It was partly the fault of the original baity title, but what a trainwreck the bulk of this thread turned out to be. If ever there were an occasion to dust off pg's old phrase, "the middlebrow dismissal", here we have it.
Discussions celebrating one's own and mutual ignorance, with people shooting whatever cheap shots pop up about a great thinker, writer, and soul, make me cringe to be part of HN.
There is a morbid interest in seeing how internet discussions, viewed as a whole, behave like a physiological process—perhaps a digestive organ, turning waste of one kind into waste of another.
Aw I didn't think it was so bad. It's not a philosophy site. (I just read through it, having been promised an entertaining 'trainwreck'.) I've seen much worse. And he's one of the most flamebaity of philosophers. Makes me curious - what's the biggest 'trainwreck' you remember?
Many of Nietzsche's ideas are almost entirely antithetical to the cultural sensibilities of HN so the discussion that you're going to get on here is not going to be that great.
This piece presents an exceptionally shallow introduction and survey of Nietzsche's body of thought. If you get into reading Nietzsche with the intent of learning how to live better you're going to have an impossible time.
If you're interested in reading Nietzsche I'd recommend first reading more philosophy and history (the things Nietzsche studied) in order to get some context for the things he says. It's pretty much impossible to understand what he's talking about unless you have that knowledge since his works are (in large part) a critical analysis of the nature and evolution of the modes of human thought and behavior.
> Many of Nietzsche's ideas are almost entirely antithetical to the cultural sensibilities of HN so the discussion that you're going to get on here is not going to be that great.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on:
1. What is/are the cultural sensibilities of HN?
2. Which ideas are antithetical to them?
My guess is that whatever your answer to item 1 above, you'll be downvoted and hated by those who disagree (I think HN spans a vast array of viewpoints personally), so maybe it's best not to answer. It is a sincere question tho.
Meh. Everyone is fucked up in some way, usually in a way that's a product of their times (classic example: Jefferson and slavery).
Always seemed to me that critical thinking is partly about sorting the good shit from the bad; to put it another way, this is why it's important to not trust authority just because it's authority. Evaluate each thing on its own merits (as best as your capabilities the situation allows) and go from there.
As a general principle I agree though I would go a step further and encourage more humility when a particular concept evokes a visceral emotional response. That could be a sign that it the product of the times you yourself are living in.
I take issue with Nietzsche's skepticism and derision of democracy but I'm willing to entertain his arguments and perspective. Carl Jung put forth a theory in his Psychological Types that Nietzsche's particular views on democracy were a reaction to his particular historical circumstances which makes sense to me.
tl;dr - Nietzsche was the result of his times when it comes to women.
I believe many people here have differentiated opinions. There wouldn't be a ban because you e.g. quote the bible, although it has some really misogynistic lines, especially if you want to challenge opinions in an intellectually challenging way. Many people are open for discussions - I mean, 80% of HN's value stems from being a platform where you can procrastinate easily.
I read Thus Spoke Zarathustra when I was pretty depressed. It gave me some hope and induced changes in me. It helped me to shake up my thoughts and look at myself in a new angle, if nothing more.
I just finished reading Irvin Yalom's "When Nietzsche wept", and though it probably didn't give a fair view of Nietzsche philosophy, it was great anyway :) Probably make it much nicer than it actually is.
I've read two books by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre that deal with many of the issues Nietzsche was interested in and point out some flaws in Nietzsche's arguments. They are After Virtue and Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity. MacIntyre thinks that Nietzsche got a lot right, but overlooked some things and made some assumptions that put him down the wrong path. If you're going to use Nietzsche as a guide for how to live it's worth reading some criticism of him as well.
MacIntyre is very good. But I wouldn't so much say that he points out flaws in Nietzsche's arguments, as argues that Nietzsche is not the appropriate answer to the problem of modern thought as he sees it. But very few people agree with MacIntyre's 'problem': that because we have inherited the remnants of pre-modern moral and political thought, while rejecting the metaphysical beliefs with gave them their original coherence, we must either turn back (to Aristotelianism), or give up on moral philosophy.
