Tocqueville Contra Nietzsche

[Anonymous No.17388772]

>Total mobilisation of power is a consequence of the will to equality.
How would Nietzsche respond to Tocqueville's understanding that democracy rises in hand with centralising power? This, even though it seems to be a contradiction, places the will to power squarely within the realm of modernity and the leveling process.
If Tocqueville is correct (he is) is there any way for a Nietzschean to resolve this contradiction at the center of his philosophy?

[Anonymous No.17388796]

Continued from >>17352651

[Anonymous No.17388802]

The Power-state (Machtstaat) theory contradicts your assertion bucko

[Anonymous No.17388812]

>>17388772
I didn't read last thread, but I will, what's been going on in here to have such a continuous bumping?

[Anonymous No.17388825]

"As in centuries of equality no one is obliged to lend his force to those like him and no one has the right to expect great support from those like him, each is at once independent and weak. These two states, which must neither be viewed separately nor confused, give the citizen of democracies very contrary instincts. His independence fills him with confidence and pride among his equals, and his debility makes him feel, from time to time, the need of the outside help that he cannot expect from any of them, since they are all impotent and cold. In this extremity, he naturally turns his regard to the immense being that rises alone in the midst of universal debasement. His needs and above all his desires constantly lead him back toward it, and in the end he views it as the unique and necessary support for individual weakness."

[Anonymous No.17388835]

>>17388825
"This serves to make understandable what often happens in democratic peoples, where one sees men who so uneasily tolerate superiors patiently suffer a master, and show themselves proud and servile at the same time.The hatred that men bear for privilege is increased as privileges become rarer and less great, so that one would say that democratic passions are more inflamed in the very times in which they find the least nourishment. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon.

When all conditions are unequal, there is no inequality great enough to offend the eye, whereas the smallest dissimilarity appears shocking in the midst of general uniformity; the sight of it becomes more intolerable as uniformity is more complete. It is therefore natural that the love of equality grow constantly with equality itself; in satisfying it, one develops it.

This immortal hatred, more and more afire, which animates democratic peoples against the slightest privileges, particularly favors the gradual concentration of all political rights in the hands of the sole representative of the state. The sovereign, being necessarily above all citizens and uncontested, does not excite the envy of any of them, and each believes he deprives his equals of all the prerogatives he concedes to it.

Man in democratic centuries obeys his neighbor, who is his equal, only with extreme repugnance; he refuses to recognize in him any enlightenment superior to his own; he distrusts his justice and looks on his power with jealousy; he fears and scorns him; he loves to make him feel at each instant the common dependence of them both on the same master."

[Anonymous No.17388851]

>>17388812
Do we need the board filled with bait and ecelebs constantly? I think anons can handle one effort thread.

[Anonymous No.17388868]

>>17388772
The Will to Power wasn't a literal ideological or political ideas. It can impinge upon that, but it doesn't have to, being something chiefly of nature itself. It's more of an ontology than anything, in the same way Plato's or Heraclitus' ontology still have quasi(or perhaps meta?)-political ideas, but it's not specifically a political idea. But politics cannot be denied to broaden itself into all of life and vice versa all of life broaden itself into politics. So we have the so supremely articulated Will to Power.

>I have found strength where one does not look for it: in simple, mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to rule—and, conversely, the desire to rule has often appeared to me a sign of inward weakness: they fear their own slave soul and shroud it in a royal cloak (in the end, they still become the slaves of their followers, their fame, etc.) The powerful natures dominate, it is a necessity, they need not lift one finger. Even if, during their lifetime, they bury themselves in a garden house!

[Anonymous No.17388904]

>>17388835
"Every central power that follows these natural instincts loves equality and favors it; for equality singularly facilitates the action of such a power, extends it, and secures it.

It can also be said that every central government adores uniformity; uniformity spares it the examination of an infinity of details with which it would have to occupy itself if it were necessary to make a rule for men, instead of making all men pass indiscriminately under the same rule. Thus the government loves what citizens love, and it naturally hates what they hate. This community of sentiments which, in democratic nations, continuously unites each individual and the sovereign in the same thought, establishes a secret and permanent sympathy between them. The government is pardoned for its faults for the sake of its tastes, public confidence abandons it only with difficulty in the midst of its excesses or errors, and it returns to it when it is recalled. Democratic peoples often hate the depositories of the central power; but they always love this power itself.

Thus I have come by two diverse paths to the same goal. I have shown that equality suggests to men the thought of a lone, uniform, and strong government. I have just brought out that it gives them the taste for it; the nations of our day tend therefore toward a government of this kind. The natural inclination of their minds and hearts leads them to it, and it is enough that they not be held back for them to arrive at it.

I think that in the democratic centuries that are going to open up, individual independence and local liberties will always be the product of art. Centralization will be the natural government."

[Anonymous No.17388916]

>>17388904
This passage reveals that Tocqueville had explained the 'will to power' well before Nietzsche, while also revealing what lies behind it. Nietzsche bad character can also be seen in most of the statements, the immortal hatred of one's neighbours and the increased necessity for violence where difference is weakened.
With the will to power everyone is equal before abstract power. This absolves one in attacking great men, while increasing the frequency of these false and willless contests. But power in this sense is only a negative, it is the destruction of all value in the face of negative power - wholly in keeping with the transitional period and the elimination of the sacred. It is not for anything, and is thus nihilistic.

More clearly. Nietzsche's constant attacks on the greats are a means to eliminate difference, to force an equality with their power where he has none. Equality before power serves this purpose.

[Anonymous No.17388980]

>>17388868
The powerful natures do not necessarily dominate though. That's fate. Often the most powerful may be brought to ruin.
A tyrant may be killed for attempting to exert too much power.

Inb4 #thatswilltopowertho

[Anonymous No.17388994]

I'm not seeing the argument against Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.17389002]

>>17388772
The will to power is a spook.
What the Nietzchian imperative really is, is this:
If you happen to find a god -- kill it.

[Anonymous No.17389008]

>>17388980
But the point is, will to power doesn't necessarily, or sometimes at all, mean wanting to exert physical or political control over others.

[Anonymous No.17389053]

>>17388994
Why not?
If Nietzsche says he is anti-democracy but his very ontology follows that of democracy is there not a contradiction?
Further, what does this contrradiction imply?

[Anonymous No.17389144]

>>17389008
The point is that will to power isn't a thing. Making the highest value a substratum is meaningless because it says nothing essential about power and reduces values to technical considerations alone, or at least predominantly.
Power, especially in terms of force, is an efffect, a physical movement away from power in the ancient sense. It is of a lack of power, the transitional period, and nihilism, and increases of this lack. Meaning it is precisely the opposite of what Nietzsche said.
This is clearly demonstrated with Tocqueville's superior philosophy of power and democracy. Nietzsche is limited to modern aesthetic considerations and says very little about power in itself. The kantian origins of his thought even prevent this.

[Anonymous No.17389171]

>>17389053
Democracy might have arisen from the centralization of power, but that does not mean that democracy is the ultimate end of power. Nietzsche despised the degenerative, dysgenic effects of democracy, and wanted to move forward. This is not incompatible with democracy and the Machtstaat being intertwined.

[Anonymous No.17389203]

>>17389144
Power is the acting spirit in the world in Nietzschean philosophy. The point is perspectivistic, that aesthethics etc. is really a result of power acting in the world.

[Anonymous No.17389315]

Reposting this from the other thread, in response to >>17388798

An expenditure of power can only occur if we assume that one unit of time is causally related to the next (i.e., it occurs at a local level of reality which experiences time), but the will to power is a cosmic force and as such does not need time to operate (since the universe does not experience time).

In other words, power is neither expended nor accumulated at the level of the universe, it is constant there; this exchange only occurs at a local level of reality which experiences time. What this means is that each configuration of the will to power exists unrelated to any other. The will to power is the only constant throughout all of them, and it can also be called the will to growth at this level because each configuration produces many locals which seek their own development within the cosmic arrangement of power.

Also, will to power is undefinable because it is a cosmic force, and workable definitions only exist at a local level of reality. The universe can't refer to itself.

[Anonymous No.17389351]

>>17389171
>Nietzsche despised the degenerative, dysgenic effects of democracy,
Clearly not since he mostly attacked surface appearances while following the nomos. Tocqueville's descriptions of the Americans are a mirror of his character. A subanglo.

What does the Machstaat look like and how does it transcend the humanist order?

[Anonymous No.17389360]

>>17389171
>arisen from the centralization of power
Not at all what was said.

[Anonymous No.17389374]

>>17389002
>If you happen to find a god -- kill it.
Sure, because gods threaten the coming of the Overman, an earthly king.

[Anonymous No.17389382]

>>17389203
>in Nietzschean philosophy
>in Nietzschean philosophy
>in Nietzschean philosophy
>The conclusion from Nietzsche to the possible is not valid.
The point is not to blindly follow Nietzsche. And you're going against him with this dogma.

