I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this quote from Nietzsche

[Melchior]

The abyss is a good symbol for nihilism and despair.

I think this is right. The "monster" you're fighting could be despair as well. Fighting against it is futile, you have to transcend it. Theists can transcend it through faith. Nietzsche would reject that idea, but say that it can be transcended through will to power and self-mastery.

You don't have a clue what he is talking about.

[DesolationRow]

You don't have a clue what he is talking about.

Well, thanks for enlightening me then.

You seem to prefer telling others they're wrong, rather than offering any interpretation of your own. It's discourteous.

[Buddhist guy]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

[Melchior]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

Right, and that's what I am trying to say.

[Melchior]

You don't have a clue what he is talking about.

Well, thanks for enlightening me then.

You seem to prefer telling others they're wrong, rather than offering any interpretation of your own. It's discourteous.

That's because I know better. Nietzsche liked to say obscure things. He is not really a philosopher, so don't worry too much about it.

[Buddhist guy]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

Right, and that's what I am trying to say.

Fair enough!

[Ansiktsburk]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

in that kind of matters, where there are no right answers, the thing maybe to do is to indenfiy the components that clashes, or the different alternatives to choose from. Discussing it is still valuable, even though you do not get to a nice "end", the discussion as such is the goal.

[Buddhist guy]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

in that kind of matters, where there are no right answers, the thing maybe to do is to indenfiy the components that clashes, or the different alternatives to choose from. Discussing it is still valuable, even though you do not get to a nice "end", the discussion as such is the goal.

Agreed

[Melchior]

I really don't think there's a "right answer" to topics like this.

in that kind of matters, where there are no right answers, the thing maybe to do is to indenfiy the components that clashes, or the different alternatives to choose from. Discussing it is still valuable, even though you do not get to a nice "end", the discussion as such is the goal.

It is extremely difficult to interpret Nietzsche without knowing the background of his thought (19th century). He believed some crazy things. At times he seems to draw from Darwinian theory, and at other times he clearly opposes it. He reviled socialism, but at times he says things that seem to support it. I would leave this quote alone, and just understand that sometimes you have to take what he says at face value, as poetic speech. He just liked to play with words and ideas. It can be very dangerous to read beyond what is there.

[Buddhist guy]

It is extremely difficult to interpret Nietzsche without knowing the background of his thought (19th century). He believed some crazy things. At times he seems to draw from Darwinian theory, and at other times he clearly opposes it. He reviled socialism, but at times he says things that seem to support it. I would leave this quote alone, and just understand that sometimes you have to take what he says at face value, as poetic speech. He just liked to play with words and ideas. It can be very dangerous to read beyond what is there.

Hi Melchior,
It makes sense that reading Nietsche's works would likely promote possible insights into Nietzsche's personality and speculation as to what he may have meant, of course no one can ever know. What do you mean by "dangerous?" Are you referring to the Nazis?

[Melchior]

It is extremely difficult to interpret Nietzsche without knowing the background of his thought (19th century). He believed some crazy things. At times he seems to draw from Darwinian theory, and at other times he clearly opposes it. He reviled socialism, but at times he says things that seem to support it. I would leave this quote alone, and just understand that sometimes you have to take what he says at face value, as poetic speech. He just liked to play with words and ideas. It can be very dangerous to read beyond what is there.

Hi Melchior,
It makes sense that reading Nietsche's works would likely promote possible insights into Nietzsche's personality and speculation as to what he may have meant, of course no one can ever know. What do you mean by "dangerous?" Are you referring to the Nazis?

Not at all. The Nazi interpretation is closer to the truth than the leftists, who somehow claim Nietzsche as there own. He reviled socialism and any kind of 'egalitarianism'. He said that there are 'people that are unfit to live'. I translated it myself, so I know. Nietzsche liked to make provocative statements. No-one here, and no professors of philosophy, are capable of the kind of nuanced work that I have done with Nietzsche's texts.

Just as widely distributed languages have regional variations, so also do they have historical ones. Failing to recognize this can lead to subtle, even gross distortions in meaning, misleading the reader in the process, to a greater or lesser extent. It is very important that the translator not inadvertently distort the meaning of a passage by using words which might be appropriate for a contemporary text, but are completely out of place and anachronistic when used to translate a text from a time before the word or expression even appeared. Too, the contemporary term may have connotations which are antithetical to the author’s point of view. It can be inadvertent: the translator may simply be unaware that the term he is using is of relatively recent origin. Such is the case with ‘underprivileged’, which has been used by Walter Kaufmann in his translations of Nietzsche’s term schlechtweggekommen (the 19th century terms used were ‘unfortunate’ or ‘dispossessed’). Kaufmann’s translations of Nietzsche have been regarded, for decades, as the ‘gold standard’ for faithfulness. My own work in translating these texts has revealed that Kaufmann was determined to ‘rehabilitate’ Nietzsche, to make him seem a much less fearful figure than the one which the Nazis and others before them had created to serve their purposes, and that Kaufmann was not above some careful, calculated, and not easily detected ‘whitewashing’ to accomplish this. The isolated case, the slip of the pen, can be forgiven, but the systematic repression of anything that does not conform to Kaufmann’s ideal, to what he wants Nietzsche to be, cannot be passed over in silence. Kaufmann, whether deliberately or subconsciously, systematically softened Nietzsche’s harshest, most vehement and provocative pronouncements, sometimes simply by making them ‘opaque’. He also substituted esoteric neologisms for the ordinary German terms Nietzsche used. A result of this distorted portrayal, Nietzsche, who had once been dismissed in respectable circles as a proto-Nazi, has been embraced by the academic world and now, cleansed of his hubris and everything else that makes Nietzsche Nietzsche, he is taught in philosophy classes to impressionable and callow youths. The truth is that Nietzsche did indeed say some things that seem unacceptable to many today, in the post-war West. These things cannot be wished away or dismissed. Reading Kaufmann’s translations, though, one gets a different impression of Nietzsche. The easiest way to show this is by providing an example of how Kaufmann treats schlechtweggekommen (and the related term mißrathen, now spelled missraten) in context. I will then provide a list of other instances out of context and show how I treated them.

