[metalsonata]

You can't have your cake and eat it too though Mutabor--Mussolini accepted Nietzsche, but rejected Marx. And yes, Marx was pro-violent revolution. So were the French and American revolutionaries. Not being a fan of bloody revolution myself, even I have to accept that it's been necessary for the betterment of a nation before, though it's just as frequently, if not far more so, also been nothing more than a waste of human life. I also think you're exaggerating the split between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer--Nietzsche demonstrated nothing but respect for him, and while they disagreed on several key issues (nihilism vs. pessimism), Nietzsche also wrote in support of a lot of Schopenhauer's ideas, emending as he went along. I also don't understand where you're getting this Christian vs. pagan stuff. Schopenhauer believed that if there was a god it was an evil god, and Nietzsche put forth the ubermensch as being a mortal replacement for supernatural morality. I don't think there's much more to it than that, at least not at the surface level. Amusingly enough, I recall you distastefully writing of Buddhist philosophy elsewhere on this site--how you square this distaste with what I'm interpreting as your like for Schopenhauer's essentially materialist spin on it is beyond me, unless it's simply the spiritual dimension of it that you find distasteful, in which case it seems like you prefer to lose the baby with the bathwater. (Which would make sense, given what you've had to say about Marx and Nietzsche above.) It seems to me that what you've done is group together a band of men whom you have an immense dislike or hate for, then attempt to tenuously and emotionally tie them together without considering the massive splits between them in terms of personality, philosophy, politics, ability, and intent. While you're correct in many respects, I think your big picture is suffering from a lack of nuance or mischaracterization, or both.

 

[ns6490]

   
It is a precise characterization, not ham-fisted.
 
The essence of Nietzsche's philosophy was his antagonism with Schopenhauer. He countered all central key points of Schopenhauer's philosophy. For example, for Schopenhauer's ethics the ideal was a figure of Jesus Christ with his self-resignation ( resignation of Will to live) and humility, at the same time he dismissed paganism as barbarism. Nietzsche in the opposition created an ideal of over-man ( a barbaric pagan person) who is beyond any ethics, who spits on moronic moral laws, who values the force and Will to power. Nietzsche used to be a disciple of Schopenhauer and then suddenly he turned against his Master and started to demolish all principles of his teacher as if in revenge. Nietzsche started to write against Schopenhauer after his conflict with his another master Wagner who was a Schopenhauerian. 
 
While in anger and in a state of revenge against his two masters ( Schopenhauer and Wagner) and also being in a state of psychological collapse slowly getting mad Nietzsche wrote stuff which without evil intentions from his part turned out to be very fitting into German and Italian paradigms of neo-barbarism.

 
Yes, a hamfisted reading. Your follow-up post only lends further muscle to my initial assessment. Let's first agree that Nietzsche was prone to bursts of excess in much of his writing, including some rather subpar poetry. Given the calibre of his intellect, and the sobriety of his earlier works, including The Birth of Tragedy, it is foolish to interpret this man's works literally. He intentionally steered his prose away from the early, drily argued academic writing to something he saw as much more than that, a writing that would defy categorization. The Nietzsche we know from this point on demands of his readers subtlety, an ironic sensibility, as well as a sense of humor. From this vantage, an idea such as the eternal recurrence becomes not a Brahmanic rehash but a powerful call to examine the sources of stagnation in the reader's own life. 
 
What most interested Nietzsche, including the idea of the uber-mensch, was an honest evaluation of the self and the world, and thereafter building the self back from the ground up, and therein imbue life with a sense of unrestricted nobility. And yes, he does sometimes get rather carried away writing about the subject. Like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche saw how individuals were from birth dragged into a life of unreflective mediocrity hampered by sloppy mores, how self-actualization was limited by forces that remained invisible until placed under unstinting scrutiny. Nietzsche most loudly railed against hypocrisy that made these cultural and religious baggages possible. His chief inquiry was how to construct an authentic life, not incite others to unthinkingly take part in fascist states or to blindly participate in racist, genocidal extermination. Nietzsche would have found abhorrent what he saw happening in such regimes. If nothing else comes from this exchange, I want it known that Nietzsche held anti-semites in utter contempt. Your casual statement, "If Nietzsche was alive he would have been very proud of [Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin]" is utterly misinformed, intellectually irresponsible, and textually unsupportable.

