Influences of Writing
by
Jack Rooney
Announcement
Nietzsche is dead. The allure of his surviving dogma is that he is an interesting read. He wrote pretty well and was able to use language in an articulate manner. And it is easy to see how an untrained mind can get sucked into his line of reasoning and embrace his philosophy and become a Nietzschean. The same could be said of Marx, or Hitler, or Chairman Mao, or of any writer who knows how to use convincing words eloquently.
The same problem, the appeal of impassioned and convincing rhetoric, occurs in "Mein Kampf" crusader.net , for example: if you grant them (both Hitler and Nietzsche) their starting premise, (not all men are created equal, or some men are superior to others, and the responsibility for my life rests on my own shoulders, derived from Nietzchie’s Overman concept, and one claim does not follow from the other of necessity) then the rest of the work makes sense to an untrained mind and one becomes a Nazi.
Of course, the guardians of the Nietzsche doctrine make claims like the following:
"Nevertheless this does not mean that the mainstream society is advanced enough to understand this, which is one of the many things you can read in his works." Nietzscheophite in rebuttal to "Nietzsche is Dead" 6/99. Alt.Philosophy.
Where the implication is that if you and I were as intelligent as they, we would understand Nietzsche, or Hitler or Marx or Lenin or Chairman Mao and agree with them. Of course it never occurs to any of them that some of us lower life forms out here do understand what these men are saying and disagree because they are wrong.
"God is Dead!"... "Man must become better and more evil."... "Who poses the greatest threat to mankind; is it not the good and the just?"... "I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth." Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (Translator) users.aol.com
What are often thought of as some sort of profound philosophical truths from Nietzsche are on close critical examination nothing more than self-contradictory, incoherent mush from a philosophical context, or an interesting tragedy from a literary context about a lost soul.
It is, of course, a mistake to attempt to derive well-reasoned philosophical arguments from works of literature. But one can not even speak of concepts like truth and meaning and good and just and value and purpose in a universe where the cosmic yardstick of value has been remove in the opening statements. "God is Dead". Really? Wherein should I find value in your words? The British philosopher John Locke wrote, in his essay on tolerance, "Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all." John Locke, Selections, "The Spirit of Toleration", Ed by Sterling Lamprecht, Charles Schribner’s Sons, NY, Pp. 50. C 1928, utm.edu
Without a Supreme Being, there is no supreme anything.
"I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing." users.aol.com . In the universe Zarathustra describes, there is no such thing as "virtue". One cannot possibly understand what is meant by the use of the term; it is a vacuous, empty concept. The entire text is replete with examples where Zarathustra spoke nonsense. But Zarathustra is a fictional character in a fictional story, and the philosophy that comes from his mouth is as fictional as his character. It is unfortunate so many have taken these misguided words so seriously. But literature is powerful stuff. It can be used to entertain and enlighten or it can advocate great evil. Fortunately, there always seems to be someone around to expose the ruse.
The fatal error found in Nietzchie is also found in Marx and Sartre. In Marx, english-www.hss.cmu.edu, the error occurs with his positing as truth "the downfall of the absolute", which he attempted unsuccessfully to turn against the Hegalian dialectic, ets.uidaho.edu ; there are "no absolutes" and they are absolutely certain of it. Give me a break.
In Sartre, for further example, the error occurs in reducing existence to absurdity and then expecting us to find value in a 1000 page book he wrote telling us all about the meaning of existence, "Being and Nothingness", epistemelinks.com
I mention Marx and Sartre in connection with Nietzsche only because they are the most notorious examples of writer/thinkers suffering from the same disease, which I believe, has its origin in Nietzsche. They reduce themselves to absurdity and contradiction with their own words in their denial of God with certainty and then expect the reader to accept what they say as truth, as meaningful, as valuable. It is the inherent flaw in all Atheistic and agnostic lines of reasoning which attempt to place the individual at the center of the universe as the creator of value. If man is the creator of value, there are as many values as there are men, which means there is no certain moral truth whatsoever
Nietzsche is dead, and so is any semblance of truth one might wish to glean from his philosophy -- he killed it himself with his own pen and the words of his character Zarathustra. Thus is always the fate of those who deny the existence of God with such absolute certainty.
In 1889, less than two weeks after the completion of "Nietzsche contra Wagner", he broke down, insane. Go figure.
Respectfully,
Jack Rooney
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c 1994 Jack Rooney. Steal these words. jer
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