Animalism, Earthism

you have to ask me this now? you need to get to me a little sooner, dude, because i get burned out on serious posting in a matter of minutes, these days. his defense of aristocracy, his conception of the state, his criteria for the overman, his analysis of darwinism, his views on women, his taking kant for granted, his WTP metaphysics, his infatuation with heraclitus, his dissing of spinoza (on one occasion), his self-deprecating in front of that russian hottie lou salome, his scolding schopenhaur for blasting on hegel, his failure to meet stirner and pay proper homage to the original gangsta, and his unwarranted dismissal of coffee… to name a few things.

but he got far more right than he got wrong, and he’s still a beast because of that fact.

Given that list, I guess the better question is: what did he get right?

And I do understand it is somewhat of an unfair question. He tends not to give you nice straight lines and neat lists. But as far as your energy has not been fully depleted, I’d like to hear it.

i suppose at the bottom of this question is: can there be a Nietzshce for the people?

My first guess is yes, but it is based on a premise that you named as one of the things he got wrong. Overcoming as pathos. But anyway, like to hear your take.

My philosophy teacher once told me a letter of Nietzsche’s had been found or something where he mentions Kierkeggard and how he seems interesting, but appearently it was shortly before he lost it, but potentially he would have ended up meeting up. Don’t know if that wins him any points.

I think of Stirner as a bit of a joke. A lot of fascile points. Not a lot of depth there.

Dostoyevski and Shopenhauer are the OGs of Nietzsche’s thoughts, if there is any. The ones who broke the ground he needed.

Where Stirner is smugly superior, Dostoyevski is in an abyss of anxiety. That safety Stirner felt, it betrays a lack of actual wrestling with the beast.

Fuck it, Imma say it. I think you would LIKE to be a Stirnerian nihilist, because of the feeling of safety, but have despite yourself found yourself face to face with the beast. Cracking jokes is an honourable response, but it doesn’t crack through like Nietzsche did, says I.

Kierkeggard also broke through in his way. He was a bit of a hippie at heart. I like that guy. A lot of people don’t catch his vast arrogance.

He did panic, though, and latched on to Christ for dear life.

Understandable as well. The way he did it is honourable. After all, his obsession was with Old Testament shit, which is the good shit.

Both my grandfathers were hard Communists and still I inherited from both of them a copy of Zarathustra.
No one who has any sense in his head disregards Nietzsche. That criterium runs through the entire ladder from the mud to the citadel.

Yeah it kinda made my day. Capable is some kind of cosmic elephant.

I first felt oh no what a waste, that would have been too cool if that had happened -
but then I thought maybe this was his way of getting to see Kierkegaard. Losing his wits - his military eye.

One of these people who make boring observations an art. They are the ruin of most bourgeoise lives.

The old testament is actually one of the best books ever.

The prodigal capitalist revealed.

Serendipper

Why do you insist I simplify it?
You can prefer something, and identify with it, and have reasons for preferring and identifying with it, without thinking it’s objectively superior.

You’re right. Good point.

So I guess he wouldn’t have minded, then. But I wonder if, in this regard, he ever questioned himself (or ever made the connection).

understandable. he does have that effect. we take offense at anyone who calls our deepest thoughts and most pressing philosophical concerns, a menagerie of nonsense and spooks. we want to take something seriously, want to believe we can find some cause external to us that might give us meaning so that we can temporarily lose ourselves as the ‘creative nothings’ that we really are (according to stirner), and escape the nihilism that consumes us.

there probably hasn’t ever been a thinker as honest as stirner; that’s what’s so offensive to the involuntary egoist, who on account of his fear of his own nothingess, cannot live without lying to himself and others. what’s so impressive about stirner is that he ‘called out’ everything philosophical that was to develop south of marx, long before it happened. he was the absolute antithesis of marx’s collectivity and morality, a kind of private eye that got a look behind all the individualisms and egoisms that would evolve and parade around as ‘moral’ systems. especially capitalism; the quintessential farce in this respect. so in a way stirner was like the priest that the capitalist must confess to if he is to come clean. the capitalist has everyone else fooled, but not stirner… not that master psychologist and magistrate of philosophical honesty.

