I ABSOLUTELY LOVE this reading of Nietzsche. As a black person, I've always read Nietsczhe in the sense of a European "exposing the thought process". Like, in a way he's ratting out the sadism behind colonialism. In that way yes I've always read him as an antagonist.
I've always felt that the "ambiguity" reading of Nietzsche by the left was more of a justification to use him more interesting ideas for their purposes while leaving the difficult mission of truly unpacking the anti-egalitarian ethos at the center of his work and re contextualizing it into a more wholistic leftist system of thought. There's just too many parallels between Nietzsche and leftwing thinking for this to not be the case. For instance, you can see certain parallels with the way Marx describes utopian socialists and the way Nietzsche critiques socialists of his day. At the end of the day, when the right is authentic and honest in what they say the left should always pay close attention.
One should read Nietzsche - and other controversial writers - the same way Clarice Starling talks to Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, without defending his most abhorrent conclusions, but using his strongest ideas to reveal something better, or truth. That's the oppose of cancelling culture, it is understanding that even intellectual figures are not coherent beings, even that they claim otherwise. It's also the denial of purity and it's ideological counterpart puritanism, both illusions and remainders of a religious past that insists, anyway.
The conservative aristocratic angle of Nietzsche seems to use 'ressentiment' as a way to diminish and deflect away from the critique of economic privilege as an illegitimate form of meritocratic hierarchy. The notion that social status, as derived from market processes, is somehow deserved or that money-wealth is an accurate measure of virtue, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. His attempt at 'restoration' of aristocratic hierarchy requires a dishonest measurement of value.
Don't you think his Focus was more on biological heredity, then economic financial inheritance?? He is damn near a biologist, as shown in his obsession with going underneath the human psyche, to the body. He was seeking some deeper route/root to Greatness. He was a eugenicist.
@aydnofastro-action1788 Possibly, but so was Plato (if we consider his corrective eugenicist projects for a fevered city in the Republic) whom Nietzsche rejects for being too rational/Apollonian. My reading of Plato is that his conception of psyche is more embodied and that the 'rational' part is there to function as a harmonizer of the rest (toward justice). Nietzsche's conception of the deity Apollo isn't really supported by modern scholarship. My understanding is that Apollo functioned as a source of visionary-ecstasy and law; Orpheus for aesthetic-sensual-erotic Justice; and Asclepius for health-justice (of soul and body). Market transactions were not considered a source of truth or justice. Perhaps this is why Nietzsche really rejects Plato and Socrates.
@@aydnofastro-action1788his sister meddling with his writings makes judging his thoughts on biology not necessarily clear cut. Him calling her proto nazi boyfriend and all other and all other antisemites aborted fetuses doesn’t paint racial obsessions as something he would necessarily support
@@benzur3503just because Nietzsche was not a Nazi or an antisemite doesn't mean that he couldn't hold eugenicist views. For example, eugenics was very prevalent in the united states; that's where Hitler got many of his ideas from.
I think this is a somewhat surface level reading of Nietzsche. He really does not justify hierarchy on the grounds of meritocracy as such but rather just that rather in the grand scheme of things injustice is actually preferable to justice. Nietzsche is also a firm materialist and does not even begin to considers the concept of morality itself to be a scam. He believes that life is motivated by a desire for the feeling of power over another which is why hierarchy naturally occurs. In order to keep the slaves obedient, the masters then instill them with a morality THEY created. Then later when the slaves revolt they instill this "slave" morality into the now free populace which is now fearful of the privileges of the master. Now, while they have materially freed themselves Nietzsche believes that because they fail to see their morality as a mental slaver it will drive them towards self-destruction and nihilism. You could very well say, "Oh well that's just his excuses for hierarchy, etc." but realize he base this extrapolation from what I would say is a very grounded and plausible materialist reading of Christianity's role in the development of Europe.
I picked up the audiobook, and look forward to digging in! I double checked and exactly a year ago I was working my way through “Philosophizing With a Hammer and Sickle”, which I believe was also on Repeater.. Please get Jonas Čeika on for a discussion/“debate”, here or wherever the venue/channel! Congrats, Daniel!
Nietzche is a bit too spooky for me, either those who win win, and power is all that matters, and no amount of words and fine ideas are anything but means to an end (so one should watch out for those academic tricksters like himself). Or one simply revalues those values and sets up a safespace for whatever group one wants. The only diffrence between groups is where they draw the line, and the only diffrence between left and right is wether the line should expand, include all, regress or stay the same.
