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
    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
          62·
          2 years ago

          Ummm but have you read this 3,000 page treatise on how that was taken out of context. You literally cannot utter a word until you have read that… plus this 18-volume analysis by CIA sponsored Foucault on the ideas and consequences of underwater basket weaving.

          see you in 20 years when you actually know enough to comment

          • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
            51·
            2 years ago

            He very much was talking about races, and the need for european “blond beasts of prey” to expand outward and conquer the world, he was very explicit about that, in the quote above.

            He also is a thorough orientalist, and advocates for their conquering:

            The world has been Orientalized long enough; and men now yearn to be Hellenized.

          • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
            31·
            2 years ago

            Also with respect to eugenics, he very much was an advocate of a landed hereditary aristocracy:

            Will this aristocracy be a caste, and their power hereditary? For the most part yes, with occasional openings to let in new blood. But nothing can so contaminate and weaken an aristocracy rich vulgarians, after the habit of the English aristocracy; As it was such intermarriage that ruined the greatest governing body the world has ever seen: the aristocratic Roman senate.

            Even Plato, who was an aristocratic philosopher, didn’t think that aristocracy should be hereditary, but rather based on ability.

      • 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.

          • SpaceCowboy@lemmygrad.mlOP
            31·
            2 years ago

            It’s not about some sort of playbook it is about how humans relate to one another and recognize (or don’t) the humanity of other humans. That is really what is at the heart of fascism (and liberalism as well). ideology

              • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.ml
                51·
                2 years ago

                “In 1932, Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, received a bouquet of roses from Adolf Hitler during a German premiere of Benito Mussolini’s 100 Days, and in 1934 Hitler personally presented her with a wreath for Nietzsche’s grave carrying the words “To A Great Fighter”. Also in 1934, Elisabeth gave to Hitler Nietzsche’s favorite walking stick, and Hitler was photographed gazing into the eyes of a white marble bust of Nietzsche.”

                That same sister, by the way, married a Wagnerian Nazi and they moved to Paraguay to make a Nazi commune.

                Wild to say Nietzsche has nothing to do with nazism and that Hitler didn’t understand him. Hitler loved him.

                  • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.ml
                    51·
                    2 years ago

                    How does that make it any less disingenuous to claim he has nothing to do with Nazism? Or Italian Fascism, which also was greatly inspired by Nietszche’s writing?

                    “They belong in the kitchen and their chief role in life is to beget children for German warriors.” Is Neitzsche’s view on women. At what point do you stop defending a dead guy whose writings directly influenced the Nazis and fascists, and who has countless terrible things like this that can be quoted and just say, “ah shit, yeah, he fucking sucked” and move on with your life?