Hegel??

"After decades of trying and utterly failing to see what could possibly be worthwhile in Hegel's philosophy, I believe I've had a breakthrough."

That's the first paragraph of an essay I posted here on December 11, 2023. 4 months later, it seems more and more likely that what I understood was a YouTube which purported to be about Hegel. Does that video actually have anything to do with Hegel? I don't know. I don't have any Earthly. I can't even. 

 

What we have here, now as before, is failure to communicate. We're back to where we were before last December. I am not getting the message from Hegel's texts. 

Unless I am. Unless Schopenhauer was right about Hegel's philosophy: that it was pseudo-intellectual gibberish successfully passing itself off as philosophy. But I can't be sure about that anymore. 

It's not that I am afraid to assail the reputation of a celebrated thinker and purported genius. Every word Susan Sontag published or said on a broadcast was pseudo-intellectual garbage, delivered with that smug grin William Gaddis warned us about. Spengler is, im Grunde genommen, pretty silly, and hugely overrated. But at least much more entertaining than Sontag.

It's not that I can't follow philosophers in general. With those up to and including Hegel's most celebrated immediate forerunner Kant, and also with those following him, although I must often read very slowly and repeat certain passages, I don't get this feeling I get with Hegel. Not with Kant himself, not with Heidegger, not with Adorno. Not with the world's most famous Hegelian, Marx. 

Well, as Kierkegaard said -- Kierkegaard, who has often delighted me, often made me shake my head chidingly, but never puzzled me: enten -- eller. Either Hegel has fooled a great number of very smart people, who regard him as a great genius, but not me, or Schopenhauer, or Kierkegaard -- or all of those people have significantly smarter than all three of us, at least in this regard.

I can easily admit it when a single person is clearly more intelligent than I  -- okay, not easily, but I can admit it. When an entire group is outdoing me, it's disturbing. 

It sort of reminds me of the historical Jesus question. I've studied it pretty thoroughly. Most of the people who have studied it pretty thoroughly say that it's pretty obvious that a person named Jesus preached in Galilee and Jerusalem in the 20's, 30's or 40's AD, that he said many of the things in the text we today call the Sermon on the Mount, and that he was crucified on Pilate's orders. 

Well, it's still not obvious at all to me. That light bulb above my head, which is supposed to go on when I see how the evidence all adds up to Jesus having really lived and preached and been crucified by Pilate -- that light bulb is not on, it has not begun to flicker. The Biblical scholars go over the evidence, and to me, they're making the case that it's possible Jesus existed, the case that it's conceivable -- and then they say, so you see, it's really certain that he existed! And I shout wearily: No! I don't see!

I also don't see how I'm not keeping up with what those Biblical scholars are saying. Let's take the example of another famous controversy: were the writers of the New Testament wrong when they said that a virgin birth was prophesied by Isaiah? Yes. They were wrong. Bart Ehrman explained this to me in less than half a minute. To make a short story even shorter: read the entire chapter of Isaiah 7, and as Ehrman said: shame on all of us supposedly brilliant people for not already having read the entire chapter. It's not long. The Hebrew word can mean "virgin," or simply "young women," somewhat like the English term "maiden." Reading Isaiah 7, the entire short chapter, makes it clear that the Greek New Testament authors were mistaking in translating the word as "virgin" instead of simply "young woman."

I had zero trouble keeping up with that. But understanding what is so great about Hegel...

Before and After Freud: the Case of Nietzsche

Instead of succumbing to the anti-semitism of Schopenhauer, Wagner and his own sister and brother-in-law, Nietzsche regarded individual human beings who happened to be Jewish, and praised Spinoza as his great predecessor and brother-spirit, and Heine along with himself as the two greatest German poets. 

Instead of joining in in the great chorus of German nationalism with followed the unification of 1871, Nietzsche chose to live south of Germany, was an early advocate of a united Europe, and was much more meticulously critical of his native Germany than of any other land. 

When it came to sexism and militarism, however, Nietzsche did not free himself of the destructive prejudices of his time. 

 

Living just a little bit too early to benefit from the insights of Sigmund Freud, he projected his own life, where his father died when he was a young boy, leaving him dominated by his mother and older sister, into a senseless critique, in his philosophical writings, of the entire female gender, and in particular steadfastly denying that women had any place either in the ruling of a state, or in the creation of serious literature or philosophy. Making the mistake he had avoided when it came to ethnic groups, regarding people -- well, men, at least -- as individuals, he always writes of women as an homogeneous group, with no brilliant individuals worthy of his detailed attention. He does mention George Sand, but only long enough to insult her.

If you've read his books first, his letters come as a complete surprise: he's quite mild-mannered, and as polite to numerous female correspondents as can be. No hint of the sexist contempt in his books.

And when it comes to war, Nietzsche, who was too frail to be accepted as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and saw it only as an orderly in the military hospitals, is as jingoistic as only those can be who have never fought. As with his sexist projection, the overcompensation of his glorification of war is as clear as can be to us, who have had the benefit of Freudian insights. I think Nietzsche may make a good Exhibit A if one ever debates against those who minimize the effect Freud has had on the world's collective consciousness. 

Will I Re-Consider Hegel?

If everyone or almost everyone disagrees with you, you may be a genius, far ahead of your time, or you may be wrong. Best to at least investigate the latter possibility.

I know of only one person who shares my opinion of Hegel: Schopenhauer, who called Hegel the worst, most ignorant, incoherent, empty, pretentious charlatan ever to successfully pass himself off as a philosopher. (See any remark about Hegel in any of Schopenhauer's works in which Hegel is mentioned.)

On the other side, those who considered Hegel to be somewhere between very clever and a world-beating genius include almost everyone whose opinion remotely matters, from Marx to Adorno to some of today's sneakiest anonymous post-postmodern YouTubers... Kierkegaard rejects some aspects of Hegel's system very energetically, but he doesn't call Hegel a fool or a fake the way Schopenhauer does. Kierkegaard clearly sees Hegel as a worthy adversary, who will not be defeated by mere insults.