The Stirnerian post-leftists already beat this guys to the punch and did the 'through Nietzsche' much better and in a Stirnerian anti-societal direction. Stirner of course was likely an unacknowledged major influence on Dead Fred and he is of course on of the major figureheads of modern era anarchism/anarchy(more the latter).
Nietzsche: ”there is no right interpretation!” Interpreters of Nietzsche: ”This is the one true interpretation of Nietzsche! He was anti-this and anti-that” (In any case, I really enjoyed this conversation)
While Tutt's political analysis makes sense on the surface, it hardly engages with the more ontological level of Nietzsche's philosophy and the negation of the subject in overcoming ressentiment. How do we maintain joy in the world in our fragile and finite existence? If Tutt is correct, then the only "truth" remains for us: a hollow and ideological politics that leaves us in our delusional state of mind. Tutt's "centering" and historical contextualization presuppose a concreteness to all of the social categories and concepts that were never established in Nietzsche's time or our own. Left/right politics affirms the same nihilistic tendency that Nietzsche was writing about. If you want to read an egalitarian Nietzschean, read Jean Luc Nancy. This attempt to read Nietzsche as a "class enemy" misses the point of his philosophy.
@@seamusgeimhreadh I am confused by the way your question is worded. Do you mean does Fanon overcome the problem of ressentiment, or is his book an example of why it needs to be overcome? Sorry, I just want to understand your question.
@josephturner9763 Sorry. I just meant to ask: Is your understanding of the concept of ressentiment the same as the central problem in Fanon's Black Faces, White Mask's? I'm not always sure what the word means precisely. I'm reading Fanon now and it seems true.
There's also the question of why the great politics of a thinker who sought the transvaluation of all values would be a bricolage of nineteenth century political clichés? The Nazis ideology comes from European ideology in general. I often find this left wing blaming Nietzsche for the Nazis is kinda the equivalent of the alt right blaming Foucault for identity politics. Unfortunately this equivalence shows that the left is equally prone to polemically ignoring reality.
" " Friedrich Nietzsche or others are tremendously important, but they are not one with the whole. On the contrary, they are super-egoists - particularly Nietzsche. I love him, too. He has a tremendous insight into things; great revelations have come through his mind. And he's the one most neglected all over the world - perhaps out of fear, because once you are deep into Nietzsche, you cannot be the same person you have been before. Nietzsche is going to change you .His thoughts are rational; his insights have no parallel in the whole history of philosophy but still, he is not a meditator. It is all mind. And this is the distinction I would like you to remember: There have been two types of influences in the world, people who have changed millions of lives. One belongs to the mind - all the philosophers, all the thinkers; they have great genius as far as mind is concerned. They have impressed millions of people for thousands of years and they are still fresh. But there is an different line of people like Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu - these are not philosophers. What they are saying is not coming from the mind. It is coming from beyond the mind. They have put the mind aside. To understand them, just intellect is not enough. To understand them, you will have to go on the same path as they traveled .Mind goes nowhere. All philosophers are playing with words. Sometimes there is immense beauty even in words, great poetry, logic, that you cannot deny. Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre, Jaspers or Martin Heidegger are pinnacles of intellectuality. You are bound to be impressed - but you are not going to be transformed. And to be impressed is to be enslaved. Unless a transformation happens, your slavery goes on deeper and deeper. Look at the life of Friedrich Nietzsche, not just his philosophical approaches towards reality. His life is one of utter misery. You would not like to be Friedrich Nietzsche if you knew his life. He lived absolutely alone, without friends, because he was such an egoist that to make friends with him was impossible. He was high above; you are just creeping on the ground. What friendship? - he does not consider you to be even a human being. He considers you as a subhuman species. And his whole philosophy is how to create the real human being which he used to call the 'superman.' But he himself was not even an ordinary man, what to say about a superman? - physically ugly... but that can be pardoned; he could not manage in his whole life to love a woman, because love to him was domination and nothing else. He wanted a servant, not a beloved - a slave to dance according to his tune. Looking at his life, one feels deep compassion. He lived his whole life alone with his sister. The sister sacrificed her own life because somebody was needed to take care of Nietzsche. And finally, he went mad. And remember, nobody goes mad suddenly. Madness is something that grows slowly until it is too much and everybody else becomes aware of it. He was mad from the very beginning, but it was not known; it was within the normal insanity of humanity. But soon, he crossed the line. In the end, even though he was declared mad, he had forgotten all his philosophy, he