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Friedrich Nietzsche
Posted on: June 16, 2009 - 11:33pm
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Last night I had a disagreement about Friedrich Nietzsche,my friend said that he was a nihilist and I said that Nietzsche was a existentialist,and that only a small part of his writing can be considered nihilist,but not his over-all philosophy. Signature ? How ?
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Hmm, I could see it either way but I think you're right. If memory serves me right, he wrote a lot about nihilism but was actually an existentialist.
And the substance that you wanted to discuss was???
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Well,I guess that you could say that it was a "Philosophical" discussion about the impact nihilism had on German society.
Signature ? How ?
"On Truth and Lying In a Non-Moral Sense" reads very nihilistically too me.
I mean, he says that words and concepts hold no meaning, the human intellect is fake, etc...I don't know, he always seemed like a nihilist to me.
"Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven. Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads. And recks not his own rede."
Well, I have not read much of his works but I have read some of them. Honestly, I think that this is not a question that even has a definite answer. One possible answer is that he was a bit of both (yes that would be a total cop-out but even so...).
This would suggest to me where the line should be drawn and again, I must cop-out and say that the line moved around during his life. From what I have read, I tend to the idea that he was more existentialist later in life but that might reflect on my mainly nihilistic view of the world.
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Nietzsche was actually very anti-nihilist in the sense of thinking "nothing is anything and everything is nothing so let's head for self-destruction" (I guess they had emo kids back then, too). Thus Spake Zarathustra put forth ideas for a new morality, as he was nihilistic in the sense of "there is no deeper meaning to life" but he followed up with "so let's make one." Parts 1 and 2 are pretty good, IIRC.
-Triften
Nietzsche's writings have no real meaning except what the reader projects as meaning.
So wouldn't Nietzsche say you are both right and both wrong?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Nietzsche as a nihilist is a very common misconception--some of his best work was actually a reaction against the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is essentially the anti-nihilist manifesto.