/lit/ - Literature

No.

>>7013038
Compelling argument.

>>7013031

Yeah it's true but normies will always get assblasted at Nietzsche because he's not nice.
No point in starting a fight with them about it.
Trying to explain that Nietzsche is good to a normal person is like trying to explain to a child that santa claus isn't real.
They probably won't believe you and even if you convince them it will fuck their shit up and everything they ever believed will seem like a lie (which it is but they won't have a very good time figuring it out).

>>7013031
He was the victim of a rare breed of syphilis that has, as a survival adaptation, the effect of causing its host to be life affirming so that it doesn't commit suicide due to the sympthoms. If it wasn't for his syphilis, he would've been a schopenhauerian till the end.

>>7013066

Nietzsche didn't have syphillus his mental breakdown was a classic onset psychosis induced by mania. It's practically written all over his letters he wrote in the aftermath of that horse incident in Turin.

What was he even right about?

>>7013072

Something something founding figure of psychology something something first thinker to diagnose nihilism

Die Wahrheit ist hart, and most egalitarian-minded types can't handle it.

Antiquity is the guiding light for culture and all valuable forms of progress.

Nietzsche is complicated.

I'm a very eager reader of his works. Actually, I've read more Nietzsche than I've read of anything else, and I think about his ideas for several hours a day, every day?

Genius?

Well, outside of the sciences, he has spurred more intelligent people to thought than basically anyone else. That should probably suffice as proof that he's a "genius," insofar as "genius" is a meaningful category.

But there are problems with our Freddy, too.

I'm not completely convinced that he ever overcame the nihilism which was his stated enemy and the negative 'fulcrum' around which is philosophy was oriented.

To put it simply: he didn't really succeed in his aims. The problem of nihilism was not 'solved' by Nietzsche and, as apt as his warnings about it were, I fear that his attempts at a 'positive' project were, viewed in hindsight, basically harmful.

I've often compared Nietzsche, as a philosopher, to Led Zeppelin in music: something good in itself, but an unambiguously negative influence. The experience of reading Nietzsche's literature is profound, moving, uplifting--but look at history. Look at the thinkers he inspired, the thinkers who "used" him. It's basically a gallery of criminals, fools and lunatics... Foucault, Rand, Derrida, Heidegger, Icycalm... If there is a "Nietzschean tradition" or a "Nietzschean movement" of any kind, it's a toxic, pernicious one.

It seems there are basically two types of 'Nietzscheans':

1. Mindless idiots who simply read his work, admire its 'virility' and decide it's some kind of affirmation of a sort of 'barbarian anarchism' that puts their torture consciences to rest.

2. Left wing thinkers who selectively quote him to support socialism or left-anarchism.

Neither of these are admirable projects, in my opinion.

I think the proper way to view Nietzsche is as a sparring partner; an ever-attacking, ever-hostile force you must oppose and struggle with, sort of like a Sensei to the young Karate student. It's fine to admit that your sensei's job is to attack you. The problem comes when you don't fight back.

>>7013111

>his attempts at a 'positive' project

you mean those ones that didn't exist? Yeah I remember those too.

>the proper way to view Nietzsche is as a sparring partner

lol Nietzsche doesn't sound like he's for you bub go read some Sam Harris.

>>7013120

Naaaaaah, the Ubermensch and all that. Late Nietzsche (1882 onward) definitely tries to construct something, and it kind of sucks, honestly. I say this as an admirer of NIetzsche--as I said, I think about him for at least an hour a day, every day,.

ctrl C ctrl V gorgias

>>7013071
Diseases can induce psychosis and manic states. You should've just said 'brain tumor', Sigmund.

>>7013111
Good post, but Zeppelin having a negative influence? There would be no Black Sabbath or Black Flag without them bruv

>>7013200
>>7013111

dadrock is shit

>>7013111
You havent said why and how he didnt overcome nihilism

Brace yourself, the shadow is coming.

>>7013071
How about looking at this from a 21st century perspective, instead of using vague, antiquated terms.

>>7013202
what music do you like?

>>7013227
music that actually has spirit in it, not some normie drug fueled normie music

>>7013233
Purcell?

>>7013031
he was a modern Leonardo da Vinci
so no, he was just an artist who didnt contribute to anything significant

>>7013233
like what? tell me a name

>>7013240
Kanye West :^)

Aloof Proof is the only example I'll give you

>>7013244
Wagner was the last person to make tolerable music.

>>7013245
And yet Wagner became the graveyard of music.

>>7013111
As far as your criticism of Nietzsche's followers goes, I'd liken it to the same problem as Ayn Rand's followers.

Both construct a philosophy around a superior man who bends the world and will of others to his whims, creates reality as he pleases, and so on and so forth. But anyone who is actually capable of doing this doesn't need the philosophy to do so.

>>7013111

The answer to nihilism is simply willing. Will is what redeems from nihilism, and it is the strongest wills that are most redeemed from it.

>>7013248
People just stopped trying to make good music after Wagner, the 20th century killed music.

>>7013031
It doesn't matter

>>7013253

Yearning can achieve all things, even a triumph over the will to nothingness and extinction.

>>7013111
>I'm not completely convinced that he ever overcame the nihilism which was his stated enemy and the negative 'fulcrum' around which is philosophy was oriented.
Nietzsche never, ever implies that he himself is the Ubermench.

nietzschean rhetoric on /lit/ sometimes just makes me want to cut my stomach open and attach a plastic tube rerouting the shit out of my colon through a hole in my throat and out of my mouth back into my ass through my butthole

>>7013255
but bruh, what about green day?

>>7013263
w-why?

>>7013264
>muh Green Day
>muh Muddy Waters
>muh Eric Clapton
>muh Jimi Hendrix
All shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT.