had not forgotten one thing - even in his madness. And you will be surprised: what is that one thing? That one thing was that he would always sign his signature as "Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche." That "Anti-Christ" was the only thing that remained even in his madness. Not a single letter has he signed without writing "Anti-Christ" before his name. If he had been born in India, he would have been anti-Gautam Buddha; if he had been born in China, he would have been anti-Chuang Tzu. It doesn't matter, these names are not the point. Why was he anti-Christ? - because Christ is not a philosopher. Christ does not give any reasons for his assertions, he speaks on his own authority. He gives no arguments, there is no need. Because he feels the truth, he expresses it. He does not argue. In fact, only lies need arguments. You can see in any court, so many arguments....Truth is naked. Its very presence is enough to convince you. And if truth can not have self-validity and depends on arguments, it is not truth. Arguments may change. Somebody may be more logical than you are.. ..Nietzsche is a great logician, a great philosopher, but he knows nothing of reality. All that he says is mind - guesses, inferences. Assumptions supported by argument may befool people but they cannot befool a man who knows. Nietzsche does not know. But he writes beautifully. He writes very consistently, he reaches to the very heights of argumentation. But these are not things of real, authentic value. The only thing valuable is experience, not argument. And Nietzsche is absolutely without any experience. He has never meditated, he has never been in his own being. He has never contacted the vast, beautiful universe that surrounds us. It is our womb. We are in it, continuously being nourished. The West is rich as far as useless things are concerned and poor as far real values are concerned. Nietzsche was "Anti-Christ" for the simple reason that millions of people follow Jesus, and Jesus has not given a single argument to prove his philosophy. And to disprove his philosophy, Nietzsche goes on giving, one after another, hundreds of arguments - beautiful arguments, very refined arguments, but arguments are just arguments. You can go on arguing about love your whole life, but that will not give you the experience of love. The West has produced only philosophers. The East knows nothing of philosophy, it knows only mysticism. And mysticism is based on the simple phenomenon that experience needs no argument. Experience is its own validity."
Your entire argument relies solely on ad hominem attacks and religious sophistry rhetoric, making it hypocritical to claim any moral high ground while subjectively judging the quality of philosophical ideas based on the personal life of the philosopher. Purposefully or ignorantly, you've overlooked certain crucial aspects of Nietzsche's life to fortify your religious argument. Firstly, it's imperative to recognize that Nietzsche's contributions to philosophy, while intellectually challenging, delve deeper than many self-proclaimed religious mystics who disparage life as an illusion. These mystics advocate for transcending this existence, often through asceticism, viewing life as a deceptive hurdle to be overcome for the promise of an afterlife. Nietzsche directly opposes this anti-life philosophy, declaring an "intellectual war" against such absurdities. And what exactly do you mean by "beyond the mind", how can the mind go beyond its limitations ? It is a very strained definition of a just certain way of thinking that also happens in the mind, as it tries to obtain a certain untouchable high ground from which it can dismiss all other explanations of the world and universe itself. On the contrary, Nietzsche aims to ground us in the reality of life itself. There exists nothing beyond the mind, nothing beyond this world. To lead a meaningful life, we must confront ourselves first and foremost, and Nietzsche guides us to look inward for understanding. In fact, there is more connection between Nietzsche and Eastern philosophy than you might think, and he was deeply influenced by it and even praised Eastern thought in certain instances. Acknowledging Nietzsche's suffering strengthens his philosophy's potency and value. His experiences resonate with universal human struggles, teaching us how to overcome suffering and cope with life's inherent madness. Nietzsche endured profound hardships, including chronic illness, witnessing his devoted father's agonizing death, and navigating strained relationships, especially with a sister supporting anti-Semitic movements. Despite these challenges, he demonstrated extraordinary strength, carrying the weight of life while creating remarkable works of philosophy that inspired many thinkers until this day. Your emphasis on mysticism in the East overlooks the fact that Western philosophical traditions encompass more than mere intellectual exercises. Thinkers like Nietzsche grapple with profound questions about morality, existence, and reality. The clichéd antagonism between thinking and feeling, or between philosophy and mysticism/religion, is a shallow interpretation that fails to grasp the depth and complexity inherent in both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions. There is no such Experience without reflection or a Thought. To experience is to think. To meditate is to think, just in a different way. It could maybe that meditation is a just a deep and clear state of thinking about the thought processes and about the experience itself.