There are three obvious problems with this: (1) the historical story is only partially true; (2) it is not at all difficult to rework pre-modern beliefs within a modern and secular framework; (3) this whole argument depends on a very particular view of what 'moral philosophy' is and can be.
IMO the best introduction to Nietzsche is Christopher Janaway's 'Beyond Selflessness', though it concentrates on the Genealogy of Morality. It's also worth reading Walter Kaufmann's 'Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist' - the book that originally rehabilitated Nietzsche's image in the English-speaking world in the 1950s. Before that, Nietzsche was either ignored, or thought of as proto-fascistic (Nietzsche's sister, who controlled Nietzsche's papers after he fell into insanity, famously had an important role in this. Hitler helped her open a Nietzsche archive).
Yeah, that's probably a better summary of his attitude towards Nietzsche. Thanks for the recommendations. I have read most of Beyond Good and Evil, but am not too familiar with his thought except secondhand.
No, I don't believe that. My point is two things. Just as a matter of fact, most modern (Western) moral and political thought is at least influenced by, and in many cases a conscious secular reworking of, Judeo-Christian beliefs. That is true of a lot of the so-called 'greats', and is true of our political culture more generally. In that sense, we can tranpose pre-modern beliefs into a modern framework, because we have.
The other point is that I don't think there is some kind of special philosophical condition of coherence characteristic of pre-modern, or specifically Aristotelian, philosophy, which has now been irretrievably lost. MacIntyre only thinks that because he
is an Aristoelian.
I personally think the search for an 'objective' basis for morality is philosophically wrongheaded, and that the belief that morality either is objective or entirely meaningless is complete nonsense.
Hans Sluga, Politics and the Search for the Common Good
Both are very sceptical of the attempt to formulate a general theory of how the world should be in the abstract. They have a different take on political theory.
Geuss also recently wrote a brilliant series of intellectual portraits of ten or so figures from the history of moral/political thought, which is extraordinarily incisive, but also very accessible. It's called Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno.
Evolutionary psychology and even game theory hint at the possibility that morality has objective qualities that are advantageous for (human) societies.
I mean, what does advantageous mean (and who gets to decide what advantageous means)?
The Chinese government was able to pull a ton of people out of poverty and into the middle class with a system of governance that most Westerners find, on balance, to be too costly to individual civil rights for the benefits it produces. Whatever side of the debate you are on you have to acknowledge that there are very real differences in foundational moral principals. While I don’t doubt that some moral principals can be derived from psychology, all things being equal, the problem is that our most fundamental moral disagreements are always very complicated and always involve placing valence on multiple projected outcomes.
I don’t understand how people so easily dismiss Nietzche’s central philosophical claims when a good chunk of modern philosophy and indeed the terrible history of the first half of the 20th century has largely vindicated him.
It’s not like it even matters as a point of debate though, as we will see who is right very soon.
Look around: objective morality indeed! We are generating the worst negative externalities we have ever generated as a species and we placate ourselves because we have democratized the blame.
If this is a moral generation then I would like to know whoever was immoral. We’re about to destroy each other at scales unheard of, but because it’s through the environment and not through war we have rendered ourselves inculpable.
At least pre-Modern Aristolean morality forced people to think of their obligations to their community.
That is very silly. How would a descriptive fact about the world (e.g. what is of evolutionary adaptive advantage for humans) ground an objective moral 'ought'?
What you are really saying, I'm guessing, is that humans have certain altruistic or moral capacities, and that there are certain game-theoretic principles that suggest how we might act in our collective self-interest.
Note that both of those things depend on false conditions: we are adapted to an environment which is not our present one; highly idealised game-theoretic situations tell us little about the complex realities of politics, history, economics, etc.
And what is valuable is not what is in our evolutionary advantage hundreds of thousands of years ago, or what is game-theoretically in our collective self-interest. And again, neither of these things can possibly ground an 'objective' basis to morality. You are confusing the descriptive sense of morality (as a feature of animal systems) with its normative sense.
> That is very silly. How would a descriptive fact about the world (e.g. what is of evolutionary adaptive advantage for humans) ground an objective moral 'ought'?
