Thread by @ZoharAtkins

Let’s do a @threadapalooza on Nietzsche, an unavoidable force in our thought and culture, a brilliant polemicist whose work is both over-exposed and undervalued; he would have been off Twitter but would have written a Substack railing against everyone—including his fans.

“The only one who could ever reach me was the son of a preacher man.” Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister. Although often seen as an enfant terrible by religious folk, Nietzsche was a soulful and sincere seeker who was equally critical of atheists as he was of believers

His much remarked upon phrase “God is dead” is spoken by his invented literary prophet Zarathustra to atheists! 3

It is the non believers who seem not to realize—for Nietzsche—the extent to which their secular values are built upon a religious edifice. Nietzsche comes to caution not about the excesses of religion only but of its secularised forms as well. 4

Nietzsche is said to be an existentialist and an individualist—a textbook one at that, but Nietzsche came to his worldview(s) as a serious thinker (and brooder) who was concerned with many of the same questions that troubled the ancients. What is the good life? What is real? 5

Nietzsche broke his teeth as a philologist--a scholar of the origins of words--and a classicist, although his work was rejected by his contemporary "mainstream" scholars of the classics; he was doing his own new thing, but still as a scholar. 6

Nietzsche wasn't the first to appreciate that our norms and ideas evolve over time; you find this in Hegel, in Schopenhauer, in early modern thinkers like Joachim de Fiore, Vice and Ibn Khaldun, but Nietzsche gave this idea its gravitas. 7

Vico not Vice 7b

Nietzsche rejected teleology—the idea that history moves towards a goal. 8

He rejected the idea of a set number of epochs as you find in ancient typology; but he did think that something changed (broke) when Greek warrior culture was replaced by turn the other cheek culture and blessed are the meek culture, which he attributes 2 Biblical tradition. 9

Nearly two centuries before @sullydish called our times a "Great Awokening" Nietzsche claimed the trend towards celebrating victimhood is as old as Judaism and Christianity, what he calls "slave morality." 10

Nietzsche's views are contested and contestable. Do Judaism and Christianity really celebrate weakness? King David is depicted as a fierce warrior. The Church was by no means pacifist. 11

Yet experientially something feels/felt true about Nietzsche's broad stroke claim. Secular Zionists like Ahad Ha'Am accepted his critique of traditional Jews as too passive, both ideologically and characterologically. 12

Homeric heroes are great fighters; David's prestige comes not only or primarily from his militarism, but from his love of God, his psalms. 13

The main point says Nietzsche of the slave revolt in morality is that people come to feel guilty about being noble—having status pegged to accomplishment. He would have seen “privilege” discourse as a continuation of the New Testament. 14

Which means Nietzsche views Christianity descriptively as a social gospel rather than or more than a prosperity gospel—his views match those of liberation theologians, usually of the left, albeit from the other side of the aisle. 15

Nietzsche is better on the critique than the call to action—he wants us to undergo a new way of being in the world —one that is less burdened by guilt about differences in talent and status between people. He’s unabashedly non egalitarian. Focusing more on personal thriving 16

His views got picked up by Nazis, but they’ve also influenced Silicon Valley tech culture, Ayn Rand, Foucault, and Rorty—so let’s not do guilt by association. 17

If you care about self care, self determination, been on a high school sports team, you’ve been influenced by Nietzsche lite. 18

I think Nietzsche’s biggest successor is Freud, and that his end point isn’t so much political activism as it is cultural production combined with therapy—“doing the work” 19

Not doing the work in the sense of being ideology pilled, but in the sense of sifting through what influences one affects and what one rejects or revises—the project of remaking oneself out of one’s sources. 20

Like Freud (and Foucault), Nietzsche wants to do an archaeology of the self--to see how we are formed so that we might paradoxically re-work ourselves. Knowledge is power, but it's not enough. As the cliche goes, the patient can only change if s/he wants to. 21

What are we changing into? Here I think the Nazis get it somewhat wrong--not into eugenicists or "blonde beasts" but into whatever we want. But what do we want? If there is no essential self, and no normative guardrails how do we decide what to become? 22

It's wrong to think Nietzsche wants us to be self centered bros or whatever, because such a pronouncement would be just as dogmatic as the next thing. 23

Just as in negative theology you don't say what God is, but what God isn't, Nietzsche's ethics are a kind of negative ethics--he tells us more what not to be assuming we want to thrive and not be what he derisively calls "last men." 24

