Truth: Nietzsche

[James T]

Having had trouble with the concept of truth, accepting it, moving to a metaphysical concept, denying it and then accepting it again pragmatically, I find Nietzsche's expression of it captivating.
What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; 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.

[FreezBee]

Having had trouble with the concept of truth, accepting it, moving to a metaphysical concept, denying it and then accepting it again pragmatically, I find Nietzsche's expression of it captivating.
What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; 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.

Is that true?

- FreezBee

[BWE]

I am awake. Truth

[James T]

Is that true?Well at least the performance of the argument is consistent with the claim.
I am awake. TruthBut your claim is always in the present, and present when read, and thus there will be times you are actually asleep - in contrast to your claim - and thus False.

[BWE]

Is that true?Well at least the performance of the argument is consistent with the claim.
I am awake. TruthBut your claim is always in the present, and present when read, and thus there will be times you are actually asleep - in contrast to your claim - and thus False.
During those times when I'm asleep, I have no comment.

[FreezBee]

Is that true?Well at least the performance of the argument is consistent with the claim.

:) Indeed.

Nietzsche's iconoclastic ramblings may contain as much truth as you can find elsewhere. He critisized the tendencies of his time, in particular the emerging German nation state, which ultimately led to the Nazi government. For Nietzsche 'truth' was a social construct, a lie that had meant something sometime, but had long lost its meaning.


- FreezBee

[gamera]

Nietzsche is considered one of the founding influences on postmodernism, and his critique of truth assailed modernism at the core, though he was not attuned to the political nature of discourse, and was somewhat obsessed with the institution of the church.

[GenesisNemesis]

I am awake. Truth

One is asleep.

Truth?

[Quizalufagus]

IMO that passage is representative of a rather immature stage in Nietzsche's philosophy--namely, his love affair with romanticism. He repudiated what he wrote during this stage of his life very shortly after writing it. The later Nietzsche realized that genuine truth is not at all illusory, though the omnipresent prattle of the epistemically ill (notably Christians) often makes it seem so.

[FreezBee]

The later Nietzsche realized that genuine truth is not at all illusory

He did?

To the best of my knowledge, Nietzsche continued to claim that truth isn't there, it is made, and as such a product.


- FreezBee

[James T]

IMO that passage is representative of a rather immature stage in Nietzsche's philosophy--namely, his love affair with romanticism. He repudiated what he wrote during this stage of his life very shortly after writing it. The later Nietzsche realized that genuine truth is not at all illusory, though the omnipresent prattle of the epistemically ill (notably Christians) often makes it seem so.The nice thing is that his first text can still be read independently of his later views and still speaks from its own strengths.

[Quizalufagus]

He did?

Sure. Consider Nietzsche's numerous positive comments regarding science. Also, consider how he wrote of the value of truth:

The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me--I know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops--and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner--to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm...Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self..... [From the preface to the Antichrist

Nietzsche did think that truth of a certain kind was made, but he would discount that truth as illegitimate.

The nice thing is that his first text can still be read independently of his later views and still speaks from its own strengths.

But when a thinker repudiates his own point of view one must pause and consider what changed his mind. I believe it is evident from reading the later Nietzsche that Romanticism is deeply flawed.

[James T]

But when a thinker repudiates his own point of view one must pause and consider what changed his mind. I believe it is evident from reading the later Nietzsche that Romanticism is deeply flawed.Though it is nice how eloquently and compellingly the earlier defeats the arguments of the latter.

[FreezBee]

...Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self..... [From the preface to the Antichrist

Nietzsche did think that truth of a certain kind was made, but he would discount that truth as illegitimate.

Oh, but what Nietzsche considered Truth was a subjective truth, what is true for the self -- and that not necessarily being a sharable good.

Commitment to Truth is commitment to Self.


- FreezBee

[Quizalufagus]

Though it is nice how eloquently and compellingly the earlier defeats the arguments of the latter.

Well, I'm not sure Nietzsche ever made an argument in his entire writing career. In any case, I'm not sure why you would view Nietzsche the romantic as more convincing than the later Nietzsche. I think his philosophy in, say, Zarathustra or Beyond Good and Evil is much more thoroughly thought out than it is in the Birth of Tragedy. In what way do you find the latter more convincing than the former?

Oh, but what Nietzsche considered Truth was a subjective truth, what is true for the self -- and that not necessarily being a sharable good.

Yes, at least insofar as genuine truth can only be shared among the elite few able to grasp it. However, that dimension of "subjectivity" doesn't diminish the objectivity of a truth for Nietzsche; he never viewed the truth as a social construction (at least after his Birth of Tragedy phase). Certainly there is a social construction which many take to be truth, but Nietzsche is actually rather vehement about the lack of value in this. The real truth isn't that social construction, nor is whatever one holds to be true for onself--rather, it is a prize transcending individuals or societies which can only be found by rejecting the false social truths we're assailed with.

Commitment to Truth is commitment to Self.

I don't think Nietzsche would say that the two are equivalent. Certainly the two are related from his point of view, but hardly the same. That doesn't imply that he rejected the existence of absolute truth, though.

[premjan]

Not sure why you are approaching this from Nietzsche. Do you really have a problem with the notion of truth?

[James T]

Well, I'm not sure Nietzsche ever made an argument in his entire writing career.Just wait ... while I pick myself up off the floor. I should have been sitting on a low chair when reading that. Are you for real?

[premjan]

Wasn't Nietzsche very much leaning towards literature, as much as philosophy?

[FreezBee]

Wasn't Nietzsche very much leaning towards literature, as much as philosophy?

Indeed he was. He was educated as a linuguist, which is quite clear from his writings and his use of imagery. That also makes it difficult to figure out, what Nietzsche actually meant, because he so often hides behind some literary mask.

- FreezBee

[gamera]

Though it is nice how eloquently and compellingly the earlier defeats the arguments of the latter.

Well, I'm not sure Nietzsche ever made an argument in his entire writing career. In any case, I'm not sure why you would view Nietzsche the romantic as more convincing than the later Nietzsche. I think his philosophy in, say, Zarathustra or Beyond Good and Evil is much more thoroughly thought out than it is in the Birth of Tragedy. In what way do you find the latter more convincing than the former?

Oh, but what Nietzsche considered Truth was a subjective truth, what is true for the self -- and that not necessarily being a sharable good.

Yes, at least insofar as genuine truth can only be shared among the elite few able to grasp it. However, that dimension of "subjectivity" doesn't diminish the objectivity of a truth for Nietzsche; he never viewed the truth as a social construction (at least after his Birth of Tragedy phase). Certainly there is a social construction which many take to be truth, but Nietzsche is actually rather vehement about the lack of value in this. The real truth isn't that social construction, nor is whatever one holds to be true for onself--rather, it is a prize transcending individuals or societies which can only be found by rejecting the false social truths we're assailed with.

Commitment to Truth is commitment to Self.

I don't think Nietzsche would say that the two are equivalent. Certainly the two are related from his point of view, but hardly the same. That doesn't imply that he rejected the existence of absolute truth, though.

Systematizing any aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy is notoriously difficult, and has led to radically divergent interpretations. This isn't a coincidence, since Nietzsche consciously pitted himself against traditional metaphysics and its truth statements by using nonphilosophical modes of expression (parables and narratives).

Still, I have to take issue with your interpretation.

Nietzsche viewed himself as ending Western metaphysics, as commenced by Plato -- Nietzsche nemesis. For Nietzsche the idea of truth as a falling away from the ideal, the actual, the correct represented a kind of spiritual sickness, picked up by Christianity, that was anti-life and "anti-Becoming." Nietzsche saw himself as ending the tradition of Western thought Plato commenced, and hence the death of God theme (as God became the stand in for Platonic "truth" in the onto-theological development of Western metaphysics. I can't think of a more thorough rejection of the concept of "truth" as understood in Western thought than what Nietzsche purports to be doing.

In place of truth, for Nietzsche, western man needed to return to Heraclitus' ontology of becoming, and so he attempted to "stamp Being on Becoming," as Heidegger puts it. What is is always becoming, and becoming is the will to power. The will to power happens through creation. And thus art, not philosophy, is the realm in which we encounter the being of Being, and hence who we are. Needless to say, art isn't "truth" in the common sense of the word, but fiction, semblance, even deception.

Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a man who rejects Platonism and the search for truth behind phenomena and confronts his own finitude without transcendence of any kind. I believe Nietzsche called this amor fati -- love of necessity, something he claimed was at the very heart of his philosophy. It is the willingness to be grounded in the nothingness (the abyss is another important metaphor in Nietzsche thought), the process of creation and destruction in which we inevitably are reduced by death, that Nietzsche sees as the proper goal of humanity in a post-Platonic world. By the way, this is not a recourse to materialism, which Nietzsche soundly rejected, as just one of the (latter) phases of the sickness that is Platonism.

Now, by design, this isn't a systematic way to think. Nietzsche consciously rejects the categories and vocabulary of traditional metaphysics, since his goal is the end of metaphysics. And surely part of the rejection is the category of truth.

It's this uncompromising existentialism that made Nietzsche so important to Heidegger, Satre, Derrida, Foucault, and most of the important philosophers of the 20th century.

And the other hand, it is also the declamatory and literary mode of Nietzsche that allowed popular forces like Nazism and Randians and teenage libertarians to claim him. Because Nietzsche is not a systematic thinker by design, he's open to appropriation by low brow movements of every kind, but especially on the right (a phenomenon which itself deserve analysis, which I don't think anybody has done -- why is Nietzsche philosophical task so easily sidetracked into rightwing movements?).

