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.
Aristotle thought women had fewer teeth than men. Plato thought that abstractions were real. Everyone but Heraclitus was convinced all change was illusory and history moved in a flat circle. It’s amazing how people ignore that all of these philosophers have more or less been proven wrong by modern science.
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Behold! I’ve brought you a man
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The original trollface meme
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Aristotle also believed that souls came in three varieties: vegetable, animal, and human. He believed the fetus received first a vegetable soul, then after a few weeks an animal soul, and finally at 45 days (or 90 for women) a human soul. This went on to inform the Christian perspective on ensoulment up until recently with the idea of total ensoulment at conception which influences anti-choice positions today.
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I love philosophy and I actually take my reflections from philosophy and apply them to life a shit ton, I just think Plato and Aristotle’s approach to it is not very useful. Plato in particular. Aristotle has some better concepts but I think approaching life with abstract virtues is a really easy way to manipulate your population. Because you ascribe certain values to certain behaviors which may or may not have that value which makes it very easy to play with the worldview of the populace. As to the origing of their ideas I think that is less important than how they were used (not unimportant -just less important). Those ideas laid the foundation of oligarchic rule in the ancient world and then again during the renaissance until today. Western thought is contaminated at the roots by elitist ideas on a whole different leve.
If you like Nietzsche I recommend you read the things I linked below. I’m kind of surprised how many people on here seem to like him… he’s literally the grandaddy of fascist thought. I think people tend to assume sincerity from writers of that era for whatever reason. Nietzsche literally wrote anti-communist propaganda at a period where communism was experiencing a massive increase in popularity. If you’ve read Nietzsche without that context then you should re-evaluate.
What I like so much about Confucianism, for all it’s faults, is that it prizes benevolence (ren) above all other virtues and it takes the approach that humans are not these static creatures but grow and learn. The western philosophers really inhabit the world of ideas far too much. To confucius the people are not bad, they are misled and impoverished. To the Western thinkers, there is something wrong with most humans and they must change from the inside outward… it’s justification of oligarchy through and through.
That’s true, but there is no evidence nietzsche ever read Marx. I think he was too far in his own bubble to even notice tbh. When nietzsche refers to socialists i believe he is referring to who we’d call the utopians. Not dialectical materialism.
The way I understand it, nietzsche hated Plato and Socrates because they were idealists, he thought idealism was the birth of Christianity and the denial of the real world. I agree with that. Nietzsche is an edge lord tho.
Part of the reason I read him is exactly bc of his collision with socially-minded philosophies. Call me a masochist but I want to understand the idiot nietzsche edge lord as deeply as possible. One of the biggest reasons being that a lot of reactionaries like JPeterson and his followers use nietzsche to fit their needs and there are few people that ever challenge them or their made-up great man ideology.
My opinion is that there is a lot of good in nietzsche at least when it comes to aesthetics, morality, a kind of psychology and some decent social critique. However, he is no anthropologist. I think it was Beyond Good and Evil that he posits that trade is the beginning of humanity. A cursory view at animal behavior disproves this premise quite easily.
His idea of the ubermensch and all that’s related is both terribly named and contradictory to his own claimed philosophical project. He constantly repeats the idea that philosophy should be species-nurturing and life-affirming, the “gay science” right? Well, the ubermensch is anything but life affirming or species nurturing. It is a complete rejection of humanity. It is the anti-mensch. It is human to be average. If we weren’t, humanity would have never existed. It would be more akin to tigers or pumas, non-cooperative. He also claims to be against resentiment, but his philosophy is built on it. It doesn’t really compute.
You cannot overcome humanity; to do so means extinction. At the very least, the rhetoric is absurd.
Edit: I think to get anything from nietzsche it has to be read in a specific way with a lot of disclaimers and caveats. Just read Lao Tzu and Guangzhou. They’re better and less tedious IMO.
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Read closely.
Let us look a century ahead, let us suppose that my attentat on two millennia of anti-nature and the violation of man succeeds. That party of life which takes in hand the greatest of all tasks, the higher breeding of humanity, together with the remorseless extermination of all degenerate and parasitic elements, will again make possible on earth that superfluity of life out of which the dionysian condition must again proceed. — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872
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I really would like to hear the context behind how on earth that isn’t just a blatantly fascistic quote… How do you interpret it?
