Ideas
Love and Hate
On Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorisms
When cleaning our son’s room, who this morning departed for a summer camp, I found a small book on his desk, Aphorisms on Love and Hate, by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Our son from time to time buys books and has now a little collection, mostly philosophical topics, I believe.
Sometimes he asks me to read one of his books, so now made up my mind to pick up this 55 pages small book.
The dark cover reflects what I knew from earlier and what ideas I have on this German philosopher who lived from 1844 to 1900.
Friedrich Nietzsche held a pessimistic view on modern society and culture, and his thoughts on “Übermensch” have falsely been taken as arguments for the Nazi ideology.
Although Nietzsche has famously been misrepresented as a predecessor to Nazism, he criticized anti-Semitism, pan-Germanism and, to a lesser extent, nationalism.
…
His views stand against the concept of popular culture. He believed the press and mass culture led to conformity and brought about mediocrity. Nietzsche saw a lack of intellectual progress, leading to the decline of the human species. According to Nietzsche, individuals needed to overcome this form of mass culture. He believed some people were able to become superior individuals through the use of will power. By rising above mass culture, society would produce higher, brighter and healthier human beings. (Wikipedia)
I’ve many times thought that maybe Friedrich Nietzsche is not the best choice for a young man to read.
When I caught sight of this quote at the beginning of the book, I had to start to think: “We must learn to love” - Yes! Absolutely! That’s what LIFE is about.
That’ what the world needs now. And at all times!
But the second statement: “hatred must be learned and nurtured”!
I have difficulties to understand the meaning of this, seen through the eyes of a 20th and 21st-century human who has clearly in mind the atrocities mankind are able to do towards each other in a never-ending number of wars and conflicts through the 20. century.
This quote lacks a dimension which is indispensable for everyone who wants to say something wise about humans, humanity and human progress, both materially and ethically speaking.
We cannot today, in the world we live in, accept that a goal for humans can be “to become a proficient hater”.
We are in times like these already suffering and struggling more than enough with the moral deficiency on the highest political level.
Can we accept all these lies, all this manipulation by political leaders who show too many signs of resemblance with the Führer of Nietzsche’s country of birth, a single man who through lies and mass manipulation led the world to the holocaust and to a world-wide disaster we still have to recover from?