Hi!
I am just starting to read Nietzsches books and other works that he wrote.And I am interested in thoughts of others philosophers and philosophy enthusiasts on this platform about his books and other works he wrote or overall about him.
Thanks in advance if anyone responds!!!
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Nietzsche was, at his core, just a poor, confused, and suffering little creature.
His fundamental problem was quite simple: what is left to do after the job has already been finished? Hegel had already brought classical Philosophy to its absolute end by seamlessly fusing it with religion. In that specific framework, you can either be a Hegelian, or you can be nothing.
Nietzsche chose to be nothing. His entire bibliography is merely a pathetic regression to the ancient era of howling prophets.
And a terrible one at that. He spends volumes violently critiquing Christianity, yet he bizarrely glorifies Christāthe literal source of the disease! The man lacked even the most basic structural comprehension of what he was attacking. He was a Judeo-Christian zombie, completely oblivious to his own mental conditioning.
Do not waste your time on this intellectual dead-end.
I recommend reading enough on your own to develop your own questions before soliciting opinions from others.
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But he was fun to read.
Plato turned reason away from the moving appearances to another world of permanence and eternal form. Western thinkers ran too rashly into this new world, or so Nietzsche thought. Nietzsche found that the eternal forms were lies, and they were the true appearances and constructions of desperate imagination; he instead found that the world of change was the reality. Nietzscheās metaphysics, therefore, was more sympathetic to the pre-socratics, but with more modern, enlightened tools brought to the table. So he flipped the tables back on all of Western society. A useful exercise when seeking truth.
Nietzsche saw all the dogmatic idealists as despisers of the real world. He made Christianity his foil, as the main cause and purveyor of the self-loathing existence Plato and Socrates instigated. His notion of slave morality turned the tables of morality as he turned the tables of metaphysics. Nature produces the king tyrant, whose thumb squashes all the peasants. This is the force of nature, the will to power. But the peasants united and invented āmoralityā as a set of eternal moral laws and norms, set above all the world, including above the king tyrants, so now the peasant could subject the king to moral judgment and oppression. Nietzsche saw morality as a way for weak men to put weak reigns on strong men, and hope to free themselves - but instead they merely added chains to everyoneās existence, all for sake of preserving weakness.
These are interesting ideas. I think they are ultimately born of teen angst and rebellion for its own sake. Nietzsche was a contrarian who really knew how to write, and who really saw the world like an artist sees - utterly uniquely. And thinking through Nietzsche can provide a needed correction to honest thinkers who might otherwise be too easily seduced by Platonic, Aristotelean, Christian assessments.
But if one is honest, in the end, Nietzsche can be shown to be quite a despiser of reality. Humble peasants can be strong, and the self-destruction of the will to power can just be accidental, actually unwilling, and of no value.
Iād suggest the āBirth of Tragedyā, āOn Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Senseā, and Walter Kaufmanās āThe Portable Nietzscheā at the very least. Many of the things he said are said by others, but he always says them the best. Although I totally disagree with him, how great is this:
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of āworld historyā ā yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.
Something definitely happens whenever I read that.
Or perhaps those who insist on reifying ārealityā into frozen verities are the despisers of it.
Itās a common tendency to read will to power as forcing others to do what we want. In fact, what power wants is its own exhaustion. The strong for Nietzsche is not a species of human which does what it pleases and commands over others. Strength is the delight in losing oneself to another self, indefinitely, continual self -reinvention.
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Please donāt read Kaufmanās Nietzsche.
The most astonishing interpretation of Nietzsche is Klossowskiās Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. A close second is Deleuzeās Nietzsche.
The first order of business should be finding translators to English to read. Klossowski appears to have translated the Gay Science into French.
I cannot find a reference that Deleuze translated Nietzsche.
For some, it is easier to break into difficult new philosophical ideas by starting with secondary sources, which is why I mentioned Klossowski and Deleuze.
I have a different view of the value of ease versus perplexity.
However that issue may be argued, there are a finite number of translations to choose amongst if one actually reads the text.
Hello 
I find Nietzche to be essentially a first-year philosophy student who has come out of a tradition of male chauvanism. Not that he smacks of misogyny, itās just that the types of statements made appears the exact same to me as the more intellectual manosphere people (and, I should say, Iām not talking crap here - the good can be extracted from the bad anywhere, generally). Sort of an intellectual Jocko Willink (who, again, I am not talking down on).