Nietzsche's ire is reserved for moralists, which is funny because he's a moralizer against moralizing. He's also against people who think that secular liberals who think they've figured everything out. He's not a conservative per se, but he's a crank:) 25

Mind you, Nietzsche himself didn't live the daring warrior life he promotes. He talks about the need to not be emasculated, but his Sturm and Drang were mostly interior affairs. He died of syphilis, slowly losing his mind. He wouldn't want our pity or fake compassion 26

But he was a daring mind--and that means that he does a kind of bait and switch, turning nerdiness if you will into its own heroics. The pen is as mighty as the sword even when it's writing in favor of the sword and against the pen. 27

Do I wholly buy Nietzsche's condemnation of slave morality. I don't. I don't think it's accurate. But do I think that we end up living sub optimal lives owing to unnecessary guilt and self-punishment, yes. 28

I do think that reducing everything to tribal loyalty and good vs. evil is itself a cultural mode that is usually pernicious, if itself at times a necessary meta-evil. 29

Do I think the self is a multiplicity of drives, and that authenticity is a project of self invention rather than a return to some underlying essence? In some ways, absolutely! And I don't see anti-essentialism as anti-religious either. 30

I think our ability to self invent is itself an expression of our having been created in the divine image, to use the Biblical language. 31

Now that we've gotten slave morality out of the way (Nietzsche's most controversial and famous doctrine) let's turn to some of his other main ideas, like the dialectic he sets up in Birth of Tragedy between Apollonian and Dionysian. 32

Apollonian ideals center around order, while Dionysian ones center around chaos. Nietzsche's point is that tragedy and music and great art are about the struggle between these domains, with special deference given to the Dionysian. I find this frame meaningful. 33

I also resonate on a personal level with it--I think of academia as highly ordered, Apollonian. I started writing poetry seriously while writing my dissertation at Oxford--I needed a way of processing life that matched my experience and wasn't so distanced or stultified. 34

In short, my turn to poetry was an expression of my Dionysian urge in the midst of Apollonian "golden handcuffs." But I'm not anti-Apollonian. Apollonian gets us competency, tremendous execution, predictability. Dionysian gets us inspiration, dreams, insanity. 35

With Dionysian modes there's a lot of downside and upside risk. Apollonians are "basic." We need them. Dionysians can be unstable, prone to violence, absurdity, idiocy, but also give us breakthrough, invention, spirit and passion. 36

Apollonians are wonks; Dionysians are Bohemians. Put them together in a culture or in a person and you might get something really amazing, not a synthesis but a tension that makes both dimensions more powerful, a binocularity we urgently need. 37

Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, was a metaphysician, even though Nietzsche himself rails against metaphysics. He say there is no transcendent point of view, no absolute truth. But he says this absolutely. 38

For Heidegger, Nietzsche is the culmination of the Western tradition, not it's antagonist. For him, Nietzsche's God, his Being, his reality principle is "the will to power," the notion that all things strive to exist and to continue existing at the expense of others. 39

Heidegger doesn't say Nietzsche is incorrect; he simply says that Nietzsche's ability to think Being as "the will to power" means that Nietzsche is still old school; Heidegger's fancy word for it is "onto-theology" (the wedding of ontology and theology in one worldview) 40

Heidegger says Nietzsche decides to define everything around will, but posits as an alternative the possibility of "the will not to will," a paradoxical stance that is less egoistic/subjectivist and more nondual, engaged-receptive, Wei Wu Wei (effortless effort), flow. 41

I mention Heidegger b/c he was no metaphysician either, but is concerned that Nietzsche becomes dogmatic despite his strident stance against dogmatism. 42

Leo Strauss, late in life, said when he read Nietzsche in his 20s he agreed with everything insofar as he understood it (implying that he reneged on his Nietzscheanism later) or else that he thought Nietzscheanism needed to be rejected on pragmatic-political grounds 43

That is, Nietzsche's relativism can't be admitted even if it's right, because if openly exposed it will lead to the downfall of the city. If you buy this, it means that Nietzsche's thought is both personally deep and politically toxic. 44

I'm partial to the Straussian-tragic view that the personal need for daring iconoclastic truth the political need for stability are often in tension 45. Nietzsche might like this set up as it posits the city as Apollo and the philosopher as Dionysus. 45

Both Heidegger and Strauss, from different angles, worry that Nietzsche is saying "might makes right." This often called positivism. Strauss posits "Natural right" aas a possible alternative; Heidegger's alternative is more opaque, mystical. 46