Section 846, Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power):

The German text:
Der Verlangen nach Zerstörung, Wechsel, Werden kann der Ausdruck der übervollen zukunftsschwangern Kraft sein (mein Terminus dafür ist, wie man weiß, das Wort ‘dionysisch’); es kann aber auch der Haß der Mißrathnen, Entbehrenden, Schlechtweggekommenen sein, der zerstören muß, weil ihn das Bestehende, ja alles Bestehen, alles Sein selbst, empört und aufreizt.

Kaufmann (1967)
The demand for destruction, change, becoming, can be the expression of an over-full power pregnant with the future (my term for this, as is known, is the word ‘Dionysian’); but it can also be the hatred of the ill-constituted, disinherited, underprivileged, which destroys, has to destroy, because what exists, indeed existence itself, all being itself, enrages and provokes it.

The proposed translation:
The demand for destruction, for change, for evolution, can be the expression of an overflowing power pregnant with promise for the future (my term for this, as is well known, is ‘Dionysian’); it can, however, also be the hatred of the lost, of the pitiful, of the needy, of the dispossessed, which destroys, and must destroy, because it is provoked and enraged by everything that exists, indeed, by existence itself.

Here, following Jowett’s advice (‘the feeling should be more important than the exact word.’), the string of nominalised adjectives Mißrathenen, Entbehrenden, Schlechtweggekommenen is translated as ‘the lost’, ‘the needy’, ‘the pitiful’, ‘the dispossessed’, whereas Kaufmann has ‘ill-constituted’, ‘disinherited’, ‘underprivileged’.

To the casual observer there may not be that much difference between these sets of words, but, though subtle, the differences are important. The first term used by Kaufmann, ‘ill-constituted’, is hardly common or transparent. It is not ordinarily used of individuals, but rather of organizations, families, governments, and the like. So we would have to object to the first term Kaufmann uses on several grounds: it is unfamiliar, it is unidiomatic, and it is out of place. Missraten as a verb (spelled mißrathen in Nietzsche’s day), an adjective, or as the collective noun die Missratenen (spelled Mißrathenen in Nietzsche’s day) has a wide range of applications, and can be translated in various ways, from ‘failure’ (the noun Mißrathenen), to ‘unruly’, ‘wayward’, ‘bad’, ‘poor’, ‘misshapen’, ‘unfit’, and perhaps even ‘inferior’ (the past participle form of the verb missraten, spelled the same way, used as an adjective); ‘to go bad’, ‘to fail’ (the verb missraten). The basic concept is ‘to go wrong’, and as such it takes on the specific character of its context. I have found that ‘unfit’ seems to be appropriate in many cases, for both the collective noun and the past participle adjective, as shown in the following examples:

The German text:
Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power), section 872
Die allermeisten Menschen sind ohne Recht zum Dasein, sondern ein Unglück für die höheren: ich gebe den Mißrathenen noch nicht das Recht. Es giebt auch mißrathene Völker.

The proposed translation:
The great majority of men have no right to life, and serve only to disconcert the elect among our race; I do not yet grant the unfit that right. There are even unfit peoples.

Ludovici:
The great majority of men have no right to life, and are only a misfortune to their higher fellows.
[Remainder not translated by Ludovici].

Kaufmann:
The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men. [Remainder not translated by Kaufmann].

[Impenitent]

remembering that the will to power is a set of his notes (written at vastly different times and stages of his thinking) compiled by his sister...

but I agree, Nietzsche never wrote for the masses

-Imp

[Buddhist guy]

Thank you for clarifying

I'm beginning to see why the Nazi's endorsed Nietsche!

[Melchior]

Thank you for clarifying

I'm beginning to see why the Nazi's endorsed Nietsche!

Yep. He wrote many such sweeping statements.

[van Keister]

Very good interpretation of the Wille zur Macht. I'm glad to see that someone has a correct interpretation of Nietzsche. A good book on this subject is by a friend of mine, Abir Taha, called "The Cult of the Superman," We argue a lot on the methods at arriving at Ubermensch as she believes it is more religious (spiritual) than my biological version.