People who disagree usually just don’t get him.
They are usually the type of people who can’t understand sarcasm, take metaphors literally, and have little-to-no sense of humor.
He does, but he is also dangerous–his metaphors and his philosophy–his own life paying as the ultimate testimony to that danger. Not to mention supplying some pillars–which parts of his philosophy do–to grotesque social Darwinians like the Fascists. As he himself said though, to open paths to great peaks one must also open possibilities toward great evils. I am only sad that he was right.
Just don’t make him into an idol, or he’ll come back from the grave and kick your ass for not listening to him. The irony.
See, to me, even as a novice trying to make sense of his writing style, I got the impression that he emphasised perspective and existentialist values for that very reason. I’m no expert, but I’ve seen these concepts peppered throughout a good bit of his work - somewhat even in his sarcasm, which often seemed to be criticisms of the presuppositions held by humanity.
I interpreted that as if to say “Don’t take anyone’s perspective as fact; examine it rigorously and find if/how it is applicable. With that being said, here is what I’ve concluded…”
No doubt he was a great mind, and the power of his writing is well recognized…probably now more than ever. As far as ‘creating pillars’, I might argue the reader to be the culprit there. He presented ideas, and distributed them without force (and success at first). The ‘pillars’ were created out of how some tenant of Nietzsche’s philosophy applied to the perspectives of other individuals. More specifically philosophy being applied to the desires of certain individuals in such a way to find justification for them.
That’s one man’s opinion though. There comes a time to question everything, just remember it’s much more rewarding to do that before you accept an idea.
“The errors of great men are venerable insofar as they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.” 
He was very strongly anti-nationalist and explicitly decried anti-Semitism. I’m sure Orwell’s Big Brother could have cited Wittgenstein in defence of Newspeak, too; taking soundbites from The Greats and perverting them to one’s own ends is part of the power machinery of the despot. Hegel did far more to promote totalitarianism and the nation-as-body theories of the fascists.
Only_Humean
I know that he was . . . but this does not stop theories within his Will to Power to be taken in justification of social Darwinism. It is like reading a man who gives you excellent reasons for eating cake, tells you that nothing in the world is wrong if you so desire, but then says, “Don’t eat cake because it’s foolish. Instead, eat watermelon, like me. It is better and more nutritious anyway.” Well, you might say to yourself that the man is right, watermelon is better and more nutritious. But it doesn’t change the fact that you can still eat cake if you want to. Theories of social Darwinism as well as elitist, “noble” ethics, are all over Nietzsche.
“The errors of great men are venerable insofar as they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.”
It is precisely crap like this that is dangerous. The error of Napoleon’s march into Russia cost over 500,000 “little men’s” lives. I guess it was more fruitful, since now we have the Napoleonic dessert—quite delicious and my favorite. But not worth the price of a single life. On the way to “greatness” are the costs of thousands of “ordinary” lives to which these so-called “great men” mean nothing to all in the name of “progress.” In the name of the “overman.” Or in the name of a “pure race.”
The “truths of little men” propgate the human race and create a peaceful, mediocre, soccer-mom and pop. The mistakes of great men just might blow up the world. I call the former much more venerable than the latter…
statiktech,
I have no quarrel with that. Nietzsche would likely be quite proud of such an interpretation of his work. I only made the reference to those that have misused him to caution about the dangers within his work–dangers Nietzsche himself was well aware of and cautioned his readers against.
Only_Humean
This is interesting. Could you elaborate?
Where to begin… 
His work on society and states uses dialectic reasoning (which I think is potentially the most useful of his developments) to say that effectively everyone is subordinate to the greatness of the state, and the greatest of all states is (coincidentally, for him) a 19th-century German monarchy. The state is God’s will on Earth. And Marx came to similar historically-inevitable conclusions by more or less transposing the ideas. As Russell put it, “To Hegel, freedom means the freedom to obey the police and little else”.
Nietzsche is a great starting point, a gate way drug into philosophy, an excellent, clear, witty and inventive stylist.
