But he shouldn't be divulged nor widely read, and here is why.
I was listening to the fifth chapter of the Gay Science, entitled "We the fearless ones", in which Nietzsche discusses the problem of truth.
https://librivox.org/the-joyful-wisdom-by-friedrich-nietzsche/
He concludes that truth can be just as valuable as falsehood, that both have "equal rights", so to speak. What really matters is what is more useful to life, and this both can be. The will to truth, or the conviction that truth is always better than falsehood, is merely the result of us believing our own lies, called morals. His discussion of epistemology as a moral issue is simply brilliant. But why morality if there's none of it in nature and the world? Why silly, because of the *other* world! Hence religion and philosophies like that of Plato.
Notice that he doesn't say, like the vulgar relativist, that there is no truth. No, truth does exist. It's just that it's not always productive of the most positive results.
(From this point forward, not necessarily Nietzsche's opinions.)
This knowledge, however, this wisdom, that truth is not always preferable to falsehood, should be kept away and hidden from the masses. This is because a plebeian-type mentality will always interpret this in a negative sense conducive to nihilism, providing fertile soil for destructive ideologies such as liberalism and Marxism.
Religion and mythology fulfill this important role of enforcing truth-telling to the masses. What science is to the more clever individual, religion is to the plebeian: namely telling them that truth is the most important thing in the world. But there is still a higher type of person, let’s call him patrician, who asks, with Pilate: what is truth? But this wisdom is not for the lower man. Hence why I think readers of Nietzsche shouldn't advocate too strongly for enlightenment, or if they do, only to the few. The lie of religion has this one utility, to prevent the mass-man from falling prey to destructive nihilism and manipulation by the enemies of the higher man. And since the patrician has fully abandoned the conviction that truth is the most important thing, I think it's perfectly valid for him to utilize mystification as a means of keeping the plebeian from doing harm to himself and others. (Even Voltaire thought so! Hence my issue with atheists quoting him in their advocacy for mass atheism, but I digress.) Secularism is already a sufficient solution to neutralize the more negative effects that religion can have in public life. Laugh at religion all you want, but to your peers; not publicly, not in the marketplace.
LT;DR Nietzsche is cool, just not for plebs.
>>7831786
>he shouldn't be divulged nor widely read
u 100 years late m8
>>7831786
>But he shouldn't be divulged nor widely read, and here is why.
He himself said that only the elite would truly comprehend his message.
So he declared himself to be elitist, that's why the Marx-Engels writings were criticized in some of his works.
>>7831786
>This knowledge, however, this wisdom, that truth is not always preferable to falsehood, should be kept away and hidden from the masses.
While I agree, you did just very clearly outline all of this on a public imageboard... not really following your own words there are you?
I disagree, I think most plebs can come to the same realizations and live a life of attempting Übermenschhood if they weren't so scared of looking at themselves and finding out their own values.
How did Nietzsche even become so popular anyway?
>>7832136
he has sweet aphorisms
>>7832136
Insecure girls love the watered down pop culture version of his philosophy
>>7831786
Nice explaination op, I agree with what you said, I came to the same conclusions as him, we won't find prosperity by educating the masses. Do you know the movement of libertines scholars ? (in french it's libertins érudits I have no idea how to translate it). It's a bunch of philosophers/politicians whose philosophy was to exchange knowledge and practice philosophy only with a very few people and they didn't want to share their knowledge with the masses because of how dangerous they conssidered their knowledge to be (they were mostly atheists politicians of monarchies). One of them is Machiavel for exemple. This vision of the truth, irremediably lead to the will of establishing an aristocracy.
is trump ubermensch?
>>7832195
pretty much, though he has room to improve
>>7832141
More like introverted boys.
>>7832098
I see the error of my ways.
>>7832191
I didn't know about this movement. I'll look it up. Thanks!
>>7832225
It's actually amazing how much girls in the arts and humanities are into Nietzsche. You can actually use him to pick up girls, no matter what their ideology. I met one girl how that was an Evangelical Christian and simply loved him just because he said something cute about dance (she was a dancer). Another girl was a Marxist, but she couldn't help it either! It's because women...
well, foucault did say " In a sense, all the rest of my life I've been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys."
>>7832136
His sister used his books for the nazi movement at the early 1900s though.
It was widespread that Nietzsche was an important philosopher who supported the nazi ideology. But recently he got "cleansed".
Now he is "used" by the media for ignorant people.
How does that make him a genius? He was mostly repeating what was said ~2000 years ago
Nice thread reminds me of high school. Is everyone on this board underage?
Was he really supportive of those ideologies? I mean, on the geneology of morals, he condemned the hatred that led to the creation of the contemporary notions of good and evil. Wasn't that same type of hatred displayed on the holocaust?
