Question: What language (dialect) of German did this Nietzsche do his writing in? I know, his "sister" did some of the 'glossing over' (interpreted) on his latter works, as his 'mental condition' sank...
And just who, in particular, translated his works into what form of "English"... was it British English or what?
I don't care if he wrote his works by the light of kerosene, candles, wood stoves, fluorescent lamps, or starlight.
All this quibbling over Nietz said this, meant that, hugged horses, ate psycho drugs by the handful whatever. Can you dig it?
Dialect of German language to...? Any one "authority" oversaw the translation into...
ps- quite sincere here, folks.
Tomas
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Prominent scholars spent years digging in the Nietzsche archive, and checking what his Nazi sister changed in Will to power, which was not too hard to spot I guess, as she couldn't understand basic logical concepts, as the tutor she hired to explain her her brother's philosophy, reported.
Dialect of German? Don't know.
He was the most original thinker of modern age imo, but his allegorical, poetic, immediate style leaves him somewhat overlooked even among professional philosophers.
"I have to say that I find Neil's use of Nietzsche to criticize wisdom and the spiritual path to be extremely naive, even to the point of being moronic. The quotes above have no relevance for those on the spiritual path.
"I can't be bothered going through each quote. We've already discussed these issues in some detail over the past few weeks. It only takes about 5 seconds to see through it all and to see into Nietzsche's soul, but if people have mental blocks and desperately want to avoid having any relationship to truth, then those 5 seconds might as well be an eternity.
"The very fact that Nietzsche is describing the truth as he sees it in the above quotes completely undermines the deluded view that he is speaking against truth in and of itself. Instead, what Nietzsche is really addressing are the various misguided ways that people have traditionally approached truth.
"Neil's basic mistake is that he cannot see how truth can be approached other than in these misguided ways. He is still thinking inside the box."
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I have to say that I find a great deal written on these pages as 'extremely naive'---the stuff of frustrated boys who don't seem to have much of a connection to life, and certainly can't offer too much advice about it, or how to live it. While I don't think I come to the same conclusions as Neil, and regard Nietzsche as someone viscerally living a huge conflict and not someone who solved it, or is a Prophet for some New Ethic, I think I grasp why Niel takes issue with the formulisms one finds on these pages.
So, now you are defining what is 'the spiritual path'? I literally *roll my eyes* because no one, in all my reading here, has said much of anything with relevance to what I understand as spiritual life, or 'the spirit'. What I read here are the bold opinions of adolescents who seem to have problems with women, and likely do not have successful relationships, are afraid of sensuality, and seek to excize from their own selves 'the female. The list goes on and on and on. It becomes useless to participate here because nearly all the conversations are couched in idiocies that are simply boring.
A conversation about what IS spiritual life, and what this could mean, I don't think will be had, frankly. Few of you have even a basic preparation that would enable such a conversation. Your own certainty as to what IS 'spirituality' is the precise blinder that keeps you (I opine) from saying anything helpful or interesting about it. And furthermore! I assert that Nietzsche IS 'spiritual' in a very relevant sense precisely when he delineates the issues in conflict, the supreme problems connected with them. As someone wrote, he is a tough nut to crack, but the superficial reading (*barf!*retch!*vomit!*) I have gotten on these pages when Thus Spake is quoted is enough to make me cry into my GFs panties for an hour!
To point out, as Nietzsche does so well, that we have to examine the base and bedrock from which we make *pronouncements* (as the QRS make all the time) about 'Truth' (with capital tee), is an idea that literally capsizes the kind of pronouncements that are well on their way of being concretized in DoGmA, as we get 'round these parts. 'Truth' is just a group of decisions that I make, and cannot be claimed by a person or a group. I think that is more of what Nietzsche is getting at, and the ramifications of disassembling false edifications of 'Truth', and false conclusions, is more what he is getting at.
While I can't speak exactly for Niel's project, I do note that *you* do not seem to grasp the question that he presents to you...as a matter of fact you seem rather deaf to it.
