/lit/ - Literature

>>6662276
died a slow humiliating death, the irony

Maybe if you read his books you'll find out.

>>6662276
Read Stephen Zweig's "Nietzsche" to find out, great book. It's on libgen.

>>6662313
nietzsche the philosopher and nietzsche the man are two very different ppl

>And the most important singe clue about Zarathustra is that it is the work of an utterly lonely man.

>He is shy, about five-foot-eight, but a little stooped, almost blind, reserved, unaffected, and especially polite; he lives in modest boarding houses in Sils Maria, Nizza, Mentone, Rome, Turin. Carefully the myopic man sits down to a table; carefully, the man with the sensitive stomach considers every item on the menu: whether the tea is not too strong, the food not spiced too much, for every mistake in his diet upsets his sensitive digestion, and every transgression in his nourishment wreaks havoc with his quivering nerves for days. No glass of wine, no glass of beer, no alcohol, no coffee at his place, no cigar and no cigarette after his meal, nothing that stimulates, refreshes, or rests him: only the short meager meal and a little urbane, unprofound conversation in a soft voice with an occasional neighbor (as a man speaks who for years has been unused to talking and is afraid of being asked too much).

>And up again into the small, narrow, modest, coldly furnished chambre garnie, where innumerable notes, pages, writings, and proofs are piled up on the table, but no flower, no decoration. Back in a corner, a heavy and graceless wooden trunk, his only possession, with the two shirts and the other worn suit. Otherwise only books and manuscripts, and on a tray innumerable bottles and jars and potions: against the migraines, which often render him all but senseless for hours, against his stomach cramps, against spasmodic vomiting, against the slothful intestines, and above all the dreadful sedatives against his insomnia, chloral hydrate and Veronal. A frightful arsenal of poisons and drugs, yet the only helpers in the empty silence of this strange room in which he never rests except in brief and artificially conquered sleep. Wrapped in his overcoat and a woolen scarf (for the wretched stove smokes only and does not give warmth), his fingers freezing, his double glasses pressed close to the paper, his hurried hand writes for hours -- words the dim eyes can hardly decipher. For hours he sits like this and writes until his eyes burn.

>>6662318
The words of an idiot.

>>6662323
>five foot eight
fucking manlet lmao

>>6662323

>>6662323
>shy

really? he doesnt seem shy in his writing

>>6662323

>>6662345
RARE

>>6662323
I think this might have had an impact on his outlook

Why does no one ever post his best picture?
He was handsome as fuck in his prime.

>>6662344
Well, yeah, but that's where his carefulness in writing comes in. He was a philologist in training, after all; he knows very well how to write for different audiences and for different effects.

Intelligent Nihilistic and a wicked sense of humour

>>6662382
that's a picture of nietzsche not a picture of me

>>6662370
looks more like chekhov tbh

>“In assessing Nietzsche’s condition I have long been reminded of identical or very similar experiences with young men of great intellectual ability. Seeing them laid low by similar symptoms, I discovered all too certainly that these were the effects of masturbation [by hiding under their bed, perhaps]. Ever since I observed Nietzsche closely, guided by such experiences, all his traits of temperament and characteristic habits have transformed my fear into a conviction.”

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/ber-clench_of_the_bermensch_Nietzsche_and_Masturbation

>>6662410
Nope, Nietzsche was a sexual ascetic.

>>6662370
Now I understand why they call him edgy homo and the gay science man

>>6662414
Not what Wagner said after hanging out with him for years. He mocked Nietzsche for being a vegetarian who fapped too much.

>>6662727
>Wagner
>Telling truth
Nietzsche criticized him in his books so hard on his books so Wagner got so mad.

>>6662745
Are you this retarded in real life or are you just internet stupid?

I don't understand how people like you can go through life on such a basic level of awareness and knowledge.

>>6662808
>Ad hominem

>>>/b/

>>6662808
worthless rhetoric

>>6662745
>criticized him in his books so hard
That only proves Nietzsche was the butthurt beta faggot.

>>6662834
>Being not logical

>>>/b/

>>6662892
It's being a pussy. Saying he isn't a beta faggot for having to his pen to write tirades against a guy is like saying Dante wasn't a beta faggot who wrote Christian fanfiction punishing people he didn't like and idolizing a girl he barely knew.

Accept he was a brilliant beta faggot and you are his not so brilliant bitch.

>>6662323
Who suffered more for us, Friedrich or Jesus?

>>6662370
He was, wasn't he?

