Nietzsche is a deeply and almost universally misuderstood figure. He was not the monster he is often taken for. In point of fact, everything that Nietzsche criticized with his trademark ruthlessness and sarcasm, is exactly the same stuff that goes by the name of progressivism and political correctness today. We conservatives owe him a debt of gratitude and a more sympathetic reading.

That is not to say that the misunderstanding which has burdened Nietzsche lo this century and half, is not in many ways his own fault, however. He eschewed scholarly modes of presentation, opting rather for the fireworks of paradox and aphorism. This was not due to some heroic attempt on his part to probe the realms of mysticism which lay beyond the frontiers of logic, but rather a necessity born of his own utter incapacity for systematic thought. Anyone who wishes to show himself approved in philosophy must first attain a respectable comprehension of contemporary scientific, and especially mathematical, technique. Concerning Nietzsche, the less said about these subjects the better. That is why he was so appalingly bad at metaphysics despite his nearly peerless talents as a social critic.

It’s true that Nietzsche is subtle, but yet there is a crude key that can perhaps unlock the better part of his secrets. When reading Nietzsche, we should remember that he was…

A) First of all a poet. He would have liked nothing better than to have been taken seriously as an artist, but he lacked the living tradition that would have brought him into contact with his task. Looking about him and seeing artistic taste everywhere in decline (notwithstanding his early enthusiasm for Wagner), he lamented the waning appetite for great deeds and triumphs, both in art and in life, which he called “decadence.” The personal root of his philosophy was born of him needing a noble soul to guide him, and not finding one.

B) This led him to become a caustic critic of all pretense and hypocrisy. He judged men based on whether they really acted like they loved and hated the things that they said they loved and hated, it being taken for granted that what a man loves and hates is indistinguishable from what he essentially is. With his keen observation he found, needless to say, that society presented a rather confusing tableau of lies, deceits, mixed motives, and stifling conventions.

C) These he attributed to two causes, the first being personal weakness, or fear in the face of life and its grand, implacable demands. Such fear, when it was not frankly admitted and dealt with, had the result of “internalizing” a man’s will to power, i.e. making him clever and crafty, skilled at manipulating others to preserve his own safety. The most sophisticated creation of this internalized intellect to date has been the second cause of decadence, the “moral code.” It is this code which acts constantly throughout a man’s life to defang him, by either persuading or coercing him to prefer others’ existence to his own. The weak men have invented the moral code in order to force the strong to make a place for them and take care of them, to the detriment of the human race. The moral code is a morality for slaves. Nietzsche identified Judaism as its originator (cf. the Egyptian Exile, the Assyrian Conquest, the Babylonian Exile, and the final destruction of the Temple and ensuing diaspora), and Christianity as its propagator.

D) Those of us who understand real Christianity know that it is nothing like Nietzsche’s characterization of it; but very few people, either now or in Nietzsche’s time, really understand Christianity. It is very easily perverted into a doctrine of contempt of life, nondiscrimination, endless forebearance extended to criminals and perverts, pacifism, and an identification of weakness with goodness. This is what Nietzsche meant when he said “Christianity”; this is what he hated; and about this he was right.

E) Thus, for Nietzsche, the Superman is simply the man who has the courage to throw off these unnatural conventions so that he can love and hate without pretense. He does not use “morality” to stifle, cloak, or justify his actions; it is enough for him that he has a zest for life and enjoys his own existence. He is an artist of life. The “Eternal Recurrence,” one of Nietzsche’s most misapplied and even embarrassing concepts, is actually an expression of his awareness that the Superman desires only that life should continue as it is, i.e. he doesn’t set his hopes on the “heaven” of the slaves, a place of peace and repose free from life’s demands. The Superman loves life and is equal to the challenge; he needs nothing more. Those who venture to see in Eternal Recurrence a logical consequence of Democritus’ atomism (including Nietzsche himself when he took this route) have divorced the matter from its psychological importance.

F) So far Nietzsche has presented little to quarrel with. The fatal step came when he, in obedience to the spirit of the times, attempted to supply the “scientific” foundations of his criticism so that it might thereby garner the more intellectual cachet. In this he failed. Nietzsche was not a man of scientific temperment himself, and he lacked both the personal discipline and the metaphysical expertise to give his thoughts the systematic presentation they needed. This accounts for some of his increasing hysteria and egotism. He could not prove; he could only exhort. As a result, his much-needed philosophy became more and more liable to misunderstanding and outright distortion by those with an axe to grind, and the truth it contained was buried under the weight of his brilliant but often excessive and fantastical verbiage.

G) Additionally, Nietzsche became unnecessarily enamored, entangled, and confused by then-current scientific ideas, especially Darwinism, which he half-heartedly adapted as the structural element of his own intellectual ediface. That was a colossal mistake. When the Will to Power is cut off from its spiritual source and demythologized, it becomes a mere albumin-process, a meaningless excretion of matter — hardly the kind of thing which is consistent with the rest of Nietzsche’s joie de vivre. Dawinism is a shallow and dishoest idea which can be refuted from first principles (Kant did this long before there even was a Darwin). The fact that Nietzsche fell under its spell was not one of his finer moments, and probably signals that his disease was already well advanced.

