurance (or with regard to increasing its adaptability to a specific climate, or with regard to the preservation of the greatest number) would have nothing like the same value, if it were a question of evolving a stronger species. In gauging values, the good of the majority and the good of the minority are opposed standpoints: we leave it to the naïveté of English biologists to regard the former standpoint as intrinsically superior. All the sciences have now to pave the way for the future task of the philosopher; this task being understood to mean, that he must solve the problem of value, that he has to fix the hierarchy of values. — Vaskane

Yes this idea of the "good man" being seen with resentment seems still very Randian as well. People scoff at the individualist trying to build something in the world with their ingenious, and the collectivists (the heard, the slave morality) see them as selfish, when the selfishness is the way for them to express their inner capacities and in the process transform the world. I can see the naive appeal of this, and also have many criticisms and a sort of cringiness to this whole notion.

One main difference I guess is that Rand attaches her notions in a more traditional milieu. Basically these people are just idealizations of the "Great Men" of history.. Where Nietzsche might entertain a Napoleon, she emphasizes industrialists and the like. To me it's just a different mode of the same idea. Nietzsche's can be applied more universally perhaps.. One becomes a manic transformer into a powerful agent "in general", one is applied in a certain economic model.

@Vaskane @Count Timothy von Icarus @Fooloso4

Interestingly I found this article comparing the two. It is clear this guy is an adherent of Rand, so that's the bias in trying to distance her from Nietzsche, but I think underneath this distinction you can find the comparisons pretty easily:

Hicks concludes that “differences between Nietzsche and Rand greatly outweigh the similarities.”

Rand herself dismissed Nietzsche, saying he was “a mystic and an irrationalist” preaching a “’malevolent’ universe” with an epistemology that “subordinates reason to ‘will,’ or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character.” She said he was a poet who “projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling of man’s greatness.” But she condemned him for:

…replacing the sacrifice of oneself to others by the sacrifice of others to oneself. He proclaimed that the ideal man is moved, not by reason, but by his “blood,” by his innate instincts, feelings and will to power — that he is predestined by birth to rule others and sacrifice them to himself, while they are predestined by birth to be his victims and slaves — that reason, logic, principles are futile and debilitating, that morality is useless, that the “superman” is “beyond good and evil,” that he is a “beast of prey” whose ultimate standard is nothing but his own whim. Thus Nietzsche’s rejection of the Witch Doctor consisted of elevating Attila into a moral ideal — which meant: a double surrender of morality to the Witch Doctor.

The article I started with, said: “The best way to get to the bottom of it is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt.” That is absolutely correct. If we get to the bottom of how Rand developed her ideal man, John Galt, it isn’t found in the Nietzschean elements of Renahan, or in the “purposeless monster,” Hickman. When we follow Rand’s development of her main characters, what we see is an evolution away from Renahan. She moves from criminals, who express their individualism through rebellion against society, to men who express their individuality through acts of creation. Instead of individuals who try to subordinate others to their will, her heroes are those who seek to trade value for value. You won’t find the Renahan character in Galt at all. But, in Galt you will find the repudiation of Renanhan. — Ayn Rand, Nietzsche and the Purposeless Monster

I can't make much sense out of Nietzsche's writing - I find the often histrionic prose style close to unreadable, even the Kaufman translation (but that's on me).

One main difference I guess is that Rand attaches her notions in a more traditional milieu. Basically these people are just idealizations of the "Great Men" of history.. Where Nietzsche might entertain a Napoleon, she emphasizes industrialists and the like. To me it's just a different mode of the same idea. Nietzsche's can be applied more universally perhaps.. — schopenhauer1

I think I agree with this. Jack London was another writer who sometimes thought of himself as a Nietzschean, but his account was via Herbert Spencer fused to what he called Nietzsche's 'blonde beast'. London's own journey from homelessness to best selling author of muscular fiction he often dramatized as a journey of personal self-transformation (which it was). London was probably more in the Rand mold, although he (ironically) saw himself as a socialist.

Nietzsche was right. I won't take the time to tell you who Nietzsche was, but he was right. The world belongs to the strong - to the strong who are noble as well and who do not wallow in the swine-trough of trade and exchange. The world belongs to the true nobleman, to the great blond beasts, to the noncompromisers, to the 'yes-sayers.”

