/lit/ - Literature

>>4412604
Fuck man can't wait to finish The Trial and begin Thus Spake Zarathustra.

I have never read any Nietzsche works but I am familiar with him.

>>4412604
>thus preventing him from becoming the ubermensch
lol-logic
I think I'll avoid nietzsche for now

>>4412609
it's absolutely fantastic

some chapters just fill you up with energy. I'm only 1/4 of the way through, and I've had to read everything twice. Lots of poetry

>>4412611
according to him, pity is death

>>4412616
>according to him, pity is death
yes but why?
Extraordinary statements require extraordinary explanation.
I haven't read him, only a few excerpts/essays, but he seems like a provocateur - says lots of outrageous things, doesn't really support them very well

>>4412621
he does spout a lot of bullshit, for example he states that women are incapable of true friendship the same way men are

for Nietzsche, the ubermensch is the ultimate thing man should strive for, kind of like heaven is what christians should strive for. He lays out a psuedo-morality (he also states that the ubermensch should be beyond good and evil) that says the good is what gives a sense of power

pity acts in opposition to power, as it gives a depressing kind of feeling.

Also he, being a devout darwinian, stated that pity "preserves that which is ripe for destruction". Basically, the weak should die if they can't take care of themselves

I could be wrong, but that's what I took away from the antichrist and what I've read so far from this book

>>4412628
I disagree with a lot of what you said.

I think the eternal return/amor fati kind of replaces the overman as the main idea/thrust of the work.

As for pity and the weak, I don't think Nietzsche thought we should disregard those with less power or who are weak, but that pity is an emotion that is emblematic of the Christian morality which he so hated, particularly because it (Christianity) seemed to make weakness into a strength or virtue (e.g. "the meek shall inherit the earth").

>>4412628

Dostoyevsky had refuted that stupid ubermensch shit before freddy even thought of it.

>>4412628
indeed I forgot. In the context of the ubermensch and amorality, his statement at least makes sense.

>>4412641
>it (Christianity) seemed to make weakness into a strength or virtue
shit, forgot about this part. You're right

but I do recall reading about pity from a darwinistic standpoint in the anti christ.

who cares he is dead

>>4412628
Nietzsche mock darwin all the time....

>>4412643
I wouldn't say he refuted it, but he did give a good examination of what would happen if someone actually put that line of thinking into practice.

>>4412667

I think it was pretty solidly refuted, as a philosophical idea it can't lead to any love or happiness so what's the point? Power for powers sake? Also tellingly raskolnikov never really repents of his ideals and ends up totally destroyed by the schism between what his rational ubermensh mind says he can do, and the realities of the world and of his crimes.

>>4412641
So how do we place this into an equal rights context? Why does he refute equal rights?

>>4412682
aww so cute

"We fundamentally misunderstand predatory animals and predatory men (for example, Cesare Borgia), and we misunderstand “Nature,” so long as we still look for a “pathology” at the bottom of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths or even for some “Hell” born in them—as almost all moralists so far have done.* Among moralists does it not appear that there is hatred for the primeval forest and the tropics? And that the “tropical man” must at any price be discredited, whether as a sickness and degeneration of human beings or as his own hell and self-torture? But why? For the benefit of the “temperate zones”? For the benefit of the temperate human beings? For the “moral human beings”? For the mediocre? This for the chapter “morality as timidity.”"

>>4412708

You realise the text you quoted says literally nothing of relevance to what I said.

It pretty much just says "people won't like what I say so it must be right".

>>4412708

>morality is a weakness, I, the ubermensch am not subject to such patheric human folly

Lol wow could this be any more neckbeard and laughable?

>>4412688
Can you specify which passage you're talking about? I don't remember him saying something like this explicitly, and I feel like if he did it would probably be in the context of something like anti-statist condemnation of something like communism where the tyranny of the majority would infringe on the freedom of the individual. But it could be something else.

