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Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 10:27:13 No.7284650 View Reply Report Delete

I haven't read anything by Nietzsche. Where do I begin?

My exposure to philosophy has been quite limited so if there's anything that I should study/read before picking up nietzsche then please let me know that as well.

If not, then from where do I begin with Nietzsche and what order do i follow when going through his works?

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:08:38 No.7284784 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Bump

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:10:03 No.7284788 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Old copypasta:

I would suggest starting with Birth of Tragedy, then Human All Too human -> Gay Science (***his clearest and most comprehensive work before Zarathustra) -> Beyond Good and Evil -> Genealogy of Morals -> Twilight of the Idols.

After you get this initial feeling and grasp of his ideas, go back and read Thus Spoke Zarathustra which is his greatest and most profound work, one of the most profound books of all time, if not the most profound, but only if you are fully capable of understanding his poetry, which happens when you read his books correctly.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:32:02 No.7284858 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284861 >>7284934

Heraclitus and Plato are essential. Then maybe Epicurus/Lucretius. The Bible is also helpful. You should be familiar with Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer (although you don't need to understand Hegel in full—most people don't). If you want to start Nietzsche at the beginning with Birth of Tragedy, you should read some Greek plays. Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes... Probably good to be familiar with them anyway, as they provide the basis of the Appolinian/Dionysian dichotomy. As for getting the meat of Nietzsche, I recommend Beyond Good and Evil, followed by Ecce Homo. BG&E puts his philosophy in relatively readable aphorisms, and Ecce Homo is an incredibly lucid piece of self-explanation.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:34:08 No.7284861 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284858
Oh I almost forgot: if you have an interest in music, The Case of Wagner is short, funny and a good way to get a feel for Nietzsche's writing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:34:30 No.7284862 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Took me a few seconds to figure out that was a Nietzsche portrait, I thought it was a landscape with some grass in the foreground and some unidentified objects in the back.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:37:35 No.7284873 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284885 >>7284895 >>7286421

We need to talk about Nietzsche translators

>Walter Kaufmann:

>A pernicious Jewish scholar that built his career on preparing Nietzsche for liberal digestion, that is, sanitizing, de-contextualizing, disassociation of Nietzsche from the most obvious ramification of the man's teaching (National Socialism), incorrectly presenting Nietzsche as a wisdom writer and then tellingly doing absolutely nothing about the fraudulent platitudinization of Nietzsche by liberal 'critical-theorists' like Derrida, Klossowski, Butler, Foucault, Deleuze and similar garbage.

>Kaufmann's translations are useful, just so long as the reader pays absolutely no attention to his notes.

>R.J. Hollingdale:

>Hollingdale is not as militant as Kaufmann and is more privy to the danger of Nietzsche. He nonetheless treats N in the impartial manner of merely presenting text and at best siding with the likes of Harold Bloom and 'Great Courses' professors that think of Nietzsche loosely as an 'individualist' and wisdom-writer of that most stupid truism, 'self-creation'. Hollingdale is preferable to Kaufmann because his English is better.

>Anthony M. Ludovici:

>Ludovici is better because his English comes from a period in which there was still a natural artistic life in the language and because his mind is better suited for comprehending Nietzsche. He has a better grasp of Nietzsche's comments about 'aristocracy' because the man was, unlike Hollingdale and the post-war Jew Kaufmann, not naturally opposed to all of previous history. With Kaufmann and Hollingdale, 'aristocracy' becomes a kind of platitude that can be relativized by any Other on the basis of their present political situation. By this thinking liberals become 'aristocrats' because the tea-party resents Obama's dissolution of American sovereignty, so they're just resenters and 'resentment' also becomes a peculiarly free-floating truism that can be adopted by anyone to slander anyone else, always in the name of 'objectivity' (impartiality), which is a fraud because by doing so their morality is not understood as particular to their nature but something coming from beyond--from God! They deliberately drop the Nietzsche distinction between Power and Weakness. In contrast Ludovici correctly understands the historical continuity between Christianity, Liberalism and Obama.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:40:56 No.7284885 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284916

>>7284873
How can intelligent reading of Nietzsche lead to National Socialism if he himself despised nationalism and the German people? The only way you get to National Socialism from Nietzsche is an incredibly selective reading of him. Which is exactly what the Nazi's did.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:44:22 No.7284895 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284873
Dont listen to this guy, Kaufman's translations are great. He goes through some gymnastics on the notes, but there is no corruption of the texts themselves.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:51:48 No.7284916 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284954 >>7284968

>>7284885
You are viewing National Socialism with too narrow a set of criteria. One needs to consider the whole philosophical breadth of an ideology rather than a few isolated viewpoints. The best formulation is that of Ludovici:

http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/01/hitler-and-nietzsche/

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:57:08 No.7284934 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284949 >>7285011

>>7284858

>>7284858

holy shit. I'm kind of a beginner. Haven't read anything by any of the people you listed. (I feel ashamed writing that. I am sorry, but I'm trying to take out more time for reading)

Anyway, I want to ensure that I am able to appreciate and comprehend what he wrote as best as I can.

So, I should hold off on Nietzsche for now and pick up something by Heraclitus and Plato and then work my way by going through Descartes, Hume, Kant and Hegel?

Where do I begin for Heraclitus or Plato? Which is the first book(and which translation) that I should pick up?