 

[mutabor]

   And yes, Marx was pro-violent revolution. So were the French and American revolutionaries. Not being a fan of bloody revolution myself, even I have to accept that it's been necessary for the betterment of a nation before, though it's just as frequently, if not far more so, also been nothing more than a waste of human life.

 
Marx demanded extermination of the whole class of people which is millions. Second, since this extermination is not possible at once ( the class of merchants, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers etc. would continuously emerge) then the terror had to be constant. That is why Lenin was contemplating about possibility of genetic modification of people so that nobody would stand out from collective.
 

  I also think you're exaggerating the split between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer--Nietzsche demonstrated nothing but respect for him, and while they disagreed on several key issues (nihilism vs. pessimism), Nietzsche also wrote in support of a lot of Schopenhauer's ideas, emending as he went along. I also don't understand where you're getting this Christian vs. pagan stuff. Schopenhauer believed that if there was a god it was an evil god, and Nietzsche put forth the ubermensch as being a mortal replacement for supernatural morality. I don't think there's much more to it than that, at least not at the surface level. 

 
Clearly you didn't read Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. If you've read this book then you would have seen that Nietzsche aggressively attacks and counters every point of Schopenhauer's philosophy and Schopenhauer himself. Christian as superior vs pagan as inferior is one of the most favorite comparisons of Schopenhauer.
 
The notion of Ubermensch is opposite to ascetic self-renunciation ideals which praised Schopenhauer.
 
 

  Amusingly enough, I recall you distastefully writing of Buddhist philosophy elsewhere on this site--how you square this distaste with what I'm interpreting as your like for Schopenhauer's essentially materialist spin on it is beyond me, unless it's simply the spiritual dimension of it that you find distasteful, in which case it seems like you prefer to lose the baby with the bathwater. 

 
No, I'm a fan of Buddhism. Schopenhauer wasn't a materialist, on the opposite he was against materialists. He was a subjective idealist.

 

[mutabor]

   
If nothing else comes from this exchange, I want it known that Nietzsche held anti-semites in utter contempt. Your casual statement, "If Nietzsche was alive he would have been very proud of [Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin]" is utterly misinformed, intellectually irresponsible, and textually unsupportable.

 
There are passages where Nietzsche can't hold his contempt towards Jews ( in 'Anti-Christ' there is one passage as I clearly remember).
 
Schopenhauer heavily criticized Jews as he saw them optimistic and anti-Christian. Nietzsche because he raised against his former master started to blame anti-semites not because he liked Jews ( no he didn't) but because 1) to counter Schopenhauer 2) Jews were against Christ and Christ was Nietzsche's enemy. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.
 
Did you read The World as Will and Representation? If not then we have nothing to talk about. Because everything about Nietzsche's ideas comes from this one book.
 
Schopenhauer liked to compare Christian worldview as superior and pagan worldview as inferior. Basically what Nietzsche did - he inverted this approach: he started to claim that pagan view was superior and Christian was inferior.

 

[ns6490]

 
Did you read The World as Will and Representation? If not then we have nothing to talk about. Because everything about Nietzsche's ideas comes from this one book.

 
Did you read the Pali suttas in its entirety? If not then we have nothing to talk about. Because everything about Schopenhauer's ideas come from this one source.

 

[mutabor]

   
Did you read the Pali suttas in its entirety? If not then we have nothing to talk about. Because everything about Schopenhauer's ideas come from this one source.

 
No it doesn't come from this one source.

 

[ns6490]

   
No it doesn't come from this one source.

 
One empty bluster for another  

 

[PalJoey]

Any time you guys want to spin this discussion off into a dedicated thread, don't let the rest of us stop you.

 

[mutabor]

   
If nothing else comes from this exchange, I want it known that Nietzsche held anti-semites in utter contempt. 

 
Ok, I found the excerpt from the Anti-Christ:
 

 

44.