>>4412718
"His ideal was a utopian, Christianized Russia where "if everyone were actively Christian, not a single social question would come up ... If they were Christians they would settle everything""

Ok so a deeply christian dude wrote a book about a guy who did not follow the bible and ended with his own little "hell" inside of him....

now re read what I quoted...

>>4412729
I'm pretty much trying to analyze what Nietzsche thought was so bad about equal rights

In particular, I just read the "tarantulas" chapter in thus spoke Zarathustra

>>4412682
What I was trying to get at was the idea that his philosophy works for a few "great men" (read sociopaths,) but people as a whole just aren't compatible with the whole thing. Also, correct me if I'm wrong (I haven't read C&P in a while, so my memory might not be 100%,) but wasn't the whole point of the end to show how his repenting was putting him on the path to real happiness?

>>4412734

What you quoted only said "people criticize violent pitiless men", it literally provided no answer to my point of view thay this philosophy could hardly be practiced by anyone in reality.

>>4412738
Ok I see what you're saying. I just googled it because I don't have my copy of Zarathustra handy and the first thing that came up was SparkNotes study guide on it, and it's actually not a bad explication. I remember the "let us strive against one another like Gods" passage being one of my favorites, and I think that sort of gets to the heart of things. If there were complete equality, there would be no need or desire for us to change and become better, there would be no conflict of ideas that leads to better things. It would be a stagnant world, the world of the "last men" who in one chapter (I can't remember which atm) say of their world, "We have invented happiness" and then vegetate because they do not possess the same vitality for life as a Nietzschean, which includes struggle and suffering.

Or to put more simply, a world of equality or the Last Man might resemble that of Brave New World--people seeking simple pleasures and doing nothing to change themselves or create things.

>>4412791
Ahh that makes more sense. So in a social context, the übermensch would pretty much value his own ideas as the only legitimate authority, and carry out his "will to power", disregarding whatever "equality" others attempt to impose on him?

>>4412814
Nietzsche was definitely a strong individualist, so in a way, yes. His works aren't so much manifestos as much as they are challenges to the reader; the often used phrase is "Here's my way, where's yours?"

Be careful with "will to power" though. It's much more complicated than it seems on the surface level, and lot of people have written on what they think it means, some going as far to say that it's the central concept that underlies all of Nietzsche's thought. You might want to read up on Schopenhauer's "will to live" as the will to power is essentially an expansion of this concept. Even flowers have a will to power, so it's much more complicated than a simple desire to impose one's will.

>>4412741
Dostoyevsky was also into christianity.

>>4412643

>snorevsky
>refuting everything

he couldn't even refute himself out of the gulag lol, and played the good little moralist for the rest of his miserable life.

>>4412743

lol, "hardly practiced by anyone in reality" as if that isn't the point you poor stunted fagot.

>>4412851

Yeh you are totally right guys, morals are for the weak and you're the social elite... fucking neckbeard euphorics.

>>4412604

Nietzsche simply couldn't bear democratic modernity, he saw democracy as the ascendency of the rabble. He believed himself to be an aristocrat, when, in fact, he was descended from Polish butchers.

>>4412864

:(

sounds like someone is on the back foot

>>4412925

Right because you made a real argument right? Oh wait, no you made no argument at all.

>>4412628
you cant be friends with a woman

>>4412724
nietzsche never claimed to be the ubermensch
you are filled with preconceptions

I got it for Christmas, in English, which is not my native language, and I'm having hard time chewing through it.

Is there more to this deduction?
>pity shows the weakness in the reciever
How does pity show weakness? It sounds as self-assured as something Žižek would write. The weakness is there objectively and what pity does is it only exposes the weakness. I don't want to oppose Nietzsche but this just sounds logical to me.

The other part makes little sense to me. What part of depressant does pity fulfill? Relief from depression or subduing of your mind?

