I don’t know much about Herr Nietzsche, but my impression so far is that his huge popularity owes more to his image than to any philosophizing on his part. I’m only aware of two notable ideas from the man: the superman, and the will to power. The former is the idea that human beings are not the end product of evolution, but merely a middle point. This is just a straightforward extrapolation of our evolutionary history that any fool could’ve done! The latter is the idea that we want to be more powerful. Well, most of us wouldn’t say no to more power, but there are those of us who don’t want more power, of any sort. Again, not too remarkable an idea…
Now, his image. He was a slightly nutty German with a big moustache. He wrote things that were “shocking” and “controversial”. He even inspired the nazis to some degree. Ooh ya! When a man says he’s a Nietzschean, he thinks that makes him a “bad boy” in philosophy. Shocking and provocative enough to get a kick out of being so, but not enough to actually get any stick off anyone. Close enough to fascism to feel “hard” but not close enough to actually be or resemble one.
Is this the reaction of someone “in the dark” who’s pissed off at not understanding half the posts at ILP, or is this the plain truth that half the people here can’t face?
there is a bit more to nietzsche, but I’d suspect that your frustration is born of ignorance… simply read him… but the trick with nietzsche is that you must read all of him to understand him entirely- then again, nietzsche did not write for everyone (in fact very few can benefit from his ideas- that another of his points)
as far as being new or remarkable, there is nothing new under the sun or so the saying goes and nietzsche knew this as well… the point to this is simple: find a philosopher, any philosopher, read him and understand him thouroughly (as well as you can at any rate) and then if you like him, applaud his rhetoric and ideas- and if you don’t, bitterly oppose his writings…
the trick is in philosophy, one must attempt to use clear and valid argumentation in order to make a point and as so often happens, it devolves into a shouting match and name calling…
That may be; but you are mistaken if you think that applies to all who read him.
Then again, you are wrong:
“The problem I thus pose is not what shall succeed mankind in the sequence of living beings (—man is an end—): but what type of man shall be bred, shall be willed, for being higher in value, worthier of life, more certain of a future.”
[The Antichristian, section 3.]
The Ãœbermensch is a type of man - not a different species!
The main source of misunderstandings about the overman seems to be one of Nietzsche’s own books, perhaps his most important book, Thus Spake Zarathustra:
And;
“Never yet hath there been a Superman. Naked have I seen both of them, the greatest man and the smallest man: All-too-similar are they still to each other. Verily, even the greatest found I - all-too-human!”
[TSZ II, Of the Priests.]
But this mention of nakedness reminds me of a passage that is highly reminiscent of The Antichristian, section 3:
So “the greatest man” mentioned in Of the Priests may be the “good and just”, the so-called “highest man” according to the herd…
Sauwelios, you have made it perfectly clear that Nietzsche is a philosopher of art. He can only be fully understood by someone who is able to create his own lies and believe in them, while knowing they are illusions.
To create facts from illusions, to legislate life.
Nietzsche started with the summit of conceivable greatness of life in Greek art, ended with the superman as an artist. Everything in between must be related to art. Perhaps his posthumous friends are artists with more means than he had - sharper tools, better stone, and hence, more courage of imagination.
“Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity. And is not this precisely what we are again coming back to, we daredevils of the spirit who have climbed the highest and most dangerous peak of present thought and looked around from up there—we who have looked down from there? Are we not, precisely in this respect, Greeks? Adorers of forms, of tones, of words? And therefore—artists?”
[Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Epilogue, 2.]
Chimney - you are correct, and so is everyone else. He is popular largely due to misunderstanding of his writing. But his popularity is not relevant to his worth. Popularity is easily enough had.
Overman (superman) - It’s not a difficult point, or anything like shocking to say that man is not the end of evolution. But it was presented as an antithesis to the christian view, which was prevalent in N’s time. The christian idea still has a lot of traction. One wonders, if N’s point was so elementary, why it doesn’t have greater acceptance.
Same with the will to power, almost. Nietzsche is not so interesting for putting this idea forth as he is for describing the many ways in which it is manifest in societal life.
A superficial reading of Nietzsche can certainly be fodder for many an adolescent fantasy - but these fantasies, again, do not measure his worth as a thinker, but measure the imaginative powers of the fantasisers. We don’t rightly evaluate a thinker by the thoughts of others about that thinker. Not by that alone, certainly.