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It’s not about genetics or race. But it’s about evolution.
…
That doesn’t make any sense. Are we talking about a spiritual kind of evolution or something?
I definitely recommend reading this if you have any positive thoughts about Nietzches philosophy. Its completely anti-feminist, anti-socialist, pro-war, orientalist, and a lot more.
Thanks for sharing this. He’s so much worse than I initially thought. I have a very hard imagining any context that could make him even remotely redeemable after reading that.
No probs! We have yet to see any Nietzche defender post a single quote.
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I don’t think you read the right link, that’s a compilation of Nietzche’s own quotes, not a full analysis.
Enlighten me.
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Jfc dude. Tell me you don’t know how western academia works without telling me you don’t know how western academia works. I’ve literally read nietzsche as well and I stand by everything I’ve said here.
“There are a lot of his stuff that looks controversial at first glance but it takes a bit of work to understand him.” Next thing you’ll tell me that Foucault actually made some intelligent observations…
I’m sorry but this is pissing me off that you are this obtuse. The entire western bourgeois study of philosophy, especially in the 20th century is aimed at enshrining elitist, anticommunist ideas and rehabilitating the fascist worldview… which is still alive and well.
This thread is about you. Learn what fascism actually is.
I agree with checking out Kaufman. Again I’m mainly speaking to readers of this thread. I read the criticisms that OP posted and they seem to be doing the same cherry picking as reactionaries. Nietzsche doesn’t advocate for systems. Nietzsche advocates for Nietzsche. I think that left critics are making him out to be something he wasn’t. Yes he was a professor and bourgeois for a period of his life. By the end he was not widely read, had few friends, and he died penniless and insane. It was only after his death that real interpretation of Nietzsche began (which he predicted). If you’re interested just read him and come to your own conclusions. I recommend Anti-Christ and Twilight of the Idols.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought Nietzsche himself was not a Fascist but his sister or sister-in-law or something became a huge Nazi supporter and used his works as evidence to support Nazism. I don’t know much else about him except for Nihilism (which I primarily remember bc of The Big Lebowski)
so according to losurdo’s 1000 page book that was whitewashing done after the fact to rehabilitate Nietzsche’s reputation. There is a lot of contradictory information out there, but the truth is that the burden of proof rests on those who make that claim and it is Losurdo’s contention that they did not do anything except advance a conspiracy theory as if it was fact.
This review of Losurdo’s work on Midwestern Marx touches on that https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/book-review-domenico-losurdo-nietzsche-the-aristocratic-rebel-intellectual-biography-and-critical-balance-sheet-reviewed-by-rory-jeffs
Thanks for the read, I’ve seen a few Midwestern Marx vids before, he had some great stuff, I’ll be sure to check this out soon. I was interested in philosophy in HS and kinda completely ignored Nietzsche
I think you’re better off for it. I delved deep into Nietzsche and almost lost myself…
Midwestern marx are pretty good, I don’t love them or follow them closely, but it’s a good voice to have.
I actually think the Redsails essays on losurdo and nietzsche are as much or more worth your time. https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism/
As for The Republic, Plato just took all of that from Egypt. It’s one of the best examples of Western plagiarism.
I didn’t know that! Where can I read more on it?
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Well, Plato was right about one thing at least.
But the fact remains that he and Aristotle were still misogynists and slavery apologists, not to mention wrong about subjects that we now take for granted, such as atomic theory and evolutionary theory.
(Funnily enough, I believe that it was Epicurus who not only promoted those theories but was also one of the few authorities in Greece who allowed slaves and women to study at his schools.)
Meanwhile chad Diogenes:
Diogenes 🥵🥵
I suppose I should have specified that I’m referring to people who try to use it like a compass in life. They all had some interesting ideas (imo the one you link is pretty obvious though right?) You can’t get rich if you want to be good and the way to get rich is to exploit others…
The natural philosophy side of things is a bit different, they were exploring ideas that were later built upon, even if refuted. But in regards to applied philosophy, the emphasis on specific virtues rather than specific acts lends itself incredibly to manipulation by an oligarchy or fascist leaderhsip.
Lucretius was a based materialist from Roman times. His “on the nature of things”, is kind of a mix of poetry, science, and common sense. “Nothing comes from nothing” is a popular phrase from it.
