[lbo-talk] Nietzche: Left or Right? (Bush and Foucault)

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Tue Jun 12 10:22:17 PDT 2007


I can't read Ted.

The 1844 MS is good stuff, but it was unpublished MS,a

also pretty standard and somewhat limited German

Romanticism -- you can get pretty much the same story

from Schiller's Aesthetic Education of Man --, and

while Marx never really retracted it, still apart from

his work in ideologiekritik, he never advanced beyond

it. There is nothing in Marx that is like N's subtle

linking of social class to individual psychology and

physiology. Marx is more on the level of saying things

(true but limited) that, capitalism makes for stupid

work that cripples people's minds and bodies. He

almost never tries to explain how this sort of thing

produces values that themselves have psychological,

physiological, and sociological effects that have

their own dynamic. Don't mistake me, I like Marx's

psychology. there just isn't very much of it.

^^^^^^

CB:

How about mentioning some of N.'s specific psychological insight, and arguing why it is insightful ? I guess when I read N. on psychology linked to the social and physiological , he seems , uhh, "wrong" , for lack of a better word. Is Dionysian and _____ one of them ? They seem not "correct" , as far as general psychology; Hellenocentric errors, mythological versions of "history". His discussion doesn't fit any real world stuff I know about. Seems like he writes fiction, material for comic books. N. seems rapped up in a bunch of fantasies. What little Marx writes has to do with reality at least, and by that it's better.



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