[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 53 KB, 255x255, _PRP30HmmLa_UcoBAjABpN35kWg_d5ANrobhSOVetyy8mOQDdwwi8Zo6WEyQMVoxDFw=s300.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15240697 No.15240697 [Reply] [Original]

Where the fuck do I start with this guy? I was gifted Zarathustra by my father, but this book is all riddles to me and I can barely make sense of it. Maybe it's my subhuman mind failing to comprehend it, or I am just utterly uninitiated. Do I go back even farther and read his influences first? How deep do I have to dig?

>> No.15240703

>>15240697
START.WITH.THE.GREEKS.

>> No.15240710

>>15240697
Start with the Sumerians

>> No.15240728

>>15240697
Knowing the influences helps but it won't guarantee you'll get anything out of nietzsche. Maybe try actually trying to think about what he's saying instead of just reading the words and saying "wut I don't get it" then moving on.

>> No.15240752

>>15240728
So the problem is that I'm simply too stupid, then. Because I could stare at The Funeral Song for an hour and still not process it.

>> No.15240754

>>15240697
There's a book called the Essential Nietzsche, assembled by Walter Kaufman, that is laid out in a way to contextualize Nietzsche for new readers and I think it does a good job. It's composed of various essays, letters, and excerpts ordered in a logical sequence.

>> No.15240765

>>15240697
You don't need his influences, the only ones that are relevant are Hegel and Schopenhauer, but Freddy writes in such a way that you can understand him. I'd recommend a Wikipedia trawl first, then On the Genealogy of Morality, then Beyond Good and Evil. GoM makes BGE much easier to understand, and BGE is the skeleton key for the rest of his work. It's like an essay abridgement of Zarathustra, which is the most developed version of his thought. Everything else is peripheral, and is worth reading insofar as it interests you. If you read BGE and Zarathustra and don't understand what the big deal is, read them again. It took me a year to understand it, and a few months to cope with it after I did actually understand it. Try the New Testament for a comedown when you're done.

>> No.15240773

>>15240697
With the Greeks. Read the entire works of Plato and Aristotle, and also Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Then you read some Hegel and Schopenhauer. It's not much, but I think it's enough to have some understanding of Nietzsche's work.
When you finally get to Nietzsche, try starting with The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science (no homo). They're easier to digest, and will get you used to Nietzsche.
Or you can say fuck all and read his Wikipedia entry, then pretend that you're a Nietzsche expert. That's what all of /lit/ does, anyway.

>> No.15240779

>>15240697
jodan b peterson's lecture series Personality and its transformations. The oldest course. Watch it in the intended order. and everything with Nietzsche's name that jordan speaks of. Then start reading

>> No.15240780

>>15240754
Kauffman's translations are good, but he's too much of a literalist for my taste when it comes to interpretation.
>>15240728
Zarathustra is the most difficult of his works, and is absolutely the wrong place to start. It'll be evocative to a beginner, sure, but the actual meaning is too hard to find that way.

>> No.15240783

>>15240697
Start with Beyond Good and Evil then read it in tandem with TSZ

>> No.15240811

Do you guys think Zarathustra chokes on a snake because "snake" sounds like "snack" and Nietzsche was hungry when he wrote it?

>> No.15240812

>>15240697
Read Heraclitus, Homer, and Plato (especially the Republic, would also recommend the Apology, Phaedo, Gorgias).

Ideally, to know what's going on in Western philosophy, read Descartes (four meditations), Hume(enquiry concerning human understanding, first five chapters or so), and Kant(to whatever degree you can by any means necessary).

Some cursory understanding of Hegel and Schopenhauer will be helpful, an overview would suffice. Plus a brief look at Hinduism, mainly concerning causality. Understanding the problems of separating cause and effect goes a long way in Nietzsche.

For the progression of Nietzsche's own work... That's a tough one. I'd say just read at least two of his works before Zarathustra, maybe even the Genealogy of Morals. Would highly recommend throwing in Homer's Contest there

>> No.15240819

>>15240811
I think it's because it looked like a penis, and Nietzsche is a gay scientist

>> No.15240830

why the fuck do philosophers have to be so pretentious? why can't he say "these are my ideas" instead of framing them with the person of zarathustra?

