Re:The Invigorating Strangeness of Friedrich Nietzsche
by armitron on Friday April 05, 2019 @10:41PM
(#19588843)
That book contains so many outright falsehoods and misrepresentations that it belongs in a garbage bin. Even the guardian [1] thrashed it not to mention titans like John Gray [2].
It doesn't surprise me to learn that Pinker also manages to misrepresent and malign Nietzsche.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/14/enlightenment-...
[2] https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlight...
Re:The Invigorating Strangeness of Friedrich Nietzsche
by keiferski on Saturday April 06, 2019 @06:00AM
(#19590064)
I used to see Pinker’s name and ideas around and thought he had something interesting to say, so I picked up this book.
What a complete waste of time. It feels like his knowledge of intellectual history comes from skimming Wikipedia articles.
The key point being that Nietzsche believed that superior people should rule over inferior people, and should achieve that rule through violence and war. Which are uplifting activities for those who engage in it. And once it is established who is superior, what is done to the inferior doesn't matter.
This was an inspiration to the Nazis who, of course, decided that Germans were superior, should establish this through war, and inferior people should be killed or enslaved as the Germans saw fit.