Even Nietzsche, who has some passing insults for Hegel, seems to regard him as at least interesting. Speaking of having almost everyone disagree with you: When Nietzsche composed his list of "meine Unmoeglichen" ("my impossible ones," that is: "those whom I simply cannot stand") at the beginning of the chapter "Streifzuege eines Unzeitgemaessen" in Goetzendaemmerung, he doesn't list Hegel, but he does list Kant (along with Seneca, Rousseau, Schiller, Dante, Victor Hugo, Liszt, George Sand, Michelet, Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, the brothers Goncourt and Zola), whom almost everyone else whose opinion matters -- including Schopenhauer -- considers to be a stone genius. Time for me to admit: I don't understand Kant nearly well enough to have any opinion about him, and time for me to admit that maybe my hero Nietzsche, who was dead wrong about women and war, didn't understand Kant either. (I'm still just fine with the rest of the list.)

For Schopenhauer (and almost everyone else), Kant was the most brilliant by far of all the philosophers of the preceding century.

Hegel built upon Kant, and so did Schopenhauer.

And Marx built upon Hegel, which means that most Leftists since Marx have built directly or indirectly on Hegel.

What finally made me decide that I had to give Hegel another chance, although the camel's back had been close to breaking already for a while, was Ernst Bloch. He's one of my favorite writers, and he wrote an entire book so extravagantly praising Hegel that I had to throw in the towel and agree to read and re-read some Hegel, this time trying to hold my mind open to the possibility that he's not as bad as Schopenhauer thought.

Or at the very least, I need to re-read that particular book of Bloch's, -- Subjeckt-Objekt. Erlaeuterungen zu Hegel -- slowly and carefully, and try to decide whether I want to approach Hegel again. At this point, I don't really want to. But I'm willing to let Bloch try to change my mind. I probably will read Hegel again. It's not just Bloch, it's everybody except Schopenhauer.

Oh, and I also need to research this fellow Solger. He's mentioned by both Kierkegaard and Bloch, it seems he and Hegel were friends. I've never heard anyone else mention him, but Kierkegaard and Bloch are more than enough.

I recently heard an English philosopher say that, yes, Hegel's prose is terrible, but that his books were actually lecture notes, not intended to be published as books. And this guy was saying that Hegel was brilliant even though his prose was awful. In Subjekt-Objekt, Bloch is having none of this talk about Hegel's prose being awful. Hegel's prose is sometimes difficult, Bloch says, but it's brilliant, full of deep music and blood and guts and Luther. And the thing is: German is Bloch's native language, he's very very good at it. If Bloch says someone writes brilliantly in German, I have to listen, even if that someone is Hegel, whom I'm used to thinking of, agreeing with Schopenhauer, as writing sheer shameless nonsense.

As long as I'm here I may as well defend Schopenhauer and Nietzsche against the usual accusation from my colleagues on the Left, that they were reactionary. Certainly neither of them was progressive, but reactionary? What, exactly, do you think they were reacting against? They were both classless, and both clueless when it came to politics. I see no evidence that either of them was the slightest bit familiar with any socialist philosophy.

Old Things

I'm getting to be an old thing myself. In less than 3 months I will be 59 years old, which really doesn't seem right. On the inside, I feel like I'm 15, tops. On the outside, various physical signs assure everyone that there's no mistake, that I'm really 58 going on 59.

My car is rather old. It's a 2003 Saturn Ion 1 which I got brand-new in the autumn of 2002. At the time, it was not only a brand-new car: the Ion model was brand-new, too, so I got a few Hey wow Mister what kinda car is that?! remarks. Not for very long. Production of all Saturns was halted in autumn 2009 and the brand was officially discontinued in autumn 2010, so that by many people's standards, the newest Saturn is a pretty old car.

The idea of holding onto old cars, and replacing their engines with electric motors, seems to be gaining in popularity. One big argument for this is that is effects the environment less to replace an engine, than to build an entire new car. Currently, such a conversion is much too expensive for the typical old-car owner, but as the number of conversions goes up, and it's going up fast, the price per unit comes down. Will my Saturn live on as an EV? The thought makes me smile.

Once, I held in my hands a pocket watch which was first sold in 1884, which seems very old to me. Nietzsche had not yet gone insane in 1884. I held that watch and said solemnly, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." A silly thing to say: there's no reason to suppose that that watch ever came within 1000 miles of Nietzsche, or drove anyone insane. But for some reason it amused me greatly to say with mock solemnity, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." I don't think it was wrong to say such a thing: Nietzsche himself was not big on solemnity, to put it mildly. He even wrote things in his books about how he laughed at those who didn't dare to laugh at him.

Once, through inter-library loan, I got a copy of one of Nietzsche's books which was published in 1887, also before he went insane, which meant that he himself closely oversaw its publication. I'm sorry, I don't remember which book it was. Perhaps the 2nd edition of Morgenroethe? Whatever it was, I was so impressed by the quality of the book, by the way that the paper had held, and how it was just the perfect size and weight, that I looked up Nietzsche's letters and read him writing about what paper and font he wanted for this book. Did he self-publish, or was it normal for German writers in the 1880's to have so much say in the construction of their books, or did Nietzsche choose a publisher who gave him a lot of consideration in such things? Your guess has to be at least as good as mine.

I own a book which was published in 1869. I got it in the early 1990's. At that time 1869 seemed incredibly old for a book which someone such as myself got for $8.50 at a second-hand bookstore (the price is written inside the front cover). It's volume 2 of a 2-volume set of the works of Schiller. Perhaps if both volumes had still been around, it would've been worth more than $8.50 per volume. Perjaps not. Again, surely, your guess is at least as good as mine. The volume is big, the publisher is the FG Gotta-sche Buchhandlung, the font is small Fraktur which I've never been able to read very well at all. This volume 2 is mostly or entirely non-fictional prose. After many attempts at reading Schiller's accounts of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Thirty Years' War, I found a copy of the same texts in Roman type and was immensely disappointed in the dopey things Schiller has to say about history.