>>6662323

>tfw Hitler suffered the same ailments

>>6662370
because that is edited

>>6663415
>tfw you will never be Hitler

>>6662323

Guess all the plebs who replied to you either haven't read Zarathustra, or didn't get the definitive Kaufman translation. Recognised that classic description from the first 6 words.

>>6663552
Wow congrats dude. You must be an ubermensch like me :)

>>6662276
The fact he's holding a katana is proof that otaku culture is the closest to Übermenschheit anyone has come.

>>6662344

>he hasn't seen hegel dialectics about internal and external appearances

shiggdiddyy

>>6662276

Read his personal correspondence.

It's fascinating.

You discover that his literary persona was almost a schtick... Nietzsche in his personal life was extraordinarily polite, sensitive, and almost effeminate. He may have even been gay,

>>6664787
So which philosopher was the biggest asshole in person? Marx?

>atheist
>katana
>edgy prose
>that mustache
For me it's Kefka- intelligent, nihilistic, and with a wicked sense of humor.

>>6663579
>katana
I want to believe this is bait. I choose to believe. Well baited.

>>6664816
Wittgenstein was a dick to everyone, but in that hilarious Hugh Laurie fashion.

>>6662276
>original fedora

>>6663552
>translation

>>6662276
A romantic betafag

>>6662327
It's pretty silly because it would make him significantly above average for the time and place. That's what you get with modern biographers ignorant of the environment where their subject lived.

>>6664924
But he didn't say it like he was short. If anything the "but" in "but a little stooped" implies that he was tall, but a bit hunched over so that he was shorter in reality.

>>6662327
>>6664924
>>6664935
I didn't know I was on /fit/.

They have a crazy obsession about height, shit's weird.

>>6662370

Is that actually Nietzsche?????

I have never encountered this pic before and I have searched "rare Nietzsche pictures" many times,

>>6664816
Rousseau by far. He wrote a famous treatise on education while abandoning his five children who all died of ill treatment and starvation.

>>6663552
>Kaufman
>Left-wing translation

Die.

>>6664943
manlet detected

jk, fit have warped themselves into all things being ranked in numbers. all things. usually bigger numbers better

>>6664816
Diogenes.
>disrupts Plato's lectures and publicly humiliates him
>masturbates in public, takes a shit in a theater
>some guy invites him into a nice house and tells him not to spit on the floor, so he spits in the guy's face instead

>>6662323

Have you guys ever noticed that many people who speak about God and righteousness, about doing good and loving humanity, about helping others and ending suffering, about equality and simplicity and morality, that those people are a lot of times old gamblers, drinkers, brothel-visitors, egotists and controlling-fanatics? Example: Tolstoy.

And on the other side, a lot of people who speak that they don’t care about humanity, that morals are non-existent, that there are superior human beings that should rule the inferior ones, that all religions are lies designed to please the weak and enrich the smart: that people like this are often shy, reclusive, kind, respectful and gentle? Like Nietzsche was, for example.

I have never encountered any atheist that was actually a person deprived of morals and who treated people and animals as they pleased. However I have encountered a lot of “deeply religious” people who acted like fanatics and had the words “punishment” and “salvation” on their mouths in every bunch of words, but who were criminals, immoral-rascals and denerates in the past, and even committed crimes and injustices after they “converted”.

>>6664978
What I've always loved is how you have Schopenhauer vs. Nietzsche, Will-denying vs. Will-affirmation. And how did they come to these views? Shoppy through success and fucking loads of bitches. Yet he turns pessimist. Then you have Nietzsche who's incredibly lonely, total virgin, awful torture chamber of a body, and rejected by academia. And he turns positive and upwards.

So fascinating.

>>6662370
2nding
is this really him

this is what I was talking about:

>>6664945

On my post: >>6664978


No wonder that Tolstoy loved Rousseau:Both of them had an abstract love for humanity, for that word and concept “humanity”, but couldn’t even treat their families and close ones with love and respect.

Every major moralist must be carefully observed: a lot of times they sculpt this shell of wordy moral-codes and cloudy ethics to protect the monsters of egoism that lie inside.

>>6663552
>translation
plebbus maximus

>>6665005
Might this not partly be because Schopenhauer was comfortable and could afford to let his pessimism parasite his spirit while Nietzsche would not survive the additional burden, so he threw it aside?

>>6664978
because as the saying goes "with god everything is permitted"

But I still think you are overgeneralizing and there are countless examples of the contrary.

>>6664816
Aquinas

>>6664978
By atheist i guess you mean those that came to atheism through self-reflection. Because the atheist-by-default average Westerner/East-Asian is a terrible person.

>>6665038
>"with god everything is permitted"

For protestants maybe.

