Especially the part about morality being a trick of the weak to constrain the strong. This is what Nietzsche called ressentiment. — Joshs
If the "weak" can constrain the "strong", then the "weak" aren't actually weak, and the "strong" aren't actually strong. What gives — baker
By ‘strength’ Nietzsche meant a will to continual self-overcoming ( not personal ‘growth’ as in progress toward self-actualization, but continually becoming something different). — Joshs
I've never understood the point of 'continual self-overcoming'. What does this mean (or look like) in practice when you are going about your daily business? It sounds kind of tedious — Tom Storm
The feeling of tedium... — Joshs
But if we are taught that the way of moral, spiritual and empirical truth involves chaining ourselves to fixed, foundations, we will consider overcoming to be a mark of immorality, irrationality, madness, nihilism, infidelity. — Joshs
You overcome the tedium. :smile: — Count Timothy von Icarus
The second, more popular explanation is that "strong" have allowed their hands to be tied by a "false morality." It's here that a relation to Nietzsche's ideas is more obvious. Generally, the claim is that economic elites, the "neoliberals," or simply "the Jews," have tricked the strong into a false morality. Once the strong "wake up," and form their own morality, this age of evil will be resolved. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Nietzsche has the whole spiel about how others decide where they want to end up re morality, and then invent reasons for getting there. It's a good critique, but it seems like it could easily be turned back on his own work and his fairly rigour free retelling of Jewish history that just happens to paint a picture where the "real story," lines up with his beliefs.
I always felt these had a lot in common with the old: "you only reject the obvious truth of Christ because you're blinded by your own pride and shame at your sin." I'm not against arguments from psychoanalysis as a whole, but they seem to easily fall into this problem of being "too neat." — Count Timothy von Icarus
I've felt bored since I was a small child. The feeling has never left me... — Tom Storm
Maybe my problem is that I've always felt everything was contingent upon culture and history and that there is no foundation or point of reference for humans. Perhaps I need to become a Christian fundamentalist to self-overcome. — Tom Storm
In place of the Christian saint Nietzsche wishes to see what he calls the "noble" man... The "noble" man will be capable of cruelty and... crime; he will recognize duties only to equals. ... The "noble" man is essentially the incarnate will to power.
What are we to think of Nietzsche's doctrines? ... Is there in them anything objective, or are they the mere power-phantasies of an invalid?
It is undeniable that Nietzsche has had a great influence...
Nevertheless there is a great deal in him that must be dismissed as merely megalomanic.
He condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome of fear. I am afraid my neighbour may injure me, and so I assure him that I love him. If I were stronger and bolder, I should openly display the contempt for him which of course I feel. It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost universal hatred and fear...
It never occurred to Nietzsche that the lust for power... is itself an outcome of fear. Those who do not fear their neighbours see no necessity to tyrannize over them....
I will not deny that, partly as a result of his teaching, the real world has become very like his nightmare, but that does not make it any the less horrible.
It is necessary for higher men to make war upon the masses, and resist the democratic tendencies of the age, for in all directions mediocre people are joining hands to make themselves masters… He regards compassion as a weakness to be combated… He prophesied with a certain glee an era of great wars; one wonders whether he would have been happy if he had lived to see the fulfillment of his prophecy.
There is a great deal in Nietzsche that must be dismissed as merely megalomaniac… It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all the men he admires were military. His opinion of women, like every man’s, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. “Forget not thy whip”–but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks.
How so? In what way is Nietzsche's "historical analysis" more actual historical analysis than Hegel or Vico's? I would say Marx actually has a leg up in this department, despite the same charge being easy to level at him — Count Timothy von Icarus
Take religion. Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud also developed explanations for religion around the same time as Nietzsche, explanations that also nicely happened to support their particular overarching message. How do we judge between these, in some ways mutually exclusive, versions of history and why wouldn't they be subject to the same charge of "working towards a pre-existing conclusion?" — Count Timothy von Icarus
His opinion of women, like every man’s, is an objectification of his own emotion towards them, which is obviously one of fear. “Forget not thy whip”–but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women,
You and Russell obviously don't know what the whip is. Yet another metaphor hidden in plain sight. The whip is what Zarathustra uses to create dance and song. And can be seen in the second dance song. So the old woman said to Zarathustra "forget not thy dance and song." Those elements of Dionysus that women love. — Vaskane
Suppose that truth is a woman – and why not?
