From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> Date: 2007/06/12 Tue AM 02:26:54 GMT To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, docile_body at yahoo.com Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Nietzsche Selection
Andie wrote Whoever earlier trotted out that old canard
1. about Nietzsche being some sort of Nazi [I didn't -- J. D.]
2. Who espoused a Master Morality [I did]
3. that was a *precursor* to the Nazi volkish morality on which the Aryans were racial uebermenschen [I didn't],
[snip]
4. that its it was mysterious that Jews who lost families in tho Holocaust could find value in him [I did -- because in spite of his personal tastes, his ideas were evil in themselves and could be taken in that direction],
5. also that he was an immature adolescent taste that grownup people despise [I didn't -- I just reported that I had found Nietzsche attractive in my adolescence (when under the age of 21 you could not get married or donate blood without parental permission -- or literally get the key of the door)]
6. and that he's not worth our attention because he supposedly advocates victor's justice [ see 2 above],
7. also that we can blow off Kaufmann because he's an anticommunist [I was greatly influenced by Kaufmann when I started teaching philosophy, but after intense study of The Genealogy of Morals I came to the conclusion that -- as I said in my post -- he saw Nietzsche with too soft a focus. Anecdotally, in a conference about phenomenology he got into such a rage about eastern bloc totalitarianism that his wife had to remind him about his blood pressure]
8. individualist [many of my students reproduced from his preface to *Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre* that all existentialists had in common was "perfervid individualism",
9. so we need not pay attention to his patient arguments that the foregoing is all nonsense, manages to compress into a very small space a great many of the apparently immortal lies and misconceptions about Nietzsche larded on him by his sister and the Nazis. This load of bollocks is hardly worth refuting; if you believe it, you'll believe anything [I don't],
10. but if it is desired I will refute it (again) when I have leisure. [Please don't.]
But can you refute the substance of my post, my claim that this represents his thought about the values of good and bad, good and evil?:
*****************
Postmodernists have made a pluralistic use of the term genealogy current. In fact for Nietzsche there is *only one* genealogy of morals. It can be illustrated by the figures of the Romans and the Jews (and later, Christians).
The Romans in their greatness use the valuations "good" and "bad" -- the latter, meaning "no-good", worthless, they apply to the Jews. The Jews on the other hand use the valuations "good" and "evil", and apply the latter to the Romans. As George W. Bush would say, that is because they hate freedom, which is something the Romans love -- to have, that is. That is because they are life enhancing, yea-saying -- just look at their aqueducts!
In their fear, envy and powerlessness, the resentful Jews invent a trick to trap the Romans. They claim that it is "good" to love one's enemies, and that they are "good"; they pretend to love the Romans, in spite of their barbarities and cruelties, and claim that the Romans should be "good" and love them too, and cease being "evil". They want to drag the Romans down to their level of wretchedness and life-denying, nay-saying.
Strangely, Allen Wood claims in *Karl Marx* that Marx the immoralist brings us to a mysterious territory *beyond good and evil*, just like Nietzsche. In fact what has happened is that Wood has declared (wrongly, I think) that for Marx justice just means conforming to the rules of a given economic system (such as slavery or capitalism), and cannot be used to criticise such a system. In fact there is nothing mysterious about what is beyond *good and evil*; beyond that (i.e. the only other choice) is *good and bad*-- which is simply a "morality" *WITHOUT JUSTICE*-- unless you count the Thucydidean "natural justice" of the rule of the stronger -- might is right.
You can choose to be either a "Jew" or a "Roman"; Nietzsche chooses to be a "Roman", and those who think he cares what they are, are "Jews".
I think Walter Kaufmann -- who was virulently anti-Communist and individualist -- portrays Nietzsche with too soft a focus. Although I did not see the post which inspired this thread, I agree with Charles Brown that Nietzsche is anti- Marx. When I wonder how Christians, Marxists and others, including Gustav Mahler whose niece Anna was murdered in a concentration camp, see value in Nietzsche, I remember that in my adolescence -- a long time ago now -- so did I.
James Daly
>
> From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Date: 2007/06/12 Tue AM 02:26:54 GMT
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, docile_body at yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Nietzsche Selection
>
>
> Whoever here wrote that you can't trust that N wrote
> "what he really meant" is quite right, since N signals
> this all over the place and even says it many times.
> It's best to try to read N straight up by himself, but
> his work is a maze of mirrors, and it really doesn't
> hurt to avoid naivete about it, or to seek guidance
> from people who have tried to make it out in an
> informed way. Least of all is it wise to read his
> individual statement snipped out of context.
>
> Whoever earlier trotted out that old canard about
> Nietzsche being some sort of Nazi who espoused a
> Master Morality that was a precursor to the Nazi
> volkish morality on which the Aryans were racial
> uebermenschen, such that it was mysterious that Jews
> who lost families in tho Holocaust could find value in
> him, also that he was an immature adolescent taste
> that grownup people despise and that he's not worth
> our attention because he supposedly advocates victor's
> justice, also that we can blow off Kaufmann because
> he's an anticommunist individualist, so we need pay
> attention to his patient arguments that the foregoing
> is all nonsense, manages to compress into a very small
> space a great many of the apparently immortal lies and
> misconceptions about Nietzsche larded on him by his
> sister and the Nazis. This load of bollocks is hardly
> worth refuting;l if you believe it, you'll believe
> anything, but if it is desired I will refute it
> (again) when I have leisure.
>
> --- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 6/8/07, B. <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I am also wary of _What Nietzsche Really
> > Meant_-type
> > > stuff. Why isn't there a _What Bertrand Russell
> > Really
> > > Meant_? Oh yeah, because Russell wrote what he
> > meant.
> > > I assume Nietzsche did, too. So go to the horse's
> > > mouth, as well, instead of through 3rd parties.
> > >
> > > -B.
> >
> >
> >
> > It is not necessarily a good assumption.
> >
> > Or put it this way. Aristotle tried hard to write
> > what he meant. But what
> > was Plato doing? Was he writing what he meant? Was
> > he writing what Socrates
> > meant or Thrasymachus meant? Or was he writing to
> > "turn you around"?
> > Writing to turn you around is not necessarily the
> > same as writing what you
> > mean.
> >
> > Schopenhauer was writing what he meant. But
> > Nietzsche was writing to turn
> > you around, somehow.
> >
> > ___________________________________
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> >
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>
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