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Nietzsche & Dialectics
Apologies in advance 'if' this is a bit muddled:
1. I've been getting back into Nietzsche a bit lately after reading "Beyond Good & Evil" almost a year ago, and I'm interested if anyone could share (a link to others' or their own) ideas of what Nietzsche would think of socialism, but even more specifically of dialectical materialism, and possibly a Marxist critique of a "Nietzschean" (I know, Nietzsche would scoff at that term) approach to that.
2. Nietzsche would reject "scientism" and on even that basis alone would reject Marxism (read scientific socialism), but how might a scientific socialist respond to this?
3. One last thing: Does Nietzsche really reject the "appearance-reality distinction" (i.e. does he say that the 'lightning' does not 'flash' but rather the so-called lightning is just the flash)? That sounds like it would mean "things are only what they seem"...which has profoundly backward political implications.
I guess this would have been better for the "Dialectical Materialists" group forum, but for some reason I had trouble posting there.
Thanks!
"I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." - Antonio Gramsci
"If he did advocate revolutionary change, such advocacy could not, of course, receive constitutional protection, since it would be by definition anti-constitutional."
- J.A. MacGuigan in Roach v. Canada, 1994
Friedrich Nietzsche was a meglomaniac psycho with sociopathic tendencies.
He spent a lot of his life very ill and isolated and, as Bertrand Russel said, it is painfully obvious Nietzsche's disdain for human compassion (which according to his warped world view, socialism pandered to to an extent) was because he saw liked to imagine himself in his fantasys as some sort of warrior or alpha male, as opposed to the pathetic state he was in.
I don't know why anyone with a brain would be interested in reading his books. He was insane in my opinion. His views were thoroughly miserable and don't deserve to have air wasted on them.
Nietzsche rejected socialism on the basis that it was "pearls before swine", basically. That's what I took from "The Gay Science", at least (which, in my opinion, is a pretty creative and good book, I like Nietzsche's little random bits and pieces in there. Didn't really like "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" that much). Nietzsche thought that people were unequal and that a "leveling" of the human race via socialism or whatever was basically unnatural. I've heard that he thought this inequality manifested itself in the aristocracy ruling over their subjects, and as such he was an advocate for an aristocratic system of rule, but supposedly the evidence for this is more in his personal correspondence and not in his official works.
Nietzsche's beliefs and my own beliefs are obviously at odds in some respects but I still think he was a pretty good writer, and his observations regarding people's perceptions of God were esp. interesting in "The Gay Science". His thoughts on that and his intentionally inflammatory musings on European nationalities in that book must've caused quite a stir when it was released.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
In "The Will to power" Nietzsche, like an elitist, says the strongest should not bother pandering to the weak. Similiarly, he describes Jesus Christ as a "deceptive Semite".
He was an elitist aristocrat and his philosophy was vile.
His supporters claim he was very good at explaining human nature and psychology. What they ignore is that Nietzsche was a geek loner weirdo with no friends who was ill throughout his life and not only are his views thoroughly uninteresting and vile on an emotional level, they can easily be refuted rationally by anyone who actually knows anything about sociology or has any experience with human beings in real life because his wretched idealization of hierarchy and his psychotic praise of arrogance and pride is just the ramblings of a sick individual who has no experience with real human beings. Human beings don't want to just submit to an elite aristocracy. He advocates an S&M relationship with the aristocracy, where the common mass should just bow and submit to their superiors in a cold, heartless world devoid of love and compassion. It is a wretched view of humanity and it grieves me that he has so many followers.
Last edited by Michael22; 1st January 2014 at 21:29.
Originally Posted by BradOriginally Posted by NietzscheThis is the underlying, true justification for science, a moral justification, the idealization of “truth”, which originated in Christian theology. The will to truth means the will to another world. “Will to truth” has the same source as belief in god.Originally Posted by Nietzsche
My challenge to you: And now that god is dead, what about will to truth?
You need to understand where the position comes from - it is based on an understanding that the contents of mind represent rather than reproduce the contents of the world involves understanding that thoughts of a thing may have different characteristics than the thing itself.
From this it follows that no entity in the world has a unique representation in the mind — individuals may differ in their representations of objects or events in the world, and a single individual may possess multiple representations of particular objects or events, either simultaneously or in succession.
A lot of the world's most interesting thinkers and writers were "geek loner weirdos". I don't know why his health problems should be a mark against him either.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
The problem is that Nietzsche makes himself hard to understand. It's not that he's an unclear writer, but he does want to prod people into thinking for themselves and not just adopting his view wholeheartedly. I don't think Nietzsche is someone we should adopt wholeheartedly, but he is someone whose criticisms of society (and of our own ideology) we should take seriously, and responding to him well would make ourselves better anyhow.
