Thanks for writing this—I think it’s a fairly useful summary. I’m not a Nietzsche expert but it tracks well with what I know. I also find the L&L Darrow reference well-chosen: when I was younger I remember being excited the first time I read the Darrow plea, just because Leopold, whatever his other flaws, seemed to ‘take ideas seriously’—although I didn’t know the words for that then. I think one of Nietzsche’s contribution to culture is in some sense instantiating part of the essence of taking ideas seriously.
My main worry with your post is that, as with all analytic distillations of continental philosophy, it reduces a worldview to some claims about that worldview. In general I think Nietzsche’s whole work is written in a way that’s supposed to stylistically communicate his idea, in the same way the word ‘bell’ evokes the sound of a bell quite independent of the semantic content of that word. And so I read Nietzsche’s convoluted claims as on the level of explicit content vaguely irrelevant, because the style itself is an example of the eternal return (of his worldview).
Thanks for writing this—I think it’s a fairly useful summary. I’m not a Nietzsche expert but it tracks well with what I know. I also find the L&L Darrow reference well-chosen: when I was younger I remember being excited the first time I read the Darrow plea, just because Leopold, whatever his other flaws, seemed to ‘take ideas seriously’—although I didn’t know the words for that then. I think one of Nietzsche’s contribution to culture is in some sense instantiating part of the essence of taking ideas seriously.
My main worry with your post is that, as with all analytic distillations of continental philosophy, it reduces a worldview to some claims about that worldview. In general I think Nietzsche’s whole work is written in a way that’s supposed to stylistically communicate his idea, in the same way the word ‘bell’ evokes the sound of a bell quite independent of the semantic content of that word. And so I read Nietzsche’s convoluted claims as on the level of explicit content vaguely irrelevant, because the style itself is an example of the eternal return (of his worldview).