[Unthinking Majority]

I've never read a post with so many incorrect points.

Trump is neither German nor a thinker. He is a typical product of US imperialism who wouldn't stand a chance in Germany.

He's a German-American. He was raised by his father who was Nietzschean master-morality asshole to the extreme, and so is Trump.

Trump is a thinker. He has a brain and a ideological worldview and a political philosophy he has put into practice that people follow.

Trump isn't the product of "US imperialism", he's the least imperialistic POTUS since Pearl Harbor was bombed. He's a product of his a-hole father who has clearly been influenced by Nietzsche and/or Hitler. Trump is the blonde "ubermench"...gone very wrong.

Hitler was a demagogue but not a thinker or philosopher. It takes an American to confound the two.

Hitler had a brain and a ideological worldview and a political philosophy he has put into practice. You don't need a degree in philosophy and 30 books to your name to create political philosophies or to think. Neo-Nazis still follow his philosophies 80 years later, his thoughts have unfortunately been very influential.

Also, I'm not an American.

Marx was a great economist, only American anti-communists would consider him a dangerous thinker today.

I'm not an American. Marx was a brilliant economist and economic historian who espoused an economic system that was only weakly and vaguely thought out and completely untested and led to the deaths of 50-100 million people. That's dangerous and irresponsible.

Nietsche was an inspirational thinker but not a philosopher who presented a system of thought.

Incorrect. You don't even know how to spell Nietzsche.

While neither of the above is a thinker in the sense of a major philosopher, you ignore real German philosopher or thinkers including Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Goethe and many others.

Not all German thinkers were dangerous. But the most dangerous thinkers were German.

Like Nagarjuna, every philosopher needs to take his philosophy to "an extreme". Otherwise it would just remain mediocre and common place.

But i'm saying a philosopher needs to consider what would happen if others take it to an extreme. Or even just follow it ardently.

The Christian philosophy of love has been turned into an instrument for massacring millions. Does that make Jesus a "dangerous thinker?"

In many ways, yes. Religion is dangerous when people follow it dogmatically. The Old Testament is filled with dangerous garbage though. Jesus wasn't as bad, but if followed strictly his teachings are filled with rubbish and holes. Divorce is a sin (what if you husband is beating you). Follow pacifism (what if Hitler wants to invade your country?).

Pre-war racists constructed Jewish-Bolshevik (or Jewish-Bolshevik-Capitalist) conspiracies. Since it's no more politically correct to pander Jewish conspiracy theories, you replaced Jewish with German in your racist conspiracy theory.

I'm not making a racist argument, i'm making an argument about intellectual culture. There's lots of good Germans and smart/non-dangerous German thinkers/philosophers. Many have in fact been brilliant. But some powerful ideas are very dangerous and the 20th century is proof. People who publicly and loudly espouse a worldview need to be careful because people might actually follow it.

[late]

Trump is a thinker.




Hitler had a brain and a ideological worldview and a political philosophy he has put into practice. You don't need a degree in philosophy and 30 books to your name to create political philosophies or to think. Neo-Nazis still follow his philosophies 80 years later, his thoughts have unfortunately been very influential.




I'm not making a racist argument, i'm making an argument about intellectual culture. There's lots of good Germans and smart/non-dangerous German thinkers/philosophers. Many have in fact been brilliant. But some powerful ideas are very dangerous and the 20th century is proof. People who publicly and loudly espouse a worldview need to be careful because people might actually follow it.

Trump is a reactionary, which is roughly the opposite of a thinker.

Hitler was very flexible, all he really cared about was power. You ever read him? Another reactionary...

The ideas are not dangerous. Hitler, for example, didn't actually use Nietzsche, he didn't understand him. Few people do. But Hitler did use the national mythology and add some buzzwords.

[Robert Urbanek]

Call me a serenity fascist.

“I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

[Atlantis]

@Unthinking Majority, you are making a racist argument. The Trump family has until recently denied its German origin. It has claimed Swedish ancestry. Trump clearly was not raised in the "German tradition" in any sense of the word. He, like 74 million of his American supporters, is a product of the US.