We are basically talking about different things although we use the same words (descriptive vs normative sense). It's basically defining words (like "ought" in the context of objectivity) and drawing conclusions. Calling my line of thinking "silly" shows me that there is a chance that I didn't specify the semantics in a way that they make sense for you in that context.
Parent asked
> Are you arguing we can root morality in objectivity?
And I hinted at the possibility that you could use certain scientific insights to build a framework which uses a certain kind of objectivity (which depends on your definition of objectivity - here I use it for scientific thinking).
If this fits someone who is scientific-minded (it certainly isn't enough for me to be a sound framework, so I agree with you that making descriptive facts a foundation for ones' morality is definitely lacking in some important qualities), this line of thinking can be used by that individual to say "I think morality has roots in objectivity".
I'm not stating my opinion here, it's more about arguments that could be used by individuals who want to have this kind of framework for themselves. I definitely see the limits in this (like you), but I was just trying to answer the question from a different angle.
Basically I was talking about people who could say things like "There is no god, we haven't seen him and the meaning of life is to reproduce" - scientific-minded people who elevate descriptive aspects so they become the foundation of their belief system. For them, there certainly can be morality in objectivity with those aspects (psychology, game theory) - although you and I don't have to agree with that because it may look one-dimensional to us.
edit: I found that perspective interesting because there are people who call themselves scientific-minded who dismiss the possibility that morality has roots in objectivity, so I found it worthwhile to show this angle.
> his real allegiance lay with the Dionysian, as his life and work went on to attest
I've argued this before but my personal opinion was Nietzsche was primarily concerned with challenging orthodoxy. He felt that people submit to moral authority without really considering why a particular set of principles are favored or from where that authority comes. As such he often played the devil's advocate trying his level best to show that the out-of-favor principles had some real advantages.
He often laments that people will misunderstand him and I think this is what he meant. He was working at a higher level of abstraction and knew people would focus on his examples rather than his higher meaning. I don't think he was aligned with the Dionysian as much as he was trying to defend it well enough to show that the Apollonian was no more objectively valid.
Is that dismissal based on an serious engagement with his work?
I'd be interested in seeing an argument why one should not let N be a guide. It would be nice (and unexpected) if that argument was informed by an actual reading of N's main works.
(disclaimer: didn't/couldn't read article) Well, that's a rather snooty, snarky comment.
Do you really want Nietzsche to be your guide in this subject? Of course not, geez. I didn't think the GP 'suggested a dismissal' of N, but of him as a one's guide to Better Living, which sounded very reasonable to me. And anyone familiar with N's writing can hopefully imagine many reasons why one might think that. It's sheer bluff to sound as if it's an unexpected or unreasonable question.
(I had written a page in answer, e.g. starting 'Did he ever even have a girlfriend?', and started rounding up amusing and acute quotes from Chesterton and Santayana[0], but decided against including any of that. I'm a huge Nietzsche fan so answering properly would take a while; I decided your remark wasn't worth it. Sorry.)
[0] Chesterton's Heretics and Orthodoxy contain good (and funny) critiques of Nietzsche, as do many of his other works, e.g. Varied/Twelve Types and GBS. Santayana's wonderful Egotism in German Philosophy has chapters on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Nietzsche is one of the great poeple of history. Such people often live short or troubled lives. Ie, Alexander, Joan of Arc, Mdm Curie or Van Gogh.
Often, the tragedy and the greatness are deeply connected.
This is, I think, the motivation behind formulating the idea of the Will to Power.
The question, if you can chose: What is better, to be a great person, one that makes a lasting (hopefully positive) mark on the world, or to be a happy nobody, instantly forgotten when you die?
Everyone is entitled to their own answer to that question.
My fates long since by Thetis were disclosed,
And each alternate, life or fame, proposed:
Here if I stay, before the Trojan town,
Short is my date, but deathless my renown;
If I return, I quit immortal praise
For years on years, and long-extended days.
Convinced, though late, I find my fond mistake,
And warn the Greeks the wiser choice to make;
To quit these shores, their native seats enjoy,
Nor hope the fall of heaven-defended Troy.
I think of Elon more as a modern Nocola Tesla. (As does, it seems, Elon himself.)