― Jack London, Martin Eden

Perhaps a step form London to Rand was HL Mencken, who was also a Nietzsche enthusiast:

He (Nietzsche) believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality, a class acutely adaptable and immoral; a class bent on achieving, not the equality of all men, but the production, at the top, of the superman.”

― H.L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

I can't make much sense out of Nietzsche's writing - I find the often histrionic prose style close to unreadable, even the Kaufman translation (but that's on me). — Tom Storm

Nah. He's pretty obscurantist. It's as clear as mud to me, granted I can't read it in its original Klingon, I mean German.

I think I agree with this. Jack London was another writer who sometimes thought of himself as a Nietzschean, but his account was via Herbert Spencer fused to what he called Nietzsche's 'blonde beast'. London's own journey from homelessness to best selling author of muscular fiction he often dramatized as a journey of personal self-transformation (which it was). London was probably more in the Rand mold, although he (ironically) saw himself as a socialist. — Tom Storm

I think a lot of people at the turn of the century were influenced by Nietzsche, especially artists, writers, and the like.

Perhaps a step form London to Rand was HL Mencken, who was also a Nietzsche enthusiast:

He (Nietzsche) believed that there was need in the world for a class freed from the handicap of law and morality, a class acutely adaptable and immoral; a class bent on achieving, not the equality of all men, but the production, at the top, of the superman.”

― H.L. Mencken, The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche — Tom Storm

Yep. Rand was an admirer of Mencken, a fellow admirer of Nietzsche, and even wrote to him about it.

Or perhaps the West is engaged in neo-colonialism by trying to foist their "sexual revolution" on to other cultures, undermining gender identities people draw meaning from? :nerd:

The pluralism seems fine to me. The problem is, what happens when people who believe they are Overmen want to reshape society to fit their vision, and don't really much care what other people think given the opposing masses are slavish Last Men, practitioners of slave morality, etc.? It's not like these groups don't already bludgeon each other in the streets.

What stops such a moral system from collapsing into simple egoism or might makes right? We can say it was written for "the few," but that doesn't really resolve the problem, especially not if the higher men must "rule."

Or perhaps the West is engaged in neo-colonialism by trying to foist their "sexual revolution" on to other cultures, undermining gender identities people draw meaning from? :nerd: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Foisting and mandatory reshaping aren’t good, and not very Nietzschean. When I said that I take Deleuze to be moving further on Nietzsche’s path, I had in mind notions like this:

“…when philosophers criticize each other it is on the basis of problems and on a plane that is different from theirs and that melt down the old concepts in the way a cannon can be melted down to make new weapons. It never takes place on the same plane. To criticize is only to establish that a concept vanishes when it is thrust into a new milieu, losing some of its components, or acquiring others that transform it.”

Deleuze understood well that one cannot coerce social change. One creates an opening and hopes that others connect with it.

I'm curious and forgive the awkward wording - is it hard to get a useful reading of Nietzsche? How often do you think his work is taken into 'bad reading' territory?

I should check out Fukuyama's book. But I may like Derrida's criticism of it even more. — Vaskane

If you're looking for philosophical insight, Fukuyama's book isn't worth reading. The long and short of it is that he believed the American empire constituted peak humanity.

I'm not sure how someone remotely intelligent and well-informed could view the American empire as anything more than the regurgitation of humanity's past mistakes in a new dress. I would sooner view his work as being a deliberate work of propaganda to promote American hegemony as it appeared after the end of the Cold War.

It's honestly so shallow that even reading a critique about it is something I would consider a waste of time.

