My first foray into Nietzsche, and I'm not sure how to interpret it.

The two works in this volume read very differently from one another. This is no surprise, as BoT is Nietzsche's first work, published in 1872. It reads as a strong foray by a relatively young scholar. His opposition of the Dionysian and Apollonian outlooks, both confronted by the Euripidean/Socratic turn in Greek culture, provides a workable interpretive parallel to the Enlightenment turn of which he lived in the latter days.

Honestly, I found this an enjoyable read, quick, easy, understandable.

GoM was published 15 years later. Wikipedia hails it as Nietzsche's finest, most sustained work. Maybe I should blame a bad translation, but I found GoM alienating and gratuitous. (Maybe that means I read it right ... probably it means I'm not the kind of reader Nietzsche's looking for.)

I'll muddle on through the other scattered Nietzsche I've accumulated. The man was brilliant--that can't be denied. But it's the brilliance of a dark, sickly age. That's my impression.

Both excellent works which bookend Nietzsche's writing.

Birth of Tragedy shows the beginnings of his thoughts philosophy, albeit disguised in his concept of 'Apollo vs Dionysus' when talking about Greek tragedy. Apollo represents reason, structured thinking, writing, law making - everything that separates man from nature. Dionysus represents passion, music, fear, the unconscious, animal instincts - everything that grounds man in nature, making us no better than beasts. According to Nietzsche the two need to intertwine and make great art, and that this only happens rarely in a contemporary setting, mainly through music.

Genealogy of morals is the end of his thoughts, and he attempts to lay out a more rigorous grounding. The first essay 'good and evil' develops the nobleman/slave binary that is a core tenant of his. 'Guilt, bad conscience' lays out his reasoning for the origins of these feelings, locating it in the debtors guilt in the creditor/debtor relationship, and 'what do ascetic ideals mean?' takes aim at the role of philosophers and Christianity, unpacking why ascetic priests are common across different cultures. All essays are packed full of ideas and definitely worth a re-read.

Nietzsche constantly tries to tear down existing thought structures and simultaneously build new ones, and it can easily be argued that he is much more effective at the tearing down than the rebuilding. His criticisms of philosophy, religion and reason are blistering, and it's worth reading just for that. However the philosophy he builds is full of contradiction and conjecture. He says that philosophers are really writing autobiographies, yet in no philosopher is this more apparent than him. When he says stuff like:

'The real danger lies in our loathing of man and our pity of him. If these two emotions should one day join forces, they will beget the most sinister thing ever witnessed on earth: man's ultimate will, his will to nothingness, nihilism.'

It's obvious he's speaking about his own inclinations, you could easily argue the opposite of what he's saying. His philosophy is almost like a house of cards, where you have to buy into a lot of his very tenuous assumptions in order to follow his thought process, but if one of those assumptions isn't true the whole thing will fall down.

However the more you read the more it becomes clear that this is his intention all along. His scathing criticisms are about how objectivity is a sham, how a 'disinterested perspective' is a myth - but given this, where does that leave him? What's his role as a philosopher? If he is to follow his criticism, he has no right to propose an objective truth:

'It is of the greatest importance to know how to put the most diverse perspectives and psychological interpretations at the service of intellection. Let us, from now on, be on our guard against the hallowed philosphers' myth of a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless knower"; let us beware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as "pure reason," "absolute knowledge," "absolute intelligence". All these concepts presuppose an eye such as no living being can imagine, an eye required to have no direction, to abrogate its active and interpretative powers - precisely those powers that alone make seeing, seeing something. All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing. The more emotions we allow to speak in a given matter, the more different eyes we can put on in order to view a given spectacle, the more complete will be our conception of it, the greater our "objectivity"'

His role is therefore to offer 'different eyes' to 'view a given spectacle'. He's allowing his emotions to speak on the matters of good and evil, morals etc. to give us a more complete conception of it, not to claim that his perspective is the absolute truth. So he doesn't need to care too much about contradicting himself or not being logical because he's not aiming for the heights of objectivity, just to put forward his view. Once you start reading him in this way it becomes much more enjoyable, as you realise that you're there for the ride, not the destination. His ideas really are different and original, and he definitely does offer fresh perspectives on a range of things. But I enjoy him most by not getting too attached to his ideas, to let them wash over me and to keep the ones that I like and to forget the ones I don't.

think for our selves will be the end

Birth of Tragedy starts really slow and some parts are pretty boring, but it gets better. Genealogy of Morals is pretty good, but I think some of the ideas are better expressed by Foucault

I reviewed a few pages and i definitely gotta read this one. Can i find the time? yea.

I would like to thank Dr. Rupp for ruining my 2007 Christmas break by luring me toward Friedrich Nietzsche. Of course I say this jokingly and with much admiration for Dr. Rupp. I spent my 2007 break pouring myself over this book only to discover it is truly a book that one should digest in small bites. To ingest too quickly is to miss the flavor and on some days almost choke. Individual sentences are touching themselves and overall the mind of Nietzsche is mysterious.

Brilliant and challenging. I especially appreciated Nietzsche’s analysis of the Apollonian and Dionysian concepts. His influence on subsequent thinkers is clear and on full display in these texts. I feel Nietzsche levels an excellent critique of his own understanding of Buddhism - however this understanding misses the mark of the ultimate metaphysics and doctrine of, at least, most schools of Mahayana Buddhism. Nietzsche also is quick to viciously criticize Stocisim throughout and then criticize the helpless attitudes of the so called “sick” (not particularly meant in a physical sense here) who could most benefit from studying Stoic thinkers and become something closer to ‘well.’ Overall an excellent analysis and an attack on those who would deny the Will to Power, and the joy to be had in life, and in exercising one’s true nature - an assertion of Man’s inherent rights to a full life. The implications are many, and some may find them objectionable. I found a lot of value here, but I feel Nietzsche’s over reliance on the affirmation of the Ego, and his reliance on many assumptions that are not proven to my satisfaction in his arguments, do not stand up well to lived experience. Ultimately this exaltation of the Ego falls apart for anyone who has experienced an Ego death (even temporarily, for to never recover the Ego would be to go mad). It would be interesting to know what Nietzsche’s thoughts may have been on the matter after a strong dose of Dionysian DMT or psilocybin. Many of the weakest arguments are those against altruism, which are dealt with from an opposing angle by thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and more contemporaneously Richard Dawkins in ‘The Selfish Gene.’ Overall a great and provocative read that serves much food for thought.

Eccentric? Yes. Overrated? No way. I think the key to read Nietzsche is not to take him too seriously. He provides excellent conversation starters. My copy is full of underlines, highlights, margin notes, and exclamations.

I read the Kauffman editions. Fun to read in tandem: early Nietzsche, and middle-late Nietzsche.

To sum up in a phew catchfrazes: BoT - apollo and dionysus; GoM - slave morality and will to power.

Too bad Nietzche didn't have a chance to chill out more.

Before he was a controversial philosopher, he was a philologist. The Birth of Tragedy shatters the preconceptions of our modern views on the development of ethics. Many accuse him of anti-semitism (debatable) and mysoginistic idiocies (true), and much of his work has been reduced to aphorisms, but like other artists whose personal lives are a complete shambles, he proved capable of producing great ideas within the scope of his work.

Letto per il corso sul postmodernismo.
- memoria come origine della responsabilitá;
- uomo indipendente che puó fare promesse;
- in che senso la sofferenza puó essere una compensazione dei debiti?
- la pena ammansisce l'uomo, non lo rende migliore;
- cattiva coscienza deriva dalla metamorfosi dell'uomo in balia della societá.