Unfortunately, this means I moved past Neitzsche before I could get through more than two or three works. They were boring, unhelpful and sounded like a complaining young man who hadnāt taken much on for himself. Now, all this negativity said:
This is simply a view some people take - and half of those people, by the end of University, are questioning whether Hegel was having a laugh. I donāt thikn he was having a laugh, but I do think much of what he had to say was laughable.
I am far more critical of Hegel (and takes like the above) than I am of Nietzsche who obviously strikes many as helpful and psychological steeling. A good friend of mine from University is currently in his Nietzsche phase. Interesting discussionsā¦
Tl;dr: I think Nietzsche is a good entree for the essentially unlearned student trying to find ways into these softer, calmer considerations of life, while essentially being a non-philosopher in the sense supported by second-to-fourth-year papers.
Iāve found that most people who think they understand Nietzsche are usually just taking what he says at face value. Try to move past looking at it as straightforward, literal, like the opinions of a person, and see it as a posture within the historical philosophical tradition; to see āGod is deadā as not a critique of Christianity, but of Kant. Now this means that Nietszche is not a 101 class, which is not to say that he shouldnāt be read, but donāt jump too quickly to thinking you get the point, or that you have reached a position to judge or dismiss him.
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Nietzsche expressed his disapproval of skepticism. I didnāt realize that skepticism was a thing in his time, an obstacle to be removed.
His amor fati is an absolutely amazing banner to rally around, but could be over-romanticized with fell consequences.
Per some sources he was also against the way philosophers detached themselves from the world. I suppose he thought of life to be lived, not studied.
His criticism of Christianity accurately forecast its demise in Europe; a bloke describes grand cathedrals, but empty cathedrals.
Nietzscheās ubermenschen, some say, rings of Darwinism.
A sister features towards the end of his life.
At the end of the day, he was just another human and if he did great things, wonderful!, and if he made mistakes, errare humanum est.
Some of the Nietzsche readers had tended to be aggressive and rude in their communications with no apparent reason or justifications to other Nietzsche readers in discussing the ideas and interpretations on what Nietzsche might have meant in saying such and such.
Not sure, if it could have been some indirect negative psychological influence of having read Nietzsche on them.
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Excellent point. āGod is deadā was just a prelude to āMan is deadā for Nietzsche.
There are many Nietzsches, just as there are many Kants, Hegels and Spinozas. There is the far right fascist Nietzsche, the existentialist Nietzsche and the postmodern Nietzsche. Each of these Nietzsches finds solid textual support. If your Nietzsche is the adolescent manosphereās darling, then I agree with your assessment. But the existentialist and postmodern Nietzsche has the support of the most respected philosophers and social scientists of the past two centuries. By characterizing Nietzsche as a āfirst year philosophy studentā youāre calling into question the substantiality of their own thinking.
This certainly has political value, as it feeds nicely into educational agendas of conservatives in todayās culture wars.
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I believe that reading Nietzsche from the source (rather than conceptually retelling it) is most productive if youāre already a mature philosopher. That is, I certainly wouldnāt recommend starting your philosophy studies by reading Nietzsche.
Iāve met some people for whom Thus Spoke Zarathustra or The Geniology of Morals were essential reading. These were, and still are, terrifying people, people I would gladly avoid.
But if youāre already experienced enough to easily criticize Nietzscheās sharp criticism, then reading can be very enjoyable.
Yep. Can you outline the problem with that?
Given that plenty of well-respected academics over that time also felt the way I feel (and still do) Iām unsure Iām too worried by this juxtaposition. Iām unsure iāve heard a reasonable support of his work in modern, academic philosophy, beyond explaining how he is very good as the role Iāve outlined. In any case, though, I have made my own assessment here
Your political comment strikes me as impulsive and unhelpful. Perhaps you could unpack it..
So I assume you avoid Foucault, Rorty, Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze.These are among my favorites philosophers.
I donāt know what logical chain led you to this conclusion, but I would like to point out that my statement about reading Nietzsche was based on the assumption that one should read Nietzsche only when they are prepared. I did not mention Foucault or Heidegger.
Not sure where to begin here. Iām not pointing to a problem, Iām pointing to a political split. Nietzscheās ideas are absolutely essential to poststructuralist philosophy, and to authors like Bataille, Ziporyn, Rorty, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida and Klossowski. They comprise a diverse community of thought with powerful political implications, which has not been overlooked by more traditional or conservative philosophical communities, including Marxists, humanists and religious Christians, who find him politically dangerous.
Youāve made your assessment without offering any indication that you are familiar with a poststructuralist reading of Nietzsche. For instance, how does his concept of power differ radically from a Marxist understanding of it? What is his critique of empirical causation and the self?