Reddit mentions of Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Modern Library Classics)

Before I begin this, I'd like to say that it's pretty fucking difficult to summarize Nietzsche's philosophy, and this is not some amazing attempt. For example, I left out entirely Kant's epistemological pessimism, and Schopenhauer's reaction to it, which was a huge influence on Nietzsche. It is important to understand that much of philosophy is a reaction to earlier philosophers, e.g., much of Plato's work is a reaction to the Sophists, and much of Kierkegaard's work is a reaction to Hegel. If you're really curious about this stuff, I'd highly suggest reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Schopenhauer's On the Will in Nature. Those two works will give you a much better understanding of Nietzsche and his works. As well, I have added some suggested readings at the end of this post, for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of Nietzsche. This post barely scratches the surface of what is an amazing philosopher's work.

First and foremost, Nietzsche is an anti-realist when it comes to morality. This means that Nietzsche denies there is an objective set of moral values. For example, you may think it's immoral to steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, and I may think it is immoral not to. However, the concepts of right and wrong, or good and evil, are nothing more than human created illusions that we attempt to live by, and these concepts do not exist in this world independent of humanity. There are many branches of ethics (e.g., a utilitarian believes in doing things that benefit the most amount of people, while a virtue ethicist would believe that you must live by your virtues in all situations), and Nietzsche would say that they are arguing something that does not exist. What you say is right cannot be proven right, nor can I prove that I am right in my beliefs. Nietzsche’s goal is to free humankind from the false notion that morality is good for them.

Second, it’s important to understand that Nietzsche believes humans are no better than animals. As well, Nietzsche does not believe in the concept of free will. His argument against free will is a bit difficult to explain, but I will do my best. He argues that a being with free will would have to be the cause of himself, or self-caused (causa sui – A is a cause of A), and since we are not self-caused then we do not have free will. If we do not have free will, then we cannot be responsible for our own actions. In fact, Nietzsche argues that we are like animals, going on instinct, but we’ve been given this thing called reason which is not as strong as our instincts. Like Freud’s concept of the human as a battlefield between the id, ego, and superego, Nietzsche believes we have an internal battle between instincts and reason. The will of a human is actually nothing more than the type of person that s/he is, which is based on that individual’s instincts. So, if I am an angry type of person, and I kill someone, then I really cannot be held responsible for that killing, because it was bound to happen due to the type of person that I am. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Nietzsche is saying they should not be punished.

Alright, now on to the most well-known aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy: his influence on existentialism, as well as his critiques of religion. For Nietzsche, the greatest problem for man is how we justify our lives, and make them meaningful and valuable. He believes that the justification of life through morals and values leads to nihilism, and that is what he sees happening around him. Therefore, Nietzsche believes that we need to justify our lives not through morals, or God, but rather through the highest form of earthly man, Superman. Basically, the role of the Superman is to pursue that beyond the morals, and to suppress the instinct side of ourselves that we discussed earlier. The Superman is the goal of humanity. Rather than setting our goal on things that are not real, i.e., God and morals, it makes more sense to set our goal on creating a Superman of ourselves. Nietzsche believes that Platonism and Christianity distract us from our pursuit of being the Superman, because they rely on reason and faith. Both reason and faith share the feature of having a moral conception of the world. This is seen in Western Civilization as follows: For humanity to enjoy security, they must project their desires onto the world as morals or values. This creates a false world beside this world, and the false world is invented by lies. The false world, morals, values, God, and absolute truth are all words for the same mistake. It’s not just that God does not exist, but that God is a lie, and the word God and morals are two things that mean the same thing. The entire concept has been created by humanity and has become a distraction. The death of God signifies the end of this distraction, whereby mankind can now pursue earthly duties to the real world. It is the false world that creates nihilism, and the death of the lies that lifts us from this state. The Superman lives beyond the concepts of good and evil. The Superman pursues self-mastery, and is able to return to life and rejoin nature (Nietzsche is not painting the Noble Savage portrait of Rousseau).

