Even for somebody who knows nothing about Nietzche, based on the frequency with which Nietzche is referenced in pop culture one has to assume that he is generally misinterpreted – it is a high bar for an idea to reach the popular consciousness, higher still for that idea to be the same as what the author intended.
Nevertheless, I decided to read Nietzche not out of some deep desire to understand his controversial ideas, but simply because I saw the book in a charity shop in Oxford and was surprised by how slim it was. My impression had previously been that philosophy dealt in massive tomes of impenetrable prose (Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason would make for a decent blunt-trauma murder weapon), but Nietzche specifically rails against this:
My ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book
Now the lack of jargon does not make Nietzsche an easy read – his sentences are complex and many thoughts are left uncompleted. It is a conversation with the reader, an attempt to guide the reader to shed their philosophical “idols”.
Yet Twilight of the Idols, one of Nietzche’s later works, is surprisingly enjoyable. Nietzche begins with his Maxims and Barbs, a set of highly quotable aphorisms (including the inspiration for Kelly Clarkson’s “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”). He then discusses several mostly distinct ideas (Twilight is essentially a collection of essays) but with certain common threads: the importance of adversity, criticisms of “idols” like Christianity, the meaning of freedom. I particularly enjoyed The Four Great Errors, which is full of generally applicable wisdom (though slightly skewing to criticisms of Judeo-Christian morality), and Reconnaissance Raids – Nietzche’s opinions on religion, psychology, as well as both historical and contemporary philosophers, artists, and writers.
Nietzche can be downright playful. His writing is full of many puns (few of which, unfortunately, survive the translation into English), and he prefaces the book by saying:
In the midst of a gloomy and exceedingly responsible business it is quite some trick to keep cheerful: and yet, what could be more necessary than cheerfulness? Nothing succeeds without high spirits playing their part.
At the same time, he is often blatantly sexist, discriminatory of people with ill health, and does little to hide his massive ego:
I have given humanity the most profound book it possesses, my Zarathustra: I shall shortly give it the most independent one.
Ultimately, I have no business reviewing Twilight nor, for that matter, any other classic piece of philosophy. I am an inexperienced reader of philosophy, so it is difficult for me to understand what exactly Nietzche is saying, let alone put the ideas into their context. Instead, I am treating these texts primarily as stimuli to encourage me to think more deeply. The lessons I extract from the book may be completely different to what the author intended but that doesn’t matter so much to me. So let this review serve as nothing more than a note to highlight aspects of Nietzsche that made me think, and a memento to flag ideas that I would like to contextualise and revisit in future once I’ve got more philosophical reading under my belt.
These are my personal takeaways from Twilight. I may be taking things out of context or misinterpreting Nietzche’s ideas.
Cheerfully challenge your philosophical “idols” with light taps of a hammer.
Be bold in your thoughts; avoid dialectics:
"Even the bravest of us only rarely has the courage for what he actually knows...”
You choose dialectics only when you have no other means. You know that using it provokes mistrust, and that it is not very convincing.
The Four Great Errors:
Seek out adversity:
On education:
On freedom:
Geniuses and übermenschen:
Great men, like periods of greatness, are explosives storing up immense energy
The genius—in his works, in his deeds—is necessarily a squanderer: his greatness lies in his expenditure... The instinct for self-preservation is, so to speak, unhinged; the overwhelming pressure of the energies streaming out from him forbids him any such care and caution.
To create things on which time tests its teeth in vain; to endeavour to achieve a little immortality in form, in substance—I have never yet been modest enough to demand less of myself.