Nietzsche's powerful insight

[Franz Ferdinand II]

I recommend everyone to read Frederick Dolan's answer to this question https://www.quora.com/What-did-Nietzsche-mean-when-he-said-if-you-stare-into-the-abyss-the-abyss-stares-back-at-you

This is the main point that striked my mind but you won't get much from it unless you read the whole thing:

"The healthiest human being, Nietzsche thinks, is one whose sheer love of life is so powerful that he or she enthusiastically desires the eternal repetition of everything that has happened and will happen – good, bad, and evil. Such a person affirms life without qualification, absolutely." - Frederick Dolan

If one wants to fully embrace life and to love life, he needs to accept both good and bad and love both while wanting to eternally repeat life no matter what is happening in life. You can't deny parts of life and love life to the fullest. That isn't total love.

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by Franz Ferdinand II
Grammar mistakes in first post

[tenta]

"You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"—how could you do DIFFERENTLY?"

[IJB063]

@Franz Ferdinand II

6 hours ago, Franz Ferdinand II said:

one wants to fully embrace life and to love life, he needs to accept both good and bad and love both while wanting to eternally repeat life no matter what is happening in life. You can't deny parts of life and love life to the fullest. That isn't total love.

“ To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering” - Nietzsche 

To do that, to fully embrace life, one must love fate.

Love of fate = amor fati

Accept whatever state you find yourself in, change what you can, if you can, and accept what you can't. Learn to exercise the will to change what you can, and embrace the pain associated with that for as Nietzsche said, it will only make you stronger. That’s what being human is all about.

“There is nothing good nor bad but the mind makes it so. “ - Shakespeare 

“Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do, and you will go on well”

@tenta
This reminded me, I responded to this post linked here talking about that quote, looking at the quote in more detail, it seems to me Nietzsche misinterpreted what Stoics mean when they say one should live in accordance with nature, I don’t believe a Stoic and an existentialist philosophy are mutual exclusive, I actually think existentialism is the taking of stoicism to an extreme

 

[Dorotheus]

Nietzsche was the best post-modern western philosopher in my opinion. I read almost all of his "books". His zarathoustra is especially very good. 

After reading nietzsche you are literally left with nothing. If you dont want to become an individual than dont touch his work. His critique of society is especially painfull. 

[Bazooka Jesus]

@Dorotheus Heh, I am always amazed to hear from people who got anything at all out of reading Zarathustra. As much as I love most of Nietzsche's writings for their awesome wit, clarity and brilliance, that little book called Thus Spoke Zarathustra might as well have been written in Chinese as far as I am concerned!

Edited May 20, 2020 by Bazooka Jesus

[IJB063]

@Dorotheus Hey Dorotheus, about 2 months ago I read Beyond Good and Evil, and just bout a week ago I finished reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra

What book is Nietzsche should I read next?

Im interested in reading more of his work and don’t now where to continue

cheers

@Bazooka Jesus I agree I didn’t really get much from Zarathustra, if I’m right I think Nietzsche really wrote Beyond Good and Evil as an addendum and as clarification for Thus Spoke Xarathustra 

[Franz Ferdinand II]

@Bazooka Jesus I am reading Zarathustra right now and boy is it good! I can only get insights from it when I focus and analyze it sentence by sentence. It wasn't meant to be read like a prose, you really have to dig into it. Maybe you could try rereading it after some time, you will get it better.

[Bazooka Jesus]

@IJB063 How about Ecce Homo? It is the last thing he ever wrote (if I am not mistaken) - and not only does it provide a neat overview and introduction into everything that Nietzsche had put out up to this point but it's also a genuinely fun read due to the fact that by the time he wrote this, old Freddie's delusions of grandeur were cranked up to about 100000000. I almost peed myself laughing while reading it.

And if you're into classical music, his vitriolic ramblings about Wagner are an absolut BLAST to read... even (or perhaps especially) for a staunch Wagnerite such as yours truly!

Edited May 20, 2020 by Bazooka Jesus

[Bazooka Jesus]

@Franz Ferdinand II Man, I think I started to read it maybe three times but never made it past page 20 or so. It's fucking cryptic to say the least... well, I might give it another go some time. Perhaps I will get it after I reached Enlightenment, lol.

