Nietzsche - Quotes - Mysoginy

' He wasn't a nice guy. And that quote proves it.

"repugnant weasel" is nearly as great an insult as "a disgrace to sexuality"

he had none or just a wee one when still sane: after he went bonkers and spoke to and looked at no one, his sister, who looked after him, exhibited him as the FREAK PROPHET wrapped in a sheet, and let his mustache grow all elaborate and curly, as this seemed more VISIONARY!!

lou andreas salomé to thread!

These are all the excuses I used to use for Nietzsche. But the nineteenth century authors I've read give the lie to them. For a clear example, check out 'What is to be done' by Cherneshevsky, which predates Nietzsche and absolutely contradicts the first quotes about Nietzsche's 'timely' misunderstanding of women. It was very clearly understood by all the nineteenth century authors that I've read except Nietzsche that feminine temperament was largely a product of environment, and Cherneshevsky, for example, who was very influential, wrote almost as well as Dostoevsky with a feminist radicalism that exceeds my own. It's difficult to explain how modern it was possible to be in the nineteenth century - you have to read in it to feel what it was like. Furthermore, Nietzsche's supposedly original ideas about the contingency of truth were very much in the air, well known, written about in various forms by Baudelaire, William James, Poincare, Bergson - and those are just the people I've read. You'd be surprised how unoriginal Nietzsche sounds after reading those authors - he comes across more as 'just another guy'. That is, purely in terms of the originality of his ideas. He did write in an exciting style. What I'm trying to say is, the arguments about the genealogy of morality weren't original to him, and there was absolutely no necessity for him to extend them into misogyny - if anything, of course, they should have helped him to see through it. He has less excuse for his comments than other people, not more.

Having sympathy for animals, but not for people, is something that lots of aristocrats pride themselves on. It must be useful to feel that way - to feel that 'hatred of the crowd' - when you know that your own luxury and security is contingent upon other people's deprivation. It's almost necessary for rich people to become misanthropic. (Why are people more comfortable liking animals? As if animals aren't cruel and greedy and destructive ... it's strange. I've observed that it's especially upper class to dislike babies but like dogs.) I'm not saying that Nietzsche wasn't a tender and sympathetic person. It seems to me that he was kind, sensitive and generous. I guess that what I'm saying is that the horse thing is kind of irrelevant. (That's my big Nietzsche anecdote too though.)

'He was suspicious about the value of truth' - he typically figured truth as a woman, too, running away, hiding behind her veils. So the quote about women hating the truth is hardly meant as flattery. Women could basically be whatever sin he chose.

I don't really intend this to be an attempt to 'debunk' Nietzsche. I enjoy Nietzsche. And as I said, he comes across as someone who has suffered so badly that he can't bear to see others suffer. He also comes across as someone who really wants to be popular. I am, though, curious as to why he has come to be seen as the 'last metaphysician,' the originator, etc. Surely these tropes around his importance are exactly the kind of thing that sensitive readers of history ought to be dismantling - especially those who call themselves postmodern. The reliance of many postmodernists upon certain authority figures is strange in itself. It's as if they're in love with Nietzsche; and he certainly was a very loveable figure; so lonely and desperate and funny.

Because he held up a mirror to your soul?

Can this be true or is it Perecquian goofiness (it was in the notes which make up the 2nd half of the unfinished '"53 Days"')?

whenever someone [usually mark s] attributes a quote to nietzsche and calls him 'n.' I like to pretend it was something nick dastoor said.

[I've done this with other threads too!!] [hee-hee!]

I'm probably more of a Kierkegaard guy at heart, but I read a bit of Beyond Good and Evil once and thought it was fabulous, so I may end up becoming the biggest Nietzsche fan on the planet, who knows?

And outrightly dismissing Nietzsche as a "repugnant weasel" with no rational consideration of the underlying implications of his statement, only serves to reinforce his assertion.

And as for your lazy and hackneyed accusation of misogyny, your scant appreciation of the concept is underlined by your inability to spell it.

(best said aloud)