I hear the Existentialists are mighty fond of him, too. — Joshs

What are your thoughts on the existentialist reading of Nietzsche? Is this illustrative of his fecundity, or is it a partial misreading in your assessment?

Here in the USA, I know they teach Nietzsche at Fordham only, cause Fordham Theologians should know what an atheist said about them. Maybe there are a few, but most of the philosophy programs I have searched do not teach Nietzsche (I don't blame them). — Eros1982

The USian universities are usually more analytic focused in philosophy departments.

I hear the Existentialists are mighty fond of him, too.
— Joshs

What are your thoughts on the existentialist reading of Nietzsche? Is this illustrative of his fecundity, or is it a partial misreading in your assessment? — Tom Storm

To me it’s like interpreting a film on different levels. You can certainly read Nietzsche as an existentialist and get a lot of him that way. Understanding him as a postmodernist doesn’t invalidate the existentialist perspective so much as radicalize it, put it on steroids.

Understand. Thanks.

So decadent you go on resenting 'this abject life' which you apparently lack the courage to quit ... you're welcome to your fashionably shallow caricature of N — 180 Proof

Nothing about eternal return or the ubermensch rings true for me. What do you want me to say? You can give a case for his ideas instead of petty sniping, but doubt what you say isn’t something I haven’t considered and thought that Schop had a better take on.

Nothing about eternal return or the ubermensch rings true for me. — schopenhauer1

That's okay, Last Man ... :smirk:

From an old thread Schopenhauer on suffering and the vanity of existence...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/529871

What do you want me to say?

Nothing we ain't eternally said before.

Yeah there’s nothing on there really countering anything. You said N was ill but affirmed life and somehow this proves something or other about his philosophy. Schop didn’t think many people were going to be ascetics or even have the one virtue he thought was truly moral, compassion. Art was more amenable, but not everyone was going to be an artistic genius either- only temporary observers, temporarily stopping the Will.

All of metaphysics is more or less inconsequential because irrespective of the constitution of the universe, as human beings we still need to address the question of how to interact with it — SatmBopd

Perhaps you simply have not broadened your studies enough? This statement of yours can essentially be interpreted as a form of pragmatism. The Metaphysics of Pragmatism by Sydney Hook (a student and successor of Dewey) is a favourite of mine. All in all, if I had to pick one philosopher to idolize, better Dewey than Nietzsche....

I never really understood how anyone could pick one philosopher out as the most...anything. Most of them (us) admit the basic conclusion is that they (we) know nothing, or that they have only scratched the surface of what may be the case. If I was to say whose thoughts continue to interest me the most, they would certainly include Nietzsche. But I love metaphysics. I love Nietzschean metaphysics. I get that it is easily kindling, gathered carefully into neat formal piles only to be shown its true purpose in flames. I get that the metaphysician walks on quicksand at every step, on a tightrope. But even Nietzsche did not destroy the Apollonian; he did not banish the spirit from flesh (quite the opposite, he caged it in the flesh, but then, it is spirit to him nonetheless); he did not truly get beyond good and evil (he's basically a grumpy old monk telling us all how wrong we are), but maybe instead he redefined what is good (all-overcoming power of will) and what is bad (weakness hidden by despising). He gave us volumes to think about, but as with so many others, I am left craving. He does not account for everything in my experience.

I currently look at it all like this: all of the philosophers (and many other types of sages and wise folk, and shaman) were essentially trying to put to words the same object, the same subject, the same experience - human experience. They are all beating around the same bush. So the interesting question is "why would Plato come up with what he said, and Nietzsche come up with what he said, when they were both trying to describe the same experience?" It's like they all looked a sculpture and started arguing "it is essentially form and beauty" and "how can you say that when it is chaos and destruction" or "how can you say 'say that' without saying first what 'that' means?" Why would Berkeley say all we need are ideas, and Lucretius say all we need are atoms and void - what object produces such seemingly opposing pictures?

Can't go on without Nietzsche, but I love the pre-socratics, and we have to deal with Kant and Hegel, and Descartes goes on and on way too long imagining God, but he really did say something when he noticed that he existed. The being for whom being is an issue. So many important worldviews to consider and reconsider.

