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More Thoughts on Nietzsche

 
 
nickyludd
00:09 / 14.06.03
Nietzsche & the Nietzsche-icon

W.W. Sawyer in his Mathematicians' Delight remarks that every academic subject has its ghost or shadow, and that most of us learn the shadow; further that this is why most are repelled by mathematics - because they do not encounter it, they "learn" its shadow.

Many major philosophers (using that term in its broadest sense) have a shadow; some have several. By this I mean that their names function as a stand-in or a dummy for a parcel of notions or values which are not grounded in the texts of that writer. I call this shadow an 'icon'. I intend this word to convey two associations:
 
 
—| x |—
04:18 / 14.06.03
And you couldn’t put this in the thread on Nietzsche because…?

I like yer last paragraph—good to be up front about agendas, sometimes. And thanks for the references. I’ll be back.
 
 
nickyludd
04:22 / 14.06.03
Because I thought it was a bit long for a comment, and anyway there have been other threads on N - so not everything on N needs to be in one thread. And the other thread began kindda tentatively - I wanted to not be tentative and .. dammit .. I wanted to start a new thread which advanced a definite view on N.
 
 
iconoplast
05:19 / 14.06.03
I'm pretty sure I disagree, but I'm not sure exactly with what. That is, I'm not sure what you are saying. Nietzsche loved slavery? Liberals love Nietzsche?

I mean... the topic abstract: "Remarks on the liberal falsification of the aplogist for slavery, Nietzsche. Quotes which the liberals ignore and some commentaries ." - I wince at the phrase "the liberals". Mostly because I don't think i've ever heard it used before a phrase that didn't make me wince, so now I just have this pavlov-twitch about it. And calling Nietzsche 'the apologist for slavery'... even calling him an apologist for slavery is an exagerration, if not an outright misstatement.

Then again, saying that you can sum his philosophy up with "put no-one above yourself" is laughable.

I've read a lot of Nietzsche, and consider him one of my favorite philosophers. It's funny - I totally agree with what you said about philosophers casting shadows, and I think it's more true of Nietzsche than anyone else. I'm told his sister actually cut up his writing and glued it back together to make the volume which was published as The Will to Power more nationalistic and more antisemitic. So quotes from that book... I sort of think of it as being written by PseudoNietzsche. In fact, Nietzsche is probably the only philosopher whose shadow actually got a book published.

Nietzsche, it seems to me, is not normatively in favor of anything except experimentation. The Geneology of Morals is a descriptive text, which claims that Good and Evil arose from Good and Bad, when the Slave Morality inverted the values of the Master Morality. I don't believe Nietzsche was on the side of the masters any more than he was on the side of the slaves. Maybe a little. But not entirely.

So I think any work which thinks of Nietzsche as a moralist is essentially at fault. The way I read him, Nietzsche is an Epistemologist. He's attacking the very ideas of Good and Evil, so to argue that he was trying to advance his own notion of Goodness doesn't make sense.

Unfortunately, I think Nietzsche is like the Bible in the following respect: when I went to a SPEP conference, I went to all the talks on Nietzsche, since he was the only figure I felt I knew enough about to understand the lectures. Not once did a speaker use a quote I was familiar with, and they were all using Nietzsche in arguments I'd never heard.

That doesn't mean there wasn't textual evidence in their favor.
 
 
—| x |—
06:43 / 14.06.03
I have placed my response to this thread in the other Nietzsche thread which is in perfectly good working order (the thread, but not necessarily my response!) I more than happy to deal with your view over there: the abstract of that thread says "tell us what you know about Nietzsche" and clearly this is something that you feel you know.
 
 
Jackie Susann
09:01 / 14.06.03
I don't see how your shadow Nietzsche is any better than the other guy's - I assume he had a handful of quotes to back up his reading, too. It seems pretty obvious, without having books at hand to drop citations of my own, that Nietzsche was neither a liberal nor a fascist. The whole drive of his thinking is anti-systemic, reducing it to this or that political line is ridiculous.

Similarly, I think that seeing Marx either as a proponent of equality, of state ownership of the productive apparatus, of major redistribution of income or a theorist of a social order beyond wage-labour are equally unsupported by the bulk of his work. You can read him either way, but mostly he's a political economist offering a relatively novel take on the concept of value.
 
 
nickyludd
10:37 / 14.06.03
My point was precisely that the reading of Marx in the first part of what you embolden is *not* Marx, but his icon, the second is the entire point of his project. There is *no* support for the first in his project. it is just easy and cheap to state that writer x can be read in any old way.

You assume wrongly re the other guy. It is not all ridiculous to claim that Nietzsche has a clear and unambiguous political project. l have given quotes. If you say - again so predictable, that he is 'unsystematic' - then it is up to you to produce contrary textual evidence.

If someone clearly states that they favour slavery, then what more does it take to show that they do indeed favour slavery?
 
 
nickyludd
10:45 / 14.06.03
to iconplast - can't you read? How are those quotes not a defence of slavery. I won't re-cite them. Why can you not see what is in front of you? Is it too embarrassing? It is there clearly in black and white - Nietzche states that a good social order demands hierarchy and slavery. He writes nothing which contradicts those remarks.

You make the usual lying defence that N is unsystematic, rhetorical and so on. This is an imposition on him because liberals cannot face that one of the so-called great philosophers of the last century or so was an apologist for barbarism, and hated the French Revolution, the Paris Commune and the European labour movement.

He also was quite clear that the Jews, with their "slave-morality" were to blame for the socialist movement . Now doesn't that remind you of someone?
 
 
iconoplast
16:13 / 14.06.03
Hey, ludd? Easy there. If this is some personal crusade that you've got an emotional investment in, lemme know. I don't particularly care who "wins" this, I just like talking, and reading, about one of my favorite thinkers. Don't, however, like being called names.

And no, as a matter of fact, I never learned to read. Please don't mock my shortcomings.

Anyway. Apparently I am arguing "The Liberal" side of this, which makes you... whatever. And I'm supposed to support my stance that Nietzsche is unsystematic and rhetorical.

Well, that's almost what I think. Nietzsche wrote aphorisms. For textual support of this, please see The Gay Science, pages... well, all of them. Except the poetry. Aphorisms are like being 'rhetorical', except saying that Nietzsche was rhetorical doesn't make sense. Saying that Nietzsche wrote aphorisms means that his message was not one that could be explicitly formulated.

In On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense, Nietzsche says:

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.(12th paragraph down)

I don't think Nietzsche is unsystematic. I think he is asystematic. I think he is attacking systmatic philosophies and the idea of deductive logic. And to take such a stance, outside of the accepted discourse of reason, means that he can't use deductive logic to defend it. Hence, aphorisms.

I... I'll be honest. I'm not sure what the argument is about. Am I trying to prove I know how to read? That I'm not stupid? That I'm not a liberal? I just wanted to make the case that Nietzsche is too complicated and nuanced a thinker to be pigeonholed either behind the phrase 'put nothing above yourself', nor behind 'the apologist for slavery.'
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:12 / 14.06.03
I'm moving to lock this thread, and suggest that discussion on Nietzsche continue here. I also suggest that people try to keep a civil tone. Just because uncle Friedrich was a a shouty man with an enormous moustache, you don't have to be one as well to make sure he likes you.