somewhere else i talked about how stirner and marx represent the only two possible wings of political theory. and stirner is incredibly important because he is the shining symbol of conservatism (jakob had it backward in some comment elsewhere), which is nothing more than an anarchy of egoism with no view toward a collective and truly moral state. this being the case, the conservative is the epitome of the involuntary egoist; he covers his immorality up by telling himself he cares for something more than his pocket - humanity, freedom, liberty… spook narratives he occupies his head with, ‘causes’ he tells himself he is involved in so he can avoid having to face his own transparency.

in the end you might say there are only two types of people. nihilists-truthers, and nihilist-liars. the first type is the creator of morality precisely because he knows there isn’t any morality. he has to fill this void, and to do so honestly, properly and completely, he has to shift to the other side of that spectrum and embrace the marxist collectivity. the second type is immersed in a tripartite lie; the first, that there is morality, the second, that his cause (capitalism) is this morality, and the third, that he becomes moral in what he does when he takes up his cause.

so the capitalist is so perfectly nestled in this series of lies that he tells himself that to come out of it would scare him to death… and this is the condition of the involuntary egoist. the first step out is to come clean and get washed. then you can begin doing political philosophy proper. until then, one is a thug at best, or a worm at worst.

this is the wisdom of the grand master max; that deadly philosophical marksman sniper. dostoevsky and nietzsche were great existential soldiers, sure, but they couldn’t shoot like max. no sir.

There isn’t any morality? Based off of logic there is. Since existence at its root is agony, morality spawns out of such. Objectively and subjectively.

Nihilism? Really? The meaning of life is Life, to evolve and experience, sorry that isn’t enough For some, quite sad to be honest. If one actually TRULY believes life has no meaning then what stops them from ending their life which has “no meaning” other than cowardice? They should take a trip back to Valhalla don’t you think?

We should have a half socialism system, half of our system focused on necessities and the other half as capitalism for luxuries, the un-needed things that we use as comforts or pleasures. We need to educate people in individual thinking and if they aren’t educated we should take their vote away, sorry not sorry. How can you fix an issue if you have a mass of people who don’t even understand what the issue is?

First step, diagnosis. Which they obviously don’t know how to diagnose, so why do we give them this sense of “false winning” when they’re losing and just too ignorant to see such.

what i mean is, there are descriptions for morality, but no prescriptions; there is no moral theory that can get around the naturalistic fallacy without appealing to something transcendent to humans that sanctions concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. and even if there were, one is still not obliged to follow such rules.

for an all-encompassing prescriptive theory of morality to exist, moral philosophy has to be greatly simplified and narrowed down to a few basic premises. they would be utilitarian in principle, and hedonistic in practice, translating into the axiom: the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest amount of people. this is the only way you’ll ever get around all the conflicts generated by moral and cultural relativism. and such an all-encompassing morality needs to be forced on the world… precisely because of man’s inherently selfish nature. in the context of my above post, i’m explaining this problem in terms of polarities that are represented by both stirner and marx. one approaches one or the other, absolutely, and there is no ‘middle ground’ here. anything short of the marxian collectivity will express only a variation of stirnerism, which is what the world should be wanting to avoid if it wishes to establish a solid foundation for morality.

now i’m not saying the world has to do this… only that if it doesn’t, it will never turn moral theory into a prescriptively objective subject.

few things are more irritating than watching clumsy philosophers fumble around with moral theories that have no lasting substance, or try to invent new, designer moral theories that are only the residual left-overs of moral theory already demolished by positivism. you might say the age of moral ‘philosophy’ is over. morality now belongs to the sciences. the philosophers blew their chance.