I don't think he really supported Aristocracy. He saw Aristocrats as having had a certain kind of cultural nobility, and that they did what was sensible in their time, but he also saw them as having a kind of self-defeating bestial side. After all, the Aristocrats failed to preserve their rule. They created the conditions for the priests to arise. Aristocracy itself unwittingly created the problems which Nietzsche derides.
He did criticize Socialism and to a lesser extent Anarchism, but these were new movements when he was writing most of his work. I don't think he thought that bourgeois society was really preferable to these two forms either. He liked to antagonize people and critique their views.
FYI I think he was mostly critical of Duhring more than Marx, which is funny as Duhring was also the whipping boy of Marx and Engels.
Yeah he was a hell of a critic. Despite lobbing a few rhetorical bombs at Jews, he actually had some good criticisms of antisemites at the time too. Basically, he was a really good troll - and he was a troll for what seemed to him to be good reasons - in ways that I think modern readers fail to understand.
Bertrand Russell did not understand Nietzsche. He was operating with a poor translation and there was a lot of suspicion of all German philosophy, especially any thought that Naziism somehow claimed as inspiration.
It's true that he was sick for much of his life but that's not something you can hold against him.
As for compassion, Nietzsche hated the kind of universal compassion which is morally mandated, though as far as compassion is an exhibition of power he didn't despise it. He did not really like moral universals of any kind.
He didn't really like what he saw in the socialist movements of his time. Then again, I don't know if he had a good grasp of socialist theory either. He saw it as some kind of attempt to make the herd the rulers of society. He also saw it as rooted in a kind of compassionate and ascetic morality. Of course, for Marx, socialism was a movement to negate the structural bonds of the working class that prevented them from being emancipated. But then again, as I mentioned earlier, his main target in criticizing Socialism (at least the only person he mentions by name that I'm aware of) is Duhring, who was a problematic thinker for a whole variety of reasons.
If there's anything we as socialists can use about his political thought it is - as much as anything else, his criticism of racists and his argument that whatever "truth" the current hegemony posits is deeply problematic.
Yeah he was critical of the way modern science reduced everything to material terms, and the way it proclaimed objective truth and a material alternative to religious dogma, when in a sense it was using the same notion of truth as the dogma it sought to overcome. Scientists in this view operate as a sort of priestly class, claiming objectivity while their own subjective views sneak in as much as any other person making a truth claim.
I'd have to review his criticism of scientism to see how a Marxist might respond, but I think one way is to learn from his criticism and drop some of the positivist assumptions in how we view the utility of science (i.e that science is some kind of objectively progressive institution, and that it really gets at objectivity independently of a subject's viewpoint). Another is to argue how Marxist "Science" is more nuanced than the institutional science he was criticizing. A self-critical Marxist (at least in theory) would try to uncover any institutional biases shading his view, and understand the historical contingencies framing and limiting that viewpoint. They would at least be more careful when claiming some kind of objective knowledge of the world.
Nietzsche is suspicious of any metaphysical claim of an absolute truth which we can represent in thought. He saw that different people have different perspectives on "truth" and that there's no need to posit that our truth somehow objectively represents some kind of reality.
Socialist Party of Outer Space
Nietzsche feared women and had little experience with them. He was also racist and anti-semitic. His whole philosophy is based on fear and hatred.
As Bertrand Russell said, there is a great deal in Nietzsche that should just be dismissed as meglomaniac.
I disagree that most good thinkers are loner weirdo's. Marx had many children and was very sociable. Nietzsche was a weird little aryan man who spent a lot of his life alone consumed with hatred and fear, imagining himself as some sort of warrior or king aristocrat. He may have been homosexual and his idealisation of the compassionless, alpha warrior aristocrat may have had a homoerotic element to it.
(To generalise, it is often the case that the most psychotic and sociopathic elitists may be small pathetic men. For example, lots of extreme libertarians are geeky spotty boys or short, overweight men. It can often be the case that strong men with strong relationships, who are not consumed with fear and hatred, are more communitarian and paternalistic.)
Again, I don't really see how his neurosis or fear of women or whatever is a good reason to discount his work. He wasn't really anti-Semitic, either. There are numerous threads on this website which disprove that myth regarding Nietzsche, whatever his other faults may be.
The list of writers who had serious "issues" is numerous...Kant, Proust, Kafka, Poe, etc etc. the list goes on.
And oh, he may have also been a closeted homosexual! How horrible!
Man, you're so judgmental. *sigh*
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
He was very critical of anti-semites on many occasions, as well as German nationalism. He was critical of biologism and scientism (as the original post indicates), yet modern racism is basically a pseudo-scientific claim on the nature of certain races. Nietzsche would not have endorsed that.
Also the vast majority of intellectuals were racist in the 1800s. Marx and Bakunin famously made some idiotic racial comments. As did most liberal thinkers. Really, it's hard to say Nietzsche is that much worse on that front - he even opened many feminists to appropriate his work for their own ends.
The problem isn't with the megalomaniac, it's with the people who sheepishly follow them. At least the megalomaniac is bold enough to challenge dead ideas in favor of their own.
