RE: Are you the monster you want to be?
December 19, 2018 at 12:12 pm
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2018 at 12:13 pm by Angrboda.)
@Drich:
Well, given your frequent emphasis on using primary sources rather than secondary sources, I find it odd that you would form conclusions about him based on secondary sources alone. I haven't read him myself, being allergic to reading and all, but I hear that he is a difficult philosopher to categorize or say definite things about. He is a very literate philosopher, from all I'm told, so I think it would likely be a mistake to judge him without having read him. As to his contribution to the ideology of the Nazis and 30s Germany, I have studied that, but I don't recall the specifics. I believe the general conclusion was that attempting to draw a straight line between Nietzsche and those ideologies is a mistake, and that he was largely misrepresented by them, but that's a weak memory, at best. I would have to read him and study him to draw any conclusions. Not having done so, I must remain somewhat agnostic as to his whole programme. I find some of his pithier quotes prescient and useful, independent of any relation to his greater philosophy, such as the monster quote. I think it stands on its own merits, whether or not Nietzsche's philosophy itself does so.
Well, given your frequent emphasis on using primary sources rather than secondary sources, I find it odd that you would form conclusions about him based on secondary sources alone. I haven't read him myself, being allergic to reading and all, but I hear that he is a difficult philosopher to categorize or say definite things about. He is a very literate philosopher, from all I'm told, so I think it would likely be a mistake to judge him without having read him. As to his contribution to the ideology of the Nazis and 30s Germany, I have studied that, but I don't recall the specifics. I believe the general conclusion was that attempting to draw a straight line between Nietzsche and those ideologies is a mistake, and that he was largely misrepresented by them, but that's a weak memory, at best. I would have to read him and study him to draw any conclusions. Not having done so, I must remain somewhat agnostic as to his whole programme. I find some of his pithier quotes prescient and useful, independent of any relation to his greater philosophy, such as the monster quote. I think it stands on its own merits, whether or not Nietzsche's philosophy itself does so.