1869 no longer seems like nearly such an incredibly old age for a book which I own; but this volume may still be the oldest I own. No, wait... I have a Teubner edition of Aeschines' orations which was published in 1851. I got it for $5.50, I have no idea when or where. In the case of the Schiller there are clues as to when and where I got it. It's my 2nd-oldest volume.

I read texts which are sometimes thousands of years old, but I tend to prefer to read then in recent editions. I'm not particularly interested in old books or collecting, other than for reasons which have to do with the texts themselves. What can I say, people have gotten better at setting type and making it legible. And the old editions, if and when I want to struggle through them, are available in new photographic reprints and in places such as Google Books.

Stephen Greenblatt and New Atheism

It took me a while, but I finally noticed the link between a recent source of aggravation, Stephen Greenblatt

and his profoundly misinformative and hugely popular book The Swerve,



and that earlier source of annoyance, those avid consumers and champions of misinformation, the New Atheists.

I had separated myself from the New Atheists. It was amazingly easy to do: I simply stopped seeking them out, and, to my amazement and immense relief, I rarely came across any of them any more. There was a whole big wonderful world out there which was almost entirely free of them. Almost.

New Atheists are atheists who believe that religion is the source of most or actually all of the world's problems, and who constantly talk and write about religion in this vein while being very careful never to learn anything about it. The classic example is Richard Dawkins, who is constantly going on and on about how Islam is the greatest threat to the world, and has never read the Koran and never will and is freakin' proud of it. New Atheists are constantly discussing a fictitious story about early Christianity and the creation of the Bible, while being very careful never to read more than a dozen or so verses of the Bible specially selected for their awfulness, or to learn anything about the ancient Mediterranean world in which Christianity and the Bible first arose. They live in an echo chamber, only "learning" about the ancient Mediterranean world from each other, distrusting any and all actual experts.

I don't know whether Stephen Greenblatt is a New Atheist or has even heard of New Atheism, but how could New Atheists not love Stephen Greenblatt and his book The Swerve, which is so full of inaccurately hostile denunciations of Christianity?

I don't mind denunciations of Christianity -- I've written a few myself -- but I greatly prefer those which are factually accurate. Like this one, a positively furious book-length denunciation of Christianty which cuts much deeper than any New Atheists have dreamed of doing, although it is much less clumsily broad than their attacks: Der Antichrist,



written by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche had been appointed a full professor of Classics at the University of Basel at the astonishingly young age of 24. He was very well-versed in the literature of the ancient world in which Christianity and the Bible arose. At age 44, writing Der Antichrist, Nietzsche referred often to the New Testament in the original ancient Greek, although he found the Greek New Testament to be very badly-written, and reading it to be a very unpleasant experience. Nietzsche never was interested in taking the easy path, or so his writings make it seem. He was a scrupulous author, concerned, to a very unusual degree, that the things he wrote made sense. He wanted to make sure that his book about Christianity contained no inaccurately hostile denunciations, only accurate ones.

Nietzsche wrote Der Antichrist in 1888, an extraordinarily productive year for him as a writer. (Was he hurrying because he felt the end of his sanity approaching?) This one book was written between the 3rd and the 30th of September, and then he went right on to other things, until the 3rd day of January, 1889, when he went suddenly, thoroughly and permanently insane, perhaps from the effects of a decades-old case of syphilis overpowering his brain at last. Or perhaps he went mad from exasperation at so many people who spoke and wrote on the topics he cared about, without bothering to be well-informed. Like the many people who've been glad to discuss Nietzsche with me, who've never read anything Nietzsche wrote. (What on Earth did they suppose they were discussing?) Like Greenblatt and the New Atheists, so eager to discuss things like Medieval monasteries and atheist philosophy, and so determined not to learn about them. What do they actually imagine they're talking about?

And what should I do about it? Simply avoiding New Atheism certainly has been comfortable. But maybe, ultimately, as thoroughly atheist as I am, I can't be completely comfortable just sitting back and watching religious forms of stupidity be replaced by equally stupid atheist ones. Maybe, as sweetly tempting as it is, I'm just not as Epicurean as that.

Gee, I hope this doesn't drive me completely and permanently mad.

A Short Manifesto

Whether or not someone believes that God or gods exist is much less important to me today than before I met a lot of New Atheists who proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that atheism is no guarantee that a person is even a little bit bright. I'm pro-environment, pro-multi-culture, pro LGBT rights (which are just human rights, no more and no less), I'm in favor of universal health care and helping homeless people and refugees. Where people stand on issues like those is much more important to me than their religious beliefs. And despite what some New Atheists and some right-wing Christians will try to tell you, a person's religious beliefs or lack of them is no indicator of where they stand on any of those issues.

I'll admit that I tend to think of theology as worse than useless, but I've read enough philosophy to know that theology and philosophy aren't synonymous, even though many theologians and New Atheists seem to disagree. I think that studying history and philosophy is as important as studying science, and for similar reasons. (And history includes the history of religions, plural.) I like Nietzsche's statement (he was a philosopher, kiddies) that life without music would be a mistake. All the arts do is make life bearable. Many New Atheists are very strong in science, but they tend to cultivate the antagonism between science and the humanities, and that antagonism is very unfortunate -- and only a few centuries old, and much more pronounced in the US than in, for example, Germany. Milton wrote about science and Galileo wrote sonnets, and of course there was Leonardo da Vinci. You don't have to choose between science and the arts; in fact, it's very unfortunate when anyone is antagonistic toward one in the supposed name of the other.

Diplomacy

A: Republicans: "All lives matter!"
World: "Cool here are some refugees from Syr..."
Republicans: "lolol not those lives"

B: not all Republicans voted for Trump, let alone support these type of statements. There must be another word that can be subbed here instead of Republicans

A: You are right, no need for the word Republican there.