>>7013259
of course he doesnt, just look at that mongoloid face

pic related was the true Ubermensch

>>7013031
A transcript of a set of lectures by Leo Strauss were put online a bit earlier this year, and are a wonderful example of sensitive close reading of Nietzsche. The text in question is Beyond Good and Evil, and Strauss does quite a bit of work of showing how the aphorisms are connected, and of how well structured the work is, revealing something of the complex argument and set of claims being worked out over the course of the book. Lots of discussion about how and why Nietzsche wrote the way he did.

Anyone looking for an introduction to his thought, or even those more experienced readers looking to see what else might be in Beyond Good and Evil should take a look at them.

http://leostrausstranscripts.uchicago.edu/navigate/9/table-of-contents/

>>7013278
T.E. Lawrence was the only ubermensch to ever live

>>7013248
Wagner is an eerily perfect symbol, of the decay of western art music, of a kind of foretelling of what would be to come, and a genius in his own strange musical-narrative language.

>>7013031

>>7013346
He transcends the dichotomy.

>>7013111
>>7013180
What do you take to be Nietzsche's positive project? Ubermensch aside.

>>7013282
A nice short essay on Beyond Good & Evil's relation to Zarathustra by way of an analysis of the two paragraphs Nietzsche devoted to Beyond Good & Evil in Ecce Homo:

http://www.svabhinava.org/esotericphilosophy/JosephMartin/BGE&Zarathustra-frame.php

A marvelous philosophical commentary on the first chapter of Beyond Good & Evil:

http://www.svabhinava.org/esotericphilosophy/JosephMartin/BeyondGood&Evil-frame.php

And finally an interesting exploration of the relation of some elements of Nietzsche's thought to ideas expressed by the Eleatic and Athenian Strangers in Plato's Sophist, Statesman, and Laws:

http://www.svabhinava.org/esotericphilosophy/JosephMartin/NietzschePlato-frame.php

Until this very moment I never was really curious about Nietzsche, I just assumed it was autism because so many of these internet turds liked to point at him blankly. Well, now you fuckers tipped the balance.

If I regret the decision, /lit/, I swear to god

>>7014045
DO IT

>>7013031
when will you cunts stfu about this fuckin guy

>>7014045
Pal it will change your life

>>7014045
God is dead

>>7013031
Agree.
Also funny to see many try to fit his ideas into feel-good / leftist / self-help-book etc. models...

>>7013072
Communism and democracy, humanism all flow from Christianity and are still based on slave/herd mentality

The will to power combined with the fact that most of peoples ego forms subconsciously is a good model for explaining a lot of people's actions/choices

Eternal recurrence and amor fati are great bases for the morality of a strong person

>>7013111
The fact that you talk about "negative influence" shows that you are applying your own moral values to certain peoples actions, and you would say that someone who read a lot of Nietzsche by now understands that those are all subjective.
The fact that you call them criminals, fools and lunatics and their influence bad shows that your moral system at least overlaps with many of the subhuman morals and as such I guess even though you read his points much of them went over your head....

>>7014651
And, the irony / funny part of this is that Nietzsche himself offers the insight that nobody has a model of the world based on truth, rather based on his (subconscious) (will to) power considerations. So this is what you are doing here, and you dont seem to notice.

>>7013064
/thread

>>7013066
The syphilis theory was debunked, it was most likely just dementia.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3313279/Madness-of-Nietzsche-was-cancer-not-syphilis.html

>>7013111
>The problem of nihilism was not 'solved' by Nietzsche
Depends on what you mean by a solution. If you just want a cut and dry, mathematical solution to the problem, you're not gonna get one because life doesn't work like that outside of mathematics and logic, two fabrications of the human mind. Nietzsche did solve the issue of nihilism through his philosophy, a much more intangible solution of course but a solution nonetheless as far as life is concerned.

>>7013120
Did you even read Zarathustra? His "friends", whom he addresses throughout the book are the same as rivals to him, he encourages them to strive against him and in striving against him is how you come to inherit his philosophy and become his equal. Overall it is very warrior-like. Don't forget that Nietzsche said that turning the other cheek is disrespectful to the other person and that an eye for an eye is the honorable way to do things.

>>7013180
Why does it suck? When you reach the level of understanding he possesses, when you become a life-affirming Yes-sayer, life becomes no more about truth but about your values. You can break down the "stages" of human perception like this, stage 1 being the most primitive mind:

Stage 1: You're the ego's bitch. The "I".
Stage 2: The "I" is put behind, but now you're truth's bitch.
Stage 3: You have become the Self and ego and truth are YOUR bitch now.

Nietzsche put forth his own value system towards the end, which is the final stage in action. The last stage of the life-affirming Yes-sayer requires a big fat NO in order to express its YES — a new stone tablet of laws, your laws, must be established. Creation requires destruction, and giving birth is painful; consider the harshness and dictation in Nietzsche's later writing as the necessary pain in birthing his new value system, which is beyond truth, beyond the ego. and especially beyond good and evil.

Of course, but the fact that mainly plebby christfags don't understand anything about him shows how far he transcends them and their limited worldview.

Christfags criticizing Nietzsche is the philosophical version of a gang of mongoloids criticizing Einstein. Not only don't they know what he's getting at, they don't seem to make any effort to try and understand him. They can only view Nietzsche through their lens of plebbiness

>>7013031
>Now that the dust has settled
Nietzsche died one-hundred fifteen years ago! The dust has long been settled and part of the Earth!

>>7013072
That atomism is wrong, that art has its basis in the natural world, that humans do not create art and are merely conduits, that Apollo embodied the impulses that caused the Hellenic people to create all of their gods, that people often believe and worship deities to put value in themselves, the list could continue for a while.

