Istanbul attacks

Ahh, but I have long believed that a lot of what Nietzsche says is not necessairaly intended to be taken as gospel but to make you think about the issue. His anti-Christian theory may be repulsive but it also makes a lot of sense. One of the phrases from 'Beyond Good and Evil' that I particularly liked was talking about the 'philosopher of the future', 'one has to get rid of the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with many'. Admittedly after that he does go on to slate the notions of common good but either way, he is undoubtedly a great philosopher. One of the things I like is his style, the way that a lot of what he says can appear irrellivant but actually has its value in getting you to either think about the issue being discussed (if you are a philosopher) or get bored and leave alone what you can not hope to understand (the rest).

I know what you mean about his prose, often I read a passage and think 'that would make so much more sense in German'.

I do not agree with everything Nietzsche says, obviously, but I am indebtted to him because with many philosophers its easy to read what they say and basically agree with everything because its so logical until it takes you to somewhere you didn't want to go (Plato being the master of this). With Nietzsche you HAVE to think about it, even if you don't agree with him. I often think that this is his aim.

Another chap who is well worth reading is Michael De Mortain, fantastic philosopher.

 

Good post, Stefan!

No doubt that Nietzsche was indeed a great philosopher that had a great impact on the humanity. Unfortunately that impact was caused by misinterpretations of his theories. One curious example is that Nietzsche believed that the German people should rule the world, but for achieving so he states that the Germans and Slavs should create a new race and had to be helped by the Jews, the master economical experts. Maybe Hitler read it in Polish...

And what you say is truth; you might not agree with Nietzsche's theories, but surely they make you think for a while... and you must consider his opinion!

What I mostly dislike of him is that he disdains every other philosopher because he think he's the only one right. In "Twilight of the Idols" (I don't know if that's the apropriate translation) he does nothing but criticising everyone and not telling you exactly why. "Because I say so!" "Socrates was a vulgar man from the crowd. Hegel was an inept..." Things like that.

But I liked
"Also spake Zarathustra". His prose is very good. And of course, his Übermensch is always misunderstood (perhaps because he's too ambiguos and harsh some times) but the main point of his theories is the transmutation of values and mores. It doesn't have anything to do with eugenesics and genetics...

[ 03. December 2003, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]

 

Actually, I have often felt that one of the biggest damages Nazism did was to make certain things intellectually unacceptable, Nietzsche is one of them. To say 'I agree with Nietzsche' is as good as proclaiming yourself a Nazi, sickening! Then again I think that may be one of his problems with his style, it is all about getting you to think. If an idiot reads it, takes it all literally and likes it, well we have seen what can happen.

I agree with you on his slating of other Philosophers, though he does raise some good points: 'In every philosophy there is a point at which the philosophers conviction appears on the scene'. Very logical really, I agree with a lot of his general comments like that. BGE is full of them and they are often right, philosophers are 'actors', they do present their belifs and theories as fact. The difference is that Nietzsche sets himself apart from them when in fact he exactly the same. Actually I was really impressed that he had the guts to recognise all this but rather let down when he said 'but im different'. You must admit that he had a point about Socrates though .

Socrates deserves a topic of his own at least, I have so much respect for that man, who devoted his life to teaching a society to value reason above 'common sense' and then died for it. As someone (De Botton?) said 'We should not look to Socrates for advice on escaping a death sentence; we should look to him as an extreme example of how to maintain confidence with an intelligent position which has met with illogical opposition' in other words, he shows us that if your position is well reasoned beyond logical doubt, if it meets with opposition from those who have not reached their conclusion through reason we should stick by our guns, even if it means death!

De Montaine, a man I envy for his knowledge (particularly of Greek and Latin) and his Library, one of the inscriptions he had on his roof beams from Terence that is of immense poignance to me is 'Homo sum, humani a me nihil alienum puto' or 'I am a man, nothing human is foreign to me'.

Anyhow, bed is calling and I have work to do, I envy Martin for his vampire like stamina .

EDIT: Carl, thats the way mate. I'm not a Scot but its just a bit of friendly advice, can have dire concequences . Actually, since we were on the subject of Korea, one of my fathers old clients was a vet of Imjin ridge, well, he was part of the Irish (guards?) unit that went in after the Glosters came out, apparently they had tons of ammo and so on left . Then again I'm not going to take anything away from the Glorious Glosters, was born beneath the cathedral spires (not literally but nearly) and am proud of it for some reason.

