Nietzsche

Quora Answer : How do I understand Nietzsche?

Sep 23

Think of Nietzsche like a modern stand-up comic. Like the Bill Hicks or George Carlin of his day.

Very smart. Very insightful. Cared deeply. But had to hide it behind a cynical front.

His books are extended "comedy routines". They make a lot of good points. But they are often dressed up as rather absurd stories, or with Nietzsche role-playing different characters / versions of himself. Or they are drilling down into something that really bugs him. Perhaps something that seems trivial, but which he diagnoses as the root cause of deeper problems.

Like a good comedy routine, a book may seem to wander off into unrelated issues, but suddenly comes back to the main point with an amusing shock.

Quora Answer : Should Nietzsche's writing be viewed more as literature than as philosophy? Why?

Sep 24

"More as" I'm not sure.

The point is Nietzsche is all about collapsing the distinction.

Not because he's flippant. But because you can say that Nietzsche is a nihilist about everything except aesthetics. Or that he sees the personal, subjective, aesthetic as the only response to nihilism.

As Frederick Dolan quotes him saying, if you try to make anything : morals, values, even arguments etc. impersonal / detached / rational, you make them sterile and meaningless and destructive.

Only the personal / engaged / subjective and aesthetic has value.

In this view, philosophy is only really meaningful if it becomes literature.

Quora Answer : What does Nietzsche's philosophy say in layman's terms?

Dec 4, 2016

In a very concise form :

Life is what you make it.

Don't listen to all those other philosophers before me who said life is about X or Y or Z. They're all pompous asses with a hidden agenda of trying to hold you back. Your life is what YOU make it.

YOLO!!!

Actually no, you live an infinite number of times, but they'll all be identical to the one you live now. So you really want to make sure you live your life for you, not for anyone else.