Is Nietzsche just a bad writer? He has to be one of the most frustrating philosophers I've read...

Whine about it some more bitch boy. You’re about as insightful as you are responsive.

I suggested Heraclitus' fragments because there is a quality about them that, if you can understand them, you can easily come to understand the strong Hellenistic influence on Nietzsche. His writing is for "hyperboreans" — if you strongly lack familiarity with the Hellenistic sense, you're going to mangle the work in some way.

Or OP could just read The Birth of Tragedy which is as explicit as it gets for Hellenic influence. Like it’s no fucking secret Nietzsche had a hard-on for Western antiquity. That’s trivial. If OP is really struggling with Nietzsche I doubt sending him down a rabbit hole of hermeneutic hell is really the solution.

He could read that, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, and Twilight of the Idols; but if he's having trouble with Nietzsche's writing style, he might have to start with someone else. Heraclitus is pretty simple and there's not a whole lot of him to read.

>to understand [meme philosopher a] you have to read [meme philosopher b]
>to understand [meme philosopher b] you have to read [meme philosopher c]
>to understand [meme philosopher c] you have to read [meme philosopher d]
How long does this process go on for?

>Twilight of the Idols
Now there’s an idea, a tremendously more worthwhile suggestion.

>Heraclitus is pretty simple
I can’t imagine a more ironic admission at this point in your explanation. I wouldn't even concede to that simply due to the interpretive problem of there barely being a Heraclitus to interpret. And why should OP seek an easier way into Nietzsche when the whole point of Nietzsche is to remain in exactely the opposite postion, namely the poinf of tension, suffering, confusion, a shattering of sorts. While OPs failure to access the material may be of a lesser type than the upshot of N’s view, it is a reaction that should not be avoided if OP ever hopes of fundamentally understanding N. He should be confused, averted, distrustful, and distressed in light of N’s philosophy and still have the desire to turn back to it and read onward. The facts of “the real Nietzsche” are apart of that exercise that the secondary literature has largely defanged, which includes suggestions like “turn to x author or y author.”

The Pre-Socratics, who began philosophy. There is no shortcut if you want to get anywhere substantial; it's like entering an argument halfway into it and (naively) thinking you have any real clue how to contribute.

You talk about avoiding hermeneutic hells but you're basically encouraging one by saying he shouldn't be trying to build a foundation of context for himself from the same individuals that Nietzsche read. If faggots like Heidegger and Deleuze focused more on building said foundation they wouldn't have spewed as much bullshit as they did, for example.

I'll correct what I said, but it's just an expansion of what I meant: OP should become more familiar with the Pre-Socratics, and also with Nietzsche's views on them. Nietzsche himself emphasized the Hellenic sensibility as extremely vital to him.

>You talk about avoiding hermeneutic hells but you're basically encouraging one by saying he shouldn't be trying to build a foundation of context for himself from the same individuals that Nietzsche read.
No, I’m not. One can read Nietzsche, understand his system w/o reference to other philosophers. Now, of course, this is not the outlandish claim you might think/imply it is; no one is saying all OP needs is Nietzsche. But a close study of the Cosmic Fragments, for example, is not what OP needs to understand N; he doesn’t even need a glance at this particular source right now.

>faggots like Heidegger and Deleuze
Are you seriously claiming that two master historians of philosophy didn’t already have this context when they devised their systems and interpretations? Likewise, I should ask, do you really think Nietzsche didn’t consider his own foundations when composing his works such that their philosophical implications are worked out/taken further/baked into his system as to make further study of them unnecessary within the context of his own meanderings? Like you really think these straight up zealots of philosophy would waste their breath if they didn’t think they had something further to say on these supposedly all important foundations?

>Nietzsche himself emphasized
He also said Zarathustra was the greatest gift mankind had ever received and should be taken as the fifth gospel. But if you take your suggestion seriously OP would be better off studying the iconography of Dionysus than he would some old philological point. I mean that sincerely. OP literally would be better off reading Homer, Sophocles, and studying the Dionysian festivals/cults.

But also literally what’s wrong with Heidegger or Deleuze’s Nietzsche? Or are you just name dropping for the sake of keeping up?

>But a close study of the Cosmic Fragments, for example, is not what OP needs to understand N; he doesn’t even need a glance at this particular source right now.
He will need to among several other works left from the Hellenes if he wants to parse The Birth of Tragedy at all.

