Twilight Of The Idols- Friedrich Nietzsche

 Friedrich Nietzsche is a prevalent name in the field of philosophy. When I decided to buy a book for myself, I decided his book should be it. However, I knew that without proper understanding reading major works would not be effective. It would be like watching the final movie without watching any other, albeit the books are not continuation of each other.  By going through the internet I decided upon Twilight Of The Idols, to be the first step to reading his other major works like Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But boy oh boy was i not prepared for the challenges of the book. 

I consider myself fluent in English, but the book was  huge on another level. In the earlier chapters I searched for the meaning for 2-3 words every 2 pages. Although, by the end of the book it became a bit easier to grasp. Similarly for anyone thinking of reading this book, you should also be prepared that it does not have a structure you are familiar with. Rather than a story, essay or anything of the like it is more of a snippet of thoughts. It appears as though there are many things going through Nitzsche’s mind and he jots down what he wishes to share. 

As for the content itself, I regret to say that it is not as eye opening as people might portray. Perhaps, it is because I simply could not grasp it all, but I took a lot of time going through the book. It's a pretty short read if you just go through it but I took almost a week to go through about 100 pages. However, I should also mention that those that follow Nietzsche say that it is not the content per say, but the ability of Nietzsche to make us doubt ourselves, make us doubt the information we hold to be true no matter what. If you find yourself doubting these then Nietzsche work is successful, or so they say. 

I can't give you much of a review, since as I said its not a continuous story but snippets of thoughts. So let me write down some thoughts that made me think as I read through the work. 

• Which is it ? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man

• The weak have more intellect. In order to acquire intellect, one must be in need of it.

• That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much. Where authority still belongs to good usage, wherever men do not prove but command, the dialectical is regarded as a sort of clown. ( it was relevant after the

  gen Z protest to some extent, had we had a very demooring figure in politics anyone who was trying to reason would have been made fun of. A similar situation was also in China during Mao’s regime where intellects were humiliated during the cultural revolution)

• Socrates & Greeks at the time did not have liberty to choose to be rational, there were only 2 alternative : either perish or be absurdly rational ( I am currently reading

  From third world to First World by Lee Kwang Yu and this was also the case in Singapore where the countries sovereignty was at stake, very rational decision had to be made not just by leaders but also by the common people due to which perhaps populists policy were not pursued. Similarly it also goes to explain quotes like “ Need is the mother of all innovations” and “Weak times create strong men”. In times when either being strong is the only way out, had one been weak, had one been irrational then one would simply cease to exist, fail) 

I have bought the collection of Twilight of the idols, The Anti Christ , Ecce Homo. However, I have decided to take a break from the challenging world of Nietzsche for now.