Thursday, March 27, 2008

Big problems Nietzsche

Why does Nietzsche get such a good press?
Here are some problems with him:
1. Nietzsche despised the struggle for equal rights, it was only logical that he would prove an opponent to women's emancipation. Nietzsche put it 'Man shall be trained for war and woman for the procreation of the warrior, any thing else is folly'. That is surely sexist, to both sexes.
2. Hitler often visited the museum in Weimar on Nietzsche and posed for photos looking intently at the bust of Nietzsche.
3. The Nazi movement found much affinity with Nietzsche's ideas including his attacks against democracy, Christianity and parliamentary governments, his preaching in The will to power where Nietzsche proclaimed the coming of a ruling race that would become the "lords of the earth," his praise of war and the belief in a coming master race and the superman.
4. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche attacks past philosophers for their alleged lack of critical sense and their blind acceptance of Christian premises in their consideration of morality. So how can you be a christian and support him.
5. In "Beyond Good and Evil" his book He finds the English coarse, gloomy, more brutal even than the Germans, and declares that "they are no philosophical race", singling out Bacon, Hobbes, Hume and Locke as representing a "debasement and devaluation of the concept 'philosopher' for more than a century" (§252). Nietzsche also touches on problems of translation and the leaden quality of the German language (§28). As a Scot I find it unfair he seems to claim Hume as an Englishman.
6. In the same book Nietzsche proclaims that "The time for petty politics is past: the very next century will bring with it the struggle for mastery over the whole earth". Now that just seems like a call to arms for supremacy of the planet.
7. In "Beyond Good and Evil" Nietzsche criticizes "unegoistic morality" and demands that "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before order of rank" (§221). Every "high culture" begins by recognizing "the pathos of distance". Is he saying their that people should put rank before morality. That is sick, and helps snobs and racists.
8. Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Förster-Nietzsche (July 10, 1846 Röcken, Germany, - November 8, 1935 Weimar, Germany), who went by her second name, was the sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the creator of the Nietzsche Archive in 1894. In 1930, Förster-Nietzsche, a German nationalist and antisemite, became a supporter of the Nazi Party. After Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Nietzsche Archive received financial support and publicity from the government, in return for which Förster-Nietzsche bestowed her brother's considerable prestige on the régime. Förster-Nietzsche's funeral in 1935 was attended by Hitler and several high-ranking Nazi officials. He did disown her in a way.

9. The Genealogy of Morals, He wrote that The 'masters' have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)…Everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarized….

10. He criticized the struggle for equality of rights as yet another form of "mediocrity" and of the "decadence" brought upon by "democracy." Against this equality, he declares himself in favour of a differential relationship between the masculine and the feminine. He said in "Beyond good and evil"
"The democratic movement inherits the Christian."--the political manifestation of slave morality because of its obsession with freedom and equality.

11. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche wrote his most chilling and cruel lines:

A doctrine is needed powerful enough to work as a breeding agent: strengthening the strong, paralyzing and destructive for the world weary.
The annihilation of the decaying races. Decay of Europe. The annihilation of slavish evaluations. Dominion over the earth as a means of producing a higher type. The annihilation of the tartuffery called morality. The annihilation of suffrage universel; i.e. the system through which the lowest natures prescribe themselves as laws for the higher.-The annihilation of mediocrity and its acceptance.

12. Nietzsche alleged that "...one is not 'converted ' to Christianity — one must be sufficiently sick for it.

13. Nietzsche does however explicitly consider Jesus as a mortal, and furthermore as ultimately misguided, the antithesis of a true hero, whom he posits with his concept of a Dionysian hero.

14. He seems to support Nihilism, in my view : Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position which argues that Being, especially past and current human existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following:

* there is no reasonable proof of the existence of a higher ruler or creator,
* a "true morality" does not exist, and
* objective secular ethics are impossible; therefore, life has, in a sense, no truth, and no action is objectively preferable to any other.

Well surely is is the same as moral relativism then which right wingers normally claim is PC gone mad. I am left wing but I do think there is true morality. How else do we argue against bullying, racism, rape, child abuse, murder, war, ethnic cleansing, adultery, robbery, fraud. Yes it can be difficult to define what is good or evil but every word and term is difficult to define no word can be defined 100%. What people of different eras thought was good and what was evil, has often changed.
To say that as good and evil can never be defined 100% by every individual opinion for every era, defined well we might as well get rid of every word in the dictionary.
If true morality does not exist then how can you define something that not exist, therefore, how can you define that it does not exist.

15 Christianity, as the religion of pity, is deplored by Nietzsche. Pity leads to depression, loss of vitality and strength, and is harmful to life. Pity also preserves that which should naturally be destroyed.

16 In § 1, Nietzsche expressed his dissatisfaction with modernity. He disliked the contemporary "lazy peace," "cowardly compromise," "tolerance," and "resignation.".

17 Nietzsche wrote : Why did Christianity trample down the culture of Islam? "...[B]ecause Islam was noble, because it owed its origin to manly instincts, because it said Yes to life even in the rare and exquisite treasures of Moorish life!"[103] The Crusades were "higher piracy."[104] "For in itself there should be no choice in the matter when faced with Islam and Christianity, as little as there should when faced with an Arab and a Jew. The decision is given in advance; no one is free to choose here. One either is Chandala or one is not...I can't grasp how a German could ever have felt Christian."[105]
I find this view offensive I think many Islamic people will find it an offensive view that Nietzsche somehow insinuates Islam does not help the weak.

18 I have just found out Nietzsche fans say he is against Nihilism, Well surely he was the ultimate Nihilist. He supported the idea that good and evil did not exist. He talked about slave morality as a terrible thing.
When i found out what Nihilism i just naturally assumed he was one,When you read his work it seems to be what he argues for. In what way he not a Nihilist.

I believe in morality he did not. He even claimed as i said in point 7 that "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before order of rank". He was the ultimate Nihilist.

By the way I have read his work.

Beat that Nietzsche, who ever you are. I just dissed you and you cannot reply I win. Big raspberry blow to you. Oh yeah I forgot he can't hear me.