[Anonymous No.17389403]

>>17389351
>Clearly not
Have you read anything of his? He is constantly attacking democratic institutions and their beliefs.

[Anonymous No.17389404]

>>17389315
>the will to power is a cosmic force
It isn't.
And this relies on your own defense of Nietzsche which goes against his philosophy. His philosophy is infinite becoming and forceful domination not divine being and graceful order.
You said it yourself, can't have it both ways. But every argument sees you betray that.

[Anonymous No.17389427]

>>17389403
Attacking something doesn't mean you win, and it doesn't necessarily me you're opposed. Often the most violent revulsion follows the appearance of the doppelganger.
Have you read Tocqueville? There's enough here to prove that I've read and engage with the ideas. Try the same.

[Anonymous No.17389437]

>>17389427
>Attacking something doesn't mean you win, and it doesn't necessarily me you're opposed.
He did oppose them philosophically though, and it's VERY OBVIOUS that he did this. He attacked them at the root of their beliefs all the time. Whether he supported them politically is another story.

[Anonymous No.17389446]

>>17389374
>the Overman, an earthly king.
kek
Better than Wagner, Goethe, Carlyle, Napoleon, Alexander, Socrates, Xenophon, Agamemnon, Achilles, even Homer, Nestor and Zeus himself.
Must be quite a guy.

[Anonymous No.17389452]

>>17389360
I fixed the argument so it was in line with what historians are saying, i.e. Machtstaatstheorie.

[Anonymous No.17389461]

>>17389437
>He did oppose them philosophically though
On the surface. Otherwise his idea of power and the ultimate man wouldn't be democratic in its form and values.
>root
Show passage.

[Anonymous No.17389479]

>>17389461
>Otherwise his idea of power and the ultimate man wouldn't be democratic in its form and values.
Read a book lol

[Anonymous No.17389487]

Quoting anon's post.
>>17387558
Christianity doesn't reject power as a value, it rejects the idea that superficial power is truly a power; it doesn't relegate all of its values to the "beyond," as the weakness of the "powerful" that Christianity criticizes can be immediately seen, in this very world

>religion of pity
Strawman


>equality emerges out of...
Is "everyone has the same amount of power" and "everyone has the same importance to God" the same thing?

>>17387708
An injunction to be straight rather than an incisive attack on anything. Nice pseudo-Biblical text, it is.

>he will never dance the tarantella

[Anonymous No.17389491]

>>17389351
Machtstaat is the theory that the centralized state grew out of the needs of interstate conflicts, war and politics. It's the leading theory in Scandinavia explaining the growth of the social state. The state started caring for its inhabitants because it needed healthy men for its armies, and educated men to build and maintain its war machine. It is similar to Scheidels work on conflict and equality.

[Anonymous No.17389499]

>>17389479
Point out differences >>17388825
In the essence, not the surface.

[Anonymous No.17389510]

>>17389491
Bad theory. But post the best book on it.

[Anonymous No.17389518]

>>17389499
I'm not going to do that because it's pretty obvious that you don't really give a shit about the source material to begin with. Just know that you are dead wrong about him. And no, this defense doesn't go against his philosophy, only your retarded uninformed notion of it.

[Anonymous No.17389556]

>>17389404
You're not really representing his argument correctly. He is correct, Will to Power is Geist, it is life itself, it is a cosmic force that exercices its ultimate consequences every moment.

[Anonymous No.17389558]

>>17389487
Christianity is one of the worst parts of his philosophy. He resented it so much that he had to alter the image of the world to accomodate this.
It almost completely contradicts his theory of power, even though he took Christian values as a center.
One who loves fate should love Nemesis and the cruellest resentment. His power is less than this, secular and decadent.

[Anonymous No.17389577]

>>17389518
>you don't really give a shit about the source material
I actually do, you're missing the obvious irony.
But stay weak if you want. Maybe your democratic methods will seem aristocratic to someone.

[Anonymous No.17389588]

>>17389577
There's no irony. You think there is one because you hold an absurdly stupid notion of what his philosophy is all about. You are "exercising your will to power" by being a dumbass, not by being clever in this instance.

[Anonymous No.17389597]

>>17389510
https://tidsskrift.dk/historisktidsskrift/article/download/56343/76549/

If you want it in English, I have no idea. The main sources are German and Scandinavian. There are a few English sources in that text though. Whether they are good or not, I haven't a clue, but here they are:
Ernest Barker: 'Nietzsche and Treitschke. The Worship of Power In Modern Germany'
Ernest Barker: 'The New German Theory of the State' in 'Why We Are at War: Great Britain’s Case'
Leon Jespersen: »The Machtstaat in Seventeenth-century Denmark«, Scandinavian Journal of History, 10 (1985), s. 271-304

[Anonymous No.17389607]

>>17389556
Then it's will to spirit, or life, or the cosmic force, not power. Can't have it both ways, or ten.
But explain how the exertion to become infinite power magically stops and doesn't annihilate all the weak men. You can't because it's just the reverse of the problem of evil.

[Anonymous No.17389617]

>>17389588
The only true heir to Nietzsche agrees with me, so stop trying to drag the argument down into empty opinions and bullshit posturing. Make an actual argument or go back to youtube

"That sheer will has its limits must still be acknowledged. A posse ad esse non valet consequentia ("The conclusion from the possible to the actual is not valid"). Success, for instance, does not depend exclusively on will, even the greatest effort of will cannot force it. Rather, accomplished and perfect motion is distinguished by the fact that in it willed effort recedes. Great works of art, for example, always appear effortless; in an excellent painting, in a superb statue, the artistic effort and painstaking workmanship vanish in the perfection of the whole. Will and success are not identical, and therefore the will to power by itself does not accomplish anything. It may fail, it may come to ruin, and this does happen particularly when it is not consistent with the human nature from which it springs. It may lead to a mere caricature of power, to a distortion showing that little or nothing has resulted from all the willed effort. What such an exaggerated will for power achieves is like the work of a bad artist who wants to depict strength. In order to create the impression of extraordinary strength, he exaggerates all muscles and proportions except that basic proportion from which alone the power of a figure can become effortlessly manifest. The assertion of an all-present will to power remains lopsided unless the higher authority has been established, without which this will to power can be neither convincing nor successful.

Overvaluation of will in itself contains a destructive element. It implies an overestimation of movement, of direct action, of the human type which blindly follows its instincts, of the raw vitality of life. Likewise, movements enforced by sheer will tend to become themselves mechanical and unfree, because they push on towards their objectives where they are bound to fail anyway. But this dynamic thinking is by no means a sign of exuberant physical strength, nor is it a sign of a rich personality, overflowing with ideas. On the contrary, it is deeply significant that our idea of the highest power is one of divine calm, and that we associate the sublime, not with motion, but with a majesty which rules from rest. The will to power, in contrast, strives for power, because it doesn't have it. It is a poor will; that is why it is so greedy for power."
- FG Jünger

[Anonymous No.17389631]

>>17389510
> SUMMARY
The Transformations of the "Power State" (Machtstaat):
The History of an Historiographical and Political Concept
The concept of the “power state” (Machtstaat) was introduced into Danish
historiography in 1983/85 by Leon Jespersen as a concept “implying some of
the elements present in a militarized state and in a tax state with increased
expenditure on defence, administration, the court and diplomacy, a state which
had also been strengthened partly for reasons of prestige” (Scandinavian
Journal of History 1985, p. 272, cf. footnote 72 above). This rather broad
definition was narrowed down by Knud J.V. Jespersen who in 1989 defined the
power state as “a state existing by virtue of itself, outside and above the social
classes. This type of government was an innovation of Renaissance Europe,
caused especially by a new, expensive technology of war that forced the states to
operate as organizers of substantially increased armies” (Jespersen: Danmarks
Historie, p. 18, cf. footnote 79 above).
Even if the power state turns up occasionally in recent Scandinavian scholarship, the concept is normally used neither in the broad meaning defined by
Leon Jespersen nor as conceived more succinctly by Knud J.V. Jespersen, but in
a diffuse manner indicating a military state or merely a strong government. This
development seems awkward for a concept that was introduced and refined in
order to define a new research paradigm. An analysis of its historical roots, that
may uncover inherent difficulties or contradictions, is thus called for.
According to Leon Jespersen the concept of the power state is derived from
the so-called Prussian school of historiography and political science, represented by scholars such as Carl von Clausewitz, Heinrich von Treitschke, Carl
Schmitt and Otto Hintze. Of these, only Hintze actually used the concept of the
Machtstaat, and only once, in an influential article on the origins of the modern
state from 1931. However, the concept of the Machtstaat can be traced further
back. Already in 1868 the Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt used the
word in a lecture to stigmatize the dreadful expansionist policy of Louis XIV. To
Burckhardt the Machtstaat was a state that claimed full possession – body and
soul – of its subjects and used liberty, prosperity and culture only as a front for
the raw pursuit of power. A similar if not identical usage can be documented
among German jurists contrasting the Machtstaat to the Rechtstaat (a state gov-
Magtstatens transformationer 65
erned by the law). Among German political historians, however, the attitude
toward power was much more positive. From 1906 (Friedrich Meinecke) until
the 1950s (Gerhard Oestreich) the concept of the Machtstaat figured regularly
in the writings of the so-called Borussian (Prussian) school. To these historians
the word implied much more than a significant amount of power.

cont. [1/2]

[Anonymous No.17389635]

>>17389617
In other words, how do you, or Nietzsche, reconcile the will to power with clear limits? Where is the line that brings it to a halt, and what is behind it?