Both think Nietzsche advances the Protagoras view that "man is the measure of all things." In fact, this is why Nietzsche being a harsh critic of the social gospel and egalitarianism is beloved by some on the (new) left. 46

The idea that all or most aspects of our identity are socially constructive, that there is no such thing as human nature, appeals to the Judith Butler line of thinking that says everything is performative. 47

It's interesting--Bruno Latour focus that science is a social-cultural-anthropological enterprise, more about us than anything else, and yet he worries about global warming. Meanwhile, some on the right argue that global warming is a social fiction. 48

point is everyone can play the game of being anti-naturalist; it's neither a rw or lw position, but a matrix. In reality, everyone picks and chooses what things they want to be natural and what social phenomena. 49

Thus, Nietzsche is a friend and enemy of many strange bedfellows! Always a sign of a great thinker, in my book. 50

To my knowledge, Nietzsche (and Kierkegaard) were mid-late 19th c. thinkers who only gained popularity in the 20th c., particularly around WW1. 51

Existentialism--if you want to characterize these thinkers in that way--was ahead of its time. That's very different from existentialism as its own post 1968 student movement orthodoxy. 52

Nietzsche and Kierkegaard became global cultural "influencers" at a time of mass death, a time when people felt life was short and meaningless, and when institutional trust was dubious. 53

It's also worth mentioning the popularity of existentialism going hand in hand with the rise of industrialization. The more automated and fast paced society becomes, the more DIY culture is needed to compensate for it. 54

The two are seemingly opposed, but may reinforce each other; existentialism offers a possible retreat from the world, a way of finding and pursuing one's truth regardless of what's happening in the world. 55

But does the Nietzsche reader become a brand strategist or a drop out? Not to be snide but perhaps one need not choose. Keroac's novels now adorns the flagship Warby Parker shop, whose name comes from Keroac. 56

Nietzsche would not have told us what to do for a living or been for or against "sticking it to the man." I think he would have been generally skeptical, though. To do something genuinely daring is hard; it's not always the same as being ostentatiously countecultural. 57

But he would say that we need new myths; we can't live in a state of deconstruction. Whatever your goals, don't think you can dismiss culture as a driver of change. 58

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" is why Nietzsche focuses on Wagner in my view and not politics--ultimately, artists and shamans have tremendous power to shape how we think and more importantly feel. 59

Nietzsche was a philosopher, but he was a literary stylist par excellence, an artist. In this, he joins the rare ranks of Plato and Heidegger for whom style is not incidental to the work, but part of it. 60

For Alexander Nehemas, Nietzsche's style is meant to give us a vertiginous experience of a plurality of views; in so doing, Nietzsche lets us FEEL the truth of perspectivalism rather than simply nod our heads to it. 61

One lesson of perspectivalism (the idea that no single perspective is best or purest) is humility; if there's no absolute view, we should ask about what certain views DO rather than whether they are right. They are right and wrong, or neither. 62

Correctness can't be the (sole) rubric by which we judge ideas and values. 63

If correctness is not the be all and end all, then what matters? For Nietzsche only one thing--does it lead us to be life affirming! 64

Of course, what does that mean?? Life affirming? I think it means that we value our own being alive, not that we become utilitarians looking to maximize global life expectancy or deontologists who are "pro-life" in the everyday partisan sense. 65

But being life affirming isn't a biological imperative; it's about feeling that life is worth living, that there is meaning. This is a daunting task for those who have rejected the necessity of God and transcendent values. 66

Most normies who find their lives to be basically meaningful still adhere to some lukewarm baseline view that there is a pre-given imperative to our existence. 67

Nietzsche wants us to reject or just question this imperative, and nonetheless to care! 68

I actually think this can be a kind of religious perspective. According to some Hasidic thinkers, when the Messiah arrives, the Law will still be valid, but we will choose it naturally, of ourselves, rather than obey it from obligation. 69

You might think of Nietzsche as saying (in God-voice): "I don't want you to love life because I created the world and placed you in it, but because you find it--and make it--meaningful." 70

Yes, Nietzsche has a lot of harsh words for the complacent faithful, but many of those criticisms can be found amongst religion's internal critics. Take the Kotzker Rebbe who said, "I can resurrect the dead, but I prefer to revive the living." 71

I'm reminded of a line from the Dutch film, Ordet, where one religious neighbor says to the other, "If yours is a religion of joy, why are you so miserable? 72