I disagree. There is some need for the word Republican here, because, of all the Republican elected officials in office who criticized Trump before the election, almost all of them -- not all of them, but almost -- immediately got a brand-new, supportive attitude about him as soon as he won. If you're thinking, "It's like they were sure he was going to lose, and they were just distancing themselves from a loser, instead of sincerely distancing themselves from policies they could never support," Then I agree. It's a lot like that. It's exactly like that.

I'm talking about Republican Senators and Republicans in the House of Representatives. If you look at all Republicans, including former office holders and never-office-holders, it's easier to find criticism of Trump. The thing is, if Trump is to be regarded as unfit to rule, it doesn't matter how many rank-and-file Republicans and Republican governors and mayors want him out -- it's going to take some Republican Senators and Congresspeople in order to impeach, convict and remove him.

That's why it's so important that so many Republicans in the Senate and the House became so much more supportive of Trump as soon as he was elected.

Also, of course, it means that they were either being completely insincere before, or they are completely insincere now: either, before the election, they didn't really think he was unfit to rule, and only said so because they were sure he was going to lose -- or, they really thought he was unfit now, and they still think so, but getting some bills passed and appointments filled is more important to them that the President is -- all of those things they said he was: despicable, unbalanced, dangerous, utterly unfit to lead...

Of course, the diplomatic thing for me to do right now, as a Democrat, would be to forget about that insincerity for now, and practice some insincerity of my own, and be friendly to the Republican Senators and Congresspeople who criticized Trump before the election, because we need them in order to impeach, convict and remove Trump.

So: nevermind what I said before: there's no need for the word "Republican" in that joke. Do I mean that? No, I'm lying, because this is politics. But maybe, if I think it over, I'm actually not lying, because politics is very important, and the main thing right now, the political priority, is dealing with Trump. And maybe those Republican Senators and Congresspeople will seem much more like allies again very soon, when they can't pretend to like Trump anymore. And maybe I'm actually having a little bit more understanding for their shifts in position. I mean, if I want to whip out the l-word, there's the President and his people lying much more egregiously on a daily basis than any Senator or Congressperson of any party does in the average month.

You know how I'm always talking about moral relativism in relation to philosophy and especially in relation to Nietzsche? Well, it also applies to the actual real world, like this. What is truth? Good question, Pilate! Good question!

"Man Muss Das Leben Tanzen"

Diese Plage, diese Seuche von falschen Zitaten! Ihr Armeen von Zitaten-Verbreiterer, die Euch nicht die Muehe machen koennt, erst mal zu ueberpreufen, ob das was Ihr weiterleiten wollt, echt ist.

"Man muss das Leben tanzen." Ist gar nicht schlecht. Haette viellecht dem Nietzsche selbst gut gefallen.

Ist nicht von Nietzsche.

Ich habe das falsche Zitat sehr vielemal gesehen in den letzten Tagen. Zuerst strengte ich mich an, der ich ja alles von Nietzsche eigentlich schon gelesen habe, zu erinnern, wo diese Stelle ist. Da ich mich nicht erinnern konnte, begann der Argwohn.

Dann eine Internet-Suche. Es ist eigentlich nicht schwer, egal, was Abraham Lincoln und Benjamin Franklin ueber Internet-Zitaten sagten, herauszufinden, ob sie echt sind. Zuerst eine einfache Suche nach man muss das leben tanzen. Jede Menge von Treffern sagen dass es von Nietzsche ist, aber man sieht nirgendwo eine Quellenangabe -- Name eines Werkes von Nietzsche, Kapital, usw -- und spaetestens dies sollte einen argwoehnisch werden lassen.

So. Zum Nietzsche Channel. Suche nach "man muss das leben tanzen," und, wie erwartet: kein Treffer.

Man mache sich mal dann und wann ein wenig Muehe!

"Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger." -- Nietzsche (Not True!)

Nietzsche himself delivered a very dramatic demonstration that it's not true. What didn't kill him drove him completely insane and left him a helpless invalid for the last 11 years of his rather short life. He wrote many profound things, but "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker" ("Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger") was not one of them. It's the last of 8 aphorisms on page 11 of the insel taschenbuch edition of Goetzen-Daemmerung, and it's the weakest, least authentic thing on the page. And to make the demonstration of its untruthfulness even more dramatic, and the whole case even more ironic, Nietzsche wrote that just weeks or months before his final, permanent, irreversible breakdown.

Nietzsche was in very deep denial about himself and the state of his health. It would have been much more accurate and honest if, instead of "Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger," he had written something like, "I am in very delicate health, and I must be very careful about what I eat and drink, where I go and what I do. And it would be a great stroke of good fortune for me if I were to meet a physician who is a genius -- soon!"

"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker" ("Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger"), although completely false, is snappy. And so it has been one of the handful of sentences which have made him known to millions of people who have not read his books.

Nietzsche's breakdown occurred very suddenly, early in January, 1889. Still more irony occurs to me: In the last year before the breakdown, Nietzsche wrote and published a great deal, several books, full of swaggering lies about how robustly healthy he now was. He admits that he had had periods of poor health before -- but now, he insists, he is much more than merely okay. The irony is: what if he wouldn't have broken down if hadn't been working so hard on all of those brilliant books (they all contained much brilliance, besides the false swagger and denial about his poor health)?

What if "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich staerker" ("Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger") was actually the very last thing Nietzsche wrote in any of his published works, and was actually the last straw of effort which, although not killing him, utterly snapped all of his remaining strength?

Please, everybody, take good care of yourselves.

Nietzsche On His Atheism

From Ecce Homo, the chapter "Warum ich so klug bin" ("Why I'm So Clever"), in the middle of the 1st paragraph:

»Gott«, »Unsterblichkeit der Seele«, »Erlösung«, »Jenseits«, lauter Begriffe, denen ich keine Aufmerksamkeit, auch keine Zeit geschenkt habe, selbst als Kind nicht, – ich war vielleicht nie kindlich genug dazu? – Ich kenne den Atheismus durchaus nicht als Ergebniss, noch weniger als Ereigniss: er versteht sich bei mir aus Instinkt. Ich bin zu neugierig, zu fragwürdig, zu übermüthig, um mir eine faustgrobe Antwort gefallen zu lassen. Gott ist eine faustgrobe Antwort, eine Undelicatesse gegen uns Denker –, im Grunde sogar bloss ein faustgrobes Verbot an uns: ihr sollt nicht denken!