[Anonymous No.17389640]

>>17389510
>>17389631

Nvm, gonna post image instead
1/2

[Anonymous No.17389647]

>>17389510
>>17389631
[2/2]

[Anonymous No.17389667]

>>17389640
Keep in mind that you can always copy, paste into search window, select all, copy, paste to align your paragraphs.
Only problem is some browsers may have a few spacing mistakes.

[Anonymous No.17389673]

>>17389607
No, it's Will to Power. Will to Life is a tautology, as Nietzsche himself said.

> But explain how the exertion to become infinite power magically stops and doesn't annihilate all the weak men

Because there is no direction behind it. Will to Power excerts itself continually throughout the universe, it is life putting its mark on the world. It is neither good nor bad - it is beyond good and evil.

[Anonymous No.17389709]

>>17389617
It's a good quote, and a worthwhile perspective. However, I think that Nietzsche would like to put a hammer to these higher powers alluded to, to see if they ring hollow when stricken

[Anonymous No.17389720]

>>17389667
thanks

[Anonymous No.17389725]

>>17389647
Thanks for the summary.
What stands out to me first is the modern state and its conflicting ontology. One of the great lessons of WWI, and some of the geopolitics which preceded it, was that the centralised states (as in those which retained elements of the ancien regime) lacked the ruthlessness necessary to overcome the democratic states. What this suggests is not the conflict of psychiatric types or the material strengths alone, but that the democratic being was more suited to the nomos of the modern period - he could be more ruthless within this growing order of destructive, neutralising power.
This goes against Nietzsche, Maistre, and countless other conservatives who retained faith in Great Men even as they fell one by one, worse with each event.

[Anonymous No.17389737]

>>17389673
Explain how will to life is a tautology? All men have it; some in varying degrees. By life, we mean vitality, longevity. Adding a religion to this only adds further hues to these ideas of "vitality." All men have a will to life, but some have a perverted will- their will to life leads to death. Its direction is precisely life- not simply living, but something more than that.

All men, on the other hand, exert themselves throughout the universe. You cannot die, or go back. There is only forward or above in life. We all put our marks on the world, whether we want it or not; the question is, which mark do you put on the world? One's mark on the world will be weaker if his will to life is weaker

>>17389709
What if the hollow noise is a product of the imagination? What if your ears are deficient?

[Anonymous No.17389771]

>>17389647
>>17389725
But as for actual content, this seems to be originating from materialist concerns, that the wars and political conflicts were the cause, and not themselves a result of higher values, or even a divine metamorphosis.
Tocqueville takes us back to the 1200s for the political origins, and it's something I've long agreed with. He also suggests a shift in the being of modern man from the onset, and most significantly that democratic power is a providential order imposed upon the world. The simplest question is, can any materialist-oriented philosophy ever give us the same degree of image as that of theological or mythic interpretations.
Do they say anything equal to this?

They mention Schmitt, who may help in explaining the providential origins. He said that every event since the birth of Christ is a political act towards the katechon. Not only does this speak to the necessity of any real power to have an end, a dominion towards which all actions are dedicated, it may reorient away from the Nietzschean idea of weakness and intellectual nihilism (as a response to Christianity).

More generally, the centralisation of power may be an attempt to reconcile land and sea forces. The very sight of man must shift where he must reign over impossible territories. The seas are also a great void of power for the western world, in its very law, which must have an equivalent force.
Again, entirely theological and mythic considerations, but they give another sense and weight to the questioning and where it ends up. That is likely too abstarct, but there's not a lot that can be said based on summaries alone.

[Anonymous No.17389803]

>>17389635
Why does there need to be something behind it?

[Anonymous No.17389814]

>>17389171
It doesn’t matter if Nietzsche despised democracy, the other anon is saying his ontology of raw power contradicts this disposition of his.

[Anonymous No.17389822]

>>17389709
A good thought, and this is essentially how I see Nietzsche. Is his hammer that in the sense of Prometheus attacking Zeus, or the automatons and Cyclopes of Hephaeustus' breaking away and causing endless and aimless destruction? At the lowest one may even contrast it with a socialist workers' revolt, the fruitless attack of peasants with tools against an army.
I don't think it is either one, but more often that not I would say he tends towards carelessness and aimless attacks. One would need great patience and foresight for the promethean attack. Is there anything in his thought that approaches this? I would say the overman and will to power are far to general, and too often he has powerful critiques but falls short of them hitting on the essential. This is clear in the confused definitions of nihilism, they take longer to arrive at their end, and do not see as deeply as someone like Kierkegaard.
This is without considering someone like Goethe or Holderlin, who give us an image of nihilism from the negative, the ineffable. This is beyond critique.

[Anonymous No.17389830]

>>17389814
>It doesn't matter if Nietzsche disagreed philosophically with democracy, he was still a democrat

[Anonymous No.17389856]

>>17389709
And one of the problems with power is that you cannot always test, you must be decisive. As Ernst Junger says, the court may have time, but the king must be decisive.
In this one may see Nietzsche's indefinite laws of aristocracy, one which is falling, or driven towards civil war. He is secure in having time because he is without power and does not have to be decisive. We get an aesthetic sense of power much like that of l'art pour l'art, but the possible may move further from the actual with every thought.

[Anonymous No.17389884]

>>17389617
>The only true heir to Nietzsche
That would be icycalm, not Junger

[Anonymous No.17389896]

>>17389830
You're assuming that it is philosophical rather than political, or simply aesthetic. As the Tocqueville quote shows, the average democratic person also hates democracy. As in private interest it is vice turned into a means, a fulcrum to extend one's being.
It is in the same way that a gardener who clips off the tops of weeds does not get to the roots. Soon his shed will be overrun, and his garden depleted.

This is why I asked for the source of Nietzsche's best arguments against democracy. Surface hatred may be impotent, or a false form of resentment.

[Anonymous No.17389901]

>>17389884
>icycalm
He based.

[Anonymous No.17389906]

>>17389737
Will to life is a tautology because it means that the meaning of life is life itself, which is tautological.

[Anonymous No.17389911]

>>17389737
> All men, on the other hand, exert themselves throughout the universe. You cannot die, or go back. There is only forward or above in life. We all put our marks on the world, whether we want it or not; the question is, which mark do you put on the world? One's mark on the world will be weaker if his will to life is weaker


This is will to power.

[Anonymous No.17389919]

To be more gracious towards Nietzsche, one may say that in contradiction there can be something approaching the mythic form of thought. But I'm not willing to admit that given the very often brutal step away from laws, and any sense of theology let alone myth.

[Anonymous No.17389943]

>>17389673
>Will to Power excerts itself continually throughout the universe
So why are we still here?

[Anonymous No.17390136]

>>17389803
What is power?

[Anonymous No.17390140]

>>17389896
>You're assuming that it is philosophical rather than political, or simply aesthetic.
Ah yes, I'm just assuming that he disagreed with democrats philosophically...

>All education begins with the exact opposite of what everyone praises so highly today as ‘academic freedom.’ It begins in obedience, subordination, discipline, servitude. And just as great leaders need followers, so too must the led have a leader. A certain reciprocal predisposition prevails in the hierarchy of the spirit: yes, a kind of pre-established harmony. The eternal hierarchy that all things naturally gravitate toward is just what the so-called culture now sitting on the throne of the present aims to overturn and destroy. This ‘culture’ wants to bring leaders down to the level of its compulsory servitude, or kill them off altogether; it waylays foreordained followers searching high and low for the one who is to lead them, while its intoxications deaden even their instinct to seek. If, though, wounded and battle-weary, the two sides destined for each other find a way to come together at last, the result is a deep, thrilling bliss that resounds like the strings of an eternal lyre.
Anti-Education

>To be sure, "the kingdom of God" has thus been enlarged. Formerly he had only his people, his "chosen" people. Then he, like his people, became a wanderer and went into foreign lands; and ever since, he has not settled down anywhere—until he finally came to feel at home anywhere, this great cosmopolitan—until "the great numbers" and half the earth were on his side. Nevertheless, the god of "the great numbers," the democrat among the gods, did not become a proud pagan god: he remained a Jew, he remained a god of nooks, the god of all the dark corners and places, of all the unhealthy quarters the world over! His world-wide kingdom is, as ever, an underworld kingdom, a hospital, a souterrain kingdom, a ghetto kingdom. And he himself: so pale, so weak, so decadent.
The Antichrist

>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... 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...
The Antichrist

Surely it was all a ruse, right?

