[trashtester]

Nietzsche is one of the great poeple of history. Such people often live short or troubled lives. Ie, Alexander, Joan of Arc, Mdm Curie or Van Gogh.

Often, the tragedy and the greatness are deeply connected.

This is, I think, the motivation behind formulating the idea of the Will to Power.

The question, if you can chose: What is better, to be a great person, one that makes a lasting (hopefully positive) mark on the world, or to be a happy nobody, instantly forgotten when you die?

Everyone is entitled to their own answer to that question.

[Juliate]

Iliad, book 9, Achilles speaking:

  My fates long since by Thetis were disclosed,
  And each alternate, life or fame, proposed:
  Here if I stay, before the Trojan town,
  Short is my date, but deathless my renown;
  If I return, I quit immortal praise
  For years on years, and long-extended days.
  Convinced, though late, I find my fond mistake,
  And warn the Greeks the wiser choice to make;
  To quit these shores, their native seats enjoy,
  Nor hope the fall of heaven-defended Troy.

[trashtester]

Good example. This has concerned people throughout the ages. And if you reject Heaven and reincarnation, it may be the only path to eternal "life".

[brador]

Which did he choose in the end?

[daseiner1]

Achilles is mortally wounded in Troy by an arrow through his heel.

[trashtester]

His renown lasts until this day, 3000 years later. The answer is in the quoted text.

[Juliate]

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

Excerpt above taken from this translation: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Iliad_of_Homer_(Pope)

[throwaway8879]

There isn't a "better" life. It's all the same in the end, we'll all be nobodies.

[imartin2k]

In the future, we'll have "Elon Musk's Guide to Better Living", and then there'll be the same debate.

[trashtester]

I think of Elon more as a modern Nocola Tesla. (As does, it seems, Elon himself.)

The closest current analogy to Nietzsche would be Jordan Peterson, I think. Their problem definitions are very similar (ie to fight nihilsm), but it seems to me that Nietzsche's proposed path is more heroic, but also harder.

[voidhorse]

I agree completely on Elon; that’s probably the same fate other tech greats will be granted as well.

While Peterson’s most basic premise to “fight against nihilism”, is respectable I don’t think he is philosophically well-equipped enough to have the same lasting effect as Nietzsche—if you listen to his arguments it’s clear that he’s quite ignorant of a whole swath of philosophical developments that have occurred in the past few decades. His arguments are not sophisticated. Someone with a basic education in the humanities can craft them just as easily. His whining about the death of individuality is also shallow—he doesn’t even realize the very shape of the concept of induiviudality itself has changed over time. He’s praying for the ressurection if old concepts, which is a method the ignores the particularités and needs of our own historical situation. Part of this could be a result of his trying to reach a wide audience, part of it could be his lack of capability, idk. At any rate, even though Nietzsche has an aphorism about writing for your readers it’s clear he himself didn’t do so, and his reknown partly stems from the uniqueness of his style, which is impeccable. In this regard Peterson doesn’t hold a candle to Nietzsche. Of course he may still be remembered, given he’s speaking for a different era, but idk, lacking argumentative or stylistic ingenuity typically doesn’t net you a spot in the hall of fame.

[trashtester]

It sounds like you know more of this than me. Do you have any specifics in mind about the change in the concept of individuality?

That said, I also see Peterson as clearly adding much less than Nietzsche (if anything at all) on pure philosophy. He is a psychologist, first and foremost, that happens to draw on some concepts from philosophy and biology (developed by others) for the purpose of providing a path for people (mostly young men) that have lost the sense of purpose.

In this confrontation with the inner emptiness, he seems to grapple with the same problem as Nietzsche, but with a more practical approach.

Indeed, as a clinical psychologist, his task is precisely to formulate it in a way that can reach people.

For those who have never had any serious struggles with the problem (nihilism, lack of purpose), he probably looks like a quack.

[ethelward]

Nicola Tesla actually invented thing. AFAIK, Musk didn't; he's above all a successful businessman but has little to no technical competencies.

[erikpukinskis]

There is a lot of technical work to turning an invention into an affordable and dependable product.

In fact, I would wager the majority of engineering/math/physics/etc happens after the proof of concept phase.

[robfitz]

In that case, Tesla would have lived and died happier if he'd had a Musk around to help him find a way to scalably and sustainably bring what he invented to the world.

[trashtester]

You are right. Maybe Edison would be a better example.

[vinceguidry]

I disagree that Nietzsche is one of the great people of history. I believe he's currently fashionable at the moment because of the West's love affair with narcissistic self-imagining, but the obsession will pass when we grow up and get over it.

Jane Austen made greater contributions to the Western dialectic but we tend to dismiss her as a 'mere' novelist. I submit that we'll have grown up as a society when we start to recognize that Austen, with her emotional maturity and capacity to give her characters real, palpable depth, was the far greater figure.