Nietzsche discussion thread

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

Don't know if there will be much interest in this, but it seems like a lot of people here have a working knowledge of Nietzsche (from the discussion in the Buddhism thread in GC), and I've never had much of a chance to read and discuss, so I thought I'd start a thread and see what happens.

There's a link to the full text of Twilight of the Idols [url="http://www.handprint.com/SC/NIE/GotDamer.html"]here[/url].

For some context, here's the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Idols"]wiki[/url].

Let's start with the Preface and go from there if anyone's interested.

For me, the Preface is a good example of everything I can't stand about Nietzsche. I guess I just don't get it, and it seems like nothing more than a long-winded way of saying that we're going to dig out and expose the false premises that modern culture rests on.

Here's some basic background on Nietzsche's core philosophy. I'm summarizing from Wiki (naturally, anyone should feel free to disagree with the CW):

(1) Nietzsche wants to completely break down our conventional systems of morality - he thinks original moral systems were based on "master-morality" where goodness is equated with the characteristics of the strong, and that we've since adopted a "slave-morality" (as in ancient Greece) where goodness is equated with the characteristics of the weak (as in Christianity). Most would argue that Nietzsche favors a return to "master-morality."

(2) God is dead, i.e. there is no longer hope of any universal perspective (this is called perspectivism).

(3) The will to power motives all human behavior, not the will to live, or the will to be happy (I always think of this energy bar my professor had labeled "Will to Power Bar.")

(4) The ubermensch is the person we should all strive to be. He lives in [i]this[/i] world (not in hope for some other world) and he creates new values from a love of this world.

(5) The eternal recurrence is a thought experiment. Your life choices should lead to a state where you could be comfortable with every aspect of your life playing out over and over in exactly the same way for all eternity (some people think it's more than a thought experiment, but I think they're crazy so I'll leave it to someone else to describe the alternative).

Also, I'd say in Twilight of the Idols the focus is on (1) and (2).

ETA: Also, we're throwing a lot of technical terms around, and a lot of stuff from other philosophers, but a philosophical discussion should never be a name dropping game. If anyone wants an explanation of something, please ask. The terms are just shorthand. And please don't feel like you shouldn't contribute if you're not inclined to throw out the original Greek or don't know what prostitute Nietzsche got syphilis from, etc.

[Rhom]

Everything I learned about Neitzsche I learned from [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenosaga"]XenoSaga[/url]. ;)

[Bellis]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1289034' date='Mar 26 2008, 12.02']There's a link to the full text of Twilight of the Idols [url="http://www.handprint.com/SC/NIE/GotDamer.html"]here[/url].[/quote]

Cool. I'm down with smashing idols. :)

Dunno how much more I have to add here, I'll probably let you and Coco and others with formal training in philosophy take over, but I'll probably lurk this. (I'll also be away next week, further limiting my participation).

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

[quote name='Bellis' post='1289131' date='Mar 26 2008, 14.00']Cool. I'm down with smashing idols. :)

Dunno how much more I have to add here, I'll probably let you and Coco and others with formal training in philosophy take over, but I'll probably lurk this. (I'll also be away next week, further limiting my participation).[/quote]

Let me ask you this - I'm normally pretty hostile to this kind of characterization, but is there anything in the way he writes that strikes you as particularly [i]male[/i]? I can't shake it, and I'm not really sure what I mean either.

[ztemhead]

k let me pick up some at the store. I can't read that much online without my eyes bugging out, and besides, Nietzsche is cool to have on your bookshelf. So says Steve.

[Jacen]

Didn't he used to play for the Green Bay Packers? :P

No, seriously. I've tried to read him because I know I'm supposed to like someone so dark, highly referenced, and God is dead and all that. Besides, he took a rockin' side profile photo, gotta hand that to him.

[url="http://www.arikah.net/commons/en/2/23/Nietzsche1882.jpg"]http://www.arikah.net/commons/en/2/23/Nietzsche1882.jpg[/url]

Never could get through Thus Spake Zarathustra. Always prefered Voltaire for readability.

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

[quote name='ztemhead' post='1289143' date='Mar 26 2008, 13.09']k let me pick up some at the store. I can't read that much online without my eyes bugging out, and besides, Nietzsche is cool to have on your bookshelf. So says Steve.[/quote]

OK. If you want to get more than just Twilight, I have "The Portable Nietzsche," edited and translated by Walter Kaufman, generally considered the foremost Nietzsche expert. It has helpful commentary.

The title is also kinda hilarious, IMO. As if I've got my own little syphallitic Friedrich riding around in my front pocket.

