/lit/ - Literature

>Socrates
Not so fast OP! That guy ruined philosophy, don't you know?

>Consciousness is the expression of herd mentality in the animal and must be regulated, if not rejected outright in certain situations, in order to improve the species
Did any Greek share this view? Or was this original on Nietzsche's part?

So now that leftists have done a 180 on him over the last few years after realizing that he wasn't actually in support of them, who will be his successors / future philosophers? The coming technocrats?

>>18155397
Should have listened to Nietzsche during his professorial days, back when he assessed that in order for democracy to work it must do the following:

1. Enforce that every single person living within the democratic state vote, because "a law that decrees that the majority shall have the decisive voice in determining the well-being of all cannot be erected on a foundation that is first provided by that law itself," "universal suffrage may not be an expression of the will merely of the majority; the whole country must desire it," "as hardly two-thirds of those entitled to vote, perhaps indeed not even a majority of them, come to the ballot box, this is a vote against the entire suffrage system," and "nonparticipation in an election constitutes precisely such an objection and thus brings about the downfall of the entire voting system."

2. Permit minorities to secede from the state freely if they cannot, on the same basis of self-determination as the majority, constitute smaller sovereign communities of their own, so as to prevent the unassented and undemocratic rule of a majority.

3. Prevent the organization of parties and prevent those who possess no property and who are genuinely rich to vote or run in politics, because "the three great enemies of independence [...] are the indigent, the rich, and the parties" because the poor are too dependent on others and therefore easily swayed, the rich are simply too powerful and therefore have too much sway, and the parties stifle independent thought in the name of the party line.

Of course, Nietzsche viewed democracy like Plato, as an "involuntary exercise in the breeding of tyrants" and as the degeneration of the state, and was personally anti-democratic and only in support of it insofar as it was valuable in creating a new aristocracy, so it's funny that he understood what policies would be needed to make it work better than the democrats seemed to.

>understand nearly every single individual aphorism clearly
>put the finished book down without really understanding what the fuck he was trying to say overall

Am I retarded or missing something here? I've read Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals.

>writes in simple and easily digestible aphorisms
>yet extremely difficult to infer his overall point with different readers coming to wildly different and contradictory conclusions

Why is this?

How can this man's philosophy be simultaneously so accessible yet so incomprehensible? He writes in individually simple aphorisms yet 10 different people will have 10 different takes on what he's actually trying to say overall.

>Democracy has ever been the form of decline in organizing power...the form of decline of the state. In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum. When this will is present, something like the imperium Romanum is founded; or like Russia, the only power today which has endurance, which can wait, which can still promise something - Russia, the concept that suggests the opposite of the wretched European nervousness and system of small states…

>>16428110
>I still don't know why people are so mad at them. Is there a good essay or pamphlet about this?
Quoting Nietzsche:
>Psychologically considered, the Jewish people are a people endowed with the toughest vital energy, who, placed in impossible circumstances, voluntarily and out of the most profound prudence of self-preservation, take sides with all the instincts of decadence - not as mastered by them, but because they divined a power in these instincts with which one could prevail against "the world."
They have literally "rode the tiger" (reference: Evola) for thousands of years after their civilization and homeland was destroyed. Their intelligence and skill in surviving and prospering despite being hated fosters resentment.
Resentment sums up all of the hatred.

>>15729543
I did. Not because of feminists. Not because of desert fairy tales. Not because of nofap. But because I'm bored of it. I just don't feel like jacking off. I have no sexual desires. I now devote my life to philosophy.

Really? All this hype and his grand idea is to reject philosophy and live by the ideals and mindset that the ancient Greeks did? I thought he was supposed to be original.

It's been six years.

"Does existence have any meaning at all? A few
centuries will be needed before this question can ever be heard completely and in its full depth."

I don't really understand what he is saying in GoM with regards to ascetic morality. It seemed like in the early chapters he categorized it as simply being a denial to life and often a cope, but then when categorizing the philosophers, he seems to take a different turn, saying how celibacy allowed them to generate their ideas and that no great philosopher ever married. Is he still against this or just trying to critique philosophy in a more round about way?

I am reading On the Genealogy of Morality and he seems to contradict himself at best, and just have tautological reasoning at worst.

> modern western morality is cruel and sadistic (even Kant somehow)
> the aristocrats were cruel too but we can't blame them since it's only in their nature. By the way, cruelty in this sense is life affirming and only natural!
It seems like he just switches his ideas regarding cruelty between the first and second essays.

> slave morality is just a desire of the weak who can't achieve what the strong can
Couldn't you apply this same critique to Nietzche himself? He had poor social interactions so instead of having the strength to overcome it, he simply placed value on power instead of social compassion. He himself inverted the values of the dominant structures (Christianity in the case of Europe at the time) to try and regain domination in his life.

This also seems to raise the question, what happens when the slave morality becomes dominant in society and reinforces it through brute strength? Was Charlemagne or any other Christian conqueror still enslaved? Seems rather odd to predicate such a thing to a literal warlord.

> advances a study about morality grounded on materialist evolutionism that reduces it to only what it naturalistic
> somehow considers it profound to see pleasure/pain dichotomy arise as a result of this understanding
Obviously you are going to arrive at this conclusion if you just see social phenomena as nothing more than a crude pragmatic agreement. However, people across the political spectrum have shown ancient morality to be far more than just barbaric stupidity (Levi-Strauss, Guenon, Eliade, Jung, etc.)


I don't want to claim that I am a Nietzsche expert by any means, but these seemed to be significant issues that arose when reading so I figured I would ask.

>Haha life's like totally dumb and God ain't real but like forge your own meaning bro, you do you haha
No wonder Nietzsche fanboys are exclusively teenagers/early 20's poser faggots who want to seem unique but are too cowardly to do anything but be yet another conforming wageslave chasing after 2.5 kids, a wife, a house and a car. I love to travel XD! I'm not religious, it's just pathetic to see people holding up faggots like Nietzsche who don't actually have anything to say, just pleasant lies wagies like to hear.

Get a grip. There is no meaning and no you can't invent your own. You're just lying to yourself and at the first sign of real adversity, like starvation, your feel good world view would crumble. Nietzsche is a product of and a god to the pampered youth who think a "hard life" is not being invited to parties.

>says God is dead
>dies

...What the fuck is this guy? Getting into him and it's just baseless screeds and rants and incel level invective directed at literally everyone interspersed with incredibly profound insights, sometimes beautiful prose, and BTFO-ing 2000 years of Western philosophy. I've never come across someone so in touch with their own genius. I'm simply in awe of his brilliance.

Just finished reading "Untimely Meditation", want to move on to Nietzsche’s next book, "Human, All Too Human”.

I can’t seem to find a definitive, overall best edition. Could somebody link me or recommend to me a good edition for “Human, All Too Human”

There seems to be 2 main different version, the translation by Hollingdale and the translation by Marion Faber (a woman). Anybody have a preference

how does one get into nihilism?

Well /lit/, where to begin?

All memes aside, was Nietzsche a little bit stupid?

>>9766083
>It doesn't matter at all since basis reality, human nature and morals are still the same

>>9759016
just wait a few years