That’s just what I could find. I can’t even spell Niet (looks back at your post) zsche reliably.
What do you recommend as relevant reading material for a beginner?
Please don’t say the whole lot..
Genealogy of Morals. Find where he talks about lying and lead with that.
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Nietzsche is most compelling when he defends people against self-poisoning shame and insists that dangerous, unruly energies can be worked with rather than denied. He is least convincing when he absolutises a heroic ideal and underestimates the need some people have for limits, renunciation and gentler forms of life that do indeed say ‘no’ to certain passions for the sake of other goods.
„Wir sind uns unbekannt, wir Erkennenden, wir selbst uns selbst: das hat seinen guten Grund. Wir haben nie nach uns gesucht – wie sollte es geschehen, dass wir eines Tages uns fänden? Mit Recht hat man gesagt: „Wo euer Schatz ist, da ist auch euer Herz“; unser Schatz ist, wo die Bienenkörbe unsere Erkenntnis stehn. Wir sind immer dazu unterwegs, als geborne Flügeltiere und Honigsammler des Geistes, wir kümmern uns von Herzen eigentlich nur um eins – etwas „heimzubringen“. Was das Leben sonst, die sogenannte „Erlebnisse“ angeht – wer von uns hat dafür auch nur Ernst genug? Oder Zeit genug? Bei solchen Sachen waren wir, fürchte ich, nie recht „bei der Sache“: wir haben eben unser Herz nicht dort - und nicht einmal unser Ohr! Vielmehr wie Göttlich-Zerstreuter und In-sich-Versenkter, dem die Glocke eben mit aller Macht ihre zwölf Schläge des Mittags ins Ohr gedröhnt hat, mit einem Male aufgewacht und sich fragt „was hat es da eigentlich geschlagen?“, so reiben auch wir uns mitunter hinterdrein die Ohren und fragen, ganz erstaunt, ganz betreten, „was haben wir da eigentlich erlebt?“ mehr noch „wer sind wir eigentlich?“ und zählen nach, hinterdrein, wie gesagt, alle die zitternden zwölf Glockenschläge unseres Erlebnisses, unseres Lebens, unseres sein – ach! Und verzählen uns dabei … Wir bleiben uns eben notwendig fremd, wir verstehen uns nicht, wir müssen uns verwechseln, für uns heißt der Satz in alle Ewigkeit „Jeder ist sich selbst der Fernste“ – für uns sind wir keine „Erkennenden“ ….“
Translation:
We are unknown to ourselves, we who recognise, we ourselves: there is a good reason for this. We have never searched for ourselves – how could it happen that one day we would find ourselves? It has rightly been said: “Where your treasure is, there is also your heart”; our treasure is where the beehives of our knowledge stand. We are always on the move, as born winged creatures and honey gatherers of the spirit, and we really only care about one thing – bringing something “home”. As for the rest of life, the so-called “experiences” – who among us takes them seriously enough? Or has enough time for them? When it comes to such things, I fear we have never really been “on the ball”: our hearts are simply not there – not even our ears! Rather, like the divinely distracted and introspective person, who has just been roused from his reverie by the bell ringing its twelve strokes of noon with all its might, suddenly waking up and asking himself, “what was that ringing?”, so we too sometimes rub our ears afterwards and ask, quite astonished, quite embarrassed, “What did we actually experience?” Even more, “Who are we actually?” And we count, afterwards, as I said, all the trembling twelve chimes of our experience, our life, our being – oh! And in doing so, we miscount… We necessarily remain strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must confuse ourselves, for us the sentence “Everyone is most distant from themselves” applies for all eternity – for us, we are not “knowers”…
This is why I can’t get through it. What is:
“Where your treasure is, there is also your heart”?
“the beehives of our knowledge”?
“the trembling twelve chimes of our experience”?
Does this require knowledge of his prior work to understand?
Is it German folk wisdom terminology that I’m not getting?
I find it all very difficult to decode, seriously.