But I generally agree, prior to Nietzsche ethics was more like a fairy tale that would not admit of reality, and post Nietzsche, ethics as a branch of philosophy should be over, but lingers, like a corpse occasionally moving in place as it decomposes.

... before Nietzsche: Dogmatic boring philosophy. — Vaskane

Did Nietzsche find Heraclitus dogmatic and boring? Or Montaigne?

Nietzsche said that Plato is boring, and at the same time that with regard to Plato he is a thorough skeptic. (TI,2) So what are we to make of this remark by one ironic skeptic about another ironic skeptic?

These remarks occur within the context of the art of writing. With regard to the art of writing and its counterpart the art of reading Nietzsche suggests, something important has been forgotten. Something known before Nietzsche :

Our highest insights must–and should–sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when
they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for
them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to
philosophers–among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims, in short,
wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights –….
[consists in this:] the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down
from above…. What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must
almost be poison for a very different and inferior type…. There are books that have
opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower
vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them; in the former case, these
books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter, [they are]
heralds’ cries that call the bravest to their courage. Books for all the world are always
foul-smelling books.

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 30

If one reads Plato, or any higher type, as one higher man reads another, then they will not find what they read boring. In the section "Reading and Writing" from Zarathustra Nietzsche says:

He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader.

but he really did say something when he noticed that he existed — Fire Ologist

Though he did say it best, it was far from being an original thought. I wrote about it, here it is translated to English:

The first example is St Augustine's si fallor, explained in "Monologues", "The Trinity" and "The City of God":

"If he doubts, he understands that he doubts; if he doubts, he wants to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows that he doesn't know; if he doubts, he thinks that he shouldn't agree rashly. Even if you doubt other things, you shouldn't doubt that you doubt. Since if it didn't exist, it would be impossible to doubt anything," — Saint Augustine

which Descartes discusses in a letter to Andreas Colvius:

Vous m'avez obligé de m'avertir du passage de saint Augustin, auquel mon Je pense, donc je suis a quelque rapport; je l’ay esté lire aujourd’huy en la Biblioteque de cette Ville, et je trouve veritablement qu’il s’en sert pour prouver la certitude de nostre estre, et en suite pour faire voir qu’il y a en nous quelque image de La Trinité, en ce que nous sommes, nous sçavons que nous sommes, et nous aymons cét estre et cette science qui est en nous; au lieu que je m’en sers pour faire connoistre que ce moy, qui pense, est une substance immaterielle, et qui n’a rien de corporel; qui sont deux choses fort differentes. Et c’est une chose qui de soy est si simple et si naturelle à inferer, qu’on est, de ce qu’on doute, qu’elle auroit pû tomber sous la plume de qui que ce soit; mais je ne laisse pas d’estre bien aise d’avoir rencontré avec saint Augustin, quand ce ne seroit que pour fermer la bouche aux petits esprits qui ont tasché de regabeler sur ce principe. — Descartes to Colvius

Although Avicenna mentions consciousness and the separation of body and mind, he doesn't establish thought as proof of existence.

Although some claim that the "Upanishad Mandukya" is about the cogito, this is not quite true.

Also, in "Nicomachean Ethics", Aristotle mentions consciousness of consciousness as consciousness of existence, but based on the definition that thought or perception are existence.

Goméz Pereira in "Antoniana Margarita" also presents consciousness as proof of existence, as well as some other parallels with Descartes.

Thomas Aquinas says in "De Veritate": "No one can assent to the thought that he does not exist. For in thinking something, he realises that it exists"; resembling Aristotle's argument.

I am not sure what to make of this.

Surely Nietzsche knew that Hesiod said:

The muses tell Hesiod that they speak lies like the truth.

(Theogony 27)

The suspicion is that in reporting what he claims the muses tell him he is lying. He is giving weight and authority to what he says by putting his words in the mouth of the muses.

I do not think he was fooling himself in claiming:

Not I! not I! but a God, through my instrumentality!

Where they pointed to the gods you point to Nietzsche. As if Nietzsche takes the place of the gods as the authority. It would seem that your frequent appeal to him to the exclusion of others is more like the appeal to monotheism than polytheism.

Now, of course, all of this can be regarded as a bit of rhetorical hyperbole.