>Are you seriously claiming that two master historians of philosophy didn’t already have this context when they devised their systems and interpretations?
Yes, I am. I think they rushed through it, and didn't really bother to try and seriously understand it, like a couple of schoolboy scholars. Hence why they mostly just ape him, re-word things, leave some pieces of him out... Whenever I read them, I am left thinking exactly that. It is very easy to miss something in all of this; just look at Nietzsche's personal life and how his peers interpreted him. Or how Nietzsche even condemns Goethe's understanding of the Hellenes.

>OP literally would be better off reading Homer, Sophocles, and studying the Dionysian festivals/cults.
Actually, I agree with you there. Aeschylus too.

Who did the Pre Socratics start with? Themselves. I wish modern philosophy would do the same occasionally. The greeks have nothing to say about modern science and industrial civilisation. If we want to take modern civilization seriously we can't keep relying on the past, we have to start thinking for ourselves.

>if he wants to parse The Birth of Tragedy at all
Outlandish completely, especially since Nietzsche builds the text out of specifically popular sources to show just how non-academic/specialized of a cultural problem he’s dealing with is.

>ape him, re-word things
Yeah calling bullshit on that one. You haven’t read Heidegger’s multivolume Nietzsche nor the much more accessible, canonically uncontestable Nietzsche and Philosophy by Deleuze. The former is a literal lecture for chirsts sakes. You’re just saying shit at this point to cover your half baked intuitionist stance. You couldn’t have picked two worse scholars to try to pick on for Nietzsche studies. The fact that I have to sit here and consider for two seconds whether you’re being disingenuous or not is hilarious with that as your hot take.

>Outlandish completely, especially since Nietzsche builds the text out of specifically popular sources to show just how non-academic/specialized of a cultural problem he’s dealing with is.
Okay then, let's recommend the opposite: OP should dive into The Birth of Tragedy having not read the Pre-Socratics at all. Wonder how far he'll get before he starts to wonder exactly what Nietzsche's talking about, and why the work was so controversial among his peers when it released.

Heidegger's Being and Time is a farcical remodeling of Nietzsche's will to power and Deleuze's pluralism is a rehash of Nietzsche's perspectivism. They are completely overrated and much baser intellects compared to Nietzsche.

He’d get pretty far, as I already explained. At most, he’d need a conversational awareness of Greek mythology, Greek tragedy, Socrates, and Wagner. That’s literally it it’s a fucking structured argument lol. And who tf cares about the reaction of his contemporaries? They were all idiots. That’s the point. We don’t study them. We study Nietzsche.

Also you can just stop with the Heidegger and Deleuze shit. You’re clearly out of your depth dude it’s okay to admit it. For one, you can maintain those weak-tea claims all you want and still be patently wrong about the direct secondary scholarship done by both thinkers on Nietzsche also no no no no no if anything Heidegger subverts WTP by taking it out of its explicitly naturalistic context and restating it within the metaphysical, which is something almost diametrically opposed to Nietzsche’s line of work. Dasein is not WTP wtf. Also describing Deleuze as “pluralism” is not only grossly reductive (idk how you can even begin to reduce Deleuze’s work to an -ism, good lord) but just plain fucking stupid and lacks discursive knowledge of the basic descriptors you’d find attached to Deleuze. At least google this shit before you pretend to have coversational knowledge of it. .

>if anything Heidegger subverts WTP
Same thing I said, just reworded. His concepts were out of touch with the direction philosophy had taken (with Nietzsche) regardless; fuck his pointless ass. Heideggerians, unsurprisingly, are mostly retards.

>Also describing Deleuze as “pluralism” is not only grossly reductive (idk how you can even begin to reduce Deleuze’s work to an -ism, good lord) but just plain fucking stupid
I didn't describe Deleuze as pluralism. He talks about plurality in his work. I pointed out how one of his more complex concepts is just aped from Nietzsche.

You’re hopeless dude. Go read a book, literally.

It's called aphorism you dumb shit.