[Anonymous No.17390146]

>>17390140
Here's more:

>The human being who has become free—and how much more the spirit who has become free—spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats.
Twilight of the Idols

>One should not evaluate the solitary type from the viewpoint of the gregarious, nor the gregarious from the viewpoint of the solitary. Viewed from a height, both are necessary; their antagonism is also necessary—and nothing should be banished more thoroughly than the "desirability" that some third thing might evolve out of the two ("virtue" as hermaphroditism). That is as little "desirable" as the approximation and reconciliation of the sexes. To evolve further that which is typical, to make the gulf wider and wider—Concept of degeneration in both cases: when the herd starts to acquire the qualities of the solitary, and the latter the qualities of the herd—in short, when they approximate each other. This concept of degeneration has nothing to do with moral evaluation.
Will to Power

>Absurd and contemptible form of idealism that would not have mediocrity mediocre and, instead of feeling a sense of triumph at a state of exceptionalness, becomes indignant over cowardice, falsity, pettiness, and wretchedness. One should not desire these things to be different! and should make the gulf wider!—One should compel the higher kind of man to sever himself from the others through the sacrifices he has to make to his state of being. Chief viewpoint: establish distances, but create no antitheses. Dissolve the intermediate forms and reduce their influence: chief means of preserving distances.
Will to Power

>The homogenizing of European man is the great process that cannot be obstructed: one should even hasten it. The necessity to create a gulf, distance, order of rank, is given eo ipso—not the necessity to retard this process.
Will to Power

>I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality. For, to me justice speaks thus: "Men are not equal." Nor shall they become equal! What would my love of the overman be if I spoke otherwise?
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

This stuff is everywhere, but sure, it's all an assumption. An educated guess at best.

[Anonymous No.17390159]

>>17389896
>As the Tocqueville quote shows, the average democratic person also hates democracy. As in private interest it is vice turned into a means, a fulcrum to extend one's being.
Tocqueville or you need to provide a definition of democracy that makes sense and actually applies to Nietzsche. The quote isn't enough, because it's pretty damn obvious that Nietzsche was strongly against democracy in his time and even today he would be painted as philosophically anti-democratic.

[Anonymous No.17390509]

>>17390140
>leaders and followers, eternal hierarchy, noooo don't use power against meeee it's foreordained now I'm a good calvinist
>christianity is democracy, god weak because I neetch
>they not happy cause I say so, christianity again
>antifa strong, but women bad
>describing himself
>mediocre mediocrity, fourteen different words for low values and weakness, we're going to kill the mediocre, just not me, my tower is just the same as the Anglo kings
>they're all sheep, not me thouh=gh I'm THE UNMIQUE ONE
Imagine speaking as an authority on power when you're scared of women.

[Anonymous No.17390552]

>>17390509
This post is the equivalent of a toddler cupping his ears and screaming. It's not an argument and you just sound like a dumb bitch.

[Anonymous No.17390563]

>>17390146
In all serious though, there's just no substance to it, there's nothing essential in what he says here, and most of it is downright wrong.
For example, equality in itself is not bad. A king may establish some level of equality as a means to mobilise more troops or generate wealth. In the case of Greek warfare and the heroes, the greatest strength of men appears where each raises one another to the highest level. This is equality as a natural wealth, but Nietzsche can't see this because he's blinded by resentment and a dogmatic sense of duty to the dying aristocracy.
One sees with Cyrus the raising up of the ignoble to his level, or at least to their highest. This is power, like a pulley system in which each is given value and strength beyond that of natural forces.

[Anonymous No.17390580]

>>17390552
Point out the essential qualities then, what do these things have to do with democracy? They're what we call today buzzwords, and most of it has nothing to do with democracy.
The positives and negatives he mentions can form in any type of government, or state.

[Anonymous No.17390610]

>>17390580
It's worth a reminder.
Democracy as it is used here is a type of leveling, the becoming of a certain type of man. It's not a system based on voting or a doctrine of equality.
And Nietzsche shows many of the values of democratic being. As in:
"In democratic societies each citizen is habitually occupied in contemplating a very small object, which is himself. If he comes to raise his eyes higher, he then perceives only the immense image of society or the still greater figure of the human race. He has only very particular and very clear ideas, or very general and very vague notions; the intermediate space is empty.

When he has been drawn out of himself, he therefore always expects that he is going to be offered some enormous object to look at, and it is only at this price that he consents to tear himself for a moment from the small, complicated cares that agitate and charm his life.

This appears to me to explain well enough why men of democracies, who generally have such slight affairs, demand from their poets conceptions so vast and depictions so excessive."

[Anonymous No.17390675]

>>17390552
I thought neetcheans hated arguments.

[Anonymous No.17390722]

>>17390580
Define democracy if it's not the will to equality.

[Anonymous No.17390766]

Democracy is the Overman

"In democratic societies only the central power has some stability in its seat and some permanence in its undertakings. All citizens are constantly on the move and transforming themselves. Now, it is in the nature of all government to wish to enlarge its sphere continuously. It is therefore very difficult for it not to succeed in the longterm, since it acts with a fixed thought and a continuous will on men whose position, ideas, and desires vary every day. Often it happens that citizens work for [the central power] without wanting to.

Democratic centuries are times of attempts, innovations, and adventures. There is always a multitude of men engaged in a difficult or new undertaking that they pursue separately, without bothering themselves about those like
them. They do indeed accept for a general principle that the public power ought not to intervene in private affairs, but each of them desires that it aid him as an exception in the special affair that preoccupies him, and he seeks to attract the action of the government to his side, all the while wanting to shrink it for everyone else.

Since a multitude of people have this particular view of a host of different objects all at once, the sphere of the central power spreads insensibly on all sides even though each of them wishes to restrict it. A democratic government therefore increases its prerogatives by the sole fact that it endures. Time works for it; all accidents profit it; individual passions aid it without even knowing it, and one can say that it becomes all the more centralized as democratic society gets older."

[Anonymous No.17390774]

>>17390722
>>17390580
>Point out the essential qualities
Ladies first.

[Anonymous No.17390786]

"In aristocratic countries one ordinarily professes a profound respect for the last will of men. This sometimes even
went as far as superstition among the ancient peoples of Europe: the social power, far from hindering the caprices of the dying man, lent its force to the least of them; it assured him a perpetual power.
When all the living are weak, the will of the dead is less respected."

Sound familiar?

[Anonymous No.17390796]

>>17390774
The will to equality is the essential quality of democracy and Nietzsche explicitly stands opposed to such a will. Define democracy if it somehow differs from this.

[Anonymous No.17390834]

>>17390796
The essential qualities that you think his critique of democracy revealed here. >>17390140
In other words, what does he point to that is behind these effects? Not the symptoms but the prognosis and illness.

[Anonymous No.17390839]

"These societies not only contain many independent citizens, they are filled daily with men who, having arrived at independence yesterday, are drunk with their new power: these conceive a presumptuous confidence in their strength, and not imagining that from now on they could need to call upon the assistance of those like them, they have no difficulty in showing that they think only of themselves."

[Anonymous No.17390852]

>>17390834
The essential quality of all those passages that concerns me here is his interest in increasing spiritual gulfs. He believed that the democratization of Europe was inevitable, but that a naturalistic hierarchy could still prevail. If this is compatible with the "democratic being," then I'll call him that, but I don't see how it is.

[Anonymous No.17391184]

>>17390563
Based

[Anonymous No.17392424]

B

[Anonymous No.17393261]

>>17388772
sage

[Anonymous No.17393394]

[Anonymous No.17393956]

>>17389906
No.

[Anonymous No.17394154]

>>17390140
>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
He's contradicting himself here he's essentially saying that the worker, the wage earner should be happy with his existence yet argues Zarathustra, the over-man, is the redemy to this problem. I don't think Nietzsche's criticisms of socialism were principled because it ignores the fact that Nietzsche had his own perspecitivsm, his own political beliefs in praise of aristocratic values. Nietzche would be more consistent if he actually accepted nihilism, like Stirner did, and realize that the ultimate goal here isn't creating new, wonderful things but being conformable with who you are at any given moment.