In nature there is no good intentions

plebs will never understand this

>>7015503
What is wrong about atomism?

>>7015295
>Stage 3: You have become the Self and ego and truth are YOUR bitch now.
Do you mind elaborating on how truth can become "your bitch"? Nietzsche said something along the lines of "If you ignore the truthfulness of something and simply consider its effects, you're a dirty wanker", so what do you mean exactly?

>>7015309
Actually the most sophisticated Christians I know read Nietzsche and learn quite a bit from him about how to be a better Christian.

This comes straight from his work by any wise reading.

>>7013031
Of course he is a genius, but plebs do understand him. Just not fully.

Trying to make a super secret "gets Nietzsche" club is idiocy prima facie.

>>7013072
That your posture about what is "right" doesn't have to matter to me.

>>7013111
It's important to note that at St. John's, where they study a very rigorous, Christian-oriented course in philosophy, they read multiple Nietzsche works.

People need to pay attention to the "transvaluation of all values". It's more than key to his work.

>>7015550
well, electrons and protons for one

>>7015549

However, Man holds itself apart from Nature and ascertains truths in an attempt to bring forward the light of knowledge and wisdom. In nature there are no good intentions I agree.

However, Humanity has spent far too long and far too much blood to simply say "lol well we got it wrong oh well". You're talking about disregarding the deaths of countless millions for the sake of philosophical debate.

Once we start overcoming this particular segment of the problem, maybe we can start making something of this. Unfortunately with sociopaths trumpeting one half of the debate for entirely the wrong fucking reasons that's quite difficult.

>>7015568
>Actually the most sophisticated Christians I know read Nietzsche and learn quite a bit from him about how to be a better Christian.

Nice anecdote, are you going to tell about how you knew a guy who knew a guy who was da Ubermens himself next?

>>7015591

yes, i don't see anything wrong in teaching values in a strictly way (between teaching them or not it's better to do it anyway). however, you respect more the guy who *gets it* and realizes the facade of social pressure

Nietzsche just wanted to some people to *get it* even if they didn't had the emotional maturity to actually get it from first-person experience

>>7015626

I would argue that in a society devoid of such social pressure we must find a replacement source of self-discipline, as children are not born with the capability to operate within society.

You have to ask yourself why we developed this social pressure in the first place.

>>7015579
>It's important to note that at St. John's, where they study a very rigorous, Christian-oriented course in philosophy

As a graduate, I call bullshit.

>>7015584
So there re things smaller than atoms. This hardly proves atoms aren't real.
Was Nietzsche the first to predict these smaller things or something?

>>7014651
>>7014660
>herp derp icycalm

>>7015559
Once you've become the Self you are no longer discovering truth in the world, you're creating it and giving truth to the world. That's how it becomes your bitch.

>>7013272
Yeah dude, t-there's really no call for that.

>>7015600
No.

>>7015638
https://www.sjc.edu/files/4114/3457/2898/AN_Reading_List_Fall_2015_St._Johns_College.pdf

Are not you required to read these?

Wow a whole Nietzsche thread not full of shitposting fedoras, I am impress.

C-c-c-combo breaker!

On point, I 2nd the motion that revaluation of all values is a major axis of his philosophy. Also that Nietzsche encourages his 'enemies' and embraces them as his friends. He predicts & encourages a time when his philosophy should be attacked and 'revaluated'. I think he wanted his philosophy to be like a trainee in a Kung Fu flick, ready to be attacked & tested at any moment.

>tfw I am my own spirit of gravity
It started as my parents, then became my peers, then climbed up to Nietzsche and then somehow became myself. Interesting how things work.

>>7015736
>>>7015638
>https://www.sjc.edu/files/4114/3457/2898/AN_Reading_List_Fall_2015_St._Johns_College.pdf

I'm quite the athiest, but damn, that's a nice reading list...

>>7015736
Yeah, and that's still not a "Christian-oriented" philosophical education, which is what I take umbrage with. The scholars with the most influence on our school are Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss, who are decidedly ambivalent to Christianity.

>>7015762
It is pretty secular, but you're reading large amounts of the bible, you're reading anselm, you're reading the summa, you're reading fucking pascal's pensees

the list is clearly oriented around theology. i mean, you're right that it's not 100% based on converting you to Christianity, but it's clearly meant to get you reading these things.

>>7015762
I mean, the only philosophers after Marx are Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. AKA, the two biggest philosophers who wrote extensively on Christianity.

>>7015647
Atomism is the theory that everything ultimately consists of particles that have no proper parts. It only has an indirect relation to what we call "atoms."

>>7015647
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but isn't the original point of atomism that atoms are the smallest building block of the universe? I think you're being confused by the scientific unit being named after the ancient theory.

>>7015779
>>7015786
No it's not; those are simply important texts in the history of Western thought. Let alone the fact that that reading list is limited only to the seminar classes, and not math, lab, music, or language. Theology is incredibly important to the development of Western thought, but that hardly means our education is oriented around it; like what, is the full year spent only on Greeks nothing? Or the year that focuses on heterodox or atheistic enlightenment philosophers?

Also, that list is limited to the fall semester; second semester Sophomore year veers very hard on literature and ends on Bacon and Descartes, Junior year takes up Kant for the largest part of its duration, as well as Hume, Locke's political philosophy, Rousseau, and Adam Smith, and Senior year ends with even more Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and our final reading is a re-reading of Plato again.

>>7015647
Atomism doesn't just claim atoms exist; it also claims that atoms are the smallest particles and cannot be divided into smaller parts, which is very wrong.

Why does the political left try to claim Nietzsche as one of their own?

