kim_il_succ t1_j1qywxh wrote on December 26, 2022 at 6:26 PM

It’s all personal preference I suppose, some influential philosophers can be hard to read. For example, I really don’t like to read Locke though I recognize his value. Anyway, the one sentence summary or Nietzsche is that he wrote about a lot of the nihilism and tragedy that accompanies a society which is becoming less religious and more scientific. Since there is no moral code because God is dead, nothing matters, essentially. He also doesn’t believe in free will and thinks the very idea of it is a stupidity.

Personally, I value his contribution to philosophy, and I am amazed at how many of his predictions came to pass (particularly those predicting the world wars) but I’m not fully on board with his nihilism. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Nietzsche quotes, though: “If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have an aesthetic criteria.”

Hope this was of some help, though I’m by no means a Nietzsche expert, maybe a YouTube video on him could help you out.

Chickentrap t1_j1r5ejg wrote on December 26, 2022 at 7:13 PM

I've never heard that quote before but wow, that's brilliant. Thanks.

DarthKnight024 t1_j1tuwc1 wrote on December 27, 2022 at 10:05 AM

>Since there is no moral code because God is dead, nothing matters, essentially.

I don't think Nietzsche believes that the absence of an divine and immutable moral law necessarily leads us to the nihilistic conclusion that "nothing matters". Rather, he argues that this void of meaning left in the wake of God's death leaves us with the freedom to construct our own moral laws and bring about a "revaluation of all values".

>He also doesn’t believe in free will and thinks the very idea of it is a stupidity.

Nietzsche's views on free will can easily be misconstrued depending on one's interpretation of what "free will" means. Specifically, Nietzsche attacks the egalitarian notion of free will with its doctrines of "equal rights for all" and universal compassion. Such ideas, according to Nietzsche, amount to the very antithesis of his own conception of free will, which affirms individual agency and self-determination. He terms this conception of free will the "will to power", associating it with values of vitality, passion and strength as opposed to the sense of passivity and restraint that is characteristic of egalitarian free will. The fundamental principle of egalitarianism, in Nietzsche's view, is the vengeance of the weak, who enviously seek to condemn and suppress the will of the strong and thus diminish them to their level of frailty. Having sated their lust for vengeance, they disguise their petty envy in the virtuous costume of "justice", and "freedom", all while bringing about the disease of mediocrity that plagues modern society. It is this notion of "free will" that Nietzsche despises and regards with contempt.

Lanky_Fella t1_j1rmkb8 wrote on December 26, 2022 at 9:22 PM

What’s locke’s value? He was the key philosopher of settler-colonialism and his Carolina constitution was one of the first to ever inscribe slaves with zero rights where previously the owner had rules of how they had to treat them. Dude was a hardcore slavery/colonialism thinker who developed the idea of terra nullius, that if you’re not building on the land you don’t have the right to own it.