>> No.15240844

>>15240830
because he wanted to tell a philosophy in story form

>> No.15240862

>>15240830
This tradition unironically started with the Greeks

>> No.15240867

>>15240830
Ideas were too complex to write down. The allegorical layer over the meaning forces the reader to employ their subconscious faculties in understanding, makes them "do the work". BGE is much of Zarathustra more or less said straight up, but it lacks many nuances and is less effective at communicating scale and magnitude. He bitches at the end of BGE that much of what he wants to say can't be communicated fully enough.

>> No.15240921

>>15240830
>>15240862
This
>>15240867
And this

>> No.15240950

>>15240697

Read sparknotes

>> No.15240954

>>15240780
>Zarathustra is the most difficult of his works, and is absolutely the wrong place to start. It'll be evocative to a beginner, sure, but the actual meaning is too hard to find that way.
Give me a break, he wrote it before Beyond Good and Evil and Genealogy of Morals. Zarathustra isn't that difficult.

>> No.15240960

>>15240867
Yes and he evinces many philosophical notions through examples that make the reader thing, it makes it more rewarding and helps express the ambiguity of his point.

>> No.15240978

>>15240862

Ding ding ding.
To probe beyond a surface-level understanding of the gentle walrus that is Friedrich Nietzsche one must have at least a rudimentary grasp on the Greeks, Christianity, Hegel, Kant and Kierkegaard (yes really).

>> No.15240990

>>15240830

He did it's called Beyond Good and Evil.
You life however, is a story, so how is a living person supposed to understand ideas and the relations that exist between the ideas without a framework?

>> No.15241007

>>15240697
Start with Cave scratchings, then move on to the Sumarians

>> No.15241036
File: 131 KB, 1440x969, 1578595474888.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15241036

>>15240954
He wrote those two to explain Zarathustra you fucking pseud

>> No.15241499

>>15240697
Poisonous fly detected

>> No.15241620

>>15241499
Meaning?

>> No.15241916

>>15241620
Oh boy

>> No.15241924

>>15240697
Read and reread

>> No.15241934

Read the Joyous Science

>> No.15242102
File: 118 KB, 1024x752, pepe diogenes.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15242102

>>15241499
>>15241620
>>15241916

>mfw 4chan was a marketplace all along

>> No.15242176

>>15240697
It takes a certain mindset honestly. People in the 19th century who were more learned in Greek philosophy and German idealism than you would be in 2 lifetimes literally could not understand a single paragraph of Zarathustra when it was published and probably thought it was a bunch of riddles like you did. I don’t really know what the right solution would be, just read more

>> No.15242187

>>15241620
It means that if you're a fucking idiot and you keep calling yourself such, why the fuck are you coming here and bothering the rest of us with your drivel? You have come to suck our blood and contribute nothing. Begone, slave! And return to where you belong.

>> No.15242255

>>15242187
did your mom just let you drink caffeine for the first time or something

>> No.15242321

>>15242255
Fuck off.

>> No.15242328

>>15242321
lmao I'm guessing you put too much thought into how to respond and somehow settled on that, but it just makes you sound like a crying zoomer

>> No.15242338

>>15240697
literally anywhere except zarathustra. No one understands zarathustra without having read other nietzsche.
a specific recc would be geneology of morals like yesterday's nietzschefag

>> No.15242638
File: 383 KB, 598x628, 1563811187585.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15242638

>>15242338
>No one understands zarathustra without having read other nietzsche.
That's where you're wrong, kiddo.

>> No.15242736

>>15240867
Damn it that is so STUPID

>> No.15242744
File: 87 KB, 416x720, 1581805140218.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15242744

>>15240697
Howabout you post a thread about parts you don't understand and we can all have fun helping you interpret it.

>> No.15242745

Did you get the RJ Hollingdale translation? he writes like a fag. get another translation

>> No.15242754

>>15240867

I thought BGE was better than Zarathurstra but that is probably because I am an angloid cuckold

>> No.15242755

>>15240830
Nietzsche was a poet (and a musician) at heart.

>> No.15242761

>>15242744
I'm working right now

>> No.15243351

>>15240697
if you're a christian start with the antichrist
then beyond good and evil.
once you have broken your Christcuck OS, come back here again for advice. then you can truly start

>The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

>This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian....

