Nietzsche reading tips - Page 4

Ted Striker · September 13, 2003, 14:40

Nietzsche tip #1: Don't read Nietzsche

Maniac · September 13, 2003, 14:49

If that's all you have to say, please don't bother posting in this thread...

Ted Striker · September 13, 2003, 14:52

Well it's probably the best tip you're gonna get son

Elok · September 13, 2003, 15:44

I've read Genealogy of Morals. I wasn't impressed. The long and short of it all was the glorification of barbarity. He goes into no detail about the kind of revolution his ideals would entail, despite the fact that they essentially undo the entire basis of human civilization. Mercy is cruel insofar as it hurts your enemy's pride-WTH? Does he honestly think the entire human race is as deplorably priggish as he is? Does he ever give ANY explanation as to why his brand of nihilism is correct? Any attempt to apply it to the world would result in the rapid collapse of society as we know it, to be replaced by a "creation" built out of rubble and the bodies of the dead, the only resources there would be left to use after such a cataclysm. Honestly, the man was insane. Any genius he possessed was undermined beyond any hope of salvation by his mental instability.

GePap · September 13, 2003, 18:41

The point of philosophy is to understand the root of our ideas, NOT to create any system on eart. When Socrates holds a dialogue ont he nature of language, that has **** to do with a prescription for life, so where you got the notion that a philosopher must come with a theory for life, I do not know.

Now, it nice to see that you decide to act as if you were his own personal psychiatrist..but you were not. And his final state of mind has no more to do with his output than it does with the works of someone like Howard Hughes.

Quote:

Mercy is cruel insofar as it hurts your enemy's pride-WTH? Does he honestly think the entire human race is as deplorably priggish as he is?

"priggish"? And in reading the book it should have been clear that he does NOT think the vast majority of man would or could make the leap forward. No, he is NOT interesed in creating a new society: that is NOT his aim, his aim is to probe what he feels is a life-negating world (and while he comes close to nihilism, the one thing he most despises is nihilism) which undermines the ability of people to create and enjoy life.

But you know what? Why continue to argue with someone that read him and misunderstood him?

Drake Tungsten · September 13, 2003, 19:31

Quote:

It caused people to question traditional morality and that, I advance, improved life .

Traditional morality

Elok · September 14, 2003, 14:29

I know that isn't his aim. That's precisely the problem I have with him, in case you haven't been listening for the past page and a half. And ideas, regardless of their "roots," mean nothing if they cannot be applied to human life or used as a basis for our decisions in some form. To paraphrase an old riddle, if a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, nobody has any genuine reason to care, now, do they? All Nietzsche's readers can do is feel smug and superior as they screw up their lives.
And if you're going to sulk, you needn't post to inform me of it.