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 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.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ccHrb1Wib3IoQSyNhLB24?si=A9EAOKYRSbSwrUpuy-_M-Q&utm_source=copy-link
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.