I don't hold this against them, since even modern political scientists "select on the dependant variable," all the time (e.g. "Why Nations Fail"). The analysis can still be a good vehicle for ideas, even if it's mostly illustrative. But it hardly seems like Nietzsche sets out to do a history of morals and simply "comes across his results." This is even more apparent in light of his publishing history. By the time he is publishing his mature work, he already has the core of what he wants to say laid out, and the analysis seems obviously there to support and develop those ideas, not as a form of "discovery." — Count Timothy von Icarus

He was a classical philologist, and studied ancient Greek texts from a young age. Check out his dissertation on Theognis of Megara. What sets him apart is that he actually did have a good and untainted (source texts) understanding of a part of history that was radically different than his own culture, at an ealy age. What that does, is it gives you a perspective outside of your own culture, and a point of reference from where you are able to evaluate the valuations you are given by your culture and upbringing. Lacking this external point of view, you invarialbly just end up regurgitating contemporary valuations, as many philosophers did.

So you are right that he already had his point of view made up before writing his mature works, but he did have to do a real re-evaluation of his values following a religious crisis and his classical studies at a young age, and a bit later after his falling out with Wagner and Schopenhauer... This was the impetus for his entire philosophy, and why he became a philosopher instead of a philologist, a real personal need to re-evaluate the values that were given him at the time.

He says he's read every book of Nietzsche and never found a single aphorism on Love and I pointed out well over 30 to him in just 1 book. Count largely gets his opinion of Nietzsche through material like this article you're producing.

I believe I said I did not think Nietzsche had a compelling, coherent theory of romantic/familial/Platonic love, not that he never used words rendered as "love," in translation (which you then preceded to post every instance of, regardless of if they had anything to do with the topic at hand.) "Love of fate," is not romantic love for example, just because it has the word "love," in the phrase. The incel rantings about women are the most regrettable thing the man wrote, and do not constitute a coherent theory on love.



This is a strawman. There are certainly significant problems with the core thesis re liberal democracy, but it does not reduce to "America is the greatest and society cannot get better." Rather, the Last Man thesis might suggest that liberal democracies, America included, are deeply defective.



Sure, and that all helped him be creative. It doesn't change the fact that he is a bad historian of the complexities of Jewish and Christian history.

As I pointed out, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Hegel (plus plenty more) can't all be right about the "real" reasons for historical development of Judaism and Christianity. Hegel was also a gifted student and an avid student of the Greeks from an early age. This applies for most of these guys, due to the ubiquity of classical education.

Yet Hegel and Nietzsche (and Marx, etc.) come to radically different conclusions about the origins and psychological underpinnings or Christianity. This is in part because they have been exposed to radically different aspects of the faith. For Nietzsche, the defining exposer seems to be the German Protestant moralism of his era. For Hegel, it's German mysticism, Eckhart and Boehme. As a result, they almost describe different religions despite both being smart and well educated, and indeed, different forms of Christianity, as with sects in other faiths, essentially are different religions.

What these authors all have in common is that they have explanations of religion that just happen to dovetail exactly with what they want to say re contemporary society, humanity etc. They also do not produce anything like what would be considered good professional history, glossing over millennia of extreme diversity to aid their reductive pronouncements.

My point then, is that Nietzsche is, to some extent, right in his critique of prior thinkers. People know where they want to end up and work backwards from there. This is very obvious in some cases. Early in his career, Saint Augustine is very obviously working to make catholic Christianity fit with Porphery and Plotinus. But this can't be the whole story. Because we also see stuff like Augustine abandoning his project, precisely because his own thought led him to see his project as flawed.

But this insight isn't as useful as it seems, because it turns out to be a version of the genetic fallacy. "X is wrong because its author had ignoble, ulterior motives for developing the argument," is itself a bad argument. Plenty of great philosophers, logicians, and scientists have been motivated by chips on their shoulders, a desire to bolster their faith, personal feuds, etc., but this hasn't precluded their advancements being sound.

My second point, re the Russell quote, is that you can very easily turn this same sort of analysis back on Nietzsche. This is not supposed to be a critique of the content on Nietzsche's philosophy (although I have given some of that elsewhere) but the form. Showing some line of thinking is grounded in resentment doesn't show that it is wrong.

And if it works to psychoanalyze a 2,800 year old religious tradition that has evolved across multiple continents based on scant engagement with its core thinkers, then it's certainly ok to psychoanalyze an individual based on their specific writings, letters, personal papers, and biography, which is what Russell is doing (rather uncharitably) in the quote I provided. I personally don't think this works, it devolves into insults incredibly quickly. And I personally don't find Nietzsche's history of Judaism particularly convincing, in that "slave morality," can be identified in plenty of other cultures, organically developing without Jewish influence, and because pre-Exilic Judaism actually doesn't seem to be a good candidate for the "slave morality" label. It isn't that different in many ways from all other Near Eastern societies.