And that, gay boys, was just the Sermon of the Plains! I haven't even approached the Sermon of the Mount (of Venus)!
AJ Has Spoken!
PS: I've got a squad and feminazi Ashkenazis that will be tailing you all, so don't try to leave town or nothing. Your Truths have rubbed up against the Powers that rule this sphere and you must be brought down! Anyway, time to get a job...
Thus Spake Trevor: "I wonder how many times I can say the name 'Nietzsche' before he finally gets sick of it?"
Boyan: nobody overlooks Nietzsche. They just have other things to read, and some of these things are more interesting than Nietzsche.
Like what? Hegel's Phenomenology? I was at the lecture on the occasion of 200 years of Phenomenology of spirit held by two philosophers (one a respected old professor), and they said how they read Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit some 20 times and still can't quite get it. First they say, did Hegel won, is not a valid question today because there are no wars in philosophy really, then a bit later I hear - and one of the reasons Hegel is still alive today is because the whole post moderna is fighting against the position Hegel is the central figure of.
That honestly is more interesting than listening to postmodernists claim that they have the correct interpretations of Nietzsche. I'd rather a bunch of academic philosophers arguing how they don't get Hegel than a bunch of novice pseudo-philosophers claiming they get Nietzsche. (Actually, I'd like a bunch of novice philosophers claiming they get Hegel! Wouldn't that be ill?)
Trevor Salyzyn wrote: (Actually, I'd like a bunch of novice philosophers claiming they get Hegel! Wouldn't that be ill?)
Well that would be unique at least.And yeah, when we finally claim we get someone for sure, all fun is lost.
Actually, when I go through the 8 pages on Hegel's philosophy in my philosophy textbook, I don't have major problems in understanding it, or so i think.
There is an absolut spirit who's going towards self actualization and his goal is freedom. On his way he is using, history (mankind), philosophy, art to get there, through the dialectical triads - thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
"...a bunch of novice pseudo-philosophers claiming they get Nietzsche".
I submit that here you have fucked up. From the idea that stands behind this you have tripped and everything else you say is just a record of how you are falling. With all due respects---you're a nice fellow, I think so genuinely---you have committed a very grave sin as far as 'the world of ideas' is concerned.
A few Hail Marys are in order...
So, Kafka read Genealogy of Morals and wrote The Penal Colony, and I ask you, Did Kafka 'get' Nietzsche? It is a stupendous little story with all the fine mechanics of a beautiful and crafted watch, and it is such a shrewd, sideways glance at the devilishness of 'ressentiment', and I ask you again Did he 'get' Nietzsche?
Okay, and what about Huxley whose 'Point Counter-Point' seems to drip and ooze with the yeast of Nietzschen fermentation, where he goes right to the very center of some horrible and anguished contradictions that we all seem to face---and did Huxley 'get' Nietzsche?
What about Hesse? Steppenwolf is so steeped in Nietzsche, so interested in the problems that Nietzsche raises, and yet Hesse is an out-of-the-closet romanticist who flits about through the iris patch in silken jammies, but so wonderfully lifts the lid on some of the terrible problems of the age, the militarization of the world, the clammoring for war, the heathens at the gate eating horses raw in the town square---and did Hesse 'get' Nietzsche?
It seems to me that there is no 'getting' Nietzsche---what an absurd idea! how doctrinaire! how adolescent!---you come into contact with Nietzsche and like some dangerous drug he begins to operate on you, and heaven only knows what you'll come up with. Hesse's Magic Theatre or SS storm troopers, take your pick.
Factually, y'all seem to have very minimal concepts of the way these ideas have affected art and literature....It is sort of a shame, but what can you expect from a boys club from out of the boondocks?
As a genuine Ashkenazi and Factual Owner of the World, I'd like to guide you toward that understanding, but once you understand, of course, we have to put a bullet through your skull. Or you can choose medication and we'll send you back home with momma...
So Nietzsche's goal was absolute truths that were true, as opposed to "absolute truths" that weren't.
