How Nietzsche Failed to Practice What He Preached

Nietzsche's ideas have helped many. This video explores his life, his profound philosophy, how it benefited humanity, and its impact on him.

[JonclashHq]

by this video you gave me hope to understanding what I should do next on my philosophical journey and also helped to clarify some things
thanks man!

[YonathanJ]

Great video, this deserves more views

[dreamingdreamerdream]

Even though you have provided a neat reading of Nietzsche's core philosophy, you nonetheless failed to recognize the misinformation scattered throughout your essay. Nietzsche's syphilis and the horse incidents for an instance have been disproven by great Nietzschean scholars. Please do more research so we can at least prevent spreading misinformations that are rooted from sloppy scholarship. It's about time new philosophers should take Nietzsche's mental decline more radical than that.

[shaunkerr]

"To prevent this scenario..."

I think this is a point a lot of people misrepresent or understand with Nietzsche. He believed the Greeks to be healthy in their society but, once they lost the necessity for struggle and the aristocracy inherited their position and no longer needed war, etc. to continue it, they grew into decadence. Once this happened, the formerly healthy aristocracy lost their healthy necessity of struggle and allowed for a person like Socrates to come and for his unhealthy dogma to fester and spread, pruning the decadence from society. The scenario is not to be prevented, it is cyclical and a part of society en masse. He talks about this in Human, All too Human and BGaE. To prevent this scenario is to be a naysayer; at best, it's to be the lion and exert a sacred "No!" The Ubermensche would not aim to say No! he would be beyond the child, able to make their own rules at a whim and dismiss their own morality just as fast, like a child making the rules which govern a game and then dismissing them when they are done with it; like Heraclitus' child building sandcastles on the beach.

Alas, none of us are Ubermensche or Overmen. "What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the Overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment." There are no Ubermensche's now; as Nietzsche said, the Overman will be to humans as humans are to apes and "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Overman--a rope over an abyss."The point of the Ubermensche is not to become one; one does not become anything except what they are. Man is a rope and can orient himself towards producing other men and yet more men who one day, in the distant future, can create a man capable of being the Overman, the next evolution in man. This perspective of becoming the Overman today is simply Tony Robins style self actualization; it's self improvement nonsense; it's the kind of stuff that Last Men types who watch Jordan Peterson, etc. view to get themselves revved up and think they are going to change the world and dominate instead of being nothings.

The types who listen to endless YT videos set to musical scores to give you goosebumps of inspiration and motivation. This is not who Nietzsche writes to. If you need motivation and inspiration and guidance in what to do in life, you are not Nietzsche audience. There's nothing individualistic about this type of person. Nietzsche wished to free individuals from the corrupting force of shame based moralities, to have a step backwards to take a leap forward, not to help anyone improve their lives. If you feel better following Nietzsche's advice then you are simply a herd member looking for self actualization/improvement. Nietzsche believed the vast majority of those who are "higher men" with the potential of leading towards the Overman will be destroyed by society for being who they are. That those who are "higher" are such by design and not through learning; there's no Luke Skywalker hidden Jedi waiting for Nietzsche to play Obi-wan going on here; we MUST individually strive for greatness by our own unconscious wills and desires which are alien to us; genius is like a genie, a Dionysian spirit dwelling in our uncounscious mind like a muse to us, out of our control, driving us, destroying us to transcend our area of art, etc. through producing excellence most will never find, either bowing to the weight of pressure from the herd or being destroyed by them. When asked why he wrote with failing eyesight and no publisher, he said it was not an option to not write. He was possessed, compelled, MADE to write. If you do not possess this in art, politics, anything. If you spend your time in online gaming while attempting to learn the secrets of yourself so you can find meaning and purpose and become some great something or another, Nietzsche is not for you.