You are a died-in-the-wool racist trying to invent absurd conspiracy theories to prove your national superiority.

What unites Trump with the Nazis and racists worldwide is the believe in the kind of conspiracy theory you are peddling. It's got nothing to with a mysterious influence from so-called "thinkers" they haven't even read.

[Beren]

Are the British Germanophobe?

It seems a more common trait among them than among Americans. Americans tend to see Europe as a whole and it depends on their political and cultural affiliations whether they like or dislike it, whereas anti-Continental sentiments appear to be a rather common trait among the Brits regardless of their cultural, political, or social background. (I mean it doesn't matter if they vote Tory or Labour, for example.) They don't see Europe as a whole, though, because they're also part of it, so they dislike Continentals (especially the Germans, the French, the Dutch, and the Spanish) one by one as well.

[Unthinking Majority]

@Unthinking Majority, you are making a racist argument. The Trump family has until recently denied its German origin. It has claimed Swedish ancestry. Trump clearly was not raised in the "German tradition" in any sense of the word.

If all you're going to do now is cry "racist!" without evidence after i've debunked your other arguments you aren't going to get very far in this discussion. If you can point to where i've said anything about the German race or German genetics please point that out.

Trump's genetics are totally irrelevant because race doesn't determine how someone thinks. Is German even a race?? LOL. My argument is about German thought culture and some of the intellectual philosophies that have come out of Germany especially since the 1800's.

Trump and his father's worldviews fit the Nietzschean worldviews precisely.

You are a died-in-the-wool racist trying to invent absurd conspiracy theories to prove your national superiority.

LOL. Provide evidence for any of this. You don't even know what nation I belong.

[Unthinking Majority]

The ideas are not dangerous. Hitler, for example, didn't actually use Nietzsche, he didn't understand him. Few people do. But Hitler did use the national mythology and add some buzzwords.

If an academic in your country becomes an international philosophy superstar and worked and died during your lifetime I would think it likely many people would be at least someone familiar with the theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power

[late]

If an academic in your country becomes an international philosophy superstar and worked and died during your lifetime I would think it likely many people would be at least someone familiar with the theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Will

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power

Buzzwords.

"Some of the misconceptions of the will to power, including Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche's philosophy, arise from overlooking Nietzsche's distinction between Kraft ("force" or "strength") and Macht ("power" or "might").[2] Kraft is primordial strength that may be exercised by anything possessing it, while Macht is, within Nietzsche's philosophy, closely tied to sublimation and "self-overcoming", the conscious channeling of Kraft for creative purposes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_power

Don't feel bad, even among philosophers, Nietzsche is a pain to deal with.

[Rugoz]

He wrote Mein Kampf. He's not really any different than Lenin. Hitler built a political philosophy and put it into action (fascism/nazism)

I don't think Mein Kampf qualifies as a philosophical text. It's doesn't come to its conclusions through proper rational argument, or only sporadically. It's very personal and emotional. I don't know about Lenin.

Well he was arguably the leading neoliberal economist.

I was thinking of the "nothing but property rights and military" type. Friedman advocated a negative income tax for example, which is highly redistributive.

Marx was a great economist

Was he? He's completely absent from the economics curriculum. Instead familiar names are Pareto, Ricardo, Cournot, Walras, Wicksell etc. Granted, you never hear of Adam Smith either.

As for Nietzsche, I found that to be a good lecture:

[Atlantis]

If all you're going to do now is cry "racist!" without evidence after i've debunked your other arguments you aren't going to get very far in this discussion.

You haven't debunked anything. What you are saying is absurd.

You have listed a number of people whose only common denominator is that they have German ancestry. Most are not thinkers or philosophers in the common sense of these terms. Whether or not one considers them dangerous depends on one’s ideological preferences. You haven’t shown what cultural elements they have in common. There are no cultural elements whatsoever that unite Karl Marx and Donald Trump, for example.

Your only message is that there is something profoundly dangerous about Germans. That is hard-core racism.

[late]

You haven't debunked anything. What you are saying is absurd.