—The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was already persistent within the primitive community. That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely naïve corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal “holiness” unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art—all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature.  The thing responsible is race. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again—he is threefold the Jew.... The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly practice, the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and utilities—this is not only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the force of nature. 

...The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish: once a chasm  began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian is simply a Jew of the “reformed” confession.—

 
He openly talks about how Jews are natural liars. The whole Jewish race are masters of lies. 

 

[ns6490]

   
Ok, I found the excerpt from the Anti-Christ:
 
 
He openly talks about how Jews are natural liars. The whole Jewish race are masters of lies. 

 
Earlier I mentioned Nietzsche's propensity for hyperbole, and the need to read his writings with an approach subtler than the sledge hammer deployed by some. Do you think the excerpt you quoted at all possible a commentary on the anti-semitism that widely prevailed in Europe in latter 19th century? Do you think there might be a subversive element here consistent with his aims of disclosing the unsavory elements of Christianity? Do you think there might be a parodic tone at work here? Something along the lines of, "Well, if Jews are bad as people seem to think they are, Christians are three times as bad."
 
Given that Nietzsche dissolved his relationships with his publisher and Wagner for their anti-semitism, that he upbraided his sister for her anti-semitism and marriage to an anti-semite, given that he had close Jewish friends, and given the pervasiveness of anti-semitism that circulated in his time, which do you think is more likely: that Nietzsche wrote that passage with a straight face, or that he wrote it with a satiric hand? Should we disregard such biographical details in favor of an autistic hermeneutics?
 
Finally (really; I'm not going to post any more on this topic), let me leave you with another quote by Nietzsche on Jews: "It is fantastic to what extent this race now has the "intellectuality" of Europe in its hands."

 

[mutabor]

   
Given that Nietzsche dissolved his relationships with his publisher and Wagner for their anti-semitism

 
Amazon: Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation
 
From a review:
 

 Kohler also presents a Nietzsche who wrote antisemitic passages in his works during the alliance with Wagner, but who stopped after the split. This is simply and flagrantly untrue. The post-Wagner Nietzsche attacked antisemites, but he also continued to attack and insult Jews. There are many, many antisemitic passages in Nietzsche's work - Nietzsche fans, like Kohler and the reviewer from Kirkus Review quoted above, like to overlook Nietzsche's antisemitism, but antisemites find Nietzsche a useful supporter and resource. You'll find plenty of antisemitic quotes from Nietzsche on proud display on the Web's neo-Nazi sites, and the vast majority of these antisemitic passages were written AFTER the split with Wagner.

And there's Nietzsche's attack on Wagner in which he claimed that Wagner had a Jewish father. There is irony, of course, in claiming an antisemite has Jewish parentage. But it reflects what Wagner himself seems to have believed, that the man who was almost certainly his real father, Ludwig Geyer, was Jewish. For this attack Nietzsche must have drawn on his private conversations with Wagner, in which Wagner poured out personal fears to a man he believed was his friend. The nastiness in Nietzsche's attack is in the betrayal of confidence, not in the claiming that Wagner had a Jewish parent.

 

[mutabor]

The main reason why Nietzsche was anti-semitic and anti anti-semitic at the same time is because he was at first a Schopenhauerian who was an anti-semite ( initially sharing anti-semitism with his teacher). Then he became a fierce deadly enemy to Schopenhauer and started to demolish the whole philosophy of Schopenhauer including anti-semitism. 
 
One of the favorite ideas of Schopenhauer was that the New Testament was against the World and demanded self-resignation, while the Jewish Old Testament was optimistic and praised the World and its creation. Schopenhauer considered Jews as pagans in nature and considered the Old Testament as Jewish mythology alike to Greek mythology. Ancient Greeks he also considered as people with pagan optimistic hence inferior worldview.
 
Nietzsche when he became an enemy to Schopenhauer called his former teacher a decadent and every religion with its praise of humility a decadent ideology of weak people. Morality of people who defended humility, compassion, love, self-sacrifice he called slave morality and such people themselves he called decadents. In opposition to decadent people he created an image of an over-man who was dangerous, pitiless, the fittest to survive. He also created a notion of 'Will to Power' which was opposite to self-sacrifice and humility.
 