In other words he wanted truth rather than non-truth.
If you keep thinking in terms of absolute truth you will never get him. Nietzsche did not think in terms of absolute truth. He attempted to explain everything -- truth, morality, concepts/language, metaphysics, all religions, etc -- from a natural, empirical perspective where all we have are appearances and no reason to believe that we can have any contact with absolute truth.
Alex,
Is Nietzsche really that hard to get? My understanding has changed quite a bit as I read through the books. Still got 2.5 books left to read and will reread most of them. I can see how people can read 1 book or just skim through a couple and not understand it.
Nietzsche did not think in terms of absolute truth.
False.
He attempted to explain everything -- truth, morality, concepts/language, metaphysics, all religions, etc -- from a natural, empirical perspective where all we have are appearances and no reason to believe that we can have any contact with absolute truth.
It isn't a natural, empirical perspective that all we have are appearances. On the contrary, most people naturally believe that the world is physically and objectively real, and that our experiences are mere reflections of this objective reality. A chair that we experience in our consciousness, for example, is just a reflection or a duplication of an objective chair existing in the real world beyond consciousness. That is how people commonly and naturally think.
So Nietzsche's viewpoint is actually a cultivated metaphysical viewpoint which undercuts the natural, empirical perspective. It is an abstract viewpoint which arises out of his adherence to the absolute truth that all we have are appearances.
As an aside, I fully agree with Nietzsche that all we ever have are appearances. It is an important truth to understand for those on the spiritual path.
"Is Nietzsche really that hard to get? My understanding has changed quite a bit as I read through the books. Still got 2.5 books left to read and will reread most of them. I can see how people can read 1 book or just skim through a couple and not understand it."
How could I answer that, since I don't claim to 'get' him? I have already said on a few occasions that I question what it is you suppose you have 'gotten', if you start to move too quickly toward resolution of the problems that Nietzsche brings to the fore with facile conclusions. There is a 'bad reading' and...better readings.
In my case, Nietzsche honestly upended a great deal in me, I mean about standard ideas and conventions about morality and ethics, and the fact of 'ressentiment' as a motivator is a wonderous phenomenon to examine.
My world has become divided and not unitary because of Nietzsche. So, I am learning to recite mantras that will take me after death to a higher planet filled with spiritual lads and damsels who stroke the lyre and who flutter through consciousness like butterflies, sprinkling fairy dust. Yet, while here on terra firma I have to keep kicking the little fuckers on the lower rungs of the ladder and at the same time try to keep my suit unwrinkled and my poetry idealistic, and at home in my chamber high above the multitude when I listen to strains of Bach and Handel and almost float as I walk, I sincerely invoke the Supreme Lord who is like Krishna and Radha in Holy Vrindavana, and the next day go back and keep kicking down the riff raff...
So much depends on those mantras...
So you see when it comes to the innards of 'spirituality', and to what I consider the most essential aspects of life, I see Nietzsche as simply 'lacking information'. I think it is important to become familiar with some of the works by writers who came under Nietzsche's influence, and even some who were dealing on related themes, Dostoevsky for example.
Is it asking too much that you read Notes from Underground? I mean, is it really asking too much? Or A Weak Heart?
(Your apolgetics for Hitler, of course, threw up a red flag for me. Before the Ashkanazi Council puts a bullet in your head (...'I am just now having all anti-semites shot!'...) we will surely tortue you a bit, for fun...)
I have to say that I find a great deal written on these pages as 'extremely naive'---the stuff of frustrated boys who don't seem to have much of a connection to life, and certainly can't offer too much advice about it, or how to live it. While I don't think I come to the same conclusions as Neil, and regard Nietzsche as someone viscerally living a huge conflict and not someone who solved it, or is a Prophet for some New Ethic, I think I grasp why Niel takes issue with the formulisms one finds on these pages.
So, now you are defining what is 'the spiritual path'? I literally *roll my eyes* because no one, in all my reading here, has said much of anything with relevance to what I understand as spiritual life, or 'the spirit'.
