Friedrich Nietzsche

[Tommy-K]

Don't really know much about him so any info would be greatly appreciated.

[arielle]

Hey ^^

Try to educate yourself about him. Since you have access to the internet you have an endless source of information. You have wikipedia, and tons of other sources that you could get information from.
You just have to go to a web browser like google.com or alltheweb.com and put in Friedrich Nietzsche and you'll come up with an endless amount of sources. Just make sure you read around on other pages. Sometimes you can't trust everything you read on the internet.

[Demogorgon]

A reactioray idiot made moderately more interesting by the fact he was off his head. He suffered a complete mental breakdown later in his life but looking at the stuff he came out with I don't think he was ever that stable.

[Janus]

Frederich Nietzsche (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche)
http://www.geocities.com/danielmacryan/nietzschei.html]Philosophy (http://anonym.to/?[url) of Nietzsche[/url]

We've also discussed him quite a bit on this site as well:
Nietzsche (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=33548&hl=Nietzsche)
Critique of Nietzsche (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=34416&hl=Nietzsche)
Nietzsche (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=29625&hl=Nietzsche)

[BreadBros]

He was a German philosopher from the 1800s. His philosophy is hard to describe due to the fact that he did not offer any kind of systemic explanation of the world (focusing on critique rather) and because much of his writing is in the style of literature or symbolic text rather than literal logic.

The main things he talked about...

Master/Slave morality. Nietzsche thought Christian/Platonic thought emerged out of feelings of resentment that the "weak" or slaves feel. Master morality is the morality of the masters/strong. Master morality ruled in the heroic ages and ancient Rome but was eventually conquered by the slave morality in the form of Christianity and Platonic philosophy. Nietzsche feels slave morality is detrimental to humanity and calls for a return to master morality.

Anti-Social Darwinism. Nietzsche feels certain social traits and characteristics lend themselves to survival, prosperity and procreation among humans...but the fact that these traits lend themselves to survival does not make themselves necessarily good for humans or human collective mental health.

Death of God. Nietzsche argues that for most of humanity's existence the idea of 'God' has driven our morals and social structures. As the non-existence of God becomes more and more obvious, God's hold over human morality breaks down and is done away with. Most people can't deal with this reality though because it produces fear and angst. Instead, people will be full of self-doubt and reject the very concept of absolute values, of objectivity or a belief in anything. He calls this 'nihilism' and it is contiguous with Christian theology, which by placing all value in the after-life also removes any possible value from reality. This is a bad time for human beings he argues, because meaning will be removed from life by the relativists, but eventually mankind will reject all idealistic philosophical systems and a new "kind" of human will emerge..the ubermensch or overman.

You should read the wiki-article, its pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

The political value of his philosophy has been debated for a long time...in his day most of his followers were left-wing, then the Nazis adopted him as theirs (although he wrote several letters arguing against anti-Semitism and disagreed with his sister's support for the Nazis)...today his legacy is mixed, sometimes individualist wannabe-philosophers on the right claim his legacy but most of the serious philosophers who follow in his steps are on the left, namely the existentialists.

[Avtomat_Icaro]

The Nazis raped Nietzsche's ideas, the Ubermensch Nietzsche came up with had nothing to do with the racial/biological construct the Nazis believed to be their Ubermensch

[CornetJoyce]

Originally posted by [email protected] 18, 2007 03:27 pm
The Nazis raped Nietzsche's ideas, the Ubermensch Nietzsche came up with had nothing to do with the racial/biological construct the Nazis believed to be their Ubermensch
Nietzche actually proposed to "banish the antisemitic bawlers from Germany."