Does Nietzsche commit a 'Rapist's Fallacy'?

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The USSR made a habit of incarceration dissidents in insane asylums ( in distinction to the USA which now sends the mentally ill to its prisons) on the theory that anyone disagreeing with the party line is mentally ill. On Nietzsche's logic they were simply removing the sick from public view. It is only a small step from there to Butler's Erewhon where sickness is a crime. The almost completely decayed health system in the USA may find it more economic to execute the ill thus expanding the Blackwater Corporation's domain to a rather conclusive combination of public health and public execution. No telling where this might lead.

Mind over matter only works for individuals, not for an entire species. I'm sorry, but we are a species of sadists.

Descartes is the "I think, therefore I am guy". He also attempted to destroy reality and build it back up from nothing, except he made one fatal flaw, assuming that there was a god. He's the only philosopher I read in college that I didn't find some redeeming quality in.

What do you mean by that?

Consider a man who is victimized and tortured by women his whole life, who seem to be nothing more than 'beautiful lies' to him, bringers of pain in the disguise of a fair, motherly sex, who secretly want the man to retch in torment, e-ven-though-he's-con-scious.

As much as I dread that possibility, women have done a lot to increase its likelihood. They bless their sadists with sweet hugs and kisses as if to prepare them for their 'nerd beatings,' and in the image of the act directly tempt the romantically unsuccessful man into nausea and fury by showing him the opposite of what he 'has.'

His pain could be called 'stigmatic pain' -- possibly the worst kind of pain -- of no use to him, but only to others who wish to avoid ending up like him. It consists precisely in his being an 'example of failure,' the figurative "Don't do this" diagram in a textbook about life, and, we could imagine, in his complete inability to tolerate his pain, on the basis that it would otherwise lose its meaning as stigmatic pain and encourage other, happier people to allow themselves a similar fate.

Now, one may take one of Nietzsche's ideas -- that of eternal recurrence -- and ask, "What if this man must be reborn as himself over and over again for the rest of eternity, in a Hell of loneliness in which he will never get to know what it's like to have a girlfriend whom he can trust?"

Would that not be the most unbearable thought in the world to you, or are you just a Species of Sadists?

You may reply that the laws of nature are either nondeterministic or that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics allows him to live alternate destinies in his next lives. In the case of many-worlds, however, wouldn't that man be reborn every time? What would it mean for that man to have the option of 'being someone else,' when he was bound to exist anyway?

Do you ever think about this, or are you just a Species of Sadists?

Suppose consciousness was only possible in a world of cruelty, and that the Anthropic Principle (you can read about it here) prevented this man from attaining liberation from his torment? "Look, it's the same world again! Look, again! Again! Again!" As if a Painbringer specifically created this universe out of profoundly evil logic just to torture this man, using women who turn him down and other catastrophic misfortunes as its chief weapon against him after 'learning how to be a sadist.'

Don't these ideas move you into sympathy, or are you just a Species of Sadists?



No wonder you get shot.

Last edited by MikeH106 on 03 May 2009, 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Kneejerk Nietzsche topic

Our eternal recurrence philosopher had syphilis of the brain, due to an encounter with a prostitute years before. he was also a product of his time: Women were either bad or good. The mental illness brought on by the venereal disease, not to mention the physical deterioration must have ruined whatever coherent thought he had left by the time he wrote much of his work.

Take him with a grain of saltpeter.

^^^ very sad. an otherwise brilliant mind wasted.

nietzsche's i mean.

And many more geniuses out there who didn't get the recognition as he did.

So in some ways, he was lucky especially being just a man of his time.

It seems that Nietzsche attempts to justify his claims with a pompous, long-winded chain of fallacies, by unleashing his 'strong men' and beasts of prey upon his intended minority, and then attempting to backwardly justify it based on the subsequent reaction of this minority (if, in fact, it ends up being a minority, and I do not necessarily hope that it will).

Thus, his entire discussion of men of ressentiment could be based merely on the way they act after they have been bullied, rather than before. An idiot who read Nietzsche (excuse my language) might commit the fallacy of hasty generalization if he were to tell us that men who are 'weak and ill-constituted' have always been, or must necessarily be, men of ressentiment, based merely on their reaction to bullying.

