My takeaway from witnessing countless arguments about Nietzsche: Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. If he were, there wouldn't be so much arguing about how to interpret his works.
I have sat down with an unbelievably large number of people studying Nietzsche, as I was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class on his work. Time and time again, I would be pointing out the basic, fundamental misunderstandings; The world view of the typical American Christian cloud their ability to think clearly about the basic nature of Nietzsche's perspective. They literally can't think logically straight, and bend meaning word by word with personal emotional criticism interlaced with "fear for their soul". They are intellectually handicapped, their thoughts are so interlaced with variations of fear.
Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after many years of reflection.
In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong, you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive system that our consciousness gets trained with.
It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it "intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.
I was about 20 years old, and had lost several important friends while also briefly dropping out of college. Saw Nietzsche on a bookshelf while making an effort to continue my education independently as I saved money. I was young enough to earnestly jump into pursuing "the whole damn truth," and my mental health be damned. Cue years of unrelenting depressiveness, self-absorption, solipsism, fragile and tragic romantic relationships, etc.
I completely agree, and I think a lot of people who don't "get" Nietzsche are actually reacting to his ideas perfectly rationally with respect to their (not necessarily anti-intellectual) values in life. I for one would have been much more fortunate to have studied him in an academic setting, with a group of peers. I recall reading once that Nietzsche's ideas are valuable insofar as one finds a resistance to them.
Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful. I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still feel this suffering every time I choose to feel.
I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a chance.
It does get better.
One thing that helped was leaving the negative environment. Also, some of my angst sprang from the disempowerment of youth; having more power ($$, or in Spanish, effectivo) to control the world around you makes most life problems easier to deal with. Philosophically, I became something of a Stoic: this may be the worst of all possible worlds, but there's not really much value in being depressed about it. You are not in control of the world, but you are in control of your reaction to it, and as long as the world is absurd one may as well laugh. However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance. Try to make peace with your demons; they're just another aspect of you.
I doubt if your life and mine have many true parallels, but that was my path out of darkness. I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.
I can relate.
> However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance.
This is so important. Learning to love oneself is such a difficult task but so rewarding in the end.
Thanks for sharing your story, it was very inspiring.
> I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.
I'll try to remember to allow myself to find peace in hard times. I hope that you can feel the love and warmth in your life.
Your story gives hope. I feel blessed that you told us your philosophical journey. Have a great day!
If we believe that suffering is valuable for the excellence of humanity (not just for individual human beings), it seems to justify a political system that actively neglects the welfare of its citizens. To say nothing of the intellectual dishonesty of claims that suffering builds character when said from the vantage point of those who can choose not to suffer.
In the end, I actually think Nietzsche's political philosophy is wholly compatible with something resembling the modern welfare state: insofar as we can understand suffering to be valuable, it is only so when it is an active, human choice. Those forced into such a position may find themselves closer to "the whole damn truth", but only incidentally. And human experience is rooted in the choosing. The power of Martin Luther's oft-(mis)attributed "Here I stand, I can do no other" is not in its truth -- he obviously could have done otherwise, but he chose not to. Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human. That some (many? most?) may decide the 'easier' path of herd morality doesn't change this: we are, by virtue of our humanity, able to elect not to be human. That so many do is a tragedy, yes, but an understandable one; and the possibility and fact of this tragedy gives meaning to the choice itself.
I think most of them truly don't realize how self-delusional this phrase really is because their own experiences confirm their beliefs (they were able to work hard and achieve something). So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.
- - -
> Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human.
I like the small discussion about being human, although I can't agree with the position that we're "truly human" because of our ability to choose. This is a philosophical and subjective question, but basically I think that humans can have inherent value (based on ones belief system) even if we would find all the mechanisms in their decision making process and can predict what they do. I think that humans can be "truly human" even if we find out that free will is an illusion. I believe this, because "being human" is a definition made by humans and it wouldn't be very helpful to see ourselves as worthless just because we don't have real choices (using the assumption that free will is an illusion here - this doesn't mean that I necessarily think it is). It can be that people see humans as worthless, but they don't need the "ability to make choices" as an excuse for their misanthropy, beliefs or nihilism. There are many ways to achieve that.
Therefore it's likely that you'll change your definition of being human (and their inherent value) as soon as research shows us that free will and choices are mostly illusions because our thoughts are based on deterministic processes.
Some days I feel this charitable. Others not. Usually I suspect they're too intelligent for a lack of awareness to be a good enough excuse: there comes a point where ignorance becomes willful. Then again, this is precisely the problem we're talking about here: when our cognitive biases are so comfortable that our brains erect strong defenses to keep intruders out.
---
I probably should have avoided being categorical with my comments on choice. While the capacity for such a choice appears to be unique to the human being, I am not entirely convinced it is, but that has more to do with intuitions about nonhuman minds rather than any sort of certainty. However I am incredibly cautious about the kind of research into free will that you're talking about, because, even if I doubt the inevitably of the endpoint you suggest, it remains an attempt to transform the human being into a calculation, into a process, and that reduces our affairs into mere administration. It's one of the (productive?) contradictions in my own thought that I am constantly pushing up against: my politics are such that I see the value in that kind of bureaucratic management, but my philosophy is such that I see it as dehumanizing. There is no natural equilibrium to be had here, so our duty is one of rebalancing, of maintaining the scales between the unique capacity for human choice and ensuring the conditions of life that are necessary for our biology.
While I don't defend his expression skills I just want to emphasize how hard it is to anticipate what people 100 years in the future will think about your ideas. And the interpretations and emotions which those people use while reading the texts.
The hard part about Nietzsche is being able to let your mind absorb the thoughts without interfering with your own values and belief system. But I guess it's not a secret that it's hard for people to listen without simultaneously judging something.
> Nietzsche wasn't very good at expressing what he meant.
His earliest works are lucid. As his disease progressed his work approaches rambling nonsense.
Goethe was a polymath and statesman, much more involved in the world of human intercourse than Nietzsche. A regret of mine is having read too much Nietzsche and not enough Goethe back when I had an excellent command of German.
Definitely worth it to freshen up your memory. I hope you find some time to do it. Although I kind of disagree with the view that Goethes thoughts are "more important" than Nietzsches'. Both sometimes contain astonishing levels of obviousness (used here with negative connotation) and both have works which are hyped due to their names.
I recently (re)read something very interesting about 'obviousness' in philosophical writings. The idea was that when a claim is obvious, it is because you are not the target audience for that claim. For example, you live in a world where Sartre lived and wrote and had an impact; the ideas that he wanted to convey are no longer novel, at least partly because he conveyed them and they became part of the culture. (Though even today, there are likely people to whom the claims are not so obvious as they are to you.) The essay starts off talking about claims that are obviously wrong, not obviously right, but later applies the same reasoning to obviously right claims. I am going to abandon an attempt to summarize a 1000-word essay. Just go read it.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/read-history-of-philoso...
I used the word because this obviousness leads to boredom for some readers and I can see how both writers have obvious statements (from today's point of view) in them. That this is entirely subjective and based on the knowledge and self-awareness of the reader was never questioned, although I agree that I wasn't clear about it.
- And there is another dimension which was the reason for me to use the word with negative connotation: Sometimes Goethe just wrote about his wishes and desires towards a woman and some people try to see a lot more in some of his works (this is entirely subjective). It's like some of Kafkas works which can be interpreted quite clearly using his biography. But I don't want to start a discussion about the difference between interpretation and what the author tried to say. Many experts interpret works without considering the biography of the author and see the work of someone as something which stands on its own. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I slightly favor methods that analyze texts based on the biography of the writers. But I can also understand why this is not necessary for a good interpretation.