Anyone read Nietzsche?

[FollowChrist34]

Yes, this is actually spot on, very perceptive. I came to believe Nietzsche was a sort of an emotional, spiritual cripple. He wanted to overcome suffering, life’s adversity, injustice, meaningless, with strength, to be like a fortress, to engage the beauty and joy of life with both the body and mind, with laughter, honesty, courage, friendship to the bitter dark end. But to overcome suffering by not suffering I don’t think is possible and stay human. You have to reject compassion, love, forgiveness - that is all ‘slave morality.’ The last thing Nietzsche did while still coherent (he was mad for the last 11 years of his life) was run out of a restaurant where he was dining and embrace a horse that was being beaten by its owner in the street which he had seen out the window. Nietzsche, in tears, buried his face in the horse’s neck and was led home that evening, insane. I like to think he finally met Christ in an act of love. Compassion. It was probably the most decent thing he ever did.

 

[Flopfoot]

The sense I get from him and Sartre was that they saw a lot of people around them didn’t believe in God - this was a general shift, not only were the agnostics becoming atheists, but the weak Christians were becoming agnostics, and the strong Christians were becoming weak Christians - and they tried to figure out “how can people find meaning in their lives without God?”

Nietzsche saw that a lot of people still followed “cultural Christianity” even though they didn’t have strong belief in God, and he thought that this was a mistake, because they had no reason for what they were doing and therefore no hope for the future. So he tried to invent a different way of being.

My feedback on Nietzsche is twofold - first, I think that a lot of people just don’t care as much as he did about having ultimate reasons behind what they did, to this day there are a lot of people who act culturally Christian and don’t see a problem with it. Second, I think that no one has yet successfully been able to invent an alternative way to find meaning without God, and it might not be possible.

 

[goodcatholic]

Second, I think that no one has yet successfully been able to invent an alternative way to find meaning without God, and it might not be possible.

atheists, where are you ? I’m sure you’d take exception to this viewpoint.

 

[goodcatholic]

What if Nietzsche were alive today? Honestly I think his target would be the politically correct left wing radicals. Nietzsche comes across to me as a champion of free speech. He might take the side of Christians even.

 

[Rob2]

Nietzsche comes across to me as a champion of free speech.

Does he now ?

So you might explain what in heaven’s name he meant when he said , “Main thought! The individual himself is a fallacy. Everything which happens in us is in itself something else which we do not know. ‘The individual’ is merely a sum of conscious feelings and judgments and misconceptions, a belief, a piece of the true life system or many pieces thought together and spun together, a ‘unity’, that doesn’t hold together. We are buds on a single tree—what do we know about what can become of us from the interests of the tree! But we have a consciousness as though we would and should be everything, a phantasy of ‘I’ and all ‘not I.’ Stop feeling oneself as this phantastic ego! Learn gradually to discard the supposed individual! Discover the fallacies of the ego! Recognize egoism as fallacy! The opposite is not to be understood as altruism! This would be love of other supposed individuals! No! Get beyond ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’! Experience cosmically!”

 

[goodcatholic]

A champion of his own free speech.