17 ms·

My takeaway from witnessing countless arguments about Nietzsche: Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. If he were, there wouldn't be so much a

by ThJ 8y ago

My takeaway from witnessing countless arguments about Nietzsche: Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. If he were, there wouldn't be so much arguing about how to interpret his works.

platz 8y ago
That's ok, he wasn't writing to be understood by everyone! among scholars there is much agreement about what nietzsche meant of what he wrote.
bsenftner 8y ago
I always felt he was extremely articulate, and it is the typical readers preconceived filters preventing them from understanding Nietzsche sentence by sentence. I have sat down with an unbelievably large number of people studying Nietzsche, as I was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class on his work. Time and time again, I would be pointing out the basic, fundamental misunderstandings; The world view of the typical American Christian cloud their ability to think clearly about the basic nature of Nietzsche's perspective. They literally can't think logically straight, and bend meaning word by word with personal emotional criticism interlaced with "fear for their soul". They are intellectually handicapped, their thoughts are so interlaced with variations of fear.
- yonoataraxia 8y ago
  I think it's ok. When they would instantly understand Nietzsche, it's very likely they already had major depressive episodes in their lives. Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after many years of reflection. In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong, you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive system that our consciousness gets trained with. It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it "intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.
  - rwill128 8y ago
    I really appreciate the way you've articulated your thoughts on this. It helped me reflect once again on the way Nietzsche affected me when I first read him. I was about 20 years old, and had lost several important friends while also briefly dropping out of college. Saw Nietzsche on a bookshelf while making an effort to continue my education independently as I saved money. I was young enough to earnestly jump into pursuing "the whole damn truth," and my mental health be damned. Cue years of unrelenting depressiveness, self-absorption, solipsism, fragile and tragic romantic relationships, etc. I completely agree, and I think a lot of people who don't "get" Nietzsche are actually reacting to his ideas perfectly rationally with respect to their (not necessarily anti-intellectual) values in life. I for one would have been much more fortunate to have studied him in an academic setting, with a group of peers. I recall reading once that Nietzsche's ideas are valuable insofar as one finds a resistance to them.
    - yonoataraxia 8y ago
      It's funny. I had a nihilistic mindset and found Nietzsche afterwards. I guess we're similar. Therefore I didn't had the chance to have any resistance to his ideas. Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful. I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still feel this suffering every time I choose to feel. I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a chance.
      - sethrin 8y ago
        I never got much into Nietzsche, but well, between being trans, and having seasonal depression, and having been stuck in rural Alaska for twenty years, we can say that I've seen some depressive episodes. It does get better. One thing that helped was leaving the negative environment. Also, some of my angst sprang from the disempowerment of youth; having more power ($$, or in Spanish, effectivo) to control the world around you makes most life problems easier to deal with. Philosophically, I became something of a Stoic: this may be the worst of all possible worlds, but there's not really much value in being depressed about it. You are not in control of the world, but you are in control of your reaction to it, and as long as the world is absurd one may as well laugh. However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance. Try to make peace with your demons; they're just another aspect of you. I doubt if your life and mine have many true parallels, but that was my path out of darkness. I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.
yonoataraxia 8y ago
That's true, but it's much more fun to read about being a camel, lion and finally a child than describing it in a dry and unambiguous way. So in a way he tried to appeal to his readers and made a piece of art. But you should also acknowledge that only 20% of people were able to read back then. His expectations about his readers were based on the time he lived in. While I don't defend his expression skills I just want to emphasize how hard it is to anticipate what people 100 years in the future will think about your ideas. And the interpretations and emotions which those people use while reading the texts. The hard part about Nietzsche is being able to let your mind absorb the thoughts without interfering with your own values and belief system. But I guess it's not a secret that it's hard for people to listen without simultaneously judging something.
jackfoxy 8y ago
Nietzsche and Goethe are the two greatest prosists of the German language. Nietzsche had an awesome command of philology and was a syphilitic. His writing is seductive. > Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. His earliest works are lucid. As his disease progressed his work approaches rambling nonsense. Goethe was a polymath and statesman, much more involved in the world of human intercourse than Nietzsche. A regret of mine is having read too much Nietzsche and not enough Goethe back when I had an excellent command of German.
- yonoataraxia 8y ago
  Unfortunately I'm German so I can't recommend good translations, but it should definitely be possible to read Goethe in German and English simultaneously. Look for Dual-Language Editions with side-by-side views of German and English texts. Definitely worth it to freshen up your memory. I hope you find some time to do it. Although I kind of disagree with the view that Goethes thoughts are "more important" than Nietzsches'. Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) and both have works which are hyped due to their names.
  - wging 8y ago
    > Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) I recently (re)read something very interesting about 'obviousness' in philosophical writings. The idea was that when a claim is obvious, it is because you are not the target audience for that claim. For example, you live in a world where Sartre lived and wrote and had an impact; the ideas that he wanted to convey are no longer novel, at least partly because he conveyed them and they became part of the culture. (Though even today, there are likely people to whom the claims are not so obvious as they are to you.) The essay starts off talking about claims that are obviously wrong, not obviously right, but later applies the same reasoning to obviously right claims. I am going to abandon an attempt to summarize a 1000-word essay. Just go read it. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philosophy-backwards/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philoso...
    - 8y ago

by ThJ 8y ago

platz 8y ago

That's ok, he wasn't writing to be understood by everyone! among scholars there is much agreement about what nietzsche meant of what he wrote.