Indeed, he doesn't know how to do philosophy, and his grasp on history is almost as bad.

Does fit in with Putin's goal of division..

[Unthinking Majority]

There are no cultural elements whatsoever that unite Karl Marx and Donald Trump, for example.

Except for being leaders of the most radical western political movements of the last 200 years on the very far ends of the political spectrum. Fascism and communism didn't come out of Denmark.

Your only message is that there is something profoundly dangerous about Germans. That is hard-core racism.

There is something profoundly dangerous within certain elements of thought by some German thinkers that have lingered for centuries and caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and was responsible for a serious coup attempt in the United States last week, as well as running through the CCP in China.

So ya maybe next time a politician gets up and spouts far-right or far-left radical German-think voters might want to take a more careful look.

[Unthinking Majority]

Indeed, he doesn't know how to do philosophy, and his grasp on history is almost as bad.

LOL. How does one "do" philosophy? Is there an ivory tower I can go to do that?

Does fit in with Putin's goal of division..

LOL x 2. Paranoid much?

[Atlantis]

Was he? He's completely absent from the economics curriculum.

It goes without saying that Marx isn't a priority in the neoliberal curriculum. That's compensated by his dominance in the communist curriculum. If I said "great economist" that doesn't imply any sort of value judgement.

As for Nietzsche, I found that to be a good lecture:

When @Unthinking Majority talks about Nietzsche's influence on Trump's father, he is talking about a popular idea about Nietzsche of people who haven't actually read his works.

To go by the video, Nietzsche actually sounds quite prophetic. Trump is the opposite of what Nietzsche describes as the "good or noble", and when the good and noble of the priestly class is perverted, "the priests become the most evil enemies and, because of their impotence, their hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions." Couple that with the "ressentiment" of the slave class, you get the Trumptards instilled by the monstrous hatred of their leader storming Capitol Hill.

So, it's not Nietzsche who led to the phenomenon Trump. Quite on the contrary, it is Nietzsche who warns about the phenomenon Trump as the "most evil enemy."

Thus, the deliberate ignorance advocated by @Unthinking Majority actually led to the catastrophe that is Trump:

In my university years my philosophy professor once told me that philosophers ...

I'm really tired of German thought leaders. English (of the British variety) philosophers have been FAR more reasonable and productive over the centuries. Trump is a sad reminder.

Anyways, what kind of German culture/philosophy or insight of Nietzsche's thinking could Friedrich Drumpf have passed to his grandson after he left Germany at age 16 to become a brothel owner in the US? How could he have passed on German culture to his grandson having always denied the family's German ancestry? Neither Trump nor his father speak German or have studied German culture or philosophy.

[Beren]

Fascism and communism didn't come out of Denmark.

Fascism came out of Italy and what you mean by Communism came out of Russia, you dimwit.

[late]

How does one "do" philosophy? Is there an ivory tower I can go to do that?

College.

It's a discipline, and an odd one at that. It has traditions, which you need to know about even if you decide not to follow them. But mostly there is context, you need to set your work within the context of philosophy, usually using other philosophies to throw a light on your structure. Sometimes that winds up looking like a plate of pasta, a lot of other philosophies held together with a bit of your sauce.

I'm not really a fan of traditional philosophy, but you're not ready for Contemporary American Pragmatism, much less what came after.

But I will set you a goal, read Rorty, mostly because he was one of the great intellectuals of the 20th Century. After you get the basics under your belt, an understanding of the ideas in philosophy before the 20th Century, you can move into reading 20th Century philosophers. They're a bit of a nightmare. But things start getting better when Rorty shows up.

The early work is a couple classes, the 20th is 3 or 4 classes, and most do Rorty on their own. Unless you go get a masters or phd.

None of this should be taken as a suggestion that you do that. It's a complete waste of time, as a practical matter. Unless you graduate from an Ivy league school in the top 10% of your class, there is no way in hell you're getting a job. You will likely become some sort of writer or information handler, but not a Phil prof.