I'm basing this interpretation mostly on Heidegger's two volumes on Nietzsche, but except for the Heideggerian flourishes, I think it's pretty well accepted.

[premjan]

There is the Christian notion of the tree of knowledge vs. the tree of life. I suppose Nietzsche went for the tree of life, in this metaphorical sense. Not in his own life of course.

[Boro Nut]

Wasn't Nietzsche very much leaning towards literature, as much as philosophy?I don't know. But I do remember a documentary which seemed to indicate his obvious frustration with his fellow German philosophers in respect of their ineffectual efforts to surmount the challenges set by Plato and his fellow Greeks. This was probably the root of his ill-advised outburst against Confucius, which inevitably lead to his totally unnecessary booking.

The big surprise for me was how ineffectual Beckenbauer turned out to be, and he was lucky to stay on when Martin Luther chose instead to replace Wittgenstein with the energetic Marx in an effort to snatch the contest at the death. But even this couldn't inspire the torpid Germans, and it was left to Archimedes, (himself a surprise inclusion), to provide the vital spark of inspiration which resulted in the Greeks running our fairly comfortable winners, albeit only 1-0.

Boro Nut

[Received]

Oh, why not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vV3QGagck

[Boro Nut]

why is Nietzsche philosophical task so easily sidetracked into rightwing movements?).Right wing movements were not the problem. Too much is made of Germany's famed right wing movement. The question that should be asked is where the hell was the left back? When Heraclitus played in Socrates there was no-one within yards. Leibniz's shortcomings were cruelly exposed at this level, but he was right to feel aggrieved at the total lack of cover. Fingers have to be pointed toward the static Hegel and absent Schopenhauer in the build up.

Boro Nut

[Quizalufagus]

Just wait ... while I pick myself up off the floor. I should have been sitting on a low chair when reading that. Are you for real?

Are you interested in discourse or in fisticuffs? My impression is that you're interested in the latter; you certainly don't seem to be trying to have conversation here.

I'm basing this interpretation mostly on Heidegger's two volumes on Nietzsche, but except for the Heideggerian flourishes, I think it's pretty well accepted.

Yeah, and I pretty much agree with what you wrote except for the Heideggerian flourishes. I believe you've made a certain jump from Nietzsche's rejection of the western metaphysical notion of truth at the time to Nietzsche's rejection of any objective truth, though, and I feel that's not justified upon examining the body of Nietzsche's writings. You've made some points that I'd like to address in detail, though--and I will do so as soon as I find the time.

Good to see somebody's interested in conversing. :)

[James T]

Just wait ... while I pick myself up off the floor. I should have been sitting on a low chair when reading that. Are you for real?

Are you interested in discourse or in fisticuffs? My impression is that you're interested in the latter; you certainly don't seem to be trying to have conversation here.I was accurately expressing my complete and utter disbelief at your claim Nietzsche never made an argument. I am interested in a discussion, however for a discussion to be possible it helps if you were at least reasonable with your claims.

[FreezBee]

And the other hand, it is also the declamatory and literary mode of Nietzsche that allowed popular forces like Nazism and Randians and teenage libertarians to claim him. Because Nietzsche is not a systematic thinker by design, he's open to appropriation by low brow movements of every kind, but especially on the right (a phenomenon which itself deserve analysis, which I don't think anybody has done -- why is Nietzsche philosophical task so easily sidetracked into rightwing movements?).

Nietzschemocked just about everything in his time, including socialism and Darwinism. However, his attacks on the emerging national socialism were more subtle and more difficult to discern from the genuine article.

I'm basing this interpretation mostly on Heidegger's two volumes on Nietzsche, but except for the Heideggerian flourishes, I think it's pretty well accepted.

Wasn't Heidegger a menber of the Nazi party?


- FreezBee

[gamera]

And the other hand, it is also the declamatory and literary mode of Nietzsche that allowed popular forces like Nazism and Randians and teenage libertarians to claim him. Because Nietzsche is not a systematic thinker by design, he's open to appropriation by low brow movements of every kind, but especially on the right (a phenomenon which itself deserve analysis, which I don't think anybody has done -- why is Nietzsche philosophical task so easily sidetracked into rightwing movements?).

Nietzschemocked just about everything in his time, including socialism and Darwinism. However, his attacks on the emerging national socialism were more subtle and more difficult to discern from the genuine article.

I'm basing this interpretation mostly on Heidegger's two volumes on Nietzsche, but except for the Heideggerian flourishes, I think it's pretty well accepted.

Wasn't Heidegger a menber of the Nazi party?


- FreezBee

The issue is how Nietzsche's writings seem to attract a rightwing audience, even as the audience clearly contorted and misunderstood what he said. Something about him has this effect, even today (libertarians still invoke Nietzsche in some quarters).

The fact that Heidegger himself dedicated two books to the man, and clearly appropriated some of his vocabulary (such as the idea of being as an abyss), merely reinforces this point, since yes indeed, Heidegger was implicated with the Nazis -- to his eternal shame.

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism because of his rejection of essentialism, but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the rightwing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.

[FreezBee]

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism because of his rejection of essentialism, but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the rightwing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.

Yes, I think you have a good point here. The Nazis, rather than seeing that Nietzsche mocked them, could take inspiration from the mockery. For the Left, there simply weren't any easy catches in Nietzsches writings.

However, also don't forget that Left and Right may not always be easy to pick apart. The Nazis are considered to belong to the Right, yet they claimed to be socialists. Ans Mussolini, another Right-winger, had been a socialist.

From a strict Marxist point of view, I would think that Nietzsche is an escapist taking refuge in a literary world making him as bourgeois as the rest. But as you say, many on the Left will take the Right-wing image of Nietzsche on face value.

Should Nietzsche be freed from his captivity as a Right-wing prophet?

That would a difficult task, but you are most welcome to give it a try :D


- FreezBee

[gamera]

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism because of his rejection of essentialism, but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the rightwing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.

Yes, I think you have a good point here. The Nazis, rather than seeing that Nietzsche mocked them, could take inspiration from the mockery. For the Left, there simply weren't any easy catches in Nietzsches writings.

However, also don't forget that Left and Right may not always be easy to pick apart. The Nazis are considered to belong to the Right, yet they claimed to be socialists. Ans Mussolini, another Right-winger, had been a socialist.

From a strict Marxist point of view, I would think that Nietzsche is an escapist taking refuge in a literary world making him as bourgeois as the rest. But as you say, many on the Left will take the Right-wing image of Nietzsche on face value.

Should Nietzsche be freed from his captivity as a Right-wing prophet?

That would a difficult task, but you are most welcome to give it a try :D


- FreezBee


Well, there has always been a lot of interest among postmodernists with Nietzsche. Derrida of course recognized his importance. And I have seen several articles in ecological philosophy journals in which "deep ecology" attempts to appropriate Nietzsche (not very successfully in my opinion). I think they've appeared in Environmental Ethics or the Trumpeter.

(If you aren't familiar with deep ecology, google it -- it's a radical if nonsystematic ecological point of view developed by the Norwegian Arne Naess, with the help of Sessions and Deval here in America, which has also drawn on Heidegger and other postmodernists to attack anthropocentrism. I was involved with it early on and have published a couple article in that vein. I think I've moved on, however)

Deep ecology generally has leftist sympathies and is attacked by the right (though feminists and some social ecologists have also attacked it from the left).

[gamera]

Voila, I found this article in six seconds!

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-158838824.html

And the Environmental Ethics article is cited here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1OwAmggI6rYC&pg=RA1-PA177&lpg=RA1-PA177&dq=deep+ecology+nietzsche&s

[James T]

This focus on the writer as authority really jars for me these days.

[FreezBee]

Voila, I found this article in six seconds!

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-158838824.html

From linked article:

By way of a philosophical examination of select animal images from Nietzsche's animal menagerie, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this essay develops the thesis that Nietzsche's animal images provide lessons in deep ecology insofar as they serve to move Zarathustra and the reader through the critical transformations necessary for remaining faithful to the earth.

**********


May my animals lead me!
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
As is well known, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche casts the principal themes of his thought not in abstract concepts but in poetic ...

Ummm, well, wasn't those animals a snake and an eagle? The eagle ascending with the snake around its neck?

Anyway, at that time there was an ecologist movement in Germany with the slogan "Blut und Boden" meaning "Blood and soil". The claim of that movement was that humans were made of blood (what we today would call genes) and soil; the latter in the sense that we eat is from the soil, and therefore people living in different places will be different due to differences in the minerals contained in the soil. Nietzsche mocked this movement, so maybe he isn't all that useful as an ecologist prophet?

And the Environmental Ethics article is cited here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1OwAmggI6rYC&pg=RA1-PA177&lpg=RA1-PA177&dq=deep+ecology+nietzsche&s

Now, this looks more interesting. I'll go have a read.


- FreezBee

[gamera]

Voila, I found this article in six seconds!

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-158838824.html

From linked article:

By way of a philosophical examination of select animal images from Nietzsche's animal menagerie, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this essay develops the thesis that Nietzsche's animal images provide lessons in deep ecology insofar as they serve to move Zarathustra and the reader through the critical transformations necessary for remaining faithful to the earth.

**********


May my animals lead me!
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
As is well known, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche casts the principal themes of his thought not in abstract concepts but in poetic ...

Ummm, well, wasn't those animals a snake and an eagle? The eagle ascending with the snake around its neck?

Anyway, at that time there was an ecologist movement in Germany with the slogan "Blut und Boden" meaning "Blood and soil". The claim of that movement was that humans were made of blood (what we today would call genes) and soil; the latter in the sense that we eat is from the soil, and therefore people living in different places will be different due to differences in the minerals contained in the soil. Nietzsche mocked this movement, so maybe he isn't all that useful as an ecologist prophet?

