Nietzsche

I have heard of him before but who was he? What did he teach in his books?

He was a philosopher who started out as a philologist. His first book, "The Birth of Tragedy" used the history of words and art to show how, in the past, our moral concepts were different, and how humans have a mirror morality that values passion as the ultimate good over 'justice'.... he called this disparity a conflict between our apollonian selves and our dionysian selves.

He went on to write many other books, each analyzing the roots of our moral concepts. In "Beyond Good and Evil" he basically said that the morality of ancient man was very different than it is now, and that that morality, which was based on the expression of personal, natural power/passion, is less artificial than our judeo-christian-greek concepts of justice and law and order. In essence, he says that our morality is an unnatural construct.

In his later books, he goes on to develop this idea into one where the highest form of man is the 'over' or 'super' man who no longer deludes himself with abstractions of artificial justice, but whose natural intuition and zeal for living move him through his days.

There's obviously a lot more to this... just think of Nietzche as the ultimate anti-nihilist, though his basic deconstruction of morality SOUNDS nihilistic.

Also, his ideas about personal transcendence of culturally-imposed morality were misused (esp. in regards to the 'seuperman') by the nazis, and so, today, many people mistakenly associate him with nazism

Also, 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' is his most famous book. It's a fictional work that illustrates the ideas that are outlined in his other books... 'Zarathustra' goes from village to village as the harbringer of the Superman. In a famous passage, he describes man as a tightrope walker... One either crosses the rope or doesn't.

For an intro to him, though, I'd advise that you read 'Beyond Good and Evil' first... It outlines his ideas fairly well and is short. Many colleges use it in their intro to philosophy courses.

One of Nietzsche's Most familiar quotes is "God is Dead".

uses a lot of Nietzche in the psychology of his stories' villains. Great reads...

...an acid attack on Deutch-Protestant philosophy and alsmost on Emmanuel KANT tought. NIEZTCHE was a "amoralist", this meant that he tought that Nature is the law of the stronger and that was the sense of life.

Nietzche also critize severely Shopenhauer, Gearges SAND, Victor HUGO, Emile ZOLA (He wrote that ZOLA invented "the pleasure of stinking").

Nieztche was also crazy, he passed the end of his life in a mad people hospital. And wrote many of his books there. In his last book, "the sunset of idols", he started to re-think his theory of the stronger supremacy with a bit of humours. He wrote that weak will soon also have supremacy on earth because they are more clever and ... more numerous !

One of the most famous NIEZTCHE quote, wich had been quote in many hollywood actions movies :

"Everything that dont kill you make you stronger"

almost of WAGNER, that he called, the decadent german composer. He wrote at least (if my memory is OK) 2 book about WAGNER. The most famous is "the wagner case".

Why are you talking about this mad fascist?

Originally posted by Agnis
Why are you talking about this mad fascist?

mad, certainly, fascist, I'm not sure...
His wrotes are really funny, sometimes not really intelligent, it's true, but he had a good vision of actual world...

In His last book (Sunset of idols, or the hammer philosophy), he predicted the end of the idols... That's certainly what we are living actually... You see, he was one of these man who didn't know what they wrote...

It's true that it's him who started to talk about the aryanism philosophy and the "MANHU LAW".
It's true that he inspired HITLER and german anti-semitic thinkers, even if he always clamed not to be anti-semitic...

You can lay none of the charges of "Nazism" at FN's door: his sister (allegedly sane), who looked after Nietzsche towards the end of his madness and decline, lived on a long time and was more than glad to accommodate Nietzsche's writings -which defy any schematic or systematic summarisation - to Hitler's views.
Nietzsche was, in fact, distinctly "anti-German" at least the Germany he knew.
His relationship with Wagner was fascinating -the younger Nietzsche idolised him, then he despised him. The text to which Nans refers is, in German, Goetzendaemmerung" which is, of course, a deliberate play on Wagner's "Goetterdaemmerung" (apologies for lack of umlaut). Theer is a book "The Case of Wagner" (Der FallWagner" which makes fascinating reading if one knows one's Wagner -and Wagner's even more interesting a genuinely profound genius who really was a Jew-hating Nazi-before-his-time. A marvellous example for the mush-brained blubberers of the liberal heresy who imagine geniuses must somehow be nice!

Nietzsche has interesting things to say on History and he was a very great writer of German prose: Estragon would advise "Also Sprach Zarathustra" to any advanced student of German wishing to improve his/her prose composition.
He was also a great aphorist or epigrammatist - hundreds of pithy, pointed sayings.
If this topic began as a genuine desire to know about FZ, it should be in "People" where Estragon will gladly give of his little store of knowledge. We had -a year or two ago -a drivel-monger's posting on this: he/she/it couldn't even spell the name.
Estragon confesses vast interest and hence no little knowledge of the area: if anyone does wish to read on here -look out for the wonderful Lou Andr�as Salom�: an intellectual Mata Hari, a 19th century up-market groupie, and one of the most intriguing women that history has recorded.

One can see FN hated christianity. This was his shock value. He did say God is Dead however most religious people dont see the paradox. God has to live before he can die. I think he was trying to say that zelots strangle spirituality to the point of devine death. In the same way JC was hung out by very religious people.

He was born the son of a preacher and anyone brought up in a strict religious enviroment can empathise. He came to the conclusion that christianity was a disease. The belief system striping man of natural justice. Celabrating ignorance and weakness resulting in universal decadence.

He realised that christianity had its uses and its removal would create a theological vacume. This was the insperation for his work. I believed he named this new belief system the transvaluation of all values. He was a genius. He was unbalanced. He went mad. Mabe he was before his time. Poor old FN has had a lot of mud slung mostly by people who have not read his work.

The renaisonce had spurned an explosion in the arts and sciences yet the church held sway over theoligy. He was a Greek philosapher surounded by mindless zombies no wonder he went mad. If he was sucsesfull he may have prevented the waste that we call the 20th century.

[Edited on 21-8-2003 by enoch]