Jackson Jambalaya

Nietzsche is certainly quotable. However readers should know that Nietzsche's "will to power" philosophy is incredibly destructive. Hitler and Stalin were admirers of Nietzsche. Sadly, much of the drivers of today's cultural change utilize Nietzschian influenced tactics. Nietzsche went insane and his sister sold tickets for people to come see the great Nietzsche drooling and completely out of his mind.

Nietzsche would have spit on Hitler. He had nothing but contempt for the Germans and praise for the Jews. Thought the two should intermarry.

Nietzsche is very easy to misinterpret. See Justin Sledge. Nietzsche would have wanted to know why they cared what everyone at school thought about them.

THIS STUFF IS OVER MY HEADDrooling is good thing when you can't piss.

However readers should know that Nietzsche's "will to power" philosophy is incredibly destructive.

More like "incredibly misunderstood." N. pointed out that people interpret & otherwise shape the world according to their own desires. He is more interesting for his insights into the details of this process than for noticing it in the first place.

"Hitler and Stalin were admirers of Nietzsche."

As Walter Kaufmann pointed out, Hitler's "reading" of N. never got beyond the book titles. (You can easily google Hitler's thoughts on how to read, from Mein Kampf.)

As for Stalin, I am unaware of his having been influenced by N. - presumably he would have managed to be a murderous tyrant with or without a few obscure German philosophical books in his library.

"Sadly, much of the drivers of today's cultural change utilize Nietzschian influenced tactics."

Whatever that means. Have a nice day!

Valar morghulis

Check out “New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche To Stalinism" by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal published by Penn State University Press. Nietzsche had a big influence.

Per Jacob Golomb for Princeton University Press: "Nietzsche was clearly an elitist who believed in the right to rule of a 'good and healthy aristocracy,' one that would, if necessary, be ready to sacrifice untold numbers of human beings. He sometimes wrote as if nations primarily existed for the sake of producing a few 'great men,' who could not be expected to show consideration for 'normal humanity.' Not suprisingly, in the light of the cruel century that has just ended, one is bound to regard such statements with grave misgivings. From Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, the last eighty years have been riddled with so-called political geniuses imagining that they were 'beyond good and evil' and free of any moral constraints. One has to ask if there is not something in Nietzsche's philosophy with its uninhibited cultivation of a heroic individualism and the will to power, which may have tended to favor the fascist ethos."

The reviews of Rosenthal's book speak for themselves.

As for Golomb, no one is suggesting that N. is a political role model; he does not IMHO seem to've understood politics or even followed it closely. But there were tyrants before & after N., and the 20th century is replete with explanations for modern tyrannies without having to imagine that anything would have been different without the musings of a prematurely retired, self-published classics professor.

When it comes to Fred, Hitchens, in some of his final words, nailed him best.

ROFLMAO Anderson can't control his need to school the wingnuts.

Valar dohaeris

4:13, you're right, sometimes I really can't. KF knew this post was Anderson-bait ....

Anyone familiar with N's utter contempt for socialism would also be ROTFLHAO at the idea of N as inspiring communism. As for dictatorships, they didn't need Zarathustra for that idea.

(Fun fact: the "superman" pretty much falls out of N's writing after TSZ. I tend to agree that it's ironic even in that book: Z thinks the future depends on the superman's arising, but then the idea of eternal recurrence makes him realize even that is only temporary. But then TSZ is my least favorite N book; loses in translation maybe.)

Anderson wins. And I must say I am surprised KF would take this chance at unsettling his loyal readers, which certainly includes a million pounds of dumb.

12:26 AM, you make a million + one. Thanks for playing though its clear you know very little about KF's loyal readership.

All hail King Anderson (at least that is what he wants you to do).

Hey now, I did not claim to *be* the superman.

12:26, I have to disagree; N. has a lot in common with the JJ readership. The following from Beyond Good and Evil can be taken as a comment on socialists, or Democrats (if the distinction is admitted):

In every country of Europe, and the same in America, there is at present something which makes an abuse of this name a very narrow, prepossessed, enchained class of spirits, who desire almost the opposite of what our intentions and instincts prompt—not to mention that in respect to the new philosophers who are appearing, they must still more be closed windows and bolted doors. Briefly and regrettably, they belong to the levellers, these wrongly named "free spirits"—as glib-tongued and scribe-fingered slaves of the democratic taste and its "modern ideas" all of them men without solitude, without personal solitude, blunt honest fellows to whom neither courage nor honourable conduct ought to be denied, only, they are not free, and are ludicrously superficial, especially in their innate partiality for seeing the cause of almost all human misery and failure in the old forms in which society has hitherto existed—a notion which happily inverts the truth entirely! What they would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happiness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and alleviation of life for every one, their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called "Equality of Rights" and "Sympathy with All Sufferers"—and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be done away with.