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.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
        42·
        2 years ago

        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.

          • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
            52·
            2 years ago

            This is an anonymous forum I can be as emotional in my responses as I want. Ideas matter. I get worked up about them.

            This is like jordan peterson levels of avoiding answering a question.

              • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
                51·
                2 years ago

                I am emotional because these ideas underpin the ideology that has killed 10s of millions including my family you absolute horses ass!

                Ideas are not just floating around in people’s heads they manifest themselves, sometimes grotesquely.

                “LMAO imagine caring about ideas”. yeah real materialist analysis there.

                  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
                    71·
                    2 years ago

                    A herd of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and masters, with military organizations, with the power to organize, unscrupulously placing their fearful paws upon a population perhaps vastly superior in numbers, … this herd founded the State. The dream is dispelled which made the State begin with a contract. What has he to do with contracts who can command, who is master by nature, who comes on the scene with violence.

                    The possibility has been established for the production of…a master race, the future “masters of the earth”…made to endure for millennia — a higher kind of men who…employ democratic Europe as their most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of the earth.

                    The homogenizing of European man … requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength … strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.

                  • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
                    31·
                    2 years ago

                    Nazism gave his ideas wings.

                    The relationship between superstructure and base is not one directional or straightforward. but the idea that modern leftists actually think he has something positive to offer is honestly appalling to me.

      • ZarathustrasApe420@lemmygrad.ml
        21·
        2 years ago

        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.

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
          32·
          2 years ago

          I’m really not. I’m not saying he was goose-stepping around europe but literally his ideological framework built the foundation of dehumanization which brought race science into the 20th century.

          you are so engrossed in his personal life you can’t see what his writing created and enabled.