I will start the long response that follows by asking your indulgence to allow me to tie a few things together.
In Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 28, Nietzsche says:
“… there is nothing that has caused me to meditate more on PLATO’S secrecy and sphinx-like nature, than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no “Bible,” nor anything Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a book of Aristophanes. How could even Plato have endured life—a Greek life which he repudiated—without an Aristophanes!”
We should not too quickly look past that little fact.
About Aristophanes he says:
“that transfiguring, complementary genius”
It was Aristophanes who Socrates accused of being his accuser in the Apology. Aristophanes, the comic playwright who ridiculed Socrates is “The Clouds”. Why would Plato sleep with a book by Aristophanes under his pillow? What is the significance of Nietzsche drawing this little fact to our attention? What does it say about the relationship between Socrates and Plato and Aristophanes?
As to Plato’s secrecy and sphinx-like nature? Isn’t it matched by Nietzsche’s own? See aphorism 1. Who is the sphinx and who is Oedipus? It was Nietzsche who revised the practice and drew attention to the importance of esoteric writing.
In the section “What I Owe to the Ancients” from Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says:
“In regard to Plato I am a thorough skeptic …” Nietzsche himself was a skeptic questioned the value of truth. It is only fitting that one skeptic should read another skeptically.
Yes, as would be commanders and legislators.
And if this is the age of the last man then Nietzsche has failed to lead us.
The will to power is interesting like that… it is of course that tyranny created by the rank ordering of our drives which details our pathos of distance. Though interestingly enough … from WtP 999
The order of rank: he who determines values and leads the will of millenniums, and does this by leading the highest natures—he is the highest man.
If a person can lead other wills for thousands of years… then we’re affected by all sorts of “wills” though the real trick is trying to not see, as Schopenhauer did, will as this transcendental force… what were affected by is the effects of their creations upon the physiology of the body…
And as Nietzsche details, the Will to Power is the primitive form of affect, thus anything that produces an effect in your “will” is, essentially a part of your “will to power,” internal or external.
Nietzsche thought it prudent to point out that even Plato (the decadent, life-denying idealist), needed to cut loose in secret with the life-affirming joyous laughter of Aristophanes.
So, a genius who needed a little antidote for the bore he wrought. That’s derision, not endorsement.
(Dead) skeptics are friends now, because they share part of a process? I don’t believe you believe this. I think you’re being recalcitrant for the sake of it.
I pointed out earlier you’ve taken liberties that aren’t meaningfully there and you’ve demonstrated perfectly how you go about it.
Are we going in circles here?
I disagree that you disagree. You haven’t presented a meaningful argument here. You clearly misunderstand Nietzsche’s project entirely, if you think him some fortuneteller. He doesn’t want to lead you. He doesn’t want to hold your hand into the future. There’s no greater insult to the teacher, than a student clinging on.
So, that little quote (nice cut-off point, chief) from “Twilight of the Idols” is a laughably stupid example.
When we read the full text it’s very, very obvious what he thinks of Plato.
Shall we take a look here?
I’d love to know what you think you’re doing here. Is it magical thinking? You have a bone to pick and you just can’t let go? Where do you get this stuff from? And why… Why do you think, what we’re doing here, is meaningful at all?
We’ve drifted so far from the original contention and you’ve demonstrated nothing in the process.
Nietzsche didn’t think of Plato as friend. Nietzsche wasn’t a social engineer. Nietzsche wasn’t a political philosopher of note. In fact, when Nietzsche is brought up in a political context, the only sensible thing to do is snort and go on about your day. More fool me, for not having done just that.
Active forms of language were used too much there if the intention was to express Nietzsche’s thoughts.
Nietzsche claims that we are deceived by language, for example, by the grammatical form of subject. But how is language born? Do grammatical forms reflect primitive prejudices, or do they instead reflect something that could be regarded as real in human life?
The point was that for Nietzsche the ordinary masses should be, should remain, spectators of the tragedy, whereas so-called great individuals are the actors or main characters in fateful events.
I don’t think it’s a bad question, but a serious answer to that question will pretty much always end up being farcical.
Because Nietzsche didn’t write to or for the masses, there’s no coherent system to implement; no theory of rights, no mode of governance, no institutional architecture.
A “Nietzschean state” would be preposterous… Can you imagine a government body codifying what constitutes a higher man? Or a higher man enjoying the protection of the state to pursue his endeavors freely, without too much friction? It always makes me chuckle because it would be utterly antithetical to Nietzsche’s project. He would furiously despise the idea of it.
Such a state would effectively destroy the higher man.
So, there’s not really a world where “we” learn effectively. You and I can learn effectively, and take the descriptions and prescriptions about psychology, culture and existence to heart. But most of us, the we, won’t.
I can imagine you might think that’s a bit of a dodge… but I just don’t think there’s anything there but the existential.