This phrasing closely matches Matthew 6:21 and Luke 12:34 in the Bible. Standard translations like the King James Version (KJV) or New International Version (NIV) render it as “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” with minor wording variations (e.g., “Your heart will be where your treasure is” in the New Century Version).
This is a metaphor meaning we are “busy bees” bringing our “treasure” home, and too distracted to be self-aware.
This also evokes the image of the clock chiming midnight, with people shortly before their deaths reviewing their lives with regret.
Nietzsche uses many aphorisms and metaphors, which are very much the language of the 19th century. I quite like it and have cherished some of the writing of authors from that time, Theodor Fontane, for example, who wrote novels critical of the German Empire and the militarised society.
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I don’t think Nietzsche is a very good place for me to start with more recent philosophy Bob. I’ll be forever decoding metaphors and aphorisms, and my knowledge of Biblical quotes and references is very sparse. I’ve read some Kierkegaard and I found that a lot easier to get through and digest. Maybe I should stick to that at present..
I’m finding Nietzsche a bit too flowery, to be perfectly honest. It’s distracting me from the meaning he’s trying to express. Or maybe I’m just too thick, who knows? Back to Kierkegaard for me..
I find it amusing that Kierkegaard does the same for me as Nietzsche does for you. However, I have grasped the German language better some of my German peers because I have a strange affinity with it that I can’t explain. I went to evening classes forty years ago and the literature teacher was amazed that the “Engländer” often showed more enthusiasm than the German born participants.
Perhaps it’s because I lived in Denmark for so long and got used to the way they express themselves? I’m not sure. I had a similar experience in a Danish class, by outshining some of the others in class who were either Danish, Greenlandic or from the Faeroe Islands, but my problem with Danish was never with the written word, it was always with the spoken. I always felt like I had a mouth full of marbles when trying to speak it, and I still do to this day - the guttural sounds and strange vowels never came naturally to me, and I don’t think they ever will.
Do you think it has something to do with becoming acclimatised the the common grammar and mannerisms of a language that makes an English translation more comprehensible?
Yes, very much so. But I also tend to translate difficult English texts into German because I understand them better that way. For me, there is no “high German” like for colloquial speakers, and German helps me understand “sophisticated” English in textbooks.
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I feel like there are many words in the English language that are used so infrequently that when I stumble across them it feels like a barrier. But that sounds like a good idea you have, perhaps translating certain Nietzsche passages to Danish might help me to read it more fluently and separate the metaphors more easily? Maybe if it’s just worded differently that might help? There are far fewer words in the Danish vocabulary to trip over for an uneducated grunt like me..
I’m going to give it a try.
Introspection takes you out of being present in the moment, and instead of practical wisdom, people who live in our heads just know unlived… so not truth. The midday noon is the moment we are never in until in hindsight.
Kierkegaard said same/similar… subjectivity (instantiating in action) is truth… “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Guh I’m verklempt.
I wonder Nietzsche knew that the heaven we store our treasures in is the eternal moment Kierkegaard was talking about instantiating in action (on earth as it is in heaven)?
Nietzsche was making the point that if we only become introspective in existential situations like the end of our lives, we are full of regret and depend more upon the redemption than if we were “on the ball” and knew ourselves like the Delphic maxim advises us. Instead of being preoccupied with bringing treasures home, if we were more mindful of our experiences, it would save us much regret and perhaps brighten up the world.
This seems to align with Jesus calling on his followers to be a light to the world and salt of the earth.
Nietzsche targeted the historical institutionalisation of Christianity and what he saw as the church’s distortion of Jesus’ original message, more than the figure of Jesus himself. Nietzsche distinguished between the “Christ” he admired as a figure of radical innocence, purity, and instinctive life-affirmation, and the “Christianity” propagated by Paul and the Church, which he condemned as a perversion. In The Antichrist, he praises Jesus as a “free spirit” who lived in immediate, psychological union with God, embodying anti-dogmatic love and psychological insight over abstract doctrine. He portrays Jesus’ kingdom of God as an inner state of peace and presence, not a future metaphysical realm.
