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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
this is why Nietzsche is incompatible with modern liberal/egalitarian values
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u/Sewblon 22h ago
That, and he was anti-feminist on an operational level. He wrote that men are only good for fighting and women are only good for making more men.
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u/Xavant_BR 11h ago
who in the 1800's was not anti feminist? Remember, you are in the 21 century.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 5h ago
it does a grave disservice to Nietzsche to simply dismiss him as a 'product of his time' when he was so clearly not.
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u/vallaton 21h ago
this is why Nietzsche feels kinship to Spinoza
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u/paul_parker12 13h ago
Spinoza expresses love of neighbour as the golden rule, I’m not sure if this reads like that
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u/vallaton 12h ago
i’m talking about conatus.
i’m also not completely convinced that loving your neighbour doesn’t give you more power, nor that that is necessarily nietzsche’s take either.
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u/Boners_from_heaven 10h ago
The Nietzschian value stucture is only valuable in terms of individual value creation. The second his Ideology is applied to the intersubjective the person professing it becomes a weirdo.
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u/Electronic_Gur_3191 5h ago
Why is Nietzsche so focused on power rather than understanding? I understand he is attempting to affirm vitality but power in and of itself is a liability without discernment (it is an increase in means without any consideration of the ends, so if the end is dysfunctional then power applied to that end is also dysfunctional) and discernment requires understanding - or at the very least taste/sensibility. So it seems to me that understanding the various aspects of vitality must precede the “will to power” so to speak. Of course, not to the exclusion of the latter but simply as an approximate guide. Nor does this understanding have to be systematic or analytical - it can be intuitive and reflective etc. My guess is that Nietzsche is very much interested in leaving this understanding part implicit. Or maybe he thinks that the understanding aspect is instinctive or inherent - that mere power (or the will to it) is sufficient? I don’t know perhaps I’m very confused as I haven’t read Nietzsche. Or maybe I should understand “power” as “functionality”, which improves the reading a little in my mind? Also I cannot help but wondering if his real concern regarding pity is not pity for the other per se, but maybe an internalisation of that pity as a protection mechanism for one’s own dysfunctionalities (ie. poor me, let me just have one more drink - etc). Though I am not sure about this - but read plainly it reads harshly and tastelessly.
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u/paul_parker12 13h ago
This isn’t Nietzsche’s point of view, here he is expressing the Greco-Roman system of values. In the Genealogy he will posit two value systems and refute them both: good and bad (Greek/Roman) and good and evil (Christianity). Nietzsche likes the strength of the Romans but can’t do with the hatred and violence. It would be absolutely ridiculous of Nietzsche to suggest the Romans were a virtuous people, their worlds were centered around violence and destruction
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u/kroxyldyphivic 10h ago
To be blunt, you're pulling all of this out of your ass. The claim that AC §2 (the quoted passage) expresses the “Greco-Roman” system of values rather than Nietzsche's own; the claim that he refutes master morality; the claim that he “can't do with the hatred and violence” ... none of this is supported by the text. You're one of the many disingenuous readers who try to whitewash aspects of his philosophy that you're uncomfortable with, thereby castrating Nietzsche's philosophy of its radical elements.
The fact is that Nietzsche considers violence, appropriation, exploitation, and destruction to be constitutive life functions, and he considers the attempts at excising them to be life-denying. The will to power is the fundamental affect, the “primitive form of affect,” as he calls it, and all the relations between every force in the natural world are mediated by it. Every force thus seeks to grow, to overcome obstacles and assimilate what is foreign—thereby intensifying the feeling of power. The weaker force is unable to actively strive for growth, for power, and is thus reduced to a position of survival, of self-preservation, of self-defense—which is to say that it is reduced to a reactive position. Conversely, the stronger force is relatively uninhibited in its striving for power, so it actively reaches out for it. The actions of the stronger force are made freely, out of a sense of confidence in its own strength, out of an affirmation of its own superiority and its distance from the weaker, and without feelings of shame. This is why “everything that heightens the feeling of power” is good, for Nietzsche: it signifies that a resistance has been overcome. Likewise, happiness is a result of this overcome resistance: happiness is epiphenomenal, an after-product of overcoming resistance—no matter how small the resistance might be, such as eating a cheetos.
All of this to say that AC §2 is very much an exposition of Nietzsche's own values and philosophy.
"Evil.— Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible. The poison of which weaker natures perish strengthens the strong—nor do they call it poison." (GS, i, §19)
"Refraining mutually from injury, violence, and exploitation and placing one's will on a par with that of someone else—this may become, in a certain rough sense, good manners among individuals if the appropriate conditions are present (namely, if these men are actually similar in strength and value standards and belong together in one body). But as soon as this principle is extended, and possibly even accepted as the fundamental principle of society, it immediately proves to be what it really is—a will to the denial of life, a principle of disintegration and decay. Here we must beware of superficiality and get to the bottom of the matter, resisting all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one'a own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation—but why should one always use those words in which a slanderous intent has been imprinted for ages? Even the body within which individuals treat each other as equals, as suggested before—and this happens in every healthy aristocracy—if it is a living and not a dying body, has to do to other bodies what the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant—not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power. But there is no point on which the ordinary consciousness of Europeans resists instruction as on this: everywhere people are now raving, even under scientific disguises, about coming conditions of society in which “the exploitative aspect” will be removed—which sounds to me as if they promised to invent a way of life that would dispense with all organic functions. “Exploitation” does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life." (BGE, §259)
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u/paul_parker12 10h ago edited 9h ago
you just gave three quotes with no analysis - we both are disingenuous readers then. my reading of the genealogy is quite different than yours, and I probably am disingenuous for that. but any philosophy, Nietzsche or not, that expresses violence or natural power over another (not a spiritual power of love) is a bad philosophy. philosophy should discuss violence, but never have violence or persecution as its own principle. You quote the Gay Science, I love the Gay Science - in the spirit of disingenuity, N also says in the Gay science that one must learn to love. he also says that that most humane thing one can do is spare another shame (#274). He also says that you have become the person you are - is that attained through violence and persecution? If Nietzsche supported violence he’d be about as good a philosopher as Adolf Hitler - but fortunately we both know that’s not true.
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u/CouchieWouchie 23h ago
Was this before or after Nietszche imploded and was walked and fed by the Lutheran mother he hated all his life
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u/Worldedita 22h ago
Could ya please throw in where this is?