That’s fine, I generally assume people’s responses are sincere.
Which is why I was asking the question: what might a culture shaped more deeply by Nietzsche’s ideas actually produce in people? I’m not thinking about systems, but about the ways it might alter how individuals think and live. Perhaps there’s no where to take this.
Oh I see… My bad, I was still wrapped up in my annoyance over the political angle
Higher individuals would reject the guilt-driven framework of contemporary ethics. They wouldn’t want to adhere to abstract duties or social contracts but would instead cultivate their own meaningful life projects.
There’s an inherent tragedy to this, of course, which would need to be embraced as a price for the building of this beautiful character, excellence and private meaningfulness.
Interesting. In your reading of Nietzsche, is that how it worked for you personally, and did it amount to a feeling of liberation or something different?
I’d also be interested in what you said about the tragic dimension of this, and whether you can expand on that a little. Are you suggesting that his work may be intrinsically at odds with any collective or community projects?
It seemed much possible that Nietzsche’s Will to Power has close relation to his ideas on morality. For that, we could analyse what Will to Power means in Nietzsche.
Would you explain what your understanding on Will to Power is?
Philosophical discussion is partly about reading the original classic texts, ideas and concepts and making our interpretations which are reasonable and agreeable.
For that we could make creative inferences on the concepts and ideas within agreeable and reasonable frames. For that process, we need to understand the concepts and ideas first.
I like your theme. As I read him, Nietzsche is seductively ambiguous, telling us that he is not telling us. Inciting us to read between the lines. “I forgot my umbrella.”
To live in a vast and proud tranquility; always beyond… To have, or not to have, one’s emotions, one’s For and Against, according to choice; to lower oneself to them for hours; to SEAT oneself on them as upon horses, and often as upon asses:—for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as well as of their fire. To conserve one’s three hundred foregrounds; also one’s black spectacles: for there are circumstances when nobody must look into our eyes, still less into our “motives.” And to choose for company that roguish and cheerful vice, politeness.
The recluse does not believe that a philosopher—supposing that a philosopher has always in the first place been a recluse—ever expressed his actual and ultimate opinions in books: are not books written precisely to hide what is in us?—indeed, he will doubt whether a philosopher CAN have “ultimate and actual” opinions at all; whether behind every cave in him there is not, and must necessarily be, a still deeper cave: an ampler, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abyss behind every bottom, beneath every “foundation.” Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy—this is a recluse’s verdict… Every philosophy also CONCEALS a philosophy; every opinion is also a LURKING-PLACE, every word is also a MASK.
Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its “prejudice,” grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of “free will”, with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows—and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude—such kind of men are we, we free spirits!
Hmm, it did and didn’t. I have a very contentious relationship with Nietzsche’s work. I think he’s an absolute genius who, every once in a while, wrote some really dumb shit
I take most of his stuff as brilliant psychological work. For me (and he’d probably chew me out for saying this) I don’t see much interference from social norms and ethics in the shaping of my life and character.
I, like Nietzsche, am profoundly chronically ill and housebound. Despite all the pain and suffering, I think my life is absolutely beautiful. But since I’m privileged (the fates have decided I was to be born Dutch) it’s easier for me to have this beautiful life and recognize it as such, because there are all these societal structures in place. In his estimation I didn’t have to struggle as hard to find my beautiful life, as I should have because of those structures.
I am not a higher man. I don’t aspire to be one. My days of making art, raging against the machine and frolicking in the meadows with my dick out, are over. What remains is calm and quiet observance, and I’m grateful for it.
Perhaps I’m the last man
To your last question: Yes, I think his project is antithetical to collective projects as we usually understand them, and that’s indeed where the tragedy lies. Nietzsche knew that a healthy, high culture requires a stable collective base. But the creator must always break free from that comfort to forge themselves.
Nietzsche’s lonely existence was by design, it was a carefully made choice. A part of him would’ve loved to be the man enjoying himself freely, without a care in the world, with friends, drinking wine in the sun. But then he wouldn’t have been Nietzsche. That’s a tragic sacrifice.
Nietzsche has been long dead. Why do you still read him?
If you search the forum archives you will find that many of the points I made above I have made before. I have no interest in arguing with you for the sake of arguing.
It is now clear that what I am doing is wasting my time. Nietzsche hated reading idlers. As he says, “He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader.” You seem unaware of Nietzsche’s esotericism, his love of the mask, of how he should be read.
You quote from “What I Owe the Ancients” but have not read carefully enough. About Thucydides he says: “His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says.”
Nietzsche expects the same from his own readers who are not reading idlers. Begin to connect the dots if you are to begin to hear his unuttered thoughts.
Is that what concerns you? No wonder you are unable to get out of the hole you have dug. The “original contention” is only a part of the discussion topic.