Nietzsche can be read to be saying, if philosophy is supposed to be so great why are so many philosophers and scholars such miserable people? 73

Now was Nietzsche a party himself? I don't think so. Often we preach the words we need to hear, need to follow, ourselves. 74

The criterion that philosophy and religious life should help us thrive is a contribution I welcome. Too often, they don't; but I wouldn't toss the baby out with the bathwater and say that the tradition is anti-thriving, as Nietzsche sometimes suggests. 75

The goal is to restore thinking as a way of life, to borrow from Pierre Hadot. To make the study of texts something that touches the heart and informs our relationships, not just our heads. 76

The charge against Nietzsche is that he justifies sociopathic behavior by removing the guardrails of traditional morality and metaphysics and castigating altruism as a kind of bad faith. 77

What sort of nut job is more upset about Mother Teresa than he is about Don Draper? 78

But Nietzsche isn't saying be selfish. He's saying don't apologize for becoming who you are. But becoming who you are isn't selfishness and those who make us feel that it is are not demanding generosity, but demanding conformity; dumping their "stuff" on us. 79

The Nietzschean hero, as I understand it, doesn't reject relationship but has good ones. Moreover, the Nietzschean hero is not a secularist or an atheist. The Nietzschean hero is one who finds their own path within a world that seeks to crush it 80

The forces of coercion come from all corners. And awareness is not necessarily liberation. But Nietzsche isn't a zealot; his point is that to be an individual is not easy, often a failed endeavor. 81

Why does he inspire me? I read him when I was 17 and felt God leaving the room. But you know, the willingness to let God leave, and feel that absence is daring. And lest you eye roll, substitute something you hold dear for God: human rights, dignity, whatever ideal you esteem 82

If you haven't stared into the abyss and felt it stare back, says Rosenzweig, you haven't lived. Maybe don't live in the abyss, but going into it strengthens one's ability to live on the other side. 83

Nietzsche is the inferno through which we should all pass. He is a noble adversary and mirror who has much to teach. 84

Above all, I appreciate his skepticism at those who use "justice" as cover for their own vanity projects. 85

Is there no justice? That's the view of Thrasymachus often attributed to Nietzsche. Or is it that too often (though not always) the invocation of justice is self serving and psychologically deflective. 86

No matter how you answer, you should ask what you mean by justice, and entertain the possibility that what you mean is just "I want power for myself." 87

Now if that's what justice is, I think it will help the powerful and not the powerless. And so I am skeptical that the Nietzschean critique of the powerful will do much to improve things. 88

But I agree with Nietzsche that power is not in itself unjust or unjustified and (relative) powerlessness is not itself bad or a sign of innocence or goodness. 89

To hold power is not always to be an oppressor. On the contrary, we need to create a world in which more people experience themselves as having power; not one in which our assumption is that having power means being guilty, and in which powerlessness is an intrinsic virtue. 90

One way of reading Nietzsche is to think of him not as proposing a new creed, but as offering a series of thought experiments in the service of helping us ask how might my life be different if I believed this? 91

The belief is up to us. I find that compelling, too. The notion that life is a choose your own adventure and that thought is the amusement park ride we choose--or that chooses us. 92

The crucial thing is that we CHOOSE it, own it, accept it as ours; in this sense, Nietzsche continues the Socratic imperative to examine life, to reject complacency. 93

But there is no playbook for doing so. Nietzscheans don't agree on anything, nor should they. 94

Maybe their agreement point is that we should engage people and ideas in a spirit of trying to make life more affirming; it's a waste of time and energy to try to call people out and correct them. 95

If you can, focus on the positive. One of my favorite Nietzsche lines is that everything that is "anti-" is beholden to what it opposes. If you don't like something, don't let it rule you by defining yourself in opposition to it. Be pro, not anti. 96

Yep, guilty as charged. I just moralized. I just said "don't be anti" which is a contradiction. And this too is a meta Nietzschean point. Have a sense of humor, most of all, laugh at yourself, your own hypocrisy. Don't think you are better than others. 97

If you are consumed by rage at others, you are brought down to the level of what you dislike; and psychologically you probably dislike it because you dislike that aspect of yourself. 98

Inside every truth to power speaker is a silent authoritarian. 99

If you're melancholic you're doing it wrong, but if you worship happiness you're also doing it wrong.

Life is suffering, but suffering can be a teacher. Be a life long learner and the meaning of your life will emerge, in your living it. (100/100)