>>7013072
The Last Man

I'm proof of that

>>7015929
Atomism doesn't claim that atoms as we understand them are basic. Just that there are basic particles ("atom" is Greek for "uncuttable"), and everything is made up of them. These could be fermions and bosons, or whatever they might end up being made up of. As long as there are discrete basic units of matter, atomism is true.

>>7015905
Of course it has those, many Catholics are very well educated on these topics.

The point of the course isn't to convert you and make you devout, it's to educate you so that you can and will defend Catholicism throughout your life, whether or not you believe.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, or false, it just is a part of the institute, to make you educated on catholic thought.

No undergrad degree in philosophy ever will require you to read Pascal, for instance.

>>7015935
Some of his notions (even if misunderstood by the left) seem very appropriable for certain left causes, such as his critiques of (unsophisticated) nationalism, his disdain for anti-Semitism, his critiques of organized religion, the seeming relativism that appears in his works which bolster certain leftist arguments against intolerant attitudes, and his critiques of scientism. There's a way in which a (very) partial reading of Nietzsche can bolster arguments against dominant partialities and reigning prejudices and beliefs, which the left has been increasingly on the lookout for.

>>7015935
"Mistrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack
not only honey.
And when they call themselves “the good and the just,” do not forget that
for them to be Pharisees nothing is lacking except — power!
My friends, I will not be confounded and confused with anyone else.
There are those who preach my doctrine: and at the same time they are
preachers of equality and tarantulas.
That they speak in favor of life, although they sit in their holes turned away
from life, these venomous spiders: this is because they want to cause pain.
They want to cause pain to those now in power: for it is with these that the
preaching of death is still most at home.
If it were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise; and precisely
they were formerly the best world-slanderers and heretic-burners.
With these preachers of equality I will not be confounded and confused.
For thus justice speaks to me: “Men are not equal.”
And they shall not become so either! What would my love for the Super-
man be if I spoke otherwise?"

>>7016178
The sort of equality and thought expressed by kyriarchy theory is diametrically opposed to Nietzsche's thought.

>>7016175
>Of course it has those, many Catholics are very well educated on these topics.

Oh, so now we're not just broadly Christian, but we're Catholic? And where did you get this idea from?

>The point of the course isn't to convert you and make you devout, it's to educate you so that you can and will defend Catholicism throughout your life, whether or not you believe.

Still doesn't follow, and I'm contesting you precisely on this made up idea that we're educated to defend Catholicism whether or not we believe it. Several Catholic works being present on the sophomore year reading list (that you still only partially know, not having seen the spring semester list) doesn't suggest that at all. Nor do you know what our education was involved in, it being discussion oriented and not featuring almost at all.

>That's not necessarily a bad thing, or false, it just is a part of the institute, to make you educated on catholic thought.

So just ignoring that comment I made about Klein and Strauss being the big thinkers behind our college, or what?

>No undergrad degree in philosophy ever will require you to read Pascal, for instance.

Granted, and which still doesn't mean our education is oriented around theology or Catholic thought. And are you going to ignore my comment about that reading list only dealing with *one* class?

You don't have any idea of what you're talking about.

>>7016205
That's fine; I did say they were partial in their readings.

Nietzsche's a very great psychologist, philogist and philosopher, although unfortunately his work is contaminated with projecting. Nietzsche feels a strong resentment toward Christianity, socialism and the masses.

>>7015295
>life becomes no more about truth but about your values

What do you make of the following passage from Use and Abuse of History:

"...the doctrines of the sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all ideas, types, and styles, of the lack of all cardinal differences between man and animal (doctrines which I consider true but deadly)"?

I mean, I mostly have BG&E in mind, but he doesn't question the value of truth per se as he does the Will to Truth. Perhaps I'm remembering wrong though, and you might have a more explicit citation to Nietzsche?

>>7015935
A quick gloss over of his Wikipedia page can make a libtard think he actually supported equality, especially with his idea of perspectivism, even though that supports inequality instead.

>>7013111
holy shit. if your claims in the first paragraph are true, you don't now how to read, or even think.

>>7014045
Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher for a reason.

He is very normie-unfriendly, however, as has been pointed out multiple times in this thread. I read and enjoyed him before I had a formal class on existentialism in university.

He's so much better than the other two major existentialists we studied (Kierkegaard and Camus) it's not even funny. And the class made me appreciate him even more.

He wasn't a happy man, but he was an optimistic one and believed in the individual itself to will itself to power, which is why I find it hilarious that liberals and socialists quote him so often without knowing that he vehemently disagrees with 90% of what they preach and want.

>>7016598
I think they know, but don't care as long as they can pilfer ideas useful to them.

>>7016598

>Nietzsche
>better than Kierkegaard
>implying any philosopher can be 'better' than another
>implying that this isn't to fundamentally misunderstand the project of philosophy

>>7016598
He made up that aphorism so people wouldn't fight monsters.

>tfw people will never understand that Nietzsche peaked with The Birth of Tragedy and his discourse on the Apollonian and Dionysian paradigms, instead caring more about his works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Übermensch
Oh well.

>>7016846
This. The Birth of Tragedy makes Zarathustra look Dawkins-tier.

>>7016846
>tfw The Gay Science is his best book, and his most overlooked.

I also love BT, though.

>>7016472
Consider that Nietzsche said this:

>Art is the proper task of life.
>We have art so that we may not perish by the truth.
>"This - is now my way - where is yours”? Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way”. For the way - it does not exist!

Also, read Ecce Homo again. It's very clear to me that late Nietzsche is no longer as concerned about truth as he once was, he is more concerned about art, about establishing his values; he is past being the camel in his three metamorphoses of the spirit, he has all the truths he needs to become the lion and at last the child. Not to say that truth's only function is to be utilized for your own power, but ultimately this is the path one who is healthy and life-affirming will always go down. It's the final mature stage of the spirit.

