Miscellaneous Chatter > General Misc.
Bakker and Nietzsche
What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Auriga ---My second "Bakker and.." thread.
What influences from Nietzsche's philosophy can we see in Bakker's books, and what parallels?
The most obvious one is Kellhus and his embodiment of the Nietzschean overman, a person who is totally unbound by morality and has complete control over himself, letting him control others. If I remember right, the first PON book opens with a Nietzsche quote.
Any other ideas?
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Galbrod ---This is a great thred to start! In addition to the series opening up with a Nietzsche quote (as mentioned above), the books are packed with ideas and concepts that are (in my mind) close to the reasoning of Nietzsche. You can for example compare the central theme of before-after in the series to the following ideas of Nietzsche:
"Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality."
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Meyna ---+1 Galbrod. Wow. I never thought the Nietzschean undertones were so strong in the Dunyain philosophy.
+1 Auriga, too, for starting the thread and making the original connection.
Ninja Edit: Overman and Uberman are the same thing :lol:
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Auriga ---
--- Quote from: Meyna ---Wow. I never thought the Nietzschean undertones were so strong in the Dunyain philosophy.
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Yeah, the Dûnyain ideology is fairly Nietzschean - they've taken his premise of "God is dead, so there is no true morality other than rational self-interest" to its logical extreme. They also seem to follow Nietzsche's idea that true enlightenment can't be attained humanely, so they've bred themselves into something beyond human. And, like true ubermenschen, they've erased all ethics and morals in themselves, which are just obstacles in their path to the Logos.
(Of course, you can argue that there's no such thing as a totally amoral organism, just as there's no such thing as an absolutely indifferent mind. Life is a manifestation of need, after all, and so it is by definition caring. Even if this care and love is only towards the self.)
Nietzsche also said this, in his "Beyond Good and Evil":
I never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious people are loath to admit — namely, that a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want . . .
So, the Dûnyain are turning themselves into self-controlled minds who have thoughts only when and how they want. Kellhus is pretty much the embodiment of what Nietzsche called the "Apollonian" soul - the will to overcome, to dominate, to force chaos into order.
(Cnaiur, on the other hand, is closer to what Nietzsche called the "Dionysian", the irrational and disorderly. He's described in pretty Nietzschean terms - we hear that Cnaiur "looks down on all outlanders as though from the summit of some godless mountain.")
--- Quote ---Overman and Uberman are the same thing
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What Came Before:
--- Quote from: Madness ---That quote from Beyond Good and Evil is the Nietzsche quote from the beginning of TDTCB ;).
That cat should be an emoticon.
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