Nietzsche's unique style is commendable, but I think he's only the most high-aura philosopher due to recency bias. In Ancient Greece Pythagoras had so much aura that he was basically turned into a demigod... Today, though, this deification has obscured our view of the true Pythagoras, so we only really remember him as "the triangle guy"
Good to find someone well read on him. I've been on a Nietzsche kick recently, and wrote a similar article to yours explaining some of the most interesting parts of his philosophy/sorta responding to criticisms of him: https://substack.com/@souldesigner/p-191823019
A critique of your debunking of this claim "He encourages evil/cruelty/meanness." Encourage might not be the right word, but he certainly thought it was a necessary component to achieving greatness. Also at the beginning of the anti Christ he states "The botched and the weak shall perish. And we shall help them to it."
You clearly are well-read on him, as many shibboleths here signal to me. I've been a fan of N for a while so I'll offer my thoughts.
> He worships power
On the concept of the WtP. N is wrong on WtP on a metaphysical, scientific, and psychological level.
On a metaphysical level, Friston's FEP (which I personally see as a successor to Schop's WtL) explains for all things far better, for both animate objects and inanimate objects, which N explicitly tried to describe with the WtP. A rock isn't trying to grow stronger or whatever. It's just maintaining itself.
On a scientific/evolutionary level, N's criticism of "Darwinianism" in the WtL is the absurd dated rejection of now-established science that it appears as at a surface level, despite types like BAP trying to make it work. I read a full scholarly paper trying to make it work. It doesn’t.
On a psychological level, he is also wrong that our desires are all about increasing our power/feeling of power (he sometimes focuses more on just the "feeling of power"). Our desires are homeostatic in nature. They are about reducing "expected variational free energy" as Friston would put it, or about "lack" as Lacan puts it. Desire to feel powerful is just a subset of this.
Regarding personal criticisms of N, far more damning than him being a virgin or whatever is that he was likely bipolar and that this is highly visible in his work, which often has very clear manic, megalomaniacal, frantic, etc characteristics, not to mention the depressiveness he experiences. It's also well-known that he wrote TSZ in like a week.
> He encourages evil/cruelty/meanness
I don't see how you can read his work and not think it's the case. He constantly praises evil, cruelty, and meanness, very explicitly. I agree he was known to be nice in his personal life but his writings certainly show this.
> Nietzsche isn’t cool
Nietzsche is the coolest. I agree with this.
> His denial of absolute truth is self-refuting
I think N's epistemology is far better described as Pragmatist (in the philosophical sense) than perspectivist. People vastly overstate how "postmodern" he is when it comes to truth. He strongly praised logic and saw truth as basically being determined by what works (a simplification for sure, but the point is that he saw there as being actual criteria instead of just various perspectives). He also criticized placing emotions over reason, saying emotions just give us vague understandings of things, while reason is how we actually figure things out.
> Genealogy of morality = genetic fallacy?
I agree with what you say regarding the Genealogy of Morality, though the more common misconception I come across is that N didn't actually prefer Master Morality over Slave Morality.
> The Eternal Recurrence
It's likely N did see the Eternal Recurrence as something governing the world. In his notes he tried to justify it using physics. It's possible he scrapped it and saw that as not justifiable though. Regardless, it is definitely best when just seen as a thought experiment.
Friston’s work and FEP/predictive processing as concepts broadly being criminally under-circulated is why Nietzschean metaphysics is taken more seriously than it should be. Scott Alexander has a couple of nice sorta-introductory posts about them on his old blog if one is curious but doesn’t feel like wading through the scientific literature.
I do wonder why exactly do you consider him writing Zarathustra in a week somehow automatically disqualifying? Isn’t it a bit fascinating imagining Nietzsche utterly possessed by a fit of artistic inspiration and madly jotting down the manuscript in a few days? Locking himself in a dark room while burning the night-oil, wracked by involuntary convulsions but still grinning madly and muttering incoherently under his breath?… Seems kinda cool, ngl.
I read those PP/FEP posts yeah that’s what got me into it.
I more mentioned him writing TSZ so quickly to imply it was written in a manic episode. And sure the idea of the mad genius can be romantic and bipolar people often have created great works of art, but it calls into question how generalizable his philosophy/psychology is, and calls into question its quality.
Nietzsche's unique style is commendable, but I think he's only the most high-aura philosopher due to recency bias. In Ancient Greece Pythagoras had so much aura that he was basically turned into a demigod... Today, though, this deification has obscured our view of the true Pythagoras, so we only really remember him as "the triangle guy"
One of the issues with Nietzsche is that American academics purposely distorted his philosophy in the post-WW2.