H) To sum up, the “Superman,” the “blond beast,” the “will to power,” all these must be understood as symbols of a desire to live without hypocrisy. It was, ironically, Nietzsche’s inability to express ideas forthrightly, that led to his notoriety. His was the overheated song of a frustrated and hearbroken bard who knew nothing except how to sing. The pitiful figure of Zarathustra is as autobiographical a sketch of Nietzsche as any we could ever hope for. Nietzsche was not an evil man. Now Mahatma Gandhi, he was evil.

I used to entertain a wish to write a screenplay about Nietzsche’s mature life. How about William H. Macy to play the lead?

My understanding is that he was a Judaix.

Would you care to explain this sui generis BS of yours? Nietzsche never advocated Jєωιѕн supremecy, ever.

He may never have openly said he wants Jєωs to rule, but his attitudes are clear enough.  He sees Jєωs as being superior.

He developed a late loathing for Antisemites because he knew they were catering to the urban mobs, but that certainly isn't the same thing.

That's not why he loathed antisemites.  He loathed them because they represented morality against the Jєωιѕн power.

How could he possibly advocate the supremacy of the very race he deemed responsible for creating his despised slave-ethic?

It's part of his inversion of morality - he wants to call Christians Jєωs to denigrate them.  Nietzsche admires the Old Testament, he hates the New.  He's pro-Jєω, pro-Jєωιѕн power.

He wants all antisemites to be shot, and he says the Jєωs have crossed the Rubicon, either they will lose Europe or be masters of Europe.

I have read Sprach Zarathustra and must wonder why anybody would even want to redeem Neitzche (if indeed he is redeemable). If his work isn't what it purports to be, that is, one of the forerunners of Hegel and nαzιism, then it is garbage and not worth keeping around, As it is, it is only worth keeping around for the sake of making the historical connection between the beginnings of German philisophical thought heavily influenced by Darwinism and its ultimate expression in the religion of nαzιism.

This is a good illustration of Nietzsche's malignant mendacity:

 

It is certain that the Jєωs, if they desired--or if they were driven to it, as the αnтι-ѕємιтєs seem to wish--COULD now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be absorbed and assimilated by Europe, they long to be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jєω",--and this bent and impulse (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the Jєωιѕн instincts) should be well noted and accommodated: to that end it might be useful and fair to expel the anti-Semitic screamers from the country.

Could anything be more absurd than to pretend that the Jєωs do not grasp for power and ascendancy?  This coming from someone who believes in the Will to Power?

A psychopathic hater of Christianity will have natural sympathy for the Jєωs, and hate their critics.

IMHO, your summary of his ideas shows that he's irredeemable.

Mine, too.  And how many poor people I have known who read or were taught his nihilism, and were harmed by it!!

The OP is a classic case of sentimental subjectivism taking the place of objective ideas and rendering them more acceptable based upon appeals to subjective dispositions.  One must evoke empathy and reinterpret wicked notions in the most benign manner because the subject was pitiable and confused.  Thus, his philosophy is rendered incautious at worst because he was a passionate but ignorant man who simply couldn't get his ideas in scientific order.  This reminds me of a C.E. article on "Judas" which described certain heretics attempting to interpret Judas' betrayal of Jesus in a positive light; that his reasons were subjectively just and innocent.  This is exactly the same new hermeneutic that is applied to false religions, for example, thus completely disorienting the mind.  Popes have repeatedly warned against attempting to entertain the ideas of false modern philosophy and apply them to Christianity.  Ironically, the short essay itself is incredibly unscientific.      

Nietzsche is a deeply and almost universally misuderstood figure. He was not the monster he is often taken for. In point of fact, everything that Nietzsche criticized with his trademark ruthlessness and sarcasm, is exactly the same stuff that goes by the name of progressivism and political correctness today. We conservatives owe him a debt of gratitude and a more sympathetic reading.

That is not to say that the misunderstanding which has burdened Nietzsche lo this century and half, is not in many ways his own fault, however. He eschewed scholarly modes of presentation, opting rather for the fireworks of paradox and aphorism. This was not due to some heroic attempt on his part to probe the realms of mysticism which lay beyond the frontiers of logic, but rather a necessity born of his own utter incapacity for systematic thought. Anyone who wishes to show himself approved in philosophy must first attain a respectable comprehension of contemporary scientific, and especially mathematical, technique. Concerning Nietzsche, the less said about these subjects the better. That is why he was so appalingly bad at metaphysics despite his nearly peerless talents as a social critic.

