Thoughts on Nietzsche

In my opinion, reading Nietzsche was a bit of a task for me. To be honest, I don’t really find much enjoyment in reading philosophical texts. Perhaps it’s just difficult for me to understand what the philosophers are trying to get across to the reader, or maybe it’s because I simply cannot really understand what they’re trying to convey at all… I basically don’t really take that much of a likings to philosophy.. and Nietzsche’s essay didn’t really change my opinion on this either. I found that it was particularly hard to fully understand and agree with some of his points; granted, I did find them interesting however, but I still had much difficulty with this read. I found that he takes a different, more diverse and I guess to some, a shocking approach in conveying his opinions in the text. With that being said, I still found some of his ideas to be quite enticing and nonetheless, intriguing by the end of his essay.

For starters, I thought that Nietzsche’s reference to Ancient Greece should be noted. By doing this, Nietzsche somewhat resembled Rousseau to me, to a certain degree that is. I find that philosophers tend to make certain referential statements to further emphasize their points, or validate them, and I found Nietzsche’s essay to e more interesting because of this.  However, unlike Rousseau, I did find that Nietzsche wasn’t exactly as easy to understand as Rousseau. I would have to say that reading Rousseau was perhaps one of the most enjoyable philosophical reads for me to date. I found that Nietzsche rambled quite frequently, which made it challenging for me to follow all the way through.

In my opinion, I think that Nietzsche’s main argument in his essay, is that of good and evil. He states that humans create good and evil; with regards to this topic, I think that it is quite interesting how good and evil are two vices that were thought to have been present since the existence of humanity, rather than actually being a mere creation from our perception. Furthermore, I found that Nietzsche’s views on punishment to be very intriguing. In spite of his alternative ways of thinking and looking at particular subjects, his arguments were still pretty entertaining to me. From today’s lecture, I definitely found a new perspective on Nietzsche, since he basically said that he thinks that punishment is something that is fun…. Something that should be enjoyed! Though I do not believe this to be necessarily true, I will somewhat (I guess) respect his view on this.

Basically, after reading Nietzsche’s essay and attempting to analyze it in more depth, and upon attending the lecture, I am still left somewhat confused with his points. Cant wait till I hear other people’s opinions! See you guys tomorrow!!

2 thoughts on “Thoughts on Nietzsche

  1. Agreed, I found Nietzsche more difficult to follow than Rousseau as well! Which is funny, considering Rousseau’s text is older than Nietzsche’s. But I guess certain texts will always be more understandable than others, no matter how long ago they were written. And ya, the lecture really helped clarify and reveal some points I’d not fully understood. It’s definitely interesting to see this new spin on punishment, something that is generally viewed as anything other than fun, in a philosophy text. As much as I don’t wanna go there, I couldn’t help but laugh at imagining this guy with the ridiculous moustache potentially being super into dominatrix stuff! But hey, no judgement over here =p. To each their own! That’s of course a bit of a stretch from what he means in the text. See you tomorrow! Good blog post :).

  2. The question of punishment is interesting. It makes a lot of sense to me that guilt simply came about from debt, and that punishment is a way we pay another our debts by giving them fun. Perhaps it’s not something i’d like to believe, but when you look at the world around us, there are lots of examples of punishment purely as an exercise in power, rather than to actually increase ones wealth etc.
    Cool blog!
    Sam

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