Talk:Friedrich Nietzsche/Archive 13

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Wish or accept?

The section about the Eternal Return reads: "the importance of living life in such a way that one could accept its eternal repetition." Now, didn't Nietzsche say that the right way to live would be to WISH this "eternal repetition", and not only to "accept" it? I am not much of an expert in Nietzsche, so I ask before changing anything. Thanks. LFS 13:09, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Nobody answers, so I will change it. LFS 00:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Nietzsche's Stay in Turin, Italy

Just FYI: I've uploaded two photographs to the Nietzsche Wikimedia Commons [1] (see bottom)-- a photograph of the house he stayed in while in Turin (he wrote Ecce Homo there) across from the piazza where he is said to have had his breakdwon and a dedicatory plaque outside the same place. They're not of very high quality because I did not have my PC to process them adequately and most of all I had no tripod at the time and was running out of batteries (these were taken at night). Still they should be alright cropped if anyone here thinks they would be useful to the article. Also the following links should be of interest: NPR broadcast of "Nietzsche's Love Affair with Turin"[2] and this site (in Italian) which has some quotes of his about the city as well as a photograph which marks the exact location of his room in the building.[3]--DWRZ (talk) 14:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

God

In fact, though Nietzsche thought scientists and secular-minded people of his day had failed to see it, Nietzsche claimed the "death of God" would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth.[citation needed] Instead we would retain only our own multiple, diverse, and fluid perspectives — none of which can have a final say on things. This view has acquired the name "perspectivism".

This rant is nonsense and should be deleted. If someone can site where Nietzsche said anything about, "the "death of God" would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective on things, and along with it any coherent sense of objective truth..." I will give him/her my cherished Faber edition of "Free Spirits!" --GuamIsGood (talk) 03:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

That paragraph looks like a rather inelegant gloss of Nietzsche's worries about the death of God as presented in The Gay Science. But of course, he was worried about the looming threat of Nihilism. This may come about as a result of the weak losing anything to believe in (since they are not strong enough to create their own values), but it is only universal morality that he specifically mentions as losing foundation in the common mind as far as I can recall. I'll have to look into it more. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 17:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Nietzsche didn't know what nihilist meant and niether did Dostoyevsky. Nihilism? Boo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Commentarian (talk • contribs) 05:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia is not a place for original research, so it doesn't matter what Nietzsche actually thought: verifiability, not truth. There was a similar objection to the Übermensch page late last year, which was resolved when the person pursuing the change could not cite any sources. The ones I put forward were these:

• Lampert, Nietzsche's Teaching, p. 17: "The God who once lived and provided a sun for this earth is now dead, and now longer supplies a horizon to man's world (GS 125)." And on the next page, Lampert states, "Zarathustra has not yet learned that the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and nihilism (II. 19; III. 8). […] Zarathustra's gift of the superman is given to a mankind not aware of the problem to which the superman is the solution."
• Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche contra Rousseau, p. 159: "the overman is a contingent ideal whose willing only makes sense in the context of nihilism and the death of God."
• Heidegger, "The Word of Nietzsche," in Question Concerning Technology and other essays, trans. William Lovitt, p. 57: "Nietzsche's thinking sees itself as belongin under the heading 'nihilism.'" Heidegger then quotes (p. 60) from Gay Science 343: "The greatest recent event — that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian god has become unbelievable — is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe." P. 61: "If God as the suprasensory ground and goal of all reality is dead, if the suprasensory world of the Ideas has suffered the loss of its obligatory and above it its vitalizing and upbuilding power, then nothing more remains to which man can cling and by which he can orient himself." Etc.

I'm sure others that dealt with the death of God exclusively could be found, but these should suffice as evidence that Nietzsche scholars do attribute views such as these to Nietzsche. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 14:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Commentarian, you are operating under the incorrect assumptions that Nihilism must mean only one thing and that this meaning must be narrowly construed. Nihilism, for Nietzsche, is a philosophy that is even more life-denying than the Pessimism of Schopenhauer (which Nietzsche also rejected). Such views are obviously going to be abhorrent to anyone following the life-affirming path Nietzsche recommends. But while the term is operationalized a bit, it is also well within the boundaries of what one might expect the word "nihilism" to refer to. In short, Nietzsche knew exactly what nihilism meant—both generally and within the context of his philosophy. Postmodern Beatnik (talk) 19:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It’s such a badly written paragraph. The first two clauses could be removed without any substantial loss to the content. If the author had cited the Madman section in The Gay Science, then the smug secularists would have been worth mentioning. The clause in that sentence uses the word ‘universal perspective’, which is very ambiguous and misleading. A universal perspective could mean something like the Kantian phenomenal world or a shared belief, neither of which are necessarily lost with the death of God. And what exactly is a “coherent sense of objective truth”? ‘Faith in objective truth’ would be a simpler and better way of expressing the ramifications of the death of God. Then, an absence of such an obvious citation doesn’t help build any confidence in the article. The next sentence is ambiguous; does he mean that each individual has multiple perspectives or does he mean we live in a world of multiple perspectives? Presumably the latter. It would be closer to the point of the matter to describe what Nietzsche refers to as the madman in section 75 of The Gay Science. The madman lies outside the universal consensus, and does not subscribe to ‘objective truth’ (which Nietzsche calls “irrefutable errors” or universal consensus). He therefore undermines our ability to make judgments about truth, art morality etc. (i.e. – value judgments), as we have no grounds or criteria for making such judgments. In that same section, Nietzsche considers the prospect of the world following the madman as the “greatest danger”, and is in favor of this exception, provided it never becomes the rule. So, the loss of God is not only an existential crisis, but it also undermines truth, morality, and our ability to ascertain the value of things (the advent of a form of nihilism).

