Nietzsche

Another problem with Nietzsche's philosophy, as it plays out in the 20th Century and beyond, is that it favours the point of view of the uneducated.

Although this consequence has been founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of the writer, who would have liked nothing better than to keep some ideas about reality esoteric and hidden from all but a few, in practice, Nietzsche's philosophy has come to favour various boorish and simplistic notions of reality that force a psychological regression in the writing's adherents.

See the following from Twilight of the Idols:

How the "True World" Finally Became a Fable
The History of an Error

1. The true world—attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it.


(The oldest form of the idea, relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A circumlocution for the sentence, "I, Plato, am the truth.")

2. The true world—unattainable for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man ("for the sinner who repents").


(Progress of the idea: it becomes more subtle, insidious, incomprehensible—it becomes female, it becomes Christian ...)

3. The true world—unattainable, indemonstrable, unpromisable; but the very thought of it—a consolation, an obligation, an imperative.


(At bottom, the old sun, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale, Nordic, Königsbergian.)

4. The true world—unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming, or obligating: how could something unknown obligate us? ...


(Gray morning. The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)

5. The "true" world—an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—consequently, a refuted idea: let us abolish it!


(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)

6. We have abolished the true world: what world has remained? the apparent one perhaps? ... But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one!

(Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)

Nietzsche's point in illustrating "the history of an error" is that we should live life as if we were participating in reality right now. We should not put off living a real (authentic) life until after we die.

Unfortunately, however, many of his staunchest disciples have fallen into an interpretation of Nietzsche's view which goes along rather different lines than he had intended, thus entrenching epistemological error by conflating objectivity with their own subjectively based reactions to things around them.

They take what they see as Nietzsche's injunction -- to act upon the world as it appears to them to be -- and they immediately lose their capacity for any reality testing that would enable them to correct presumptions that happen not to be correct.

Those who respond to the world as if "how it seems to me to be" is in fact "how it is" experience psychological regression to the stage of maturity prior to a child's ability to understand that its feelings about things in the world do not always accord with how those things actually really and truly are. Pre-oedipal strategies of forcing the object "out there" to come into the hoped-for mode of relationality with the feeling subject (on the basis of the subject's felt needs), are utlised at the stage of development that precedes the ability to acknowledge that the mother object "out there" hasits own independent identity and raison d'etre, separate from the needs and desires of the infant (who experiences the dependency structure of the relationship quite differently).

Similarly, those contemporary Nietzscheans who are unable to distinguish between "the world as I desire it to be" and "the world as it actually is" try to force others to attend to their needs, without first discerning whether it is the other's genuine desire to do so. Particularly in terms of gender relationships, we see the male contemporary Nietzschean assert that things are merely "how they seem to be." They use pre-Oedipal strategies (such as projective identification) to compel the other to fall in line with how they fantasise reality to be and prefer to try to force their idea of a positive relationality between the subject and his object, rather than trying to find out something about the independent identity of the other, and how he or she functions.