>OP asked the question
>user "answer"s with his interpretation
>another user "answer"s with his interpretation
>user critiquing another user with a little bit spice of "go read some book OP"
>another user critiquing user with a little bit spice of "go read some book OP"
>ends up with ad hominem
>"answer"s after that is filled with ad hominem of OP

Classic Yea Forums guys, Classic Yea Forums

>The work I have been reading is The Genealogy of Morality, by the way.
If you read GM and felt that way; there is nothing I can help you. That is actually his most "normal" one.
All I can say is just read a lot. Read this kind of writing and please. Be wise.

Nietzsche is widely regarded as a fantastic writer even in translation. user, I...

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NIGGA

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I thought trolling was a dead artform.

bump

It's one of his most straightforward work, maybe you're just a brainlet ? Or too autistic for that kind of writing. Nietzsche was a keen admirer of the French aphoristic moralist, his writing style often draws from that vein. If you're expecting Kant-like treatises from him you'll obviously be disappointed. And I'd say the opposie of what you stated, that Nietzsche's prose is not so good, but that je seems to be achieving the effect he wants with it, which would make it a good writer.

Anyway for that kind of work the prime question is: what is he trying to do ? The prose is only a function of that.

>Nietzsche was a keen admirer of the French aphoristic moralist
I didn't know about it, aphoristic moralist like... who?
I can only think pascal...

Larochefoucauld, Chamfort

Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Fontenelle, perhaps also La Bruyère, and their ancestor Montaigne. Nietzsche would have loved their contemporary De Retz, but I doubt he was aware of him.

>I completed an MA thesis on Nietzsche w/o really fucking with Heraclitus
yikes

imagine thinking this

this

>It's one of his most straightforward work, maybe you're just a brainlet ?
Genealogy is one of his harder works.

I think that user meant to say Genealogy is his most logical one.
And what I mean by logical, it is not the meaning nietzsche is brainlet in other books... It means it has logical style in Genealogy.
It feels like, you know, just, just philosophers, like Kant, schop.

Do you act like this in the academy, assuming your MA wasn't for nothing? Your presentation is fucking obnoxious, everyone I personally know in the academic philosophy world would fucking hate you for it. For your peers' sake and maybe even yours I hope you hide it or disguise it with humor or something.

this is what nietzsche wrote on due to his failing eyesight and horrible migraine headaches, he got one custom built

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I think he's good if you like a jumblish flow of consciousness

He's an ordinary man, like Hegel

See Imagine thinking studying literal fragments outside of their philological context indicates a deep philosophical knowledge. Not a chance in hell any of you fags have read beyond that Oxford UP book that gets tossed around here let alone seriously studied ancient Greek/have had a classics education so idk why I’m still entertaining this point.

See Except in your case I’d really highlight how unresponsive you are seeing as you wasted extra space crafting one of the least interesting responses in this thread. Literally adds nothing to the discussion, and is 1. hilariously ironic on a site like this and 2. no shit I don’t present shit like this to my peers, obviously you faggots aren’t my peers regarding this topic. A dumb motherfucker literally just recommended reading Heraclitus before delving further into N, tried to back track and write it off under an even more lighterwater survey of the Presocratics, and proceeded to say a bunch of gibberish about Heidegger and Deleue which was not only off topic but incorrect. No shit I’m going to respond how I see fit.
>everyone I personally know
this is a nice way of saying “I’m an undergrad”

>yikes
>oomph
>ooooooooo
your reddit is showing. but i guess this also means Yea Forums has never heard of specialization and thinks all literature written on everything include comprehensive accounts of thinkers’ ouvres and influences.

Everyone still responding to me in this thread can fuck off. I’ve made my position clear, sustained rebuttal, and yet again been reminded of why I don’t enter Nietzsche threads on Yea Forums. At the end of the day you people really don’t read; you circulate a few ideas which are typically outdated or divorced from the real world exhange of ideas. But at least I get to call you all dumb niggers while trying to express that. Almost forgot, OP, Solomon and Higgins have an entry book called “What Nietzsche Really Said” that may give you an entry point, assuming you’re American.