Finally, Nietzsche mentions “perspectivism” in The Genealogy of Morals. Perspectivism is thinking about an object or concept from a multiplicity of perspectives, even contradictory perspectives. The advantage of this method is that one can learn more about something than a singular perspective or system. It also ties in nicely with Nietzsche’s thoughts on anti-doctrinal freethinking, which features in HAH and Daybreak. Now in the land of lazy-minded academia, these two distinct thoughts – a dire consequences of a lapse in faith and the method of the freethinking intellectual – have become merged, and it is ‘common knowledge’ that Nietzsche was a champion of diversity and pluralism. It is from this foggy thought that this article, and many like it, has emerged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.153.80.2 (talk) 05:22, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Academia may be full of foggy thought when it comes to Nietzsche, but it is the primary generator of reliable sources. Could you clarify whether your objections to the section center on its being a bad interpretation of Nietzsche or on its being a bad explication of what interpretors have said about Nietzsche? RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 05:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I had problems with the lack of sources and the poor interpretation, not to mention the poor writing. However, someone has edited the section, and it looks much better. There is still the "perspectivism" error - I would like someone to tell me where Nietzsche says the death of God results in a plurality of perspectives known as "perspectivism". The only perspectivism reference I know of is, as metioned above, in The Genealogy of Morals. I haven't read all Nietzsche's works yet, so I'm open to being corrected. 122.153.80.2 (talk) 00:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Lead

I think this is one of those articles that should have a long lead section. It's only ten lines, less than one for each screen of text on my monitor. I would like to see a discussion regarding the ratio of text in article to text in lead some time, but I have little doubt that this one should be a bit longer; two paragraphs for Nietzsche is not enough. Richard001 (talk) 10:52, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

You're probably right; for anyone who's interested, the style guideline on this is at WP:Lead section. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 14:21, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Pictures of Ecce homo manuscript etc.

Hallo, I have uploaded some scans of the facsimile edition of the Ecce homo manuscript to Wikimedia Commons; you might want to use them in the EH article. There are also some new pictures from the Antichrist manuscript, and you might like to have a look at the articles about AC and EH in the German wikipedia which might get better in the next months.--Chef aka Pangloss (talk) 12:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

• 
  (detail of) title page EH
• 
  (detail of) first page of the preface EH
• 
  last page EH
• 
  two surviving title pages of AC
• 
  "law against Christianity", debated as part of AC
• 
  first note on the "eternal return", August 1881

Affirmation of life?

Notable ideas Apollonian and Dionysian, death of God, eternal recurrence, herd-instinct, master-slave morality, Übermensch, perspectivism, will to power, ressentiment

WHAT HAPPENED TO 'AFFIRMATION OF LIFE'? IT'S HIS BEST IDEA...(IN MY HUMBLE OPINION)...

Nemo Senki66.213.22.193 (talk) 00:27, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you're thinking of Albert Schweitzer? Cosmic Latte (talk) 01:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I was thinking "reverence for life," which is indeed Schweitzer. But I don't know if "affirmation of life" appears explicitly in Nietzsche or only in later commentary, such as B. Reginster's The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Note that will to power is already mentioned in this article. Cosmic Latte (talk) 01:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I found it; it's under 'Nietzschean affirmation'...I think this would be important to this article because of its influence on Camus and Absurdism; I'd like to add it them, if no one minds...Thanks!... Nemo Senki66.213.22.193 (talk) 21:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, go right ahead! I can't imagine why anyone would object. And if, for some reason, anyone does object later on, they'll still need to appreciate the fact that you decided to be bold in a constructive way. Cosmic Latte (talk) 00:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Slave Morality under Rome

I've emended the article to read "Nietzsche sees slave-morality as an ingenious ploy among the slaves and the weak (such as the Jews and Christians dominated by Rome) to overturn the values of their masters and to gain value for themselves." The parenthesis used to read "(such as the Jewish slaves in Egypt or the Christians dominated by Rome)." I don't think Nietzsche ever talks about slave morality in the context of Moses (he was very keen on the Old Testament): his ascription of "slave morality" to the Jews concerns a later period in antiquity (Babylon and Roman domination). As I recall, all his discussions of the Jews and "slave morality" occur re: the birth of Christianity. Jack (talk) 09:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

In On the Genealogy of Morals, the Jews begin the slave revolt while they still have some political independence, presumably because the redemption from slavery was a central part of their worship. So, I'll restore the original wording. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 14:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't find the passage. From what I can see "the Jews" appear in Genealogy of Morals at I.7-8 (re: Jesus), I.16 (re: Tacitus, John the Divine). Nothing in the second essay. From the third essay: "All honor to the Old Testament! I find in it great human beings, a heroic landscape, and something of the very rarest quality in the world, the incomparable naivete of the strong heart; what is more, I find a people." This doesn't sound like a description of "slave morality" to me. The text I changed had to do with the Jews' slavery in Egypt, i.e. the dawn of Jewish history. Where do you get the idea that the invention of "slave morality" dates, according to Nietzsche, to a period of Judaean political independence? Jack (talk) 17:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Part of the last sentence of GM I.7: "with the Jews the slave rebellion in morality begins". The bit about Jesus in I.8 says that he perfected the Judaic inversion in morals, which means that the inversion of which he speaks preceded Jesus and the birth of Christianity. The Jews were not fully enslaved to Rome until the rebellion of 68–70 CE. RJC ^{Talk Contribs} 22:21, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but they were under the thumb of Roman puppets. Nothing here has anything to do with Egypt, and the article as it stands give the misleading idea that N. felt slavery to be a characteristic of the ancient Jews per se, as opposed to a historical phenomenon. I'm reverting back to my very small change. Jack (talk) 05:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)