Sunday, February 20, 2011

Ohhh that Nietzche

So we are reading a lot of Nietzche in my critical thinking class and today I finally sat down and crack open my first book of the year. I tried to read Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil , and I just could not do it. Whatever brilliant points Nietzsche is making here, I can't even make out what they are. When he isn't complaining about other philosophers for paragraphs at a time, he's throwing in Latin phrases for no reason other than the fact that throwing in some Latin makes your sentence 500% smarter, or rambling about nothing forever with tons of obscure sentences that you have a master's degree to even hope to decipher. I can't even critique Nietzsche's philosophy, he's so far arrogant I can't even make out what his philosphy is underneath all that "prophetic words"t he uses.Maybe we are jumping into hard writters too soon? Maybe is like picking up a journal article in quantum chromodynamics and not understand it, same with Nietzche, expecting to be able to just pick up one of the most difficult philosophers and just read him. Why? I know that reading serious works requires serious background and serious training but if a writer isn't able to convey their point to the reader, then the writer is at fault. You can't blame the reader for not being willing to read a dozen other books first. The reader gives the writer their livelihood, so the writer owes it to the reader to make things as easy to understand as is reasonably possible. I have learned one important thing though. Intellectual does not necessarily mean good.

17 comments:

  1. luckily the books I read is usually fantasy, no latin there. haha

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  2. a transcript of the common conscience

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  3. yeah i hate when people make things more complicated than it needs to be

    try to get someone more experienced to decipher it for you

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  4. ough this reminds me of the saying 'never use ten words when seven will do'. nice post though... concise!

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  5. So true, I think that some books are just written in order to make you feel bad because you don't understand their "intellectual" standpoint

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  6. I love Nietzsche. I always recommend starting with Thus Spake Zarathustra. His points are more clearly laid out for the philosophical novice as compared to other works. A good edition will also have plenty of contextual notes to help you along. As far as communicating points, his work, like many philosophers, was written with an audience in mind that had some assumed background, so I wouldn't fault him for not being clear to someone just jumping into it.
    Keep at it. I've found Nietzsche to be very rewarding reading.

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  7. Nietzsche isn't my favorite philosopher... I'm more into Kantian ethics... I'll hop over to Utilitarianism from time to time haha

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  8. Nietzche is hard to absorb in large doses. I recommend listening to him instead of reading him. It will let you osmose into it a little more, and reading will be much easier afterward.

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  9. I've always enjoyed reading Nietzsche...we read his work in my first-ever philosophy class.

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  10. Nietzche is amazing, i love his books

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  11. Philosophical discussions are always easier to follow and comprehend than the source material, in my opinion.

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  12. Very interesting read, I find it funny you mention he throws in latin phrases to make it seem smarter. :P

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  13. Nice post, enjoyed it reading it...following.

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  14. I've heard mixed opinions. I'm half tempted to read a few of his works just to see what all the 'hype' is about.

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  15. Good is an opinion, while I agree that Nietzche is full of himself, his works aren't quite as polluted with fluff as you claim.

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