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Well, I exhausted the public library's collection of OSC books and then some, and I've decided to read some Nietszche, mostly because, from what I've heard, it's life-changing stuff. I have no idea where to start. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to start? I can't find a copy of Beyond Good and Evil, and I hate reading e-books- it hurts my eyes, and I'd much rather sit in bed and read. Are there any Nietszche books that would be in popular circulation and is a good starting point?
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posted
Given your username, I recommend against Nietzsche, as it could be bad for your health.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Nietszche's pretty awesome from what I hear, remember no anti sementism can actually be derived from his works unless your anti semetic to begin with it (then you'll just read it into anything anyways) was completely his sisters fault interpreting or editing in that stuff after he died.
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posted
I'm going to advise against Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I tried it one time, but I couldn't get out of the first few paragraphs. It made absolutely no sense.
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posted
Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality are probably two of the better known and--to my mind--more easily understood of his works.
But there are also people who actually enjoy philosophy around here, and they can probably answer you more fully.
Also, with my more literary bent, I found The Birth of Tragedy interesting.
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posted
I have a Nietszche themed watch. "The eternal return of the same" rotates around the face in place of a second hand.
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These also include many selections from other works. Both are translated by Walter Kaufmann, and I think his introductions and notes do a good job of adding information and debunking some of the more dubious claims regarding Nietzsche's philosophy.
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posted
OKay, thanks. I chose the name "deus" because it means "god", and I like how it sounds. I'm not a particularly religious person or anything, so I think I'm fine.
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posted
I liked Beyond Good and Evil. It's a good read, and I love thinking about his ideas. Definitely read about his life, too, and not just his intellectual output. It's instructive to see that he didn't live at all the way he wrote. He was very much not one of the ubermensch.
I think the fact that Hitler loved his stuff so much put a taint on it that's not entirely justified, however, he definitely does feel to me like a child who is brilliant but hasn't lived life at all. If you read about his life, he did pretty much keep himself aloof from living and interacting with many people. It's like he was super smart but his ideas were just all wrong, and only the experience of living could have taught him better.
I like him as a person, though. For instance, he loved Dostoyevsky (as do I) and I just love it that he had a transformative experience when someone was beating a horse in the street, and he threw himself on the animal's neck to try to save it, and was beaten himself and collapsed. It was apparently quite similar to Rodion's dream of the horse in Crime and Punishment. They say Nietzsche went mad that day and never recovered. I wonder, though, if he didn't just realize something important about life that contradicted everything he previously wrote, and therefore his friends and family thought he was mad. I don't know. There are also stories that he had syphilis, and it was the dementia that comes from the final stages of that disease.
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quote:Originally posted by Deus: OKay, thanks. I chose the name "deus" because it means "god", and I like how it sounds. I'm not a particularly religious person or anything, so I think I'm fine.
They were making a clever little joke you'll understand once you start reading him.
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posted
He was famous for quoting "God is dead" although that is quite out of context, a continuous pattern with his work, thus when they say it could be hazardous to your health, and you being God an all...
I loved most of his work from a clearly intellectual standpoint, it gives a great perspective on the eugenics movements and its off-shoots. When you actually read his novels and consider them in reference to his reality, you get a stunningly different picture than what the Nazis, among others, extrapolated for their own gains. He's a thought provoking writer, full of interesting contradictions, he writes some of the most depressing stuff I've ever read but in the end all of his cynicism leads to an exaltation of the little things and life and the sheer gravity of the human experience.
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posted
brilliant, brilliant stuff. Inspirational, troubling, influential and entertaining. Can't ask for too much more. Ecce Homo is actually a good one to start with, I think.
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quote:Originally posted by Mintieman: brilliant, brilliant stuff. Inspirational, troubling, influential and entertaining. Can't ask for too much more.