The Epicureans were pretty based for sure. especially in their approach to politics. Very much a human-first kind of philosophy.
Totally, it was a “yall seriously believe in all these gods and nonsense, humans don’t need them and we can improve things on our own.”
People tend to forget that ancient Greek philosophers were… well, ancient. It’s useful to read their works and some of them do still have ideas that can apply today. For example, the stoic approach of “you make your own misfortune” is relevant to mental health today to a certain degree. Or Thucidedes’ approach to chronicling the Peloponnesian war has a very materialist approach.
But ofcourse, they lived in an age where slavery was acceptable and the main form of government was a mixture of oligarchy and monarchy. The ancient Greek world was chronically afflicted by steady xenophobia and women were largely seen as property (with the possible exception of Sparta where women were likely the economical elite). And ofcourse most people didn’t tend to know a whole lot about the physical world around them. It’s only natural that the bulk of these thinkers were idealists and propping up the elite. Their ideas on politics, economics, and to a large extent, science are pretty much outdated. There’s no denying, however, that they set the stage for future advancements, including Marxism. Marx’s ideas were largely formed in his younger years, by thinking and refuting the idealism and elitism of the Ancient Greek world and its offspring in contemporary Western thinking.
I would like to offer this episode of the podcast Red Menace as a response to OP’s criticism of Nietzsche. It is certainly no fault of Friedrich Nietzsche that his life’s work was posthumously highjacked and used to prop up Nazism. While I certainly agree that most of his followers are insufferable manchildren I believe there is substance and value to Nietzsche’s work. He is not, in my opinion, the greatest philosopher of his time nor the most useful. What I appreciate about Nietzsche are his criticisms of Prussian militarism, liberal/philosophical idealism, political antisemitism, and puritanical religious constraint on the human spirit. I think Nietzsche was well ahead of his time in recognizing the path Europe was headed down by the close of the 19th century. He resisted the all to common urge for security and complacency of his time and dared to question what all this edifice of society was for if it was doing nothing to empower human beings. More than anything I can relate most of all to the fact that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche reflects the inner thoughts of an intensely lonely person, feelings I have also suffered in my life. I’ll stop now but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in on a discussion I actually know a bit about for once.
I probably won’t give it a listen if I am being honest. I don’t want to invalidate your experiences, particularly as I am in a pretty lonely place myself now and had an exceedingly lonely childhood, but there is a difference between being isolated physically and feeling alone. We are not alone my friend, your perception of those around you is what made you feel alone, and nietzsche 100% feeds into that. Western Marxism in general tends to be quite elitist and therefore misses one of the primary motivations to socialism which is to provide a good life for all the people because all people inherently are worthwhile and deserve it.
If Nietzsche provided all the fodder to build fascism, primary among those self-dehumanization and the dehumanization of others I fail to see what the comments we made below got wrong. I really encourage you to distance yourself from those thoughts. And I can almost guarantee you that the person you are referring to used extremely cherry-picked quotes to say “see, he questioned x” like yes, that is what reactionaries do. They complain about the current state of things, but then say the advisable course of action is to reverse… which a bourgeois like Nietzsche would have benefitted from.
On Nietzsche https://redsails.org/nietzsche-the-chinese-workers-friend/
Roderic Day’s various reflections on the matter which I think are very good: https://twitter.com/search?q=nietzsche (from%3Arodericday)&src=typed_query&f=top
And what I consider the quintessential explanation of the role of social relationships in socialism https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1923/winged-eros.htm
(I’m like exhausted so forgive me if I was harsh or anything, I just wanted to respond relatively thoroughly)
Literal extermination to improve life for those of higher breeding…
Slavery to provide high quality of life to the “Olympian Men”
I really agree with what Losurdo says here;
And I think it ties really well into Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic - that is that everyone desires to be seen as a human who matters and you can either decide that some people need to be objects so you can be the subject (which never actually works) or you come to the realization that all humans are subjects in their own right and so you decide “neither master nor slave be”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master–slave_dialectic
Here’s some more of Nietzche’s cringe quotes. The guy was as reactionary a philosopher as you could get. Very surprised to see ppl defending him here.
Same. I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I knew the frankfurt school was influential on the western left but I am still surprised supposed MLs are defending him. It’s making me lose my cool a bit…
“You just didn’t read him right” is classic bourgeois obfuscation in the academics.