And not to even mention the "truths" which Nietzsche came across, the deepest ones. But I won't go into that.

>>7016205
>tfw you have almost every privilege there is

>>7017079
its a good feel
i love being better than everyone

>>7016205
It's sad to think anyone in the "oppressed" group actually believes they're oppressed, even sadder that they for some reason want to be called that.

>>7013202
It's grandparock now, brah
Nirvana is dadrock

>>7017007
Sure, I guess I just wanted to clarify whether you take Nietzsche to be rejecting truth wholesale, or reducing its place in his philosophy, or somesuch thing. That central quote alludes to the Roman poet Lucretius who says in his poem, "On the Nature of Things":

"First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
And go right on to loose from round the mind
The tightened coils of dread religion;
Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
Song so pellucid, touching all throughout
Even with the Muses' charm- which, as 'twould seem,
Is not without a reasonable ground:
For as physicians, when they seek to give
Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
And yellow of the honey, in order that
The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
The wormwood's bitter draught"

I.e., his use of poetry is meant to *beautify* the ugly truths of his teaching. That quote anyway doesn't quite suggest to me that he's less concerned about truth than with art; a possible reading of it might suggest that truth and art are concerns that go together. That art is necessary for beautifying the truth, rather than that we should be concerned with art alone. Does that seem like a plausible reading?

can you comprehend that comprehension hasn't happened yet in your little fucking skull?

>>7017168
not really

>>7016205
>Privelege: Credentialed, highly literate
>Oppression/Resistance: Nonliterate, uncredentialed

what the fuck

>>7016846
>>7016913
Why do you think this?

>>7015971
The consensus of modern physics is that atomism is false. Physical reality is composed of continuous fields, not discrete atoms. Or so say the majority of physicists at least.
>>7017228
It's good to bring in Lucretius (criminally underread for how influential and genius he was), but I don't think Nietzsche is saying the same thing. With Nietzsche, it's more that with art you create your own truth, not seek some truth that exists outside of your control. A simple example of this would be of you wrote a novel, you decide when, where, why and how things happen in it. You create a self-contained domain where the truth is of your own design, even while you continue to discover more of it. This line of reasoning leads to considering one's own existence as a whole as art, which is what leads to Nietzsche's "aesthetic morality". But here you have to be careful and see aesthetics not as a stand in for good and evil (beautiful and ugly), but as a mode of exerting will and understanding experiences. Nietzsche created a narrative of himself as great, as having the perfect circumstances (in Ecce Homo he describes how what appear to be detriments in his condition and surroundings were vital to his becoming great).

Heidegger writes about this a lot and sort of comes out on the other side, critical of the enframing of art (art as in artifice).

>>7017844
I see what you're saying, but I'd still wonder at that second quote and have to ask how it is that truth then is something that we're at risk of perishing from? Your take on it would suggest that we perish of our own artistic sensibilities?

(That might make sense; one could imagine someone creating values that end up not being conducive to life, but that reading still doesn't quite seem like what Nietzsche's after in that passage.)

>>7017228
No, I don't think he REJECTED truth. Rather, there comes a point in maturity where the spirit's search for truth is over and it is time to establish its own truths instead. A quote from Bertrand Russell rings a bell:

>I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet -- a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things.

Moreover, one of the truths that Nietzsche came across was that untruth is a condition of life, and that all truths are not actually searched for and found but rather created by ourselves. In this sense, truth becomes a more flexible thing than we previously saw it as, since it is now a creation of the mind. We have no organ for truth, as he says, i.e. all of our so-called truths are merely human truths and to place any truth beyond the organic structure that conceives it is an error in judgment. This begins the transition into higher maturity and the desire to dispatch of the ego "I" and the idol "You" and ground oneself back into the Self and then destroy and re-create all values. At the end of the day, value is truth, power is what has value, and truth perishes without power by its side.

>>7017701
You do realise there are people on this planet who have never had a chance to go to school and learn to read, right?

>>7018032
sure. does that mean we should treat the fact of education as being oppressive, or that the proper resistance to the privilege of being educated is to encourage being uneducated?

>>7015736
mmm... this is real /lit/-core right here

>>7015549
Today I watched a video of a monkey petting some puppies.

Your assertion is bullshit.

>>7020176
most /reddit/ comment I've seen in a while

>>7020337
I have to agree tbh
They're not even ashamed of it anymore

>>7013212
So Islam is the Shadow coming to replace our once revered christian god? Sounds good to me.
As long as it's not in my lifetime

>>7013253

Let's systematically destroy this will-to-life post from a simple nihilistic perspective, which, not that it matters, happens to be my sincere, unironically held view of the world.

>The answer to nihilism is simply willing.

"The answer" suggests that you get someplace, manage something really, permanently useful, which isn't true. Yes, it might be true in life, but in the long term, this isn't the case. The sentiment itself is a futile will-to-life in the face of the known inevitability of death.

>Will is what redeems from nihilism,

again, a life-delusion which pretends that the impossibility of redemption is in any meaningful sense possible,

>and it is the strongest wills that are most redeemed from it.

On the contrary, the old chestnut that "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" is what really applies here. Alexanders, CEOs, self-actualized supermodels who age gracefully and the like, far from achieving redemption, all literally (and I do mean, literally) and immediately meet the same end as a Jared Fogle, or a peasant. Neither fame nor infamy, but simply again, nothing.

Not even your precious art or literature are safe. On a sufficiently long timeframe, everything is eventually destroyed in one way or another, as some barbarians in the middle east are dramatically demonstrating at multiple occasions these days. But their demonstration is of course not necessary as a proof of the general principle of entropy.