Nietzsche did not believe that all beings are equal. He believed in an order of rank. The idea of equality was something of the past, something advocated by God, and with God dead we can now see that it too is a lie. Nietzsche believed that there were higher men, and lower men, just as in nature there are dominant members of the pack, and submissive members of the pack (remember, Nietzsche sees no difference between humans and animals). Nietzsche believed that the idea of equality was created by lower men, to bring the higher men down to their level. The lower man makes up most of society, and is the typical man whose only goal is to suppress his instincts. However, the higher man not only possesses great power, creative power, and strength, but also he is able to keep all of these things in control. The higher man has a strong will to power, and can basically suppress instincts. For Nietzsche, the only value of a human is what qualities that human acquires, and the value of humanity exists solely in creating Supermen. With lies such as God gone, the only objective now is to become a Superman.

Suggested Reading:

Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought

Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed

Basic Writings of Nietzsche

Nietzsche's Ethics and his War on "Morality"

I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition - This one I just recommend because it's a fun and interesting read, but it's not necessarily going to give a lot of insight into Nietzsche's philosophy.

It used to be standard practice to buy the following two volumes ed. and trans. by Kaufmann:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Portable-Nietzsche-Viking-Library/dp/0140150625

http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393

Together, they contain almost all of Nietzsche's works.

Edit: Notable absences are The Gay Science and Will to Power.

I'm in a similar boat as you; interested in continental, but surrounded by a lot of analytics.

Hegel is notorious for being dense and difficult to read, and while he was incredibly influential on many later continental thinkers, I don't think anyone who really wanted to help you get into continental philosophy would have you start on Hegel, unless they were committed to reading through it with you.

Heidegger's maybe a bit less obtuse at times, but he can also be confusing if you don't have a professor or more experienced student guiding you along. I asked a professor where I should start, and he recommended his published lecture notes from The History of the Concept of Time, which I admittedly haven't finished yet, but he spends a lot of time in it explaining Husserl's philosophy of phenomenology, which is crucial for understanding Heidegger, as well as a number of other continental thinkers.

As for some easier continental-esque thinkers, there are some that I think are a bit more accessible. Bear in mind that there isn't exactly a group of thinkers who all signed a document saying they were continental philosophers, but there are a number who seem to run in the tradition, and many others who were at the very least related to them.

To begin, I'd recommend some Kierkegaard. He was a Christian philosopher, and is often considered to be one of the earliest existentialist philosopher's. He did a number of works on concepts of faith, anxiety, dread and other elements of the human condition, adding his own angles on them to apply them to Christian philosophy. He wrote under a number of pseudonyms in order to create a number of different perspectives, although underlying all the chaos was a desire to get you to start thinking for yourself. A good place to start with him would be Fear and Trembling. Many of his ideas were influential on continental thinkers such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre.

To go in a very different direction, Nietzsche is another thinker who was very influential on many continental philosophers. The self-declared Anti-Christ, he basically believed that we are about to enter a post-God world, with his writings often either trying to burn our bridges back to the Church or trying to point us in a new direction. Like Kierkegaard, he doesn't always say what he means directly, but much of his philosophy is ultimately aimed at getting you to start thinking for yourself. I'd recommend this anthology, as it contains a number of pretty crucial writings of his.

If after this you're still interested in Heidegger, I don't have as much background there, although I've read a few of his Basic Writings, which is a collection of essays of his. In one of my classes, we also read an essay from his Pathmarks which wasn't terribly dense, so that might be a nice place to start as well. Being and Time is generally considered to be his most important work, but it's renowned for being dense and difficult, although there are a number of commentaries on that book alone that may prove useful.

For one final recommendation, I'll throw in Kaufmann's anothology of existential writings, which has a number of essays on existentialism, which was heavily tied to many core continental thinkers.

And I wouldn't worry about your roommate.

Haha its ok, i feel i say sorry too much day to day as well, habit i suppose. Well some good things to start you off might be "the portable nietzche" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Portable-Nietzsche-Library/dp/0140150625) or maybe, :"The basic writings of nietzche" (http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393)

these should keep you going for a bit :), sorry (sorry for saying sorry) about the delay, been a bit too busy to reddit. :) enjoy!

