/lit/ - Literature

>>23258089
Not that guy, but that article has direct quotes on it — and if that's not good enough for you, then here's something straight from the horse's mouth:

>The demand for "freedom of the will," in that superlative metaphysical sense, as it unfortunately still rules in the heads of the half-educated, the demand to bear the entire final responsibility for one's actions oneself and to relieve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society of responsibility for it, is naturally nothing less than this very causa sui and an attempt to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by the hair, with more audacity than Munchhausen. Suppose someone in this way gets behind the boorish simplicity of this famous idea of the "free will" and erases it from his head, then I would invite him now to push his "enlightenment" still one step further and erase also the inverse of this incomprehensible idea of "free will" from his head: I refer to the "unfree will," which leads to an abuse of cause and effect.

>People should use "cause" and "effect" merely as pure ideas, that is, as conventional fictions to indicate and communicate, not as an explanation. In the "in itself" there is no "causal connection," no "necessity," no "psychological unfreedom," no "effect following from the cause"; no "law" holds sway. We are the ones who have, on our own, made up causes, causal sequences, for-one-another, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, reason, and purpose, and when we fabricate this world of signs inside things as something "in itself," when we stir it into things, then we're once again acting as we have always done, namely, mythologically. The "unfree will" is a myth: in real life it's merely a matter of strong and weak wills.

>It is almost always already a symptom of something lacking in a thinker himself when he senses in all "causal connections" and "psychological necessity" some purpose, necessity, inevitable consequence, pressure, and unfreedom. That very feeling is a telltale give away - the person is betraying himself. And if I have seen things correctly, the "unfreedom of the will" has generally been seen as a problem from two totally contrasting points of view, but always in a deeply personal way: some people are not willing at any price to let go of their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, their personal right to their credit (the vain races belong to this group); the others want the reverse: they don't wish to be responsible for or guilty of anything, and demand, out of an inner self-contempt, that they can shift blame for themselves somewhere else.

Beyond Good and Evil §21

>Against positivism, which halts at phenomena—"There are only facts"—I would say: No, facts are precisely what there is not, only interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": perhaps it is folly to want to do such a thing. "Everything is subjective," you say; but even this is interpretation. The "subject" is not something given, it is something added and invented and projected behind what there is.—Finally, is it necessary to posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention, hypothesis. Insofar as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—"Perspectivism." It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.

Was he right?

>>17109644
Nietzsche was a total modernity hater. Just check out this poem from The Gay Science:


Against the Laws

>Suspended by a hair, the clock
>As of today hangs round my neck:
>As of today, the stars; the sun,
>Cockcrow and shadows are all done;
>Whatever used to tell the time
>Is mute and deaf and blind, and I
>Find nature silent as a rock
>At the ticktock of law and clock.

can nihilism be refuted without subscribing to religious principles? i fail to see how we could ever discover objective meaning in the universe through scientific findings, for example (unless we found God living on Mars)

What order should I read his works?

Mr. Dog is the Overman.

Was he right?

>praised the Greeks for their passion being so consuming and whole in itself that it blended seamlessly into their politics and caused various wars between city-states
>praised the Greeks for their pure sense for the aristocracy that gave way for the Olympian ideal for men and regarded the plebs as lowly playthings for the gods
>lamented that the modern times lacked "great politics" and only had "petty politics"
>lamented that the modern times made waging war increasingly difficult, and sang "a Paean for war"
>regarded the State as good when it was forged in bloodbaths caused by "blond beasts of prey" and regarded it as synonymous with the military when it was created this way
>regarded the modern State as bad because it was controlled by money to force creative genius to serve it
>regarded slavery as a necessary constituent to all culture
>thought Plato's ideal state was great for establishing a pyramid structure for the purpose of creating genius besides that it lacked recognition for the art genius

Can someone explain why people interpret him as being non-political? In no way does he appear to be non-political to me. On the contrary, he seems as politically charged as the most eccentric Greek politicians, who were so political they made life itself political.

Heroic optimism and Heroic pessimism are 2 sides of the same coin. I don't fucking understand how people on this board think pessimists are smarter than optimists. Both heroic pessimism and heroic optimism both stem from being heroic, the only difference is that in the never ending dualities of all things, the heroic optimist actually stives to see the positive part of the duality while regarding it as a whole. He still sees the duality, he isn't delusional.

