Materialism>idealism
I’m not trying to get into a whole debate, it’s just interesting to me the way some people cling to these idealist philosophers. Same w the stoics imo. As a guy who used to read all of them… they’re useless to actually understanding life. Like it can be helpful to read them in order to understand how the Western worldview evolved, but they really shouldn’t be taken as some sort of handbook - which many seem to do. (reactionaries). People who read Nietzsche or Plato and think they have some sort of secret insight is my biggest red flag irt pseudo-intellectual who is just going to waste your time… same with Dostoevsky btw.
Confucius is based af though.
Edit: Also, yes these kinds of people exist- my former mentor/boss who spent decades at a white shoe DC law firm would accept any idea if you found a quote by Plato to justify it lmao.
I recommend Domenico Losurdo’s book on Nietzsche, this review on midwestern marx gives a decent snapshot of it, and directly addresses how Kaufman rehabilitated Nietzsche. Losurdo essentially follows Nietzsche’s life from beginning to end and situates every piece he wrote in that timeline to contextualize it.
Thank you! I’ll give it a read. I find it incredibly telling that the Nietzcshe defenders are largely relying on “no you’re not smart enough to get it” instead of like…actual writings that would lend some support to their arguments.
Doesn’t strike me as a particularly Marxist way to examine something, but hey, love to be told by some man on the Internet that he’s smarter than me because I didn’t arrive at the same conclusions as him.
Agreed. One thing I have noticed on all fronts not just philosophy is that people have a hard time internalizing just how distorting the works of the bourgeois intelligentsia are. Like I studied economics in college and to make money in the world I literally had to throw out everything they taught me. The entire role of like 90% of academia is to obfuscate the truth - whether they even realize it or not.