Walter Kaufmann's translations are considered to be some of the best and most complete.

https://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=0W892J7TAVWHW496WR8B

I can vouch for the Kaufman translation, very easy to understand. And that's coming from someobody with no background in philosophy who learned English as a third language.


Amazon link to the copy I have: http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393

Look, this probably isn't good advice. Hell, it isn't even really advice. But, have you ever considered just...bailing? Like, concede terms for the divorce with minimum fuss, quit the job, and move to the Caribbean? I mean, the pay won't be great. I can't guarantee the job would be good either. But, you could get a job here, for example. Again, this isn't really advice. Just saying. If there is any point in your life where you are going to say fuck it all, it seems now. Don't blow your money on stocks, that would be such an act of self-sabotage. Go somewhere else. Be someone else. Fucking hell, you could literally be a bartender at a hotel on the Caribbean beach, or become a farmhand, or anything. If you have some savings, fantastic. Hold onto that tightly, and keep that as your fall back plan. You may hate the job bartending, or hate tree planting, or whatever. But, fuck it all. Affirm life. If you had to live this life over again in the exact same manner, and over again, and again in an eternal recurrence, would you? If the answer is no, then do something about it.

>The greatest weight.-- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

>The Gay Science, Section 341, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann translation

Go rock your life. And, if I can recommend one book (and as a book worm I feel obligated to), it is The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. Take care now, and make your happiness, and remember the greatest weight.

I was interested in the following with regards to my Nietzche reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2

http://www.amazon.com/The-Portable-Nietzsche-Library/dp/0140150625/ref=pd_sim_b_1

As for the religious stuff, I'm actually agnostic, it's just that religion and theology have always sort of fascinated me. I plan on reading St. Augustine's Confessions and City of God.

Honestly, the hardest part of him is where to start. Ask five people and you'll get six answers.

But as a general recommendation, stick primarily to Walter Kaufmann's books, and you can't go wrong. He was one of the leading scholars on the school of his thought, and I find his translations of Nietzsche to capture the dramatic emphasis of his prose the best.

For a brief introduction I'd start with his Biography by Kaufmann, this is useful for understanding the time in which he lived, the philosophical climate, and debunking myths about him, followed by Basic Writings, and then The Portable Nietzsche which contains his more complex works, Twilight and Zarathustra. Each of these contain complete texts, as well as discussion and expositions to give them more context, and are extremely helpful in understanding the work.

Also, If you're a materialist already, an Atheist or an agnostic, start with The Antichrist and you'll fall in love with him in the first pages. Its a summary of his view on Christian morality, and it doesn't hold back at all, a quick read at about a hundred or so pages. If you want an appetizer, peruse The Will To Power, his book of aphorisms, to whet your palate (this is also where most of the romance quotes live). These were my introductions, and I never looked back.

Read up on morality. A lot of great minds have done a lot of hard thinking about this. You don't have to make it up from scratch.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism-moral/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-epistemology/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-moral/

Having said that, this is a hard problem. Here is one man who faced the issues head on ie "what does the absence of god mean for morality?"

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/

http://www.amazon.com/Writings-Nietzsche-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0679783393/ref=pd_cp_b_1

This material is for reading slowly and for much thinking.

Personally I think morality is an unsolved problem. No-one has been successful in rationalizing our primate instincts. For now a good working principle seems to be "be a decent human being".

Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann

I've been interested in reading Nietzsche's writings for a while now. I am particularly interested in his ideas about morality, so this collection is particularly good for that, as it includes Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.

Why should you buy this for me? Surprisingly, I've been unable to find these works at my college's library or the used bookstores in town. An interlibrary loan is also a poor solution in this case; it's obvious from the little bit of Nietzsche that I've already read that it will take me much longer than a couple of weeks to understand these works.

Finally, thank you for this act of generosity, no matter who you choose in the end.