With all this bs in mind, I am looking for some objections. Does anybody know of a philosopher or philosophical project/ question that is more interesting or important? Who addresses the above issues better than Neitzsche? — SatmBopd

Heidegger wrote on Nietzsche in 4 volumes, and they look cool. I am sure Heidegger covers most of the topics listed in the OP in his own philosophy.

If OP means that no-one has resuscitated God, sure, but then many things get discarded by philosophy. Does anyone still believe in aether and the four elements, except in some poetic sense? My point is that philosophers (after Nietzsche) might not just be involved in destruction, but also creativity and creating new value.

nice quote; i googled it to make sure and got this free book chapter.

‘The thinker’, Nietzsche writes, ‘regards everything as having evolved … he asks: whence does it come? what is its purpose?’ (WS, §43). — the above link

I sometimes get the sense of Nietzsche only being engaged in refutation (showing that a person claim or theory is wrong), but I would be inclined to think, naively, that he also wants to assert the value of himself etc. and that this is not because everyone was so mean about him (wrong, wrong, wrong). Does it depend on how trivially the two attitudes (creation/destruction) are related: why the unity might slip out from anyone's "purpose"?

Anyway, I don't think he should be considered the final word, the alpha and omega, on nihilism or philosophy, if only because (from the very little I know) the end is also the beginning (*obligatory pic of Ouroboros*).

Post-modernists can't misread a philosopher. They just read different [insert philosopher's name here]s. Protagoras and Gorgias become the heros of the Platonic Dialogues. :cool:

Does anybody know of a philosopher or philosophical project/ question that is more interesting or important?

The key "grand system" builders are Plato, Aristotle, Saint Aquinas, and Hegel. You might throw Kant in there as well. Those authors all spawned "traditions" which continue to attract a very large number of devotees. There are worlds to explore in each.

Aristotle and Aquinas are fairly dry. Being foundational thinkers for what would become the "scientific method" and modern thought, a lot of their greatest insights will seem like common sense. We're just used to thinking that way now. Aquinas is also filled with theology, which is generally a turn off to modern audiences. So I might not start with either of those two.

Kant is similarly quite dry, although also a good deal more difficult to read IMO. And based on your post, I don't think you'd like him (granted, that's scant evidence to go on).

That leaves Hegel and Plato. Hegel is famously a slog to read and difficult; Plato's dialogues are often cited as among the best works of literary art from the ancient world. The choice is easy, give Plato a shot.

If you liked Nietzsche, you'll probably like a good deal of Plato because, despite all the railing against Plato that Nietzsche does, he often ends up advancing the same positions. Yet Plato's approach is very different, and his ethics in particular are quite different.

Platonism certainly did become a dogma over the centuries, and this is to some extent what Nietzsche is actually attacking when he rails against Plato, but Plato himself is the opposite of dogmatic in many places.

I would recommend the Apology as a starting point because it's short and sweet. That or you could just jump into the Republic. Or, if you really admire the Dionysian element in Nietzsche, there is the Phaedrus. Just bear in mind that the first speech in the Phaedrus is supposed to be terrible, and the second flawed. It's not until Socrates throws his cloak back in divine inspiration that the real gem emerges.

The Teaching Company's course on the Dialogues is quite good too, and is helpful for getting all the symbolism going on. Just get it through Amazon or Wonderium or something, because they are ridiculously overpriced on TTC's website.

I also really like Wallace's Philosophical Mysticism in Plato and Hegel as a secondary source (it's sort of a misleading title as it has as much to do with freedom as the "divine").

Very few philosophers are as fun to read as Nietzsche, but Plato is one of them (Saint Augustine is another). For Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics is worth checking out though. It's more dry, but still quite readable.

(That all said, Hegel is my favorite "big system" guy. It's just tough to say where to start with him).

Yet Plato's approach is very different, and his ethics in particular are quite different. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One important thing that they have in common that helps to put this difference into perspective is that they do not regard philosophy as a set of topics or problems to be addressed as abstractions or as a doctrine of universal truths without regard to the differences between readers and their cultural and historical circumstances. Nietzsche calls attention to something both practice:

The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to philosophers–among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims ... — Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 30

Platonism certainly did become a dogma over the centuries, and this is to some extent what Nietzsche is actually attacking when he rails against Plato — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree. I think it a mistake not to distinguish between Plato and Platonism.

