/lit/ - Literature

there's also the possibility that you can't read

>>11277314
>literally proves what I said

>>11277311
>is his philosophy so pretentious that nobody can actually understand what he meant?

More like he meant contradicting things because he considered himself a philosopher artist capable of entertaining different points of view, changing his mind and connecting his ideas to his lived states (it's hard to affirm Eternal Recurrence when you're vomiting constantly and suffering from chronic headaches for example). This was Nietzsche's strength in fact: you're bound to find something interesting and useful in his work even if for the most part it doesn't resonate with you. It's why he haa such a widespread influence over so many opposing political and philosophical groups and movements.

>>11277336
case in point

>>11277311
So what are your most prevalent thoughts on Nietzsche?

>>11277369
He killed God, morality, idealism, common decency, was literally a Nazi, and fucked a horse.

>>11277336
Look fella you're clearly irrationally heated about some old dead German
maybe just maybe this time the whole world's right and you're wrong

>>11277311

Nietzsche should be proof that you should convey your ideas as clearly as possible and not drown yourself in poetic garbage because than anyone just says anything about your work.

>>11277380

>>11277311

He's not meant to be read with the intention of learning philosophical theses as you would read schopenhauer or kant. He's meant to be read as a novel or a literary work: something you interpret personally to draw a message that is unique to yourself. It makes no sense to ask what an author who did not believe in "truth" actually meant. Just enjoy the read, think about what you read, and make the best in it for your life.
Don't take him as an authority to refute/win over other people. Take it as a work that talks to you alone.

>>11277380
If you’re not trolling, then yeah, you’re just a retard. Maybe you’re a retard even if you’re trolling.

>>11277311
It's more like most people's knowledge of Nietzsche's work consists of a Cliffnotes summary, or at least that's how it seems. Especially when people go on about the Ubermensch or Will to Power as if they were his most important ideas. To understand his philosophy you have to understand both the evolution of his ideas but also his aims as a philosopher. He was not interested in devising a system of of thought or a unified theory, rather, he had no issue with contradicting himself or confusing the reader.

>>11277476
>being this literal despite admiring Nietzsche (a literal equine fucker btw)

>>11277311
Honestly it is the very opposite. Nietzsche was such a great stylist and so good at boiling down his complex ideas into powerful images and concepts, that a casual or lazy reader or a Wikipedia skimmer might come away with a completely wrong idea of what N is actually saying as they haven’t gone the whole hog. The fault lies with readers either expecting to be spoon fed or so bowled over by the simplified introduction of the respective philosophical argument that they cannot see the wood for the trees.

>>11277311
>is his philosophy so pretentious that nobody can actually understand what he meant?
A professor I had said that a person's interpretation of Nietzsche tends to reflect their personality, and his own interpretation has changed considerably through the years. However I don't think that makes the philosophy "pretentious", and neither do I think that invalidates it. What I have to say about it is pretentious - I think that diversity of interpretation is a strong indicator of depth, so long as it's not due to plain inconsistencies. And the majority of people who read philosophy will misinterpret it for a variety of reasons not having to do with how smart they are.

>>11278830

It at least indicates indicates that his books are generative of ideas or the elaboration of them in many people. You might also say that people who get frustrated at them not being clear are in a phase of their life where they're looking for a philosophical manual that will tell them how to think.

Maybe his books were so shittily written people can't discern what he meant, but pretend to, and get smug and start making fun of people who interpreted him differently?

>>11277414
How are there still any cerebral folds, doesn't make sense if it's being stretched.

>>11278915
they're drawn on

>>11277311
Nietzsche is the most complex philosopher in all of history and wrote aphoristically and at times in an apophatic style. It shouldn't come to anyone's surprise that even people who read him can come away with different ideas about what he wrote.

>>11280701
Don’t forget socrates.