What do you consider to be "the spirit"?
I assert that Nietzsche IS 'spiritual' in a very relevant sense precisely when he delineates the issues in conflict, the supreme problems connected with them. As someone wrote, he is a tough nut to crack, but the superficial reading (*barf!*retch!*vomit!*) I have gotten on these pages when Thus Spake is quoted is enough to make me cry into my GFs panties for an hour!
What's a specific example?
To point out, as Nietzsche does so well, that we have to examine the base and bedrock from which we make *pronouncements* (as the QRS make all the time) about 'Truth' (with capital tee), is an idea that literally capsizes the kind of pronouncements that are well on their way of being concretized in DoGmA, as we get 'round these parts.
I agree that Nietzsche was primarily about challenging people and pushing them out of their comfortable boxes. He was good at it in some ways, but if I was to be brutally honest about it he wasn't all that good. One of his biggest flaws was that he made it too easy for people to crawl inside the comforting box of postmodernism.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this. It undermined all the good work that Nietzsche did in his lifetime. It undermined his own iconoclastic agenda.
It is similar to what happened with the Zen movement. Zen was originally about shocking people out of their comfortable mindsets in the hope of awakening them to reality. But it quickly degenerated into a religion in which Zen devotees turned these shock tactics into dogmatic tenets and transformed what was once a promising philosophic movement into just another box for deluded people to crawl into.
The exact same thing has happened with Nietzsche's own shock tactics.
Shock tactics are designed for specific circumstances. They are temporary in nature. They are designed to overturn specific delusions and don't have any meaning outside of this. But people, in their need to be followers of authority, have turned them into eternal rules to live by.
'Truth' is just a group of decisions that I make, and cannot be claimed by a person or a group.
This is self-contradictory in nature, because it is based on your claim here that Truth is such and such.
I think that is more of what Nietzsche is getting at, and the ramifications of disassembling false edifications of 'Truth', and false conclusions, is more what he is getting at.
That's exactly right. Falseness and its ramifications were precisely what he was concerned with.
While I can't speak exactly for Niel's project, I do note that *you* do not seem to grasp the question that he presents to you...as a matter of fact you seem rather deaf to it.
The question that Neil is putting to us is self-contradictory in nature and therefore incoherent. That is why I cannot grasp it. There is essentially nothing there to grasp.
It's kind of funny when you think about it. Neil is urging us to abandon truth (and thus embrace self-contradictory thinking), but he cannot do this without being self-contradictory himself. This makes it impossible for someone like myself to take him seriously because I already place value on truthful thinking which is non-contradictory.
He would have to give me a proper reason to abandon truth, one that is both coherent and compelling, but in doing so he would automatically be making an appeal to my love of truth. And so the whole enterprise is doomed from the start.
It seems to me that there is no 'getting' Nietzsche---what an absurd idea! how doctrinaire! how adolescent!---you come into contact with Nietzsche and like some dangerous drug he begins to operate on you, and heaven only knows what you'll come up with. Hesse's Magic Theatre or SS storm troopers, take your pick.
Very poetic, and a nice attempt at imitating Nietzsche's style, but poetic license does not make up for lack of content.
Nietzsche, like any other philosopher, can be interpreted successfully or unsuccessfully. Unless you are used to interpreting philosophers -- as in, unless you have interpreted many philosophers -- you do not have the tools to access his insights. But, your inability to understand Nietzsche is not universal: it only applies to non-philosophers and pseudo-philosophers.
