[Moshe..]

Originally Posted by Lowlander
Please don't expect me to be a living compendium of philosophy. I'm sure I haven't read as much as you have. What I said about ritalin was *no* joke actually, and I'm very selective when I choose books! What I've read about philosophy is:
a whole lot of Nietzsche
a whole lot of Vilar
a little by Schopenhauer
Hobbes's Leviathan (but 20 years ago)
a little by de La Boëtie (as mentioned above)
and the contemporary fellas Rüdiger Safranski and Wilfried Gottschalch (who are somewhere in-between philosophy and psychology)
and a little by Demokrit
and a book by Ludwig Feuerbach (who sucks to no extent, IMHO, he was more like a preacher than a philosopher)
and that's pretty much it.

I decide to read a book *only* if I'm convinced that it can help me understand the human soul. And a book should not get on my nerves …
…by repeating too many thoughts I've already heard elsewhere, or
…by sounding like a sermon (see above, Feuerbach…).

I tend to catalogue (in my head) almost every thought I find in a book and to compare every thought with similar thoughts that have been expressed by other writers. So if read too many books, it would kill me, or I'd end up in a loony bin just like Nietzsche did. No sh!t. That's why I stick to good old Friedrich N.'s own advice: "Read little, but *carefully*".

Besides, Nietzsche and Vilar are authors that can really deter you from reading too many other philosophy books, because they both explain how deeply most other philosophers in history have been manipulated by what their contemporaries called "morality". And what's more: Vilar explained in what way Nietzsche was manipulated too (at least: manipulated in what he thought about women). So, knowing about these things, should I really torture myself reading a weighty tome like, e.g., Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? No, I'm not gonna do that.

You’re german so of course we expect special insights from you.

I did some philosophy at oxford. It was such a fun anglo-saxon course (i.e. set theory, formal logic, philosophy of maths, philos of language, computational linguistics ect – I could work for google now no joke!). So i haven’t got round to reading enough soulful philosophy. But i did at least learn plato and aristotle! And I also found out about different religions just from hobby-reading. My reading style is the exact opposite of yours; I love haphazardly skimming across the library shelves. Of course I’m still looking for a hypnotist to help me live down my traumatic memories of the critique of pure reason, the most elaborate system of torture devised by man.

Oh and who’s this vilar person?

I don't think Nietzsche's books captured the essence of the feminine soul either. I've never come across a male philosopher who was clever enough to understand women. I keep asking myself: Why the hell do so many men believe that a woman who talks or acts like a fool is stupid by nature? Couldn't it be that many a woman only pretends to be naïve for tactical reasons? Scientists have proven beyond any doubt that there's no primary difference between women's and men's intelligence. Couldn't it be that the differences between the female soul and the male soul are due to education and to the rules set by society, and not innate? Is it mere coincidence that the most important statements about the feminine soul were made by a female philosopher (Esther Vilar)?

Plato is amazing on the subject, although you have to read him way too carefully. I haven’t done any vilar though. You get the sense nietzsche knew less about women than the average person working in a donut icing factory (what are we supposed to call them nowadays - donut engineers?). He was so intimidated by the masculine teutonic girls. Maybe he’d have been better off in italy.

German culture seems to have the most difficulty relating the sexes. It is a problem in all the northern european cultures of course! In paris or turin they generally relate more easily. It’s paradoxical since there’s a greater differentiation between the sexes in france and italy. French women are so ostentatiously feminine. You can even hear it! The difference between the average pitches men and women speak is so much greater there.

Nietzsche was prophetic (he had a very good nose!) on the declining differentiation in northern europe. And in england today it’s got to the extent where the class differences have taken primacy; class has overtaken gender! Girls from a certain type of school will have more in common with boys from similar schools than they will with girls from a different class of school. But god knows what it’s like in america! One always gets the impression that everyone has exactly the same soul regardless of ties of family, job, height, weight, race, class or sex. Mass production of humanity, you see. Henry ford would be oh so proud.

We need to talk about plato. Here is someone who understands that masculine/feminine is just a clumsy distinction for the person in the donut icing factory. You have to study plato. A well-developed soul is as complex as any city (it is isomorphic to the well-developed republic) and contains both male and female parts.

As for Schopenhauer: I think the main difference between him and Nietzsche is the fact that Schopenhauer was afraid of the dark sides of the human soul and said "no" to them while Nietzsche said an emphatic "yes" to them. Nietzsche believed that too much fear of the "dark" side will lead to a reduction, a minification of the human being who will then turn into a "grigorious animal". So, in that respect, Nietzsche was an aesthete. He made clear that the beauty of the human mind gets destroyed by people's tendency to workaholism. (He puts it best in "The Gay Science".)

Yes the difference is schopenhauer was totally emasculated. Life was too much for schopenhauer. There is a fundamental weakness of spirit. He was way too delicate! Cynicism is idealism gone wrong; it's the left over from when a delicate idealism gets shattered by reality. What a miracle he didn’t blow his brains out like his dad. But he had an incredibly powerful mind for metaphysics. He weaves together kant and buddhism so beautifully. His ideas on re-incarnation and music are utterly spectacular. He also writes very clearly (because he went to an english boarding school i say). I’ve only read a few secondary sources and his aphorisms though (haven’t had time to do ‘the world as will & rep’ properly). But as you say nietzsche said yes to life in its reality. Schopenhauer is like the child who refuses to eat anything which isn’t cake, which isn’t sugar-coated and covered in marzipan.