Marx was not some moral angel either - he probably had an affair with his housekeeper. Passing moral judgements on the life of a thinker says little of the quality of their thought, even if it says something about the motivations or biases they might have had. What you're doing is a blatant case of ad hominem - I think Bertrand Russell would be horrified that you are using him so liberally alongside attacks on character.
As I said earlier, the idea that Nietzsche supported Aristocracy is a naive oversimplification of the praise which he gives it. That's like saying Marx is a Capitalist because he spoke of Capitalism having a "progressive" element. Nietzsche thought Aristocrats realized something about the human potential, however he still saw them as blind, dumb and driven by unchained animal desires.
Also he couldn't have been a homosexual as he had a failed romance. Even if he was, who cares?
This is an interesting and moralistic criticism of Nietzsche. It's accurate to say that a lot of libertarians are arrogant and mediocre strivers but I don't see why you have to pick on their weight and physical appearance. Geeky spotty boys and short overweight men have done great things.
The relationship between compassion and power is an uninteresting observation of human behaviour. Generosity of spirit is universally a good thing.
Generosity of spirit in the hearts of the ignorant and those lacking self awareness has historically been abused on more occasions than it is worth counting.
Yes and those who abuse them are scum. Nietzsche argued that socialism would deny life itself in practice. Similarly, he disdained Christianity for being a slave morality. He argued that humans greed and desire for development was what "life" was or should be. What he failed to see is that humans desire to become rich is itself based on fear and hatred.
Those who take part least in the system and who have the smallest stake yet have a generosity of spirit are more interesting than those with a big stake in the capitalist system, who have "made it". Nietzsche's ideology makes everyone into children, where no one can develop into an adult and be there own person unless they are part of the ubermensch. Most heinously of all he denies amelioration and his hatred of universal love and compassion is sociopathic.
Yes, sorry you are right. Mentioning a persons height or weight was a dumb statement but it is accurate that a lot of libertarians are mediocre strivers.
1) Dialectical Materialism is Stalinism? Many Marxists say awful things about Nietzsche without saying anything clearly. I admire many Nietzschean thinkers and writers, so...
2) Dude was an anti-socialist & a skeptic about science
3) ?? How do you mean ??
I see that you are new to this forum - welcome. That said, it appears as though you have a very rudamentary understanding of Nietzsche and his thought. You grasp the basics of what he said but very little of how these things work together with bigger ideas, i.e. what he meant.
Without driving this thread off-topic, a simple example would be your claim that he viewed christianity as slave morality. This is absolutely correct, he did, and he was correct in this view when you consider what he meant by slave and master morality. It appears as though you are reacting to the use of the word 'slave' and believing it to be derogatory. It could be construed as such, but Nietzsche's use of it had to do with the fact that slave moralities are bound by a master-slave relationship: one of ultimate submission. I suggest you read deeper into his work before you insult him inappropriately.
Nietzsche would reject dialectical materialism off the bat as dialectics is philosophical nonsense with no material foundation. He would accept materialism in-so-far as it is a descriptive and not a normative argument. He would reject socialism as an ideology (see the quote some posts up).Originally Posted by Brad, OP
Nietzsche would reject Marxism as it is prescriptive: workers ought to rise up and take back what is theirs. That said, he advocated many things in a prescriptive form. The difference is that he advocates them on an individual level while Marxism advocates on a class level. This distinction is rather meaningless in the big picture but would lead to many a disagreement in discussion. Marxists, in my understanding, do not want people to blindly follow someone or some ideology. We want workers to understand our situation as workers within capitalism and act upon that. This is not in contradiction with Nietzschean philosophy however the notion of 'following' an ideology is.Originally Posted by Brad, OP
Nietzsche rejects the 'appearance-reality distinction' because that is itself metaphysical idealism (i.e. it posits reality = truth).Originally Posted by Brad, OP
If we have no business with the construction of the future or with organizing it for all time, there can still be no doubt about the task confronting us at present: the ruthless criticism of the existing order, ruthless in that it will shrink neither from its own discoveries, nor from conflict with the powers that be.
- Karl Marx
The problem with all of Nietzsche's philosophy is that he's an irrationalist. It is impossible to provide completely valid theories if you don't even accept logic as a means to evaluate your propositions, and it's certainly beyond anyone to reason with someone who rejects reason.
Having read The Will to Power I understand what Nietzsche meant. He was recommending elitism.
Following his arguments to the logical conclusion, for those of us not achieving the level of intellect or "greatness" all they can look forward to is that favoured phrase from the Third Reich "arbecht mach frei." He was a disgrace to humanity.
I would argue Nietzsche's philosophy is evil of the highest order.
It is a call to arms. It provokes a strong emotional response in people because it is elitism with a sadistic twist.
I suggest you read God is dead. You need to understand why he rejects universal truths.
