Nietzsche signals Marx, that to really matter, philosophy has to change the world, not merely to interpret it. He is widely imitated, his aphorisms are interpreted every which way, but the lasting impression of meanings behind them are mere shadows, of the last bastions of an ever recurring theme via Platonic ideas-as visions.
Whoever descends to the modern vernacular of the profane, while harboring some connection with the past’s Sacred foretaste, deserves to be tarred and feathered.
I would rather go mad then to envisage giving up on the extreme subtleties of a perennial philosophy.
The conflict is irresolute, and the blind deniers simply parrot some up to date critique, while blaspheming the original intent of the will’s tremendous power. The power is in the stress of realizing that it is irresolute, hence the reduction of the phenomenological into that of the existential, eclipsing the logicality, but not the sense of it’s eclipse. It is a nihilistic despair, but it’s nihilization extends vertically, as well as horizontally, but n a maddening rush, of inclusion, of thr Other, and from it grows the forms of it’s exclusion, a transformative bridge connecting all ages, places and existences. The ideal is born out of the idea, of willfully connecting the despair of the particular to the harmonic wholeness of the universal.
To me, Nietzche’s gift is all encompassing the sadness of Schopenhauer with the joy of a mysteriously magical overcoming of time and space, of the beast with the beauty of higher level connection: compassion.
This level’s aim is forgiveness and juxtaposition of opposites into the highest score snooker dialogue.
Magnus, you’re losing the debate with Gib. Just throwing that out there. You can’t just call him a fag and say he has no discipline and then tell him he’s wrong for reading what you wrote and thinking that’s what you meant to say. You’re just losing the debate man. It’s pretty bad.
This ‘debate’, if you could call it that, is incredibly disgusting. You are both acting like aggressive children with a demented interpretation of each other; with intolerable subtleties of profanity and polemic arrogance, achieving nothing.
I never intended this thread to be argumentative. The contributions from jerkey, Arminius and Turd are perfect exemplifications of what I originally sought after.
Let’s retain ourselves in a civil manner, please, for the better of us all.
Hey, I got no qualms with that. I can very easily carry on a civilized discussion, but I can’t promise it won’t happen along side a bit of trolling with Mr. Anderson.
Try it! Ask me a question. Let’s have a discussion.
Here’s what I originally wrote, soon after you’d posted your OP:
This suggests you consider those two books examples of his early writings. But BGE was written in 1885-86 and published in '86. Its sequel (Nietzsche actually called it its sequel) is On the Genealogy of Morals, which is from 1887. These books are usually considered part of another “period” than his writings from 1888. And yet there’s only a year between these last two “periods”.
::
Thus far what I originally wrote.
When did he go slightly mad? Isn’t the Zarathustra slightly mad to say the least? But I think I see what you mean. Something changed in the course of 1887: Nietzsche was increasingly worried by his (seeming) lack of impact. So let’s say that’s when he went slightly mad (and that he stayed slightly mad until he went completely mad in early 1889). Why are his writings from that period significant? Because they constitute Nietzsche’s coming out as Zarathustra (cf. GM II 25)–i.e., as much more than a scholar (cf. BGE “We Scholars”). They constitute Nietzsche’s coming out as a “philosopher proper” (BGE 211), a world-historical event like Plato.
In reading these reply’s, one sees how Nietzsche has become a
kinda Rorschach test…
I too read Nietzsche as a young man. it is clearly a young man’s wet dream
because it allows the reader, a young man with ego, to dream he is the
ubermensch and all that stuff about herd mentality doesn’t apply to him because
he is above all that…but this based on a misreading of N…
the ubermensch is not about being the superman, but about one
who overcomes himself…Uber can mean above and below…’
It was never about overcoming other people and becoming
a “superman”, nope, it was about the man who can overcome himself,
become something else… Recall it was N. who said, “we must become who we are”
and one does this by overcoming… but what is overcome? Man’s basic nature…
N. real agenda was to find a morality that is not defined by god…
to find a morality that man created, thus his emphasis on the creators
of values…But to become the creator of values, you have to overcome
that which society has trained you, herd mentality and the like…
This is the reason why N. didn’t really talk about politics…
the battle for N. was within the individual and the courage to
create new values by overcoming oneself…
I have noticed everywhere I go in my personal philosophy,
N. has already been there… it is rather disconcerting that
every road I take, N. has already been there… I intend to return
to N. when I am ready to reread him in my research into modern
philosophy, maybe in a couple of years…but first medieval
philosophy calls me…
For the sake of saying this is my personal interpretation of when Nietzsche went slightly mad (although he had always been extremely neurotic, perhaps since his Father’s/Brother’s deaths) would have to be after the second edition of The Gay Science was published while he was working on The Wagner Case. After Twilight, Nietzsche takes a serious turn for the worse.
Believing in science and its “gods” or believing in philosophy and its “gods” is very similar to believing in religion and its “gods” and believing in theology and its “gods”. The gods do not disappear - because humans want to be gods. (Note: These last two sentences are not referring to the question whether gods exist or not, because there is no answer in the sense of knowing it, there is only an answer in the sense of believing it.)
There is no such a thing as debate between me and Gib. Debates apply only to people who are trying to convince their audience they are right. This is not what I am doing. What I am doing here is I am correcting Gib. There is neither competition nor equality between the two of us. There is me who is right and there is Gib who is wrong. Nothing that I can possibly lose.
You need to do what you normally, but not fully, do, and that is to stay away from philosophy. Go back to your non-philosophical chat where you talk about your insignificant everyday life events. This is the only thing you can do well.
My problem with Gib, which is not merely a personal problem as Gib likes to think, is that he is evasive.
You don’t see this because you are no better than him.
Countless posts have been written about what an utter retard you are. Don’t force me to repeat them.
You cannot carry on a civilized discussion. You already demonstrated your incapacity to do so. What you can do is be meek and timid. You can be an egalitarian, a relativist, who respects other people’s right to be evasive. And this is what you normally are, until someone comes along and puts you in your place, and your defensive mechanism that you call “trolling” is triggered.
You already have an opportunity to do so, you imbecile. By admitting that what you did was wrong we can return to the topic.
But you don’t want to do this. Instead, you want me to forget about it, nay, you want to convince me that you did nothing wrong.
You cannot talk to someone unless you know that someone is responsible. You proved to be irresponsible, therefore, if you want this discussion to move forward, you need to become responsible.
But that’s not what you’re doing. Instead, what you are doing is trying to make me irresponsible myself.
You do not want me to think, to process all of my knowledge and experience, in order to predict whether talking to you is worth my time. No, you want me forget everything I know, and simply hope that you are worth my time.
This is what you are doing in the above quote.
You are telling me that I should think that you will be paying attention merely because you say you will be paying attention.
You think that if you have a serious intent to pay attention from now on that I should forget everything you did in the past and simply lay hope in you.
I believe this gives you some sense of superiority, though false of course, because you do not really understand how thinking works.