No. You should stop speaking for Nietzsche.
Quote, then provide your own commentary…hopefully relevant to the thread.
Perhaps you missed this:
Y’all feel free to explore your private side-convos via private message.
Unless you want to get kicked out of class for street cred or something… then… looks at you both very sternly, points to the door, says: GO
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OK. Go easy on me, first attempt.
From Daybreak (1881):
Thus the individual hides himself in the general concept ‘man’, or in society, or adapts himself to princes, classes, parties, opinions of his time and place: and all the subtle ways we have of appearing fortunate, grateful,powerful, enamoured have their easily discoverable parallels in the animal world.
Isn’t this just referring to group behaviour and social norms? We as socially inclined mammals behave this way instinctively; behaviourally there’s not much of a difference between an exquisite party hosted by a prince and a troop of chimps surrounding and fixating on an alpha male, apart from the materialistic pomp and circumstance humans like to engage in and parade with. The social norms, whilst differing by a significant degree are in place for both groups nonetheless. But pomp and circumstance also can lead to war, so where’s the morality and restraint there? Why would it be considered worse for someone to e.g. spontaneously remove their clothing and stand naked at such a princely party than to go to war and kill other humans? One is considered crude and inappropriate, the other often noble, brave and selfless. How can that be?
Even the sense for truth, which is really the sense for security, man has in common with the animals: one does not want to let oneself be deceived, does not want to mislead oneself, one hearkens mistrustfully to the promptings of one’s own passions, one constrains oneself and lies in wait for oneself; the animal understands all this just as man does, with it too self-control springs from the sense for what is real (from prudence). It likewise assesses the effect it produces upon the perceptions of other animals and from this learns to look back upon itself, to take itself ‘objectively’, it too has its degree of self-knowledge. The animal assesses the movements of its friends and foes, it learns their peculiarities by heart, it prepares itself for them: it renounces war once and for all against individuals of a certain species, and can likewise divine from the way they approach that certain kinds of animals have peaceful and conciliatory intentions.
Animals often seem to have a greater sense of self-preservation than people do. They are unaware of such concepts as “honour” and “bravery”; they don’t even ponder their own demise, they just instinctively avoid it. For such an animal to behave peacefully is probably not the result of inherent morality, but more survival instinct. Humans on the other hand measure time incessantly and are painfully aware that their own life will end one day, so they need to comfort themselves with with idea of a just God and eternal reward for pious behaviour. Unfortunately, pious behaviour often also extends the aforementioned acts of warfare, so the self-preservation instinct is fully overridden by systems of faith and belief.
The beginnings of justice, as of prudence, moderation, bravery — in short, of all we designate as the Socratic virtues, are animal: a consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies. Now if we consider that even the highest human being has only become more elevated and subtle in the nature of his food and in his conception of what is inimical to him, it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as animal.
I think it is improper to describe the entire phenonemon of morality as animal. Animals do not have devised systems of belief, if they behave in a moral fashion, then it is mostly down to survival instinct and advoidance of danger. Humans have created their own morality “framework”, where agreed upon moral standards which are in line with systems of faith and belief. Animals just don’t have that, so I don’t understand the implied commonality.
Go easier on me… I barely read all of it, and have only this to say so far.
Hegel had his master slave dialectic because it was culturally relevant.
Genesis (the creation and fall) had predator prey (not until Jesus/Paul etc was it dialectic… love your enemy)… had super smart predators, and humans prey to them because they were new (innocent as doves… not yet crafty as serpents). Slavery wasn’t culturally relevant yet.
Oh shoot. Don’t get me started.
So do you mean that morality was borne from not wanting to fall prey to those predators? And maybe also the constraint of animalistic passions became a practical consideration under those circumstances?
Fuller answer in the rest of that^ post 
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