Jack Fox-Williams explores power, class and religion.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/131/Marx_and_Nietzsche
Marx & Nietzsche
Re: Marx & Nietzsche
Funny article, this was. It had no point, it had no resounding conclusion. It was a mere description of two philosophers, nada a parallel between them. The author may as well have extolled the qualities of apples vis-a-vis Wiener Schnitzel, or the beauty contained in Mona Lisa by da Vinci and in Guernica! by Picasso.
In other words, I expected a comparative thesis, CONNECTING the two philosophers by some common element and saying what separates the two. The author had no deep insight, as he took the topic of Christianity, and examined its role in the Will to Power in the thinking of Nietzsche, and examined its role in Marx's philosophy of class struggle.
This was a weak, almost non-congruent common thread.
Aside from that, I resented that the author used a rather non-English translation of the German text into English. Many a German philosopher get horrible treatment in the hand of translators. The structure of the two languages are eerily similar; and the translators don't notice that idiomatic differences hide behind the similar structures. In their slavishly translating word-for-word, they create hopelessly nonsensical text.
And beyond that, there is just bad, BAAAAAD translations. Take, for instance, the following sentence, lifted from the text of the article: "Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has lost himself again"
What the dickens does this mean? I daresay it means nothing. How do you win your self esteem? Through a lottery? Or in a card game, or via Bingo? And you have to win it to yourself? Win it THROUGH what? This sort of hopelessly meaningless translation is the bane of the English trying to understand the foreign-language philosophers. Not only are there concepts to derive, strange to the English mind, but it has to be done via reading text that makes no sense.
Another example of poor translation, that the hapless author has to have read to get to his (by me seen as weak) points: "labelling him as an “underhand Christian""
Well. Underhand is not a properly used word there. It ought to be "underhanded". But the translator was sloppy, creating a text in English that makes semantically no sense, because it is syntactically wrong.
Typically, I noticed, English-language philosophers are enamoured by Nietzsche. They consider him an enigmatic writer, and a wonderfully bizarre creation of nature. But he is not. He is made out to be such by the horrible, horrible and unjust jobs translators meet out on his writings.
In other words, I expected a comparative thesis, CONNECTING the two philosophers by some common element and saying what separates the two. The author had no deep insight, as he took the topic of Christianity, and examined its role in the Will to Power in the thinking of Nietzsche, and examined its role in Marx's philosophy of class struggle.
This was a weak, almost non-congruent common thread.
Aside from that, I resented that the author used a rather non-English translation of the German text into English. Many a German philosopher get horrible treatment in the hand of translators. The structure of the two languages are eerily similar; and the translators don't notice that idiomatic differences hide behind the similar structures. In their slavishly translating word-for-word, they create hopelessly nonsensical text.
And beyond that, there is just bad, BAAAAAD translations. Take, for instance, the following sentence, lifted from the text of the article: "Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has lost himself again"
What the dickens does this mean? I daresay it means nothing. How do you win your self esteem? Through a lottery? Or in a card game, or via Bingo? And you have to win it to yourself? Win it THROUGH what? This sort of hopelessly meaningless translation is the bane of the English trying to understand the foreign-language philosophers. Not only are there concepts to derive, strange to the English mind, but it has to be done via reading text that makes no sense.
Another example of poor translation, that the hapless author has to have read to get to his (by me seen as weak) points: "labelling him as an “underhand Christian""
Well. Underhand is not a properly used word there. It ought to be "underhanded". But the translator was sloppy, creating a text in English that makes semantically no sense, because it is syntactically wrong.
Typically, I noticed, English-language philosophers are enamoured by Nietzsche. They consider him an enigmatic writer, and a wonderfully bizarre creation of nature. But he is not. He is made out to be such by the horrible, horrible and unjust jobs translators meet out on his writings.