Nietzsche even appears to equate strength with expressions of cruelty in his first essay, or at least posit cruelty as a necessary outcome of being strong, and he writes:

"To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength." -First Essay, Section 13

"When the oppressed, downtrodden, outraged exhort one another with the vengeful cunning of impotence: 'let us be different from the evil, namely good! And he is good who does not outrage, who harms nobody, who does not attack, who does not requite, who leaves revenge to God, who keeps himself hidden as we do, who avoids evil and desires little from life, like us, the patient humble, and just' -- this, listened to calmly and without previous bias, amounts to no more than: 'we weak ones are, after all, weak; it would be good if we did nothing for which we are not strong enough' ..." -First Essay, Section 13

Note, first of all, the logical ambiguity in Nietzsche's writings. He doesn't tell us whether these traits are to be considered together or alone, and then he goes on to write that this ideal of lovingkindness amounts to 'no more than' than an acceptance of one's physical weakness. Yet there are valuable expressions of strength that don't involve hurting people, and advantages of being weak, or at least small (see my essay, The Weaknesses of Competition for Individual Strength and the Evolutionary Value of Small Size).

It would be a sad and revolting fact if Nietzschean fallacies, over time, are what transformed our culture into the torturefest it is today.

Yeah, I'd say that Nietzsche is a difficult figure to read, and I would also suggest that the genealogy of morals is just an attack on Christianity more so than a promotion of rape.

The Schopenhauer comment is badly distorted. Schopenhauer was a bitter, depressive man who argued that this was the worst of all possible worlds, so really, that kind of jab makes sense.

Secondly, even if we take some of your reading seriously, there is a sense in which people take identity in the tragic things that happen to them, and use them, something that Nietzsche opposed.

Thirdly, as Orwell points out, German does not translate exactly, and Nietzsche is known for being very difficult to figure out, even reading the German.

As for Nietzsche promoting cruelty, this could be in part true, but I strongly doubt it. Most people haven't read Nietzsche, and the lines for cruelty are pretty pre-Nietzschean. I mean, there is likely more evidence that torments have generally decreased rather than increased over time, so Nietzsche cannot be blamed for a lot in terms of torture.

But yes, Nietzsche does like strength, mostly because he sees weakness as leading to basically a form of living death, rather than expressions of a joy of life. The herd is basically a group that binds people together and is uncreative, as opposed to Nietzsche's individualism.

And he enjoyed scolding people -- how ironic that would be, if it were true.



If they happen to you, they become part of your identity. You can then do a number of things with them, even if you just report that such-and-such actually happened.



I also hear that his sister rewrote some of his writings. In this thread, I will take Nietzsche's writings for what they appear in the book, and refer to the author as Nietzsche for the sake of simplicity.



I would be less angry if torture were reduced even further.

Thankfully, I have stopped retching (an affliction that hounded me for about three years) and would love to see a happy ending to all this madness -- a happy ending for everyone, and not just the Happy Bunny.



Surely birds and squirrels are weaker than humans. Are they a form of living death?

I think he'd just laugh - your analysis is so utterly poor and so much of it is about yourself and so many of your criticisms of him are criticisms of yourself.

Am I the only one who thinks Nietzsche was an aspie?

So why are you reading him, you're clearly not one of his intended audience.

Nietzsche is an early existentialistic thinker, this does include the right to reject past events or to cease caring about them at a whim.


That's the Will to Power, and it is the major book that became popular with the Nazis, as his sister was a Nazi.


Ok, but blaming Nietzsche is problematic. He is just a rhetorical person who wants people to have the strength to overcome nihilism and live a life worth living. He is mostly ignored, and most of our evils can be traced more strongly to past evils than they can to Nietzsche.


Do birds and squirrels face nihilism and have to create an a self that can overcome this nihilism? Are their actions already reflective of the will to power?

Weakness here is a spiritual form of weakness. It isn't a matter of literally being strong, but rather having a strength oriented spirit, willing to face nihilism and the death of God rather than succumbing to it.

