Nietzsche's most interesting ideas are not his critique of socialism and democracy (though he has a few interesting comments on those topics), but his moral psychology, class analysis of morality, and concept of human self-transforamtion which is actually a lot like Marxian disalienation. (I don't believe Nietzsche ever heard of Marx or Engels -- Capital would definitely NOT have been his cup of tea.) Schmitt's most interesting ideas are around his critique of liberalism and his idea that politics is defined by struggle with an Other that msut come to war -- there is certain Marxist ring to that too. Schmitt definitely knew Marx.
Then there's the question of what counts as a right wing idea. I don't think that Hayek's critique of planning is a right wing idea, or that Madison's defense of constitutional democracy is a right wing idea. Or that Psoner's pragmatism is right wing -- you read literally hundreds of pages of Posner,m admiting the fertility of his insight and the breadth of his knowledge, with only occasional reminders that he's a right winger. Posner's most famous idea, the economic analysis of the law, the idea that law does and should serve economic efficiency, i.e., profitability, sounds in its positive form a lot like you know who. The brilliance is in working out the details, for taht you have to read specific applications, either in hsi treatise on Law & Economics or his antitrust book or his tort law book or . . .
So what are we looking for here? What is the point of this discussion?
jks
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> andie: I can't give you any of thesde people while
> standing
> on one foot. Read 'em yourself. Posner: the essays
> in
> Overcoming Law are varied and accessible.
> Nietzsche,
> the most accessible work is probably On the
> Genealogy
> of Morals (a class analysis of the origin of
> morality
> -- you might actually like it!), Schmit -- The
> Concept
> of The Political is short and accessible.
>
> ^^^^
> CB: I've read some Nietzche. I am not favorably
> impressed. See comment
> below. Not exactly an idea original with Nietzche,
> class analysis of the
> origin of morality. Does he cite Marx and Engels ?
> The ruling ideas of any
> age are the ideas of its ruling classes.
>
> Plus, doesn't Nietzche use faux history as the basis
> for his arguments ?
> That's kinda weird. Dionysian and watchacallit are
> not exactly valid general
> anthropological categories ( despite Ruth Benedict).
>
> I'll say this: I think Nietzche and Heidegger are on
> to something in their
> critique of Platonism, if as I understand it they
> are into.
>
> You should be able to give an essential and brief
> summary of the most
> important ideas in any of these. I can do it for
> writers whom I read and
> find worthwhile. Just name one important insight
> that Posner has. Can't be
> that hard. What are the important ideas in "The
> Concept of the Political" ?
> Can't be that hard to outline them in very few
> words.
>
>
>
> ^^^^^^^^
>
>
> Michael Pugliese:
>
> Reminder to Charles. You ever get around to pulling
> out of library stacks
> these books on Nietzsche I recommended to you a
> while back?
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I've read some Nietzsche. I'm not favorably
> impressed. I think one of
> his main defects is that his arguments are based on
> a mythical and false
> version of human history. He has bullshit
> anthropology. You can't make up
> history and expect to draw important conclusions
> from what you make up. He
> represents the petit bourgeois mind gone bizerk
> under the pressure of the
> alienation of capitalism. In the course of that, he
> may hit on some
> anti-bourgeois insights, but taken as a whole, he's
> a mess. Plus, he's
> anti-Marxist, which will just lead his admirers
> astray on most important,
> intellectual issues.
>
> Plus, stop giving me reading assignments. It's
> arrogant. You read the books
> and bring me book reports on them. Then I'll teach
> you something.
>
> ^^^^^^
>
>
> MP: Your habitual, "Enemy of the People,
> " orthodox M-L style thought, to indicate the
> fascistoid essence of anyone
> to your Right, is tiresome. Public intellectuals can
> be any variety of
> leftist, rightist, centrist.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: If it's tiresome to you, I'll try to do it more
> often. However, it is
> inaccurate to characterize my thought in the way you
> do here. It's
> slanderous caricature and your habitual redbaiting.
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> http://old.thing.net/ttreview/images/corpse.jpg ,
> "Nietzsche's Corps/E:
> Aesthetics, Politics, Prophecy, Or, the Spectacular
> Technoculture of
> Everyday Life, " by Geoff Waite, a post-modern
> communist reading (Waite was
> in the PLP when Hilary Putnam was. A "stupid party,
> " {"Marcuse: Cop or
> Cop-Out?"} but, I suppose they had their reasons.
> "Nietzsche and Soviet Culture: Ally and Adversary,
> " by Bernice Glatzer
> Rosenthal and, "New Myth, New World
> >From Nietzsche to Stalinism, " by the same scholar.
>
> . Communists also used and misused Nietzsche, but
> that fact is largely
> unknown because Soviet propagandists invoked reason
> and labeled Nietzsche
> the "philosopher of fascism," even while covertly
> appropriating his ideas.
> In this pioneering book, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
> excavates the trail of
> long-obscured Nietzschean ideas that took root in
> late Imperial Russia,
> intertwining with other elements in the culture to
> become a vital ingredient
> of Bolshevism and Stalinism.
>
> -clip-
>
> In Stalin's time, unacknowledged Nietzschean ideas
> were used to mobilize the
> masses for the great tasks of the first Five-Year
> Plan and the Cultural
> Revolution, which was intended to eradicate
> "bourgeois" values and attitudes
> from Soviet life and to construct a distinctly
> Socialist culture.
> Nietzsche's belief that people need illusions to
> shield them from reality
> underlay Socialist Realism, the official Soviet
> aesthetic from 1934 on.
>
> Clip-
>
> Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
>
>
> MP: All those Heidegger buffs on the academic left
> just Fascists? "Left in
> form, Right in Essence?"
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> CB: The Heidegger buffs are just bourgeois liberals.
>
> So, are you saying that Nietzsche's alleged
> influence on Stalinisim is to
> Nietzche's credit ?
>
> Is Nietzche really the first one to think that
> people need illusions to
> shield them from reality ? Religion as the opium of
> the people seems to be
> something of the same idea.
>
> ^^^^^
>
>
> Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
>
> On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Charles Brown wrote:
>
> > CB: Give me examples of smart ideas that Posner,
> Schmitt ,Strauss and
> > Nietzsche had.
>
> For my money, Nietzsche's the most important
> philosopher of the
> 19th century. His historical analysis of "slave
> morality" in
> Geneaology of morals is a good example of his
> creativity and
> insight.
>
> Miles
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Why doesn't he give credit to Marx for the basic
> idea of morality being
> rooted in class relations ? Sort of phony for him to
> act as if the basic
> approach - connection between class struggle and
> morality - originates with
> him.
>
> As far as the specific of Christianity as a religion
> of slaves, Engels'
> writing on the origins of Christianity discusses
> that it is rooted in the
> slave classes in the Roman empire in that region. I
> don't
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