("God," "immortality of the soul," "salvation," "the beyond," all concepts which never held my attention, to which I also gave no time, not even as a child. Perhaps I was never childish enough for that sort of thing? I'm not familiar with atheism as the result of thinking, even less as an insight. With me it's a natural instinct. I'm too curious, too questionable, too arrogant to be satisfied with a crude answer. God is a crude answer, an impoliteness to us thinkers. In essence it's even a crude prohibition to us: "Thou shalt not think!")

I don't know how Nietzsche could have answered the question of whether or not he was an atheist much more clearly than that. Of course, some people will not be satisfied even with this. Some people are just impossible.

By The Time Nietzsche Was My Age He Had Been Completely Crazy For 10 Years

And I'm feeling a bit frustrated myself, frustrated by the whole not-being-rich-and-famous thing. But I'm not completely crazed by the frustration, not yet. (Although I realize, of course, that anyone who ever says "I'm not crazy" must add, in order to be logical: " -- at least I don't THINK I'm crazy. But if I WAS crazy, how would I KNOW?")

Before he went completely insane all at once early in 1889, Nietzsche had reconciled himself, or so he claimed, with his lack of popular success. Some writers, he said, were destined to be recognized only posthumously, and he counted himself among those. He was wrong about that. He became very famous before he died -- but, unfortunately, not until he had been completely insane for several years. Which kinda spoils it in a way.

Some of you may be asking, "What th' Heck, Steve -- are you actually comparing yourself to Nietzsche now?!"

Yes, I actually am. I finally got tired of just sitting back and waiting for others to start comparing me to people like Nietzsche -- not because of the tragedy of his biography but for the brilliance of his writing. Yeah, I actually am comparing myself to the greatest writers who ever lived. In part because I want to be rich and famous. But also in part because I actually think I'm one of the greatest writers who ever lived, there, I said it. I DESERVE to be rich and famous, there, I said that too.

I deserve huge success BEFORE I die or go completely insane from waiting. (Assuming that I haven't actually already gone completely insane because if I had how would I know?)

When I read Nietzsche saying that when he reads Spinoza he knows that they are kindred spirits, I know what that's like. I feel exactly the same way about Nietzsche. (Although not in every single detail: I don't share Nietzsche's sexism, and I'm a socialist and he was an ivory-tower guy who claimed to be "above" politics. I got over the ivory-tower kind of silliness many years ago.) I feel less so about Spinoza because I'm not nearly as fluent in Latin as I am in German.

Oh well, here I go, pushing "Publish" again and hoping that this post will be The One --

Anti-Racists Formulate Concepts Of The Superman, Racists Come Along And Misunderstand Them

The comic book character Superman was created in 1933 by two Jewish guys who presumably were not Nazis.

The term superman is -- or was, for a while -- generally translated into German as Uebermensch. The Nazis often referred to themselves as Uebermenschen. The German term Uebermensch was coined by Nietzsche, who hated anti-Semites and racists in general.

In English, before the creation of the comic book character, the most prominent user of the term superman was George Bernard Shaw, also an anti-racist. Some people think that Shaw's support of eugenics was racist, but, on the contrary, he favored breeding across ethnic and class lines -- the exact opposite of racist goals of "racial purity." In direct opposition to racist pseudo-science, Shaw's assertions that benefits would come from broadening the gene pool are scientifically sound.

Nietzsche first mentions the Uebermensch in Also sprach Zarathustra, published in 1883. Shaw first mentioned the superman in his play Man and Superman, written in 1903, first performed in 1905. It has often been erroneously asserted that Shaw got many of his ideas directly from from Nietzsche. Shaw himself attempted to clear this up, saying that, although he liked Nietzsche's works very much, he first began to read them after he had read assertions that he had gotten various ideas from Nietzsche -- but the error persists. When Shaw read Nietzsche, he found that they had much in common -- such as being frequently misunderstood by people who very annoyingly claimed to be championing their causes without first having gone to the trouble of reading their works.

An annoying tendency which still hasn't died out.

Bollinger's Addendum To Bollinger's Axiom:

People will often judge unintelligent assertions uncritically if their source is someone regarded as intelligent.

In other words:

What was so bad is not that Kipling said that East and West would never meet, but that so many people took this ridiculous assertion so seriously because it was written by Kipling, and Kipling had a Nobel Prize.

What was so bad was not Pauling's advocacy of megadoses of vitamins, but that so many people took this ridiculous advice so seriously, because Pauling had 2 Nobel Prizes.

What is so bad is not Hawking's ridiculous fear of artificial intelligence, but that so many people assume that there's nothing ridiculous about it, because, Hey -- it's Hawking.

People, even very bright people, make mistakes fairly often. It's referred to as being human. I'm not so much concerned about the mistakes listed above committed by Kipling, Pauling and Hawking. I'd put those under the "everybody's human" category.

What bothers me here is the widespread uncritical acceptance of bad ideas expressed by intellectual authorities.

Nietzsche was bright enough to see that it's wrong to accept what anyone says uncritically. And unlike many other intellectuals -- his one-time friend Richard Wagner comes immediately to mind -- Nietzsche was not so vain that he wanted uncritical disciples; in fact, he explicitly said that he wanted none such. See, for example, the motto to the 2nd edition of the Froehlichen Wissenschaft.

The Misinterpreting-Nietzsche Industry Appears To Be Thriving

Or shall we call it Elisabeth-Foerster-Nietzscheanism, after its founder?

A Google News search results in many "think" pieces (I use the term sarcastically here) comparing Nietzsche to -- Donald Trump.

One piece said that Trump has become Amurrka's 2nd-most significant Nietzschean, after -- Ayn Rand.