It’s true that Nietzsche is subtle, but yet there is a crude key that can perhaps unlock the better part of his secrets. When reading Nietzsche, we should remember that he was…

A) First of all a poet. He would have liked nothing better than to have been taken seriously as an artist, but he lacked the living tradition that would have brought him into contact with his task. Looking about him and seeing artistic taste everywhere in decline (notwithstanding his early enthusiasm for Wagner), he lamented the waning appetite for great deeds and triumphs, both in art and in life, which he called “decadence.” The personal root of his philosophy was born of him needing a noble soul to guide him, and not finding one.

B) This led him to become a caustic critic of all pretense and hypocrisy. He judged men based on whether they really acted like they loved and hated the things that they said they loved and hated, it being taken for granted that what a man loves and hates is indistinguishable from what he essentially is. With his keen observation he found, needless to say, that society presented a rather confusing tableau of lies, deceits, mixed motives, and stifling conventions.

C) These he attributed to two causes, the first being personal weakness, or fear in the face of life and its grand, implacable demands. Such fear, when it was not frankly admitted and dealt with, had the result of “internalizing” a man’s will to power, i.e. making him clever and crafty, skilled at manipulating others to preserve his own safety. The most sophisticated creation of this internalized intellect to date has been the second cause of decadence, the “moral code.” It is this code which acts constantly throughout a man’s life to defang him, by either persuading or coercing him to prefer others’ existence to his own. The weak men have invented the moral code in order to force the strong to make a place for them and take care of them, to the detriment of the human race. The moral code is a morality for slaves. Nietzsche identified Judaism as its originator (cf. the Egyptian Exile, the Assyrian Conquest, the Babylonian Exile, and the final destruction of the Temple and ensuing diaspora), and Christianity as its propagator.

D) Those of us who understand real Christianity know that it is nothing like Nietzsche’s characterization of it; but very few people, either now or in Nietzsche’s time, really understand Christianity. It is very easily perverted into a doctrine of contempt of life, nondiscrimination, endless forebearance extended to criminals and perverts, pacifism, and an identification of weakness with goodness. This is what Nietzsche meant when he said “Christianity”; this is what he hated; and about this he was right.

E) Thus, for Nietzsche, the Superman is simply the man who has the courage to throw off these unnatural conventions so that he can love and hate without pretense. He does not use “morality” to stifle, cloak, or justify his actions; it is enough for him that he has a zest for life and enjoys his own existence. He is an artist of life. The “Eternal Recurrence,” one of Nietzsche’s most misapplied and even embarrassing concepts, is actually an expression of his awareness that the Superman desires only that life should continue as it is, i.e. he doesn’t set his hopes on the “heaven” of the slaves, a place of peace and repose free from life’s demands. The Superman loves life and is equal to the challenge; he needs nothing more. Those who venture to see in Eternal Recurrence a logical consequence of Democritus’ atomism (including Nietzsche himself when he took this route) have divorced the matter from its psychological importance.

F) So far Nietzsche has presented little to quarrel with. The fatal step came when he, in obedience to the spirit of the times, attempted to supply the “scientific” foundations of his criticism so that it might thereby garner the more intellectual cachet. In this he failed. Nietzsche was not a man of scientific temperment himself, and he lacked both the personal discipline and the metaphysical expertise to give his thoughts the systematic presentation they needed. This accounts for some of his increasing hysteria and egotism. He could not prove; he could only exhort. As a result, his much-needed philosophy became more and more liable to misunderstanding and outright distortion by those with an axe to grind, and the truth it contained was buried under the weight of his brilliant but often excessive and fantastical verbiage.

G) Additionally, Nietzsche became unnecessarily enamored, entangled, and confused by then-current scientific ideas, especially Darwinism, which he half-heartedly adapted as the structural element of his own intellectual ediface. That was a colossal mistake. When the Will to Power is cut off from its spiritual source and demythologized, it becomes a mere albumin-process, a meaningless excretion of matter — hardly the kind of thing which is consistent with the rest of Nietzsche’s joie de vivre. Dawinism is a shallow and dishoest idea which can be refuted from first principles (Kant did this long before there even was a Darwin). The fact that Nietzsche fell under its spell was not one of his finer moments, and probably signals that his disease was already well advanced.

H) To sum up, the “Superman,” the “blond beast,” the “will to power,” all these must be understood as symbols of a desire to live without hypocrisy. It was, ironically, Nietzsche’s inability to express ideas forthrightly, that led to his notoriety. His was the overheated song of a frustrated and hearbroken bard who knew nothing except how to sing. The pitiful figure of Zarathustra is as autobiographical a sketch of Nietzsche as any we could ever hope for. Nietzsche was not an evil man. Now Mahatma Gandhi, he was evil.

I used to entertain a wish to write a screenplay about Nietzsche’s mature life. How about William H. Macy to play the lead?

I'm sorry to say this MotW... but what you just wrote above sounds like some #### that comes out of the mouth of a character in a woman-written anime. And I'm not kidding. I'm really disappointed to see this coming from YOU.