[Anonymous No.17394369]

>>17394154
>h-he's contradicting himself
cry more

[Anonymous No.17394416]

>>17394369
He is though, Nietzsche is too afraid to actually accept nihilism; his whole philosophy was to create alternative to the transcendental humanism of Kantians; only to fall short because Zarathustra, the over man, just becomes another external, alienating cause, duty man must take up as a form of salvation, an implied imperfection that does not exist. Instead of accepting that Nietzschean Last Man would in fact be end of all it; he desperately keeps trying to keep the flame going

[Anonymous No.17394465]

>>17394416
>Zarathustra, the over man, just becomes another external, alienating cause, duty man must take up as a form of salvation, an implied imperfection that does not exist.
brainlet take

[Anonymous No.17394471]

>>17394465
What is your take then, cuck. I'm not expecting anything profound because this is /lit/, and these days the quality has certainly declined

[Anonymous No.17394497]

>>17394471
the overman is real and you resent that

[Anonymous No.17394537]

>>17394497
>the overman is real
Nietzsche only goes a far as criticizing the genealogy of morality to only replace with the speculative over-man; creating his own "idol" to be criticized. The "overman" is not real, but a fiction invented by a guy who spent the rest of his in a mental ward.

[Anonymous No.17394542]

>>17394537
cope, the overman is real

[Anonymous No.17394557]

>>17394542
Telling me its real is a form of coping though; the overman is a spook that is about as real as god

[Anonymous No.17394587]

>>17394557
>the overman is a spook that is about as real as god
big cope by a brainlet and nothing more

[Anonymous No.17394651]

>>17394587
Yet, Nietzsche made a moral claim to justify the existence of the over-man. He claims the overman is necessary because in absence of god, socialism and liberals were on the verge of taking its place; the problem he saw with these movements is it that preached equality which he saw as lethal to the creative impulse of humanity. Since equality creates the herd mentality that attempts to manipulate people into believing "equality" exists, or that it must be emphasized over the unique potential of human beings to stand out. "Equality" would lead to the degeneration of humanity because it doesn't allow for people to be different or ambitious. What N doesn't realize is that you can reject being an overman, or "following the herd" by having an existential indifference to the problems human faces. N isn't being consistent by arguing that genealogy of morality is based on lies, but then creates the "over-man" from that same belief that metaphysical laws govern objective morality.

[Anonymous No.17394712]

>>17394651
>He claims the overman is necessary
source?

[Anonymous No.17394825]

>>17394712
>"Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.Lo! I show you the last man.The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest."We have discovered happiness"- say the last men, and they blink.One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who has other sentiments goes voluntarily into the madhouse.. "Give us this last man, O Zarathustra,"- they called out- "make us into these last men! Then will we make you a gift of the Superman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:"They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
If you read the last couple of sentences; N is making it clear that overman is necessary because he poses the juxtaposition of Zarathustra as being the rejection of that.
In Ecce Homo, he literally says,
>If you should require a formula for a destiny of this kind that has taken human form, you will find it in my Zarathustra."And he who would be a creator in good and evil—verily, he must first be a destroyer, and break values into pieces.
"Thus the greatest evil belongeth unto the greatest good: but this is the creative good."
Zarathustra, the overman, is necessary to Nietzsche because it is the antidote to collective herd mentality of humanity, and the nihilism he saw as being a terrible solution to this problem; one that arose as the power of religion waned from the various wars and scientific advancements that were happening in his age.

[Anonymous No.17394844]

>>17394825
he simply posits the overman as a goal there, nowhere is necessity tied to the concept

[Anonymous No.17394845]

>>17394154
>nihilism
I think so too. Instead he wavers in indecision back and forth between nihilism and hardened monistic belief. Both are weakened because of it.

[Anonymous No.17394856]

>>17394497
Where is he?

[Anonymous No.17394866]

>>17394825
he simply posits the overman as a goal there, nowhere is necessity asserted, or "metaphysical laws" injected

[Anonymous No.17394881]

>>17394856
>>17389884

[Anonymous No.17395049]

>>17394866
>he simply posits the overman as a goal there, nowhere is necessity asserted, or
You'd missing the point of Zarathustra; why did he leave the mountain? He could have stayed there.
>"metaphysical laws" injected
It is, because in Ecce Homo he considers Zarathustra to be an essential truth to overcome nihilism, socialism, and the other movements he found abhorrent. Nietzsche was still a humanist who believed human beings had value, but they needed to aspire a "higher", spooky one.

[Anonymous No.17395077]

>>17394825
So why doesn't will to power solve it?

[Anonymous No.17395087]

>>17395049
>a "higher", spooky one.
So he turns the herd into a spook.

[Anonymous No.17395088]

>>17395049
>why did he leave the mountain?
he wanted to

>he considers Zarathustra to be an essential truth
source?

[Anonymous No.17395178]

>>17395088
>he wanted to
Because he wanted to transform humanity into his own image. He literally says it
"Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman, is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!"
>source?
Ecce Homo
>In my lifework, my Zarathustra holds a place apart. With it, I gave my fellow-men the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed upon them. This book, the voice of which speaks out across the ages, is not only the loftiest book on earth, literally the book of mountain air,—the whole phenomenon, mankind, lies at an incalculable distance beneath it,—but it is also the deepest book, born of the inmost abundance of truth; an inexhaustible well, into which no pitcher can be lowered without coming up again laden with gold and with goodness.
>>17395077
I'm not sure what Nietzsche means by will power because that's an open question. The problem really is his concept of overman because Zarathustra descends into the madhouse to create another set of sacred, fixed ideals that one should aspire to. He doesn't solve the problem of nihilism because one can be skeptical of the potential overman's value or possibility.

[Anonymous No.17395262]

>>17395178
nothing here about necessity or a metaphysics, what's your point?

[Anonymous No.17395300]

>>17395262
Nietzsche does away with morality, truth because its foundations were set upon Christianity; yet his solution to that problem is to kvetch about the "over-man" ; he's just doing what he criticized

[Anonymous No.17395349]

>>17395300
>he's just doing what he criticized
he isn't doing that at all. the overman is a goal and is real / can be made real. no necessity, no metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.17395389]

>>17395349
>no necessity, no metaphysics.
I'm not sure how you can say that Zarathustra's concept of the "over man" isn't a metaphysical ideal, goal.
Nietzsche never gave up metaphysics either otherwise Perspectivism makes no sense

[Anonymous No.17395419]

>>17395389
>metaphysical ideal, goal
not the same thing. perspectivism is even the key to understanding this.

[Anonymous No.17395470]

>>17395419
Zarathustra, over man, can not come to be unless it is defined by a priori principles defined by Nietzsche. It is purely metaphysical because it is a product of pure philosophy.

[Anonymous No.17395499]

>>17395470
>Zarathustra, over man, can not come to be unless it is defined by a priori principles
wrong

[Anonymous No.17395554]

>>17395499
Yes, Zarathustra, the overman , is a fictitious standard imposed by an external observer. It is not a real thing it; is a novelty perspective pushed by Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.17395581]

>>17395554
the overman is real and is a gambler, a consequence of gambling, not a consequence of necessity. read more.

[Anonymous No.17395616]

>>17395581
You are destroying morals by saying people are resentful for not wanting to be over-men.... you are making the claim , like Nietzsche, which exasperates the last man for being comfortable with himself, not wanting to seek redemption or risk, as something abhorrent "resentful" in the eyes of god, I mean, Nietzsche but you aren't being moralist, you are not contradicting yourself, and you are "real" because Nietzsche's a priori beliefs he did not create

[Anonymous No.17395627]

Nietzsche's idea from a novel is real a thing. I would know, because my dc comic books are filled with real people, with real super powers

[Anonymous No.17395685]

>>17395616
>You are destroying morals by saying people are resentful for not wanting to be over-men
never said that. the rest of your post is borderline gibberish

[Anonymous No.17395834]

>>17395685
>I never said that
>>17394497
>the overman is real and you resent that
You might have schizophrenia like Nietzsche did

[Anonymous No.17395840]

If the original question is rephrased, does it make more sense? Rather than being a willless type who will risk nothing and only seeks security and comfort, is the Last Man not something much more than this? As we see in much of Tocqueville's analysis he is a dual-figure, he is constantly undoing himself and willing to risk everything for the smallest freedoms.

We see this in the World Wars in particular. The willingness to risk everything, sometimes just for the adventure of running into the enemy trenches, rose up in soldiers like a force of nature. And throughout, despite all of the pain at the regional level, there was a being formed impervious to death. These are shifts at the level of the species, and one cannot say men who work harder and destroy whole regions of the earth for something like space exploration seek only comfort.

The same can be said of the socialists even. It seems a weak form of moralism to characterise the socialists as only the lowest type of men. There is something rather horrific in such a being, even in terms of strength. In Russia they were willing to sacrifice hundreds of millions of lives in an effort to "triumph over the sun." The technological force is, even if horrific and ugly at times, an incredible form of power unlike anything else in history.