The #2 Elisabeth-Foerster-Nietzschean, perhaps. The #2 shameless blowhard spouting racism and chasing money and not afraid to mis-use the name of Nietzsche or anyone else in his thoroughly vulgar exploits. Nietzsche never had a lot of money, and he never complained about that. He didn't build huge monstrosities, architectural monuments to his own ego which went bankrupt one after the other. Elisabeth was involved in a few boondoggles and wasted some investors' money, but not Friedrich. The architecture with which he was most closely associated were the attic garrets in which he wrote his books. Elisabeth led some vile right-wing political parties, but Friedrich wouldn't touch politics with a 10-foot-pole. He said that the problem with the thinker trying to be a party politician was that he thought his way all too quickly all the way through the party. Trump brags about what big crowds he draws. (He likes them so much that sometimes he pays people to attend his events and pretend that they came their on their own.)

Nietzsche didn't merely hate crowds -- crowds were the quintessence of what he hated.

But of course, if you've ever read as much as one of Nietzsche's books, all the way from the front to the back, and not just a few dubious quotes from some Nietzsche For Dummies anthology, then I haven't said anything you didn't already know. You already know that Nietzsche's books weren't in the same genre as The Art of the Deal, and that the comparison of him to Trump is mind-bogglingly far from accurate. And you already know that Elisabeth-Foerster-Nietzscheanism is still alive, thanks to morons like Rand and Trump and their herds of stupid fans. And maybe you're wondering why someone who claims to admire Nietzsche is even bothering to write about the likes of Trump and Rand. And if you're wondering that, perhaps you've got a very good point.

But if you've also read some of these comparisons of Trump to Nietzsche and are wondering whom to believe, me or those other guys, may I suggest you read something like this, front to back:

Understanding Nietzsche -- It's Not For Everybody Who Claims To

Mel Brooks, in a 2013 Q&A with Judd Apatow, talking about making Blazing Saddles back in the early 70's and worrying about whether he was going too far:

Brooks recalled asking John Calley, then head of production at Warner Bros., "'Can we beat the s--- out of a little old lady? Can we punch a horse?' He said to me, 'If you're going to go up to the bell, ring it. He told me that early in my career, and I never forgot it. I had cavemen masturbating [in History of the World, Part 1]. I rang it." (Emphasis mine.)

A few years ago I was listening to Brooks' voice-over commentary on a DVD of Blazing Saddles, and he mentioned Calley giving him that advice, and I've never forgotten it, although I can't claim that I've lived up to it as well as Brooks has. (And by the way, doesn't it sound from this anecdote as if Calley was a wonderful guy for directors to work for?)

Mel Brooks knows his Nietzsche, unlike many people who speak and write about Nietzsche, including some philosophy professors who do so for a living.

Why do so many people insist upon saying such nonsense about Nietzsche? Does it have a lot to do with his own sister having grossly distorted his work, first before he lost his mind, and then much more so afterwards, when she was appointed the worst-possible executrix of his estate and writings? Did Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche found a tradition of nonsense about Nietzsche which has been running parallel for 140 years to the tradition actually based upon his philosophy? Do we need to separate the students of Nietzsche into those of Friedrich and those of Elisabeth?

That actually would explain quite a lot.

And just a heads-up to you discliples of Elisabeth, those of you who simply will not stop making stuff up and then claiming that Nietzsche said it -- I'm coming after you. And when I come up to that bell, I'm going to ring it. Those of you who make a metaphysical mountain out of the molehill of aphorism 295 in Jenseits, for example, squeezing out of that mention of Dionysus the assertion that Nietzsche was a practitioner of ancient Greek polytheism. Do you also claim that Nietzsche said that dragons are real and that they and lions can talk? Objectively, if you can get away with using Jenseits to argue that Nietzsche was not an atheist -- nevermind that he said that he was atheist, about as emphatically as anyone ever could (Ecce Homo, "Warum ich zu klug bin," 1st paragraph) -- then you ought to be able to convince people, based on Zarathustra's speech "Von den drei Verwandlungen" (p. 22 in the Goldmann edition of Also sprach Zarathustra, ISBN 3442075262), that dragons and lions talk to each other.

Obviously, objectivity and making sense have little to do with the aims of the Elisabeth Förster-Nietzschians. Indeed, they seem positively allergic to good common sense. Something they have in common with theologians. And like theologians, they love to claim that Nietzsche really was religious after all. If you actually read Nietzsche, you'll come across countless passages in which he says that he loathes theologians -- and who can blame him? him above all?

I think I know how Schopenhauer felt about Hegel.

Nietzsche And Atheism

"I'm not saying that Nietzsche believed in the literal existence of deities."

Good, then you don't deny that he was an atheist, because that's literally all that the word means. -- Oh, but you do deny it:

"I wouldn't call him an atheist."

One thing's for sure: he's safely dead and buried and unable to directly contradict any words that anybody puts into his mouth, or complain about what people call him. The fact is that he did refer to himself as an atheist, and never objected to being described that way. I can't imagine him denying he was an atheist any more than I can imagine him objecting to someone saying that his eyes were whatever color they were.

-- Wait: actually, I can imagine Nietzsche objecting to someone referring to the color of his eyes. Nietzsche detested antisemites, and spent some time and energy disassociating himself from some of them, including antisemitic politicians such as his sister's husband. Let's say for the sake of argument that Nietzsche's eyes were blue, and that his sister or brother-in-law was trying for the umpteenth time to associate him with their antisemitic crusade, and mentioned his blue eyes in the context of some tripe about racial types -- yes, Nietzsche might well have objected to that.

I have heard, although I haven't been able to confirm it, that Nietzsche sometimes denied that he was German, and asserted that he was Polish. That's easy to believe, because he detested the nationalism of Bismarck's newly-united Germany.

I emphasized that Nietzsche was an atheist, not because of anything in Nietzsche's time, but because of the current phenomenon of atheists denying that they are atheists because they are disgusted by the New Atheists. I too am disgusted by New Atheists, I just don't feel inclined just yet to surrender a perfectly-good adjective to Dawkins, Harris & Co, and let them make it exclusively their own.