>>6665038
>with god everything is permitted
I'm not permitted to fly unaided, therefore there is no god.

>>6665152
Almost every atheist in the western world was brought up Christian.

>>6663427

He was a man who saw all works of art as divided between those works which represent the naturally chaotic and those which represent the artificially orderly.

>>6665171
No one in Europe is brought up Christian as far as I know.

>>6662276
according to kaufmann he was extremely difficult, almost insufferable.

>>6665369
Kaufman is a cunt who distorted Nietzsche's more anti-PC views.

>>6665378
I hear this meme all tge time,,did he leave stuff out or what?

>>6664978
Yes, some people are hypocritical assholes and there are losers with strong views. Shocker.

>>6663552
Kaufman didn't like Zarathustra. That intro is pure polemic.

N would go for walks in the mountains and formulated the idea of eternal return on one such hike.

>>6664944
google "Nietzsche" and its on the first image page

>>6665256
Tbh that one looks even more editted

>>6665439
just like those images of Stirner on the first page

Another classic Nietzsche

>>6662323
>For hours he sits like this and writes until his eyes burn.

lol what the fuck, did this motherfucker stare at him through a window all night?

But it's not hard to believe at all that Nietzsche was close to that whole description. After all, one must need to be strong in order to become strong. His writing is stronger than anyone else's so it's no surprise that his body was weaker than everyone else's. But he wasn't weak to the point of incompetent, and obviously he never let his weaknesses overtake him. That is the sign of serious strength.

>>6665345
Godless libertines, the whole lot

>>6665533
nice tripdubdubs

>>6665345
>>6665533
I'm a freedomstani, but I don't believe this is true. Maybe it's accurate for people in places like London and Paris, but for the most part people in Europe do still identify as Christian. I don't think they would identify that way if they had serious exposure to (organized) Christianity.

>>6665390
He just doesn't want to admit that Nietzsche would have despised the left

>>6665345
>>6665533
I'm a freedomstani, but I don't believe this is true. Maybe it's accurate for people in places like London and Paris, but for the most part people in Europe do still identify as Christian. I don't think they would identify that way if they had serious exposure to (organized) Christianity.

>>6665583
Nietzsche would've despised the contemporary right too.

>>6665390
Kaufmann understood Nietzsche to the extent that he saw:

1) that Nietzsche's use by the European political Right after his death was based in part on selective reading of Nietzsche, and also the work of his anti-Semitic sister who put together The Will to Power (taken as his ultimate work) in a completely selective and self-serving way.

2) That Nietzsche was a hard writer to understand, but that he was in fact a careful planner, and that reading him to understand him required carefully looking at how subjects were differently treated throughout a given work, and how the placement of the aphorisms affected his arguments.

3) He was under no illusion that Nietzsche would have agreed with the political Left that Kaufmann sympathized with, but his sympathies with the Left often prevented him from doing exactly what he rightly outlined was the right way to understand Nietzsche; he remained too suspicious of Nietzsche, and couldn't personally stomach working through and understanding works as difficult as Zarathustra.

Bothering to read Nietzsche instead of the Greeks or Maccabees or a biography of Charlemagne or Attila or Suleiman or Napoleon means that you are likely the wrong type anyway

>>6664944
>I have searched "rare Nietzsche pictures" many times,
i know you're lying but i still love this mental image. it really makes me happy.

>>6665688
Aristocratic radicalism doesn't sound leftist at all to me, and that's what Nietzsche called his own project.

>>6665688
>at Nietzsche's use by the European political Right after his death was based in part on selective reading of Nietzsche, and also the work of his anti-Semitic sister who put together The Will to Power (taken as his ultimate work) in a completely selective and self-serving way.
Nietzsche is unapologetically right wing.

Why are the Nietzsche threads on /lit/ so terrible?

>>6667122
Why is your post such shitty bait?

>>6662370
>>6662405
>>6664944
That's Ravachol, nigga was ubermensch as fuck

>>6667060
Nietzsche was trying to erase greek metaphysics from his work. He might've begin as a hardcore Aristotelic, but by the end, he's starting Heidi's project to turn back to the pre-socratics in an attempt to create a new understanding of philosophy

>>6667089
>anti-nationalism
>anti-racism
>right wing

I'm deeply against the whole "nietzsche was a libertarian" mindset, but he wasn't a conservative either, if anything, he saw both as the fruit of poisonous, dialectical occidental thought

>>6667122
Because either people haven't read him, or they have wildly (sometimes mildly) distorted interpretation. Usually the latter is from the left, and is due to academics and readers who want to appropriate Nietzsche as a leftist. And while a lot of his ideas are indeed useful and applicable to leftism, the rest and overall is, as said by the other anon, 'unapologetically right wing.'

