A Strange Conversation
“God is dead,” said Friedrich Nietzsche whose father and grandfathers were clergymen. When the psychologist I met at a bar on Hamra Street learned about this, he said, “Aha! We can say that here, too, Freud was right.” Nietzsche was only four years old when his father died. Therefore, the only way for him to re-enact the story of Oedipus was to kill what his father believed in — God, or, as the Germans call him, Gott. That was, at least, what the drunken psychologist hypothesized before ordering another drink.
It is also known that Nietzsche disliked women. That will be clear to anyone who reads his works. “But who can blame him?” The psychologist said. “He grew up with a lot of women around, you said, no?” Mother, sister, grandmother, aunts. My Gott! The list is long. “But let’s not justify sexism here. Let’s pay the bill and leave this bar.”
On Twilight of the Idols
They say that Nietzsche wrote Twilight of the Idols in less than 10 days. When I read that, I was like, “That man really had nothing more entertaining to do than to sit and write.” But, at the same time, I was impressed. In fact, I envied him a little. I’ve been wanting to write a book for years, and I have nothing to show for it.
I also read that, with Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche’s goal was to write a short introduction to his philosophy. But, after reading most of his works, in my humble opinion, I can say that he has failed to do so. Human, All Too Human is likely a better introduction to his philosophy. When someone who has never read Nietzsche asks me what to start with, I always suggest Human, All Too Human, and, in some cases, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Otherwise, they will not grasp what Nietzsche is all about.
Now, surely you have come across the dictum that says, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” Have you ever wondered where that came from? If you did, then now you have an answer. You have found the book where that quote — the one that Instagram influencers use so frequently — came from! The book is called Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer.
“How to philosophize with a hammer.” How wonderful.
On Scholars
The worst mistake you can do in life is to study philosophy. I wouldn’t suggest you major in philosophy unless you want to live a lousy life. Philosophy is dead to everyone except philosophers. “Philosophy and necrophilia,” the drunken psychologist once told me, “have a lot in common.” He didn’t elucidate though. In philosophy, the best you can be is Slavoj Žižek; the worst you can be is also Slavoj Žižek. In the end, it’s up to you. Be who you want to be.
Besides, I advise you not to take my advice.
How many bottles of wine have I had writing this? I didn’t count.
But I guess all I wanted to say is this: Scholars are fetishists. They don’t read philosophy like an average human being ought to. When you read philosophy, read like a human. Remember that.
Thoughts on Twilight of the Idols
“Apophthegms and Darts,” which is the first section of Twilight of the Idols, is filled with maxims covering numerous topics, many of which are more ridiculous than they are shocking or thought provoking. So I am not going to spend a lot time on them. However, I will quote a few of them below for you to read with your own eyes.
How is it? Is man only a mistake of God? Or God only a mistake of man? —
From the military school of life. — What does not kill me, strengthens me.
To live alone, one must be an animal or a God — says Aristotle. The third case is wanting: one must be both — a philosopher.
As you can see, there’s not much to talk about there. But we can say a few words about the subsequent section called “The Problem of Socrates.” Actually, I find it very funny. To defeat Socrates, Nietzsche calls the Greek philosopher “ugly.” He first turns Socrates into a joke, and then adds that “ugliness is often enough the expression of a thwarted development checked by cross breeding.” But he doesn’t stop there. No. Nietzsche keeps swinging his hammer like a lousy internet troll who just wants to make people feel bad about themselves. He adds that criminologists and anthropologists (of his time, of course) have found that “the typical criminal is ugly.” And so Nietzsche expects us to conclude something like this: Socrates is an ugly criminal.
If Nietzsche were on Twitter he would have been “cancelled.”
“Socrates wanted to die,” he writes. “Athens did not give him the poison cup; he gave it to himself; he compelled Athens to give it to him.”
I don’t know about you, but I laughed so hard when I read this.
Another thing that made me laugh comes under the section called “Morality as Antinaturalness.” There he says, “We no longer admire the dentist who pulls out the teeth, that they may no longer cause pain.” When I read this, I suddenly remembered that I haven’t been brushing my teeth. So I immediately put down the book and went to brush my teeth. Boy, was I drunk! I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror…
In the final pages of the book, I came across something that made me very happy. I read the sentence: “Dostoiewsky, the only psychologist, let it be said, from whom I had anything to learn…”
This made me smile like an idiot. And I caught myself nodding as if I discovered something epic. “Well,” I said, “I hope this Dostoiewsky is the Dostoevsky I know. Nietzsche calling Dostoevsky the only true psychologist he knows is amazing! It all makes sense now. I will share this with all my friends.”
Then I passed out for some time.
But here I am again, now, and I will end this entry with the best quote from Twilight of the Idols.
The individual, in his antecedents and in his consequents, is a piece of fate, an additional law, an additional necessity for all that now takes place and will take place in the future. To say to him, “Alter thyself,” is to require everything to alter itself, even backward also.
***
Read more on Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols here.
Bored Absurdist 