[Rugoz]

It goes without saying that Marx isn't a priority in the neoliberal curriculum. That's compensated by his dominance in the communist curriculum. If I said "great economist" that doesn't imply any sort of value judgement.

It would at least not sound ridiculous if you said "neoclassical" instead of "neoliberal". The economists I mentioned were classical economists, and so was Marx. There's also no such thing as a "communist curriculum".

But there's more than neoclassical theory in the the curriculum today, and I haven't heard or Marx there either. Although this guy comes out in defense of Marx:
https://voxeu.org/article/marx-and-mode ... oeconomics

To go by the video, Nietzsche actually sounds quite prophetic. Trump is the opposite of what Nietzsche describes as the "good or noble"

Good is the valuation the nobles (aka the powerful) give themselves. Trump is powerful (relatively speaking) and a man of action (not a thinker/priest). Hence he fits the Nietzschean description of the warrior/ruling/noble class quite well. He uses slave morality to gain power, but that's not a contradiction.

Not that I personally buy into Nietzsche's theories.

[Ganeshas Rat]

German philosophers are not dangerous, they're plain stupid. Kant was spending his time building theories like 'Martians are smarter than Earthers, Jupiterians are smarter than Martians, Saturnians are smarter than Jupiterians and so on'. The whole work of Nietzsche can be automatized with a simple script. Nietzsche is a tight string over the endless abyss. And only time will show if he turns into an inner beast or an outer man. Nietzsche is a crystal that grows when nobody sees it, and only the night surrounds this landscape of madness. Nietzsche came when the sun of humankind was yet on the rise: only much later the enigma of monks will open its gates.

Hegel went mad after learning the number "3" and didn't produce any significant since then.

So, British philosophers are much dangerous (every line has poison). Let's not forget that Marx was a british philosopher. French philosophers (till the XX century) are extremely useful and (since the XX century) are extremely dangerous. American philosophers don't exist. Greek philosophers is the wine of life. German philosophers are funny.

[late]

German philosophers are not dangerous, they're plain stupid. Kant was spending his time building theories like 'Martians are smarter than Earthers, Jupiterians are smarter than Martians, Saturnians are smarter than Jupiterians and so on'. The whole work of Nietzsche can be automatized with a simple script. Nietzsche is a tight string over the endless abyss. And only time will show if he turns into an inner beast or an outer man. Nietzsche is a crystal that grows when nobody sees it, and only the night surrounds this landscape of madness. Nietzsche came when the sun of humankind was yet on the rise: only much later the enigma of monks will open its gates.

Hegel went mad after learning the number "3" and didn't produce any significant since then.

So, British philosophers are much dangerous (every line has poison). Let's not forget that Marx was a british philosopher. French philosophers (till the XX century) are extremely useful and (since the XX century) are extremely dangerous. American philosophers don't exist. Greek philosophers is the wine of life. German philosophers are funny.

Translation:

I don't understand philosophy at all.

Btw, one of the schools of philosophy I have the fewest problems with is Contemporary American Pragmatism. Pragmatism is an American school that has been around since the 1800s.

The one funny moment in the history of philosophy was when the Logical Positivists proved what their whole school was about could never happen. They blew themselves up.

[Atlantis]

Good is the valuation the nobles (aka the powerful) give themselves. Trump is powerful (relatively speaking) and a man of action (not a thinker/priest). Hence he fits the Nietzschean description of the warrior/ruling/noble class quite well. He uses slave morality to gain power, but that's not a contradiction.

No, the noble is inherently good. To be good in order to become noble won't work. In other words, the good needs to be selfless, like the wise man in Confucianism or Daoism. The truly wise doesn't know he is wise.

Trump is the exact opposite. He's a narcissist who envies the powerful (ie. establishment). Trump corresponds to the "great enemy" according to Nietzsche, which is the priest class gone wrong. Trump doesn't represent the warrior class. He's the "impotent" clown of TV shows and twitter who develops a "monstrous hatred" because he is prevented from doing what he wants by the establishment even in his position as president. He is impotent because, aside from his cult followers, nobody believes his lies about having been cheated out of the election, etc.