As mentioned on the race episode, I thumbed through a book edited by Andrew Valls called Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy,
…James Winchester examines Nietzsche’s views on race. Against those who charged that Nietzsche was a racist, Winchester shows that his relation to race is far too complex to be captured by this label. Although Nietzsche made some disturbing remarks on this score, he also departed from conventional racial thinking of his day by claiming, for example, that Jes constituted a strong race and Germans a mixed and weak one. These views, among others, do show that Nietzsche was a racialist–he believed that races were real and had great causal significance in shaping thought and culture. This view, combined with his assessment of the German and Jewish races, led Nietzsche to recommend “mixing” of the two in order to strengthen the German race. While Nietzsche sometimes thought in racial terms, his use of racial ideas was neither consistent nor well worked out.”
Knowing that Nietzsche didn’t have his shit together on this topic despite talking about it so much doesn’t make me feel much better about him in this respect, but then again, I was already looking past the many unforgivable things he said about women, so the race issue doesn’t require any further stretching of the brain on my part.
-Mark Linsenmayer
this reminds me of conversations about how much the biography of philosophers should be read into, and or against, their writings/teachings, and for me there isn’t so much a general rule except to say that this should be demonstrated to be relevant or not as opposed to merely asserted.
For a living philosopher working on race folks may be interested in:
http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/03/multi-scale-political-affect-securitization-and-racial-anxiety.html
Nietzsche didn’t much care for people in general did he? Didn’t like Germans. Nietzsche didn’t have his proverbial shit together on the class issue either. Actually, Nietzsche was a sick dick.
That’s what I said. Just a dick.
I don’t understand why he gets so much praise for being an intellectual, much less a philosopher. I guess they didn’t have much to choose from, at that time.
I’m so glad I lived in the time of people like George Carlin, Patrice O’Neal, Ken Kesey, Eckhart Tolle and U. G. Krishnamurti.
Nietzsche was super racist. Hundreds and hundreds of Nietzsche’s original phrases reveal an explicit biological, social and personal criminal racist (inhuman, misoginist, sure!). These texts are usualy hidden or manipulate by ideologists. I give some texts now only in german and spanish, with citations under google search: “Nietzsche Rassist”
what the hell…4-chan level of analysis of Nietzsche, got it completey wrong. I wish he were still around to deliver one of his gorgeously snarky rejections of bad thinking.
There are many examples of his racism and misogyny (like most European men at that time). Yes, he said some amazing things that have changed many lives, but it would be foolish to not consider his bias when reading his work. I always roll my eyes at people who replace Jesus with Nietzsche and quote him as some perfect all-knowing being. It is interesting how Christian practices show up even after people have left the fold.
Show examples of where he’s “racist” and “misogynistic” and explain explain how it shows his personal problems with the groups he’s “targeting”.
In defense of Nietzsche
Taking anyone’s work out context to serve your own purposes is often the trait of poor orators and writers when I need of “cred”. Nietzsche can’t be a racist in essence because racism or any ism for that fact is the in inescapable return of the same, the will to power and in short nihilism. Nietzsche defines nihilism as the “devaluation of the highest value”. His work is to serve hyperbolic critique that demands us to transcend our “humanity”. Nietzsche asks us to look at ourselves and to realize that we as a species have a problem with the herd mentality that we are eager to follow and we are often to eager to accept our condition, station and normative assumptions in life.
To understand him better…read Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist a book by Walter Kaufmann
Nietzsche was an anti-humanist struggling with his internal anguish and his own inability to transcend nihilism.
Only observant comment I’ve read. Anti humanist though? I think he was so deeply in touch with humanity and history and human nature that he foresaw everything and wouldn’t have been able to do so unless he had been an avid proponent of the spirit of man.
Dudes, please get off your Anti-Christ Nietzschian high horses of supreme superiority… plenty of people have made good comments, and you seem to only want to see Nietzsche through a Jesus-tunnel vision. The quotes are absolutely everywhere if you’ve read the material; I don’t care whether he’s being sardonic, quippy, snarky, sly, witty, or whatever you want to call it; it’s not wisdom to say that women deserve the whip to them (Thus Spake Zarathustra), or that if they seek educational opportunities, they must somehow be problematic, or that it’s racist to call Africans less sensitive to pain than Europeans (Genealogy of Morals). Go read Dominic Lusurdo’s scholarship toe-to-toe with Walter’s sterilizing scholarship that erases the context of brutality and carnality that Nietzsche writes with, in contempt, whether it’s sardonic or not, against most people who are not of his ilk, Ubermensch supermen elite rovers of the galaxy, whom honestly you too might seem to be striving for. Might want to take a look at that if you’re being honest, and go find all the quotes yourself and read beyond your artsy interpretations of his greatness — the guy was fucking problematic in a LOT of bad ways, not just some of the ‘good’ ones.