And the Environmental Ethics article is cited here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1OwAmggI6rYC&pg=RA1-PA177&lpg=RA1-PA177&dq=deep+ecology+nietzsche&s

Now, this looks more interesting. I'll go have a read.


- FreezBee

Well, like I said, I think the attempt by Deep Ecology to encorporate Nietzsche is somewhat of a stretch.

Nietzsche is an important thinker, but surely not the kind of systematic one that would lend any direct support to environmental philosophy. I mean, Nietzsche's entire project was to avoid any systems or ideology. He had some affinity with German romanticism, but beyond that, his interests seem to lie elsewhere.

[FreezBee]

Well, like I said, I think the attempt by Deep Ecology to encorporate Nietzsche is somewhat of a stretch.

Nietzsche is an important thinker, but surely not the kind of systematic one that would lend any direct support to environmental philosophy. I mean, Nietzsche's entire project was to avoid any systems or ideology. He had some affinity with German romanticism, but beyond that, his interests seem to lie elsewhere.

Indeed, Nietzsche was too anarchsticto lend direct support to anything -- hardly even to other anarchists.

Can Nietzsche actually be used for anything constructive?


- FreezBee

[gamera]

Well, like I said, I think the attempt by Deep Ecology to encorporate Nietzsche is somewhat of a stretch.

Nietzsche is an important thinker, but surely not the kind of systematic one that would lend any direct support to environmental philosophy. I mean, Nietzsche's entire project was to avoid any systems or ideology. He had some affinity with German romanticism, but beyond that, his interests seem to lie elsewhere.

Indeed, Nietzsche was too anarchsticto lend direct support to anything -- hardly even to other anarchists.

Can Nietzsche actually be used for anything constructive?


- FreezBee


Now that's a good question!

[FreezBee]

Can Nietzsche actually be used for anything constructive?



Now that's a good question!

So, we need someone to come up with a good answer, don't we?


- FreezBee

[premjan]

I felt that Nietzsche had a very good feel for issues, but he was a little emotional in his opposition to Christianity. He is more of a liberal centrist than a conservative prophet I think.

[gamera]

Can Nietzsche actually be used for anything constructive?



Now that's a good question!

So, we need someone to come up with a good answer, don't we?


- FreezBee


Well, I think that Nietzsche's project was essentially destructive. He literally wanted to put an end to western metaphysics as it had developed from Plato, and was elaborated by Christianity dualism. (Note again his influence on Heidegger as Heidegger explicitly takes up the task of the deconstruction of philosophy (but it meant something a bit different to him).

There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. Nietzsche didn't offer any easy answers, but simply a perspective that our currrent metaphysics were "sick" and resulted in a disastrous way of life. He had a point. He didn't claim that he had some systematic philosophy that would replace the death of God. Indeed, his point was that there is no systematic replacement, and we shouldn't seek one.

[premjan]

I guess that's the point of existentialism, or Krishnamurti etc. - constructing meaning for yourself.

[FreezBee]

I guess that's the point of existentialism, or Krishnamurti etc. - constructing meaning for yourself.

And that may be the crux of the matter -- do we construct meaning for ourself?

Aren't we thrown into a preexisting world with predefined meanings? Can we destroy those meanings?


- FreezBee

[premjan]

We can choose to swallow the existing meanings or examine them more closely for ourselves. Proposing this was probably why Socrates was put to death. Conservatives I think adopt a narrower suite of meanings. Liberals tend to prefer to draw from a wider area.

[Received]

What do you guys mean by "meanings"? The sort of existential, Kierkegaardian meanings? Or, like, contextual meanings?

[premjan]

What is more or less meaningful I guess - more or less something allied to the notion of values. I guess that is Kierkegaardian.

[gamera]

I guess that's the point of existentialism, or Krishnamurti etc. - constructing meaning for yourself.

Is there any other option?

[premjan]

You can try to borrow it from another person, or book.

[gamera]

You can try to borrow it from another person, or book.

I think that's a form of constructing meaning. As Heidegger points out, even evading decisions about who we are is a decision we make about who we are. We are doomed to be free to choose who we are.

[Received]

Mauvaise foi!

[FreezBee]

Beauvaise fois de gras!

[Received]

Exactly.

[gamera]

Inauthenticity. The real meaning of being lost in my view of Christianity.

[premjan]

You can try to borrow it from another person, or book.I think that's a form of constructing meaning. As Heidegger points out, even evading decisions about who we are is a decision we make about who we are. We are doomed to be free to choose who we are.A trivial form of it though.

[gamera]

You can try to borrow it from another person, or book.I think that's a form of constructing meaning. As Heidegger points out, even evading decisions about who we are is a decision we make about who we are. We are doomed to be free to choose who we are.A trivial form of it though.

Certainly a form that trivializes us. Which is the point of Nietzsche and Heidegger and Satre, etc., I think.

[Received]

There's a distinction between passive construction and active construction; between drifting along, embedded in the herd, digesting the memes of the masses, and following one's own particular preferences. What makes them one's "own"? Indifference for the herd. Creation for the sake of creation. And esteeming is the beginning of creation, as Nietzsche would have it.

[Coyote]

Why the truth?
Why not a lie?

[Received]

Because truths give us tingles, and lies are bad bad.

[Coyote]

Nietzche himself was not a moralist when he asked the same question.
But as often as not it is the truth that makes us squirm, and lies that cause the forces of life to vibrate within us.

[premjan]

Tree of life vs tree of knowledge of good vs. evil.

[FreezBee]

Tree of life vs tree of knowledge of good vs. evil.

An interesting perspective -- but maybe they are the same tree?

- FreezBee

[George Hathaway]

Truth is a judgment call.

An individual judges a proposition to be true if that individual's understanding of the meaning of the proposition accords with their understanding of reality.

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.

[Coyote]

Having had trouble with the concept of truth, accepting it, moving to a metaphysical concept, denying it and then accepting it again pragmatically, I find Nietzsche's expression of it captivating.
What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; 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.
Once the truth is found to be lies though, even if there is a pragmatism in living one's life according to the lie, how can there any longer be any passion to live the lie as fully?

You may see that this quote by Nietzche has two aspects. In the first half the embellishments that are truth are canonized, are written from the perspective of being believed in; in the second aspect the lie becomes fully exposed and all that is left is the cyncism of living one's life among last men.
Living authentically in this case would be accepting that our truths are lies, and understanding that no further sets of truths have come along to replace the dead gods which we once lived and died for.
No hot or cold, only luke.

The overman does not exist for us last men. In the end, the overman did not exist for Nietzche either. He left no bridges unburned. He rejected all his paths.

There can be no passion in the decadent nihilism which defines the existential
decadence of the last man. For all that live as the last man is not without its pleasures and diversions. Whether such pleasures and diversions are enough to sustain it against the next wave of barbarians remains to be seen.
Perhaps in the end, they are merely last men too, running amok.

[Coyote]

...

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism......but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the right-wing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.
It is much more than symbolic rejection of him from the left, or accident of history or low-brow populism from the right that accounts for this, imho. Nietzsche' rejection of all 'isms' just cannot fit the worldview of socialists who define humanity in terms of society. Ultimately, they are all Hegelians who see the final destiny of humanity as an egalitarian paradise. The state subsumes the individual in the ideologies and the dialogues that now define the left.

In contrast, Nietzche's appeal is to a man's pursuit of a solitary excellence, his defining of a man's humanity in terms of an overman rising above the herd, as the superior physiology of the blond lion even exerting itself from the pre-Christian mists of the germanic tribe. His poetry and rhetoric appeals to the belief in an individuals freedom so valued by libertarians, and to the myriad of pscyhopathic populists as well ,who who have no use for the constraints of moral thinking on their designs for their own egoistic aggrandizement without regard to the needs of others.

If it is unfair to Nietzche that sociopaths have figured so largely among those who use his name, it would be more surprising actually if this were not the case given the nature of his rhetorical flourishes.

It is not that there are not equally malevolent pyschopaths arising out of left-wing movements either, be they the Stalins or the Doarns of the world, but their language is framed differently. Their language actually must be framed differently to have any legitimacy in the social circles that they use for their power base.

[Coyote]

Truth is a judgment call.

An individual judges a proposition to be true if that individual's understanding of the meaning of the proposition accords with their understanding of reality.

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.
I would disagree with this somewhat. What we postulate as truth may well be a judgement call, and indeed without discernment and judgment. truth is not availabel to us.
Perhaps too, even with good discernment and good judgment, any of the important truths about who we are cannot but be a matter of faith rather than truths, but that does not necessarily mena that truth does no texist. it merely menas that it is unavailable.
With that point being made, I do agree that possessing Truth requires good judgment. Truth must be based on our ability to judge and discern and value what is Truths are worthy fo being held out as self-evident, and which are self-destructive lies.

Whatever value that Nietzche made have placed on the rejection of transcendent truth in real terms was utterly destroyed in the ovens of Auschwitz. Even if Nietzsche may legitimately rejoice in suffering and embrace the fires that forge the human spirit into steel, there is a depth and a expanse of human suffering, and an infinitude in the problem of human suffering and evil that in fact requires a belief in transcendence as one of the Truths that we embrace in order to remain alive.

The mass genocides of the twentieth century are our existential truths. It is not a matter of judgment that this is so. These facts are as self-evident as the lies of human beings who would deny them are evil.

That human life is may still be valued in the face of such human evil though requires that Transcendance be a human value. it is just not humanly possibly for any great individual to rise from the shadows cast by twentieth century genocides. It is just not humanly possibly to rise above the height of that shadow of Auschwitz. The shadow is greater than any biography can ever be.

