I too was a right-leaning young man who fell for Nietzsche in his late teens and early 20s, though I was also religious, which (for obvious reasons!) always stopped me from taking his philosophy on board in any kind of comprehensive way.
One thing you don't explicitly say, which is part of what makes Nietzsche so seductive, is just how good a writer he was, especially in German, but it comes through even in English translation. His rhetoric carries one along in a way that sometimes means that possible intellectual objections aren't at the forefront of the reader's mind. I can't think of another philosopher who is that good, except for Plato - who is, not at all coincidentally, another writer who was appropriated by a large number of apparently incompatible later thinkers.
“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”
It's interesting to compare notes with someone partly ideologically aligned but with very different sensibilities.
My take on Nietzsche has long been that he provides no reason to believe any of his claims, and that's all one needs to know about him. And also, I can't stand the guy. I can't read ten pages of him without intense feelings of contempt.
Another way to put it is that Nietzsche is to the mind as the wave is to the sandcastle. He is a deconstructor of rational thought, constantly substituting sneering for logic. It's always a vice to be able to tolerate Nietzsche. He doesn't reason, but he's like pornography to intellectual pride, and people who can tolerate him are invariably less rational than they should be because they're not humble enough.
My intellectual hero, C.S. Lewis, is the opposite. His writings are pervaded by an ethos of rational accountability for everything he claims. Of course, sometimes the evidence is inevitably introspective and personal, but he lets you know when he has to lean on that. CS Lewis appreciates the lone hero with his back to the wall every bit as well as Nietzsche, but he has no tincture of Nietzsche's snob appeal.
I should acknowledge one debt, though. I like to read the "madman" passage every Good Friday for devotional reading. Good Friday, after all, was the one day in history when it was really true that God was dead. Fortunately, the grave couldn't hold Him.
“Much of the intoxication of reading him comes from his seductive combination of depth and lightness.” This is so true. Great essay, which reflects my own experience. I also loved the writing in Zarathustra, and got into it in my late teens, early twenties.
Hmm. There are writers here whose work screams AI. Repetitive sentence structure a tell for one person whose content otherwise greatly interested me. I didn't have that impression here. I wonder what you see that I am missing.
Oh youre not missing anything. In a previous post he talked about his use of ai with his writing, and now whenever i read anything he writes that question is always in the back of my mind.
I would expect richard to be smart and thorough enough to edit any ai creations for those telltale signs you mentioned. I thought the article was much better than what ive come to expect from him(though admittedly thats been limited to his free articles over the past few months), and definitely much better than standard ai fare, and *that* made me think hm maybe he had some help.
Consider how far ai images have come in the past year.. theyre so good now many of them are indistinguishable from real pictures. I would expect writing to follow suit. And it really wouldnt be that hard to fine tune an ai creation to make it more "authentic", as it were. That, to me, is whats really meant by those purporting to work *with* ai. Mark my words, thats what the next year will be on substack, ai creations edited for humanness. Richard himself is the one who brought this to my attention, by suggesting paying him would ensure we get the real deal.
Ofc we have no way to know, and that i think is the most damning part.
One aspect of Nietzsche people get wrong is that he was an anti-Semite and proto-Nazi. It just is not true. He hated anti-Semites, among them his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Unfortunately, after Nietzsche's sharp decline Elizabeth gained control of all his intellectual property and was his caretaker for the last 12 years of his life. Fortunately, the body of Nietzsche's work is there for all to read, including excellent English translations.
The closest to a "Nietzschean liberal" in intellectual history is Leo Strauss. Step (1): “Nietzsche so charmed me between my 22nd and 30th years that I literally believed everything I understood of him.” Step (2): "We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy. While we are not permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which democracy exposes itself as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the obvious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence."
I too was a right-leaning young man who fell for Nietzsche in his late teens and early 20s, though I was also religious, which (for obvious reasons!) always stopped me from taking his philosophy on board in any kind of comprehensive way.