That's fair. Lots of thinkers have good ideas that nonetheless need future thinkers to make workable. I don't think this gets around the problem in Nietzsche's thinking in isolation though. This is relevant in that, ironically, no philosopher tends to have modern disciples treat their corpus more as a sort of Holy Scripture (maybe Marx is a competitor here).

I personally don't see how coercion employed by the strong/higher man is unNietzschean. He seems to be saying quite the opposite in many passages.

Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Hegel (plus plenty more) can't all be right about the "real" reasons for historical development of Judaism and Christianity…My point then, is that Nietzsche is, to some extent, right in his critique of prior thinkers. People know where they want to end up and work backwards from there…
My second point, re the Russell quote, is that you can very easily turn this same sort of analysis back on Nietzsche — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you expect the “real” reasons for these developments to be available outside of all culturally influenced interpretation? And if not, how does one understand and separate the role of cultural bias from objective fact of history? What method do you prefer and which philosopher of history do you think best achieves this?

If one assumes, as I do, that the idea of empirically objective history is incoherent, this does not mean that there aren’t more and less rigorous ways to do a relativist history. Have you read Foucault’s ‘The Order of Things’ This is a relativist, or as he calls it in the book, an archeological approach to history. He describes three periods of Western history, the Classical, Renaissance and Modern chapters, and analyses each of these in terms of overarching paradigms or worldviews ( he calls these epistemes). These systems of thought encompass all modalities of culture. He focuses on linguistics, economics, biology and the human sciences. The transition from one episteme to another is guided by no logic, except that each episteme is conditioned by what precedes it.

In later Foucault works we come to understand the mechanisms of organization of an episteme via the dissemination of forces of power through societies. His focus is less about overt coercion than a bottom-up reciprocal shaping of values through the way institutions comes to establish their material relations with persons. He was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche in his understanding of the relation between power and knowledge in creating value systems and the institution's that materially express and perpetuate them. It was Nietzsche who allowed Foucualt to get away from the dialectical idealism of Hegel and dialectical materialism of Marx in understanding historical motivations.

Comfort, routine and the mundane sound pretty good to me. — Tom Storm

Me too. These days my self-overcoming amounts to disrupting my routine of sitting on the couch watching cartoons and eating Cheetos to moving to the recliner watching cartoons and eating potato chips.

Do you expect the “real” reasons for these developments to be available outside of all culturally influenced interpretation?

No. I'm actually quite a fan of speculative history.

What I am saying is that the method is easy to do poorly, and in some respects Nietzsche does it very poorly indeed. His Plato is almost a gnostic, and it is indeed hard to see why he would have become so influential. But because Nietzsche's claims do depend on the supposed failures of all prior thinkers, it is indeed relevant if past thinkers appear only as shadowy ghosts of themselves or pale strawmen. That and, it's possible to do history without commiting to the genetic fallacy.

And this is ironic since, where I think Nietzsche gets the most right, he doesn't actually differ from Plato very much. When Socrates throws back his cloak and starts spouting divinely inspired dithrayambs in praise of love he seems very Dionysian and life affirming indeed. Overcoming ressentiment, rigid ideologies, cultural biases — all in Plato. But I think that Plato also gets at other things worth overcoming, and has a good argument for why an attitude of love frees one from being externally determined. So the baby gets thrown out with the bath water and then like, half the baby gets recovered, but the claim is that our half baby is totally new, or something like that.

That, and I simply disagree with some conclusions. Socrates is a step up as the tragic hero. A man who is willing to die because he loves what is good in life so much. This is in no way a step down from Achilles, running off to pout because he had to set his rape slave free because he was getting his brethren killed in droves, who then gets his friend killed due to his sulking, and goes on a murder spree to cope. Even on purely aesthetic grounds, Socrates is more compelling, even as a heroic figure (he fights the Spartans without the benefits of invulnerability.)