An over-man with Will to power VS a decadent with humility and compassion
 
Nietzsche considered Germany as a country with decadent culture probably because of a very strong protestant morality among common people, also there was an element of personal bias - maybe he saw Germans as ugly people? Hence he considered attacks of decadent Christian Germans on anti-Christian Jews ( who were also very good survivors, the fittest nation) disgusting.
 
Schopenhauer:
 

 

The myth of the Fall of man is the only thing in the Old Testament to which I can concede a metaphysical, although only allegorical, truth: indeed it is this alone that reconciles me to the Old Testament. Thus our existence resembles noting but the consequence of a false step and a guilty desire. New Testament Christianity, the ethical spirit of which is that of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which is therefore very foreign to the otherwise optimistic spirit of the O.T., has also, extremely wisely, started from that very myth …

The innermost kernel and spirit of Christianity is identical with that of Brahmanism and Buddhism.

The spirit and ethical tendency, however, are the essentials of a religion, not the myths in which it clothes them.

Therefore, I do not abandon the belief that the teachings of Christianity are to be derived in some way from those first and original religions [i.e., Brahmanism and Buddhism]. … But in virtue of this origin, Christianity belongs to the ancient, true, and sublime faith of mankind. This faith stands in contrast to the false, shallow, and pernicious optimism that manifests itself in Greek paganism, Judaism, and Islam.

 
What Nietzsche basically says in all his books ( he puts upside down Schopenhauer's ethics): Paganism belongs to the ancient, true and sublime faith of mankind. This life affirming faith stands in contrast to the false, shallow and pernicious pessimism and life denial that manifests itself in decadent Christianity, Buddhism, Brahmanism etc.

 

[metalsonata]

To get back on topic:
 
Still working my way through the Qur'an--hit the halfway point last night. Enjoying it quite a bit, insofar as such a thing can be enjoyed. But I've also been reading:
 
Saga (2012-), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
 
I enjoyed Vaughan's Y: The Last Man quite a bit--while it's hardly the comic book masterpiece that a lot of people made it out to be, it's one of the most classically entertaining comic series I've ever read, so naturally I was eager to see what he'd do next. That said, I'm terrible at keeping up with comic publications, so I was a bit surprised when, at Barnes and Noble last weekend, I saw Vaughan's name plastered on this pastel blue volume that featured a close-up of an alien baby breastfeeding on the cover. I had to buy it, obviously. Not all the way through it yet (will probably finish within the next couple days), but it's pretty great so far. Fast-paced and absolutely bonkers. The story seems pretty thin and more than a little tacked-on, but the obvious focus is on the characters and Vaughan's fever-crazed take on Star Wars-esque space opera, albeit with considerably more sex, violence, and surrealism. It's pretty much everything that conservative mothers fear from comics, and everything that those of us who refuse to grow up love about them. (Not to imply that comics are only suitable for the terminally adolescent--I consider many series to be the literary equals or superiors of their more academically-prized prose and poesy brethren.)

 

[PalJoey]

Just finished a quick re-read of 'Great lost Albums' by Mark Billingham, David Quantick, Martyn Waites, Stav Sherez. A collection of parodies about ill-starred recording projects, including Kraftwerk's Christmas album, Jim & Van Morrison not getting on in the studio, the album where Bernie Taupin wrote the tunes and Elton John wrote the lyrics, plus Coldplay's IKEA Sessions.
 
Funny, silly, and not to be read if you are in any way precious about your favourite artists.
 
 
Now getting into Geoffrey Moorhouse's excellent collection 'At the George'.

 

[OddE]

Had a chuckle last night as I realized why the book I was currently reading - Elizabeth Kostova's "The Historian" - seemed very similar to a book I'd read years ago.
 
I'd read it before.
 
(In my defense, I had first read it in what turned out to be an abridged edition which I picked up somewhere in West Africa in 2007-2008 or so - but still, I couldn't help but laughing...)
 
Currently reading Ian Stewart's "Taming the Infinite", a popular history of mathematics.