>> No.15243369

>>15240703
dont do this

>> No.15243386

>>15240697
Start with Guenon and Deleuze

>> No.15243396

>>15240697
You dont start you throw it in the garbage

>> No.15243960

>>15240697
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y8_RRaZW5X3xwztjZ4p0XeRplqebYwpmuNNpaN_TkgM/mobilebasic?pli=1

>> No.15243975

>>15242745

>Did you get the RJ Hollingdale translation? he writes like a fag. get another translation

Hollingdale is by far the best (except for my own personal translation, as yet unpublished).

>> No.15244036

>>15240697

You don't have to "dig deep" at all. You just need some knowledge of life.

TSZ really doesn't rely on the reader "getting" any clever references. N. is just describing the world as it is and people as they are and as they ought to be. In (mostly) parable form.

There are a few passages where it might help a bit to know who he's talking about - the grotesque portraits of Wagner, Schopenhauer, etc - but they're a very minor part of the book.

Just read it. (In the Hollingdale, if you don't speak German.) If you don't understand it, live a bit more. Earn your passage around the world as a whale harpooner. Smuggle drugs across the US-Mexico border. Join the French Foreign Legion. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Run for President.

It's not a book for pedants or milksops. It's great.

>> No.15244319

>>15244036
So it's not for me, then. That hurts.

>> No.15244369

>>15243369
Why not?

>> No.15245798

>>15240728
>don't read the words bro

So THIS is the power of immanence?

>> No.15245805

>>15240830

Because he doesn't have any. He's a fag.

>> No.15245885

>>15244036

Why? NEETzsche himself was a lifelong bum who literally died because he was a bitch.

>> No.15245944

>>15242338
It's not hard to understand if you have similar life experience of complete alienation and breakdown of the illusions you operate under

>> No.15245992

>>15240703
Do this.

>> No.15246903

>>15240710
>avoiding paleolithic cave paintings
never gonna make it

>> No.15246947

>>15246903
This. You literally cannot understand Enkidu's character and motivations unless you are well versed in the paleolithic tradition.

>> No.15246960

>>15240728
>influences
nigga i bet ur the type of guy to think nietzsche read hegel

>> No.15247315

First: On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
Then: On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

>> No.15247517
File: 488 KB, 2079x1041, 1586910137498.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15247517

>>15240697
>"Cesare Borgia as Pope"
TSZ is the key to all of it, and it will click better with the post-Beyond Good & Evil under your belt.
>Gay Science + Genealogy of Morals
>Post BG&E works
>BG&E
>"Pre Platonics" lectures; Birth of Tragedy through Daybreak

Context reads:
>Look up Roger Boscovich
>Schopenhauer Essays
>Kierkegaard
>Hegel Philosophy of Right/History
>Stirner, Ego & His Own
>Bentham On Liberty (adversary)
>Proudhon, "What is Property?" (adversary)
>Aristolte Poetics/Politics
>Plato Republic >>15240812
>Law of Manu (Hindu caste text)
>Machiavelli's Discourses (everyone knows The Prince meme already)


Carl Jung's lectures on TSZ should be useful, if you're just looking to one and done this. A primer on Western esotericism to frame how to approach his work, whatever the medium, is recommended.

Avoid Kaufmann translations if possible (they're adequate, but most others will be better provided they are not attempts made prior to him)

>>15240765
>You don't need his influences, the only ones that are relevant are Hegel and Schopenhauer
More or less this

>>15243386
>"The will to a system is a lack of integrity."
pic related

>>15243975
>Hollingdale is by far the best
The German as a prose stylist shines through in his renderings

>>15244036
>You don't have to "dig deep" at all. You just need some knowledge of life.
Things hiding in plain sight frequently elude detection. ~ FN apothegm on truth being a woman; masks and types of actors (sincere and otherwise)

>> No.15247948

>>15247517
Iirc Freud said something similar about philosophers being schizos inventing worlds they can live comfortably into.

>> No.15248873

>>15240779
no

>> No.15249248

>>15248873
yes

>> No.15249984

>>15240710
start with the pre-historians

>> No.15250755

>>15249984
start with the saurians

>> No.15250799

>>15240697
Nietzsche writes philosophy in proza which can be hard as fuck to grasp due to the lack of structure. I would say watch some lectures and video's on some of his more prominent idea's. Read his wikipedia page. Read his Stanford article https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ . This way you are familiar with his ideas which in turn helps you not getting lost in the obscurity in which he writes.