These days my self-overcoming amounts to disrupting my routine of sitting on the couch watching cartoons and eating Cheetos to moving to the recliner watching cartoons and eating potato chips — Fooloso4

Oy. Your cardiovascular system may not be too thrilled with that routine.

Also, for the Nth time ... Resentment vs Ressentiment guys pretty vital to learn the difference. Sorry, resentment is an emotion that all humans experience. The strong and the weak both experience resentment. Both however don't react the same way, the fact most here cannot use the terms correctly show most shouldn't even be discussing Nietzsche. Learn his philosophy and psychology before pretending to know it. — Vaskane

Why do you suppose that Nietzsche's armchair philosophy of "slave morality" (asceticism and the like), is out of ressentiment? Just knowing this fact doesn't mean it's thus the right analysis. It is very idiosyncratic to setting up his own justification.

But either way, his concepts are loosely connected and so becomes up to the participant to make of it what they will.

If you want to provide your explanation of Nietzsche by quoting a few passages and then explaining your ideas on it, go ahead.

If you want to provide academic interpretations of it, and then provide commentary, go ahead.

But, to pretend that his writings are clear and systematic and that anyone reading them will just "get it" by reading them because the language is clear and direct, then that seems false to me. His writings are extremely idiosyncratic and obscurantist. Unlike Schopenhauer, who though lengthy in his prose, was a clear, direct writer and you can always see the plain understanding of his ideas, EVEN in his aphorisms which were meant to be short but convey some profound ideas.

So, if you would like to indicate what you (or another academic you think is accurate) got about Nietzsche's ideas, go ahead. I know that Hubert Dreyfus is a good place to start. There are others that are also a bit more accessible. But, this is one of those cases where "reading the text" doesn't necessarily get you that much closer to a more direct understanding of the author's ideas without prefacing it with some secondary literature.

What I do get from Nietzsche, I don't like, and I feel leads to even worse philosophies. Either they are trivially true, framed better by other philosophers, and are too open for any interpretation. Some think these are strengths, but I see it as tiresome and useless.

Cursory list of Nietzsche's ideas:

Will to Power:
Clearly taken from earlier ideas of Will, mainly from Schopenhauer, but instead of "will-to-live" it is "will-to-power". Will to power is more amorphous and to me, is just about individual creating their own values and overcoming challenges, embracing life etc. It's basically positive praise of the individual to become his own person.. This was treated better in an existential way by Camus giving more concrete examples of the actor and such, and Maslow with his idea of self-actualization. Both of which I think don't contend with the real problems Schopenhauer already discussed and defeated many years earlier.

Ubermensch:
Someone who is able to transcend the conventional morality and live life to its fullest. Every cocaine addled world-traveler thinks they're an ubermensch. Every punk rock drunk howling at the moon thinks he's an ubermensch. Every hipster doofus leading a bohemian lifestyle thinks he's an ubermensch. Every Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk thinks he's an ubermensch. Every dictator and cult of personality thinks he's an ubermensch. In a descriptive sense, it can describe a lot of meglomaniacal thinking. In a normative sense, it is narcissistic duschbaggery.

Eternal Reoccurrence:
Again, Schopenhauer dealt with these issues in a more nuanced and informative way. This can easily be co-opted by fitness instructors and company gurus.. Rand types actually, who want to make sure that everyone is living the best moment they can over and over, embracing the "suck". Nope, the suck just sucks, and you are not a pussy for acknowledging this. It is just life. It's juvenile to think that at every moment one is calculating the best way to live that. Why? Because if you lived to the extreme at all moments, you end up burning out, becoming homeless, dying, suffering more. But then if you claim that it requires structure as well, it just starts looking like a Randian industrialist, artist, inventor, and the like. You become exactly sublimating in the way that is conducive to society. Besides which Freud got to these ideas better with his ideas of the Id, Ego, and Superego. You can't just live as an Id.

Apollonian and Dionysian:
Again, this is better laid out by Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego. Also, Schopenhauer's theory of aesthetics is more in depth, exploring the idea of how the artist is bringing out the forms of the object, and how this temporarily stops one's will. Even if you don't agree with him, it is more explanatory.