Some Thoughts on Nietzsche

I’ve read a few of his books now. Geneology of Morals. The Gay Science. Human all too Human. Parts of Zarathustra and most recently, Beyond Good and Evil.

I feel confident enough about his work to say a few things about it.

First, personally, I’m kinda done with N. His writing is dry to me now. As with all philosophy, I read it from the perspective of an unrepentant Marxist (and no, you probably don't understand what that means). I read it pragmatically, to draw out ideas that may be helpful and politically sound for my life. I don’t read it as a scholar to “know” what XYZ said, able to quote at will to look fashionable at a dinner party.

Of all the material I’ve read by Nietzsche, I think Genealogy of Morals (GoM) is the most succinct at presenting his "idea", the most interesting to read from the perspective of writing quality, and the most pragmatic to draw lessons from. Though Human, All too Human is good as well. GoM offers the most politically and for daily life.

The basic idea of GoM is an analysis of power and morals. Power and morality are separate. With the rise of Christianity came a rise in slave morality (as opposed to aristocratic morality). Aside from the weakness of social class analysis, what N’s system offers is a the concept of resentment, slave morality and warrior morality.

My main takeaway is the necessity (should you want to break from bourgeois power structures) to exist by exerting your will on the world, and not sulk in resentment. Resentment is the default position of the weak, who have no power themselves. They hate those who have power. The weak want to eradicate any form of power that is above the herd. Powerless, they use poison to eradicate and domesticate the strong. Religion is one poison Nietzsche is notorious for attacking.

Nietzsche actually maintains the necessity of spirituality. He is not a nihilist. He attacks the nihilism of modern society, domesticated by slave morality. As a Marxist, a lot of this jives with the notions of the proletarian. The proletariat, domesticated and enraptured in body by the structures of capitalism, and in mind by the stimuli of capitalism, must escape by realizing itself, exerting its rule upon a foreign world, the world as constructed by capital, as personified by the bourgeoisie.

Today’s ruling class exert their will upon us with the consideration of a sociopath. Instead of sulking and resenting them for this, we need to PUSH BACK. We need to exert our own force, the force of a sane humanity (or proletarian or whatever way you want to phrase it). The point isn’t to offer some kind of resentful moral indignation, but an actual political vision. An exertion of will and power.

In daily life, resentment offers no path forward. In personal relationships, resentment is the death of love. What’s so much healthier in a relationship is when each person can stand on their own, when they can maintain their own spirit. Again, this fits with N’s idea of an individual creating themselves, of moving away from a nihilism and towards the creation of a spirit not based on good/evil (which are limited by their origins in slave morality).

Of course Nietzsche has much more to say, and so much of it is trash (his concepts of race and gender and the role of women are severely limited to the 19th century and remain as juvenile as you should expect).

For example, the following are thoroughly reactionary:

127
Science offends the modesty of all real women. With it they feel as if someone wanted to peek under their skin - or even worse, under their dress and finery.

123
Even concubinage has been corrupted - by marriage.

114
The immense expectation concerning sexual love and the shame in this expectation ruin all perspective in women from the beginning.

Like, fuck off edge lord. There's no expectation of sexual love by men?

What it comes down to is classic bourgeois patriarchy, despite Nietzsche's attempts at breaking from those morals. Beyond Good and Evil? He couldn't even get beyond the delusional trope of women/body vs men/mind binary. And I'm so fucking BORED with that.

Some aphorisms I liked, from Beyond Good and Evil,

108
There are no moral phenomenon at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. . . .

92
For the sake of his good reputation who has not once - sacrificed himself?

And oh, I've done that more than once to devastating results.

76
Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

This is what I tell myself when the world crashed down on me. It's the time, not me, that's crazy.

77
With their principles people want to tyrannize their habits or justify them or honour them or abuse them or hide them: - two men with the same principles probably want them for fundamentally different things.

Fighting myself to write everyday is exactly this.

So yeah. I read Nietzsche more for his psychology then the rampant misogyny or rightist-individualism. More than anything, he was not a fascist. He would have considered the Nazis nothing more than resentment in a horde, obsessed with a false mythos of an illusionary past. In fact, that bullshit was rampant in his own lifetime and exactly what he critiqued throughout his work. To end in his own words,

“Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, that is the end of German philosophy,” he wrote. “I will have all antisemites shot.”