What are your thoughts on Nietzsche?

[Mr.Shadow]

I have been reading "Basic Writings Of Nietzsche".
What are your thoughts on this individual.

[Dan Rowden]

Short answer: brilliant. Long answer: ain't got time for that.

One of the greatest thinkers of the western tradition. You'd have to raise a specific issue; there's just too much to talk about otherwise.

[Pye]

Read The Gay Science.

Nietzsche is brilliant. He's so brilliant, that at some point, one realizes that they must overcome him, too . . . .

[Mr.Shadow]

The Birth of Tragedy
Seventy-Five Aphorisms From Five Volumes
Beyond Good And Evil
On The Genealogy Of Morals
The Case Of Wagner
Ecce Homo
These are the books that I have.

[Dan Rowden]

That's great. What aspect of Nietzsche's thought did you want to address?

[Mr.Shadow]

I am having a hard time grasping the whole damn book.
I stopped mid way through good and evil.
It seems to me there is just rambling on about many subject in this book.
It has been hard for me to follow for sure.
Im not sure I am reading with as much an open mind as I should.

[Dan Rowden]

To be candid, I think Nietzsche is a little beyond your capacities at this time.

[Alex Jacob]

"Now the rainman gave me two cures,
Then he said, "Jump right in."
The one was Texas medicine,
The other was just railroad gin.
An' like a fool I mixed them
An' it strangled up my mind,
An' now people just get uglier
An' I have no sense of time.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again."

---Bob Dylan, Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

[Mr.Shadow]

Dan Rowden You maybe right about that one for sure.
But hey Im trying lol.

[Dan Rowden]

Agreed.

[Dan Rowden]

Please tell me this isn't the extent of what you intent to bring to the place?

[divine focus]

To be candid, I think Nietzsche is a little beyond your capacities at this time.

Beyond capacity, or beyond interest? It may not matter enough to get. Everyone has their own direction.

[Dan Rowden]

If you cannot remotely grasp Nietzsche, you're not ready for him.

[Animus]

I've never read Nietzsche.

Last night I plowed through David Quinn's The Wisdom of the Infinite which totally transformed my perception. Well.. not totally, a lot of it I already grasped. It took me 6 hours of reading and another two hours of additional contemplation. Apart from the odd "No one says..." here and there I found little to argue about. And even where Quinn says "No one says..." the points are rather obvious or are supported by better arguments. So... on the whole, I found nothing wrong with the material. Afterwards I got thinking that I could no longer think about Reality even in the terms Quinn uses, because they are another arbitration of consciousness. This quickly led to the realization that I can't even think at all... and then... infinite emptiness.

Would Nietzsche be appropriate at this point?

[Dan Rowden]

He might be. Try his most famous book and see what you think:

Thus Spake Zarathustra

[Animus]

Thanks Dan. The Prologue is very interesting!

This Zarathustra character is related to Ahura Mazda if I remember correctly.

[Dan Rowden]

Yes, Zarathustra is the originator of what we know as "Zoroastrianism". Ahura Mazda is to that tradition what Brahman is to Hinduism. I don't recall why Nietzsche used the name Zarathustra for his character, or if anyone really even knows.

[Animus]

Zarathustra it seems is the proverbial thinker, but he also reflects Nietzsche's own life in the mountains. A lot of parallels here.

I haven't made it far through the book, as I've spent some time associating myself with his journey to better interpret his musings.

This concept of the Uebermensch (Over-man/Super-man) makes a lot of sense, but I can see how it might be misinterpreted and the man thought insane. That's just how insane most of us actually are, that we fail to recognize sanity regardless of its efforts to make itself seen. Regardless of it's truth, we can't detach ourselves from the comparison that naturally occurs. That is, we tend to see others as inferior in mind and thus have nothing to offer us. One would be apt to say Nietsche's morality is inferior at the onset and ignore the steps taken to get there. Consequently never realizing the genius.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

IIRC, Nietzsche only used Zoroaster because good and evil are prominent features of Zoroastrian tradition. There wasn't much more to it than that: Zoroaster was Nietzsche's mouthpiece.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

While the book should not be approached too analytical, Nietzsche wrote each of the three parts after all in ten days without any later editing or publishing in his lifetime, it's not difficult to find the countless references to religious symbols throughout the book.

Also, Zoroaster [in its Greek form literally: clear star] can be seen as the earliest founding figure of the current mono-theist religions and corresponding religious morality. Like Christ he too received some form of enlightenment at the age of thirty. Nietzsche had a good eye for irony, a truly cynical eye, so to use the archetypal made-up religious sage to preach a re-evaluation of all things sacred, a conversion, would seem to him entirely appropriate.

And it's true, Nietzsche can be identified with his literary character to a certain extent. Apart from Nietzsche's love for walking at higher altitudes during much of his thinking in that period, the rising up to and coming down from mountain tops is also the universal philosophical movement.

[1otherS]

Why do we need to come down to the bottom again?

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Why do we need to come down to the bottom again?

What's originally meant here is that it's more a matter of how far ones cup flows over, if one is in a state of richness or poverty. There's no need as such to share from the position of wealth but it happens quite naturally, all depending on circumstance.

Why would anyone want to stay at the top, any top? What's keeping him there? Why does he still care?

[1otherS]

Why go back to the dregs when you've made it to cleanness?

[Animus]

My self is somewhat attached to my social status, but I don't care.

[Dan Rowden]

Why do we need to come down to the bottom again?

Who said you ever left.