>>6667193
>Nietzsche was trying to erase greek metaphysics from his work. He might've begin as a hardcore Aristotelic, but by the end, he's starting Heidi's project to turn back to the pre-socratics in an attempt to create a new understanding of philosophy

What does that have to do with 'aristocratic radicalism?'

>>6667193
>but he wasn't a conservative either, if anything, he saw both as the fruit of poisonous, dialectical occidental thought

Conservative in what sense? For anything to be great, he argues explicitly that it must develop conservatively, I.E., in the state of constant flux, all things change and thus nothing can grow to greatness.

If you mean he would oppose the typical right wingers of today, of course, but that's some low-hanging fruit.

Also, actually read what he said on nationalism. I'm so fucking tired of people saying he was "anti-nationalist", when most accurately what he's describing is multiculturalism. Nietzsche thought an all-encompassing, dominating empire (e.g. Rome) was good. Nationalism kept people fighting over petty, small things and fractious over nothing. So it's literally a form of identity politics (I'm a German! I'm a woman!) he's arguing against, not strength and force within a nation.

As for racism, he isn't. He says the Jews are crafty and exploitative, but the Germans should LEARN from their greatness, not kill them.

Seriously, ACTUALLY READ HIM. READ THE WORDS.

>>6667323
>>6667193
Also, Nietzsche is a virtue ethicist. It's enlightening when you recognize that.

>>6667060
I...didn't say that Nietzsche was leftist?

>>6667089
I didn't say that he didn't have rightist sympathies or sentiments; this is not the same as saying that he would have ever appreciated the German political Right's appropriation of him.

>>6667353
>I didn't say that he didn't have rightist sympathies or sentiments; this is not the same as saying that he would have ever appreciated the German political Right's appropriation of him.
Right, saying "the Nazis and Nietzsche were perfectly compatible" and "the Nazis and Nietzsche were perfectly incompatible" are both faulty and too simple.

Great job, let's move on to the synthesis now that we've cleared that up.

>>6667193
Nietzsche's project has nothing to do with Heidegger's. The pre-Socratics *are* key to him, but that ignores how integral Plato is as well. Aphorism 7 and the second to last aphorism in Beyond Good and Evil suggests how close he is to them; they're both followers of Dionysus.

>>6667353
>I...didn't say that Nietzsche was leftist?

Sorry, you're right. I misread your post.

>>6667337
Absolutely. Gotta be careful that people don't take it in the Aristotelian sense, with his metaphysics and telos and all.

>>6667337
>virtue ethicist

what virtues did he prescribe?

>>6667449
He prescribes virtue ethics in itself -- making your life into a work of art, living beautifully and by your own Will -- and how to go about doing it -- amoral (in the capital Morality sense, not no morality whatsoever), overcoming, living in the physical world (lack of ideals and a beyond-world), creation. Prescribing the virtues themselves would defeat the point of finding your own way, you're just supposed to go about your own values and morality as a virtue ethicist would.

>>6667449
>what virtues did he prescribe?
This guy >>6667463 is right, just virtue ethics. Consider again the evolutionary idea: that which exists, has to exert itself to exist, to die out is to be nothing. It's kind of an overarching metaphysics. Ergo, any principle, living through you, that persists is intrinsically good, and such principles are virtues. That's why he advocates self mastery, but not self mastery in itself.

>>6662316
how the fuck do you use libgen? it comes up with nothing every time i search for anything

>>6667515
That's my bad, I spelled Stefan Zweig's name wrong.

Here it is: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=ca8d532300abcbeb7f7f3a6c2d1d9416

The greentext posted early in this thread is an excerpt from the book. The parts on Holderlin and Kleist are amazing too if you're into them, but it's worth reading for Nietzsche's alone.

>>6667529
thanks champ, much appreciated!

>>6667599
No problem, always happy to share lesser known works. Plus, when you fall in love with Zweig's style -- I promise it'll happen -- check out his fiction too: The Post Office Girl is a good start.

>>6667626
will def check out

>>6667204
Ha, that's what I thought too. When I read like one passage by him. But it proves it was certainly an intentional effect on his part.

i distinctly remember that my philosophy teacher in high school told us he used to dress up as a woman and dance around the house, and was caught by several housekeepers. but he lied about a ton of things philosophy related (as i learned in subsequent years), and was also a fucking idiot that put epic atheist memes on class handouts

You guys should read When Nietzsche Wept

>>6664957
Alpha as phuck.