22
Man and Woman
Seize forcibly the wench for whom you feel
Thus thinks a man. Women don't rob, they steal.
63
Woman in music.- Why is it that warm, rainy winds inspire
a musical mood and the inventive pleasure of melodies? Are
they not the same winds that fill the churches and arouse
thoughts of love in women?
(60)The magic and the most powerful effect of women is, in philosophical language, action at a distance, actio in distans; but this requires first of all and above all-distance.
Ressentiment is the enduring psychological state of resentment in which resentment is behind one's creative force for valuation. A strong resentful person may only ever raise to the level of say priest/politician (ie someone who directs the resentment of the masses). Getting strong people behind herd mentality (objective resentful beliefs that deny life) kneecaps them from becoming what Nietzsche calls a Higher Human. — Vaskane
God, this reminds me so much why I despise Ayn Randian philosophy — schopenhauer1
I see this bipolar attitude vis-á-vis wanting to be the "moral majority" versus a "small, beset elite," as being a manifestation of the nu-right's increasing ambivalence towards democracy of any form. On the one hand, they increasingly want to dispense with democracy—"Red Ceasarism," and all. On the other, democracy has been "the principle," for so long that they can't help but make appeals to popular opinion and their place in a "true majority."
The second, more popular explanation is that "strong" have allowed their hands to be tied by a "false morality." It's here that a relation to Nietzsche's ideas is more obvious. Generally, the claim is that economic elites, the "neoliberals," or simply "the Jews," have tricked the strong into a false morality. Once the strong "wake up," and form their own morality, this age of evil will be resolved.
Generally, it is said that this will not occur until some sort of cataclysmic war, which will have the side effect of turning the currently low status practitioners of the ideology into hardened, grizzled war heros. You can't really underplay the extent to which "war will act as a force of self-transformation and self-actualization," plays into these narratives. — Count Timothy von Icarus
A favorite of today's Republicans. — Fooloso4
The provocative title of Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness matches an equally provocative thesis about ethics. Traditional ethics has always been suspicious of self-interest, praising acts that are selfless in intent and calling amoral or immoral acts that are motivated by self-interest. A self-interested person, on the traditional view, will not consider the interests of others and so will slight or harm those interests in the pursuit of his own.
Rand’s view is that the exact opposite is true: Self-interest, properly understood, is the standard of morality and selflessness is the deepest immorality.
Self-interest rightly understood, according to Rand, is to see oneself as an end in oneself. That is to say that one’s own life and happiness are one’s highest values, and that one does not exist as a servant or slave to the interests of others. Nor do others exist as servants or slaves to one’s own interests. Each person’s own life and happiness are their ultimate ends. Self-interest rightly understood also entails self-responsibility: One’s life is one’s own, and so is the responsibility for sustaining and enhancing it. It is up to each of us to determine what values our lives require, how best to achieve those values, and to act to achieve those values. — Rand - IEP
The book depicts a future United States on the verge of economic collapse after years of collectivist misrule, under which productive and creative citizens (primarily industrialists, scientists, and artists) have been exploited to benefit an undeserving population of moochers and incompetents. The hero, John Galt, a handsome and supremely self-interested physicist and inventor, leads a band of elite producers and creators in a “strike” designed to deprive the economy of their leadership and thereby force the government to respect their economic freedom. From their redoubt in Colorado, “Galt’s Gulch,” they watch as the national economy and the collectivist social system are destroyed. As the elite emerge from the Gulch in the novel’s final scene, Galt raises his hand “over the desolate earth and…trace in space the sign of the dollar.” — Ayn Rand Britannica
And yesterday's. — schopenhauer1
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