Kelley Ross has written a review of it, Nietzsche and the Nazis, with some strong arguments against Dr. Stephen Hicks' "personal view," which inspired me to get the DVD and view it for myself.
Here's Ross' conclusion:
Hicks is confused enough about morality that he agrees with Nietzsche on the "slave revolt," and this serves to vindicate the influence, which he mentions himself, that Nietzsche had on Ayn Rand. This merely serves to illuminate the failings and oversights of Randite ethics. Nietzsche and the Nazis would be much better if Hicks were not carrying water for the peculiarities of Ayn Rand's own defense of liberalism and capitalism. By apparently agreeing with Nietzsche's denigration of Jewish and Christian compassion and charity, Hicks in truth burdens his case for freedom, democracy, liberalism, and capitalism with a weakness that the enemies of all these, today principally on the Left (but also in Islamic Fascism), have never hesitated to exploit. Politically, leftist rhetoric is still, even in America, much more pervasive and effective than any defense of the free market or private property.
Nevertheless, despite these tendentious weaknesses, and the peculiarity of its structure, Nietzsche and the Nazis is a valuable and, on the whole, impressive work. That Nietzsche was not an individualist and that the Nazis were socialists are points that seriously need arguing against other admirers of Nietzsche, on the former point, and against those who, on the latter point, promote the leftist interpretation of fascism as a form of capitalism. Hicks does this all effectively, even as he performs the valuable historical service of preserving and expounding what the ideology of the Nazi regime actually was, and the reasons why a great many Germans really supported it. We should not forget that the eugenics movement in the United States was not completely discredited until it was obvious what the Nazis had done, faithfully, with such ideas. At the same time, the attraction of Nietzsche for Stephen Hicks himself is evidence for the thesis that intellectually serious people, whether Nazis or not, can believe this stuff.
Emphases and links are in the original.
I must say, I didn't find the Randian touches particularly disagreeable, but, then, I've been tempering my Objectivism with Ross's insights for a number of years now. I won't feel very qualified to argue against Dr. Ross until I finally get around to finishing one of Kant's books - or, rather, several. The impression I got of Kant from my college course on him (called Romanticism and Alienation, and it wasn't exclusively about Kant, we also surveyed Fichte, Hegel, Schilling and some other German Idealists - my paper was, more or less, "Fichte and the Nazis"; I think I got a B- on it)...
Oops! Digression!
Anyway, my impression of Kant from that class was that he deserved both barrels of what Ayn Rand fired at him. It is Ross who got me to reconsider. The trouble is, I'd rather read Ross than Kant or Schopenhauer.
I know that the points Ross goes on about in his review, even with his forewarning, aren't ones in which I feel much of a personal stake, so I found it difficult to get as worked up over them as he did when I watched the movie (the first time, without the football games). I've read four books on Hitler, including Mein Kampf and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and thirty or fourty on World War II, visited Dachau, stayed for two and a half weeks with a former SS soldier and been otherwise inundated with information about that epoch... You'd think I'd be tough to impress on that subject... But I was impressed with Hicks' presentation of the similarities and differences between Naziism and Nietzsheanism.
And, of course, I am interested in the comparison of Hicks' achievement with my own.
Update: Aha! Now I see a bit more clearly.
4 comments:
Before demonstrating your erudition, you casually mention '..went to church..' Were you worshiping or handing out business cards (real or virtual) in that activity?
A casual observer
I go to church, generally agree with most of what's said, sing the songs, follow the instructions in the order of service... I guess I worship. I'm pretty sure that God isn't what anybody, including myself, thinks He is, but I'm also pretty sure of two things about Him: whatever the referent of the term is it seems to be, at least, a pretty useful concept for the human mind in that praying helps people become aware of their own priorities. Second, it's always useful for a man to know his limitations: I don't have the power to break the laws of nature - keeping that fact in mind is what I mean by humility.
Sure, sometimes I'd like God to break the laws of nature for me, and ask Him too. Then I realize that "if it's going to be, it is up to me." I'm going to have to figure out how to make that happen myself, or lump it. Very often, the benevolent Universe takes care of such problems for me.
That's my excuse for going to church. Why do you ask?
I actually had a fellow “work his business” on me at church a long time back, so "casual observer" has every reason to be cynical of folks pretending to worship. Having an understanding of God, given the information in the scriptures, makes it possible to recognize our own purpose in mortality and in the eternities. May you find the answers you seek and eventually understand why we often use the term Father in Heaven.
I figured I must be talking to an atheist, so I tried to use language I've heard atheists using, yet without diverging from sincerity. Lying never converted anyone to anything good.
I still believe that; I don't differentiate between the "God" and "benevolent Universe," btw. It's either some of the attributes of a personal God or a complete description. I don't tell God what to be, but I certainly believe in the latter. It's what I think of when I'm feeling my most godless.
One thing about such a conception is, there's no point in blaming an impersonal universe for your problems when you're wallowing in self-pity.
I see, though, that I failed to say everything I was thinking while I was writing my previous answer. Although the worst thing I see right now is the misspelling of "to." (I don't consider ending the sentence with it faulty English.)
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