This is really what I mean when I say Nietzsche was part of the democratic order. Junger refers to it as the titanic being.

[Anonymous No.17395937]

>>17395834
saying you specifically resent the overman's existence =/= me saying people are resentful for not wanting to be the overman

[Anonymous No.17395976]

>>17395840
It's also worth remembering that the original man of the modern era is something of a contradiction, torn between the paradise figure seen in the state of nature and the brutal soldier figures who were becoming impervious to death and tearing away at everything that was not the court.

The idea of modern man is also beyond both of these images. so it is a mistake for Nietzsche to say that the Last Man is a willless being. Rather there lust for power is so elemental that they do not even need a sovereign, a central figure. Centralisation is a result of this striving for an absolute and perfect figure beyond death.

Where Nietzsche is weakest is where he moralises like the Christian conservatives, believes that somehow the aristocratic man will win against this immeasurable force. But as we saw clearly, Maistre, Nietzsche, and all the others who made such predictions were completely wrong. In the end, the democratic forces were far stronger, better soldiers, and even superior authority figures.

This goes back to ancient thinking in that the political form cannot be the center, it is but a means. Power cannot be the center either, it is a result, an effect.

[Anonymous No.17396596]

Power

[Anonymous No.17397423]

>>17393956
Yes.

[Anonymous No.17397442]

>>305370430

[Anonymous No.17397502]

>>17395976
I don't think you're really grasping the meaning of the Last Man idea. The Last Man is Nietzsche's attack on utilitarianism and similar kinds of slave morality. It is him showing why building life/philosophy/morality on the reduction of pain and the maximization of pleasure is a nullity, an empty morality. The Last Man is one who attains all his wants without pain. It is life without struggle, it is the end of life. Without struggle there is nothing, and humanity becomes a nullity, wallowing in its own pleasure, going nowhere, just existing, devoid of meaning, creativity, puissance. Life is struggle, and struggle is life.

[Anonymous No.17398153]

>>17397502
>Nietzsche's ideas<metaphysics
>metaphysics>Nietzsche's ideas
You still can't tell the difference? Why do you think everything in the world is Nietzsche?

[Anonymous No.17398186]

>>17398153
I have no idea what you're on about

[Anonymous No.17398194]

I’m convinced this is just one guy having a conversation with himself

[Anonymous No.17398271]

>>17398186
Having an idea doesn't mean it is an unbreakable law.
You're insisting that a critique of Nietzsche or any discussion of the metaphysical laws related must confirm to nietzsche's philosophy. In other words, from Nietzsche to the possible is not valid.
You really don't see the problem with this?

[Anonymous No.17398440]

>>17398271
Still waiting for a response to this btw >>17390852

[Anonymous No.17399553]

>>17390852
Got lost with you two arguing. I'll try to answer later.

[Anonymous No.17400093]

>>17398440
"For an aristocracy that allows the heart of the people to slip through its fingers for good is like a tree whose roots have died, and the taller it is, the easier for the wind to topple it."

[Anonymous No.17401010]

>>17398194
Tell us more.

[Anonymous No.17401043]

>>17397502
yes so y men love to invent a meaning on suffering. it turns out suffering is meanignless, so they seethe when they here this and hate that life an easy mode is good.

[Anonymous No.17401240]

>>17400093
And a democrat is someone who supports that transformation, right?

[Anonymous No.17401252]

>>17401043
Are you having a stroke anon

[Anonymous No.17401640]

>>17397502
>Life is struggle, and struggle is life.
You ignored everything said again.
Anyway, Schmitt clarifies this problem. While modern society may appear formless on the surface there remains a form behind everything that happens. In fact, the nomos and form may be greater where sovereignty remains entirely hidden.
Life must struggle with life. This is not abandoned in the modern era, but shifted to other laws, and within different degrees.

[Anonymous No.17402023]

I'm going to dump some excerpts from William Plank here, who wrote a neat book on Nietzsche, which I think are relevant to the thread and may make for some interesting discussion. These excerpts are from the sections where he talks about Nietzsche's relation to Romanticism specifically (it's a 500 page book where most chapters are 1-3 pages long, full of many many sub-topics). I find the topic of the thread to be framed well in them.

>It appears clear from reading Nietzsche that we must organize the history of Western thinking in the following manner: (1) Pre-Socratic philosophy, particularly what we have left of the ideas of Heraclitus, in which reality was defined as change, as process, in a word, as flux. (2) Almost 2500 years of Platonism and Christianity, what Nietzsche summarizes in the term "Socratic-Judaeo-Christian metaphysic," in which reality is defined by the philosophy of eternal forms, by the reality of fixed entities and universals, in which the common-sense perceptions of a macromolecular human perceiver are elevated to the laws of logic, in a word, as stasis. It is a period characterized by the lack of tragedy because of Socratic scientific optimism. (3) Post-Nietzschean thinking characterized by a return to flux and the reality of change, whether evolution or devolution, i.e., creativity or decadence, positivity or negativity. It is particularly this third stage which interests us here and the implications it has for the reinterpretation of the past and an understanding of the present and future. It is necessary in this sense to remember that the Nietzschean Will to Power is a cosmic process which subsumes the individual will, that it is, as Schacht names it, an "impulse to transformation." This impulse to transformation, this will to power is perfectly non-teleological and may move in (1) positive-creative, yet temporary directions to end up with the isolated Ubermensch, a phenomenon of what I will elsewhere call the axiosphere, or (2) in the decadent-negative direction to end up with the herd-man or the Socratic-Judaeo-Christian metaphysic. This description of the Nietzschean Will to Power rather adequately describes the attitude that the 19th and 20th centuries will take toward the problem of flux as reality and shows up in other guises and disguises in major thinkers such as Darwin, Freud, Derrida, Deleuze, Serres, Eigen, Ruse, and even in the implications of quantum mechanics.

1/7

[Anonymous No.17402037]

>>17402023
>[...] Nietzsche was not just an eccentric professor of classics who appeared in 19th century Europe out of thin air to proclaim the bankruptcy and to expose the threat of the Socratic-Judaeo-Christian idealist metaphysic, but that he was the capstone of a centuries-old way of life. He was the manifestation of a cultural attitude that the imprudent might call Teutonic, that the careful might name Germanic, but that I prefer to call the Gothic or the hyperborean in order to emphasize its geographical and ethnic lotus. The Greeks and the Hellenic world had their metaphysic of perfect forms and their consequent logos and epistemology of representation, of real versus apparent (a fruitful incubator of later Christian sin and guilt), a metaphysic which made a Nietzschean positivity and creativity impossible and unthinkable (impensable) because the existence of the perferct form made creativity a synonym of imitation and therefore perfectly unnecessary. Such a metaphysic made human life itself an imitation, literary analysis an exegesis, and morality an imitation of Christ. The northerners, the Hyperboreans, had their metaphysic as well, a metaphysic overshadowed frequently by the prestige of the Southerners, the Greeks, and the increased prestige they got during the Renaissance, when they were attributed virtues which as I shall suggest more properly belong to the Northerners. Beowulf had no Athena to help him defeat Grendel. His struggle was with terrible monsters of some deep chthonic origin. Compared to Beowulf, the heroes at Troy were lieutenants of the gods, acting out the familial squabbles of the Olympians. This northern, hyperborean, metaphysic was a materialistic and individualistic attitude, the kind of attitude which could put the statue of a workman, a commoner, on a 13th century cathedral, which valued implicitly the worldly over the heavenly and Olympian, an attitude which pressed, often in a vulgar and violent way, against the restrictions of a Platonist Christianity imported from the South and the East. Compare the frieze on the Parthenon with the statuary on a gothic cathedral and see where the northerner's sympathies lie.

2/7

[Anonymous No.17402046]

>>17402037
>Unabashedly pitting the north against the south, the Hyperborean against the Platonist, it becomes clear that it was the north which finally rolled over and crushed the perfect forms of idealism and returned the world to man, a world in which man could exult in the beauty and proprietorship of his little possessions, of his northern miniatures, of his house and his well-dressed wife in the paintings of Van Eyck, and it was Nietzsche who was the capstone of a world-view which rose with the gothic in the architecture and painting of the Northern Renaissance, and which, in its materialism and love of the earth, gave us Renaissance individualism Rabelais, the joy of the very physically human; Luther and his revolt against the perfection of the Church and its Pope; the quarrel of the ancients and moderns; 18th century materialism; Madame de Stael; and the 19th century fascination with the grease on the shelf of the Pension Vauquer in Balzac's Pere Goriot. We can see that the whole romantic revolution is hyperborean and even that it was only by overcoming Platonism that Darwin, Freud, and Marx were possible and that it is literally no accident that they are under the sign of materialism. Post-modernism itself, as a rejection of idealist metaphysics and forms, is a northern phenomenon—and the modern world, the world of Darwinian evolution, of Deleuzian materialist psychotherapy, and even quantum mechanics' very rejection of the most basic categories of traditional reality (direction, distance, identity, locality, etc.) are what I will call a Gothic event, a Gothic event which expelled the preconceptions and frequently the graces of the ancients, of the Platonists. How ironic that in the rejection of this idealist metaphysics powerfully supported and propagandized by the Christianized Hebrew Messiah, two Jews should contribute so much to its downfall—Freud and Marx, two Hyperborean Jews.

