Some instructors won’t even teach him, claiming his views do not constient a true philosophy…
But what of this funny man with the broad bow mustache…who would write till his eyes burned in his room…was it a personal exorcism made public, his ideas bursting from him…or did he mean to set all things right in his ramblings.
Teen age blasphmies or bursting brilliance…
Some of his ideas I lay on the table for discussion…
He seemed to hate three things…
Democracy…never let the “herd” decide…
Plato…“spirit of excellence”, puh-hah…
The “Herd”…N. cheered the Superman…who would look on us, as we do the ape. His own rules…his own destiny…his own victory. Napeleon and Hitler seem to understand the Superman concept…very well.
On Christianity…actually he had respect for Jesus. But felt the Church had virtually emasculated Christ, and turned the church into an anti-sex, anti-joy, and ultimately anti life institution.
For my money, Nietzsche was the shrewdest social prophet of the 19th Century. He predicted the rise of nationalism (the deification of the state attendant upon the death of God) and the world wars that nationalism would bring. He predicted the death of marriage (“superfluous” in a society that cannot posit a future), and he foresaw the rise of world trade after science, developing weapons of mass destruction, obviated war as an option.
These predictions are available in the “portable Nietzsches” of Kaufmann, Hollingdale and others.
Nietzsche was a superb epigrammist. It is hard to overstate his intuitive and literary elan.
As a psychologist, Nietzsche was nowhere near Freud in perception, and suprisingly, he failed to appreciate the importance of economics in sociology (much as Freud failed to appreciate the importance of culture in psychology). But as a social observer and prophet, the guy was in a class by himself.