To continue valuing life in the face of the shadow then requires a belief in transcendance as a human truth once more.

[James T]

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.Must? Is the concept even necessary? I am sure societies have survived without this.

[James T]

Once the truth is found to be lies though, even if there is a pragmatism in living one's life according to the lie, how can there any longer be any passion to live the lie as fully?A random response. Lacking.

[George Hathaway]

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.Must? Is the concept even necessary? I am sure societies have survived without this.There may be almost nothing that everyone must (by dint of experience and logic) accept as a true proposition according to their judgment of the facts of reality.

Perhaps, though, we might agree with Descartes that merely by being a human being, I (quite apparently and irrefutably) am. This is a necessary truth that each philosopher must know.

What else?

Descartes concluded that there is no other truth that is universal. Everything else can be doubted.

Is there anything else?

[gamera]

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.Must? Is the concept even necessary? I am sure societies have survived without this.There may be almost nothing that everyone must (by dint of experience and logic) accept as a true proposition according to their judgment of the facts of reality.

Perhaps, though, we might agree with Descartes that merely by being a human being, I (quite apparently and irrefutably) am. This is a necessary truth that each philosopher must know.

What else?

Descartes concluded that there is no other truth that is universal. Everything else can be doubted.

Is there anything else?

Needless to say, Freud showed that the "I am" is never revealed, but that much of what we are is hidden in the subconcious. Foucault questions who the self is and how it comes about, noting in a wonderful phrase "I am not who I am."

Placing certainty in the self, as the Enlightenment did, has only led to more questions and ambiguities.

[gamera]

...

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism......but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the right-wing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.
It is much more than symbolic rejection of him from the left, or accident of history or low-brow populism from the right that accounts for this, imho. Nietzsche' rejection of all 'isms' just cannot fit the worldview of socialists who define humanity in terms of society. Ultimately, they are all Hegelians who see the final destiny of humanity as an egalitarian paradise. The state subsumes the individual in the ideologies and the dialogues that now define the left.

In contrast, Nietzche's appeal is to a man's pursuit of a solitary excellence, his defining of a man's humanity in terms of an overman rising above the herd, as the superior physiology of the blond lion even exerting itself from the pre-Christian mists of the germanic tribe. His poetry and rhetoric appeals to the belief in an individuals freedom so valued by libertarians, and to the myriad of pscyhopathic populists as well ,who who have no use for the constraints of moral thinking on their designs for their own egoistic aggrandizement without regard to the needs of others.

If it is unfair to Nietzche that sociopaths have figured so largely among those who use his name, it would be more surprising actually if this were not the case given the nature of his rhetorical flourishes.

It is not that there are not equally malevolent pyschopaths arising out of left-wing movements either, be they the Stalins or the Doarns of the world, but their language is framed differently. Their language actually must be framed differently to have any legitimacy in the social circles that they use for their power base.


This just raises the issue more urgently regarding why rightwing sociopaths were able to harness the discourse of Nietzsche so effectively. It suggest the mythic nature of the "independent self" rising from the "herd" that Nietzsche tauted, valildating the progressive perspective, to my mind. Needless to say, humans always exist in the context of a society, something the rightwing of course relies on, since social and state power is the essence of the rightwing. The fact that the Right frames its mode of oppression as individual freedom may say something about Nietzsche's fundamental flaw in understanding the self.

[George Hathaway]

Must? Is the concept even necessary? I am sure societies have survived without this.There may be almost nothing that everyone must (by dint of experience and logic) accept as a true proposition according to their judgment of the facts of reality.

Perhaps, though, we might agree with Descartes that merely by being a human being, I (quite apparently and irrefutably) am. This is a necessary truth that each philosopher must know.

What else?

Descartes concluded that there is no other truth that is universal. Everything else can be doubted.

Is there anything else?

Needless to say, Freud showed that the "I am" is never revealed, but that much of what we are is hidden in the subconcious. Foucault questions who the self is and how it comes about, noting in a wonderful phrase "I am not who I am."

Placing certainty in the self, as the Enlightenment did, has only led to more questions and ambiguities.There are, if you wish to use this metaphor, parts of the self. A portion conscious, the rest unconscious. The parts together form a whole self, though. We are not just our conscious part but the unconscious, too. And not only that, we have physical parts a well. Which parts, too, contribute to the whole.

[gamera]

There may be almost nothing that everyone must (by dint of experience and logic) accept as a true proposition according to their judgment of the facts of reality.

Perhaps, though, we might agree with Descartes that merely by being a human being, I (quite apparently and irrefutably) am. This is a necessary truth that each philosopher must know.

What else?

Descartes concluded that there is no other truth that is universal. Everything else can be doubted.

Is there anything else?

Needless to say, Freud showed that the "I am" is never revealed, but that much of what we are is hidden in the subconcious. Foucault questions who the self is and how it comes about, noting in a wonderful phrase "I am not who I am."

Placing certainty in the self, as the Enlightenment did, has only led to more questions and ambiguities.There are, if you wish to use this metaphor, parts of the self. A portion conscious, the rest unconscious. The parts together form a whole self, though. We are not just our conscious part but the unconscious, too. And not only that, we have physical parts a well. Which parts, too, contribute to the whole.

I guess the issue is the Cartesian claim of certainty as to the self, which when examined evaporates. The "I am" upon which De Carte claimed to based our only certainty turns out to be highly ambiguous, to the point that we don't even know who is making the claim in the form of that "I".

In the Order of Things, I think Foucault does a good job of showing how making man the ground of all possible knowledge has merely lead to more and bigger epistemological problems.

[Coyote]

Once the truth is found to be lies though, even if there is a pragmatism in living one's life according to the lie, how can there any longer be any passion to live the lie as fully?A random response. Lacking.
Bubble gum for brains.
Twit.

[Coyote]

Once the truth is found to be lies though, even if there is a pragmatism in living one's life according to the lie, how can there any longer be any passion to live the lie as fully?A random response. Lacking.
Bubble gum for brains.
Twit.
Nae, even less than that.
Behold another last man.

[Esocyn]

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism because of his rejection of essentialism, but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the rightwing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.

Yes, I think you have a good point here. The Nazis, rather than seeing that Nietzsche mocked them, could take inspiration from the mockery. For the Left, there simply weren't any easy catches in Nietzsches writings.

However, also don't forget that Left and Right may not always be easy to pick apart. The Nazis are considered to belong to the Right, yet they claimed to be socialists. Ans Mussolini, another Right-winger, had been a socialist.

From a strict Marxist point of view, I would think that Nietzsche is an escapist taking refuge in a literary world making him as bourgeois as the rest. But as you say, many on the Left will take the Right-wing image of Nietzsche on face value.

Should Nietzsche be freed from his captivity as a Right-wing prophet?

That would a difficult task, but you are most welcome to give it a try :D


- FreezBee


Well, there has always been a lot of interest among postmodernists with Nietzsche. Derrida of course recognized his importance. And I have seen several articles in ecological philosophy journals in which "deep ecology" attempts to appropriate Nietzsche (not very successfully in my opinion). I think they've appeared in Environmental Ethics or the Trumpeter.

(If you aren't familiar with deep ecology, google it -- it's a radical if nonsystematic ecological point of view developed by the Norwegian Arne Naess, with the help of Sessions and Deval here in America, which has also drawn on Heidegger and other postmodernists to attack anthropocentrism. I was involved with it early on and have published a couple article in that vein. I think I've moved on, however)

Deep ecology generally has leftist sympathies and is attacked by the right (though feminists and some social ecologists have also attacked it from the left).

Deep ecology has a noticeable left/right schism. There are those on the left (though claim to be "post-left") who could easily be considered deep ecologists (Zerzan, Kaczynski come to mind. So do ALF and ELF) though there are those who consider themselves to be fascists, but also "deep ecologists" (this comes from the Nazi's obsession with nature and preserving traditional things -- being that they are traditionalists.)

Just an aside.

[James T]

As a Capitalized Essence, Truth might stand for that which every individual must judge to be true.Must? Is the concept even necessary? I am sure societies have survived without this.There may be almost nothing that everyone must (by dint of experience and logic) accept as a true proposition according to their judgment of the facts of reality.I should have been more explicit, I was thinking that individuals can happily exist without necessarily believing in any truth whatsoever, Descartes or any other.

[James T]

A random response. Lacking.
Bubble gum for brains.
Twit.
Nae, even less than that.
Behold another last man.Oh goodie, insults. Have you anything more substantial to offer??? I guess not.

[Coyote]

...

I don't believe anybody has written on this topic: Nietzsche is important to postmodernism......but he plays no symbolic role that I'm aware of in leftist discourse and symbology. In contrast, something about him attracts the right-wing mentality to the extent that they are willing to reinterpret him and try to encorporate him. I agree the encorporation is totally unwarranted, if not delusional. But it's an interesting phenomenon in intellectual history that seems to me hasn't been really looked into. Now it may be just that the Right got to him first (through the accident of his writing shortly before the rise of Nazism), so the Left now considers him a symbol of rightwing arrogance and solipsism. But I don't know.
It is much more than symbolic rejection of him from the left, or accident of history or low-brow populism from the right that accounts for this, imho. Nietzsche' rejection of all 'isms' just cannot fit the worldview of socialists who define humanity in terms of society. Ultimately, they are all Hegelians who see the final destiny of humanity as an egalitarian paradise. The state subsumes the individual in the ideologies and the dialogues that now define the left.