I agree except for the final sentence. I think Nietzsche's stuff is also utterly wrongheaded, as WW2 demonstrated. Why aren't we all ruled now by our German ubermensch? I think it's because his ideas were nonsense and ultimately unsuccessful as they play out in the real world, where all the cleverness in the world can't help you if you're just plain mistaken about what matters.
So I do ask for more in a thinker. While it's great, brilliant, entertaining stuff that you certainly want to read, I CAN ask for more. I ask for more wisdom and generosity of spirit, for ideas which rise above the arrogance of youth and health, and for ideas that actually understand what it means to be alive and to be human. Read about Nietzsche's life, too. Also read Dostoyevsky's novels and the progression of his thoughts during the course of his life. Dostoyevsky was another brilliant thinker during this same period, who had much in common with Nietzsche, but he lived longer and experienced much more of life. Those things taken together are quite instructive, and will change your ideas about Nietzsche's ideas.
In other words, Nietzsche is someone whose ideas often captivate young minds, and for good reason, but luckily most people grow out of him.
posted
Tatiana, most sources I've read believe the syphilis story (he had the opportunity, and his madness wasn't an immediate thing, but a slow descent), but that isn't nearly as romantic as the horse story you mention
posted
He was one of the greatest thinkers the western tradition has ever produced; he's one of those pivotal moments in which everything changes.
The first of his that I read was Genealogy of Morals,; which is probably a good place to begin because style-wise, it was one of the more traditional bits of writing he did.
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posted
I've had a hard time getting interested in Nietszche since the time I was looking into whether the character who he wrote saying "God is dead" was sympathetic for him. I ran into his critique of Christianity, wherein he went on a bit about how nauseating it all was. It didn't seem like a very cogent argument to me. Anyway, I think men see nausea as too often a categorically bad thing.
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posted
You know, it always amazes me how people take "God is dead" out of context, even after reading Nietzsche.
His point was not merely that the Christian God didn't exist; that was something he took as a given, and which he found rather uninteresting. Rather, his argument was that the entire concept of "God" as the central, unifying force of any given society was one which society was at that time beginning to reject; no longer could it be assumed that everyone in your village attended the same church, prayed to the same deity, held the same things dear.
Many people -- including George Washington -- have said that a shared belief in the same God is necessary for any people to be confident of also sharing a common morality. Nietzsche's observation was that if this was true -- and he agreed that it was -- then society would be forced to come up with other reasons to agree on morality, or else other mechanisms by which moral compromises could be achieved and tolerated.
It's not merely "God is dead," then; it's "God is dead; what now?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I don't recommend people study Nietzsche without first appreciating Aristotle, Kant, Descartes, and maybe Hegel, at least then, you'll know where his problems and frustrations come in. I imagine it's like studying string theory without knowing the problems it's supposed to address. I think "God is Dead" is one of the most willfully misunderstood phrases of the last hundred years. Nietzsche simply means Christendom, as the default ontological setting for the Modern World, no longer obtains. He is horrified by the world not because people didn't believe in the Christian God anymore, but because people didn't believe in the Christan God anymore, yet they went through the motions as if they did, as if someone had put Christendom on life support, a nation of people faking it, so much so that even the language was empty (think about how much of our modern language has liturgical roots). It's nearly the definition of decadence. Not only was he mourning the death of God, but he was mourning all of the language that was thrown around concerning God as degraded "metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
A false people speaking a false language which they don't understand anymore because they have lost their true beliefs and now operate on habit. For better or for worse, he saw this thoughtless, sheepish Christianity as a step below the robust fear and vibrantly superstitious Christianity of the Middle Ages. I'm not a big Catcher in the Rye fan, but one of the reasons that the book is so popular is because Holden is right when he says he lives in a world of phonies. Nietzsche is surrounded by phonies, and it horrifies him.
One of the reasons the Nazies could incorporate Nietzsche is because he has a respect for life and language that went all the way down to vibrant, fecund mythic roots, and to a people just going about the motions, that's a powerful aphrodisiac.
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