Looking at modern Western societies there can't be a shadow of a doubt that Nietzsche was right with what he predicted. The development we are witnessing today is what I always call the decline of Western civilization, and in my personal environment: the decline of Germany. I feel deeply depressed when I look at the society surrounding me. Some centuries ago many people outside Germany admired my country for its profusion of poets and thinkers… And today?? Today the rest of Europe mocks Germany because almost nothing's remained of what it used to be. It appears to me that at least 75% of the people in my country are square. They only think about work, cleanness, law and order, and mow their lawns with nail scissors once a week. (They wrinkle the nose if the neighbour's grass is taller than their own.) They call every person with an ill-paid job a wuss or a failure, no matter how creative and imaginative that person is. Some even use the word Intellektueller as a contemptuous word,imagine that! – Nietzsche KNEW this was going to be the result of a trading society's automation processes. Yet nobody would listen to him.

It can't be that bad. The children still play schubert sonatas! And just thank god you weren’t born in zimbabwe, canada or the sudan.

It does sound like the obsessions of the lower end of the bourgeois (i.e. health, wealth and fear of death) have prevailed over love, warfare, beauty and pride. Afterall juliet & romeo & achilles would never have cared about something so trivial as death, let alone taxes! You see this is the worst of the lesser bourgeois. But at least you’ve managed to stop gassing jews.

Most of english society is as badly off as germany. Some of it is a lot worse trust me! I’d take the lower bourgeois over football hooligans any day. The class system (which has its downsides too obviously) has managed to slow the degeneration in certain parts of english society. There is still some aristocratic sentiment (evidenced by the enduring popularity of evelyn waugh who is an otherwise inferior english novelist). There’s still something of an attractive historical continuity in england. We have millions who read books. We have old families who behave like they were living in the sixteenth century. And the ancient schools stay the same. This provides a small counter-weight to the present, and the belief that the present is all there is - what a dangerous belief! Yet england is also more vulnerable to deleterious american influences since they borrowed our tongue.

Compare the other serious cultures of europe: france & northern italy. Italy will always be the most beautiful place in the world. Nobody’s producing art nowadays (armani doesn’t count), but they’ve preserved the ancient peasant traditions. The peasant culture’s vibrant. And there’s the aesthetical morality. Beauty is still the primary value, even if nobody wants to paint anymore. Apart from that though, hardly anyone reads, and have you seen the state of the television!

And france is falling apart; their immigrants live in another dimension, totally un-integrated. And god the trade-unions. But they’ve still got so much class in paris. French are just classy. They killed their king and replaced him with the haute bourgeois. It’s not that bad. We can always move to france.

Unfortunately one of his predictions was completely wrong: he said numerous times that new philosophers would come up and enhance his theories. That was wishful thinking.

He knew something was brewing; he didn’t know what. My favourite observation from the gay science: he hears the intonation of the prussian miltary everywhere, even in the speech of a school-girl. He knows something's going down (as he would have phrased if he'd been an american detective, if only!). Nietzsche has an uncanny sense of intuition which is unfortunately perverted by his wishful thinking. It’s like he was wishing for another renaissance last century (yeah right darling). ANd the germans had a full on mental breakdown instead.

Read only what you really *want* to read, boy! But, anyway, I'm sure you'll enjoy Faust although some passages in part 2 seem somewhat tedious. You're 100% right when you say Faust is not a sissy. I believe that Goethe was, to some extent, influenced by Shakespeare when he wrote it. His style is different from Shakespeares, but his hero Faust bears some resemblance with Shakespeare's heroes. In 1771 Goethe held a speech about Shakespeare, showing deep admiration for his work, mainly because of the fact that so many leading characters in Shakespeare's dramas were persons who took great risks, and who really *went* for it (despite all their doubts) as soon as they'd made up their minds about something (in contrast to the lazy, romantic dreamers of the 18th century whom Goethe sometimes loved to mock). In Faust Part 2 you'll find a monologue in which Faust expresses his joy of leading an *active* life with the words: "he [= the human being in general] only deserves freedom and life who is daily compelled to conquer them". On the other hand, Goethe was a sceptic as well. At the end of Faust 2 he shows how easily a human being can lose control when taking bold decisions. Yet I don't want to tell you too much about the contents before you read it.

Can’t wait to read faust.

From nine till five I have to spend my time at work
My job is very boring I'm an office clerk
The only thing that helps me pass the time away
Is knowing I'll be back at Echo Beach some day...

I'm a post-grad student with nothing to do (apart from reading faust) - my 9-5 job tomorrow is reading and finishing a box of cigarettes, then maybe i'll go to pub. Don't worry, i have to get a job one day. Arbeit macht frei. No seriously but i've got to hand in an essay tomorrow morning, it's an all-nighter for me.