Appreciate the response, wanted to give others some food for thought too. I of course hope readers of this thread will maybe listen and read a bit of his work so they can decide for themselves. I can certainly see how Nietzsche can be interpreted as dehumanizing especially given his common characterization of “man as a herd animal” but I would argue that human beings under capitalism are indeed forced into circumstances that cause them to become degraded and dehumanized. Nietzsche would say that each individual must find their own inner strength to escape this condition, in contrast I recognize and now believe that it is up to all human beings to support one another and liberate everyone from the immiseration of life under capitalism.
I like this thread because it’s true, when I was that age I was very into Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche and others. As I got older I embraced Marx and Engels because they gave me something the others couldn’t: a coherent explanation of the way the human world works. Nietzsche invites us to explore the dark places both in society and in ourselves. He was also as poisoned by irony as many of us online are today. I think it’s important to connect to these parts of yourself at intervals throughout our lives, but of course it’s just as important to come back to materialist reality, touch the grass, and do revolutionary praxis.
I am glad my response was taken in good faith because that’s how it is meant.
I think that what you are describing is that Nietzsche made you feel like you weren’t alone in your evaluation of symptoms which you observed in the world around you, which is the one place that ML’s and reactionaries agree - shit’s fucked up (which liberals deny). then comes the diagnosis (“what is actually wrong/causing these various symptoms?”) and then the recommended treatment (socialism vs fascism/monarchism/etc).
No one except ML’s routinely get ALL the symptoms correct imo, and the same goes for the diagnosis, and we’re still working on the treatment but I think Lenin was pretty close.
I had a similar trajectory from an ideological perspective. And so did Losurdo 😄
This was a great essay which directly discusses Nietzsche vs Marx
Sure thing comrade, here’s an Existential Comic that I like.
I’m with Schopenhauer on this one.
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It also helps to understand Schopenhauer a bit before trying to understand Nietzsche. Which people who idolize Nietzsche almost never seem to have done.
Have a soft spot for Brothers Karamazov, it made me think of a soap opera since it was beyond over the top pure drama. It’s been many, many years since I’ve read it though, probably would scoff at it now since he makes a lot of use of stereotypes and is heavy-handed with his morality and strawmen.
Second on the stoics.
Funny story;
When I lived in the city I used to use the bus since it was cheaper than parking down town (and less stressful). There was some dude in a fedora proudly reading a book on Aristotle on the bus, so some other dude comes by (we’ll call him bus philosopher) asks the fedoraed dude about what he’s reading, gets a little in depth, then suddenly says Aristotle is for intellectual lightweights and walks away. Dude was pissed.
I thought I was going to get pwned myself since some time I was reading Hegel’s phenomenology of spirit on my phone and the bus philosopher caught sight of me, he was actually helpful since I was still struggling through it.
I just hated the Eternal Husband so much lol. I love Tolstoy though.
LMAO that’s hilarious. That’s like a real life mysterious stranger.
Hope to read Tolstoy soon, I like to focus on one book at a time, once I get through this nonfic I’m hoping to read Anna Karenina.
The bus philosopher was always doing that to people on the bus, and if not, he was usually debating some other dude about religion. Bus rides were never a dull moment.
I love stuff like that. Spice of life…
I do one one fiction at a time usually and like 8 non fictions lol. Reading Red Mars as my fiction right now and I really like it.
I wonder what he does in life.
The philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways, but the point is to change it.
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I had a lengthly critique on Plato’s cave that I haven’t published anywhere from long ago, I think I will it today.
Yeah the only philosopher I respect is Diogenes 😎
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Uphold anti-kneed shu (I refuse to spell his name correnctly) thought. A lot of his thinking was straight up imperialist apologia 🤢🤢.
Kneed shu enjoyers stay mad 😎
Yeah and Nietzsche also invented fascism, literally. Everything he wrote was the groundwork for fascism.
Sarcasm, right?
Not at all, he laid the groundwork for the modern nihilistic approach to “human nature” which gave the fascists their bread and butter.
Fascism is a political and economic framework but it justifies itself ideologically to the masses - that justification was given to it by nietzsche.
