Yesterday's presentation on Friedrich Nietzsche seemed to go very well, even though I was considerably helped by SparkNotes.  Well, what do they expect when they set a presentation for the day after an essay deadline.  The presentation also rekindled my love for Mister Nietzsche.  I may just have to go a reread Thus Spoke Zarathustra again...

A philosopher once criticised my love of Nietzsche by saying that you can only appreciate him as a writer, and not a philosopher.  All in all, Nietzsche seems to be looked down upon by Philosophers in general.  In part, I would attribute this to his writing style.  Nietzsche is very lyrical and his work is highly metaphorical.  It also contradicts its self frequently as (in true Romantic style) he often wrote while high and later suffered a mental breakdown.  His work is also more of a stream of conscious so it is not structured in any way.  There never seem to be any outright conclusions in Nietzsche.

In part, criticisms seem to be linked with Nazism.  Yes, Hitler drew a lot of his doctrine from Nietzsche.  The idea of the Ubermensch - Master Race - does seem to be lifted directly from there.  Nietzsche is also unpopular with women in general (in Zarathustra he infamously writes "men should be trained for war, and women for the recreation of the warrior.  All else is folly").

However, Nietzsche was trying to encourage freedom of thought.  He criticism previous philosophers as dogmatics who ridgedly constructed complex arguments in order to express what was essentially there own opinion, and taught students to follow these dry facts rather than express themselves.  He believed in the "free spirit", where philosophers explore new paths through to their conclusion, no matter where that may be.  In reading Nietzsche's own work like this, parts become incredibly beautiful.  Nietzsche is expressing his own view and doesn't care if you don't follow him to the letter. 

As Bruce Lee once said "Absorb what is useful; reject what is useless".  Parts of Nietzsche's philosophy is wonderful, as it teaches one to be an individual and a strong moral figure.  To look to oneself and nature to inspire morality, rather than relying on the doctrine of Religion or anywhere else.  And anything that you don't like should be discarded and replaced with your own views, because that is what free thought is all about.

My absolute favourite line comes from his criticism of the Stoics in Beyond Good and Evil where he discribes a "beast of nature" as being "prodigial beyond measure, neutral beyond measure, with no purpose or conscious, no compassion or fairness, fertile and desolate and uncertain all at once".  Truely a beautiful and striking image that certainly makes one feel empowered as a person, if this is what we are to strive to be.