(I am extremely sorry for coming across as such an illiterate person)

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 11:59:09 No.7284939 Report Delete

Quoted By:

I'm currently going through Human All Too Human, my first Nietzsche, and this book is amazing, it's really messing with me on a visceral level, it's challenging and beautifully written. I'm marking favourite passages and going back at them time and time again, knitting through the book and moving slowly.

I bought the book a year ago, read about 10 pages then and set it aside. It was interesting, but it was also hard to deal with. I've tried to read him too when I was younger and quit, had a few prejudices on what Nietzsche was about since then. I'm saying this because I think that only now I have the knowledge and the maturity to go through it and relate to what is written, so don't discard him if it's not coming to you at the moment.

From the little that I have read of him, it's not that he has a difficult vocabulary or that he points to obscure references, the difficulty lies in that he uses certain simple words like "moral", "metaphysics", "faith", "vanity", "science", etc in a particular way that I wouldn't be able to explain to you (not like he does). These concepts are extremely charged to the moral person and when I first read him I felt he was just messing them around, when in truth now I see how he counters that extraordinary inclination of ours to become enamored by them, identify ourselves with them. Nietzsche appears to talk from a whole different level, not bound by the supposed duties we ascribe to ourselves and in that regard he is completely revolutionary (or at least he is being so to me). I think it is useful for you to acquaint yourself with this level of thinking that could perhaps be described as a lack of excuses of any kind. He is also very poetic, he makes great analogies and even everyday examples. That being said, what he says is harsh, I think that for the first time I'm being really shaken by something I'm reading, he brings the responsibility to you and to you alone, he undresses everything.

I think I'll read Thus Spoke Zarathustra next.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:03:25 No.7284949 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284934
For Plato you're going to want to get the Hackett versions of most of his dialogues, except for the Republic, which you'll want the Bloom translation for.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:08:10 No.7284954 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7284989 >>7284994

>>7284916
I wouldn't say nationalism is an isolated viewpoint of Nazism, in fact it's one of it's core tenets, if not THE core tenet of the ideology.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:11:42 No.7284968 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284916

>and the German philosopher advocated a return to the pre-Socratic values which, by being concentrated on biological worth, would combat and eliminate degeneracy.
Nietzsche talks about how he has no desire to eliminate his enemies, he even thinks the church can stay intact, he only wants to bring them down to where they deserve to stand, instead of as rulers of the world. Nazism, on the other hand, is very fanatical and exterminatory, as christians are.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:17:11 No.7284989 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284954
dont waste your time with that ludovici drone

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:19:44 No.7284994 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7285012

>>7284954
There were many Nationalist critics of National Socialism in Germany.

Anyway, Nietzsche had no time for German Ehtno-Nationalism, but his work was well received by Pan European Nationalists

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:24:23 No.7285011 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7284934
Heraclitus' work "On Nature", is, like the works of most ancient writers, lost. All we have is fragments. Kirk and Raven's "The Presocratic Philosophers" has a (relatively) good translation.

For Plato, there is a lot of surviving work, which makes the process of choosing what to read rather difficult (I'm assuming you don't want to read only Plato for a rather long period of time, but if you do, go for it and read everything). I suppose the best place to start is probably Euthyphro, with Alcibiades and Meno afterwards. Make sure to read the Republic before moving on.
And when you get tired of Plato's Socrates, blue off some steam with Aristophanes' The Clouds.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:25:06 No.7285012 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7285032

>>7284994
and there were many national-socialist critics of national-socialism.
this syllogism leads nowhere.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:30:41 No.7285032 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7285232

>>7285012
My point is to make the statement that Nietszhe "despised Nationalism" is an erroneous one. Nietzsches ideas continues to exert strong influences on many forms of Nationalism (conventionally left and right) today

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 12:30:54 No.7285035 Report Delete

Quoted By:

"Muh start with the greeks"

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 13:41:23 No.7285232 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7285032
the fact that he is influential on nationalists is a nonsequitor. He explicitly criticized the idea of nationalism, as he did that of equality. How you can deny interpretations that erroneously omit his anti-equality positions and yet still deny his opposition to nationalism is some severe cognitive dissonance.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:29:32 No.7286421 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7286428

>>7284873
garbage copypasta like the collective posts of /lit/

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:31:25 No.7286428 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7286421
this thread was dead. it remained dead. and you have bumped it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:33:57 No.7286448 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Only adolescents start with Nietzsche

Tallis !!y+12CeFwYOo

Tallis !!y+12CeFwYOo Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:42:03 No.7286487 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7286560 >>7286579

>>7284650
Read Heraclitus, Plato, the Bible, you should be familiar with Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer.

Then, you'll need a good understanding of Greek Tragedy; Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (although he's goddamn boring), middle comedy, as well as some understanding of greek poetry; Homer must be read.

Montaigne and Machiaveli are extremely important.

You'll want to read La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld and have some understanding of XVIIth century France.

A good knowledge of the Renaissance would also help.

Then, read his works chronologically. There's no purpose in doing anything else; it will only produce misreadings.

Start with Birth of Tragedy, and read onwards. Try reading his less well-known works, such as On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, and Five Prefaces to Books Not Written.

Read the works at least twice, and try to comment them in the margins. Note down the most important aphorisms, and read them multiple times.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:56:18 No.7286560 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7286487
"untimely meditations" was written before BoT, except the last essay about wagner.

other important stuff FN read: lichtenberg, goethe/eckermann, voltaire, chamfort, stendhal, leopardi, emerson, mérimée, f.a. lange

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 26 Oct 2015 18:58:49 No.7286579 Report Delete

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