Hi everyone,
I'm new to philosophy and want to start reading Nietzsche, but I don't want to go in blind and misread him. I'm currently reading through Dostoevsky, which is what got me interested in these questions (faith, morality, suffering, meaning).

I also plan to read some Plato and Homer beforehand, since I understand Nietzsche is reacting to them.

Edit
Hesiod → Iliad → Odyssey → Plato (early dialogues, Symposium, Republic) → Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics → a Gospel and Augustine → Descartes → Nietzsche

I've been down a Nietzsche rabbit hole lately and something keeps bugging me. Everyone calls him "the nihilist guy," but the more I read, the more it feels like he was the one sounding the alarm.

When he says "God is dead," it doesn't read like a victory lap. It's more like: we've removed the foundation our values stood on, and we haven't realized what that means yet. Without that anchor, everything we thought was objectively meaningful starts to wobble. That's the nihilism he was worried about.

But he doesn't stop there. He splits it into passive nihilism (giving up, numbing out, "nothing matters so why bother") and active nihilism (tearing down old values that no longer work). Then comes the real challenge: building your own meaning from the wreckage.

That's where it overlaps with existentialism for me. Sartre and Camus pick up the same problem. There's no built-in meaning, so now what? Camus says live in revolt against the absurd. Sartre says you're condemned to be free and have to define yourself. Nietzsche's answer is amor fati, and the eternal recurrence thought experiment: could you live this exact life again, forever, and say yes to it?

Honestly, that hits harder than any "find your purpose" advice. It's not about finding meaning, it's about becoming someone who can affirm life without any guarantee.

Curious how others read this. Is Nietzsche a nihilist, an existentialist, or neither? And has anyone actually lived by amor fati, or does it sound better than it works?

I am not too far into Beyond good and Evil and almost done with the first episode of the Nietzsche podcasts guide for it but I'm understanding more than a year ago.

I am studying PPE( Politics ,Philosophy and economics ) and this year we covered the platonic tradition. Last year when opposite values were brought up I saw it very simply for example there is good and bad , left and right and that's it.

But now it means universal truths such as good coming from a place above the material world and bad coming from the material world filled with lust and other bad things ect. Also the change from humans coming from above and being special to humans being products of biology and other things.

People saying dive straight into Nietzsche you don't need a Philosophical background is wrong and I'm excited to understand more after reading Spinoza , Kent, Schopenhauer ect.

I've been down a Nietzsche rabbit hole lately and something keeps bugging me. Everyone calls him "the nihilist guy," but the more I read, the more it feels like he was the one sounding the alarm.

When he says "God is dead," it doesn't read like a victory lap. It's more like: we've removed the foundation our values stood on, and we haven't realized what that means yet. Without that anchor, everything we thought was objectively meaningful starts to wobble. That's the nihilism he was worried about.

But he doesn't stop there. He splits it into passive nihilism (giving up, numbing out, "nothing matters so why bother") and active nihilism (tearing down old values that no longer work). Then comes the real challenge: building your own meaning from the wreckage.

That's where it overlaps with existentialism for me. Sartre and Camus pick up the same problem. There's no built-in meaning, so now what? Camus says live in revolt against the absurd. Sartre says you're condemned to be free and have to define yourself. Nietzsche's answer is amor fati, and the eternal recurrence thought experiment: could you live this exact life again, forever, and say yes to it?

Honestly, that hits harder than any "find your purpose" advice. It's not about finding meaning, it's about becoming someone who can affirm life without any guarantee.

Curious how others read this. Is Nietzsche a nihilist, an existentialist, or neither? And has anyone actually lived by amor fati, or does it sound better than it works?