>>7831786
>Generally speaking, it is quite right if great things-things of much sense for men of rare sense-are expressed but briefly and (hence) darkly. so that barren minds will declare it to be nonsense, rather than translate it into a nonsense that they can comprehend. For mean, vulgar minds have an ugly facility for seeing in the profoundest and most pregnant utterance only their own everyday opinion.
This was Jean Paul as quoted by Nietzsche in his unpublished book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.
>>7831786
there were a great thread month ago about a specialist of N who answers some questions and he basically said that N only talks to the architect not the people. He was truly an aristocrat.
>>7833431
Link please
>>7832258
>, but she couldn't help it either! It's because women...
dat mustache though
>>7831786
>This knowledge, however, this wisdom, that truth is not always preferable to falsehood, should be kept away and hidden from the masses. This is because a plebeian-type mentality will always interpret this in a negative sense conducive to nihilism, providing fertile soil for destructive ideologies such as liberalism and Marxism.
most average people i know ignore the truth when it doesnt help them. when the falsehood makes them happier. these people are pretty stupid.
>>7832191
The only reason this knowledge is 'dangerous' is because it puts the other people on the same level playing field as those who have decided to keep it to themselves.
Instead of sharing knowledge they keep it. Knowledge is power and they can remain at the top of the proverbial pyramid whilst others either suffer or live happy ignorant lives.
philosophy is dead plebs, get over it.
philosophers were the hipster/SJW/etc of their time. Spouting useless unhelpful shit that hasn't helped humanity in any real way.
>>7831786
>This is because a plebeian-type mentality will always interpret this in a negative sense conducive to nihilism, providing fertile soil for destructive ideologies such as liberalism and Marxism.
Plebs don't even know what nihilism is.
>>7833485
can't find on warosu, i think the site was down at the time so there is no archive unfortunately
>>7832258
Did she read any of his quotes on religion, especially the top 3, and particularly Christianity, and particularly evangelical Christianity??
>>7833569
convenient
Everyone who reads him love to think themself above the average man but it can't possibly be true statistically.Who was able to become an ubermench according to Nietzche? Was it only other 'geniuses' like himself? The top 1% of a society or just anyone that's a little better than the average?
His thoughts weren't particularly interesting or even intelligent.
>>7833749
I agree. You are better off just listening to Kanye West instead, it's basically the same.
>>7833783
Poe's Law
>>7833819
it doesn't make a difference on a functional level
>>7833783
At least Kanye West has contributed something positive to the world unlike Nietzsche.
>>7833552
They don't need to understand nihilism as a philosophical position to be practical nihilists themselves.
>>7833533
In Nietzsche's case I don't think this is totaly true. I don't think that this is the reason. You can perfectly decide to not share your knowledge because you don't want other people on the same level playing field, it's not like Nietzsche would tell you it's immoral or blabla, he doesn't believe in moral imperative. But Keeping knowledge to yourself because you don't want others to be like you sounds like what a weak person would do, someone who would fear confrontation, who wouldn't want to get hurt and thus would find refuge in mediocrity. I think Nietzsche would be enthusiastic to see a global elevation of the level of thinking or of the cultural level.
Nietzsche doesn't want to share knowledge because :
You can't rly share it on a global squale, and technicaly you can't even share it to anybody at all, everything is interpretation and thus highly subjective. Saying something is already changing it, Nietzsche wrote aphorismes because they're what he believed to be the closest form of written expression of the original thought.
What is a thought and why educating weaks won't help
An interpretation produced by the body, something that has little to do with your consciousness, it's forces in you interpreting something. It means an interpretation has a physiological dimension, it's not just your consciousness thinking, it's doing a small work of reflection, it's all your pulsions, it's your whole body. It means most people will just be dumb/weak and there is litteraly nothing you can do about it. Some other will be strong but that's an extreme minority.
Why you can't teach stuff to masses :
Nietzsche doesn't belive in the education of masses because for him it needs to be individual or at least between a small group of people that would have great abailities of analysis, great minds that would be able to produce great thoughts. He wrote some aphorismes about university where he said that because there were more and more people going to university, the people that passed their diploma were getting worse and worse, why ? Because a society can't produce enough smart people for the number of teachers it needs. So they just hire dumb people. A lot of them. So not only you can never properly share thoughts, but what you can share is extremely time consuming and not everybody will be able to handle/understand these thoughts.
Why did so many people started to study ?
Because the capitalist bourgeoisie prompted them to do so, they realized that an educated worker was better than a worker that worked during his childhood. (there're some remarks about it in Anna Karenine-Tolstoï but Nietzsche saw this too).