But I can imagine such a time coming, if the New Atheists succeed in making the term "atheist" synonymous with themselves to a sufficient degree.

One big reason why I don't feel inclined to grant them that success without a fight is because of all the safely-dead-and-buried atheists, like Russell, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Twain and Nietzsche, who would have been just as disgusted with the New Atheists as I and the atheists who these days prefer to call themselves non-believers or skeptics. But back then they called themselves atheists, loudly and proudly, which is where we came in. If we who actually are the intellectual heirs of Russell, Sartre, et al, give up the adjective atheist to New Atheists, it will lend support to the impression that they, not we, are the intellectual heirs of those bygone thinkers. And the New Atheists are already spreading more than enough confusion and nonsense as it is.

PS: I almost got through an entire blog post without remembering to mention how much Nietzsche hated Christian theology, and would've objected to the way that some theologians since his death have used his name as though he didn't detest it all all -- a misusage which, of course, is aided by not calling Nietzsche an atheist.

I was just thinking to myself that Nietzsche should be read in German,

because he wrote so well that translations almost always mess up what he said. (Can't read German? Nietzsche is a great reason to learn!) I also thought: Why comment on Nietzsche? How can a comment, even in German almost as elegant as his, improve on what he wrote? Then I read in a Reddit Nietzsche-subreddit: "All comments must be in English."

(Reddit is, to quote Wiki, "an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially an online bulletin board system[...]Reddit entries are organized into areas of interest called 'subreddits.'")

Then I sighed and once again gave up trying to discuss Nietzsche with people. When I discuss Nietzsche with cats, the discussion can be a bit one-sided, but I tend to get fewer silly responses.

Although Nietzsche in undeniably a philosopher, he is also undeniably a poet, and artists (including poets, musicians, etc) have made made much better use of his work than have philosophers.

Now, philosophers might well dispute that, and they might even be right, but you know what? That discussion would bore the living crap out of me. And how can philosophers possibly be right about Nietzsche when they're boring? How can that not constitute entirely missing the point? Eh, let them be right if they're right, I don't care.

Artists have also made better use of Freud than have psychologists including psychiatrists. I don't currently hang out with any artists who are fluent in German and thoroughly unfamiliar with Nietzsche and Freud.

(The rororo Bildmonograph on Thomas Mann does not even mention Theodor Fontane! I know, that was an abrupt tangent, but still, it fits here perfectly.)

I should get out more, the lack of my friends who are artists who are fluent in German and familiar with Nietzsche and Freud illustrates that, however, if I knew such an artist, would we discuss Nietzsche? As I hinted above and have said before on this blog, really the only sensible comment on Nietzsche is WHOAH, READ THIS!! and since we'd already done so, perhaps my hypothetical artist friend would say something much more sensible like "You wanna get high and go bowling?" or "Get out of my apartment, I'm trying to work!!"

From The Foreword To Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil)

Es scheint, dass alle grossen Dinge, um der Menschheit sich mit ewigen Forderungen in das Herz einzuschreiben, erst als ungeheure und furchteinflössende Fratzen über die Erde hinwandeln müssen: eine solche Fratze war die dogmatische Philosophie, zum Beispiel die Vedanta-Lehre in Asien, der Platonismus in Europa. Seien wir nicht undankbar gegen sie, so gewiss es auch zugestanden werden muss, dass der schlimmste, langwierigste und gefährlichste aller Irrthümer bisher ein Dogmatiker-Irrthum gewesen ist, nämlich Plato's Erfindung vom reinen Geiste und vom Guten an sich. Aber nunmehr, wo er überwunden ist, wo Europa von diesem Alpdrucke aufathmet und zum Mindesten eines gesunderen - Schlafs geniessen darf, sind wir, deren Aufgabe das Wachsein selbst ist, die Erben von all der Kraft, welche der Kampf gegen diesen Irrthum grossgezüchtet hat. Es hiess allerdings die Wahrheit auf den Kopf stellen und das Perspektivische, die Grundbedingung alles Lebens, selber verleugnen, so vom Geiste und vom Guten zu reden, wie Plato gethan hat; ja man darf, als Arzt, fragen: "woher eine solche Krankheit am schönsten Gewächse des Alterthums, an Plato? hat ihn doch der böse Sokrates verdorben? wäre Sokrates doch der Verderber der Jugend gewesen? und hätte seinen Schlierling verdient?" - Aber der Kampf gegen Plato, oder, um es verständlicher und für's "Volk" zu sagen, der Kampf gegen den christlich-kirchlichen Druck von Jahrtausenden - denn Christenthum ist Platonismus für's "Volk" - hat in Europa eine prachtvolle Spannung des Geistes geschaffen, wie sie auf Erden noch nicht da war: mit einem so gespannten Bogen kann man nunmehr nach den fernsten Zielen schiessen.

(It seems that all great things, in order to inscribe themselves upon our hearts, must first wander the Earth as monstrous and terrifying masks: dogmatic philosophy was such a mask, for example Vedantic philosophy in Asia, and Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to them, as surely as it must be admitted that the worst, the longest-lasting and most dangerous of all errors so far has been an error of dogmatism: namely, Plato's invention of the pure spirit and of goodness as an eternal being. But now that it has been overcome, now that Europe has awoken from this nightmare and may enjoy at least -- a healthier sleep; now we, whose task is wakefulness itself, have inherited all of the strength which grew big and strong in the struggle against the error. True, to speak of the spirit and goodness as Plato did would be to stand truth upon its head and to deny perspective, the basic condition of all life. As a physician, one may ask, "Why did this illness occur in the most beautiful creature of antiquity, in Plato? Did the evil Socrates in fact corrupt him? Was Socrates in fact the corrupter of youth, who deserved his hemlock?" -- But the struggle against Plato, or, to express it in terms easier for the "masses" to understand, the struggle against thousands of years' worth of Christian-ecclesiastical pressure -- for Christianity is Platonic philosophy for the "masses" -- has created, in Europe, a magnificent strength of the mind, never seen before on Earth: with a bow strung so tightly, one can now shoot at the farthest targets.)

