Surely the best way to cultivate greater people is through actually ensuring as many people as possible are materially well-off instead of arbitrarily enslaving a bunch of them? I understand Nietzsche wants to (re)develop a sort of aristocracy and to some extent you can't help that being parasitical towards the larger society but how the fuck does ruining the entire existence of millions of people through slavery, war and cruelty help with that? Wouldn't you rather have a large swathe of people capable of producing much in leisure time? Yeah they'd mostly create trash but that would only make the good stand out even more. Meanwhile in the elitist system that Nietzsche seems to propose you'll just run the risk of dooming a ton of potentially great artists, philosophers and scientists to the trenches of poverty, misery, pointless suffering, and consequently either religion or suicidality, and decadence.
>>24777540don't care much for neetche, but I'm pretty sure the whole point is suffering. it builds character, you know.
>>24777540I think Nietzsche's response would amount to at least two points, one being that there simply is no possibility of universal enlightenment, that leveling really amounts to leveling down and not up. The other point would be a contention over how great a people can be when embedded in creature comforts. Both points can be weighed according to where we're at right now, where material conforts and acquisitions are several orders of magnitude greater than they ever were before the last century, and where nominal access to information is simply the highest its ever been. But do we have great people today? Can we really, with full confidence, say that artists and philosophers and scientists are greater today than they've ever been? And, before one counters that science as a body of knowledge is greater, are the scientists themselves greater than a Newton, or are they, measured as a whole, just data laborers?
>>24777558I'm sure there's lots of space to make use of the character growth you get from being tortured to death or getting killed in a warzone for some 'higher culture' enacted by aristocrats who hate you for no reason
>>24777564I agree on the first point, like I said most of what would be produced would be trash anyways. But is that a problem? All societies have their trash. As for two, I don't think creature comforts and actual well-being should be conflated. Well-being here means more like increasing the ability to be physically healthy, to cultivate traits that enable personal independence, to be able to deal with hardship, hell even to not be affronted with fucking advertising for unhealthy garbage food. Society as it stands is thoroughly decadent and has confused momentary pleasure with health, but I doubt that what Nietzsche proposes politically is the 'solution' to that. Especially like he says it breaks men when they suffer without a purpose, but he basically encourages that we start making millions of people suffer through horrible lives for the 'benefit' of a small group of artists or whatever. Especially strange since it disregards the fact that technological development changes the amount of work that needs to be done to enable a free lifestyle anyways.
>>24777575>I agree on the first point, like I said most of what would be produced would be trash anyways. But is that a problem? All societies have their trashGranted, but consider the difference even between ancient trash like the demagogue Cleon, and modern trash; Cleon still led a force to take Pylos and give the Spartans the most surprising black eye in the Peloponnesian War. Are our demagogues not pale cowards in comparison?>As for two, I don't think creature comforts and actual well-being should be conflatedI thought I was careful not to conflate those, and speak only to what you raised in OP ("ensuring as many people as possible are materially well-off"). Now, given the difference in stance between this comment and OP, I take it that on reflection you don't accept being materially well-off to be simply good, but then you and Nietzsche would actually be in some agreement on at least that point.>Nietzsche proposes politically is the 'solution' to that. Especially like he says it breaks men when they suffer without a purpose, but he basically encourages that we start making millions of people suffer through horrible lives for the 'benefit' of a small group of artists or whatever.Nietzsche's not suggesting starting wars just to start wars, nor is he encouraging torture just to torture. It's clear that he thinks the arrangements of most of human history, with some few being in charge to rule and give meaning to the many, was better, and it's clear that you disagree. But are you really sure that all of life before the 19th century or so for humanity almost as a whole was simply horrible? And I don't just mean "people died from the common cold," but you're sure that self-rule of the many, which is precisely what leads us to the cultural decadence you reject, is good or better simply?
>>24777608>It's clear that he thinks the arrangements of most of human history, with some few being in charge to rule and give meaning to the many, was better, and it's clear that you disagree. But are you really sure that all of life before the 19th century or so for humanity almost as a whole was simply horrible? And I don't just mean "people died from the common cold," but you're sure that self-rule of the many, which is precisely what leads us to the cultural decadence you reject, is good or better simply?Actually my critique was hardly that. I have a very low opinion of democracy for the reasons here ascribed, so maybe I wasn't clear in what I meant to communicate. I get the impression that (and I'm hardly an expert so maybe I'm just wrong lol) Nietzsche thinks it *necessary* for people to be outright enslaved, tortured and murdered to be able to cultivate an aristic aristocracy. I'm not against hierarchical systems as is at all and in fact I even am somewhat supportive of the idea that we ultimately need visionaries that others operate in service of, but to me that doesn't per se mean we need to subject the majority of people, or anyone really, to abject impoverishment and slavery. Of course, I understand that specifically when it comes to war it can't always be avoided, and as such it's not productive to be unreasonably fearful of the prospect or becoming a pacifist unwilling to train themselves for that eventuality. But when we speak of other things it feels like Nietzsche acts like the world, technologically, still works like it did in ancient times or something from time to time and it's all such a zero sum game that you will just ruin your entire culture if you don't have a bunch of people massively benefitting from the rest. Does that make sense or am I just being confused?