Today we go to school to get a good job in life, states want their citizens to be educated because from an economical point of view it's better. Most people don't go to school to overcome themselves, they go because they want the diploma. It's gives to knowledge a kind of utilitarian form that Nietzsche would have hated.
>>7833529
And yet I envy them to death.
The truth is a sword and a shield, but they are heavy things to bear into dark places.
A wise man will throw them down and flee when the day is lost.
Are heroes innately unwise?
>>7833597
I know! That's what's most bizarre. Christianity and Marxism are pretty antithetical to Nietzsche.
>>7833635
I don't consider myself an Ubermensch just because I read him. I'm not sure Nietzsche considered himself one. Moreover, I don't think the Ubermensch is supposed to be a "genius" or even clever, for that matter. (In one passage Nietzsche goes to the point of affirming that conscience made humans weak.) On the contrary, I imagine him as someone more like the hero from Wagner's opera Siegfried: strong, free, lighthearted, almost childlike in demeanor, but nonetheless ruthless . In the story, Siegfried is fearless because the dwarf Mime had forgotten to teach him what fear is. (Nietzsche admired this opera and compared priests to dwarves and, implictly, Siegfried to Germans in the Birth of Tragedy) Likewise, the Ubermensch is someone who is free of remorse because someone forgot to teach (preach) him what conscience/good and evil/morality/etc. is.
>>7831793
actually the reception of Nietzsche outside Germany and people who read German was pretty small
so he's not that late
it's like the first day of spring break and its snowing like a mother fucker this is bullshit
>>7834300
Nietzsche is around the 25th most cited author in humanities papers (almost tied with Marx) but Nietzsche's methodology in particular echoes through poststructuralism, postmodernism and even into some Marxist and Anarchist/Postanarchist thought.
He did most of the world of deconstructing the west himself, but he left his hammer unattended after his death and now any idiot can pick it up and start smashing things. We need a new Plato or Christ to put it back behind the "break in case of the death of God" glass wall again. Because the entire 20th century was a century of nothing but philosophical and physical self destruction of the west.
>>7834344
>We need a new Plato or Christ to put it back behind the "break in case of the death of God" glass wall again. Because the entire 20th century was a century of nothing but philosophical and physical self destruction of the west.
hey man hitler tried but by the time he got to power the jews had already taken over america and they were too strong
>>7834321
Is the fact that "Spring Break" almost always happens before Spring itself starts, is that pure ideology?
There's a reason why the subtitle of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is "A book for everyone and for no one"
>>7834379
>is that pure ideology
i think it has to do with easter originally, so it surprises me that the jews haven't moved spring break around to dechristianize it yet
>>7833635
>Who was able to become an ubermench according to Nietzche?
Napoleon. He saw a solid representation of the Ubermensch in Byron's Manfred, but not exactly Byron himself. There may have been one or two others that he cited / could have considered Ubermensch material, but my mind is drawing a blank this morning.
It was not the top 1% of a society, but literally only a few people over the entire course of history. To be the Overman, you must be above everyone philosophically and thus spiritually, and you must be a creator of new values.
>>7835552
He cited Goethe too.
>It was not the top 1% of a society, but literally only a few people over the entire course of history. To be the Overman, you must be above everyone philosophically and thus spiritually, and you must be a creator of new values.
This man got it.
>>7835563
Of course Napoleon cited Goethe, he always carried a copy of Werther around, Napoleon invaded Weimar, they met twice, second time around Napoleon made Goethe a knight of the Legion of Honour
>>7835574
I mean Nietzsche thought that Goethe was an Ubermench too.
>>7835582
Ah sorry, that's true. Human, All Too-Human is full of praise for Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe
>>7832191
>libertins érudits
this guys are the leftists who think that the human rights are not meant for debauchery but for educating the pleb as an attempt to reach the fantasy of the normative reason.
I don't think him being read is an issue, because he's obviously not understood by those not entitled to his books. This is by design.
>>7835634
I didn't understand what you wrote sorry
Best Nietzsche to start with?
>>7835882
Twilight of the Idols and his (unpublished) essay, On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, start with the essay because it's short and really does lay out the ideas that are at the root of his transformation from an unconventional philologist to the philosopher of the century. then Human, all too Human, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality in whichever order you like. Those books cover the core of his work and if you're not interested after these there is no need to go further.
If you are interested, Zarathustra is the apex of his work and holds within it dozens of secrets that someone who doesn't know Nietzsche outside of that book will never get. His other works are good but generally more peripheral to his thought, The Antichrist and Ecce Homo are great works in a lyrical sense that further refine and distill some of his old criticisms. Ecce Homo is also legitimately funny and probably the most smug smirks crossed my face reading that than any other philosopher's book. You can tell he's starting to come unhinged in it though, which makes it bittersweet.