Re: the claim Nietzsche doesn't advocate for anything - Nietzsche's Great Politics: Amazon.co.uk: Drochon, Hugo: 9780691166346: Books https://share.google/DytogzRncGMww9SIj
Good to find someone well read on him. I've been on a Nietzsche kick recently, and wrote a similar article to yours explaining some of the most interesting parts of his philosophy/sorta responding to criticisms of him: https://substack.com/@souldesigner/p-191823019
A critique of your debunking of this claim "He encourages evil/cruelty/meanness." Encourage might not be the right word, but he certainly thought it was a necessary component to achieving greatness. Also at the beginning of the anti Christ he states "The botched and the weak shall perish. And we shall help them to it."
You clearly are well-read on him, as many shibboleths here signal to me. I've been a fan of N for a while so I'll offer my thoughts.
> He worships power
On the concept of the WtP. N is wrong on WtP on a metaphysical, scientific, and psychological level.
On a metaphysical level, Friston's FEP (which I personally see as a successor to Schop's WtL) explains for all things far better, for both animate objects and inanimate objects, which N explicitly tried to describe with the WtP. A rock isn't trying to grow stronger or whatever. It's just maintaining itself.
On a scientific/evolutionary level, N's criticism of "Darwinianism" in the WtL is the absurd dated rejection of now-established science that it appears as at a surface level, despite types like BAP trying to make it work. I read a full scholarly paper trying to make it work. It doesn’t.
On a psychological level, he is also wrong that our desires are all about increasing our power/feeling of power (he sometimes focuses more on just the "feeling of power"). Our desires are homeostatic in nature. They are about reducing "expected variational free energy" as Friston would put it, or about "lack" as Lacan puts it. Desire to feel powerful is just a subset of this.
Regarding personal criticisms of N, far more damning than him being a virgin or whatever is that he was likely bipolar and that this is highly visible in his work, which often has very clear manic, megalomaniacal, frantic, etc characteristics, not to mention the depressiveness he experiences. It's also well-known that he wrote TSZ in like a week.
> He encourages evil/cruelty/meanness
I don't see how you can read his work and not think it's the case. He constantly praises evil, cruelty, and meanness, very explicitly. I agree he was known to be nice in his personal life but his writings certainly show this.
> Nietzsche isn’t cool
Nietzsche is the coolest. I agree with this.
> His denial of absolute truth is self-refuting
I think N's epistemology is far better described as Pragmatist (in the philosophical sense) than perspectivist. People vastly overstate how "postmodern" he is when it comes to truth. He strongly praised logic and saw truth as basically being determined by what works (a simplification for sure, but the point is that he saw there as being actual criteria instead of just various perspectives). He also criticized placing emotions over reason, saying emotions just give us vague understandings of things, while reason is how we actually figure things out.
> Genealogy of morality = genetic fallacy?
I agree with what you say regarding the Genealogy of Morality, though the more common misconception I come across is that N didn't actually prefer Master Morality over Slave Morality.
> The Eternal Recurrence
It's likely N did see the Eternal Recurrence as something governing the world. In his notes he tried to justify it using physics. It's possible he scrapped it and saw that as not justifiable though. Regardless, it is definitely best when just seen as a thought experiment.
Friston’s work and FEP/predictive processing as concepts broadly being criminally under-circulated is why Nietzschean metaphysics is taken more seriously than it should be. Scott Alexander has a couple of nice sorta-introductory posts about them on his old blog if one is curious but doesn’t feel like wading through the scientific literature.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-to-understand-friston-on-free-energy/
I do wonder why exactly do you consider him writing Zarathustra in a week somehow automatically disqualifying? Isn’t it a bit fascinating imagining Nietzsche utterly possessed by a fit of artistic inspiration and madly jotting down the manuscript in a few days? Locking himself in a dark room while burning the night-oil, wracked by involuntary convulsions but still grinning madly and muttering incoherently under his breath?… Seems kinda cool, ngl.
I read those PP/FEP posts yeah that’s what got me into it.
I more mentioned him writing TSZ so quickly to imply it was written in a manic episode. And sure the idea of the mad genius can be romantic and bipolar people often have created great works of art, but it calls into question how generalizable his philosophy/psychology is, and calls into question its quality.
what did he think about jews in your opinion
Didn't like them, but liked the grug antisemitism of the common man at the time even less