Also, here are excerpts from Kaufman's preface for Twilight:

[quote]Nietzsche's last productive year, 1888, was also his most productive. He began with [i]The Wagner Case[/i] and ended with [i]Nietzsche contra Wagner[/i], and in between he dashed off [i]Twilight of the Idols[/i], [i]The Antichrist[/i], and [i]Ecce Homo[/i]. [b]These books are sometimes dismissed as mere products of insanity, and they certainly manifest a rapid breakdown of the author's inhibitions....[i]Twilight of the Idols[/i] is relatively calm and sane [compared to the others], except for it's title; and none of his others works contains an equally comprehensive summary of his later philosophy and psychology....

The spectacular title was an afterthought. Nietzsche has become interested in Francis Bacon, and his own discussion of "The Four Great Errors" probably reminded him of Bacon's "Four Idols." Hence the thought of varying Wagner's title, Gotterdamerung, by coining Gotzen-Dammerung, "Twilight of the Idols." When he wrote the preface, the title was still to be [i]A Psychologist's Idleness[/i]. But...his worshipful admirer Peter Gast wrote..."The title...sounds too unassuming to me when I think how it might impress other people: you have driven your artillery on the highest mountains, you have such guns as have never yet existed, and you need only shoot blindly to inspire terror all around...So I beg you...a more sumptuous, more resplendent title!" Such adulatory flattery was surely what Nietzsche needed least right then. He changed the title and added as a subtitle "How One Philosophizes With a Hammer." It is usually assumed that he means a sledge hammer. The preface, however, from which the image is derived as an afterthought, explains: idols "are here touched with a hammer as with a tuning fork."

This was the last work Nietzsche himself published; when it came out in January 1889 he was insane and no longer aware of any of his works.[/quote]

[Bellis]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1289134' date='Mar 26 2008, 13.04']Let me ask you this - I'm normally pretty hostile to this kind of characterization, but is there anything in the way he writes that strikes you as particularly [i]male[/i]? I can't shake it, and I'm not really sure what I mean either.[/quote]

Just from the preface, I'm noticing the tone is very impersonal, almost fragmented. I notice that the verb tenses are infinitive, there is no subject to a lot of the sentences. Even when he talks about himself, he's using metonymy, "my evil eye", it's fragmented. Could be the translation from German? But it might be a stereotypical male trait. That's as far as I get.

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

[quote name='Jacen' post='1289146' date='Mar 26 2008, 13.12']Never could get through Thus Spake Zarathustra. Always prefered Voltaire for readability.[/quote]

God, really, neither can I. But other Nietzsche is nowhere near that tedious. Skip to the second section titled "Maxims and Arrows" and you'll see what I mean.

I prefer Voltaire's philosophy of tending your own garden more than Nietzsche's, which makes me think of The Red Dragon. "Mrs. Leeds...[i]changing[/i]!!!" *shivers*

[quote name='Bellis' post='1289158' date='Mar 26 2008, 13.19']Just from the preface, I'm noticing the tone is very impersonal, almost fragmented. I notice that the verb tenses are infinitive, there is no subject to a lot of the sentences. Even when he talks about himself, he's using metonymy, "my evil eye", it's fragmented. Could be the translation from German? But it might be a stereotypical male trait. That's as far as I get.[/quote]

Ooh. Interesting. Thanks. Anybody know if it's the German?

And, as always, it could've been the syphilis. ;)

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

On the actual subject of breaking down our traditional ideas about ethics, or our idols, I'd like to get into this conflict between Christian and Greek ideas that came up in the Wiki article on Nietzsche's morality, and which I'm going to guess from the preface will be pretty prominent here.

First, as I'm sure many of you know, Nietzsche was formally trained as a classical philologist (a precursor of linguistics), not a philosopher. So, he was extremely familiar with ancient Greek philosophy.

I've only had a little Greek philosophy, but in my experience, it's both strange and very striking how different their pre-Christian conception of morality was, and also how much Christianity has pervaded our thinking even today about ethics and morality.

For instance (and I apologize if I've written about this on the board before), my class had a really hard time getting past the idea in Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics that a person who was raised to follow a particular ethical code could be just as good of a person as someone who came to that same code of ethics themselves, if not better. For the Greeks, the person who was "bad" once might become so again, whereas there's little chance that the person who's been conditioned to be ethical will falter.

Totally [i]weird[/i] right? We're so immersed in this Christ in the Desert/Christ on the Cross/goodness through suffering conception that it's hard to grasp and feels innately wrong. I can see why Nietzsche would say that modern ethics is slave-morality. It glorifies suffering.

(On the other hand, from a historical perspective, wasn't it the Greeks who really responded to Christianity first???)

[Serious Callers Only]

Weren't all those nation-states slave-holders? Seems like fertile ground for Christ. Besides wasn't that much later in Roman Empire days, the time of the roman agro-oligarchy?