In contrast, Nietzche's appeal is to a man's pursuit of a solitary excellence, his defining of a man's humanity in terms of an overman rising above the herd, as the superior physiology of the blond lion even exerting itself from the pre-Christian mists of the germanic tribe. His poetry and rhetoric appeals to the belief in an individuals freedom so valued by libertarians, and to the myriad of pscyhopathic populists as well ,who who have no use for the constraints of moral thinking on their designs for their own egoistic aggrandizement without regard to the needs of others.

If it is unfair to Nietzche that sociopaths have figured so largely among those who use his name, it would be more surprising actually if this were not the case given the nature of his rhetorical flourishes.

It is not that there are not equally malevolent pyschopaths arising out of left-wing movements either, be they the Stalins or the Doarns of the world, but their language is framed differently. Their language actually must be framed differently to have any legitimacy in the social circles that they use for their power base.


This just raises the issue more urgently regarding why rightwing sociopaths were able to harness the discourse of Nietzsche so effectively. It suggest the mythic nature of the "independent self" rising from the "herd" that Nietzsche tauted, valildating the progressive perspective, to my mind. Needless to say, humans always exist in the context of a society, something the rightwing of course relies on, since social and state power is the essence of the rightwing. The fact that the Right frames its mode of oppression as individual freedom may say something about Nietzsche's fundamental flaw in understanding the self.
It is a little difficult anymore to look at this as right wing is this, or left wing is that. Who would think for example that libertarians would find a home more in the right side of the political landscape rather than the left?
Or from another perspective, Nazism is as much about socialism as it is about what people on the right consider themselves today. Is it really true that this was about the conservativism and preserving traditions of Europe? Really, fascism was more socialists and revolutionary and corportist more than capitalist. Ergo, the Nazis hatred of Jews centered on their control over the banks and the wheels of capitalism.
Really, the far right and the far left have more in common than they do with either the mainstream conservative or liberal modes of expression that we normally divide into right and left.

What is clear though is that Nietzsche fully rejected Hegel and Marx and the rise of the modern state that was capable of extending its tentacles into everything.Certainly this rejection would extend as fully to the totalitarian states of Hitler as it would to that of Stalin, or what was emerging in the nineteenth century under the Bismarks and the Napoleons. Nietzche saw the writing on the wall more clearer than anyone in his own age, or even or people of this age. Many people who call themselves progessives have a much more benign view of the nanny state that has emerged that just does not fit well into Nietzchean rhetoric. Will to power for progessives is best expressed as communal action rather than the solitary artist retreating to the caves and mountaintops to create.
A man taking charge of his own destiny does not necessarily contradict the progressive vantage point of power as a cooperative venture, but there is very little in Nietzchean rhetoric that jumps out at validating the progessive response.

[gamera]

It is much more than symbolic rejection of him from the left, or accident of history or low-brow populism from the right that accounts for this, imho. Nietzsche' rejection of all 'isms' just cannot fit the worldview of socialists who define humanity in terms of society. Ultimately, they are all Hegelians who see the final destiny of humanity as an egalitarian paradise. The state subsumes the individual in the ideologies and the dialogues that now define the left.

In contrast, Nietzche's appeal is to a man's pursuit of a solitary excellence, his defining of a man's humanity in terms of an overman rising above the herd, as the superior physiology of the blond lion even exerting itself from the pre-Christian mists of the germanic tribe. His poetry and rhetoric appeals to the belief in an individuals freedom so valued by libertarians, and to the myriad of pscyhopathic populists as well ,who who have no use for the constraints of moral thinking on their designs for their own egoistic aggrandizement without regard to the needs of others.

If it is unfair to Nietzche that sociopaths have figured so largely among those who use his name, it would be more surprising actually if this were not the case given the nature of his rhetorical flourishes.

It is not that there are not equally malevolent pyschopaths arising out of left-wing movements either, be they the Stalins or the Doarns of the world, but their language is framed differently. Their language actually must be framed differently to have any legitimacy in the social circles that they use for their power base.


This just raises the issue more urgently regarding why rightwing sociopaths were able to harness the discourse of Nietzsche so effectively. It suggest the mythic nature of the "independent self" rising from the "herd" that Nietzsche tauted, valildating the progressive perspective, to my mind. Needless to say, humans always exist in the context of a society, something the rightwing of course relies on, since social and state power is the essence of the rightwing. The fact that the Right frames its mode of oppression as individual freedom may say something about Nietzsche's fundamental flaw in understanding the self.
It is a little difficult anymore to look at this as right wing is this, or left wing is that. Who would think for example that libertarians would find a home more in the right side of the political landscape rather than the left?
Or from another perspective, Nazism is as much about socialism as it is about what people on the right consider themselves today. Is it really true that this was about the conservativism and preserving traditions of Europe? Really, fascism was more socialists and revolutionary and corportist more than capitalist. Ergo, the Nazis hatred of Jews centered on their control over the banks and the wheels of capitalism.
Really, the far right and the far left have more in common than they do with either the mainstream conservative or liberal modes of expression that we normally divide into right and left.

What is clear though is that Nietzsche fully rejected Hegel and Marx and the rise of the modern state that was capable of extending its tentacles into everything.Certainly this rejection would extend as fully to the totalitarian states of Hitler as it would to that of Stalin, or what was emerging in the nineteenth century under the Bismarks and the Napoleons. Nietzche saw the writing on the wall more clearer than anyone in his own age, or even or people of this age. Many people who call themselves progessives have a much more benign view of the nanny state that has emerged that just does not fit well into Nietzchean rhetoric. Will to power for progessives is best expressed as communal action rather than the solitary artist retreating to the caves and mountaintops to create.
A man taking charge of his own destiny does not necessarily contradict the progressive vantage point of power as a cooperative venture, but there is very little in Nietzchean rhetoric that jumps out at validating the progessive response.

Well, I think libertarianism is simply a mode of the Right, in their attempt to naturalize history, but leave that aside.

I agree Nietzsche was somewhat prescient about the insidious ways social power influences us, but that only makes it more mystifying why the Right was able to so easily encorporate his ubermensch rhetoric into their agenda.

I would note that postmodernists also utterly rejected Marx and Hegel, but in a more cautious way that understood that the discourse of the self, and paeans to individualism, are also only another idiom that institutions use to control and dominate. Clearly liberation is more complex that the existence of individual rights in the context of a mode of social existence like capitalism, which is totalitarian by nature, colonizing every aspect of human interaction. Mind you I like individual rights. I just don't mistake them for real freedom, whatever that may be.

[Coyote]

This just raises the issue more urgently regarding why rightwing sociopaths were able to harness the discourse of Nietzsche so effectively. It suggest the mythic nature of the "independent self" rising from the "herd" that Nietzsche tauted, valildating the progressive perspective, to my mind. Needless to say, humans always exist in the context of a society, something the rightwing of course relies on, since social and state power is the essence of the rightwing. The fact that the Right frames its mode of oppression as individual freedom may say something about Nietzsche's fundamental flaw in understanding the self.
It is a little difficult anymore to look at this as right wing is this, or left wing is that. Who would think for example that libertarians would find a home more in the right side of the political landscape rather than the left?
Or from another perspective, Nazism is as much about socialism as it is about what people on the right consider themselves today. Is it really true that this was about the conservativism and preserving traditions of Europe? Really, fascism was more socialists and revolutionary and corportist more than capitalist. Ergo, the Nazis hatred of Jews centered on their control over the banks and the wheels of capitalism.
Really, the far right and the far left have more in common than they do with either the mainstream conservative or liberal modes of expression that we normally divide into right and left.

What is clear though is that Nietzsche fully rejected Hegel and Marx and the rise of the modern state that was capable of extending its tentacles into everything.Certainly this rejection would extend as fully to the totalitarian states of Hitler as it would to that of Stalin, or what was emerging in the nineteenth century under the Bismarks and the Napoleons. Nietzche saw the writing on the wall more clearer than anyone in his own age, or even or people of this age. Many people who call themselves progessives have a much more benign view of the nanny state that has emerged that just does not fit well into Nietzchean rhetoric. Will to power for progessives is best expressed as communal action rather than the solitary artist retreating to the caves and mountaintops to create.
A man taking charge of his own destiny does not necessarily contradict the progressive vantage point of power as a cooperative venture, but there is very little in Nietzchean rhetoric that jumps out at validating the progessive response.

Well, I think libertarianism is simply a mode of the Right, in their attempt to naturalize history, but leave that aside.

I agree Nietzsche was somewhat prescient about the insidious ways social power influences us, but that only makes it more mystifying why the Right was able to so easily encorporate his ubermensch rhetoric into their agenda.

I would note that postmodernists also utterly rejected Marx and Hegel, but in a more cautious way that understood that the discourse of the self, and paeans to individualism, are also only another idiom that institutions use to control and dominate. Clearly liberation is more complex that the existence of individual rights in the context of a mode of social existence like capitalism, which is totalitarian by nature, colonizing every aspect of human interaction. Mind you I like individual rights. I just don't mistake them for real freedom, whatever that may be.
Well again, the terms Right and Left are in the end somewhat vague. If Libertarians are of the right, they would not be of the Right as it may traditionally be defined in terms of the Ancien Regime and conserving the traditions and modes of the past. They define themselves most in terms of preserving their freedoms to make their own choices and lifestyles independent of government interference. An individuals liberty may indeed have become identified with the Right today, but from the times of the Americna and French Revolutions, this is the kind of thinking that was opposed to the Right, as the right was once commonly thought of..