>> No.15250843
File: 188 KB, 719x415, Screen_Shot_20190310_at_5.31.36_AM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15250843

>this whole thread of people saying you need to read centuries of prep to understand TSZ
>started with TSZ, and was elated to find someone had so eloquently put my inner thoughts to paper

Now I'm not sure if OP is retarded or if I am

>> No.15250875

>>15240697
I couldn't be a philosopher. I would try to autistically start as far back as possible, by the time I actually got to contemporary thinkers I would be an old men, my peers would surely deport me to the history department.

>> No.15251291

>>15250755
Strike the tail arisen

>> No.15251462

I know I'll sound naive but I think you could compensate the lack of native intelligence by puting enough time and effort into something.
If you do something on daily basis it's impossible to not be good at it, you will eventually surpass the talented but lazy ones. Of course the latter have an easier time of understanding things but you know life's unfair and you keep going.

>> No.15251740

>>15240697
Honestly, just fucking read the works. If you want to follow the "cursus honorum" then go get an undergrad degree in phil. and then some. At minimum, you need a working understanding of the Greeks, Rationalist & Empiricist, German Idealism, Goethe, Schoppy, Stirner and 19th century Christian historical materialist thought. None of this actually matters though unless you're a Nietzsche scholar. He read everything that he could get his hands on, so stop posting and go do the same.

>> No.15251822

>>15240697
you don't
you start 2400 years earlier, with the presocratics

>> No.15251873

>>15240811
>>15240819

This is true exotericist hermeneutics

>> No.15251976

>>15250843
No, I'm the clear retard. Literally post your favorite passage and I won't get it.

>> No.15251979

>>15240697
Woah I didn’t know Hitler’s mustache grew that much

>> No.15251980

>>15251462
You are naive, because every study and observation of society show that good genetics account for 90% of your success

>> No.15252199

Do I really need to read all 3000 pages of Plato, I just wanna get to this dude.

>> No.15252238

>>15244036
>>15245885
>no replies

Pathetic.

>> No.15252250
File: 134 KB, 450x645, alpha7.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15252250

>>15240752
Probably just too young. People are the product of their societies, that includes thought habits which are extremely hard to shed. That's actually a big part of what Nietzsche is trying to say. I remember being interested in Zarathustra at 24, but also being repulsed by his amoral ethics. It only went through to me at age 38.

>> No.15252261

>>15247517
I doubt Guenon meant Nietzsche because Nietzsche has no real "system". If anything he tried to break all tables.

>> No.15252624

GM, BGE, GS, TSZ, TI, EH, WTP, TL, BT, HAH, D, UM, CW, A.

>> No.15252640

>>15246947
you should study the big bang first, how could you possibly comprehend abstract ideas/epistemology if you have no idea where it came from? few years should be spent on the true fundamentals, then i can agree, paleolithic tradition is the way to go

>> No.15252662

>>15252250
I've always been repulsed by him, but he was a product f the conditions of his time. SUpermen need super gods, so he goes straight into the toilet from there.
He never despised the success and acclaim he never got though, so that's a positive thing i can say about the man, but his work, euh, fave of tyrants and psychos everywhere.

>> No.15252676

>>15252250
Youth has fuck all to so with it. There are 12, 15 year old geniuses who could write entire comprehensive essays on something like TSZ. In the end, it all comes down once again to - genetics. A monkey is not going to be able to even understand a children's book no matter how hard it tries, don't expect an Untermensch to get Nietzsche.

>> No.15252678

>>15252662
The Superman IS his own god, fuckface. He's not even separable from it.

>> No.15252725

>>15252676

Not true. You can be a 12-year-old genius in some fields, like music or mathematics or chess, but not in literature, or philosophy (at least not TSZ-style philosophy). For that you need experience of the world and emotional maturity, neither of which you have enough of by the age of 12, no matter how high your IQ.

>> No.15253655

>>15240812
>Kant(to whatever degree you can by any means necessary).
Prologomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Anthropology [together with Bentham]
^These two in particular help frame thrust of eternal recurrence, GOM, perspectivalism

>>15252261
>doubt Guenon meant Nietzsche
The pic. related is a sympathetic explication of him; if OP continues, Guenon, Evola, Oupensky, and Girard all would be topical on the esoteric/spiritual side coming off TSZ

>>15240819
>All desire wants deep, DEEP eternity
The bridge to the Overman is long, and veiny.