There are many scholars of note who disagree. From the blurb on Nietzsche as Political Philosopher: “This collection establishes Nietzsche’s importance as a political philosopher. It includes a substantial introduction and eighteen chapters by some of the most renowned Nietzsche scholars.”
Right, and if grammatical forms are mere prejudices, we can’t contrast these prejudices with what is really real. If there is no truth , then there are no mere appearances either. Interpretations are the only ‘reality’.
Not to be friends with the man
I’m not going to search the archives, silly… if you can’t argue the points properly now, you couldn’t back then.
Oooh I see, I shouldn’t rely on the printed text, but your unique ability to channel Nietzsche’s thoughts instead. Fantastic!
If I got called out for cherry-picking and quote-farming, I might resort to mental gymnastics too.
Slow clap for you brother. Very nice
Now this one takes the absolute cake! You failed, over and over, to demonstrate why Nietzsche should be considered a “political philosopher”. Not only did you not manage… you are then too lazy to even rely on the authority of a known philosopher and instead come at me with a marketing blurb. Unbelievable. Yes, wasted time you have.
Don’t you worry about me: I always idle, and I got a good laugh out of this one, so thanks for that.
Have a good one Chief. And don’t let Nietzsche’s unuttered thoughts make you do anything crazy
I’d translate Wille zur Macht as a striving to dominate. Acc. to N. life is a striving to dominate.
Domination doesn’t mean that something is forcefully changed (negated) into something else according to some transcendent universal norms. Nietzschean domination occurs, in a sense, innocently. Domination is affirmative or productive, and it simply spreads over everything. It is an immanent, intrinsic force that “naturally” assimilates other things into itself.
Nietzsche doesn’t believe in rational critique. For him, it is merely reactive negativity on the part of those who are not capable of producing anything positive.
Since English is not your first language I will let it slide, unless you are interested in the different uses of the term.
The point is that contrary to your accusation, this is not the first time I have made these claims. There is no need to argue the point, the evidence that I have discussed this before is right there.
No, evidently you don’t see. Clearly, you do not understand what esoteric writing is about. Here are some quotes from Nietzsche collected here:
Plato has given us a splendid description of how the philosophical thinker must within
every existing society count as the paragon of all wickedness: for as critic of all customs
he is the antithesis of the moral man, and if he does not succeed in becoming the lawgiver
of new customs he remains in the memory of men as ‘the evil principle.’
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, 202 (aph. 496)
Our highest insights must–and should–sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to philosophers–among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims, in short, wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights [consists in this:] the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down from above…. What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must almost be poison for a very different and inferior type…. There are books that have opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them; in the former case, these books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter,[they are]heralds’ cries that call the bravest to their courage. Books for all the world are always
foul-smelling books.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 42 (aph 30)
Whatever is profound loves masks. . . . There are occurrences of such a delicate nature
that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to conceal them…. Such a
concealed man who instinctively needs speech for silence and for burial in silence and
who is inexhaustible in his evasion of communication, wants and sees to it that a mask of
him roams in his place through the hearts and heads of his friends.
– Ibid., 50 (aph. 40)
On the question of being understandable–One does not only wish to be understood when
one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means
necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand:
perhaps that was part of the author’s intention–he did not want to be understood by just
“anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audiences when they wish to
communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.”
All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time
keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above–while they
open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.
– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 343 (aph. 381)
[M]y brevity has yet another value: given such questions as concern me, I must say many things briefly…. For being an immoralist, one has to take steps against corrupting innocents–I mean, asses and old maids of both sexes whom life offers nothing but their innocence. Even more, my writings should inspire, elevate, and encourage them to be virtuous. – Ibid., 345 (aph. 381)
The effectiveness of the incomplete.— Just as figures in relief produce so strong an
impression on the imagination because they are as it were on the point of stepping out of
the wall but have suddenly been brought to a halt, so the relief-like, incomplete
presentation of an idea, of a whole philosophy, is sometimes more effective than its
exhaustive realization: more is left for the beholder to do, he is impelled to continue
working on that which appears before him so strongly etched in light and shadow, to
think it through to the end.–
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, 92 (1.4.178)
The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that
they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and
the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and
ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.
– Ibid., 92 (1.4.181)
It is, rather, that you have failed to understand that what it means to be a political philosopher, it is not limited to “social engineering”.
The point is that the book is evidence that there are known philosophers who do not agree with you.
You seemingly willfully ignore or misrepresent, or fail to understand the importance of what Nietzsche says about the individual and its political significance.
Would you accept the idea that, while Nietzsche is not a ‘political philosopher’ in whatever formal sense you mean, his philosophy is political through and through in the same sense as the ideas of Foucault and Deleuze? Note that both Foucault and Deleuze have been attacked for refusing to offer a specific political program., even though for both of them the political is fundamental to the nature of the world.