The closest current analogy to Nietzsche would be Jordan Peterson, I think. Their problem definitions are very similar (ie to fight nihilsm), but it seems to me that Nietzsche's proposed path is more heroic, but also harder.
I agree completely on Elon; that’s probably the same fate other tech greats will be granted as well.
While Peterson’s most basic premise to “fight against nihilism”, is respectable I don’t think he is philosophically well-equipped enough to have the same lasting effect as Nietzsche—if you listen to his arguments it’s clear that he’s quite ignorant of a whole swath of philosophical developments that have occurred in the past few decades. His arguments are not sophisticated. Someone with a basic education in the humanities can craft them just as easily. His whining about the death of individuality is also shallow—he doesn’t even realize the very shape of the concept of induiviudality itself has changed over time. He’s praying for the ressurection if old concepts, which is a method the ignores the particularités and needs of our own historical situation. Part of this could be a result of his trying to reach a wide audience, part of it could be his lack of capability, idk. At any rate, even though Nietzsche has an aphorism about writing for your readers it’s clear he himself didn’t do so, and his reknown partly stems from the uniqueness of his style, which is impeccable. In this regard Peterson doesn’t hold a candle to Nietzsche. Of course he may still be remembered, given he’s speaking for a different era, but idk, lacking argumentative or stylistic ingenuity typically doesn’t net you a spot in the hall of fame.
It sounds like you know more of this than me. Do you have any specifics in mind about the change in the concept of individuality?
That said, I also see Peterson as clearly adding much less than Nietzsche (if anything at all) on pure philosophy. He is a psychologist, first and foremost, that happens to draw on some concepts from philosophy and biology (developed by others) for the purpose of providing a path for people (mostly young men) that have lost the sense of purpose.
In this confrontation with the inner emptiness, he seems to grapple with the same problem as Nietzsche, but with a more practical approach.
Indeed, as a clinical psychologist, his task is precisely to formulate it in a way that can reach people.
For those who have never had any serious struggles with the problem (nihilism, lack of purpose), he probably looks like a quack.
In that case, Tesla would have lived and died happier if he'd had a Musk around to help him find a way to scalably and sustainably bring what he invented to the world.
I disagree that Nietzsche is one of the great people of history. I believe he's currently fashionable at the moment because of the West's love affair with narcissistic self-imagining, but the obsession will pass when we grow up and get over it.
Jane Austen made greater contributions to the Western dialectic but we tend to dismiss her as a 'mere' novelist. I submit that we'll have grown up as a society when we start to recognize that Austen, with her emotional maturity and capacity to give her characters real, palpable depth, was the far greater figure.
He's been one of the most influential philosophers in the 20th century, both through Heidegger's influence -- especially in France, and through neo-Marxist (Frankfurt school) engagement with him. Finally there's Freud and his school of psychoanalysis, who took a lot of inspiration from N.
The parts of Freudian psychoanalysis that have not passed the test of time (e.g. Oedipus complex, sexual differentiation, theory of homosexuality) clearly don't come via Nietzsche, whereas Freud's approach to memory and its malleability by our desires and hopes, which is most clearly from N, is not only alive and kicking, but as far as I can tell, now (in suitably modernised form) the dominant understanding of memory in contemporary psychology.
> whereas Freud's approach to memory and its malleability by our desires and hopes, which is most clearly from N, is not only alive and kicking, but as far as I can tell, now (in suitably modernised form) the dominant understanding of memory in contemporary psychology.
It's like saying that homeopathy principles are sound because vaccines are also based on `things that make you sick`.
I'd rather suggest you try to get a copy of `the black book of psychoanalysis` as I completely subscribe to the views developed in it and it'd be more on the point than any tldr; I might give you. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/25/books.france
I don't understand what you are trying to say. I merely pointed to the undisputed popularity of psychoanalysis in much of the 20th century, and Nietzsche's undisputed influence on it, especially the conception of memory. This is orthogonal to questions of whether psychoanalysis is right or wrong. The
Guardian article adds nothing to my claims about popularity and influence.
I'm not sure what you mean. My position on N, memory and influence on P.A. has been consistent and clear, as far as I can see.