[Guest Domaine Raidneé]

Yes and yes. And many of the Roman slaves were in fact Greek. So maybe that's the explanation.

The Romans themselves were initially hostile to Christianity until Constantine issued the Edict of Milan removing the penalties for professing Christianity in 313 A.D.

[Dinsdale!]

A few things.

Classical Philology isn't really linguistics now so much as Classics. Basically he was a professor of ancient Greek literature and philosophy.

He also has the bible more or less memorized as a young child. His father was a Lutheran(?) Minister.

God is dead. Which is to say he no longer has meaning in our life. Morality ultimately depends on this arbitrary authority for validation.

Nihlism is everywhere. And it's bad life destroying etc. A post-nihlist morality is needed.

[Harlot]

I haven't read TOTI in over 15 years but I still have a beat up copy of Kaufman somewhere around here. I'll dig it out and try to contribute something intelligent in the near future beyond my hazy recollections of master-slave moralities and FN's worship of Napoleon as the model ubermensch.

[Dinsdale!]

The Preface is a convoluted explanation of the title

Title
Twilight of the Idols:
By this he means old ideas and the ancient sages that we worship. We turn them into hollow shadows of themselves, and in doing so fail to come to terms with them for who/what they are.

Subtitle
How to Philosophize with a Hammer:
This is a reference to checking reflexes by tapping the knee with a small hammer.
In the context of the idols, the image conjured is of going up to a statue of a war hero in a public park. Tap it with a hammer and listen for the reverberations. You will notice something - it is hollow, without substance.

An Aside.
When Nietzsche talks about war, he doesn't literally mean battle. He means painful self-inspection, overcoming your lower desires, etc.

[Dinsdale!]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1289174' date='Mar 26 2008, 14.30']Ooh. Interesting. Thanks. Anybody know if it's the German?[/quote]

I just took a look, and I think it's the German.
German: [url="http://www.textlog.de/3573.html"]http://www.textlog.de/3573.html[/url]

The preface is definitely metered. It's prose poetry. That's why it translates so awkwardly. Reading it aloud in German it actually sounds nice.


P.S. On the male-ness issue. Nietzsche was an amazing fucking sexist. It's pretty clear to me from his biography and writings that the dude couldn't figure out the opposite sex, and was slightly bitter about it.

[MattD]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1289216' date='Mar 26 2008, 14.50']I can see why Nietzsche would say that modern ethics is slave-morality. It glorifies suffering.[/quote]
And self-repression, yes. In the Western philosophical tradition, citizens of modern societies accept limits to their own behavior in exchange for guarantees that others will accept the same limits. This, says Nietzsche, is a slave morality because only slaves would accept it: masters would have no need. Nietzsche's conception of freedom was a positive one, while most of the modern Western tradition is based on negative-freedom, freedom [i]from[/i] things, as protection from the abuses of others. For Nietzsche, true freedom was the freedom to be able to [i]do[/i] things and maximize one's own potential without accepting limits tailored to the lowest common denominator.

[Nous]

[quote name='Domaine Raidneé' post='1289216' date='Mar 26 2008, 14.50']I've only had a little Greek philosophy, but in my experience, it's both strange and very striking how different their pre-Christian conception of morality was, and also how much Christianity has pervaded our thinking even today about ethics and morality.[/quote]
For one thing, they were egoistic to a degree that became impossible after Christianity. Whether it was Democritos's 'euthymia' or cheerfulness, Aristotle's 'eudaimonia' or well-being, or Epicurus's 'ataraxia' or tranguility, in their view virtue was good for you and the purpose of ethics was benefit the self. Their word for virtue, 'arete', is the same as excellence. Even Socrates's (or Plato's) argument on why evil is caused by ignorance relies on the idea that virtue in advantageous. (I'm not quite sure how stoics fit into this.)

[PhoenixFlame]

Call me a cliché lover, but I've always loved that line "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back." While some of his other ideas were pretty crazy, I saw the truth to that particular line one day.

As for his misogynistic views, part of it had to do with Lou Salomé, a woman he was in love with. She attracted people left and right because she loved philosophy, sharing a lot of Nietzsche's views. She was also very independent and quite cruel and manipulative. When he proposed though, she was basically "Pfft, hell no," and skipped off. It broke his heart and made him a laughingstock, while his sister could only whack him one and say "I told you so." Of course it's no excuse, but I think it played a part.

I guess what always struck me about him was how divided he was. On the one hand, he'd be cynical and icy in his views...then he'd turn around and say "What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil."

[Eddison]

What is this strange forum where people discuss instead of argue?

Anyway, I'm here.