>say literally anything about Nietzsche
>"uhm, but you got Nietzsche wrong"
So Nietzsche is kinda like Jesus, huh

>>11277311
There are things, I believe, that you can actually get wrong from Nietzsche:
The "he is the father of nihilism" or "he advocated for nihilism" is the prime example. You can actually get to that type of conclusion if you haven't read him and your sources are youtube videos or what you teacher told you in 11th Grade

Another one is the "one must follow Master Morality". He analyzed very extensively both Slave and Master Morality and in the end neither is a great standpoint, an Übermensch, as he envisioned, should be above both

He is good at criticizing institutions and society, probably among the best in history at that. He shows you why things are wrong (in his view) and backs it up with arguments. However I don't think (or I haven't read) many things regarding what you should do (in a practial way), so it's an open field to build whatever lifestyle you like while understanding it, and I guess that was his prime idea, you should seek that freedom and treasure it, do not look for the answers outside of yourself, or at least do not do it under the coercion of societal institutions that weaken you. Live your life to the fullest and love everything that has happened to make you this way.

He is, in my opinion, one of the most complex thinkers in history though, so there isn't a 101 uploaded to Youtube that breaks down everything for you (there's one for Hegel's Fenomenology for example). Hell, even if people far brighter than even the smartest people here on /lit/, like Heidegger or Foucault, struggle and study his ideas, there must be a reason.

- History of terrible scholarship: Nietzsche didn't get very famous until after he went insane, and at that point his anti-Semitic sister was editing his works to make it seem like he was an advocate for the Germans' racial superiority. This perception continued when the Nazis appropriated his work for their own propaganda. In the 1950s, Walter Kaufmann saved him from being permanently rejected as a racial ideologue, but in so doing he recast his image in a sanitized left-liberal light. Kaufmann continually downplayed Nietzsche's most shocking beliefs, leading to the effete school of Nietzsche criticism that looks to explain away his most "dangerous" beliefs (e.g. the necessity for slavery).

- Nietzsche's belief in the value of lies: Even in the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche placed a high value on "lies" (which encompasses art, persuasion, even things like "self evident" axioms). Values always matter more to Nietzsche than a strictly "truthful" correspondence between statements and facts, so it shouldn't be surprising that N contradicts himself or makes statements that seem absurd to maintain. What matters more is creating harmonies and resonances in life that allow one to overcome oneself. Thus any interpretation claiming "Nietzsche believed..." is already falling into the pitfall of "truthfulness" that Nietzsche sought to avoid.

- Nietzsche experimentalism: Nietzsche had different periods in his life when he sought to try out new ideas. His early works are attempts to build new myths out of philological investigations, which led into his "positivistic" period (Daybreak + Human, All Too Human) when he tried to reconcile scientific belief with humanity's need for meaning, which led further into his "transvaluation of all values" phase with his most well known works like Zarathustra and Genealogy. Most of the "contradictions" in his thought come from cross referencing works of these different periods. Furthermore, Nietzsche explicitly claims that one should experiment with new values and ways of thinking in life, and his work does the same without trying to fit everything in to a coherent arc or concept to which it could be reduced.

- Deliberate Elitism: Nietzsche never wrote for the masses. He wanted most of all to influence the next creator of values like Jesus or Alexander the Great to do away with our current system of morals. There is no deep interpretation of his works that could settle it equally for everyone what he "really meant"--the interpretation of his work he was most interested in was the one that could be used as a justification for creating a completely new society. If the contradictions and little frustrations in his work annoy the common reader, so much the better. The superior reader will understand that such inconsistencies are trifles compared to the overwhelming need to transvalue all values.

>>11277311
Maybe you should stop getting Nietzsche wrong OP

>>11280954
Good post.

>>11280954
What are best translations for most important works?

>>11281019
In English, Kaufmann is best. Hollingdale is also pretty good (and he translated a few of the works that K didn't). Stick to those two and you'll be fine.

I didn't mean to imply that Kaufmann was a bad critic; in fact, he's one of the most important scholars of philosophy in the 20th century. But he's biased to portray Nietzsche in a way that would appeal to a postwar Anglosphere still very much afraid of "Nazi thinkers." Many of the footnotes in his translations are illuminating and worthwhile, but he has an obnoxious tendency to stick a footnote on any shocking passage to explain to the reader why it isn't as ridiculous as it sounds or, worse, simply to make his disagreement known (cf his commentary on the "dynamite" passage in Ecce Homo: he calls it "embarrassing")

>>11280975
Based

Why do i get so scared when i start learning about "meaning" through the thoughts of these fucks?