A second question is ,really, how much has the right, however defined, incorporated the ideal of the overman into their agenda? While no doubt there have been many sociopathic individuals who have risen into prominence and have become authoritarian dictators of some sort , either as heads of authoritarian regime or even of their own private company, their appeal as often as not was manipulative and deceitful, and according to the whims of their own power play rather than according to the needs or desires of those who end up serving them. Their use of Nietzche to justify themselves or to play on the nationalistic sentiments of a group through appeals to the arechetypal and symbolic hyperbole of his writing is superficial at best, and manipulative and Machiavellian too.
But Nietszche ought to have known that his writings may well have this kind of interaction with the hormones and aspirations of the young and the ambitious who have never needed much encouragement to follow their own amorality and strive for power over and above everything else.

This is to say that insofar as the right is defined by religion, Nietzshe has bever been much of an inspiration.

As far as the post-modernists go, how could the positivism of the far left really abide with them. Progessivists and the left are by definition an optimistic bunch, ever hopeful for that workers paradise, if only the greed of capitalism is somehow extinguished and the natural goodness of human nature is allowed to flourish. Like Nietzsche, post-modernists share in the overall pessimistic tone of his towards a society sinking ever futher into decadance, with no higher ideals even possible to sustain it.
Niether left nor right nor Nietzchean, post-modernists seem to me to be the perpetual voice of the victimhood of mankind, the true last men of a world without gods.

Nietzsche shares in their pessimism certainly, of the sheet terror of inhabiting a world without gravity, the cataclysmic disaster of a world without gods to believe in. His response was to dance. What post-modernists would choose to dancing with him in this kind of hellish eternal recurrence.

[gamera]

It is a little difficult anymore to look at this as right wing is this, or left wing is that. Who would think for example that libertarians would find a home more in the right side of the political landscape rather than the left?
Or from another perspective, Nazism is as much about socialism as it is about what people on the right consider themselves today. Is it really true that this was about the conservativism and preserving traditions of Europe? Really, fascism was more socialists and revolutionary and corportist more than capitalist. Ergo, the Nazis hatred of Jews centered on their control over the banks and the wheels of capitalism.
Really, the far right and the far left have more in common than they do with either the mainstream conservative or liberal modes of expression that we normally divide into right and left.

What is clear though is that Nietzsche fully rejected Hegel and Marx and the rise of the modern state that was capable of extending its tentacles into everything.Certainly this rejection would extend as fully to the totalitarian states of Hitler as it would to that of Stalin, or what was emerging in the nineteenth century under the Bismarks and the Napoleons. Nietzche saw the writing on the wall more clearer than anyone in his own age, or even or people of this age. Many people who call themselves progessives have a much more benign view of the nanny state that has emerged that just does not fit well into Nietzchean rhetoric. Will to power for progessives is best expressed as communal action rather than the solitary artist retreating to the caves and mountaintops to create.
A man taking charge of his own destiny does not necessarily contradict the progressive vantage point of power as a cooperative venture, but there is very little in Nietzchean rhetoric that jumps out at validating the progessive response.

Well, I think libertarianism is simply a mode of the Right, in their attempt to naturalize history, but leave that aside.

I agree Nietzsche was somewhat prescient about the insidious ways social power influences us, but that only makes it more mystifying why the Right was able to so easily encorporate his ubermensch rhetoric into their agenda.

I would note that postmodernists also utterly rejected Marx and Hegel, but in a more cautious way that understood that the discourse of the self, and paeans to individualism, are also only another idiom that institutions use to control and dominate. Clearly liberation is more complex that the existence of individual rights in the context of a mode of social existence like capitalism, which is totalitarian by nature, colonizing every aspect of human interaction. Mind you I like individual rights. I just don't mistake them for real freedom, whatever that may be.
Well again, the terms Right and Left are in the end somewhat vague. If Libertarians are of the right, they would not be of the Right as it may traditionally be defined in terms of the Ancien Regime and conserving the traditions and modes of the past. They define themselves most in terms of preserving their freedoms to make their own choices and lifestyles independent of government interference. An individuals liberty may indeed have become identified with the Right today, but from the times of the Americna and French Revolutions, this is the kind of thinking that was opposed to the Right, as the right was once commonly thought of..

A second question is ,really, how much has the right, however defined, incorporated the ideal of the overman into their agenda? While no doubt there have been many sociopathic individuals who have risen into prominence and have become authoritarian dictators of some sort , either as heads of authoritarian regime or even of their own private company, their appeal as often as not was manipulative and deceitful, and according to the whims of their own power play rather than according to the needs or desires of those who end up serving them. Their use of Nietzche to justify themselves or to play on the nationalistic sentiments of a group through appeals to the arechetypal and symbolic hyperbole of his writing is superficial at best, and manipulative and Machiavellian too.
But Nietszche ought to have known that his writings may well have this kind of interaction with the hormones and aspirations of the young and the ambitious who have never needed much encouragement to follow their own amorality and strive for power over and above everything else.

This is to say that insofar as the right is defined by religion, Nietzshe has bever been much of an inspiration.

As far as the post-modernists go, how could the positivism of the far left really abide with them. Progessivists and the left are by definition an optimistic bunch, ever hopeful for that workers paradise, if only the greed of capitalism is somehow extinguished and the natural goodness of human nature is allowed to flourish. Like Nietzsche, post-modernists share in the overall pessimistic tone of his towards a society sinking ever futher into decadance, with no higher ideals even possible to sustain it.
Niether left nor right nor Nietzchean, post-modernists seem to me to be the perpetual voice of the victimhood of mankind, the true last men of a world without gods.

Nietzsche shares in their pessimism certainly, of the sheet terror of inhabiting a world without gravity, the cataclysmic disaster of a world without gods to believe in. His response was to dance. What post-modernists would choose to dancing with him in this kind of hellish eternal recurrence.

Looking at the discourse of libertarianism, I find it completely in line with Barthes' analysis of the discourse of the Right. The modern right simply isn't traditional conservatism. It is more like market evangelism, whose dreary assumptions libertarians seem to happily share.

Of course I don't blame Nietzsche for the misuse of his writings by sociopaths like Nazi theorists. My point was how odd it is that they felt the urge to misuse them at all.

Finally, you are right that the traditional left has many philosophical disagreements with postmodernism, and sometimes they even flare up into political debates. But this is rare. And that's because postmodernism distinguishes particular practices, such as electoral politics and reformism, with the intellectual discontent that might shape them. I'm a traditional Democrat, but find the writings of postmodernists like Foucault extremely helpful in understanding how power works in our society. I look at postmodernism as a toolkit, helpful in dealing with social issues I care about, like overcoming concentrated capital. I don't see a contradiction using postmodernism and participating in traditional reformist politics.

My premise is (and I think it's a postmodern premise) is that everybody has to decide how to resist power in their own way, and as long as the goal is liberation and "progress" (understanding that's a loaded term for postmodernism), I can get along with that. I make a sharp distinction between that and the Right, which is by my definition always working to benefit the rich and powerful and to oppress the poor and weak and marginal, whatever particular method or name they use for it (and that, by the way is why I deem libertarianism as a purely rightwing phenomenon).

But, as you point out, the relationship of left and postmodernism is complex and evolving.

[Coyote]

Well, I think libertarianism is simply a mode of the Right, in their attempt to naturalize history, but leave that aside.

I agree Nietzsche was somewhat prescient about the insidious ways social power influences us, but that only makes it more mystifying why the Right was able to so easily encorporate his ubermensch rhetoric into their agenda.

I would note that postmodernists also utterly rejected Marx and Hegel, but in a more cautious way that understood that the discourse of the self, and paeans to individualism, are also only another idiom that institutions use to control and dominate. Clearly liberation is more complex that the existence of individual rights in the context of a mode of social existence like capitalism, which is totalitarian by nature, colonizing every aspect of human interaction. Mind you I like individual rights. I just don't mistake them for real freedom, whatever that may be.
Well again, the terms Right and Left are in the end somewhat vague. If Libertarians are of the right, they would not be of the Right as it may traditionally be defined in terms of the Ancien Regime and conserving the traditions and modes of the past. They define themselves most in terms of preserving their freedoms to make their own choices and lifestyles independent of government interference. An individuals liberty may indeed have become identified with the Right today, but from the times of the Americna and French Revolutions, this is the kind of thinking that was opposed to the Right, as the right was once commonly thought of..

A second question is ,really, how much has the right, however defined, incorporated the ideal of the overman into their agenda? While no doubt there have been many sociopathic individuals who have risen into prominence and have become authoritarian dictators of some sort , either as heads of authoritarian regime or even of their own private company, their appeal as often as not was manipulative and deceitful, and according to the whims of their own power play rather than according to the needs or desires of those who end up serving them. Their use of Nietzche to justify themselves or to play on the nationalistic sentiments of a group through appeals to the arechetypal and symbolic hyperbole of his writing is superficial at best, and manipulative and Machiavellian too.
But Nietszche ought to have known that his writings may well have this kind of interaction with the hormones and aspirations of the young and the ambitious who have never needed much encouragement to follow their own amorality and strive for power over and above everything else.

This is to say that insofar as the right is defined by religion, Nietzshe has bever been much of an inspiration.

As far as the post-modernists go, how could the positivism of the far left really abide with them. Progessivists and the left are by definition an optimistic bunch, ever hopeful for that workers paradise, if only the greed of capitalism is somehow extinguished and the natural goodness of human nature is allowed to flourish. Like Nietzsche, post-modernists share in the overall pessimistic tone of his towards a society sinking ever futher into decadance, with no higher ideals even possible to sustain it.
Niether left nor right nor Nietzchean, post-modernists seem to me to be the perpetual voice of the victimhood of mankind, the true last men of a world without gods.

Nietzsche shares in their pessimism certainly, of the sheet terror of inhabiting a world without gravity, the cataclysmic disaster of a world without gods to believe in. His response was to dance. What post-modernists would choose to dancing with him in this kind of hellish eternal recurrence.