In general, Nietzsche did not make many points that are difficult, or esoteric, or groundbreaking. It was the exegesis of his points that was novel in conception, and it was his technique in doing so that is most important for philosophers. You post almost seems to be saying “He’s right - what’s the big deal about that?”. I agree.
Faust, three points;
It is hard to overestimate the value of fantasy to Nietzsche; it was his initial angle in the Birth of Tragedy.
We may evaluate a thinker by the actions of people inspired by that thinker.
We always evaluate a thinker by the thoughts of another about that thinker- our own thoughts.
I agree with the ignorance bit to an extent, and the reading issue to a greater extent. I’m a simple-ideas man, and I like it when I can get a hold of something from relatively few words. If I have to read ten books, then the idea(s) is probably too complicated for me.
Sauwelios: I can’t see what you’re saying… Similarly, I [tried to] read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and it seemed like nonsense to me.
faust: This is the sort of thing I was hoping someone would say. I can well believe that he - like many other thinkers in general - has taken a core of ideas and developed and expanded them, rather than continuously thought up new ones.
This is a very interesting comment. I’ll need to think about it…
On a lighter note, in your quote from faust (the ILP poster) in your sig, I momentarily read it as “…who must take every precaution lest we reveal our true, british nature, which would lead to the collapse of civilisation.”
Jake - I disagree with your second point. Inspiration is too complex for that. Yeah, Nietzsche “inspired” the Nazis and deconstructionism. But these were misfirings - N would have disavowed both. He has nothing to do with them. Marilyn Manson inspired Columbine.
I agree that fantasy was important to Nietzsche - but mine aren’t. Neither are yours.
I think we very well may judge a thinker by the influence he has on other people’s actions. Not by that alone, but it usually tells us a hell of a lot more about the nature of the thinker than our own personal understanding of that thinker. Unless one is as great a thinker as Nietzsche, one’s thoughts about him mean nothing to anyone but oneself. Unless one acts.
Nazism taught me a lot about the consequences, and therefore the value, of Nietzsche’s thoughts. That does not make Nietzsche a nazi. But it does force me to take nazism seriously as a possible way to understand Nietzsche. We are not thinking if we wave it away with the reason that it doesn’t agree with us.
Besides being notoriously difficult to spell correctly, I’ve found Nietzsche difficult insofar that his thoughts are not very organized. By reading him, one can get a sense of what he’s saying, but he’s just vague, uh, I mean ambiguous enough that one could pick and choose bits to justify their actions…
No, the superman can be imagined and thus properly believed in by a sceptic, whereas God cannot. The superman is not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. That is why he can be imagined, and why he can be reality. That is the aim - to make something real.
Even if one thinks that God exists even as Nietzsche declares him dead, this doe snot make a difference to the artist;
God is boring to the artist, because he is allready there. (That is why Nietzsche called Plato a bore)
God is a competitor to the artist, because he has created the artist. He must surpass him by creating something greater than himself - the ueberartist - the artist tyrant (who replaced the overman in Nietzsche’s last notes, they were the specification of the more general concept overman)
In a purer form: geocities.com/thenietzschech … .htm#isles
I’d say the majority of his popularity is due in large to his accessibility. That is, I don’t think there’s much question he ranks among the easiest philosophers to read. The novice of philosophy can pick up a book by Nietzsche and be captivated with or without ‘truly’ understanding what he’s talking about.
This, combined with certain predispositions toward things like atheism, perspectivism, and a sense of wanting to become something better than one currently is, leads many to champion his work, if not for its rigid philosophical or logical content, then for what it represents to them: a door into a deeper realm of thought.
Take this passage from Ecce Homo for example:
‘Whoever thought he had understood something of me, had made up something out of me after his own image …’
This is much the same point Jakob made in his second post. I would add, one’s experience with Nietzsche - or at least my own - is little more than a mirror turned against myself: reading him is a form of self-dialogue, and this dialogue may or may not result in any ‘objective’ understanding of Nietzsche’s work in the proper, academic sense, but it without question results in my coming to terms with myself, both as a thinker and a human being.
Ultimately, the experience of having read and re-read his works is closer to a religious experience for me (not unlike that of poetry) than, say, the experience of reading Kant or Aristotle. This is a major reason why he is popular, I believe, granting there are certainly many others.