The 'spirit', what an interesting question. Did you ever read those books by Carlos Castaneda? What came to mind is that narrative where they are out in the desert 'seeking the spirit', or stalking the spirit, and lo and behold they come across what looks like a strange, dying animal, nestled up against a bush. At first it is indistinct and unknown, and 'Don Juan' adds to the energy of the moment by shrieking and exclaiming that they should run for their lives as it is a creature that might attack, but they come back and Carlos tries to focus on it, but it is so outlandish that he just doesn't know what he is seeing, but what he ends up seeing is a strange creature like a griffin that is in the throes of death. Then, his analytical mind mind takes over, and he is able to decipher what is before him or to see through it: he walks over and takes hold of a peice of rag that had gotten entangled in the shrubs, and he feels satisfied that he has uncovered the mystery. 'Don Juan' is terribly disappointed, and says he squandered the rarest of rare opportunities! It was not 'a rag in the bushes blown by the wind', but a mysterious manifestation of 'the spirit', a force that moves in the creation, and if he would have allowed the vision to proceed, no one can say exactly where it might have led to, in perceptive terms.
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Talked about in another way, 'the spirit' is perhaps a force that is part and parcel of the creation in which we find ourselves, it is something that one can have a relationship with, can build a relationship with, and that 'responds' to one through all the avenues of perception, but in the end it is oh-so-difficult to define. Usually, the people who talk about 'spirit' in this way are indigenous types, shamans, curanderos, etc. I guess this sort of lens of perception comes from an older mode of perception. In our system, insofar as it is permitted to exist (and it is not), you could find it surfacing in some of Jung's formulations---an unconscious force, a manifestation of the 'collective unconscious', and he locates it most powerfully in the spirit of 'mercurious', a strange little shape-shifter, a very mercurial and unpredictable figure that always keeps surfacing in human affairs.
But in perhaps more conventional terms, 'the spirit' is also very hard to pin down but it of course is really what is at the bottom, or behind, any reference, however crude, however impudent, to 'genius'. Again, there again is old mercurius showing his laughing eyes and playing the devil or the angel, but in conventional representations it is a sort of heavy spirit, the spirit of dreary philosopher types munching herrings on the back stairs of depressing tenements like Spinoza. For me, 'the spirit' is a bit abstract, I guess, and is a sort of fine energy that is discovered in the best artistic representations and works. Obviously, I don't care a great deal for philosophy per se, but I do have a great deal of love and respect for art. I don't really care what spills out of someone's possessed head when they have been drowned in philosophical mucous, and can only really appreciate the sort of creations and aspirations that are essentially artistic. Art transcends philosophy, though it may be sort of constructed upon it, like a fungus growing on a carcass.
I do feel, but have no way of proving or even indicating with any certainty, that we are really all creations of spirit, that we are essentially 'spiritual', but contextualized in this fleshy mess, an endless morass of unsolvable problems. The human as animal, as mere organism, is alot like all other organisms: always scrapping around in mere existence, in uncomprehending survival. But in our consciousness---and it always seems to arise through religious processes, it seems to arise as a result of spiritual longing, speaking of all the 'high' manifestations in world culture from the past till the present---it seems that we begin to access something: the mysterious spirit, which is all potentials. It opens the doors of the universes!
What dampens 'the spirit'? Sometimes 'the spirit' emerges in culture and in the individual and creates literally fabulous and wonderful things. The great works of art and literature and philosophy, and science. But the 'real spirit' seems to be in decline as philistinism takes over perception. Philistinism is a leaden spirit, a sort of closing over of the 'third eye' of 'higher undersanding'.
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A whole tribe of shaman that live in these uncanny spiritual tubular constructions about 200 times higher than the World Trade Centers that are found in parts of Australia, Indonesia, North and South America---there is even one that I can *see* from my vantage here in my South American city listening to the Friday evening traffic!---have been shaking rattles and sprinkling shaman's dust of effigies I helped to create of all the denizens of the Genius Forums. That, I feel, is the least I can do...
You will all of you soon begin to feel, if you haven't yet, an utterly indescribable effervescence! that will bring you to the very core of your being, where a strange awareness, so strange and unbelievable, bubbles forth! One taste of that honey, just one taste!
Last edited by Anonymous on Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Until you can understand that the above statement is an absolute statement that cannot be supported empirically, you will not be able to see the wood for the trees.
