Monday, February 28, 2011

a couple of thoughts about Nietzsche

The last chapter of 'Examined Lives' is a summary of James Miller's thoughts. The next to the last chapter is about Nietzsche.

[...] are references on my Kindle. I thought this was enlightening:


[5633] Nietzsche, deliberately it seems, left his written corpus open to endless disputes over how to understand it. "Tell me what you need and I will supply you with a Nietzsche quote" a german satirist quipped.

[5995] Here Miller is quoting from one of Nietzsche's letters to a friend: Not only is Spinoza's whole tendency like my own to make knowledge the most powerful passion--but also in five main points of his doctrine I find myself; this most abnormal and lonely thinker is closest to me in these points precisely: he denies free will, denies purposes, denies the moral world order, denies the non-egoistical and denies evil.
end quotes

I had thought Nietzsche was criticizing Spinoza in 'Beyond Good and Evil" but it appears from that last quote that Nietzsche admired Spinoza. This is from wiki on egoism:
ethical egoism (also called simply egoism) is the normative ethical position that moral agents ought to do what is in their own self-interest.

1 comment:

  1. Although, I don't think Spinoza denied free will. Did Nietzsche even deny free will?

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