Like reading nietzsche, jung, just scares the living shit out of me, in their attempts to make sense of this fucked existance

>>11281234
If you were me, it'd be because of the intense repression you're going through. Either it is a denial of what you are, or what you don't want to be true, or something weird. Heck, if I knew what I was repressing, it could be solved quite easily.

>>11277311
>Nietzsche

Look, mate, Nietzsche was a philosopher and lived on the continent. And what did we say about continental philosophy?

>>11277342
quality picture. i kek'd

>>11282039
>Nietzsche was a philosopher

You wish.

>>11280954
>Deliberate Elitism: Nietzsche never wrote for the masses. He wanted most of all to influence the next creator of values like Jesus or Alexander the Great to do away with our current system of morals.
Can you reconcile this explanation with his Zarathustra? Specifically the subtitle 'A book for All and None'.

>>11281234
>In this sense the Dionysian man has similarities to Hamlet. Both have had a real glimpse into the essence of things. They have understood, and it now disgusts them to act, for their actions can change nothing in the eternal nature of things. They perceive as ridiculous or humiliating the fact that it is expected of them that they should set right a world turned upside down. The knowledge kills action, for action requires a state of being in which we are covered with the veil of illusion. That is what Hamlet has to teach us, not that really venal wisdom about John-a-Dreams, who cannot move himself to act because of too much reflection, too many possibilities, so to speak. It's not a case of reflection. No! The true knowledge, the glimpse into the cruel truth overcomes the driving motive to act, both in Hamlet as well as in the Dionysian man.
Now no consolation has any effect. His longing goes out over the world, even beyond the gods themselves, toward death. Existence is denied, together with its blazing reflection in the gods or an immortal afterlife. In the consciousness of once having glimpsed the truth, man now sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of being; now he understands the symbolism in the fate of Ophelia; now he recognizes the wisdom of the forest
god Silenus. It disgusts him.

>>11277311
ITT: retards beating around the bush about something as simple as 'indirect communication'

Not the best, but certainly the best without spirituality

>>11283071
man fuck that book

>>11283704
really? I thought Keats did a good job

>>11282349
it's not like he excluded "commoners" from reading his books. he knew if he was to become influential, plenty of his readers would be unsubtle and cowardly and only draw from his work the same presuppositions he sought to dispel. nonetheless, there are lessons that anyone could draw from his work to improve themselves. there might only be one person who could effect the cultural shift that he hoped to inspire, but plenty of us "lower" people could learn lessons like eliminating ressentiment from our lives, for instance. the "book for all and none" is partly a jab at himself: Zarathustra is full of lessons that anyone COULD apply to their life, but that no one (or hardly anyone) WILL do (for lack of strength or cowardice or what have you)

>Are all of his fans obnoxious or is his philosophy so pretentious that nobody can actually understand what he meant?
*snap*

>>11280701
>Nietzsche, complex
He's always clear and simple, this isn't the same as unambiguous.

>>11284292
He's clear, but his ideas aren't simple. Look at what his detractors usually say about him. They never get his ideas right.

>>11284147
Good response. To me, in trying to reconcile your statement with the subtitle, you qualified it. Just an observation.
>cultural shift
Can you tell me more about what you think this entails aside from a change in morals? What follows (from a doing away with morals)?

>>11285622
essentially we get rid of most of the herd and the rest is subordinated permanently to a hereditary elite bred by a comittee of free spirits. That’s it. Plato’s Republic but with Laozi’s methodology and absolutely no rights for the herd. Hierarchy is dealt with anarchically. Free spirits can do what they please, as long as they’re prepared to be killed if they cross others. We embrace fate without resorting to God or egalitarianism. No one knows because it hasn’t happened yet

>>11285665
Can you give me a source on where Nietzsche implies all of that?