[ 02. December 2003, 06:29 PM: Message edited by: Stefan ]

 

Only you guys could get from Istanbul attacks to philosophy so fast.

[ 03. December 2003, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: Eisenhower ]

 

It took 3 pages, hardly fast!

 

Because it's better than discuss unfounded statements...

Stefan, now you've confused me... Who are you talking about , Michel de Montaigne or Jacques Maritain?

The exact problem was that many idiots read it, wrote their own books and published their opinions in Viennese newspapers, where a failed-artist avidly read them...

Nietzsche is the king of it...

Socrates wasn't a man from the crowd. Historically speaking he belonged to a middle-class family and was a very distinguished soldier who had a house, wife, sons and slaves. That isn't exactly from the crowd...

And still, I like the young Nietzsche far better. His theory about Apolo's and Dionisos' worlds is just marvellous. I like his early works much more. Well, if we take into account that when he wrote his last works he was completely nuts...

Did you know he was also a music composer? But when he stopped composing someone asked him: "Master, why did you stop composing?" to what he answered: "Because I'm must be NUMBER ONE in everything I do, but with Richard Wagner alive, I can't be composer number one..." Now, after he saw "Parsifal" he started hating Wagner and suddenly changed his musical visions to the spot of writing a letter to Georges Bizet, telling him that "Carmen" was the best musical piece Humanity had seen. There was just a little problem: Georges Bizet had been dead for 11 years...

 

I was talking about Michael De Montaigne (which I managed to spell totally wrong, oops).

You have my point exactly about FN, it just goes to show how ignorant the Nazi leadership was in fact, to be able to selectively read Nietzsches works and so greatly misinterpret them (after all he described the Germans as a mongrel race and wrote about what the world owes the Jews). Socrates was however 'vulgar' so far as his contempraries were concerned, walking around in a dirty cloak asking people 'rediculous' questions, quite vulgar. You also have to bear in mind that so far as Greek society was concerned, Socrates equals were 'the crowd' since no one else particularly 'counted' as such.

It is a shame Nietzsche went nuts, oh well. I knew about his compositions, never heared any though from what I heared he wasn't bad. I seem to remember reading somewhere that part of the bustup with Wagner was related to Wagners wife. I hadn't heared that about Bizet, sounds about right though.

 

Stefan, if you want to have a laugh someday I recommend you to read some philosophical essays by Alfred Rosenberg and Martin Bormann... Hitler is a kind of Rousseau compared with those two...

Socrates could have been considered vulgar because the way he acted and dressed. I imagine what most people thought: "Let's hide somewhere. Here comes Socrates! If he sees us we'll lose all day talking his bs*!" and particularily that he was sarcastic and acid with all the politicians, sophists and aristocrats... Not an agreeable person for the people of the time...

Also, let me recommend you a very, very good philosophical book, rather than a History one. I'm sure it will be very easy to find in Britain. "Rise and fall of nazi Germany" by T. L. Jarman. The first two chapters, tittled "The influence of History" and "The beginnings of megalomania" are most excellent philosophical, historical and sociological analysis that I'm sure you'll enjoy very much. The detailed history of nazi Germany can't match the quality and the details of Shirer's similarly tittled book, but Shirer fails to give such a concise interpretation of German past. Besides, Jarman, being a British historian makes wonderful comparissons of the two peoples; British and German. Why if they are so alike dveloped into two so different nations? And it makes you realise that even if the steps taht lead Hitler to power were a bunch ofvery unfateful coincidences for History, what happened later wasn't. The German people had been preparing for WWII since the Roman Empire's times... Really, really good!

You'll find very easily a cheap copy over there, I'm sure!

 

I think I already have it, or at least my Dad does. I will have to look out for Bormans stuff. Actually we looked into the affect of Roman times on 1930's Germany and so on the other yeah, it was very interesting. Unfortunatly I have a fairly chunky reading list already so we shall see.

 

The Kosovo effort is a bit hard to tell, since the UN wasn't involved per se. They only authorized troops from K-FOR to be deployed, which meant lots of NATO countries plus a few neutrals.

I did find the number of US official UN peacekeepers as of June 30, 2001, however. At this moment there were 797 US personnel (1 troop, 756 civilian police, and 40 observers) in worldwide UN peace operations. This accounted for 1.8% of total UN peacekeepers numbering 44,278.