And I cannot understand why - hence my comment on your political statement in the initial reply. There’s more to go on here, though..
This may be why he is such an abysmal thinker to me - I don’t think anyone except Rorty among that list has ever pique my interest. I recognize their influence, originality (sort of) and intentionality. I do not recognize that they’re (overall) saying much worth carrying on with. You’ve give one example which will be treated further on, but besides that one, If you could outline some reason I might have to take that more seriously, do feel free - but I think we’ve been here.
I think it’s more that most people who deal with actual, real life operations of government and social implication understand that the post-structuralist attitude to the world is abstract and almost entirely divorced from human behaviour - thus, not actually employable, even if morally attractive (which is, begrudgingly, what I get from the parts that seem to make sense to me from those thinkers)
Again, that’s my assessment over time, and having read at least something substantial of these thinkers (albeit, some time ago.. shoot me).
You’ve responded as if this is important to my personal assessment of Nietzsche?
The fundamental difference between Marx and Nietzsche has me defending Nietzsche - he actually talked about people, behaviour and psychologically interrogated his own abstract concepts. Marx, on the other hand, thinks that economic structures are the source of power. These are fundamentally different concepts being talked about. They are not even “different ideas of power”. I would have an extremely hard time thinking either would deny the other’s concept - but Marx, thinking hte individual is not an important data point, misses everything worth knowing about “power” at the level of proverbial “crawling” and runs away into a dark corner. Nietzsche, while doing his own proverbial pissing in the wind, was at least humble enough to begin on the ground. This isn’t to say there’s nothing in it, or that Marx is an idiot or anything remotely like that. I am contrasting the two thinkers.
IT couldn’t possibly matter. For the same reasons the majority of what I’ve seen from the Frankfurtians and surrounding cliques - it’s thinking about thinking… about thinking… about doing. Similarly, Marx was socio-economically entirely removed from his own subject matter and it shows. I suggest this is why Socialism/Communism has never (and likely will never) appeal to any large groups of people.
You said you’re terrified of and wish to avoid people who consider genealogy of morals essential reading.The figures I mentioned consider genealogy of morals essential reading. Therefore, using my trusty logical syllogism, I concluded that you would avoid these figures. Was this a faulty logical chain?
Yes, this is an overly broad interpretation. However, to be precise, the translation of my first message into English was incorrect. Initially, I intended to say that I would gladly avoid those people for whom Nietzsche’s books were “tabletop” (in the sense of being constantly read and analyzed for quotes or as direct guides for action).
They are profoundly different ideas of power. For Marx, power is something that is invested in persons or communities in a top down manner that is wielded negatively to force others to accede to their aims and purposes. For Nietzsche power is not top-down but bottom-up, is not wielded by individuals or groups, but is pre-personal, and is creative rather than restrictive. They simply are not talking about the same thing.
I’d love to gain a robust reading of Nietzsche, but I find him, after trying four of his books, to be largely unreadable. This sits with me. One of the problems is that certain young men, with a superficial readings of Nietzsche, often seem to misunderstand ideas like the will to power, death of God and eternal recurrence, taking a literalist slant . I have no doubt he is a critical philosopher in understanding the modern period; and a proto-postmodernist. I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge; as (I think) Russell said, he is easy to read hard to understand.
I thnk you have quite misunderstood what i’ve said here: They aren’t different ‘ideas’ of power. They are talking about different things and calling them power. Hopefully this clarifies, as I think I made clear this was my point a little further along.
Correct. I, to my mind, made it clear this was on the table here:
I hope that re-colours other of my comments above..
Right you are. Power operates beaneth the level of personal agency, whose unity is a kind of illusion.
“The ‘I’ (which is not the same thing as the unitary government of our being!) is, after all, only a conceptual synthesis - thus there is no acting from ‘egoism’.
The concept of the ‘individual’ is false. In isolation, these beings do not exist: the centre of gravity is something changeable; the continual generation of cells, etc., produces a continual change in the number of these beings. And mere addition is no use at all. Our arithmetic is too crude for these relations, and is only an arithmetic of single elements.”
“ Everything which enters consciousness is the last link in a chain, a closure. It is just an illusion that one thought is the immediate cause of another thought. The events which are actually connected are played out below our consciousness: the series and sequences of feelings, thoughts, etc., that appear are symptoms of what actually happens! - Below every thought lies an affect. Every thought, every feeling, every will is not born of one particular drive but is a total state, a whole surface of the whole conscious ness, and results from how the power of all the drives that constitute us is fixed at that moment - thus, the power of the drive that dominates just now as well as of the drives obeying or resisting it. The next thought is a sign of how the total power situation has now shifted again.” “Supposing the world had at its disposal a single quantum of force, then it seems obvious that every shift in power at any point would affect the whole system - thus, alongside causality, one after the other, there would be dependency, one alongside and with the other.”
No. There’s nothing more than this in his writings, despite imprecise, flowery language. Indeed, there is nothing more he could be talking about. The quote given below does not do anything to shift this assessment as best I can tell. It feels very, very strongly like trying to “shine a turd” as they say. It’s a lot of words to say almost nothing of use to anyone. That said, I think people pretend to understand these sorts of passages, so there’s that.
If either of you could of you could explain what you’re seeing there, and how it is coherent I’d be super appreciative! Seems like a claim with no explanation at this stage.
While I can accept a lack of personal interest, the idea that there is nothing philosophically substantive and stimulating in the following quotations is, to put it politely, an eccentric view.
You’re allowed your view. Feel free to answer the challenge… I can’t even find a sentence that carries anything reasonable or coherent in it - constant vagueries. It’s fairy floss for philosophical cadets. That’s why I’ve asked for help… as opposed to dismissal.
I also note this is not a particularly rare view.
Nietzsche is worth reading. I recommend you read a biography. I also recommend you read his works in order. I find it important to distinguish between those works the publication of which he signed off on. Then there a couple that were still in the editing process at the time he went mad. And finally, there were posthumous publications for which there is no reason to believe he would have ever published them.
These posthumously published works are some of my favorite Nietzsche writings. Heidegger felt that Nietzsche’s decisive philosophical thinking is not primarily in the published books, but in the unpublished notebooks, the posthumously edited fragments that were later assembled (controversially) into The Will to Power.
He said that if one wants Nietzsche’s “true philosophy,” one must turn especially to the posthumous material.