If you watch this and believe Nietzsche is a path to being the best you you can be, STOP; this video as most about Nietzsche on YT is a surface level perspective offering a freshman depth of Nietzschean perspective on his philosophy. Nietzsche praised the Jews and Christians as being the creative side of who we are today (while also tearing them down for slave morality). He also praised Socrates and tore him down. He tears down dialectical thinking of both the Socratic and Hegelian variety. If that means nothing to you, then you have a wealth of information to learn before Nietzsche could even possibly start to make sense to you. Nietzsche is contradictory to many but that is because he was written for those who think BGaE, beyond dialectics. So if you think "Those Democrats are sheep and bad for 'Murica!" Nietzsche is not for you. If you believe "Those damn MAGA Conservative are ruining our nation and must be stopped!" Nietzsche is not for you. If you are in the culture wars (on either side) and making your opinions known, you are a part of the slave morality Nietzsche believes has contributed to society, but, has become decadent and overgrown and is in need of pruning. This is not to say you are bad in the least. It is more to say that you are not a candidate for becoming a Space Monkey so get the fuck off the Stoa... OK, being a little cheeky there, in all seriousness, if who you are is a culture wars warrior, hey, more power to you in your efforts, but, Nietzsche was not speaking to this type of person. If oyu are looking to utilize the culture wars to gain political power and transcend the current oligarchy to actualize your deep seeded will to obtain political power, well, you are barking up the right tree with this Nietzsche fellow...

Become who you are, not something better, not improvement, become who you are. If you consider yourself a Nietzschean, then you miss the point. If you really want to learn something from Nietzsche, ACT! Follow your instincts and ACT! Don't philosophize, don't look for self help, don't worry about what your purpose in life is or how will it be meaningful (at least don't look to books and YT vids to answer these questions) Worship your instincts and unconscious, your body as your God and act and you will be the most Nietzschean person you can possibly be without knowing any of his philosophy. You will probably fly in the face of society and society will crush you, but, if you aim to be an individual and one inspired by Nietzsche, that is exactly what he believes will happen to most individuals. If by the miracle of fate and happenstance you end up being at the top of your given artistic field/profession/political hierarchy/etc. and feel guilty or held back due to pity for others not there with you and wish to be liberated from this, give Nietzsche a read. If not, just act and stop looking for the answers. You ARE the answer and what you learn ought to not make you who you are, it ought to allow for you to become more expressive in who you are, to :give style to your character." Don't be an encyclopedia of information, ACT! As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,

"Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stop looking for answers that will lead you to be something (The Ubermensche, a richer person, a more powerful person, a beautiful woman, etc.) Just act and build yourself on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. Stop trying to calculate what the right thing is which will maximize your ability to succeed in life and try to catch all the dangers before they befall you and live dangerously! There's nothing to learn to become who you already are. Just act and become, constantly become, who you are and stop trying to figure it out as you already know!

"In the beginning was the act ... I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity" - Goethe.

[twissky]

I can tell I am going to like your channel a lot

[DistantLightInThe]

Well! You can't conclude that Nietzsche didn't practice what he preached. Specifically, you're concluding based on the idea of Ubermench; an Ubermench, as you point out, is mostly about who you are and what you become and if what ensues is fame and recognition then so be it but it doesn't necessitate that outcome. As someone has already pointed out that the horse story is false but even if it were true then so what?! Yes! he preached hardness, he talked time and again about resilience or the need for suffering, to be your own commander etc. but that doesn't mean that you can fundamentally change who you are at your core: there's certain amount of authenticity that you must remain true to. Anyway ... this will get too long for a youtube comment

[_sidereal]

This is full of errors that completely invalidate your point.
- Your argument is based on a story first found in an Italian magazine known for untrustworthy gossip, written 11 years after the incident supposedly occurred. It's very likely that the Turin horse story was inspired by a similar scene in the novel Crime and Punishment, written years before Nietzsche's collapse.
- He worked as a professor for a full seven years (1869-1876) before taking a leave of absence and eventually resigning.
- He rapidly developed dementia at the beginning of 1889 due to the neurological disease inherited from his father (not syphilis!) which had caused excruciating migraines since his childhood.