>>7022165
Sure, if your only point of reference is with respect to the rest of the universe, but why should that be the case? Within the human realm, Alexanders, Caesars, and Napoleons have had tremendous effect, and Platos, Christs, and Descartes have shaped fundamentally how we interpret the phenomena around (including the view you hold).

>>7022165
>lol death is inevitable so why even care or try to make things better?

WHY HAVEN'T YOU KILLED YOURSELF?

>>7022377

When some version of this one is addressed to a nihilist or an anti-natalist, it reminds me of when a women questions a man's manhood when he expresses frustration to the point of impotently lashing out (and this usually gets the unlucky man to shut up). Strictly speaking, both responses carry animal kernels of truth: the anti-nihilist animally senses that if the other guy is right, then there's no reason not to kill one's self. And the woman animally senses that the man is simply frustrated. Still, both respondents are wrong in a larger sense. Their shared rhetorical thrust is just one step removed from an ad-hom, and do not reach a deeper truth.

What both ignore, is that the nihilist and frustrated man are both animals nevertheless. In the case of the former, since existence has been thrust upon the nihilist as upon everyone else, if the rest of his animal brain functions fairly well, then he may as well live out life as pleasantly as possible until expiration. This reasonable nihilist apathetism, however, is distinct from similarly positive existential treatments, and is naturally motivated by animal considerations such as the aforementioned life-delusion (which the intellect is capable of overcoming, as actual suicides demonstrate and the earlier poster naturally suggest), pursuit of pleasure, avoidance of pain, and so on. Meanwhile, the woman who scolds a man about his manhood does so out of instinct, to play men against each other and prevent a deeper truth (nihilism as the world includes a misanthropy, which includes both a misandry and a misogyny in turn) from being said.

Since it doesn't matter either way between suicide and existence-unto-expiration, either is a perfectly viable option. Your error is in rhetorically suggesting, out of your own personal annoyance with engaging with the ideas, that the one is necessary.

>>7016846
>>tfw people will never understand that Nietzsche peaked with The Birth of Tragedy and his discourse on the Apollonian and Dionysian paradigms, instead caring more about his works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Übermensch
exactly the converse

how can you be so diluted ?

>>7022509
So you will take up time, oxygen, and a plethora of other more valuable resources contemplating your own uselessness rather than take your own life? Wallowing in apathy and misguided philosophy you will waste away knowing that your sensory experiences are all for naught and anything you've believed, fought for or represented will all be lost in the vastness of space and time?

I prefer Scheler's interpretation of Christianity well over Nietzsche. Nietzsche has no grasp of Christian theology outside of Protestantism.

>>7022165
You make an interesting point, and I actually do agree with your opinion on Nietzsche and his influence, and I think that ultimately it was Sartre and Buber that had the best solution to the apparent problem of nihilism.

Why does the ultimate inevitability of death and destruction necessarily have to prevent one from valuing life? Why does it have to prevent there being a meaning to life?

>>7023700

Hello, >>7022165 here. Apart from a few pages of Zarathustra which I never finished, I've never read a word of Nietzsche, kek, I was simply articulating my own views. I suppose it would make sense that I agree with Nietzsche on certain things, since I'm downstream in the history of ideas and all (it's likely I picked up some specific notion of his without realizing it, even if it's not in the above post). But the post was not intended as any kind of commentary on captain syphilis, just, like, my opinion, man.

Once you come to the above conclusions, you're still free to locally value life, that's all very well and good. You can locally do lots of small-m meaningful things, and make your own meaning, which is what existentialists advocate. However, the (other) error arises when humans (as they are wont to do, being thinking animals and all) confuse these animal imperatives for capital-M Meaning. Given the above, you are not utterly prevented from "valuing life" in the limited animal sense, it (the inevitability of death) simply precludes Meaning, Intrinsic Value, etc. Because...

The absence of a capital-M Meaning of Life is a conclusion based on a composite understanding - understanding both the absence of a God (or whatever gods you prefer), and understanding the universe. The physical universe. In order for any meaning, let alone Meaning to exist, there has to be some sort of an intelligence capable of appreciating it. Mmeaning does not survive death, and since everyone and everything dies, meaning is constantly dying with it. Death precludes meaning, and total (that is, inevitable) death totally precludes all meaning.

>Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being. Everything dies, everything blossoms again; eternally runs the year of being. Everything breaks, everything is joined anew; eternally the same House of Being is built. Everything parts, everything greets every other thing again; eternally the ring of being remains faithful to itself. In every Now, being begins; round every Here rolls the sphere There. The center is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.

Nietzsche is so fucking awesome.

Man how the fuck is this thread still going?

>>7025995
It's all fire anyway...

>>7022165
You're not wrong. And yet, music is still beautiful to listen to regardless of the fact that a song eventually ends.

Life is music. If it seems pointless to you because it ends, chances are you're just deaf.

>>7025044
Your assumption that there is no capital-M Meaning is that the terrestrial life we have is in-and-of itself the only thing we will ever experience in existence on any plane.

However, since we can't REALLY prove or disprove the existence of a greater deity or any sort of afterlife (as we just simply choose whether or not we believe in them), how can you say with such certainty that after you die, your terrestrial actions have no greater effect? What about the generations upon generations of future people that have to live with the effects of you actions, minor as they be? Do they not matter, does your existence as a cog in the machine of society (as minor as it is) not matter to some degree? Consider; if I have a civil debate and manage to change the philosophical ideal that someone has through discourse, let's say I convince them to subscribe to the school of nihilism, does that so-called 'enlightenment' to the truth that you assume is true not meaningful in the sense that they now understand a fundamental truth that you believe in?

