/lit/ - Literature

>With a Spartan rigour which never ceased to amaze his landlord-grocer, Nietzsche would get up every morning when the faintly dawning sky was still grey, and, after washing himself with cold water from the pitcher and china basin in his bedroom and drinking some warm milk, he would, when not felled by headaches and vomiting, work uninterruptedly until eleven in the morning. He then went for a brisk, two-hour walk through the nearby forest or along the edge of Lake Silvaplana (to the north-east) or of Lake Sils (to the south-west), stopping every now and then to jot down his latest thoughts in the notebook he always carried with him. Returning for a late luncheon at the Hôtel Alpenrose, Nietzsche, who detested promiscuity, avoided the midday crush of the table d’hôte in the large dining-room and ate a more or less ‘private’ lunch, usually consisting of a beefsteak and an ‘unbelievable’ quantity of fruit, which was, the hotel manager was persuaded, the chief cause of his frequent stomach upsets. After luncheon, usually dressed in a long and somewhat threadbare brown jacket, and armed as usual with notebook, pencil, and a large grey-green parasol to shade his eyes, he would stride off again on an even longer walk, which sometimes took him up the Fextal as far as its majestic glacier. Returning ‘home’ between four and five o’clock, he would immediately get back to work, sustaining himself on biscuits, peasant bread, honey (sent from Naumburg), fruit and pots of tea he brewed for himself in the little upstairs ‘dining-room’ next to his bedroom, until, worn out, he snuffed out the candle and went to bed around 11 p.m.

>>14916629
It's the harshest philosophy one could dedicate themselves to. It's relentless in its demands. Truth is something very different to Nietzsche than with all the other philosophers: pursuing it means undergoing the most reflective form of self-destruction one can possibly undergo. Every other philosopher simply works to rearrange their surroundings in a way that benefits them; Nietzsche deliberately rearranges his surroundings so that they can destroy him, so that he can be reborn in the ashes. Power, not comfort, is the goal — and greater strength must be tempered in fire.

>>12635625
>it is not clear what he means by 'design', what its extent is, what does not factor into design, etc.
>what is plot then? what does he mean by mechanics? mechanisms?
You're asking these questions because you haven't read enough of his writings. Did you expect the passages I pasted to cover every little detail? Because you shouldn't have. They were just a snippet from a particular chapter in the midst of many others. I won't be going out of my way to paste anything further either, because the material is there for you to read, if you are really interested in learning it. Everything important gets extrapolated on for the reader who isn't already in the know, somewhere, eventually.

As far as his Genealogy of Art Games goes, the book was never intended to be a full history of art. The book is subtitled as a polemic. What is covered there is what he deemed essential in explaining what is happening today. Not everything in history remains relevant to the present, even if it was, within some mold of past culture, true.

And to go back on the point with philosophy and taste; Nietzsche understood the matter better than Derrida, and most other philosophers. In Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, he wrote:

>The Greek word which designates the Sage belongs etymologically to sapio, I taste, sapiens, the tasting one, sisypkos, the man of the most delicate taste; the peculiar art of the philosopher therefore consists, according to the opinion of the people, in a delicate selective judgment by taste, by discernment, by significant differentiation. He is not prudent, if one calls him prudent, who in his own affairs finds out the good; Aristotle rightly says: "That which Thales and Anaxagoras know, people will call unusual, astounding, difficult, divine but — useless, since human possessions were of no concern to those two." Through thus selecting and precipitating the unusual, astounding, difficult, and divine. Philosophy marks the boundary-lines dividing her from Science in the same way as she does it from Prudence by the emphasising of the useless. Science without thus selecting, without such delicate taste, pounces upon everything knowable, in the blind covetousness to know all at any price; philosophical thinking however is always on the track of the things worth knowing, on the track of the great and most important discernments. Now the idea of greatness is changeable, as well in the moral as in the esthetic realm, thus Philosophy begins with a legislation with respect to greatness, she becomes a Nomenclator. "That is great," she says, and therewith she raises man above the blind, untamed covetousness of his thirst for knowledge. By the idea of greatness she assuages this thirst: and it is chiefly by this, that she contemplates the greatest discernment, that of the essence and kernel of things, as attainable and attained.

>>11915538
Nietzsche also shit on it and would have no respect for people who perpetuate it:

>To the mediocre mediocrity is a form of happiness; they have a natural instinct for mastering one thing, for specialization. It would be altogether unworthy of a profound intellect to see anything objectionable in mediocrity in itself. It is, in fact, the first prerequisite to the appearance of the exceptional: it is a necessary condition to a high degree of civilization. When the exceptional man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than he applies to himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of heart—it is simply his duty....

And who are the people who perpetuate it? The lowest of the low:

>Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights.... What is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry....