[IJB063]

@Bazooka Jesus Okay thanks for the recommendation, I just read the wiki page on it and it’s look as though it’s a good summary of all his work

21 hours ago, Bazooka Jesus said:

And if you're into classical music, his vitriolic ramblings about Wagner are an absolut BLAST to read... even (or perhaps especially) for a staunch Wagnerite such as yours truly!

Nah I’m not into classical music but I do know who Wagner is

Thanks for recommending Wagner

Based and Redpilled

[Bazooka Jesus]

3 hours ago, IJB063 said:

@Bazooka Jesus Okay thanks for the recommendation, I just read the wiki page on it and it’s look as though it’s a good summary of all his work

Nah I’m not into classical music but I do know who Wagner is

Thanks for recommending Wagner

Based and Redpilled

Based and Redpilled? Heh... what on earth is that supposed to mean?

Btw, another good one is The Birth Of Tragedy - very different from Nietzsche’s later writings, but a great read nonetheless; plus, it gives you a good sense of where Nietzsche was "coming from" before his big fat fall out with basically all of modern society (which he himself was of course an essential part of, as he was painfully aware).

Edited May 21, 2020 by Bazooka Jesus

[IJB063]

@Bazooka Jesus

Based and redpilled is an internet meme to agree with and praise something, that “particularly something controversial“.

I was joking, because I know Wagner I was a giant anti Semite

The Birth of Tragedy was the next book on my Nietzsche reading list, but I prefer the idea of reading Ecce Homo first, after reading the wiki page

[Bazooka Jesus]

@IJB063 Aaaaahhh, thanks for the clarification.

Yup, Richard Wagner definitely was a colourful character to say the very fucking least. I mean, he is pretty much the only artist I can think of who was despicable enough as a person for his works to be rightfully dismissed as the pompous concoctions of an intolerable bigot but whose creative genius was astonishing enough for his works to be rightfully praised as being some of the most groundbreaking and glorious creations in all of western art.

I would not actually "recommend" listening to Wagner operas though. This guy’s music is not just music -- it is a highly intoxicating and addictive drug that can be extremely difficult to unhook yourself from once you’ve fallen under it’s spell. No wonder Claude Debussy used to refer to Wagner as "the old Klingsor" (the mischievous sorcerer from Parsifal)!

Edited May 22, 2020 by Bazooka Jesus

[Dorotheus]

@IJB063 you have already read his best books. I would recommend that you read die frolliche wissenchaft as the next book. 

[IJB063]

@Dorotheus Okay noted, The gay science, I’m probably going to read ecce homo first though

But reading the wiki page, it does say that The Gay science was “published after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, in 1887“, so it might follow better from what I’ve read

[Nash_Octavius]

@IJB063 I'd recommend 'On The Genealogy of Morals' 

This work is an expansion of a major motif found in 'Beyond Good and Evil,' where Nietzsche explores the origin of human morality. It's <100pages and much more interesting than the title suggests.

[IJB063]

@Nash_Octavius Thanks for the recommendation, if youre interested in morality I just read a book could the Righteous Mind by Johnathan Haidt who looks at morality from an evo psych perspective, I thought it was really interesting

And recently I just finished reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and it really stumped because the book is a dystopia, yet there is practically no suffering in that world, that’s a pretty good description for a utopia isn’t it, a world without suffering

Yet in the dystopia genre, Brave New World practically follows right after 1984, because in Huxleys novel all the people are class regimented, brain washed from their creation (not even birthed) to love their predestined position, and they’re all drugged so that they don’t feel pain or fear death, theyre practically all sedated with sex, drugs till the day they die, just pure endless hedonism

But even in this society, which is far better objectively I would argue from were we are today, from an ethical perspective, you still feel as though it’s immoral because it’s take away our humanity, which made me question whether or not suffering is a moral imperative and necessary for the soul.

So Brave New World has got me thinking a lot about morality lately because I was rooting for the savage throughout the book the moment he was introduced 

So I might give that book a read because everything I’ve read of Nietzsche’s thus far ive loved and that book could probably help settle some questions I have on morality