Looking at the discourse of libertarianism, I find it completely in line with Barthes' analysis of the discourse of the Right. The modern right simply isn't traditional conservatism. It is more like market evangelism, whose dreary assumptions libertarians seem to happily share.

Of course I don't blame Nietzsche for the misuse of his writings by sociopaths like Nazi theorists. My point was how odd it is that they felt the urge to misuse them at all.

Finally, you are right that the traditional left has many philosophical disagreements with postmodernism, and sometimes they even flare up into political debates. But this is rare. And that's because postmodernism distinguishes particular practices, such as electoral politics and reformism, with the intellectual discontent that might shape them. I'm a traditional Democrat, but find the writings of postmodernists like Foucault extremely helpful in understanding how power works in our society. I look at postmodernism as a toolkit, helpful in dealing with social issues I care about, like overcoming concentrated capital. I don't see a contradiction using postmodernism and participating in traditional reformist politics.

My premise is (and I think it's a postmodern premise) is that everybody has to decide how to resist power in their own way, and as long as the goal is liberation and "progress" (understanding that's a loaded term for postmodernism), I can get along with that. I make a sharp distinction between that and the Right, which is by my definition always working to benefit the rich and powerful and to oppress the poor and weak and marginal, whatever particular method or name they use for it (and that, by the way is why I deem libertarianism as a purely rightwing phenomenon).

But, as you point out, the relationship of left and postmodernism is complex and evolving.

It is quite correct to understand that the Right today is not the conservatism of the ancien regime. The power base of the modern right does not lie with those who would want to maintain class privilege and the continuing division of society into nobility and commoner. Nor really does the power base of the right lie in Wall Street and the corporate elites, who by and large find that an allegiance of their big business with big government works for their interests quite well indeed.The interests of the left towards Corporatism in government with taxpayer money sheltering the risks is very useful to Wall Street and the monied classes in general. Really bigger governments work well for Wall Street, for they have always had the ear of polticians of any stripe. That is where the real money is.

The Right today represents a very diverse amalgam of people and thought.It is not as if there is no conflict between the laissez-faire attitude of the libertarian with the morality-based religious right, or the law and order security neo-cons. It is not as if there is not contradiction either in the general distrust of government and the tendency to want extreme limits put on government and the opposing tendency to recognize that in a world defined by powerful states, powerful government is often needed as a response to legitimate security issues.
To the extent that the left demonizes the right into a caricature of what conservative in general believe and think and feel, there will be no clarity in what the real differences between left and right now are.

Now I, like Jung, actually do hold Nietzche responsible for how his ideals have been misued. Words have power and it should be no surprise that the archetypes and symbols he so capably and powerfully tapped into in his writing, sprung as they were onto a world where all limits had become shattered and fragmented by an inability to believe in the existence of any truth or foundation for values whatsover, would have dire consequences. As insightful as he was about the pscyhe and human nature, he really would have had to have known what kind of evil his words could release in a human pscyhe that no longer had need to answer to anything but its own will to power.
That he wrote anyways in full cognizance of what power his words had just demonstrates how desparate he was to rediscover a center gravity for the rise of his overman.

Be that as it may, what many on the right appreciate about Nietzche is his prescience into what kind of world lie over the horizon in a Europe and Western world that no longer had any center of gravity for belief and value. The decadence, the rise of personal comfort as the primal value, the rise of a last man with no ties to a future outside of himself, the cult of the victim and clinging to slave-morality of the post-modern world long after any belief in Christ had died; these are all ideas that have demonstrated to the many on the right, the Fukyama's and the like, that the man was a prophet of sorts.

It is probably a misunderstanding of the depth and breadth of thought of the right side or the political spectrum that may lead some to be surprised that the right may actually find anything useful in the words and writings of Nietzsche, or the tendency that some on the right have to incorporate his thought into their own worldviews. For most conservatives certainly, heis the devil incarnate, and his last years in the mental institution hallucinating himself as the eternally crucified Christ may even seem somehow macabrely fitting a fate for him.

But for others, his honest and accurate appraisal of our world is a redemption of sorts for him too. His words accurately describe what we have become-what we have all become, and even if he ultimately failed into creating himself into any sort of overman, his failing is the failure of us all, after all. We still struggle, like he did, to forge values in a world that reeks from the rotting flesh of Europe's fallen god.

[Coyote]

.....My premise is (and I think it's a postmodern premise) is that everybody has to decide how to resist power in their own way, and as long as the goal is liberation and "progress" (understanding that's a loaded term for postmodernism), I can get along with that. I make a sharp distinction between that and the Right, which is by my definition always working to benefit the rich and powerful and to oppress the poor and weak and marginal, whatever particular method or name they use for it (and that, by the way is why I deem libertarianism as a purely right-wing phenomenon).

It would be interesting for you to examine your ideas here in the light of Nietzche's concept of ressentiment. http://everything2.com/?node_id=1184658. If you define yourself as on the left, then perhaps you may see where the chasm between Nietzche and socialist system lies.

The very same objections that Nietzche had to Christianity are present in the post-Christian thought from the Left, ie the disdain for power, the 'pity' that the left has for the powerless and the the unfortunate, equality of outcome regardless of individual ability. Indeed in the cult-of-victim mentality these tendencies become not just post-Christian in effect, but indeed hyper-Christian to an extent that Christianity never was, as french anthropoligist Rene Girard may have pointed out.

To contrast Nietzche and a stereotypical voice of the left, to the leftist, the criticism of Christians is that they are not Christian enough; for Nietzche he is the anti-christian to the core of his being. He is not merely a-thiestic in finding the 'superstition' unbelievable, but anti-thiestic in believing that the Christian God ought not to be believed in, even if he were true.

In broad terms, the Right tends to valuate life in terms of the pursuit of excellence, while the Left valuates life in terms of pity and compassion. Without falling into demonizing one side or the other, in the most positive light this is the difference between the two political tendencies. It is a yin and yang, or masculine and feminine phenomena, with the thundering voice of the Yaweh, Lord God of Host and of warriors, being opposed with the submissive Second Person of the Trinity who gains power through submission and victimization and the resultant pity that is affected in society.

This was FN's lament even back in the latter days of the nineteenth century. Even as the elites of the society no longer believed in the Truth of the Christian God of the superstitious, they still in effect worshipped the Christian god by keeping his commandments. "Does nobody smell the rotting flesh of the dead god", an incredulous Zaruthstra wonders aloud!

Without faith in the Trinity of the Persons of God, they yet followed the path of the faith, still believed in the ethic of Christ. Nothing really changed at all!

For what is Marxism and socialism after all, really, but a secularized version of Christianity, a continuance of the Christian revolution against the powers of the world?


What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?--Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?--The feeling that power increases--that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?--Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak--Christianity...

http://www.fns.org.uk/ac.htm

[Preno]

As far as the post-modernists go, how could the positivism of the far left really abide with them. Progessivists and the left are by definition an optimistic bunch, ever hopeful for that workers paradise, if only the greed of capitalism is somehow extinguished and the natural goodness of human nature is allowed to flourish.That's just idiotic.
In broad terms, the Right tends to valuate life in terms of the pursuit of excellence, while the Left valuates life in terms of pity and compassion.One could easily argue that the Left wants freedom for everyone to pursue excellence, so your point is, again, idiotic.

[Coyote]

As far as the post-modernists go, how could the positivism of the far left really abide with them. Progessivists and the left are by definition an optimistic bunch, ever hopeful for that workers paradise, if only the greed of capitalism is somehow extinguished and the natural goodness of human nature is allowed to flourish.That's just idiotic.
In broad terms, the Right tends to valuate life in terms of the pursuit of excellence, while the Left valuates life in terms of pity and compassion.One could easily argue that the Left wants freedom for everyone to pursue excellence, so your point is, again, idiotic.
Wow, this is actually one of the better arguments I have ever gotten from the twit side of the political spectrum.
You forgot to mention racist, sexist, homophobic and evil in your post though. "A" for effort then, but 'C' for content. It is a steep learning curve for some I guess, learning all these concept of how best to make a political point.

All and all though, not a bad effort. Your mommy and daddy will be very proud that all those dollars spent on your education have not been a total waste.

[Preno]

You forgot to mention racist, sexist, homophobic and evil in your post though. "A" for effort then, but 'C' for content. It is a steep learning curve for some I guess, learning all these concept of how best to make a political point.You're building an idiotic caricature, presumably because you wish to avoid the intellectual discomfort it would cause you to take the object of your caricature seriously (which I presume is also why you write it off as a "hyper-Christian" "cult-of-victim").

But I'm afraid in all of my 1,800 posts here I've never used the words "sexist" or "homophobic" and I've used the word "evil" only once, so you're pretty much pwning yourself. I have used "retarded" quite a lot, though, and it seems appropriate once again.
All and all though, not a bad effort. Your mommy and daddy will be very proud that all those dollars spent on your education have not been a total waste.My mommy and daddy haven't spent a dollar on my education, unless you count two ~$20 application fees and a couple of textbooks.

[Coyote]

You have nothing, Preno. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Then again, the idea of the cult-of-victim, Marxism and secular Christianity and what anthropologist Rene Girard has had to say on the subject are hardly my ideas. Anyone who has any grasp of the subject matter at all surely would have seen this.

I fully understand that I was speaking in broad terms, -but also specifically to a segment of Gamera's post- to allow him to understand how Nietzche and he were speaking a completely different language.

I was not making a judgment on either Gamera's secular liberalism or Nietzche's anti-Christian beliefs. Indeed, I personally think that there is much to be commended in
the liberal point of view. There is a difference between appreciating Nietzche's point of being and being an advocate of Nietzche-ism.