bsenftner 8y ago

I always felt he was extremely articulate, and it is the typical readers preconceived filters preventing them from understanding Nietzsche sentence by sentence. I have sat down with an unbelievably large number of people studying Nietzsche, as I was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class on his work. Time and time again, I would be pointing out the basic, fundamental misunderstandings; The world view of the typical American Christian cloud their ability to think clearly about the basic nature of Nietzsche's perspective. They literally can't think logically straight, and bend meaning word by word with personal emotional criticism interlaced with "fear for their soul". They are intellectually handicapped, their thoughts are so interlaced with variations of fear.

yonoataraxia 8y ago
I think it's ok. When they would instantly understand Nietzsche, it's very likely they already had major depressive episodes in their lives. Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after many years of reflection. In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong, you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive system that our consciousness gets trained with. It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it "intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.
- rwill128 8y ago
  I really appreciate the way you've articulated your thoughts on this. It helped me reflect once again on the way Nietzsche affected me when I first read him. I was about 20 years old, and had lost several important friends while also briefly dropping out of college. Saw Nietzsche on a bookshelf while making an effort to continue my education independently as I saved money. I was young enough to earnestly jump into pursuing "the whole damn truth," and my mental health be damned. Cue years of unrelenting depressiveness, self-absorption, solipsism, fragile and tragic romantic relationships, etc. I completely agree, and I think a lot of people who don't "get" Nietzsche are actually reacting to his ideas perfectly rationally with respect to their (not necessarily anti-intellectual) values in life. I for one would have been much more fortunate to have studied him in an academic setting, with a group of peers. I recall reading once that Nietzsche's ideas are valuable insofar as one finds a resistance to them.
  - yonoataraxia 8y ago
    It's funny. I had a nihilistic mindset and found Nietzsche afterwards. I guess we're similar. Therefore I didn't had the chance to have any resistance to his ideas. Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful. I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still feel this suffering every time I choose to feel. I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a chance.
    - sethrin 8y ago
      I never got much into Nietzsche, but well, between being trans, and having seasonal depression, and having been stuck in rural Alaska for twenty years, we can say that I've seen some depressive episodes. It does get better. One thing that helped was leaving the negative environment. Also, some of my angst sprang from the disempowerment of youth; having more power ($$, or in Spanish, effectivo) to control the world around you makes most life problems easier to deal with. Philosophically, I became something of a Stoic: this may be the worst of all possible worlds, but there's not really much value in being depressed about it. You are not in control of the world, but you are in control of your reaction to it, and as long as the world is absurd one may as well laugh. However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance. Try to make peace with your demons; they're just another aspect of you. I doubt if your life and mine have many true parallels, but that was my path out of darkness. I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.

yonoataraxia 8y ago

That's true, but it's much more fun to read about being a camel, lion and finally a child than describing it in a dry and unambiguous way. So in a way he tried to appeal to his readers and made a piece of art. But you should also acknowledge that only 20% of people were able to read back then. His expectations about his readers were based on the time he lived in. While I don't defend his expression skills I just want to emphasize how hard it is to anticipate what people 100 years in the future will think about your ideas. And the interpretations and emotions which those people use while reading the texts. The hard part about Nietzsche is being able to let your mind absorb the thoughts without interfering with your own values and belief system. But I guess it's not a secret that it's hard for people to listen without simultaneously judging something.

jackfoxy 8y ago

Nietzsche and Goethe are the two greatest prosists of the German language. Nietzsche had an awesome command of philology and was a syphilitic. His writing is seductive. > Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. His earliest works are lucid. As his disease progressed his work approaches rambling nonsense. Goethe was a polymath and statesman, much more involved in the world of human intercourse than Nietzsche. A regret of mine is having read too much Nietzsche and not enough Goethe back when I had an excellent command of German.

yonoataraxia 8y ago
Unfortunately I'm German so I can't recommend good translations, but it should definitely be possible to read Goethe in German and English simultaneously. Look for Dual-Language Editions with side-by-side views of German and English texts. Definitely worth it to freshen up your memory. I hope you find some time to do it. Although I kind of disagree with the view that Goethes thoughts are "more important" than Nietzsches'. Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) and both have works which are hyped due to their names.
- wging 8y ago
  > Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) I recently (re)read something very interesting about 'obviousness' in philosophical writings. The idea was that when a claim is obvious, it is because you are not the target audience for that claim. For example, you live in a world where Sartre lived and wrote and had an impact; the ideas that he wanted to convey are no longer novel, at least partly because he conveyed them and they became part of the culture. (Though even today, there are likely people to whom the claims are not so obvious as they are to you.) The essay starts off talking about claims that are obviously wrong, not obviously right, but later applies the same reasoning to obviously right claims. I am going to abandon an attempt to summarize a 1000-word essay. Just go read it. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philosophy-backwards/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philoso...
  - 8y ago