Nihilism, or rather the application of nihilism in the sense of not caring about the moral life you lead, is a rather childish view in my opinion. Mostly because even if you DO believe that there is no meaning to life itself, and after you die that's it, what is stopping you from enjoying the life you have and trying to influence or affect future generations of people in a positive way? Sure, there might not be any meaning it that however many billions of years from now when the sun supernovas and the universe dies, but so what? It's INEVITABLE that humanity (if we are still called that) will die out, what's that to stop people from living and enjoying mortal, terrestrial life and indulging in vices and appeasing the ego?

>>7017844
>The consensus of modern physics is that atomism is false. Physical reality is composed of continuous fields, not discrete atoms. Or so say the majority of physicists at least.

Not the anon you were talking to, but I'm a grad student in physics. What you say isn't really true, you're only talking about half of fundamental theorists, they just have the main spotlight right now (the string theorists). There is also the encampment of Loop Quantum Gravity, a competing theory for the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity, in which spacetime is basically discretized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity

>>7013186
Nietzsche had values though, them being the subjugation of the weak (nihilists, schizetypals like Socrates, Paul, Luther) and the triumph of the instincts and physiological health

>>7015550
Do you know anything about particle physics post 1930? There is no such thing as electrons, only electron clouds. All is force. There are no point particles, and the only reason we force ourselves to say there are is because our physics have not completed Einstein's campaign.

>>7026136
What do you think about physicists like Feynman who said in private that they believe, if we really got down to it, everything would turn out to be waves with no particles?

>>7026227
uhm.

>>7026136 me again.

Sounds like you yourself need to brush up on post-1930 physics. Particle physics is alive and well, particles are still modeled as point-particles, and all is energy. Force is scarcely found in modern formulations because it brings up scary notions of action-at-a-distance. QFT does represent things as waves, but when the wavefunction collapses it's still always a particle

>>7026260
I do like Feynman, no doubts there. However at the moment we don't have the insight or data to say whether it "really is all waves". The fact of the matter is that according to all detections, fundamental particles are point-like with no size or structure discernible

>>7026136
Interesting. My understanding (as a math and philosophy student with little actual experience in physics) was that particles are used as a model because it works much better at most scales, but generally agreed not to be the most "true". I read a few papers on this when I was working on the atomism of Lucretius.

For some reason the distinction between discrete and continuous physics seems like it should be important, but on further examination it doesn't really make a difference I suppose.

>>7026280
Couldn't it be possible that those points are just densely packed collections of waves?

I know there have been other physicists who have thought this. Schrodinger possibly? I don't remember. Maybe you could find it. But I clearly remember there being several high ranking names who said that the world most likely is waves with no true points, as points are "Newtonian" and basically Idealized.

what does nietzsche have that max stirner doesn't
really

nietzsche's writings could be what, 3000 pages in a regular sized book? and max stirner did it in 200, and it's also intelligible.

>>7027992
Stirner is a meme, not because he is one of the most important or profound thinkers, but because his life's works amount to inspiring Nietzsche.

All Stirner really managed to argue is in favour of individual anarchism. That's it. Nietzsche on the other hand has a plethora of works that address a variety of subjects, and evolve as time goes on, not to mention how many future thinkers and important people he influenced.

>>7027992

>Implying that what Nietzsche achieved in all his works, Stirner achieved in one shit book.

Nietzsche had a lot that Stirner didn't have. For starters, an intruiging catalogue of published and unpublished works of vast richness, and also a glorious moustache.

this essay alone proves that nietzsche wouldnt want anything to do with stirnerfags, (marxist-)hegelians or nazis

https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/nietzsche/history.htm
>If, by contrast, the doctrines of the sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all ideas, types, and styles, of the lack of all cardinal differences between man and animal (doctrines which I consider true but deadly) are still foisted on the people for another generation with the frenzy of instruction which is now customary, then it should take no one by surprise if people destroy themselves in egotistical trifles and misery, through ossification and self-absorption, initially falling apart and ceasing to be a people. Then, in place of this condition, perhaps systems of individual egotism, alliances for the systematic larcenous exploitation of those non-members of the alliance and similar creations of utilitarian nastiness will step forward onto the future scene.
...
>For in this matter our age has practised giving things new names and has even re-christened the devil. It is certainly a time of great danger: human beings seem to be close to discovering that the egoism of the individual, the group, or the masses was the lever of historical movements at all times. However, at the same time, people are not at all worried by this discovery. On the contrary, people declaim: Egoism is to be our God. With this new faith people are on the point of building, with the clearest of intentions, future history on egoism. Only it is to be a clever egoism subject to a few limitations, in order that it may consolidate itself in an enduring way. It is the sort of egoism which studies history just in order to acquaint itself with foolish egoism. Through this study people have learned that the state has received a very special mission in the established world system of egoism: the state is to become the patron of all clever egoism, so that, with its military and police forces, it may protect against the frightening outbreak of foolish egoism. For the same purpose history, that is, the history of animals and human beings, is also carefully stirred into the popular masses and working classes, who are dangerous because they are not clever, for people know that a small grain of historical education is capable of breaking the rough and stupefied instincts and desires or diverting them into the path of refined egoism.

>>7028024
>>7028034
I'd argue that the real meme here is Stirner

All nietzsche does is share his opinions (continental vs analytic philosopher.jpg anyone?) and looks more like a self-help author than anything

>>7028024
>>7028034
I'd argue that the real meme here is Nietzsche

All nietzsche does is share his opinions (continental vs analytic philosopher.jpg anyone?) and looks more like a self-help author than anything


>>7028312
>he thinks stirner was a collective anarchists

look at this cuck
stirner and nietzsche are the same page, dunce

>>7028482
so those paragraphs i quoted could appear in "der einzige und sein eigentum" without looking like alien artifacts? lel
>cuck
oh lel of lels

>>7028482
>I'd argue that the real meme here is Nietzsche
Opinion discarded.