Like all the staring points the hardest thing is to move beyond - but its the Nietzschian thing to do…
kp
This is an interesting way to view it.
It might be worth noting that some “great” thinkers who have spent their whole lives surrounded by “little” thinkers, have become so disgusted with the “little minded” lifestyle, that they do not want to be associated with it in any way. They loathe it for being boring, simple, predictable, and for not really accomplishing anything significant. They see it as a waste of a life, for those fortunate enough to have been born human.
Not many “great thinkers” want to kill and take over the world, or even be in a position of leadership for that matter; most just want to “paint a portrait” and be recognized for their efforts.
re: great man/thinker, small man/thinker
Is it surprising that when critically examined, most bumpersticker ‘wisdom’ fades into triviality and obscurity if not downright meaninglessness!
Besides, there would have been no Don Quixote without the ‘small’ Sancho Panza; no Batman without Robin, no Alexander without his humble ‘followers’, etc… It’s like the ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ of a coin; one coin, two features.
It seems a vanity to draw such distinctions. And that ‘vanity’ seems to be displayed by those who are vain enough to consider themselves autonomously ‘better’ than, ‘above’, others.
Many of those less cognitively capable are tricked into believing the hype of ‘authority’.
The Underground Man: Huzzah! Good post! ‘Progressive’ thinking.
That is of course your prerogative To that, the argument could well be that little men merely propagate humanity, it takes great men to advance it.
I like this line - outside of obvious changes in technology we haven’t “advanced” since we first stood on two legs really.
As Walter Benjamin has it (Just after World War II)
Great men propagate human slaughter? Its precisely crap like this that is dangerous
“crap like this” being the pointing out of one of the most salient and obvious historical facts of the twentieth century?
Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Kim Ill who ever today…
On a side bar are those 2 American journalists much safer in Bill Clinton’s private jet!?
kp
And what did they achieve? That is, in addition to slaughtering innumerable millions of their own countrymen. The eastern block and Germany is still recovering from Stalin and Hitler’s socioeconomic rape.
I know you’d like to ego and stroke believe they were majestic and efficient, and that maybe someday you could be like Mike, but retarded statements like that are what place the rehabilitative burden on real human beings
And how many troops did he use?
Exactly
Don’t get me wrong I’m very much against the great man thesis (be it from Nietzsche or anyone else) and with underground man here - hence the big quote from Walter benj etc!
kp
Then why would you consider them great men? Thats like me saying I hate burgers then going to BK for whoppers
Ah I get you now - to me the term “great men” is actually insulting and I count myself very lucky not to be in their ranks.
Its going back to underground man’s notion here:
So I’m just calling them “great men” as a matter of convenience as that’s how we got started plus how such characters are viewed by most - but I certainly don’t see the greatness … for me its the soccer moms and office clerks that often perform the real countless unheralded works of heroism simply to survive - as per Kierkegaard’s knights of faith perhaps
christiancadre.blogspot.com/2005 … h-and.html
Sorry i have to try be a bit clearer!
kp
why is Nietzsche automatically associated with Fascism, dictatorship, and in turn genocides/the mass killing of people?
He would have been pissed off if he had seen what his work was perverted into by the Nazis
I would tend to agree with there Peachy - some of his views as to how Bismark’s Germany was going would tend to support this
- I also reckon he would have seen the Nazis as some sort of classic priesthood herding the weak…It was not a society of the strong.
This is not to say that Nietzsche wasn’t right wing (in the most broad and general sense in so far as he was political) but his utopia would have been some sort of aristocratic/agonistic oligarchy of in the mould of Athens or maybe even Sparta
(though he admired the latter’s war like nature - their internal organization mighta been a bit too democratic!)
He certainly despised what he saw as leveling tendencies in socialism and anarchism.
You’ll find there’s been some pretty thorough debates on this one on ilp before - notably here!
(just as a little side bar - any one know a way of printing out threads sides manually transposing them into word which gets wild with tables, picture, avatars etc)
kp