>>4412621
Don't be a philistine, read Spinoza. Nietzsche's conception of pity is fundamentally identical to Spinoza's: pity is form of sadness - that is, the experience of a decrease in one's own power to persevere in being.

Spinoza is basically Nietzsche, but written in a non-abrasive, expository fashion.

>>4413003
>I got Nietzsche
>for Christmas

God truly is dead.

>>4413072
Christian God, sure.
For me, Christmas isn't a religious deal, it has become a custom, and a good one. I don't mind being sentimental, time from time.

>>4412665
Nietzsche mocks those he borrows the most from, it's part of his spirit of overcoming. Nietzsche is to Kant what Kant was to Hume. Whether Nietzsche or Kant were successful in overcoming their predecessors is open to debate.

A subtle bump

>>4412604
>equal rights

No material is equal in this world so why people start off from the notion that equal rights are things that should be handed out like fliers at a convention is beyond me. Some men are born to lead, others to follow. Some are born to rule and others to bow down. It's simple.

You know the whole concept is nice but it's simply not grounded in reality nor history.

>>4412628
>women are incapable of true friendship the same way men are

Well he's right. And no amount of "neckbeard" counterargument shit-flinging is going to change that. Women are inherently devious, dishonest and insidious. Some are more-so, some are less-so. This is coming from a married man. Women are more bounded by their emotions in every-day decision making and men are far less so, but we have our own vices and downsides to counteract and balance out the whole thing. It just so happens that friendships between men often tend to last for decades while with women it's more in the ballpark of a few months or a couple of years at most.

>>4413280
>might is right and women are evul

You seem euphoric m8. How does it feel to be so enlightened by your own intelligence?

when people give me pity, i take advantage of it and move up socially. i don't see how it is a depressant.

>>4413330
Nietzsche is suggesting that when people give YOU pity, it proves that you are weak and lack power. Whether you notice it or not, it eats you up forever. It's supposed to act as a depressant to the person who gives pity, not recieves it

It also keeps alive that should have died

>Nietzsche

Euphoric people in their intelectual puberty phase still give him attention

Bunch of bullshit, and the only reason people like him are the cause of humanity's stagnation. Instead of evolving and being more pragmatic since evolution is kind of pressing us to the balls in this century, you get stuck in the past with what a moron who wanted to rebel had to say

sage because he's just an idiot

It's ridiculous how much shit flinging and butthurt immediately show up whenever Neitzsche gets mentioned. All the "edgy" bits of his work are so fucking overblown in popular conception.

>>4414705
this. the birth of the tragedy is probably nietzsche's most crucial work since it begins deconstructing and critically examining the cartesian subject, a project that has been the concern of most 20th century philosophers from heidegger to habermas. do the edgy /lit/itizens care about this? no, instead they just go "hurr duurr might is right, dae daily nihilism thread" while marginally better informed people ridicule them for it

>but can someone explain why he hates the concept of equal rights?
he is probably wholly against the notion of rights in the ethical sense to begin with because they are empty concepts which no allegedly strong person would need in the first place. A strong person does not need a right to something in order to acquire it, he simply takes it. He doesn't need a right in order to defend himself, he can do it just fine without any. Rights are there to protect the weak, who cannot take things for themselves or who cannot enforce their will without the aid of big bro the state. I guess he is very much like Stirner on this point.
Besides this, the notion of equality, again in the ethical sense, is very much bunk for Nietzsche. There is no natural equality, and both strong and weak people need fundamentally different attitudes and conditions in order to live their lives to the fullest. Weak people cannot strive to become the overman, and so conditions that pander to weak people are not conducive to bringing about the historical conditions whereby the best of mankind moves beyond itself. Equal rights allegedly prevents that, and it prevents great people from doing great things.

>>4414705

he is absurdly edgy after zarathustra and he admits it himself

well, prevents is too strong a word there. 'hinders' would be a better one, and really that is within the context of the strong. equal rights within the realm of weak people makes sense.