In any case, I doubt that animals would be typically considered by Nietzsche to be in this category. People are creatures he would attack for this though, and some of their ideologies as well.


I do think that Mike's analysis is more about himself than it really is about Nietzsche.


I hate diagnosing people as aspies after they are dead. I am not entirely sure though, as Nietzsche did not behave in a completely anti-NT-ish manner. I mean, Kant and Schopenhauer both had some activities that make me suspicious, but it could just be that I don't know enough about Nietzsche.

Postperson: Telling me my understanding of Nietzsche is poor without explaining why is merely a personal attack and proves nothing.

The mere right to reject past events or 'block them out' in some way (I do believe quantum mechanics allows this) is not the same as an attitude of scorn at not doing so.

Do you just want to take away my ability to tell you about all the awful things that have happened to me, including a mugging incident? I will talk about those things if I want to.



That I did not know.



For the record, I have not actually blamed him for our present-day callousness, or even attributed partial blame, but there do appear to be some possible fallacies in this book, not to mention logical ambiguity as I've said before.



Do you believe we face nihilism in a way that birds and squirrels don't? If so, then how?



Can't a sick person do that? Can't someone who isn't, as Nietzsche writes, a 'bird of prey,' do that? (Not to be confused with the birds in our example.)



No, it's about Nietzsche, as I've cut and pasted many excerpts from the Genealogy of Morals. Further, I don't want anyone here to forget that I don't side with cruelty toward the sick.

I thought it was clear enough. There are those among our species that are capable of achieving mind over matter, transcending our nature to create their own, but they are the exception, not the rule. As a species, we're mostly driven by our nature.

Well, the issue is that Nietzsche expresses value judgments, and his value judgments end up rejecting self-pity and emotions of that nature, because they are not life affirming by his judgement.


Right, she spliced some of his journal entries into something semi-coherent.


Nietzsche is outright anti-logical and anti-systematic, so to accuse him for a matter that he revels in doesn't seem to be a problem.


Do I? Yes. We think. We can use our minds to hide ourselves, but squirrels and birds are more naked.


I don't think that Nietzsche was likely being literal. Nietzsche was frequently sick after all, and spent much of his life dealing with sickness, but I would doubt that he completely scorned himself.(although it is possible)


Well.... there's a difference between reading someone and reading something onto someone.

Reading onto someone doesn't mean you agree with them, but rather it means that the selection of themes and the meanings found do not seem to coincide with what likely seems to expressed by our author in question. In this case, the focus upon oppression and rejection of a lower class by an upper seems to be a major theme in your thought, including your attack upon the necessity of vegetables for instance, and it seems as if you are imposing this kind of structure upon Nietzsche. I could be entirely wrong about this of course, but this is just my impression.

I agree with post-person in that your analysis of Nietzsche is utterly poor. That's not a personal attack but the opinion of someone who has read and studied a lot of Nietzsche. You can't simply pick passages from one book and interpret them on their own. To understand Nietzschean concepts like will to power and his reasoning on cruelty and weakness requires the much greater complicated context of the whole of his work. You need to know his ideas and opinions on religion, history, Greek philosophy, Western continental philosophy, instinct, biology, etc etc., in depth first and it's clear that you don't. And it doesn't make any sense to begin trying to apply Nietzsche's ideas to modern day without first understanding what his writings were reacting to in his own time. I encourage you to read more Nietzsche, preferably under the guidance of a philosophy student or professor who is well familiar with the entire body of Nietzsche's work, if possible. His writing style can be a bit challenging sometimes (but he did that on purpose...) but his ideas are very rewarding.

mm Henry, GOM is a good starter as a lot of his basic ideas are there, but maybe it's a bit strong for you. Twilight of the Idols is really hilarious in places, it's also mostly aphorisms so it's very readable.

I think I've read most of his works, except Thus Spake Tharathustra which I always find strangely unreadable, and a couple of biographies too. I used the Walter Kaufman translations which were the standard at the time, and I've looked at another translation and didn't find it as good.