The start of a sporadic series.

In contrast to my take-down of Rousseau, Nietzsche is an entirely different beast; you could almost call him the diametric opposite both in intellect and temperament (and life lived as well).  I might as well throw in legacy to that mix, as Rousseau would be the wellspring for nearly every revolutionary that came after him; Nietzsche has been associated with a wide variety of viewpoints – due to extensive cherry-picking (and this, worst of all in the material – notes and unfinished drafts – that he meant to never be published) by the thinkers in those disparate views.  We of course immediately think of the unfortunate association with the Nazis due in large part to Nietzsche’s sister (who promoted the photo op of Hitler with the bust of Nietzsche).  Despite the fact that he lived the last couple of years under her care (as he was an invalid), they had had a rancorous relationship and she represented, with her antisemitism and German nationalism, two things that Nietzsche detested (to which he gave ample expression in his writings).  Trotskyites also found some use for some parts of Nietzsche’s writings, and others tend to misinterpret Nietzsche as a nihilist when nihilism (which he regarded as an inevitable end from Schopenhauer) was his worst fear.  It was this last that he argued was the hallmark of a dying culture and the impetus for his demand for the transvaluation of all values (which would re-anchor western thought and culture on new ground).  I find you can read him as an advocate for individual man (e.g. Zarathustra) even though you can’t ignore that he often speaks of the collective (though not the masses), so that interpretation has to be taken with at least a grain of salt.  It may even be really the most contentious point about his philosophy, for strong arguments do support the latter.

Now, the next thing to be said is reading Nietzsche is hard work for he has a style unlike anyone.  He has a penchant for aphorisms, often drenched in irony or outright oxymoron, that can end up reading as a series of Zen koans.  It dawned on me as I was reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra that I was really reading poetry not prose, let alone persuasive rhetoric, and what other western philosopher wrote like that?  I will dare say, you need to be mature to get at his meaning – though that comes at the price of having to unlearn things you believe you have learned.  I suspect that when someone reads him in their formative years, they will be too inclined to grasp at answers (that should elude them, or frankly are simply where Nietzsche misfires) and end up radicalizing as those of that age are wont to do with Marx or Rand, or any other offering a beautiful theory.  In contrast to Rousseau, Nietzsche does understand man as a social being from the beginning.  Good ol’ Friedrich was also extremely well read, from the classics up through his contemporaries.  His writing is sprinkled with commentary on other thinkers – usually with studied impudence (and not infrequently, scorching disdain).

Nietzsche was born a Prussian (in a town in what is now Saxony-Anholt) but would renounce his citizenship around the age of 24, and be stateless for the remainder of his life.  This was at the same time he was appointed a professor of classical philology at the University of Basel.  Curiously, this all immediately preceded German unification under Bismarck.  Nietzsche had previously volunteered for the Royal Prussian Army, in an artillery division, but that service was cut short by an injury on horseback.  Despite renouncing his citizenship, he served (again cut short by health issues) in the Franco-Prussian war.  Nietzsche would remain deeply skeptical (if not outright cynical) about both the German state and culture.  Deterioration of his health led him to resign his professorship (and he was pensioned) and in the ensuing 10 years he would have a productive crescendo that ended with his total mental and physical collapse.  He would also fall into a deep love (infatuation perhaps) with a woman that went unrequited, and you can’t help but wonder to what degree that colored his writings, particularly in the latter part of his productive years.  He tends to write unfavorably toward women, drifting toward full on misogyny.  There will be things you have to disagree with him about, and this is certainly one.  Some of his late work was only published posthumously (Ecce Homo written at the height of his production – 1888 did not see the light of day until 1908, eight years after his death), and of course the incomplete materials he wanted burned upon his death.  It is safe to say, despite his generally positive outlook (a rather overlooked aspect of his writing) he did not live a happy (or obviously, long) life.  He even speaks at times to the dangers of what he is thinking and proposing, and in that regard he shares with Rousseau the perspective (and existence) of the outcast.

What I intend to follow this with will be treatments on his main ideas, and perhaps some forays into his errors, particularly where those have misled people.  Some of these will be difficult or unpleasant, most obviously with his problems with Judeo-Christian morality as it underpins the modern West (both in his time and ours).  I’m certainly open to inputs or questions that you might like explored, so in that sense this will be a collaborative effort.  I will refrain from any discussion from his notes and unfinished manuscripts, which of course means nothing from The Will to Power.  Even in what is purely his writing, there are elements that I would consider errors.  Those are prolific and serious enough without going after things he may not have actually written or what he considered as incomplete.  Sometimes there are conflicts between what he says in one work and what he says in another, and teasing out what is the better reading is tough enough.  So far as I can tell, he doesn’t directly discard things he later contradicts and he very often introduces nuance or expansion on what might have been a passing thought from years before.  If I am correct about this, you can see how that adds to the likelihood of misinterpretation, particularly based on selective reading.