[lbo-talk] Nietzsche

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Fri Jun 29 14:41:49 PDT 2007



> CB: N. uses that basic philosophical truth to serve the ruling class. Evil
> genius is more pernicious than evil dumbness, because it is likely evil
> genius will help evil more than evil dumbness. N. is worse than others
> because he is so smart, and puts his smarts to the service of the ruling
> classes.

What you've never answered is how Nietzsche's thought is in service of the 'ruling class'. The man had no tolerence for the nationalist triumphalism of his day, nor any nostalgia for feudalism.


> Brilliant physics is worse than mediocre physics when the former serves
> the
> U.S. military-industrial complex. The profoundly true understanding of
> atomic physics is profoundly evil in creating nuclear bombs.
>
> By the way, there is a seeming contradiction here in that in his radical
> individualist/libertarian aspects, N. seems to take the opposite of a
> social
> determinist position.

Nietzsche emphasizes social construction at the linguistic level. It is these social agreements at the level of language that allow for any understanding of the world whatsoever. What Nietzsche criticizes is the way that these social fictions are forgotten to be social fictions and are ignored as social and therefore political constructions.... I suspect this would get him in trouble with the Marx of the German Ideology, but I think that the Marx of Capital might be more sympathetic. robert wood


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