>>7028482
>All nietzsche does is share his opinions

You should probably read him "again".

>>7016205
>Be a muslim billionaire living in a dubai mansion
>The most oppressed person ever

>>7026037
Your memory and experience remains after listening to a song. It doesn't after dying. Your point is null.

>>7028665
1. We don't listen to music because we will remember it when it's over and it is not beautiful to listen to because of this either, so my point is not null.

2. Not only were you wrong but considering that we have no memory after death, there is no memory of what we lose either, so if anything YOUR point is null. You are either listening to the music or you die an early death by closing your ears and focusing on the silence afterwards, your choice.

>>7015638
How was your experience at St. John's? Thinking of applying there, but not sure if it's a good idea.

>>7013031
nietzsche didn't make much of an impression on me. he was a great writer, but his thought seemed unsystematic and unclear. many of his theses, if you take them as factual propositions, seem to be incorrect. if you were take nietzsche's prose, all of his eloquent talk about 'aeronauts of the spirit' and 'ubermensch' and 'genealogy of morals', i don't think there's very much in there that is both comprehensible and true.

i prefer schopenhauer. i read him much later than i read nietzsche.

then again, maybe i'm just a pleb. but in that story, the weavers say that only fools don't see the emperor's new clothes. so i'm expressing my opinion anyway.

>>7029574
Excellent; wouldn't have chosen anywhere else. That said, it's only worthwhile if you have a pretty firm love of learning. The program shits all over the instrumental use of the liberal arts.

>>7029718
I love the curriculum, but how are the students and professors? I'm also considering LACs and a few Ivies, where I could read a lot of the same books with smart students under great professors. Sure it would be less convenient than following this great syllabus, but I'm just a little bit concerned due to rankings, reputation, etc...

>>7029766
The professors are great; students are the same old shit you'll find everywhere. There are always a handful who go above and beyond everyone else in their thinking, and who aren't merely pedants or the usual partygoers. Those few are always truly astounding. Everyone else can eat a dick.

As far as your concern RE:reputation; to be honest, SJC isn't what you're looking for. Those other schools won't teach you how to read any of this stuff in any way that's actually sensitive to the texts, but they all have great reputations going for them. If you're interested in the material, the reputation (which I take it you're looking to as a guide of what might be a trustworthy approach to the material?) has to be thrown aside, and the material directly encountered. You'd be shocked how often the big brand schools teach these works through textbooks, such that even the professors are lacking the kind of acquaintance one would demand.

*Transforms*

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

>>7013031
Nobody comprehends what he has written, least of all Nietzsche himself.

a great series of lectures on beyond good and evil:

https://leostrausscenter.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/Nietzsche%27s%20Beyond%20Good%20and%20Evil_0.pdf

>>7013031
Let's play 'Was it Nietzsche or was it Syfilis?'! I will start:

>Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

Aaaaaand... GO!

>>7013200
Without Led Zeppelin no Black Sabbath? Go back to /mu/ and learn some shit.

>>7031762
Nietzsche. That's a logical question for an atheist to ask.

>>7031777
it would be impossible for mankind to create an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient being you idiot.
the question doesn't make sense at all. obviously man couldn't create God by mistake when mankind is bound by the laws of physics.

fucking retard

Too many stuck up cunts here, whom obviously never have read Nietzsche in their life

>>7013287
he looks like a low test beta tbh

>>7015736
>one week to read war and peace

Damn...

>>7028665
People still remember you after you're gone. Try again.

>Thus spoke Zarathustra

Nietzsche, you fraud

He's only popular because he filled a very particular...
NICHE!!
*unsheaths katana*
*teleports away*

>>7031738
Heh, already beat ya to it at >>7013282

But certainly worth emphasizing.

>>7032228
Psh, that's our summer assignment, and we spend two classes on it, usually trying to deal with the each half in each respective class.

Of course it's not uncommon for students to still be scrambling to finish it by the time they get back.

this thread is five days old.

how the fuck did it make it so long?

>>7033282
applied nietzscheanism

>>7033282
Will

>>7013031
The great irony about Nietzsche is that he embodies the Socratic method in an extremely radical form, even though he says that one of the problems with the West is it's dire Apollonian mindset.

The fact that he eschewed alcohol, and the fact that he probably barely had any female company in his entire life, lends me to believe that his dichotomization of the Apollonian and Dionysian was an attempt to explain his own psychological need to be hyper-rational.

>>7033341
He explains his own (well, of philosophers in general) asceticism in the third essay of genealogy.

>>7033358
Yes I know, but I don't think he's being genuine.

>>7033282
Intellectual discussion.

>>7015295
yay someone who actually has some understanding of Nietzche on /lit/.

I don't understand why people don't just read Lampert's book. It's an easy read and you can actually get some understanding of Nietzche even if you don't seriously study philosophy.

At least enough not to look like an idiot when discussing him

>>7013031
Sure.

>>7015309
Time to introduce yourself to Chesteron, plebeian.

>>7034680
Chesterton? Talk about plebian.

>>7034610
>I don't understand why people don't just read Lampert's book

While it's not hard to accept that Nietzsche's writings are "hard" or "obscure", it's a bit harder for people to accept any suggestion that Nietzsche's an esotericist. At that point, the suggestion kinda throws out almost all of the standard interpretations of his work, which I'm sure leaves anyone who's clued to that profoundly confused.

>>7022585
yes, and then what?

>>7034610
>>7035367
What's so special about Lampert's book?