The heroic pessimist is literally retarded. He still acknowledges the duality of all things but for some fucking reason decides to abide by the worst thing in the duality.

Its like voluntarily handicapping yourself for no reason.

>Optimists are delusional
No, the pessimists are the ones delusional. You literally have the fucking hability of seeing the underlying duality of all your problems and all your solutions and for some fucking reason conclude its better to see the worst side of the duality

>BTFO Communism

Reminder: please do not start your philosophical reading with Nietzsche. Nietzsche is not an entry-level philosopher. Nietzsche is an exit-level philosopher. Nietzsche is a philosopher who relies on the reader being aware of several other thinkers and ideas that have preceded him in order for them to appreciate the full extent of his ideas.

Please do not read Nietzsche without at least having a basic level of understanding about the following:

>Homer
>Plato
>Aristotle
>The Bible
>Augustine
>Martin Luther
>Hume
>Goethe
>Kant
>Hegel
>Schopenhauer

You do not need to read every single work by every single one of these thinkers. You don't even need to fully read a single work by any of them. But you must have some familiarity with them and their core ideas in order to properly appreciate what Nietzsche is trying to say.

Also you probably need to know a little bit about Wagner, but that's music, not philosophy.

what would nietzsche think about racemixing?

“It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.”

Refute this

>>14300000
Hitler read his works and also had close associates read them as well. Most of the Nazis' higher ideas that are hardly known to the public came from Nietzsche: their militarism, their sense of race and Darwinian determinism, even their brand of national socialism to a degree. The problem with the Nazis is is that they were Germans, and like Nietzsche said, the Germans were unworthy of his ideas. They're a lazy, feeble people who require strong stimulants like Wagner to prompt themselves towards action, which is not a solid basis for grand actions like trying to change the world order.

What were some things he was wrong about?

>The concept of decadence.—Waste, decay, elimination need not be condemned: they are necessary consequences of life, of the growth of life. The phenomenon of decadence is as necessary as any increase and advance of life: one is in no position to abolish it. Reason demands, on the contrary, that we do justice to it. It is a disgrace for all socialist systematizers that they suppose there could be circumstances—social combinations—in which vice, disease, prostitution, distress would no longer grow.—But that means condemning life.—A society is not free to remain young. And even at the height of its strength it has to form refuse and waste materials. The more energetically and boldly it advances, the richer it will be in failures and deformities, the closer to decline.—Age is not abolished by means of institutions. Neither is disease. Nor vice.

>Basic insight regarding the nature of decadence: its supposed causes are its consequences. This changes the whole perspective of moral problems. The whole moral struggle against vice, luxury, crime, even disease, appears a naivete and superfluous: there is no "improvement" (against repentance). Decadence itself is nothing to be fought: it is absolutely necessary and belongs to every age and every people. What should be fought vigorously is the contagion of the healthy parts of the organism. Is this being done? The opposite is done. Precisely that is attempted in the name of humanity.—How are the supreme values held so far, related to this basic biological question? Philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc. (The cure: e.g., militarism, beginning with Napoleon who considered civilization his natural enemy.)

So, did the left misunderstand Nietzsche more than the right, or vice versa? I can't tell. Is there even a political system that matches up with this?

>>13320000
There are no facts, only interpretations. Therefore, gods exist when we interpret them in things, and they die when those interpretations lose their value.

Great minds think alike

>>12277548
>nihilism
Bad news anon...

the value theory of labor

>>11938145
Psychology is the bane of the genuine Christian.

>In this state a man enriches everything from out his own abundance: what he sees, what he wills, he sees distended, compressed, strong, overladen with power. He transfigures things until they reflect his power,—until they are stamped with his perfection. This compulsion to transfigure into the beautiful is—Art Everything—even that which he is not,—is nevertheless to such a man a means of rejoicing over himself; in Art man rejoices over himself as perfection.—It is possible to imagine a contrary state, a specifically anti-artistic state of the instincts,—a state in which a man impoverishes, attenuates, and draws the blood from everything. And, truth to tell, history is full of such anti-artists, of such creatures of low vitality who have no choice but to appropriate everything they see and to suck its blood and make it thinner. This is the case with the genuine Christian, Pascal for instance. There is no such thing as a Christian who is also an artist ... Let no one be so childish as to suggest Raphael or any homeopathic Christian of the nineteenth century as an objection to this statement: Raphael said Yea, Raphael did Yea,—consequently Raphael was no Christian.