I would argue that he was not interested in class as much as he was interested in the individual, or the free spirits, as he called them. Now I don't know about you but the phrase free spirit has a very left-leaning democratic quality. I think his mistake was to idealize, and conflate true greatness with genetic inheritance and family lineage Etc . History does not bear out at The Offspring of the Great and Powerful, will themselves become great and powerful. This was Nietzsche's fantasy. Funny, that he points out history does not evolve in a Progressive Way, Contra Hegel, but he does not apply that same thinking to aristocracy itself. Oops😂
the "working class" has already disappeared as a relevant category, let alone an inherently revolutionary force. and yet Nietzsche still lives. how can he be the enemy of something that has disappeared?
@@0SW13fighting specters is the easiest battle. A man was spreading a powder on the street, when asked why he does, he answered that he’s spreading anti-elephant powder. The baffled asker says “but there aren’t any elephants here” to which the man spreading the powder says “see? It’s working great!”
" his forms of egalitarian opposition...." It seems to me that, despite Nietzsche's criticism of Rousseau, he is at heart a naturalist. Another words, he believed that the natural order of things were that few rare individuals would rise up to lead the herd through the sheer power of their will. And this has a rather Hobbesian outcome. I wonder what these thinkers would have written if they had access, as do we now, to the archaeological evidence of the shift between the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era, Which they did not. After all Niche says that all of our values are decadent values. Was he grasping in the dark for the real beginnings of such a decline of the human race. Was it simply the Neolithic during which the average height of human beings shrink as much as a foot and so did the brain size?... Due to the sedentary life of the farmer, watching the crops grow, no longer engaged in a fierce battle with nature? Aren't all of these social organizations from that point on nearly variations of the herd instinct, as protection in the herd? Does not this lead right up to Marx and the core of socialism? Groups against groups ad all identity politcs? A Documentary called Civilizations reveals how War itself began simply as tribes fighting each other fertile farmland in Central America. As soon as we took this step out of nature,what Jared diamond called the biggest blunder in human history, the herd instinct began in full force. War, conflict and every form of degeneration. The Paleolithic being that Paradise Lost forever, The mythical garden of Eden, and there is no going back. Then again, you can always go carnivore!😅
Put naturals to bed then Imagination wake.”We will take a simple little verse and show you why it is not addressed to the natural man, Ecclesiastes 3:15: “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.” The “natural man” cannot grasp that, for to him reality is based only on the evidence of the senses. The man of reason could justify the verse’s end, saying if it has any meaning then the writer must mean recurrence. The sun comes every day and the moon completes its cycle and the seasons come and go. If we took a picture of the universe today, the scientists can compute how long it will take to return to this point in the picture. So the intellectual man could justify the verse; but that is not what is meant, for it is addressed not to the man of reason or the man of sense, but to the man of Imagination. What is it all about? “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been, and God seeks what has been driven away.”
When you say parasitical I see the Jamaican word overstanding as an appropriation and Inversion of the english word "understanding" that has the sense of submitting to a form of knowledge, you don't submit you take, you don't submit to rights granted but take power. In this sense the fact that Nietzsche didn't want followers needs to be taken centrally, it is about not being dominated, not by a master, a herd, nor by a particular system of thought Nietzsche is about overstanding Nietzsche not understanding him. Is it surprising that a Marxist uses the term parasite when peasants start acting like aristocrats? It doesn't matter who Nietzsche thought he was talking to, he says that he doesn't know and that his own opinion is caught within the same trap of ressentiment that everything else is. If you get caught up in his opinions you'll never go beyond him and you certainly won't go beyond your own ressentiment. Neither slave nor master, neither herd nor individual, what happens when we go beyond these binaries? If you seek your freedom in Marx and the working classes your freedom will be determined within this horizon, the twentieth century has already played out the flaws inherent in such slavish thinking. Nietzsche is simply the antidote to all the idols Marxism created. Less parasitic more insurrectionary: steal what you want and burn the rest. Though I personally found stealing what you want and letting the rest burn you works with Nietzsche as well, kinda burns all the moralising pity and calculating levelling out from leftwing thinking which is frankly a big problem. Or: the will to power/ fulfilling ones potential only requires dominating others if you're a sad fuck. There I said it.
As an example we can take CRT. The rightwing see it as the sum of anti racism but the black separatism that the alt right use to try and disqualify CRT is simply a consequence of segregation policies. The left in ressentiment just defend CRT without even realising there's a separatist aspect whereas my argument would be that a Nietzschean leftist wouldn't get out flanked because of loyalty but would point out that the separatism was conditioned by segregation itself.
Love it when leftists defend Schmidt's concept of the friend enemy distinction lol: ""Oh friends there are no friends", so says the dying sage, "oh enemies there are no enemies" so say I the living fool" Wake me when the left are no longer unconscious Aristotelians... I only play with living fools...
