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Comment by alexophile | Hacker News Reader

If you come from a solid grounding in (specifically Greek) philosophy, the concepts and questions Pirsig raises are familiar, but for me the way he addressed them seemed much less self-indulgent.

Greek philosophers were public intellectuals and, for me at least, reading their texts was somewhat off-putting because of the level of... grandstanding for lack of a better word. ZAMM seems so much more honest. It's framed as a man attempting to pass on actionable wisdom to his son that will make him a better person.

The questions are the same questions people have been asking for thousands of years: what is good? (and derivitives thereof) but Pirsig frames his answers with a very appealing humility.

Having lived off of my writing for a spell, I struggled deeply with the problem of metaphysical quality and no amount of classical philosophy ever brought me the admittedly limited clarity I felt like a got out of ZAMM. YMMV, though.

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> grandstanding for lack of a better word.

This is really interesting to me. I've recently started reading more political philosophy, and a few weeks ago, dug into "On the Genealogy of Morals" by Nietzsche, and when I got to that whole anti-Judiasim bit (the one about hawks and lambs), all I could think was "this sounds like /b/" or "I bet he was just trolling for pageviews, given that he's writing this in 1887 Germany"...

I like that comparison, he is kind of the troll of philosophical history. The interesting thing about Nietzsche, though (esepecially in Geneaology) is that he takes on so many different voices to address different existing philosophies such that you can't really say (although many have) that he's anti-semitic (In fact, IIRC he seemed to dig the old testament Jews' style) or anti-christianity.

The difference between his adolescent jabs at Christianity, Judaism, the English, etc. and an ironic motivational poster is that he had a sort of overarching point to make. Among other things, he wanted to demonstrate that existing philosophy was essentially a really deep catalog of the personal biases of a bunch of well-spoken white dudes.

>adolescent

Pointing out the hypocrisy and self-consuming nature of the greater moral system underlying western religion is scarcely adolescent and even in his day that took a good deal of courage to speak out like that.

He was provocative, but not for its own sake.

Adolescents are often courageous, but also sophomoric. I think the latter is what the poster referred to.

I wasn't trying to reduce his criticisms to adolescent jabs - I have great respect for his analysis. But he occasionally gets a little carried away and takes an unnecessary pot shot. They're symptomatic of his sort of unique brand of narcissism and, were he any less of an intellectual force, probably would have been edited out of the final versions.

You're right, but I think he's allowed the indulgence considering the kind of "peers" he had to deal with usually.

Besides that, the man just isn't given enough credit these days.

I don't really agree. He was provocative for its own sake and there's nothing wrong with being provocative for its own sake.

you can't really say (although many have) that he's anti-christianity

He wrote a book called The Anti-Christian. What else can you say?

He wrote criticisms of just about every major western belief system - if you take into account his larger body of work, saying he was anti-this or anti-that just seems disingenuous. Much of what he wrote was criticism for its own sake because that's what leads to progress.

He wanted his critiques to hit hard; he wanted to be subversive. My reading, at least, is that he wanted to teach people to be critical of highly-regarded cultural norms and morals and his writings are essentially case-studies in exactly that.

He thought Judaism and Christianity kept the ubermensch down with their weakness (ironically). That's pretty clear.

He indeed had wide-ranging perspective but I think the one thing you can say is he was anti-Christian.

He even said a few good things about Christ but anything positive was along the lines that the Christians got him wrong.

I don't think you're reading the book very well, to be honest. I'm a bit of a Nietzsche fan and I think you'll find that he praises the Jews in various parts of the book.

He despised anti-semitism as well as the formative groups that led to national socialism.

To focus on one example he made like that is very bad form.

His commentary on the brutality of societies relatively to how secure they feel was particularly brilliant. Applicable today especially when you contrast European democratic socialism and their criminal justice systems versus the US and other parts of the world.

And yet all you can extract out of his writing is that you believe he was some kind of provocateur?

This makes me genuinely sad. I'd expect a deeper and more thorough reading of my favorite author and philosopher out of HN.

I hope you'll review Genealogy or consider reading Beyond Good & Evil.

First of all, you'll notice that I said "when I got to the bit about," not "This is my final view of Nietzsche."

Secondly, I didn't say that it was "all [I] can extract out of his writing," either.

People tend to extract and reference what stuck with them most about a particular work unless they're a scholar in the material.

The accusations of anti-semitism against Nietzsche are rampant and my attempts to play whack-a-mole with them really have nothing to do with your inability to couch your statements.

If you don't want that kind of response in future, clarify yourself. I have enough work to do that I shouldn't have to keep adding a N.B. to half-baked readings of core western philosophy.

"when I got to the bit..." actually sounds like pretty definite judgment.

Perhaps "my impression was..." would "sound" preliminary. This doesn't.

Interesting. My intention was "as I was reading it, when I came across that part, this is what I was thinking."

Edit: your quote: "...and when I got to that whole anti-Judiasim bit..."

If you think Nietzsche is anti-Jewish, you're not understanding him.

He thought of the Jews as having a different position to his but also admired them far more than Christians.

He was also a hater of antisemites.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2189990

MMV, indeed.

I found ZAMM irritatingly condescending.

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