RUDIGER SAFRANSKI

Hi, i'm doing some background reading on Nietzsche via Rudiger Safranski's critical biography. Interested to read that N welcomed war because he thought it rejuvenated culture, but detested bourgeois notions of war intended to maximise profit. I would say that he differs from Hitler in that H regarded war as a means to territorial enlargment and enslavement of others. He didn't intrinsically care about culture except when it served his aims, although it is true he may have been a Wagner fan beyond his political role. He certainly didn't initiate the war in order to build more and better culture, since his movement was inherently philistine. This book is useful and recommended for the intellectual context of N. also N's hatred of mass movement politics and the 'threat' posed by the Paris Commune and Socialism generally which he clearly felt threatened by and detested. A surprising facet of N's character is thus revealed, as an anti-bourgeois yet also opposed to mass movements of toilers, does this not place him firmly then in the Nazi camp, if one views Nazism as the radicalism and enlargement of the petit-bourgeois class? Or did N claim an alliance with the vons? I mean it wasn't Frederich von Nietzsche, was it? In fact N detested the Kaiser and also Stocker as a consequence of their anti-semitism. So where does N fit in in the political spectrum or is he just a sad case? A painful case?

Gruss

hi paul,

yes, Nietzsche welcomed war but that's clear and logical. As Heraklitus said, war would be the father of all things N also regarded war as a positive thing, he cites also in Twilight of the idols a sentence that paradise would be beneath the shadow of swords. War would be a heroic thing, war is started by strong overflowing beings, it is always a barbaric moment in war which is made to wipe out all older, decadent, peaceful and tired cultures with the power of youth. how N would affirm war is definitively no question of race or racism by N.

Nietzsche would have liked to have been a member of the nobility, he was ashamed his whole life of his petit-bourgeouis origin. He always said that he was descended from Polish aristocracy, but this is not proven and also only a nice-sounding fable. N doesn't fit into our contemporary political spectrum. Nietzsche had 4 anti's: anti-feminist (this is anti-moral rather right-wing), anti-religiously (neither), anti-socialist (rather right-wing), i.e. he is a tendential, difficult philospher rather than being overtly right-wing. But many elements of his thinking cannot be grasped with the finely checked concept patterns from the left or right wing at all which we today are talking about.

yes I agree. his thought processes don't fit our world at all. He hated the Bismarck Reich, your right, and wanted to go back. So he is in some sense a right-wing anarchist, longing for the days of yore, the golden age of Goethe and Weimar, having to put up with the filthy modern tide which he detested. In a sense he's what we call, a young fogey, ie a person so young yet so old-fashioned.

Before the 2nd World War German society was substantially more complex. Hitler made a "highway" from German society, he also abolished the whole old élite, which was primarily Jewish. Nietzsche wanted to preserve old Germany, back to the old cultural Germanness, for the purposes of Weimar, new united Germany under Bismarck was an artificial nation state with a capital in Berlin. N loved Goethe and Weimar and hated Berlin and Bismarck hated. N also rejected the social state. Generally N detested the new state which set up in the 19th century including its young Emperor.

gruß

a.