>It is Nietzsche who allows us to look back over the history of Europe since the fall of Rome and to see that a powerful current of what we call modern civilization had its origins, not in the Ancients and their "rediscovery" by the Renaissance, but in the cold light of the North, where the sun does not shine as it does on the Peloponessus. Platonism, with its magical forms, is the metaphysics and politics of a primitive tribe. Those who, like Louis XIV took as their emblem the sun, tyrannized in the name of rationalism and struck an expected consonance with Cartesian philosophers who were apologists for the southern metaphysic. It was the same sun that shone outside Plato's cave and lighted the aristocratic skies of the Republic.

3/7

[Anonymous No.17402051]

>>17402046
>The individual will is subsumed in a larger cosmic process called the Will to Power (an "impulse to transformation"), which does not consider human freedom a prior reality and which is an impulse which combines and recombines particles (energy centers, unities, etc.) in a completely nonteleological and nonpermanent way. Every phenomenon is an expression of one of the two aspects of the Will to Power: (1) the negative, decadent, reactive aspect, which is exemplified in the herd man, and (2) the positive, active, creative aspect, which is exemplified in the higher man and ultimately in the Ubermensch. In the end, it is difficult to take sides with either (1) or (2) because in the great Random Walk (one of the Manfred Eigen's games) of the Will to Power, i.e., of open-ended dissipative systems, they are inextricably intertwined, they are one, and the higher man (and the Overman himself) exists as dependent on the herd man and biologically inseparable from him. It cannot be disputed that the savage contempt that Nietzsche showed for the herd man masks and implies a massive and biological democracy. If there is a contradiction in Nietzsche, it is this contempt for the herd man who lies at the very biological foundation of the Overman, that lonely and temporary nonreactive and creative evolutionary result of that active-reactive Will to Power.

>It is in this way that we must use Nietzsche to look back at the history of Europe and see it in a new way, as much more than a rediscovery of the ancients by the Scholastics and by the Renaissance scholar and more than Descartes' elaboration of a rationalist dogma which gave a new prestige to idealism. Using these Nietzschean categories, we may then see the double aspect of Romanticism, i.e., Romanticism as active and reactive, decadent and creative, negative and positive. The negative and positive aspects of Romanticism, i.e., the reactive and the active aspects, are mingled, much as the herd man and the Overman are mingled in the overarching movement, in the Random Walk of the Will to Power. Nietzsche, despite his rejection of it, frequently has an ambiguous position in relation to Romanticism and this ambiguous relation is identical to the ambiguous relation of the Overman to the herd man, in whom he is rooted.

4/7

[Anonymous No.17402056]

>>17402051
>The Reactive aspects of Romanticism. There is a whole syndrome of interrelated and overlapping characteristics. (1) The taste for antiquity, but an idealized antiquity. Even Nietzsche idealized antiquity in his early work (The Birth of Tragedy), especially the world of the Homeric heroes, whom he found superior to the Socratic debasement of tragedy in Greek rationalism and Euripedes. (2) A return to the Middle Ages and the Gothic. The Romantics claimed to have rediscovered the Gothic, but as I maintain, Romanticism is mostly a recurrence of the Gothic-hyperborean. (3) Thoughts of death and suicide. (4) Fascination for ruins and cemetries. (5) Superiority because of an inner superior sensitivity. (6) Contempt for bourgeois materialism. (7) Eternal love, often frustrated and tragic. (8) The sense of being condemned by destiny and pushed by an unknown and mysterious force. (9) Melancholy and a near absence of humor. (10) Exile, unknown identity, mysterious origin. (11) Admiration for a wild, uncontrolled state of nature where man is at home and with which he has secret, intuitive sympathies. (12) Admiration for the exotic, the bizarre and the morbid, a tendency which provides the subject matter for that excellent book on the morbid aspects of Romanticism by Mario Praz, a trend which filled much of the 19th and even the 20th centuries. (13) Fascination for the criminal. (14) Criminal, guilty and powerful passions which one is powerless to resist, acompanied by lyric self-pity. (15) Purity of the natural man, the noble savage. (16) The reality of the conscience and the idea that religion is an affair between man and his personal God. (17) The idea that inspiration in art is more important than discipline and work, accompanied on occasion by an apparent anti-intellectualism. (18) Political and social revolution. (19) The idea of the fatality of the romantic hero or heroine for the lover, the femme fatale, for example. (20) The idea, particularly in France, that one could mix the tragic and the comic, the grotesque and the sublime. At first glance, it is a little disconcerting to see that Nietzsche frequently fits the description. But as I shall soon point out and as I must insist now, Romanticism's ideal of the return to an untrammeled Nature has unexpected consequences for the naturalization of the study of man, and as unsavory and unacceptable as it may seem to some of us, there is a real connection between the Rousseau of "La Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard," the Darwin of the Voyage of the Beagle, and the Nietzsche of the Will to Power. It is unrealistic to expect that a major thinker such as Nietzsche would escape the effects of the major movement of the late 18th century, a movement which stretched through all the 19th century and into the 20th in various manifestations. In order to place Nietzsche in this tradition of romanticism, I will extend the definition in the following manner.

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[Anonymous No.17402070]

>>17402056
>The neolithic revolution. When we look at the short career of mankind from the political point of view, we see that there have been basically only two revolutions, the neolithic revolution and the romantic revolution. The neolithic revolution, as Lewis Mumford wrote (1967), should not be remembered merely as the agricultural revolution with the domestication of the cereals and livestock or the period which saw the rise of towns, it should be distinguished as the epoch in which centralized authority was invented. It was a centralized authority which became indistinguishable from religious authority, producing a civilization of priestly politics and the god-king which survived all the way through to Louis XIV and Hitler. In fact, this unity of politics and religion, this inability to distinguish them as separate is still a solid reality in the Moslem world. The ayatollahs might disagree on some things with Richard the Lion Heart, but there would be no disagreement on this point. As Derrida makes clear, this politico-religio-metaphysics even seized on writing (the definition of which Derrida extends to include all linguistic phenomena), appropriating it and sacralizing it ultimately in the logos, so that every phenomenon was subsumed in what had originally been an expression of the neolithic invention of central power. Every seeker after political power attempts to appropriate language as his own; ironically the post-structuralists and structuralists themselves have created a new jargon-language of literary analysis, over which they seek to reign in a semi-ecclesiastical fashion. The separation of politics and religion is a recent and by no means universal phenomenon; one of the rare places in which it expresses the ideals of a culture is in the United States constitution, a document which the religious fundamentalists and the creation scientists seek to change in order to make American civilization more similar to the neolithic.

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[Anonymous No.17402078]

>>17402070
>Platonism solidified this neolithic invention of authority by extending it into the fabric of reality itself in the name of the universal form, of the metaphysics of idealism, the result of which was the inability of western philosophy to distinguish between politics and philosophy, between morality and religion, between morality and politics, between aesthetics and ethics, in which the good, the true and the beautiful were indistinguishable from the powerful and the holy. As a result, the history of western philosophy has been crabbed and warped, and became a discipline which could not distinguish the true form from the human, a concern which has become the major philosophical problem of quantum mechanics. [...] Nietzsche was the first thinker to see the multiple crimes against humanity of idealist metaphysics, and to see that the true had no necessary relation to the good or to the welfare and benefit of humanity. Such a humanistic view of the nature of the good was bound to warp the attempt to understand the true (a perspectival concept which Nietzsche did not reject). The concept of the good and the true of idealist metaphysics and its inseparability from an aristocratic human concept of the true as a disguised political ideal and a perfect form are practically identical to the warped and failed practice of agriculture fostered by Lysenko because it blindly approaches the problem with preconceived ideas and produces readymade conclusions. It is no wonder then that Bertrand Russell can blame Plato for retarding the progress of western science for two millennia. Nietzsche was well aware that he was the first to have such a vision, and this realization must be one of the things which contributed to his immodesty, an immodesty which, in my opinion and considering the enormity of the consequences of his intuition, he must be forgiven. It is in such a frame of reference that we must understand his contempt for Kant, who redefined reality to suit his moral preconceptions. Nietzsche's utter rejection of teleology, comfort, security, and even good taste in his concern for an unvarnished set of perspectives can be matched in his time only by Darwin, to whom he is thus intimately connected in the history of the western mind, even though Nietzsche did not realize it.

