Do We Know What We Advocate? Stephen Hicks’s Defence of Individualism By Professor Piotr Kostyło Piotr Kostyło is Head of the Department of Philosophy of Education at Kasimir the Great University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The forty-five years of communism in Poland (1944-1989) were marked by the government reminding society of the atrocities committed during World […]
Professor Piotr Kostyło reviews *Nietzsche and the Nazis* Read More »
Friedrich Nietzsche made this indictment and prediction about the effect of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy: “As soon as Kant would begin to exert a popular influence, we should find it reflected in the form of a gnawing and crumbling skepticism and relativism.” Strong language, and it goes against a popular interpretation of Kant as the savior
Why did Nietzsche say Kant leads to crumbling relativism? Read More »
This New York Times extended article (behind paywall) on Rand’s influence includes some snark from philosophers over whether she really was a philosopher. Oh, come on. It reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s reception by the philosophers at the University of Basel (I haven’t come across their names in the history books) when Nietzsche assumed his
When philosophers boycotted Nietzsche at Basel Read More »
The Kindle edition of my Nietzsche and the Nazis was my first ever Kindle publication, released just before the hardcover edition in 2010. It’s now out in many translations and in audiobook, and I’m well pleased with its track record. The audiobook has over 4.8 million views, which is gratifying. Here also is the original
Kindle edition of *Nietzsche and the Nazis* Read More »
Question:In 200 words, what is the argument of Stephen Hicks’s book Nietzsche and the Nazis? ChatGPT: Stephen Hicks’s book Nietzsche and the Nazis argues that there is a direct connection between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the rise of Nazi ideology in Germany. Hicks argues that the Nazis were heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas,
Chat GPT on *Nietzsche and the Nazis* in 200 words Read More »
Thus spake Friedrich: “Kant’s joke. — Kant wanted to prove, in a way that would dumbfound the whole world, that the whole world was right: that was the secret joke of this soul. He wrote against the scholars in favor of popular prejudice, but for scholars and not for the people.” Nietzsche, *The Gay Science*,
Kant’s joke, according to Nietzsche Read More »
Refreshing this quotation from Zeev Sternhell’s The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition (Yale University Press, 2010), a scholarly study of the most disturbing intellectual trend of the modern world — the ongoing lineage of intellectuals opposed to the Enlightenment tradition of reason, naturalism, individualism, and freedom. Along the way Sternhell asks, of Nietzsche’s place in the trend, an
Zeev Sternhell on the Nazis’ pillaging of Nietzsche Read More »
In an interview, Foucault responds: “I am simply a Nietzschean, and I try as far as possible, on a certain number of issues, to see with the help of Nietzsche’s texts” (1989, 471). Source: Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961-1984). Edited by Sylvère Lotringer. Translated by Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston. New York: Semiotext(e), 1989, p. 471.)
Is Foucault a Neo-Marxist? Nietzschean datum Read More »
Nietzsche has a reputation for being an individualist. But note this call for mass sacrifice—from his Genealogy of Morals: “mankind in the mass sacrificed to the prosperity of a single stronger species of man — that would be an advance.” (GM II:12) Nietzsche’s sometimes-yes-sometimes-not individualism is complicated. For more, check out my “Egoism in Nietzsche
Was Nietzsche individualist? Mass sacrifice version Read More »
Friedrich Nietzsche has a reputation for being an individualist. But note this from his Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “The overman is the sense of the earth … . I love those who sacrifice themselves for the earth, that the earth may some day become the overman’s.” (Z I.P.3). So: Contrary to individualism, your life is not
Was Nietzsche individualist? Zarathustra-overman version Read More »