... the Phaedrus ... It's not until Socrates throws his cloak back in divine inspiration ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

One of the many double entendres in this erotic dialogue.

I have not listened to Michael Sugrue's Teaching Company's course but since he studied under Allan Bloom and Joseph Cropsey at the University of Chicago he must have learned how to read Plato.

A key passages in the Phaedrus is a guide for how to do this. Socrates says :

... every speech must be constructed just like a living creature with a body of its own, so that it is neither headless nor footless; instead it should be written possessing middle and extremities suited to one another and to the whole.

(264c)

Just as we cannot understand a living creature without understanding how all the parts fit together to form the whole, we cannot understand Plato without understanding how all the parts fit together to form the whole of the dialogue.

Perhaps I misunderstand something, but Nietzsche seems at odds with himself. He seems to believe in the "overcoming" of oneself, and the embracing of Suffering in some aesthetic appeal to the Ubermensch who thrives on pain in the idea of manifesting one's own values (power) into the world.

In this type of manic idea, I immediately think of Shakespeare's response:

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Perhaps I misunderstand something, but Nietzsche seems at odds with himself. He seems to believe in the "overcoming" of oneself, and the embracing of Suffering in some aesthetic appeal to the Ubermensch who thrives on pain in the idea of manifesting one's own values (power) into the world. — schopenhauer1

:sweat: Yes, you're misunderstanding N completely – put down your dog-earred old copy of Nietzsche for Dummies, schop, and carefully read some of N's books (from The Gay Science onward).

You can claim I misunderstand him all you want, but you don't break down WHY.. only very generally allude to past posts and such which aren't helpful or convincing. So go on being the ninja of sidestepping YOUR responsibility to show why. If you don't show, then don't tell.

I'm not here to "convince" you of anything, schop, just challenge (analyze) claims – expose nonsense, poor reasoning, falsity – and explore (untangle) complex ideas from which we both might learn something insightful in a dialectical exchange. Don't be lazy, man, know what you're talking about; there is no shame in "I don't know" or being attentively silent. :chin:

I'm not here to "convince" you of anything, schop, just challenge (analyze) claims – expose nonsense, poor reasoning, falsity – and explore (untangle) complex ideas from which we both might learn something insightful. Don't be lazy, man, know what you're talking about; there is no shame in "I don't know" or being attentively silent. :chin: — 180 Proof

Look, I know he is a philosophical hero of yours, so me maligning might hit a nerve with you. I welcome critique.. Hell, recruit someone else to critique what I am saying.. as with another poster who is a huge N advocate, when I "analyze" the critique further it would be a re-wording of my claims of his ideas, and thus the whole "You just don't 'get' him" deflates into simply being unhappy with one's favorite philosopher criticized. You glom onto anything I say negative about him extremely fast, so clearly, this is close to your heart.. Go ahead and explain away.. Take passages, analyze them to your content in regard to how they are NOT what I am characterizing them. We will see and as you say

and explore (untangle) complex ideas from which we both might learn something insightful. — 180 Proof

Without adhering to Plato's purely spiritual and the good as purely spiritual. — Vaskane

Don’t forget Deleuze’s dogmatic image of truth, gifted to Western philosophy by Plato.

Look, I know he is a philosophical hero of yours, so me maligning might hit a nerve with you. — schopenhauer1

:roll: Again, you should know what you're talking about, schop. As I've posted probably hundreds of times on TPF, (if anything more than a freethinker) I'm an Epicurean-Spinozist and haven't been a Nietzsche fanboy since the 1980s. That your statements about N are ignorant, not that they are "maligning", call for a response. I'd do the same if you or anyone spouted uninformed nonsense about e.g. Heidegger or Derrida both of whom I loathe.

:up:

I don’t believe it until you tell me how misinformed I am. Also you took one post which was extremely cursory but I’ll let you proceed with that sample.

To add, I don’t agree with ideas around Ubermesch, eternal recurrence, will to power, or master and slave morality. You can use those as jumping points.

[T]ell me how misinformed I am. — schopenhauer1

Well if you really want to be learn for yourself how misinformed you are ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/876624

Cool, so you offer nothing but repeat. Perhaps eternal recurrence.