Until you can understand that the above statement is an absolute statement that cannot be supported empirically, you will not be able to see the wood for the trees.
Kevin... can you not look at this without the "absolutes"? If you are bound to view everything as an absolute statement you will never see what Nietzsche is talking about.
When you treat concepts as you are and get hung up on contradictions you are assuming that language itself is not flawed. I've already argued this with you but you seem unwilling to grasp this. I assure you Nietzsche sees the problem with our language.
From the first post:
"But the origin of these antitheses need not necessarily go back to a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose to it the real genesis of the concepts. This derives from the practical sphere, the sphere of utility; hence the strength of the faith it inspires (one would perish if one did not reason according to this mode of reason; but this is no "proof" of what it asserts)."
You will all of you soon begin to feel, if you haven't yet, an utterly indescribable effervescence! that will bring you to the very core of your being, where a strange awareness, so strange and unbelievable, bubbles forth! One taste of that honey, just one taste!
You're describing a particular kind of altered state here, one that I'm very familiar with. While such experiences can certainly be amazing and can provide some genuine insight into the nature of reality, it is still a fairly minor attainment in the greater scheme of things. Genuine wisdom is infinitely beyond such experiences.
Ideally, such experiences will catapult a person into the spiritual path and inspire him to seek the wisdom which is beyond all altered states. But unfortunately, a lot of people get very attached to them, believing them to be the highest there is, and they tend to stagnate at their alter.
"But the origin of these antitheses need not necessarily go back to a supernatural source of reason: it is sufficient to oppose to it the real genesis of the concepts. This derives from the practical sphere, the sphere of utility; hence the strength of the faith it inspires (one would perish if one did not reason according to this mode of reason; but this is no "proof" of what it asserts)."
The real genesis of concepts?
Kevin... can you not look at this without the "absolutes"? If you are bound to view everything as an absolute statement you will never see what Nietzsche is talking about.
What Nietzsche was really talking about?
When you treat concepts as you are and get hung up on contradictions you are assuming that language itself is not flawed.
Language really is flawed?
If you cannot refrain from making these statements of absolute truth, how can Kevin or anyone else take your urgings seriously?
The real genesis of concepts?
...
What Nietzsche was really talking about?
...
Language really is flawed?
...
If you cannot refrain from making these statements of absolute truth, how can Kevin or anyone else take your urgings seriously?
...
No one can take a hypocrite seriously.
Using language to question the validity of language. Can't take it seriously? Can't let go of those presuppositions? Sorry.
No, I'm questioning your adherence to beliefs which you take to be absolutely true. It really has nothing do with the language.
Your understanding of Nietzsche, for example, is more primal than language. It is more direct than language. I am questioning an attitude in you which is beyond language.
"You're describing a particular kind of altered state here, one that I'm very familiar with. While such experiences can certainly be amazing and can provide some genuine insight into the nature of reality, it is still a fairly minor attainment in the greater scheme of things. Genuine wisdom is infinitely beyond such experiences."
How funny, You have focused on and commented on the joke that I added at the end, and as usual the content of what I wrote completely escaped you. I am on a list of semi-retards or Australian Neanderthals with girl-terror, and on top of that they have no 'organ for art'.
"Why are you speaking for Shamanism on a intellectual board? Why are you advocating Art to Philosophers?"
We have these habits...of dividing things, of separating certain things from other things, as if there are no connections, or shouldn't be connections, or that we will force it so that there are no connections.
The 'great minds' never made these divisions, and since this is a 'genius' forum, I don't either.
There is no absolute reason why any of these things, or any things at all, should be separated from each other. 'Shamanism' is a modality, just as the intellect is a modality, they each have their place, their moment.
And anyway, intelligent, philosophizing shamans always come out in pro of art.
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And what happened to The Spiritual Life thread? I thought that was 'the only conversation worth having'.
Alex, learn how to use the quote feature, examine everyone else’s posts, and then examine yours, do you see a major difference there? Because honestly, I’m growing rather weary of rummaging through your disordered comedy show.
