Another thing I'm now wondering about is whether Friedrich was ever clear on just who his concepts of "slave morality" were directed against and For -the average illiterate worker of his time or the elites who he sometimes seemed to despise and other times idolize....? His "Will to Power" seems clearly contempuous of the masses but some say it was seriously altered by his bigoted sister after he died. Anyone else here have an opinion on this particular source of dispute? I don't have a particularly strong case to make on this one, either way.

(Oh, and side note, I'll definitely have to read more McLuhan, Plus=Minus, thanks. Recall that Saul does refer to him positively a couple times, may have borrowed some ideas on media from him but not clear enough on them to say for sure)

[ 16 November 2006: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]

According to Grant, Nietzche's statement that Christianity contained the seeds of its own downfall refers to the fathers of the Church embracing Plato as a vehicle for their ideas rather than Socrates.

Plato was the philospher of the new literate, rational world (created by the alphabet). Socrates was the last flowering of the older, tribal oral tradition, where the culture was passed on in the memory of poets. Much of Plato's work critiques the old world that was dying, in favour of the new.

This rational, literate approach (which had many successes) also lead to Christianity's ultimate downfall from the assault of thinkers like Voltaire and Darwin. This is the source of Nietzche's aphorism "God is dead, and you have killed him."

I can see why Social Gospellers would despise Nietzche, but I'm not sure why the current crop of technocratic atheists on the left would. Grant at least saw him as seeing the situation clearly, and engaged his work.

[ 17 November 2006: Message edited by: -=+=- ]

"The bad conscience is an illness, there is no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy is an illness." (The Genealogy of Morals)

This is kind of typical Nietzsche. The first response to something like this is likely: "Well, that's not a very nice thing to say about pregnancy..." And it's very easy to discredit this comment as misogynist, hateful or whatever. But is Nietzsche commenting on pregnancy, or is he commenting on illness? Pregnancy is very hard on the body. Morning sickness is intrinsic to pregnancy, and it is also true that many women died (and tragically, still do,) in child-birth. But, it is an "illness" that produces something. Like Heraclitus, whom he quotes earlier, life is not being, it is becoming. If we are stuck with the "bad conscience," Nietzsche is saying, we must make it create something.

Which is where postmodernists find their niche in Nietzsche. He advocates turning the system--the repressive, emasculating system--against itself to produce something new. If we must feel guilty, let's feel guilty about feeling guilty and maybe we can find a way out. Or at the very least, we are conscious of the cage. Like Engels argues, we find freedom in the consciousness of necessity.

In the previous thread, I also argued that Nietzsche's privileges strength because he is contesting the Christian notion of favouring the meek, and the Hegelian notion of enobling the slave. Because promising a reward to the individual who chooses to subjugate herself in this life is the most terrible promise in the world if it is not true.

As for his so-called contempt for the masses, I don't really find it any different than Freud's contempt for civilization. I feel that when he condemns the masses, he isn't condemning a group of individuals, but rather the construct of society that imposes its false values, its absolutes, upon humanity. It's a theatre of cruelty, and it sucks. But unfortunately, it's all we've got.

[ 17 November 2006: Message edited by: Catchfire ]

"The bad conscience is an illness, there is no doubt about that, but an illness as pregnancy is an illness." (The Genealogy of Morals)"..

I would take from this (out of all context, of course), that Nietzsche is defending conscience here. I'll go out on a limb and bet that he has already observed that conscience may be regarded as the interior form of control society plants in us, and that society's control is odious to the potential greatness of the individual. And yet he's arguing that a conscience, and a bad conscience at that, guilt in fact ... is an ultimately good thing for us. Am I close to divining some of Nietzsche's message here?

And if you are attracted to Nietzsche's radical and fresh turns of thought, I wonder if you've read Kierkegard? I think I see a similar appeal in the two writers perhaps.

[ 17 November 2006: Message edited by: Brett Mann ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Brett Mann:
I would take from this (out of all context, of course), that Nietzsche is defending conscience here. I'll go out on a limb and bet that he has already observed that conscience may be regarded as the interior form of control society plants in us, and that society's control is odious to the potential greatness of the individual. And yet he's arguing that a conscience, and a bad conscience at that, guilt in fact ... is an ultimately good thing for us. Am I close to divining some of Nietzsche's message here?

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He doesn't conclude that the conscience is good, but he is aware that by saying that conscience is a false construct and that all ideologies are illusory, Nietzsche is in fact positing an ideology himself. As if humanity can only think in these terms that imprison it. But, if he can take these terrible things—guilt, the "bad conscience" and the like—and turn them against themselves, there's a chance at finding some freedom. He says that where the conscience says "no," we should say "yes" (which is where Nihilists find their ground in Nietzsche) but that includes saying "yes" to saying "no." Essentially, Nietzsche constructs an ideology against ideologies. So while conscience isn't a good thing, he thinks it can be used against bad things.

quote:

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Like some come to him prepared to see his Nazism, and some his Nihilism, I come to him from thinkers who have already digested him in a specific (clearly poststructural) way, so my reading is bound to be different from others' approaches.

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Likewise. My basic approach to Nietzsche is that he was someone who asked very very good questions and came up with very bad answers.

Anyhow, before I retire from another wild Saturday night on Babble just wanted to say I've been rereading Will to Power again and still having some problems with some of it. Aparently he is credited with the material, just not edited or finished by him but his sister. These old ditties covers it more or less:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n18/disk01_.html

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/12504

Letter
UNSCRUPULOUS SISTER
By Ingo Seidler, Reply by Philippa Foot

In response to Immoralist (February 17, 1966)

"To the Editors:

I have no quarrels with Professor Foot's recent review of two new English books on Nietzsche (Feb. 17), and I entirely share her view that we ought to come to grips, at long last, with Nietzsche's challenge as a moral philosopher. What dismays me is the fact that Mrs. Foot, too, finds it necessary to repeat Professor Schlechta's tiresome legend of Nietszche's "unscrupulous sister."
..............

Mrs. Förster-Nietzsche's three volumes on the life of her famous brother show her to be a very unremarkable intellect indeed, and there is no lack of testimony that she was a most disagreeable person. In marked contrast to her brother, she was beyond doubt both an anti-Semite and a fierce German nationalist. However, nobody, including Professor Schlechta, has ever adduced a shred of evidence suggesting that she meddled with her brother's philosophical writings, published or unpublished. Schlechta believes that his lady-foe altered a few strictly personal letters of her brother's so as to put herself in a more favorable light. On the other hand, there is the striking fact that the various editions of Nietzsche's works which appeared while Mrs. Förster was in full control of all the manuscripts, abound in (previously unpublished) anti-nationalistic and anti-anti-Semitic remarks. ...."

And this I think is one of his mistakes.

For Nietzsche, conscience is false, illogical and tyrannical. Much like Freud's ego.

Instead of arguing against church taught 'conscience' over irrelevant things like sex or an irrational sense of 'debt' to the state, he seems to be arguing against the notion of conscience and reciprocity itself. It might have been a necessary position to take at the time, useful still to consider from a philosophical angle, but truly dangerous taken as a general principle for a Society.

[ 03 December 2006: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]