Nietzsche

[Barnabas]

I agree with Elok, I think both were immoral monsters and rather similar.

If Heidegger supported the nazis, why are people so sure Friedrich wouldn't have? Did you know him better than his sister?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Because no one knows people better than their siblings... and no sibling would ever use their dead famous sibling to promote anything

[Elok]

I don't think either would have supported the Nazis--they were too individualistic. Rand hated the government (albeit she hated Commies more), Nietzsche hated nationalism, and both seem to have hated people in general and women in particular. One was a mystical misanthrope who trafficked in crypto-religious musings about Eternal Recurrence and messianic supermen, while the other was a more pedantic scholarly type--a sort of Thomas Aquinas of ****-the-human-race.

[Elok]

(funfact: if you say "**** the human race" three times, it will magically summon Guy to the thread, kind of like Beetlejuice)

[Kidlicious]

If Heidegger supported the nazis, why are people so sure Friedrich wouldn't have? Did you know him better than his sister?

The Nazis were as opposite of existentialists as you can get. Like Elok said, Neitzche really didn't believe in an ideal society.

[Dr Strangelove]

It's pronounced: NAHt-zeee.

Nietsche wanted to live by his own moral code because he wanted his sister to have his babies.

I totally get the thing about staring into the abyss though. When you've examined as many dark holes as I have they do start to stare back.

[Kidlicious]

It's pronounced: NAHt-zeee.

[Fake Boris]

I agree with Elok, I think both were immoral monsters and rather similar.

If Heidegger supported the nazis, why are people so sure Friedrich wouldn't have? Did you know him better than his sister?

It's pretty obvious that he would have hated them.

[Barnabas]

I agree in that he would not have been a nazi, I was semi trolling. IIRC Nietzsche used to troll germans by saying poles were superior to them, or more noble, something like that, very un nazi like.

[Uncle Sparky]

Sorry it took so long for me to post this.

[molly bloom]

And Little Miss Sunshine was awesome.

I'm so glad you liked it- I laughed very long and hard at the end when the whole family joined her on stage.

A very gifted writer, for all that trying to understand him is like swimming through mud.

For me he's like the philosophical equivalent of Henry James's later novels- things like 'The Golden Bowl'. You read a sentence that with various diversions and digressions is almost a page in length and then realize you've forgotten what the subject of it was.

And do reassure me you'd never let your offspring enter one of those revolting child pageants.

If Heidegger supported the nazis, why are people so sure Friedrich wouldn't have? Did you know him better than his sister?

Well my memory was jogged sufficiently to recall this:

Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who went on to become a prominent supporter of Adolf Hitler, systematically falsified her brother's works and letters, according to the Nietzsche Encyclopedia.

Christian Niemeyer, the publisher, said he wanted to clear the revered thinker's reputation by showing the "criminally scandalous" forgeries by his sister had tainted his reputation ever since.

"Förster-Nietzsche did everything she could – such as telling stories about Nietzsche, writing false letters in the name of her brother, and so on – to make it seem that Nietzsche had been a right-wing thinker like herself," he told The Daily Telegraph.

"It was she who created the most destructive myth of all: Nietzsche as the godfather of fascism."

The Nazis selectively used Nietzsche's writings to bolster their ideology and built a museum in Weimar to celebrate the philosopher, though it is unlikely Hitler himself read much, if any, of Nietzsche's work.

Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche edited her brother's writings after his mental breakdown in 1889 and quickly began to add, remove and change passages to align his philosophy with her own beliefs and those of her virulent anti-Semite husband Bernhard Förster.

Along with her husband, she founded a Utopian "Aryan" colony in the Paraguyan jungle called Nueva Germania in 1887. It was a disaster: her husband committed suicide in 1889 and Förster-Nietzsche returned to Germany. When she died in 1935, Hitler attended her funeral.

While it has been known to Nietzsche scholars that Förster-Nietzsche meddled with her brother's work, particular after his death, the new encyclopedia – consisting of entries by about 150 scholars – shows the sheer breadth and depth of her forgeries as never before.

Niemeyer, a psychologist and Nietzsche expert from Dresden University, scoured through Nietzsche's letters to catalogue the extent of the falsifications.

Of the collection of 505 of her brother's letters that Förster-Nietzsche published in 1909, just 60 were the original versions and 32 of them were entirely made up, he claims.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/7018535/Criminal-manipulation-of-Nietzsche-by-sister-to-make-him-look-anti-Semitic.html

[Elok]

And do reassure me you'd never let your offspring enter one of those revolting child pageants.

Oh, hell no. When I set out to immorally exploit my kid, I'm gonna do it properly and sell his organs. No half-assed tiaras and such for me.