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 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.
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.