Fascist or Republican?

[GePap]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


See many people criticse Nietzsche without understanding him. I criticise him because I understand him.

Your posts on this thread show you do not understand him at all.

Care to give your take for example on Nietzsche's statement that punishment is an act of the weak?

[Imran Siddiqui]

See many people criticse Nietzsche without understanding him. I criticise him because I understand him.

That sounds like the idiotic "Communists read Marx, anti-Communists understand Marx" line.

Personally, I don't think you understand him at all. Parroting your biases, which you held before you even read him.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by MrFun


Exactly -- I think you're finally moving pass the denial stage of being a nutcase. Once you can admit you're a nutcase, all you have to do, is take the first step in getting professional help.

Homo.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The fact is you are the more common line on Nitezsche, the mass market "Oh my gosh, he bad" line.

Same with Machiavelli, even though most intelligent people realize that his advice was good (and of course most people never read the "Discourses on Livy")

I think most people never care to get to the part in which Machiavelli shows his true republican sides and urges the use of a citizen army to defend the City as opposed to the mercenary forces of a Prince.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


Homo.

[Ned]

Question: aren't individualism and fascism inherently in conflict? Individualism, in its ultimate form, leads, I believe, to libertarianism, not to totalitarianism, the end result of fascism.

[Az]

That sounds like the idiotic "Communists read Marx, anti-Communists understand Marx" line.

Didn't Reagan say that?

[MrFun]

hence, the idiotic part, Azazel

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap
How could something that creates(as opposed to simply destroys) be nihilistic?

I was under the impression that nihilism denotes the idea that there are no moral values, that whether my actions hurt or help others is of no concern, and whether I break any rules only so far as it leads to practical consequences (eg, punishment). How such an attitude could be combined with creative activity should require no explanation.

But, I must suppose, this is not the kind of nihilism you lot are talking about. So, please explain what it means in context.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

I was under the impression that nihilism denotes the idea that there are no moral values, that whether my actions hurt or help others is of no concern, and whether I break any rules only so far as it leads to practical consequences (eg, punishment). How such an attitude could be combined with creative activity should require no explanation.

But, I must suppose, this is not the kind of nihilism you lot are talking about. So, please explain what it means in context.

As I understand it in the Nietzschean vocabulary nihilists are essentially life-negating- you can have values and be a nihilist if you say life does not matter at all (Nietzsche saw some Asian religious values as verging very close to nihilism in their rejection of the exstence of this world and its meaning- also part of why he hated the slave mentality- at some point, they hate so much they hate existence itself and deny it: essentially totally devaluing the sensual world for a made believe afterlife.

[Last Conformist]

Thanks.

[Ned]

GePap, et al., why are you guys arguing about Nietzsche at all? Are you equating his philosophy to fascism?

[Kidlicious]

Didn't Reagan say that?

Originally posted by MrFun
hence, the idiotic part, Azazel

Imran

[Imran Siddiqui]

Didn't Reagan say that?

Even great men can say some dumb things.

GePap, et al., why are you guys arguing about Nietzsche at all? Are you equating his philosophy to fascism?

No, Speer was. We were disabusing him of that notion.

[Al B. Sure!]

where oh where did you disabuse that notion out of me? I've just read all these pages since I last posted and do not see anything but misinterpretations of fascism and misinterpretations of nietzsche...

i'll just go through...

No, he does not "care about power" in the sense you talk about- he would view hitler as a great example of the slave mentality, a nihilist peddling ideas of fear, and a mob following him as slaves.

where do you get this from? Martin Heidegger was the premiere Nietzsche scholar and a philosophy himself... he philosophied the metaphysics that he believed were a result of Nietzsche. Heidegger, of course, was a supporter of Fascism.

and I'll quote OzzyKP...

He isn't saying "everyone should be free to do whatever they will, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else." No, that, he reasons is a corruption of the will. Nietzsche says you have an absolute freedom to do whatever you will." Period. My will to power is directly in opposition to your will to power.

this sums it all up. The will to power is a biological and physical fact. Competition is the way of the universe. the chapter "The strong man is mightiest alone" that i quoted from Hitler's Mein Kampf shows fascism's rise from Nietzscheanism... Hitler describes how men become disillusioned with religion and the strong among them create new values on new tablets... they are new creators leading a movement to replace the old... these men compete among each other in order for the strongest man, the strongest view, to be dominant. How is Hitler's description of history and of fascism any different than Nietzsche?

The person having absolute power will only result in a slave morality type of system that stifles creativity.

i think Nietzsche made it very clear that the chandalas must be separated from the higher men.

What are you two trying to argue? that Nietzsche favoured equality? I'm trying to understand... if so, that is very much not true... the chapter entitled "the tarantula" in Zarathustra addresses this and Nietzsche addressed it in nearly all of his works.

He doesn't focus on the one man, but on anyone who wants to be a creator.

yeah but he makes it quite clear that there will always be a massive rabble that is too inferior to be the overman... these will be the chandalas that the Christians pander to... strong of espirit but weak. their sheer numbers will tend to crush the uncommon men.

Do you think Nietzsche believed that all common men could become uncommon men? is that what you're arguing?


maybe we need to get some foundation here... is moral perspectivism necessarily egoistic? can we agree on that? If an individual himself is the fashioner of his reality (the existentialist/perspectivist viewpoint which Nietzsche postulated) can he be anything but egoistic? he only knows himself and he operates under the biological fact of will to power, seeking with every part of his being to impose his will upon the reality that he creates.

Can we agree on that? if so, Nietzsche can not possibly be a libertarian philospher... where do you see equal rights and liberty in Nietzsche? Hitler, in Mein Kampf, seems to have extended the will to power and moral perspectivism to it's logical conclusion... history becomes a competition between millions of individuals, all seeking to impose their will upon others.

Unfortunately, Nietzsche felt, the masses had too much espirit and too many numbers. they could flood over the few uncommon men and impose their own will upon society... a will of a slavish society... a will of an equal society... equal rights and liberty were slavish ideals to make the uncouth masses feel like the equals to the uncommon men.

Nietzsche wanted these uncommon men to surpasses the masses, despite their numbers and espirit. He respected the rabble for managing to create new values (good and evil, etc.) and impose them so sucessfully by castrating the uncommon men but he hoped his ideas, along with the ideas of the times which he felt were already making God irrelevant and disproving equality, would give new strength to the uncommon men so that they may impose their will upon a society with it's precious chandala values of equality and liberty being made obselete.

Nietzsche saw some Asian religious values as verging very close to nihilism in their rejection of the exstence of this world and its meaning- also part of why he hated the slave mentality- at some point, they hate so much they hate existence itself and deny it: essentially totally devaluing the sensual world for a made believe afterlife

what Asian religion? Nietzsche liked the relegation of the chandalas to an inferior status, exhibited in Hinduism... Buddhism has no after-life to speak of... and anyway, Nietzsche seemed to greatly prefer Buddhism over Christianity... I quote from The AntiChrist...

I hope that my condemnation of Christianity has not involved me in any injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of adherents: Buddhism. Both belong together as nihilistic religions—they are religions of décadence—but they differ most remarkably. For being in a position now to compare them, the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to the students of India.— Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity: posing problems objectively and coolly is part of its inheritance, for Buddhism comes after a philosophic movement which spanned centuries. The concept of “God” had long been disposed of when it arrived. Buddhism is the only genuinely positivistic religion in history. This applies even to its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism—): it no longer says “struggle against sin” but, duly respectful of reality, “struggle against suffering.” Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that the self-deception of the moral concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands beyond good and evil.— The two physiological facts on which it is based and which it keeps in mind are: first, an excessive sensitivity, which manifests itself in a refined susceptibility to pain; and second, an overspiritualization, an all-too-long preoccupation with concepts and logical procedures, which has damaged the instinct of personality by subordinating it to the “impersonal” (—both states which at least some of my readers, those who are “objective” like myself, will know from experience). These physiological conditions have led to a depression, and the Buddha proceeds against this with hygienic measures. Against it he recommends life in the open air, the wandering life; moderation in eating and a careful selection of foods; wariness of all intoxicants; wariness also of all emotions that activate the gall bladder or heat the blood; no worry either for oneself or for others. He prescribes ideas which are either soothing or cheering—he invents means for weaning oneself from all the others. He understands goodness and graciousness as health-promoting. Prayer is ruled out, and so is asceticism; there is no categorial imperative, no compulsion whatever, not even in the monastic societies (—one may leave again—). All these things would merely increase the excessive sensitivity we mentioned. For the same reason, he does not ask his followers to fight those who think otherwise: there is nothing to which his doctrine is more opposed than the feeling of revenge, antipathy, ressentiment (—“it is not by enmity that enmity is ended”: that is the stirring refrain of all Buddhism ...). And all this is quite right: these emotions would indeed be utterly unhealthy in view of the basic hygienic purpose. Against the spiritual exhaustion he encounters, which manifests itself in an excessive “objectivity” (that is, in the individual’s loss of interest in himself, in the loss of a center of gravity, of “egoism”), he fights with a rigorous attempt to lead back even the most spiritual interests to the person. In the Buddha’s doctrine, egoism becomes a duty: the “one thing needful,” the question “how can you escape from suffering?” regulates and limits the whole spiritual diet. (Perhaps one may here recall that Athenian who also waged war against any pure “scientism”—Socrates, who elevated personal egoism to an ethic, even in the realm of problems.)

Buddhism presupposes a very mild climate, customs of great gentleness and liberality, and the absence of militarism; moreover, the movement had to originate among the higher, and even the scholarly, classes. Cheerfulness, calm, and freedom from desire are the highest goal, and the goal is attained. Buddhism is not a religion in which one merely aspires to perfection: perfection is the normal case. —