That’s… not how Fascist ideology started. Fascism was created by the Italian petite‐bourgeoisie, many of whom read ‘the works of Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Pareto, Georges Sorel, the Nationalists and Futurists’, but the Fascists’ class backgrounds are what let them easily absorb these intellectuals rather than read them and reject them. A single lifeless intellectual could not have possibly supplied enough ideology or philosophy to help sustain a living mass movement for decades.
Yes it is. Linking to something which states when an ideology was given political life is not the same as “how fascist ideology started”. Just because Nietszche didn’t call his book fascism doesn’t mean it didn’t lay out the ideological framework for the fascist approach to social relationships. The italian fascist movement, was started by others, but we now use the term fascism more broadly than that.
However, I concede that inventing fascism was a stupid way to frame it, as if it were a solo effort, but he certainly played an outsized role and I would say that he provided fascists with some of their primary ideas irt philosophy and human relations.
What your text describes is that a group of people in Italy took those ideas and formed an organization around them… calling themselves fascist- a name which has hence been used to describe the political organization which centers around the capitalist class forcefully seizing power through the use of armed thugs which they then legitimize using their considerable wealth. But the ideas which undergird fascism at it’s key points (how to socialize brutality to the masses) are as your text describes rooted in Nietzsche.
Just because Nietzsche was not in the room when his ideas were given life in political organization does not mean that he was not important to the beginnings of fascism.
ALso not to be rude but I find your last sentence “A single lifeless intellectual could not have possibly supplied enough ideology or philosophy to help sustain a living mass movement for decades.” Ironic to say on a website full of MARXists. You may want to re-evaluate how you think about the manner in which the base and superstructure interact, or put more clearly - the power of ideas.
I’m sorry if my other comment comes across as rude- I’ve had a long day. Allow me to be more precise. you’re right that fascism can be considered a case-by-case ideology which each nation’s bourgeoisie has adapted to their cultural and political landscape.
So what I would say is that nietzsche provided some of the fundamental ideas regarding human nature which would go on to be folded into the cultural and political context of many nations. We generally refer to this marriage of Nietzsche’s ideology + the economic policies it justifies as “fascism” but each nation brings it’s own national identity/culture to the table. is that a more fair analysis.
I think we’re in agreement here you are just pulling on the definition of the word fascism and it’s historical context.
They make some intersting/helpful empirical observations with nice rethoric. Not much you wouldn’t get out of Aurelius’s Reflections, and not worth reading unless you want to deep dive western philosophy. You’re just reading the debates of a ruling class that’s been dead for 2000 years.
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This is a horrendous thing to say, and if you think Nietzsche was in favour of a society without class/sexuality/misogyny/racism then you didn’t read him. He has over 300 mentions in his works of slavery. And none of them are anti slavery.
You’ve hitched your wagon to a dead guy whose writings influenced literal fascists and for some reason it is a personal affront to you that someone else disagrees. Do some self-reflection.
You know nothing about me. This is an internet forum.
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Good comment. And education education education!
I think you may not be a communist dude… or have understood the contradictions which need to be fixed from a logical perspective but not yet internalized them from an emotional one (which I identify with a lot because I am going through that process myself). This is why I really do recommend the essay by Kollontai
The drive towards communism is one based out of love and hope, and wanting better for the human species my friend, not out of superiority or dehumanization of the people who are misguided and misled under capitalism. If in this post I have gotten harsh or rude it is not out of hatred of you or anything close to that but out of a sincere desire that we should all see and understand the beauty within each of us.
The ideal of love-comradeship is necessary to the proletariat in the important and difficult period of the struggle for and the consolidation of the dictatorship. But there is no doubt that with the realization of communist society love will acquire a transformed and unprecedented aspect. By that time the “sympathetic ties” between all the members of the new society will have grown and strengthened. Love potential will have increased, and love-solidarity will become the lever that competition and self-love were in the bourgeois system. Collectivism of spirit can then defeat individualist self-sufficiency, and the “cold of inner loneliness,” from which people in bourgeois culture have attempted to escape through love and marriage, will disappear. The many threads bringing men and women into close emotional and intellectual contact will develop. and feelings will emerge from the private into the public sphere. In. equality between the sexes and the dependence of women on men will disappear without trace, leaving only a fading memory of past ages.
This is what Che had to say on the matter and I agree wholeheartedly but am only now beginning to really feel it myself:
