I'm sure I share a love for literature and reading with you. There are all manner of books and authors I would like to read. One of them is Friedrich Nietzsche. Now of course I oppose Nietzsche simply on the basis of his anti-Christianity and tendency towards nihilism and subjectivity, evidenced by his rejection of God as the Divine Logos. I do however, based on my very limited knowledge, believe that Nietzsche in his worldview acknowledges certain truths about human behavior and motivation. Mainly in the idea of "The Will to Power". Whether or not I am wrong, right, or ignorant about the matter, I would like to read him for myself.
I come asking for advice on the subject. For those who have read his work, what should I read, what order should I read it in, is there anything I should know about him beforehand, etc…
Since my being confirmed Catholic a couple of weeks ago, I have felt as though a new chapter in my life has been reached. Presently I am a somewhat aimless, unmotivated, lanklet who struggles with mortal sin. However, I am on track to make efforts to fix it by God's help. Reading more is a part of this effort. Reading Nietzsche may be a part of this effort. At any rate, I appreciate your input. I will attempt to respond as much as I can.
People are more moved by his rhetoric than philosophy, I think.
Nolan Morales
I have heard that he was a bit more of a polemicist than anything
Justin White
If he didn't want to be judged based on his writings, he should have wrote it differently. In any case, while Neech's philosophy makes some sense in an Atheist world, in normal Christian terms it's just grand-standing.
His rhetorical flourishes remind me of a bit of Martin Luther though.
Carson Perez
Read Ecclesiastes
Isaiah Green
I think you're mistaken if you believe Nietzsche believed in any regularities in human behavior besides those implied by physiology. Somewhere in Beyond Good and Evil (I think) he suggests something along the lines that even the "Will to Power" is an equivocal concept, an arbitrary grouping of distinct individual wills. I guess what "power" meant to him in that expression was undefined.
Frankly, I don't see any other reason to read Nietzsche except in order to realize that you didn't actually want to read him, and at this point, I don't trust the opinions of anyone who is anything but indifferent about him. Because there's just nothing to be opinionated about. He would have been a blip in the history of philosophy if not for Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book which doesn't appeal to people philosophically.
Ayden Brown
I respect Nietzsche because even though he was virulently anti-Christian he also had the intellectual honesty to admit that without it the inevitable conclusion is nihilism. He rejected Christianity but he also acknowledged the deep problems that rejection led to and spent his life trying to find a solution. Unlike modern atheists who don't acknowledge any problems with their worldview at all and who fall prey to utopian socialist type thinking that we can create heaven on Earth if only we had the right socio-economic system.
Modern atheists aren't worthy to lace up Nietzsche's shoes let alone pretend they're the rightful inheritors of his atheistic philosophies.
Jordan Brown
Cioran had the best Neech criticism: he was fundamentally projecting his own inferiority complex
Robert Hernandez
Did he say so indifferently?
Isaiah Foster
put the music on mute
Aaron Gomez
Interestingly, I think he took the whole Will to Power schtick from Kierkegaard (or rather, he adopted just about all existentialist thought from him, as did many others). It was Keirkegaard who first illustrated this sort of "force of personality" against the world, but he applied it in terms of faith instead. He called this man the "Knight of Faith" (rather than the "Ubermensch" of Nietzsche). And his model was none other than Abraham and the story of sacrificing Isaac. I'm not big on Protestants, but he's an exception. It's good writing.. good biblical commentary on what might've been going through Abraham's head and how he fought off all fears and took this leap of faith.
What other existentialists did is simply remove Keirkegaard's Christian beliefs and try to adopt them to their own empty views.
Connor Peterson
That's the impression I get. I never bought the notion that he was the sort to encourage or give into nihilism, it's a matter of what his conclusions were in relation to it to a certain extent.
Henry Murphy
Hadn't even realized he was a Christian until now
Angel Rodriguez
The Will to Power is meant to be, almost explicitly, a turn on Schopenhauer's concept of a Will to Live. Nietzsche's idea was roughly that an organism merely aiming at survival would be aiming too low, evolutionarily speaking.
Jonathan Wood
Indeed, he was a Lutheran. But very critical of the organized church in his day. And they didn't like him much either.
Angel Roberts
Ah, fair enough. I know that he influenced all of them in general, but I saw parallels here too, so assumed this was another influence.
On a sidenote, I think it'd be fair if people removed Joel Osteen from that one meme for Protestants and replace it with Keirkegaard. It's only fair.
Joshua Rodriguez
The degree to which philosophers actually influence one another is probably overstated. But in this case, it is a very explicitly influence, since Nietzsche himself acknowledges Schopenhauer as a "master" in some works, though he later on (in Ecce Homo) recognizes that his own understanding Schopenhauer's philosophy was somewhat idiossincratic, and that to some degree he idolized himself, and not Schopenhauer.
Juan Perry
wasn't cioran the ultimate pessimist?
Henry Anderson
I bought beyond good and evil but I haven't read it yet. I only found out after buying it that you're supposed to study nietzche before reading his work, otherwise it's too hard to understand. Is that true for all his writings? What am I supposed to study if not his own text?
Kinda, I simply just enjoy his rhetorical style. Some of his writings are a bit too over-the-top to take seriously. I will say Cioran's secular observations on literature are excellent.
Jack Allen
I mean, I say that because after reading "short story of decay" that's the impression I got
Ethan Hill
Most people here don’t really seem to understand Nietzsche, he wasn’t a nihilist in the traditional sense of the word and he wasn’t really that edgy and many of the things about him being really autistic or an incel are just made up or baseless.
He had a pragmatic approach to logic and knowledge meaning he didnt see the underlying assumptions as existing in some sort of absolute or objective way they were just as likely in his eyes to be “useful errors”.
Given this starting point he analyzes psychology and values rather than the objective nature of things and truth. He puts forward the truth as something pragmatic, emergent from our varying perspectives. He argued our truths betray underlying values and assumptions.
When it comes to the will to power it’s much more accurate to depict it as a mapping of internal conflict, competing drives and wills, mapped externally onto existence. He views our subjective experiences of these things, these mappings based on our internal world to be more true than propositional truth claims getting at the essence of this or that thing. He doesn’t buy into those claims for him the appearances are all there are, the world is what we make on it. And also that’s not allowing for infinite possibilities because he viewed us as bound by a sort of historical sense and the constraints of style/aesthetics. He didn’t view Christianity as wholly awful he viewed it as a past tempering constraint that would be a dead end. He didn’t argue for “master morality” he argued we should transcend the values of the past and transcend them, having learned from them.
I think if you start with his epistemology it all makes perfect sense, but as a Roman Catholic I start from making those claims about Truth, essences, the objective nature of things. I don’t have a pragmatic view of Truth and I think there is real objectivity in the world. My basis for this is transcendental arguments, a logical coherence view of truth, as well as an inherent intuitional trust in Reason. Each worldview follows from its view on knowledge and what we’re willing to accept as true. I personally think a scholastic or neo-scholastic view is more intuitive, more coherent and more likely and I have Faith in God and belief in my worldview the worldview helps me reason it all out.
We should engage with his ideas honestly and not throw out what’s good in it, but also be able to see the root assumptions that lead him to deviate from us as Christians. I’d recommend the Kaufman translations (with the exception of Zarathustra the Common one is better for that). The Gay Science is a good book for getting a better view of his more personal beliefs and a wide variety of them. Don’t let them pull you away from God though, there are Christian responses to all of it.
We aren't saying that he was, we're saying that nihilism is the natural conclusion of his philosphy and he was foolish for thinking otherwise. Also
Jackson Carter
Nietzsche is a brainlet and he winnie the poohed up the whole world but if you insist on reading him start with his Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil.
Angel Murphy
Good points, never thought about it that way
Nietzsche claims not to be a nihilist, but really he was one. Also the residue of faith contaminates his thought; his dichotomy between master and slave morality and Dionysian versus Apollonian are both attempts to escape hard questions of faith and reason by exalting the unreasonable and mythic.
No wonder his philosophy was so fruitful for fascist thinkers; it gives one the easy escape of saying that unreason sometimes cannot be questioned because it is Dionysian, or it is "master morality." It doesn't matter that it is illogical and wasteful to do something according to this view, all that matters is that Achilles would have done it thus.
The same can be said for religion on Nietzsche's view; the gods cannot be questioned from a position of unbelief. Doing so diminishes the Dionysian in favour of the Apollonian, and leads to an irretrievable crisis. So we must live by taboos and superstition because we are incapable of anything greater. Apparently our brains bake if we follow Jesus in challenging superstition and idolatry, and we must do obeisance to savage and cruel idols rather than think outside our limits.
It seems also to appeal to the savage side of the German ethos, the side that still betrays that they are a converted people who used to practice human sacrifice, and who are secretly resentful of civilization, regarding it as "Jewish."
This pretty much lol I wonder if during ancient times they had to deal with the same philosophical paradigms, though less propagated because there was no printing press.
Gabriel Peterson
When I said most people here don't know what they're talking about with it I didn't mean everybody, but I still think it's stupid to call him a nihilist when his entire body of work is based in escaping the trap of nihilism. Now obviously as Christians we'd say because there objectively really is a God you can't be anything but a nihilist/deluded without acceptance of that truth because whatever you're shooting for or worshipping isn't really there.
But that's just assuming our point. To engage with the ideas we should look at what he's starting from. I would agree he's a nihilist insofar as anyone who doesn't believe in God is, but he's not really a nihilist in the standard or traditional sense.
But yeah I agree with the second quote there as well. His critiques and psychological analyses are perhaps the most interesting part of his philosophy because the positive structures he puts forward the actual solutions and beliefs are oftentimes entirely insufficient or vague. In his defense though he considered a lot of it to be a sort of prelude to future philosophy, not complete in and of itself.
Yeah I think you've pointed out the fundamental problem which is the denial of logic, logocentrism, a hierarchical arrangement to existence and the world. And he is still too trapped in Christian framing. His idea of the appollonian eventually just gets dropped altogether and becomes the Christian, and his ubermensch becomes closer and closer to conception of the antichrist as he clarifies it.
He seeks to transcend even Achilles and the master moralists and all of that but what's really left. The State is grotesque idol to him, religion is entirely corrupt in his view, and there's no solace to be found in the herd or community or love or whatever it might be. All you're really left with to strive for is what, painting pictures? It becomes absurd when you actually think it out to its logical conclusion.
He was still too attached to traditional framings, too bound by them I agree, and so are all of us.
Lucas Wilson
I think they're all coming back to square one. Boomers are the deluded utopians, and just about on their last leg with nothing but destruction and disappointment as their legacy. I think the jig is up at this point. There's a few in the younger crowd that repeat the same delusion, but I think there's a stronger undercurrent of hopelessness..or at least struggle. Not that annoying optimism.
Dominic Reyes
Nietzche's whole worldview starts from the assumption of "there is no God." From there he attempts to build up a replacement for God and morality that could keep society and mankind running in the absence of religion. In other words, all of philosophical thoughts are only relevant in a hypothetical world where God doesn't exist. In the real world, where God does exist, his works are completely irrelevant and useless. There is literally no reason for a Christian to be reading Nietzche.
Levi Scott
Questions such as whether the world actually contains any meaning to begin with. The Dionysian versus Apollonian dichotomy effectively says that we need myths, no matter how irrational they are; we need the Dionysian, and its primitive and rustic superstitions, or our mind melts, or we are drained of some virile energy by thinking too hard/trying to push superstition to the fringes.
You see, this view totally obviates thinking; ignorance is strength according to Nietzsche. It's totally Orwellian. If you know the story of Bel and the Dragon from the Apocrypha, Nietzsche seems to be saying that unless the priests of Bel are allowed to defraud the Assyrians continually by secretly eating the offerings to their god by cover of night, then the Assyrians will lose their Dionysian element, be drained of the retard-juice which allows for cultural strength, and will slowly disintegrate as a people. This is not philosophy, it is sophistry and circular reasoning; the Assyrians derive cultural strength from ignorance, therefore ignorance is good for the Assyrians, because the Assyrians derive cultural strength from ignorance.
Nietzsche never approaches the question of whether the Dionysian element is predicated on a real experience of God about which one can have a firm and reasonable conception, and therefore understand the difference between true religion and abuse, like the prophet Daniel did in the story of Bel.
Logan Peterson
Christianity is a religion whose main theme is hypocrisy. There cannot be a Christ without an antichrist.
Brody Walker
tips fedora
Adam Carter
Nietzsche > yhwh
Dylan Thomas
Are you coming from any specific philosophical current, or are these just thoughts that occurred to you during reading?
Evan Green
I don't know if I have a philosophical school. Before conversion I played around with as many as I could acquaint myself to, but really nowadays I hope only to master generic common sense, predicated on the truth of the Gospels.
I'm basically working from memory, but it wasn't that long ago that I read Nietzsche.
Anthony Reyes
Why don't you read Saint Augustine first? Hitler read Nietzsche and look how he ended up. Nietzsche wrote Nietzsche and he ended up even worse.
be a Catholic to escape neech's innate lutheran conflict
Liam Parker
Yes but the problem is that a significant number of people fall prey to the idea that their existential angst is simply caused by capitalism or the wrong political system. They can't find purpose but they delude themselves into thinking that if we just reform society enough then everything will be fine.
Secular society breeds hopelessness but the secularists think it's simply because we don't have the perfect society yet, not because a secular view of life is profoundly at odds with the human need for spirituality and communion with the divine.