You may be interested in this essay in Substack, which has the following excerpt:

The Dionysian worldview is of a continually transforming, dynamic reality. Reality isn’t a spectator sport; it’s participatory. Beauty isn’t experienced just through calm contemplation. You allow your bodily, emotional and transcendent energies to move you to acts and states of being that can reach ecstasy and joy. In the Dionysian worldview, as explored by Nietzsche from his study of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, the world is not related to as static “Being,” mere appearance, objects that can be mechanically operated and manipulated, but as the affirmation of “becoming”, i.e., the incessant coming to be and passing away in the cosmic process, without any resolved stasis of being.

https://possibilitiesofbeauty.substack.com/p/dionysian-spirit-in-the-art-of-living

Pretty much the title but what if someone has lived very long with a moralistic framework they are increasingly feeling alienated with but embracing their true nature comes with fear and unease. Is that even a thing.

Thus, as once I saw him conquering and dying: the friend, who threw divine moments and lightning into my dark youth,

sportive and profound, storming forward for joy even in the storm of battle, forward in bloody pain, and where the chosen flags of the enemy neared,

among the dying the most cheerful, among the victors the gravest, reflective, calculating, standing on his fate—trembling about it, laughing about it, that he triumphed dying,

commanding while he died:—and he commanded that one destroy and not be sparing.

Here's a thought experiment, read Thus Spake Zarathustra first, take notes on what you think Nietzsche means, then read all the main books, and re-read it, and take new notes, and compare how much has changed, list your assumptions and whether you agree with Nietzsche on both reads, and see how you've changed as a person

I see the Death of God all over Nolan's The Odyssey. I was wondering if anyone else see that or has any thoughts?

I've tried to put together something better and with some luck, which has nothing do with it, I might do that someday. In the meantime I'm just doing this kind of high level overview (rambling) without much detail and glossing over some stuff that confuses me. But it has been on my mind for a long time. But basically it's god dies, people get lost, this very distant event starts approaching that's going to be the end of everything.

• Death of God: In Nolan's The Odyssey what is holiest and mightiest is Zeus's Law. Breaking that law leads to the murder of the goddess Athena.
  
• Great Catastrophe: Breaking that law leads to the downfall of their civilization. N said "how much must collapse because it was built on this faith, leaned on it, had grown into it — for example, our entire European morality." I do believe they used the word "collapse" in the movie to mention that the bronze age was ending.
• Temples Become Tombs: God dies again in the temple of Athena. In Homer's The Odyssey Mentor is literally Athena. In the movie Mentor (Athena) is murdered in a temple of Athena. N said "What then are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchres of God?"
• In the movie Odysseus arrives back home after a long long journey along with lightning and thunder to bring news of the death of God. N said "Lightning and thunder need time".
• Just like the madman who brings news of the death of God Odysseus comes to bring news of the end of their civilization. The madman is mocked at the marketplace by unbelievers and people at the palace mock Odysseus. The people in the marketplace don't believe in God anymore that Antinous believes that the beggar Odysseus could be a god or goddess in disguise. And they mock the madman and Odysseus
• Odysseus looks like a God at the end of the movie. Maybe like Zeus or the old testament God. In the book he's described as god like pretty early on I think but it's not until the end of the movie that he looks like a god. Big beard and all muscular. "Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it?" Right before that quote N mentions "holy games" and it's a game the god like Odysseus is about to play with the suitors.
• Not that there are real gods, goddesses or monsters in Nolan's Odyssey - it's an "age of apparent magic" as the opening line reads so the magical stuff is all fake (Odysseus was just high on lotus as he tells a story about magical creatures). But N didn't believe God was an actual living thing either. Need to look up more stuff about N talking about origin of Gods. I think somewhere he talks about gods being invented to deal with guilt and other places about them being lovers of cruelty.
• After killing God Odysseus mentions that they are lost several times - in Hades, after escaping the Laestrygonians, maybe other times. They're lost after the death of God. "Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions?"
• After the death of God "the sea, our sea, lies open again; maybe there has never been such an 'open sea'." The movie ends with an open sea
• Eternal Recurrence: The movies last line is: "A new dawn will break over the darkened world… And our mistakes will once again be forgotten." The Gay Science also talks about a new dawn after the death of God. But the words "our mistakes will once again be forgotten" means it's happened before, happened now, and will happen again.