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[Anonymous No.17402143]

>>17395840
If we look at Plank's analysis, then Nietzsche is indeed part of the democratic order in this sense (which we would call the romantic, or Gothic-hyperborean revolution).

[Anonymous No.17402405]

>>17402143
Thanks anon will read in a bit.

[Anonymous No.17403050]

>>17402023
This was quite good, some similar observations to what I've said, in particular the relation to 'Kantian humility':
>It is in such a frame of reference that we must understand his contempt for Kant, who redefined reality to suit his moral preconceptions.
>The neolithic revolution... centralized authority.
An interesting point Tocqueville makes is that the division between equality and centralisation is a constant throughout history, an eternal force of human nature. Just a note to look into the centralising aspects of the neolithic further, but do you know if he discusses this more in depth?

As sort of a preliminary question, is Plank bringing Nietzsche down into the democratic order, or raising it up with him? Can't say much more than that now but I'll read it closer when I get a chance.

[Anonymous No.17404135]

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[Anonymous No.17404814]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17405882]

>>17402023
>"Socratic-Judaeo-Christian metaphysic,"
Is this true?

[Anonymous No.17406763]

>>17401043
Explain

[Anonymous No.17407250]

>>17388835
>Man in democratic centuries obeys his neighbor, who is his equal, only with extreme repugnance; he refuses to recognize in him any enlightenment superior to his own; he distrusts his justice and looks on his power with jealousy; he fears and scorns him; he loves to make him feel at each instant the common dependence of them both on the same master."

[Anonymous No.17407969]

>>17402078
Still want to discuss this.

[Anonymous No.17409167]

Bumping

[Anonymous No.17409220]

>schizo retard talking to himself is now bumping his thread and pretending as if he isn’t simply talking to himself
yikes

[Anonymous No.17409261]

>>17409220
>NOOOOOOOOOOOO NOT EFFORTPOSTING I NEED MY ECELEB THREADS AND WALLACE MEMES
KYS

[Anonymous No.17409319]

>>17403050
Plank supports Nietzsche's project and the overman, although in those passages he's definitely bringing Nietzsche's "immodesty" "down" to the democratic system (to practicality, which shows how the positive and negative aspects of this project are intertwined). He spends additional time in other parts of the book explaining how Nietzsche misunderstood his own relationship with Darwin, Romanticism, and democracy, being more strongly connected and indebted to all three than he personally realized. If I find more worthwhile passages to type up and post here, I will. I can't recall if he goes much further into the neolithic, since the book is focused on Nietzsche, but I do remember that he brings up Hitler more than once, and that he dislikes him.

Romanticism, Darwinism, Nietzscheanism, and the democratic system are all intertwined for Plank. The overman and the herd man are basically polarities on the democratic spectrum, not coming into existence at the exact same moment, but certainly depending on one another. I can't say I'm fond of everything in the book; for example, he spends a lot of time talking about Manfred Eigen's games, and while some of it is interesting, in the end it's kind of meaningless to the discussion. However, he has a pretty well-rounded grasp on the concepts he works with, so it's a solid read.

As I see it, those four things I listed above are all part of the West's (since the time of the ancient Greeks) relentless gravitation towards an intellectual elite. They were the next step in that development. Previously, it was the Socratic-Judaeo-Christian (as Plank describes) which represented the peak of intellectualism, for thousands of years, and the West organized itself in order to promote its superiority. The result of that order was to eventually cave in on itself and become paradox, and paradox became the hallmark of the new intellectual elite which emerged from that development. Since the Greeks, the West has been about an intellectual elite directing the species towards its own goals, and that hasn't changed, only recently taking a new form instead.

[Anonymous No.17409322]

>>17409220
Wtf are you faggots complaining about the only effortposts on the board? Almost everything else is just shifty resist memes.

[Anonymous No.17409703]

There's a distinct lack of posters who actually read books on this board and this thread shows it. I feel like the thread would have done better 5+ years ago.

[Anonymous No.17409733]

>>17409703
I was basically arguing against Nietzsche to see if we could get a serious discussion going since most THREADS are bait spam and the Nietzsche ones are really bad.
Wasn't too bad of a thread really, a few people came in to effortpost or at least say they're reading. But yeah the board is in a bad state for actual discussion.

[Anonymous No.17411017]

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[Anonymous No.17411840]

>>17409319
I think it's a good quote. It notices something profound that is necessary in order to grasp Nietzschean philosophy. Nietzsche was a scorned romantic type. His writings are brimming with the tension of multiple, often contrary meanings.

[Anonymous No.17411874]

>>17388772
Tocqueville was wrong, we're seeing the complete opposite happen today, as we did in the Roman republic

[Anonymous No.17411881]

>>17411874
How? Which is? What?

[Anonymous No.17411992]

>>17411881
Overly complex systems lead to centralized authoritarian structures, democracy needs a certain level of "civilisation" to exist, but as civilisation becomes increasingly broad, democracy fades away in favor of more authoritarinism, which is far more efficient at organization.

[Anonymous No.17412075]

>>17411992
What does this have to do with Tocqueville or being right? Authoritarianism lost hard.

[Anonymous No.17412129]

>>17412075
Democracy doesn't rise in hand with centralizing power

[Anonymous No.17412134]

>>17412075
Democracy doesn't necessarily rise in hand with centralizing power

[Anonymous No.17412187]

>>17412134
Don't think that was Tocqueville's point.
But clearly there is a major centralising power, most of the contradictions we see today are tied to this.

[Anonymous No.17412240]

>>17412187
Yeah and things are becoming increasingly authoritarian

[Anonymous No.17413243]

>>17412240
So how is Tocqueville wrong?

[Anonymous No.17414066]

"In Europe we find it difficult to judge the true character and permanent instincts of democracy because in Europe two opposing principles are locked in struggle, and we do not know precisely how much is to be attributed to the principles themselves and how much to the passions arising from the battle between them.

Things are different in America. There, the people rule unimpeded. They need fear no danger nor avenge any insult.

In America, democracy is left to its own propensities. Its manner is natural and its movement free. This is where it must be judged. And to whom should such a study be interesting and profitable if not to us, who are swept along each day by an irresistible force and blindly advance, perhaps toward despotism, perhaps toward a republic, but certainly toward a democratic social state?"

[Anonymous No.17414133]

>>17414066
Something important to keep in mind. How domesticated was Europe, even at the onset of democracy? The free human type can be defeated in any condition, it is not only a Christian problem. We see this where Nietzsche sides with the declining years of the Greek state, and against the order of nature so significant throughout the eras of the Greeks. A problem of the city itself rather than state types.
With the settling of the Americas a providential freedom took hold. It is difficult to speak of weakness at such levels, but there can be no doubt of the resentment of those in paradise - seen in the wars and the very laws of the modern period. Its political theology is determined by this divide, the Americas becoming something of an unknown enemy.

The free type of the Americas cannot be seen only as a worker, a lesser being. These are bourgeois sentiments. He is born of adventure, the idyllic peasantry, the Hunter spirit, the criminal, the greater than war, and even a divine sort of freedom. Nietzsche should have considered his own strong man under unfavourable conditions. A single man could hold in his possession forests greater in size than any European nation, made up of trees that dwarfed anything in their memories. If they could not hold it then they were fighting for it.
This is the titanic being in its positive sense, a lived relation to the world rather than the aesthetic of romantics who were confined to ring boarding rooms.

[Anonymous No.17414208]

>>17409319
This is interesting because it's basically the opposite of my perspective, although we have some similar observations on Nietzsche. My thinking is, in these terms, raising democracy up closer to Nietzsche. This is also, to some degree, what Schmitt and Junger were doing. There is a great divide between the theological origin of modern laws, their true power, and the simple but mundane lives that people live. The secular is really only a defence against the incredible forces taken on by modern man, he who lives after the iron age, or even apocalyptic possibilities. It is an unspoken, "how shall we become worthy of it?" Ineffable.
Nietzsche is of course speaking hundreds of years after the Christian Madman, or the fool for apocalypse.

[Anonymous No.17414781]

Power and art for art's sake. To fight on both sides is the great risk of the most powerful, one may be carried off by the elements. Ares.
A great paradox of democracy is how the divided political body actually creates this man who fights on both sides.

[Anonymous No.17415447]

Consoom

[Anonymous No.17416487]

>>17409703
What, if some day or night an anon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This thread as you now post it and have posted it, you will have to post once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every typo and every thought and every shitpost and bait and everything unutterably small or great in your thread will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the anon who spoke thus? Or have you once posted a tremendous thread when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!'

[Anonymous No.17417683]

B

[Anonymous No.17418295]

>>17388802
>Power-state (Machtstaat)
Anyone have more on this?

[Anonymous No.17419697]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17420319]

>>17418295
Read the thread

[Anonymous No.17420369]

>>17418295
>>17389647
>>17389640
>>17389491