>>11830468
Infinity is a necessary attribute for the existence of a thing-in-itself. As I've said in previous posts, another thing cannot exist if there is a thing that is infinite. Therefore, nature is either infinite, or it is relative; it can't be both. But we know that space and time are a continuum now, the shorthand for it being spacetime, which presupposes nature as being relative—i.e., nature cannot contain a thing-in-itself, or any infinite, i.e. God. This makes God a non-natural concept.

>>11349968
Same man... Same.

>Whoso not only comprehends the word Dionysian, but also grasps his self in this word, requires no refutation of Plato or of Christianity or of Schopenhauer—he smells the putrefaction.

What made Nietzsche rise so much higher above his fellow Germans in his thought?

>>10722675
Wew it sure smells like ressentiment in here!

Most of what parades as intellectual is just an apologia for knowledge, a confession of the intellect that wants the universe all for its own sake. Try Nietzsche, he is the "intellectual" anus destroyer par excellence.

Reading Nietzsche will.

>The perfect woman is a higher type of human being than the perfect man: also something much rarer.

>Everyone bears within him a picture of woman derived from his mother: it is this which determines whether, in his dealings with women, he respects them or despises them or is in general indifferent to them.

>For the male sickness of self-contempt the surest cure is to be loved by a clever woman.

>All society that does not elevate one draws one down, and conversely; that is why men usually sink a little when they take wives, while their wives are elevated a little. Men who are too intellectual have great need of marriage, though they resist it as they would a foul-tasting medicine.

>There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul — and goes on seeking.

>In a state of hatred women are more dangerous than men; first and foremost because, once their hostility has been aroused, they are hampered by no considerations of fairness but allow their hatred to grow undisturbed to its ultimate consequences; then because they are practised in discovering the wounded places everyone, every party possesses and striking at them: to which end their dagger-pointed intellect renders them excellent service (whereas at the sight of wounds men become restrained and often inclined to reconciliation and generosity).

>It is perhaps no rare occurrence that noble-minded and aspiring people have to undergo their severest trials in their childhood: perhaps through having to assert themselves against a low-minded father absorbed in appearance and deception, or, like Lord Byron, to live in continual conflict with a childish and irritable mother. If one has experienced such a thing one will, one's whole life long, never get over the knowledge of who one's greatest and most dangerous foe has actually been.

etc. But Nietzsche is a philosopher, and if you miss this part, you will miss the intentions with which he writes. If you understand this and you read his works, you'll find he's incredibly therapeutic, especially today. He will rejuvenate your masculinity which will at once rejuvenate your love for femininity. Jung may also be a good read for this.

>Do not be virtuous beyond your strength! And will nothing from yourselves against probability! Follow in the footsteps made by the virtue of your fathers! How could you want to climb high if the will of your fathers did not climb with you? But whoever wants to be a firstling, see to it that he does not become a lastling too! And where the vices of your fathers are, there you should not want to count as saints! He whose forefathers consorted with women and with strong wines and wild boars: how would it be if he wanted chastity from himself? It would be folly! Verily, it seems to me a lot for such a man to be the husband of one or two or three women. And if he founded monasteries and wrote above the door, 'The Way to the Holy'— I would say: What of it! it is a new piece of folly! If he founded for himself a new house of correction and refuge: much good may it do him! But I do not believe in it. In solitude there grows whatever one brings to it, the inner beast as well. For this reason is solitude inadvisable for many. Has there been anything more filthy on earth so far than desert-saints? Around them not only the Devil was loose— but also the swine.

Was Nietzsche the last good psychologist?

>>10572056
What is the source of that quote, exactly? A letter? I'm having trouble determining it on that website.

Different online translators give different results, but judging by the overall quote, it appears that Nietzsche is admitting that he was a nihilist only up until that point. In 1887 he had not yet written The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche contra Wagner, or many of his notes for his work in progress book Will to Power which was published posthumously. The revelations of his will to power philosophy don't start to emerge until these books, especially the last one, where he writes statements such as:

>A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of "in vain" is the nihilists' pathos— at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists. Whoever is incapable of laying his will into things, lacking will and strength, at least lays some meaning into them, i.e., the faith that there is a will in them already. It is a measure of the degree of strength of will to what extent one can do without meaning in things, to what extent one can endure to live in a meaningless world because one organizes a small portion of it oneself.

And then after, in broken, incomplete notes:

>Connection between philosophers and the pessimistic religions: the same species of man (—they ascribe the highest degree of reality to the most highly valued things—). Connection between philosophers and moral men and their evaluations (—the moral interpretation of the world as meaning: after the decline of the religious meaning—). Overcoming of philosophers through the destruction of the world of being: intermediary period of nihilism: before there is yet present the strength to reverse values and to deify becoming and the apparent world as the only world, and to call them good.

There are no conceptual acrobatics going on. It's right there, in his words, written after the quote you posted. Truth is a function of power: meaninglessness is a symptom of powerlessness. At the end, Nietzsche saw this, and was in the process from 1888 on of revaluating all values under his will to power, i.e. he overcame nihilism.