Nietsche is becoming redundant.

bro i'm a philosophy student who was extensively taught the presocratics by a nietzsche scholar, get your head out of your ass and go re-read heraclitus

>wasted extra space
I wanted your attention and I got it. I don't fucking care about derailing a trivial thread discussion about the importance or not of reading Heraclitus before Nietzsche when it's not a fucking crime to do it or not, your entire contribution in this thread, past giving Nietzsche starter recs in passing (which already is worth nearly nothing) is more or less just your insufferable attitude. I have an MA in philosophy myself. Maybe you have a PhD or more than I, if so good on you, and maybe you'll think that means even I'm beneath you if you're that big of a self-important fuck. The thing is, having made it this far in philosophy and seeing your attitude pisses me off. It manifests genuine revulsion in me. I can dismiss shitty Yea Forums pseuds so much more easily, they're not sufficiently rational or well-learned compared to trained philosophers. To see complete jackass attitude coming from anyone in the academy is to witness modern Augustinian villainy. Don't give me some attitude of "it's Yea Forums, what do you expect." I can call you a fuckface wherever I want. You deserve to be told it now in the slight chance my not doing so fucks people over who you do or will have institutional power over in your life. Students trying their hardest don't need some cunt philosophy professor and fellow faculty don't need to deal with that shit either, and keeping your vice secret doesn't make you particularly better anyway. Fuck assholes in philosophy so hard, seriously.

I'm certain you read Heraclitus and didn't get anything from it besides frustration.

>only the pre-socratics
you have to go before them to the egyptians, and also before that too.

Anything before the Greeks is just recreational reading. "Ah, so that's where the Greeks come up with that..." The Egyptians, Sumerians, etc. are too base for understanding the last two thousand years.

>Is Nietzsche just a bad writer?
I don't know if you read a bad translation or something, but Nietzsche is generally regarded as a very good writer

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seriously this shit is cringe. i recall reading heraclitus and it really doesn't help reading nietzsche. you are best just reading what nietzsche says about heraclitus lmao. actually i think heraclitus helps in reading dialectal materialist shit if anything

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also to add on to that, you might as well read the tao te ching since that guy's philosophy is shockingly similar to heraclitus'. it's much more complete as well. but after reading it, you just have to wonder really what are you getting from these philosophers that really aids you in understanding nietzsche? the best i can think of is maybe the eternal return, but i somehow feel as though you can cleanly understand that concept without much of any knowledge in philosophy period. flux? trivial, and an extremely small point of heraclitus' thought. heraclitus is puts much more focus on the unity of opposites motif as well as rationalizing the world... these are things that fit much more of hegel's style of thought. unsurprising that nietzsche took the edgiest parts of heraclitus and hegel took the most boomer

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>is someone who is considered one of the best German prose writers just a bad writer?
GM is his most straightforward work OP, I don't know what to tell you except maybe you don't have much background in philosophy and you just dove straight into Nietzsche without much information. Just read a secondary source on him, there are lots. Yea Forums's advice of "read all these primary writers all the way back to when writing was invented", while probably well-intentioned, is just a huge waste of time if all you're trying to do is understand Nietzsche; Read a secondary source. You'll figure out where to go from there. It will probably talk about Schopenhauer for example, and if you like what they say, go explore him. Et cetera. The more you read the easier it gets because you start to see how everything is connected.

>This tendency to create fragmentary, disjointed thoughts
He doesn´t know

OP has no chaos in his soul, and will neither give birth to nor become a dancing-star.

your insecurity is showing bro

Try thinking for yourself kid.

>muh flux

Just read Emerson instead. His prose is much better

adventivit asinus, pulcher et fortissimus!

I often wonder if Nietzsche was a clever shitposter, or if he was really that retarded. Reading him is much like browsing Yea Forums.

Thanks for confirming ;)

the dude they were responding to is the insecure one

>need the spirit of a Hellene
A what

>muh academy
Fucking KYSs.

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The little I read of Nietzcshse I remember immediately thinking that he really didn't seem to have a good point

Wasn't it Plato that said a good idea should be one sentence? Nietzhce should have done that

>Wasn't it Plato that said a good idea should be one sentence? Nietzhce should have done that
Are you daft? He's world-famous for his aphorisms.

Famous because people are stupid.

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>should
Brainlet

Nietzsche literally said he could express in one sentence what others needed a whole book to do.

Nietzsche is a prime pseud. There's nothing he has said that is profound.

>implying human nature has changed in the slightest
>implying philosophy and metaphysics is subordinate to science
>implying the philosophical approach and ideas of the greeks are antiquated.
>implying you can't learn anything about the present from the past.
wew

>He also said Zarathustra was the greatest gift mankind had ever received
It is.

>and should be taken as the fifth gospel.
It should.

based