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Film think Nietzsche a 'hero' or a 'villain'?

posted 12 years ago by chuck-526
7 replies | jump to latest

How does this film treat Friedrich Nietzsche?

Initially I assumed he played the role of a "bad guy": He's the "herald" that "announced" the bad things that happen. The words he says (at least the words of the neighbor, which sound very Nietzsche-like:-) are "rubbish". At best, the philosophies he popularizes make the people in the film less psychologically able to live positively despite the bad things that happen to them. And at worst, those philosophies were actually one of the causes of the bad things. (And besides all that, the film lets stand the idea that he "went crazy".)

But reading here (and to some extent elsewhere too), I keep getting glimmers of a very different point of view. So now I'm not so sure any more.

So which is it really? According to this film, is Nietzsche a "good guy" or a "bad guy"?

[–] j_money77 12 years ago

I'm not sure friend, if the film was subtle enough to slip in a commentary on the events happening it certainly got past me.

For what it's worth before the farmer denounced his nieghbor's rants as rubbish, I did so as well. He seemed like a raving disturbed neo-con.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] chuck-526 11 years ago

Not exactly the image of Nietzsche I picked up. "Life-affirming"? yes, very definitely. But "gentle"? ...hmmm...

Seems to me the (probably apocryphal) story about Nietzsche and the Turin Horse persists precisely because it implies that in a moment of lucidity before he went mad, Nietzche recanted his own philosophy.

Nevertheless, this goes a long way toward answering my query. I see now that Nietzsche is portrayed from several different angles, some more positive and others more negative. And I see now that he may be a presence more via postmodernist literature than via philosophy. I also see my original unspoken assumption that Nietzsche's portrayal was either "all good" or "all bad" was very wide of the mark.

The most Nietzsche-like words, as spoken by the neighbor (after all the background story of Nietzsche and the Horse isn't actually in the film:-) are made to sound rather pompous and silly. On the other hand, that the man and his daughter continue living pretty much as before even in the face of the apparent end of the world, does seem a major exemplification of Nietzschean life-affirmation.

[–] 11 years ago

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[–] sunheadbowed 9 years ago

I don't believe there is any good guy or bad guy in this film, only the cold, firm, hopeless nihilism representative of Nietzsche's own views, so it's rather ironic that Nietzsche's act of embracing the beaten horse is so tender and moving: it is a complete contradiction. Perhaps it's this contradiction that caused both his instant madness and the impending end of the world in this universe.

[–] TheRedViper 8 years ago

only the cold, firm, hopeless nihilism representative of Nietzsche's own views

Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist. He hated nihilism, and everything he wrote was an attempt at getting people to not be nihilistic.

Perhaps it's this contradiction that caused both his instant madness and the impending end of the world in this universe.

No, it was his syphilis.

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[–] sunheadbowed 8 years ago

These are just your opinions; like the angry troll you are, you feel the need to 'correct' other people's opinions, because you are insecure about your own. You must be a fun person to be around.

PS. (from a 2-second Google search): 'Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the façades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent.'