One thing you don't explicitly say, which is part of what makes Nietzsche so seductive, is just how good a writer he was, especially in German, but it comes through even in English translation. His rhetoric carries one along in a way that sometimes means that possible intellectual objections aren't at the forefront of the reader's mind. I can't think of another philosopher who is that good, except for Plato - who is, not at all coincidentally, another writer who was appropriated by a large number of apparently incompatible later thinkers.
“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
It's interesting to compare notes with someone partly ideologically aligned but with very different sensibilities.
My take on Nietzsche has long been that he provides no reason to believe any of his claims, and that's all one needs to know about him. And also, I can't stand the guy. I can't read ten pages of him without intense feelings of contempt.
Another way to put it is that Nietzsche is to the mind as the wave is to the sandcastle. He is a deconstructor of rational thought, constantly substituting sneering for logic. It's always a vice to be able to tolerate Nietzsche. He doesn't reason, but he's like pornography to intellectual pride, and people who can tolerate him are invariably less rational than they should be because they're not humble enough.
My intellectual hero, C.S. Lewis, is the opposite. His writings are pervaded by an ethos of rational accountability for everything he claims. Of course, sometimes the evidence is inevitably introspective and personal, but he lets you know when he has to lean on that. CS Lewis appreciates the lone hero with his back to the wall every bit as well as Nietzsche, but he has no tincture of Nietzsche's snob appeal.
I should acknowledge one debt, though. I like to read the "madman" passage every Good Friday for devotional reading. Good Friday, after all, was the one day in history when it was really true that God was dead. Fortunately, the grave couldn't hold Him.
“Much of the intoxication of reading him comes from his seductive combination of depth and lightness.” This is so true. Great essay, which reflects my own experience. I also loved the writing in Zarathustra, and got into it in my late teens, early twenties.
Sorry, I don't think you contribute anything with these comments. Take a month off and think about this.
Hmm. There are writers here whose work screams AI. Repetitive sentence structure a tell for one person whose content otherwise greatly interested me. I didn't have that impression here. I wonder what you see that I am missing.
Oh youre not missing anything. In a previous post he talked about his use of ai with his writing, and now whenever i read anything he writes that question is always in the back of my mind.
I would expect richard to be smart and thorough enough to edit any ai creations for those telltale signs you mentioned. I thought the article was much better than what ive come to expect from him(though admittedly thats been limited to his free articles over the past few months), and definitely much better than standard ai fare, and *that* made me think hm maybe he had some help.
Consider how far ai images have come in the past year.. theyre so good now many of them are indistinguishable from real pictures. I would expect writing to follow suit. And it really wouldnt be that hard to fine tune an ai creation to make it more "authentic", as it were. That, to me, is whats really meant by those purporting to work *with* ai. Mark my words, thats what the next year will be on substack, ai creations edited for humanness. Richard himself is the one who brought this to my attention, by suggesting paying him would ensure we get the real deal.
Ofc we have no way to know, and that i think is the most damning part.
One aspect of Nietzsche people get wrong is that he was an anti-Semite and proto-Nazi. It just is not true. He hated anti-Semites, among them his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Unfortunately, after Nietzsche's sharp decline Elizabeth gained control of all his intellectual property and was his caretaker for the last 12 years of his life. Fortunately, the body of Nietzsche's work is there for all to read, including excellent English translations.
This was a really nice piece. Hardly the word to use with Nietzsche in a way, but still the tone was just right. Thanks.
The closest to a "Nietzschean liberal" in intellectual history is Leo Strauss. Step (1): “Nietzsche so charmed me between my 22nd and 30th years that I literally believed everything I understood of him.” Step (2): "We are not permitted to be flatterers of democracy precisely because we are friends and allies of democracy. While we are not permitted to remain silent on the dangers to which democracy exposes itself as well as human excellence, we cannot forget the obvious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence."
Small typo Constantin Alamariu -> Costin Alamariu
Thanks