But that, I think, is the reason why the Left does not have much in common with Nietzche. The Left very much are of the "blessed are the poor" side of the equation, so even if they are often athiests in every aspect of the term, yet they still have much in common with the Christian value system. Marxism and socialism are in many ways daughters of Christianity. that is just an historic fact. Their bread and butter are the poor, the downtrodden, the powerless, the unfortunate, women, the proletariat... Dostoyevsky's Idiot tugs at their heartstrings too, and even Nietzche showed a rare soft spot when he called Christ an idiot. what is life after all without a little sentimentality for those who do not seek power for powers sake?

So again, there is nothing wrong with these values. Yin is incomplete without yang and vice-versa.

But for Nietzche, these values are categorically denied, even wildly so. No matter how much his sister would later rationalize his anti-Christ system of values as being more sympathetic to Christianity than they really were, they just weren't. Nietzche was anti-democratic anti-liberal, anti-pity, and pro-power for the sake of power. Nietzche is very much focused against pity for the poor, and focused on the elite man becoming unfettered by a morality of compasssion. He certainly wasn't a "spread the wealth and power around" kind of guy-probably not even much into "trickle down" theories of captialsitic compassion. He instead glorified a pre-Christian time, of vigorous marauding warrior tribes of Germans, and fierce Israelites glorfiying Yaweh with their enemies blood, and ruthless Greeks who esteem power for power sake, even noble Islamists who Nietzche would have preferred to have won against the Christians. Those who historically disdain compassion as weak and womanish, and rejected the spider-web manipulations of sly slaves and spirit-destroying priests, those strong free spirits who took what they needed from the weak and helpless were Nietzche's gods.

It is really, really quite different than the ideas of compassion for the poor and control for the greedy that Gamera was subscribing to in his comments.

I do not know if he will really agree or disagree, or even understand my point of view. Really, he probably just got bored and went elsewhere.
Or maybe he will be like you and only argue from the vantage point of hurt feelings for being caricatured as something akin to a lowly Christian.

I just don't know.

But again, I am sorry my generalization aka caricature has left you feeling victimized by my words. Since I have no argument against your hurt feelings, I guess my shallow apology is all I have to offer.

Then again, your hurt feelings are hardly an argument against my points either, so I guess we are even on that accord.

Maybe the Slovaks had the right idea after all. Adieu, my dear sweet Preno.

[Preno]

I don't feel "victimized", I just pointed out that your caricature is idiotic (wait, is this another part of your caricature, that leftists tend to feel victimized?). Which means that it doesn't correspond to reality (regardless of what "anthropologist Rene Girard has had to say on the subject"), not that it hurts my feelings. You'd have to try a lot harder to accomplish that.

(I also have no idea what you meant by "the Slovaks had the right idea after all".)

[Coyote]

Cult-of-victim ts a part of the caricature that you already objected to as bing idiotic. Not only are you clueless to what I say, but you are clueless to what you have said as well.

Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

[gamera]

In broad terms, the Right tends to valuate life in terms of the pursuit of excellence, while the Left valuates life in terms of pity and compassion.


While your post makes some otherwise good points about Nieztsche, I don't think this comment makes much sense (or rather appears a bit romantic). It seems totally abstracted to what the Right is about -- power, and the use of discourse to obtain it in lush florid mythological ways.

Again, this has been pretty much exposed and analyzed by Barthes in his Mythologies.

[premjan]

Right is about power, makes a lot of sense out of the right-left metaphor. Since people are typically right-handed.

[gamera]

You have nothing, Preno. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Then again, the idea of the cult-of-victim, Marxism and secular Christianity and what anthropologist Rene Girard has had to say on the subject are hardly my ideas. Anyone who has any grasp of the subject matter at all surely would have seen this.

I fully understand that I was speaking in broad terms, -but also specifically to a segment of Gamera's post- to allow him to understand how Nietzche and he were speaking a completely different language.

I was not making a judgment on either Gamera's secular liberalism or Nietzche's anti-Christian beliefs. Indeed, I personally think that there is much to be commended in
the liberal point of view. There is a difference between appreciating Nietzche's point of being and being an advocate of Nietzche-ism.

But that, I think, is the reason why the Left does not have much in common with Nietzche. The Left very much are of the "blessed are the poor" side of the equation, so even if they are often athiests in every aspect of the term, yet they still have much in common with the Christian value system. Marxism and socialism are in many ways daughters of Christianity. that is just an historic fact. Their bread and butter are the poor, the downtrodden, the powerless, the unfortunate, women, the proletariat... Dostoyevsky's Idiot tugs at their heartstrings too, and even Nietzche showed a rare soft spot when he called Christ an idiot. what is life after all without a little sentimentality for those who do not seek power for powers sake?

So again, there is nothing wrong with these values. Yin is incomplete without yang and vice-versa.

But for Nietzche, these values are categorically denied, even wildly so. No matter how much his sister would later rationalize his anti-Christ system of values as being more sympathetic to Christianity than they really were, they just weren't. Nietzche was anti-democratic anti-liberal, anti-pity, and pro-power for the sake of power. Nietzche is very much focused against pity for the poor, and focused on the elite man becoming unfettered by a morality of compasssion. He certainly wasn't a "spread the wealth and power around" kind of guy-probably not even much into "trickle down" theories of captialsitic compassion. He instead glorified a pre-Christian time, of vigorous marauding warrior tribes of Germans, and fierce Israelites glorfiying Yaweh with their enemies blood, and ruthless Greeks who esteem power for power sake, even noble Islamists who Nietzche would have preferred to have won against the Christians. Those who historically disdain compassion as weak and womanish, and rejected the spider-web manipulations of sly slaves and spirit-destroying priests, those strong free spirits who took what they needed from the weak and helpless were Nietzche's gods.

It is really, really quite different than the ideas of compassion for the poor and control for the greedy that Gamera was subscribing to in his comments.

I do not know if he will really agree or disagree, or even understand my point of view. Really, he probably just got bored and went elsewhere.
Or maybe he will be like you and only argue from the vantage point of hurt feelings for being caricatured as something akin to a lowly Christian.

I just don't know.

But again, I am sorry my generalization aka caricature has left you feeling victimized by my words. Since I have no argument against your hurt feelings, I guess my shallow apology is all I have to offer.

Then again, your hurt feelings are hardly an argument against my points either, so I guess we are even on that accord.

Maybe the Slovaks had the right idea after all. Adieu, my dear sweet Preno.


I agree that Nietzsche disdained compassion and valorized power and selfishness, but of course that's why his thinking is ultimately rather boring. Thankfully, what makes us truly human and secure is our compassion, pity and care for others. The preoccupation with power and self-interest is just the result of insecurity (which of course on a psychological level, given his disatrous inability to have even a soupcon of a decent relationship with women) Nietzsche was tormented with. Neitzsche is a classic case of an insecure male, who living in constant fear of being humlitiated and abused, makes up for it with bravado about love of power and disdain for the weak.

Now that I think of it, it is probably this personality trait (common in rightwingers like Hitler, Cheney, Reagan, etc) that attracts the rightwing to Neitzsche.

Thanks for the insight.

[premjan]

Nietzsche isn't entirely wrong. Basically unless the will flowers, it doesn't produce compassion as a side effect either. Maybe Christianity focused too much on compassion and not enough on the will in Nietzsche's time.

[Coyote]

I agree that Nietzsche disdained compassion and valorized power and selfishness, but of course that's why his thinking is ultimately rather boring. Thankfully, what makes us truly human and secure is our compassion, pity and care for others. The preoccupation with power and self-interest is just the result of insecurity (which of course on a psychological level, given his disatrous inability to have even a soupcon of a decent relationship with women) Nietzsche was tormented with. Neitzsche is a classic case of an insecure male, who living in constant fear of being humlitiated and abused, makes up for it with bravado about love of power and disdain for the weak.

Now that I think of it, it is probably this personality trait (common in rightwingers like Hitler, Cheney, Reagan, etc) that attracts the rightwing to Neitzsche.

Thanks for the insight.
You are welcome. It is a good insight. This I think is a correct reading of Nietzche, the person. His is a classic case of overcompensation.
He was basically a very timid person and in most respects a failure, an underman really.

Only in his fantasy life could he be truly great.

I wonder if he was not the most acutely aware of this than anyone else? I suspect his insight about who he was in this regard was actually painfully honest and deep.
But this is a type of courage too, to celebrate and affirm a life that falls far short of what we might will it to be, and not to give into a nihilsitc indifference or rejection of a life so humiliatingly insignificant.

The rest of the commentary pertaining to right versus left is fair comment for a liberal website such as this. I did not really expect objectivity here, but it is a relief to see that liberals still exist who an offer an intelligent discussion of an important figure in the history of philosophy.

[Received]

Nietzsche isn't entirely wrong. Basically unless the will flowers, it doesn't produce compassion as a side effect either. Maybe Christianity focused too much on compassion and not enough on the will in Nietzsche's time.

Too much on grace, post-mortem salvation, predestination, being used by God, eschewing indications for spiritual growth (e.g., fruits of the spirit), criteria for spiritual growth (e.g., faith, self murder, etc.), ad infinitum. It's inconceivable that ressentiment, as Nietzsche understood it, wouldn't be the effect of such a passive religious lifeway. Ressentiment is essentially the disease of passivity. Firing up the will, even for "evil", is ten times better than brooding in one's own psychological blubber.

[premjan]

Basically the conservative domination is fundamentalism, and liberal domination is fascism. Nietzsche was rebelling against the conservative domination, but people took him instead for a fascist.