Thoughts on Kevin's announcement [MOT]

[Richmond Mathewson]

  On 12/05/2010 23:53, René Micout wrote:
> This argument is used by the enemies of Nietzsche's thought. All these stupid things taken from "La volonté de puissance" book that Nietzsche ever wrote, but was built by his sister who was anti-Semitic (and fan of Hitler) (with whom she strongly disagreed) after the death of his brother. It is true that this philosopher is dangerous because it is misunderstood (Chamberlain) that can lead to aberrations. Nietzsche condemned anti-Semitism very strongly in his writings. Recent studies of the philosopher (in particular by Gilles Deleuze and Patrick Wotling) shows the depth of his concepts of the 19th century sheds light on issues pertinent to the 21st century ...
> As for Wittgenstein, I recommend "L'abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze" which defines his thought as "the degree zero of the philosophy" ...
> Désaccord total... but ;-)
> Bonne nuit
> René
>

Well it is a good thing that Thee and Me, at least, are grown ups, so we 
can disagree violently yet still carry on a civilised
correspondence.

This is, of course, quite unlike somebody else . . .  :)

I think that the reason many people discard Wittgenstein is that they 
think because he did not write in some sort of
metaphysical jargon, but plain, simple words and sentences, he wrote 
crap. In fact, if one takes one's time to work
one's way through his work there is a lot of good there.

I, also, wouldn't doubt that there is a lot of good in some of 
Nietzsche's work; it has been, however, overshadowed by
historical developments; whether as a result of misinterpretation (and 
that has to be a subjective judgement) of what
he wrote, distortion by his sister, distortion by Chamberlain, or what 
he actually did write.

What constitutes one man's misinterpretation may be another man's 
verité; ne c'est pas?  And as Nietzsche is dead
we are quite unable to find out what the man actually intended to say.

It is also extremely difficult to read any writer whose work has had an 
historical effect without one's interpretation
being coloured by a knowledge of that historical effect; reading in 
vacuo is not an option..

While Wittgenstein has had an effect on late 20 century thought, he has 
not precipitated (even if unwittingly) what
happened in central Europe between 1933 and 1945, and whose echoes are 
still being felt.