[lbo-talk] Nietzsche

[Jeffrey Fisher]

On 6/28/07, Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Jeffrey Fisher
> i don't buy nietzsche as petit bourgeouis rebel. certainly it's a
> reductive
> position, even if there's some truth in it.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: Actually, that's an old thought of mine, related to Sidney
> Finkelstein's
> analysis of N. , existentialism , and other irrationalisms as sort of
> petit
> bourgeoisie and others freaking out in the crises of imperialism. Sort of
> like what T.S. Eliot was reflecting in _The Wasteland_. And , yes, it is
> just one-side of N. . By itself it would be "onesided".
>
> But with the other I'm tending toward now - the representative of decadent
> German aristocracy of the period - the analysis is fuller. He sort of
> gathers the ethos of lots of ruling classes from history, and formulates a
> persona for ex-aristocrats to enter in the new bourgeois era.  But a
> philosophy for aristocrats is attractive the petit bourgeoisie dealing
> with
> the alienation of capitalism.
>
> It important to do class analysis though, and your "reductive" would seem
> a
> symptom of slipping into bad idealism perhaps.
> ^^^^^^
>
>
> the guy was hegelian through and through. his critiques of christian and
> jewish morality, much like marx's critique of capitalism, was a mixture of
> respect and disgust (or something like that), all in the context of an
> understanding that progress is always from something to something, and
> that
> there are various steps along the way, and what now looks like progress
> will
> eventually have to be got beyond.
>
> ^^^^^
> CB: I don't know. From a previous thread, I think of him as more like that
> other contemporary of Hegel, who was focussed on power like N. The other
> guy
> hated Hegel.
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> we might disagree with his analysis (although, frankly, i think _beyond
> good
> and evil_ is one of the most brilliant philosophical pieces in history,
> even, or maybe especially, when i think he is probably wrong), but i get
> really tired of the way we like to apply easy labels to him. even when we
> ourselves might come to the label through years of dedicaation and hard
> work
> trying to figure out what's going on, the label already betrays that work,
> as if it were unnecessary (see hegel's "preface" on formalism. unless you
> think hegel is a petit bourgeouis rebel ;-).
>
> J
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB: It's not just a "label". It is word of analysis after many, many years
> of thinking about N.

well, like i said, i think the former betrays the latter (a la hegel). we
tend to throw around the labels and people who haven't done the work just
pick up the label. it misses so much of the point. and anyway i think the
label is wrong. :)

I think it's best to discuss specific concepts, like the thread had on
> ressentiment.

i would actually go further and say we ought to discuss specific passages,
but that will be awfully hard to do.

What specifically is "beyond good and evil" about _beyond
> good and evil_ ?
>

who knows?

as i say, i was really thinking of _genealogy of morals_, but i guess i've
always read it as a critique of bourgeois morals. my point is that if we
don't read it dialectically, we're missing the point. he's progressive, not
reactionary. his critique of christianity, afaict, is not meant to promote
an aristocratic ethics of power. i don't know, maybe my reading is all
idiosyncratic or something (which wouldn't make it wrong :-), and i'm
certainly no nietzsche expert, although i've spent some time with him, but
it struck me how important a word "cruel"/"cruelty" is in GM. and it's not a
good thing. the morals of kant, he says, are steeped in blood. again, not
good. he rails against christianity as hypocritical, etc. etc., but he hates
cruelty more than anything else. maybe the concept of cruelty would be a
good one to discuss? alas, most of my books are in boxes at the moment, but
i can fix that, i think.

and of course zarathustra is a novel (of sorts) about transformation, about
self-transcendence.

again, afaict.

so, to come back to your question above, i'm just not sure that difficulty
in articulating a morality beyond morality (which has a utopian flavor to
it) indicates flaws in his analysis. indeed, it seems to me to indicate
honesty -- that is, it's hard to envision those things when you haven't seen
them, and to find words for those things when you haven't spoken those
things.

j

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