>>24777622>I get the impression that (and I'm hardly an expert so maybe I'm just wrong lol) Nietzsche thinks it *necessary* for people to be outright enslaved, tortured and murdered to be able to cultivate an aristic aristocracy.I think "enslaved" is correct (at the least he thinks that most people should be formally servile), but I don't think it's true that his expectation is of rampant criminality, since none of it contributes to the distinction he holds between the noble and the base. Now, he does turn up the heat in some passages in The Antichrist and Ecce Homo, for example:>The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity.Now this lends itself to our expectation that Nietzsche encourages criminality, but that would be to fill in what he in fact does not say, where the perishing of the "weak and botched" is *as rulers*; no aristocracy can stand without relying on a servant or slave class, and especially if that latter class is being killed indiscriminately, and Nietzsche knows that. But this gets into maybe a more evident problem with Nietzsche, which I would readily concede, which is his allowance for misunderstanding of his hyperbolic rhetoric to make his point. Now, someone might say, "that sounds like cope," but Nietzsche himself says records in his notebooks the thought that "it is today necessary to speak temporarily in a coarse manner and to act coarsely. What is fine and concealed is no longer understood, not even by those who are related to us. That of which one does not speak loudly and cry out, is not there." And this coarse manner he uses is (intentionally) misleading when he, for example, apparently seems to laud figures like Alcibiades, Caesar, Napoleon, but he ends up measuring spiritual strength by "by just how much he could still endure of the "truth," or more precisely, to what extent he would need it to be diluted, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified," which is instead a measure of love of philosophy (that's from BGE 39; cf. BGE 211 where he identifies philosophy and law-giving, which isn't an identification of Caesar as a philosopher, but of true philosophers as being those who hand down values that everyone else, including a Caesar, accepts).So that's just to put before you this as a consideration (and I'm sympathetic with the claim that he's irresponsible to mislead this way).
>>24777670Right, and that position towards servility is roughly one I share. I think most people will always be and incline towards servility (I consider that neither shameful or contemptible, and it is probably a large factor in the existence of societies at all), but sometimes it feels like Nietzsche showcases so little concern for their well-being as to appear outright psycopathic or misanthropic, like in that example you give. I'm definitely willing to see that sometimes he might be sort of trying to frustrate, or is just speaking metaphorically, which makes me appreciate him as a poet or artist or whatever you want to call it. But either way the curiosity I hold in how far some of my own politics are commensurate to Nietzsche's is interesting. I consider it a bit of a sort of test maybe, both to try and understand my own views and in how far I want to let myself 'agree' with Nietzsche. But ultimately I don't always quite *understand* him I think and I have a tough time expressing myself more generally so yeah. Thanks for the interesting responses.
>>24777854To add on to this cuz I somehow forgot to say it: for me its important *how* you treat the servile people you know? I don't think you should treat them like dirt outright. And a lot of research seems to point that a well-treated mass is less likely to become destructive/resentful (we notice how socialist movements often arise in abject circumstances), can be more productive, etc.
>>24777854All good, and I think I'm probably closer myself to your position. I will say that I suspect that his coarse manner is a purposeful filter, where he's happy to be offensive enough to someone of the common sensibilities of his time to be dropped and rejected (consider BGE 30, "Our deepest *insights* must—and should—*appear* as follies, and under certain circumstances as crimes, *when they come unauthorizedly* to the ears of those who are not disposed and predestined for them." Emphases mine.), and that the reader he hopes for is the kind of person open to the possibility or capable of considering that the truth about things might be ugly. But I think the real standard for all of his work of his last productive decade has to be measured against Zarathustra as his positive teaching, which seems to put a lot of qualifications on his more hyperbolic statements in his subsequent works.
>>24777872Oh, certainly, and I think Nietzsche recognizes that. If one looks to what his higher types are like in Zarathustra, one can see much more of Aristotle's great-souled man, than, say, what one imagines when they think of a cruel aristocrat.
I wonder what his take was on the Dutch republic?
Why be a master or slave, when you could be a creator?It has the same spirit of endless self-overcoming and transformation, but is directed to the production and enjoyment of beauty in the world. The goal isn't ability to impose will but to increase depth and significance of one's relationships with the world, to dance, play, and co-create with it with more grace, beauty and joy. You know the vibes:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_HroTxaZe0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxVVm75k_8Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWnA4XLrMWAAll you need to do is follow them wherever they show themselves, to follow the spirit of Curiosity. Curiosity is the expression of the Eros of the universe is human consciousness, it's drive towards novelty and complexity. We are a way for the universe to create with itself, but as "the universe" is just another way of saying "all of us," this translates to "we are a way to co-create with each other.
>>24777540It's not that he thought that was good, so much as he thought because most people have extreme lassitude, an aristocracy would always be both necessary, and emergent anyway. Societies that don't have them, decline, while others who are struggling and still hungry for power, will develop them. It's just game theory. But it's less about slavery and war and more about, idk. Discipline
"Diversity is our strength" isn't merely a woke slogan, it's written in the heavens.The universe is an unfathomably vast number of differences playing with each other and making more differences.But despite this process of endless division and creation of new contrasts, it somehow stays all together.We live in a society.
Nietzsche is sometimes a little retarded