So -- Christianity was a sort of sparring partner, and now -- or then, around 1885, when Nietzsche wrote that -- the previously-Christian European mind had grown so strong, just by surviving Christianity, that it could do great things.

A few minds have awoken from the Platonic nightmare -- his own mind certainly did -- and some are still sound asleep. Some have become atheists without shaking off one bit of the underlying Platonic sleep.

Shooting at the farthest targets. I think that clearly out-Nostradamuses Nostradamus in predicting space travel.

What would Nietzsche make of us, 130 years later? A woman's about to become President of the United States, Nietzsche wouldn't care for that at all. Germany has a female head of state. Britain's most butch head of state by far was a woman. Maybe certain realities would wake Nietzsche up from his deep sexist nightmare.

Yes, Reading Schiller's Historical Works Was Idiotic

But don't worry, I stopped after a few dozen pages' worth of Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung. So awful! Let me ask you, when you think of Lutheranism and Calvinism, is the first thing which comes to your mind -- freedom?

Yeah, me neither. But to Schiller it seemed much too plain to need any discussion that they equaled freedom, and that Catholicism equaled pure wretched evil, human misery and slavery. Except when it didn't, like when he talked about the brilliant Templars, or other brilliant Catholic orders.

When Schiller thought of Protestant freedom in the 16th century, did he think of peasants' revolts? No. To him, that sort of thing was "Rebellion," which was an even worse horror than Catholicism itself -- the horrible kind of Catholicism, not the brilliant knights in shining armor on white horses.

No, freedom was exemplified by Dutch businessmen. Catholicism was the religion of artists (if Schiller was saying here that he wasn't an artist, then finally we agree on something, except that I'm afraid he's not nearly that consistent), and Protestantism was the religion of commerce. And freedom.

I don't know. Maybe Schiller had some money invested in businesses and was a libertarian, and when he said "freedom" he meant laissez-faire, and when he said "tyranny" he meant taxes, just like a 21st-century libertarian bozo, and there was nothing more complicated about him than that.

Whatever. Earlier today I gave up on Schiller, and I started looking for the passage in Nietzsche where Nietzsche says that it is a measure of Beethoven's genius that he could take something as pedestrian as Schiller's "Ode to Joy," put it in his 9th symphony and turn it into something great, thus giving a great gift to an entire nation which until then had been suffering under endless non-musical recitations of Schiller's extremely-popular poem.

I couldn't find that passage. I googled nietzsche beethoven schiller, and looked and looked and looked, and man oh man has there been a lot of nonsense written about Nietzsche and Beethoven and Schiller. But it's okay, I just got back into my volumes of Nietzsche. I prefer the editions from Insel-Verlag. So everything turned out okay. (Standard disclaimer: everything Nietzsche writes about women and war in his philosophical works is nonsense, the rest is incomparably brilliant.)

Philosophy And Politics And Tania Lombrozo's Piece For NPR

In a recent piece for NPR, Tania Lombrozo called for philosophers to be more engaged in public life.

I'm very much interested in philosophy, so why do I have a negative reaction to this NPR article? Perhaps it aroused the Epicurean in me. In ancient Greece, Stoic philosophers believed that the more fortunate members of society had a duty to serve society, while Epicurean philosophers thought that the wise thing to do was to enjoy life with a circle of close fiends and ignore the rest of the world as thoroughly as possible. Perhaps I have a Stoic approach to politics, except that I want to keep my Epicurean philosophy separate from it. Oscar Wilde loved art, including theatre, and he wanted to see society become more democratic and more responsive to the needs of those who needs were greatest, and yet he was opposed to the Realist plays which were in a great vogue during his lifetime, plays which sought to address social inequities. Wilde insisted: "All art is quite useless." Perhaps he felt that plays were the last thing which were suited to enacting great social change. And perhaps my involvement with philosophy boils down to something resembling Wilde's involvement with art -- it's something I dearly love, but I wouldn't recommend it as a cure for society's ills.

If we're going to involve philosophers in public life -- what kind of philosophers? Philosophers tend to constantly and sharply disagree with one another about just about everything imaginable, and have since ancient Greece. As far as I can tell, the most influential single philosopher in the politics of the US of the past 100 years has been Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind and instructor, at the University of Chicago, of a very nasty and powerful brood of Republican neocons.

My favorite philosopher is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was emphatically ivory-tower. He wanted no part of any political party. Epicurean all the way, he was. "Beneath him and behind him" was how, in his opinion, every true philosopher should regard politics. And given Nietzsche's views on women, perhaps it's very much for the best that he never involved himself in politics. (Saying that Nietzsche is my favorite philosopher is far from saying that I agree with him about everything. In fact, I disagree with just about every single thing Nietzsche says about women in his philosophical works. Turning directly from those works to the letters he wrote to actual individual women, it's hard to believe that the misogynistic philosopher and the downright nice letter-writer are one and the same.)

I know of only 2 philosopher-kings, both Roman Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Julian. Neither one a bad Emperor -- Julian is admirable for his concerted although unsuccessful attempt to oppose Christianity's intolerance of all other religions -- but neither one a particularly interesting philosopher either. (I think a case can be made that both Alexander the Great and Napoleon were philosopher-kings, and quite interesting philosophers, but I mention that only as an aside in this post because the general consensus is that they were not philosophers.)

I must be honest and point out that one reason for my negative response to Lombrozo's article is that I have heard of none of the living philosophers mentioned in it. I read mostly philosophers from bygone eras. Peter Sloterdijk, and dead guys. For all I know, all the people Lombrozo mentioned are perfectly brilliant, and their participation in public life could be nothing but tremendously good, and I'm missing an incredible amount of top-notch philosophizing which puts Sloterdijk to shame. I doubt it, but it's possible.