I'm not terribly interested in reading about P.A.: it's dead branch of psychology, and has been dead for a long time. There are plenty of books / articles describing the shortcomings of P.A. some of which I've read.
You're saying that because he's respected by some academics, he is objectively worthy of respect. But that's contingent on those very same academics being worthy of respect. And I'm not sure that they are, personally.
This is a major problem in academia and other areas. The academics end up being judged by fellow academics, and any claim to merit becomes completely circular. That's how you end up with things like Brutalist architecture -- it's because the architects are seeking approval from fellow architects; and not the people who have to live in, and around, what they build.
Even worse, those academics who "suck up" to other academics end up having the favour returned to them. He scratches your back, you scratch his, then he scratches yours again... You end up with citation rings.
The person you're responding to never made a claim to objectivity. The fact that someone is one of the most influential figures in the history of twentieth century thought and culture is, in my view, a very good reason to engage with them. If you care about our common world, and its history, then you may well want to understand Nietzsche.
I realized that due to my life experiences, I see the world through the slave morality. Basically that there is a lot of subjectivity when it comes to good and evil, that the world isn't so black and white. For example land developers might see growth as a completely noble endeavor, whereas environmentalists might see the sin of destroying mother nature. I'm pretty solidly in that second group about a great many things.
So just to throw an idea out there - I wonder if today's conservatives follow the master morality, whereas today's liberals follow the slave morality. Note that this wasn't always true - for example republicans used to be the party of Lincoln (liberators of slaves) and southern democrats used to be slave masters. But I'm asking about today. Is this completely off base or is it an insight that could be used to find some common ground?
I rediscovered the classic "wear sunscreen" column/commencement speech recently and I was reminded of this quote:
"Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth."
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After reading both to some extent (but Schopenhauer in great depth), IMHO Nietzsche is just wanna-be Schopenhauer. He even admits this in an essay dedicated to Schopenhauer IIRC!
He was a weird person, just like the article portraits him to be. He might have been unstable mentally, to say the least.
Not sure if he was in a position to tell others how to live.
He kinda reminds me of Weininger; I mentally group them together as "awkward philosophers with some insane ideas masquerading as deep thoughts" even though he was technically a philologist.
"There is a false saying: "How can someone who can’t save himself save others?" Supposing I have the key to your chains, why should your lock and my lock be the same?" (Nietzsche)
You don't. You try the key on the lock, and if it doesn't work you keep looking for another key. Nietzsche is saying "I FOUND A KEY! Anyone care to try it in their lock?"
Eh, that might be a bit more euphemistic than I meant to be, but the point is there.
> He might have been unstable mentally, to say the least.
No doubt about it. He was clearly going mad as he got older. The cause of the madness is debatable, but a commonly accepted theory is that he contracted Syphilis from a prostitute early in life, and it killed him in the end.
That said, I don't think his madness nullifies his ideas, or even discredits them. I haven't studied him in depth, but the works of his that I have read have elements of genius embedded in them. Some are boring and observational, but some are deep and profound.
Regarding Nietzsche as a wanna-be Schopenhauer, this is not a fair representation at all IMHO. He was certainly influenced and had a lot of respect for Schope, but he contributed a ton of unique material and took some views very different from Schope. There is a lot of nuance in his criticism of Schope's nihilism that I think reflect his devotion to study and understanding, and respect for past thinkers, not just a pale imitation.
Mainly with the "ad", because that article is about the book, not the actual interpretation that might be insightful (or not) in some way.
Besides, much of Nietzsche's late work was indeed rambling, the guy was severely depressed, even mad at the end. It doesn't discredit his entire work, but that fact must be kept in mind dealing with it. His (even crazier) sister publicized some of his works that never were intended by him to reach public. But they did, and then Nazis happened. So, the issue is also that it's an another interpretation of Nietzsche's work.
Discussions celebrating one's own and mutual ignorance, with people shooting whatever cheap shots pop up about a great thinker, writer, and soul, make me cringe to be part of HN.
There is a morbid interest in seeing how internet discussions, viewed as a whole, behave like a physiological process—perhaps a digestive organ, turning waste of one kind into waste of another.