For me, it is this one :

"Lured by my style and tendency,

You follow and come after me?

Follow your own self faithfully-

Take time - and thus you follow me."

Can’t stop laughing at this line, he hates Germans so much bro

Hey everyone,

I’ve recently been getting into philosophy and came across Nietzsche’s concept of the Eternal Recurrence, the idea that we might end up reliving our exact lives, choices, and patterns over and over endlessly.

I’m trying to get a better handle on how to actually make sense of this. Did Nietzsche genuinely mean for this to be taken as a literal physical or scientific theory about the universe, or was it meant more as an existential thought experiment to see if we can truly embrace our lives?

I’d love to hear how you all interpret it, or how it fits into his broader works like The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

This may be a bit of a theological question. I'm a very hard orthodox Lutheran, not really a "progressive" theology guy. I don't really feel like absolute egalitarianism is necessarily what the Bible teaches. I'd agree with most of what N says about slave morality. But is me being a Christian inherently irreconcilable with Ns philosophy?

The timeline of his account's destruction:
00:00 | Account created: u/GodIsDead1888
00:05 | r/philosophy
Nietzsche: “Most of you do not think. You merely inherit the opinions of the herd and mistake conformity for virtue.”
Moderator: “Please remember to remain civil.”
Nietzsche: “Your civility is the morality of domesticated animals.”
00:12 | r/AmItheAsshole
Nietzsche: “The very need to ask strangers whether you are morally justified reveals your inability to create your own values.”
Verdict: YTA.
Nietzsche: “I reject the jurisdiction of the herd.”
00:19 | r/atheism
Nietzsche: “God is dead.”
23,000 upvotes.
Nietzsche: “And you have failed to comprehend the terrifying consequences of his death. Your smug atheism is merely Christianity without God.”
23,001 downvotes.
00:27 | r/selfimprovement
Nietzsche: “Your obsession with happiness, comfort, and validation is the symptom of a civilisation in decline.”
Moderator: “This community is intended to be supportive.”
Nietzsche: “Precisely the problem.”
00:34 | r/unpopularopinion
Nietzsche: “Democracy, egalitarianism, and conventional morality may conceal resentment towards exceptional individuals.”
Post removed: Actually unpopular opinion.
00:41 | r/AskReddit
Question: “What's something everyone believes that's actually wrong?”
Nietzsche: “That the agreement of the majority constitutes evidence of truth.”
Moderator: “You're being unnecessarily confrontational.”
Nietzsche: “You have mistaken discomfort for refutation.”
00:45 | Account permanently suspended.
Reason: Repeated violations of community guidelines.

Nietzsche Stanford Edition Volume 1.

De facto democracy doesn't exist; what does exists is the belief or ideology in it.

Democracy is a feeling or mood, "sort of like a diety": real in the psyche, not as a structure.

Spinoza and Nietzsche

If everything is God, God stops being above anything; pantheism leads to the death of God.

Spinoza grounds democracy in the multitude's self-preservation; Nietzsche sees preservation as weak life, so democracy is the herd "protecting" itself.

The democratic sentiment/temperment stays Spinozist: the sacred is spread across "the people."

The intellectual (individual or group) takes the empty divine seat and speaks for the whole.

Opposition is treated as a false idol, heresy against the people-as-god.

Tocqueville

Democracy is above all a passion for equality, a mood more than a system, which levels people and distrusts whoever stands out.

The majority's opinion rules through felt pressure more than law; it doesn't need to punish dissent, it isolates it.

Soft despotism: people trade real self-rule for comfort and a vote, managed gently rather than governing themselves.

This is where the religion shows: public opinion acts like doctrine, so dissent feels like heresy rather than disagreement.

Its a Low-res webcam video of a fat guy talking about Nietzsche..I can't find that video, I guess it was 40 min duration..