What to read after Nietzsche ?

There were never any flaws in Nietzsche's logic. More like a number of his basic assumptions were bad...

Nietzsche is widely acknowledged as having superior writing skills, completely apart from those primarily interested in his ideas (philosophers), such as literary critics, etc. You certainly wouldn't want to read a philosopher like Heidegger if you're looking for that.

If you haven't already, you might want to try Plato. His ideas may not be "new" but they are still widely contemplated and debated by philosophers (including Nietzsche). By placing the character of Socrates at the center of his dialogues, he uses an alternate way of presenting ideas that I find enjoyable.

Thank you Layman for at least a sensible reply. And you're correct about Heidigger. Your advice about Plato is reasonable, and he certainly tells something about Socrates, but for me, that's where Plato ends. My opinion, but Nietzsche was more in line with Heraclitus. I'm reading 'Fragments' right now, but it's only a short book...

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. Fred didn't care much for Platonic thought at all and was almost a "disciple" of Heraclitus. But, if you're not otherwise familiar with him (I assume you are), understanding Plato also helps you understand a lot of what Nietzsche is saying, because he refers to it often (in a critical way).

If you haven't read Sartre, you might like him. He liked to consider himself a writer, not a philosopher, but he was definitely a kindred spirit of Fred, philosophically speaking, and wrote in an interesting style, compared to most philosophers.

Consider Elmore Lenard.

Nietzsche's major point about there being no way to differentiate between 'appearance' and 'reality' is taken up by the neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, in the very readable "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature".

Thank you Layman, I read some Sartre once a long time ago - maybe I wasn't ready then. Perhaps time to give him another chance.

I hadn't considered Lenard, and will do. Thanks.

I don't know I agree that it was his major point. I'd probably go to Kant for that. My opinion, Nietzsche's major point was : what happens to men's souls after all religious values have been destroyed. I believe that Nietzsche loved his fellow man, and anticipated what was to happen. So he introduced some kind of self help...again, back to Heraclitus : "Applicants for wisdom : inquire within."

I perhaps should have said 'one of his major points'. Of course it follows from Kant by simply removing an epistemological dichotomy between noumena and phenomena. What Rorty does is to extrapolate that epistemological iconoclasm to the whole of traditional philosophical analysis. He ties this in with Heidegger's rejection of 'subjects contemplating objects' and both Heidegger and Wittgenstein's focus on language itself as agent in the construction of what we call 'reality'.

It's hard to say...Nietzsche sets a pretty high bar to match in the writer/philosophe tradition.

If you're not already familiar with them, you might like some of his predecessors like Schopenhauer (obviously), Voltaire (sorta-kinda-not really), Diderot (he's fun, but not as many new ideas), or, especially, Montaigne (who's great...no, i mean, he's Great).

There are also long-shot, off-hand thinkers like John Stuart Mill. Not a head-banging genius, but well written, interesting, and a good collate-r of ideas in his time and place.

More modern examples: Camus, Jung, later Wittgenstein.

Camus' prose is a bit stiff, but beautiful, and he has a few odd things to say, along with a lot of irritatingly relevant, moral kerfuffle.

Jung isn't a bad place to jump off from Nietzsche, but he'll take you in a very different direction. Similar themes, similar symbols, but very different goals, despite the similarity of their teleological descriptions. They have very different ideas about historical process.

Wittgenstein may have been the most original philosophical thinker in the 20th Century. His later writings are fragmentary and unclassifiable, but also brilliant and intriguing.

Two others that might be of interest are: E.M. Cioran and Walter Benjamin.

If anything, E.M. Cioran is too close to Nietzsche. An excellent writer, cynic, and wanton nihilist, in that order. Still, in his aphorisms, there are sparks of originality, and his insights cast long shadows on popularly held idols.

Walter Benjamin is a horse of a different color. He's a brilliant thinker whose admitted influences are Neo-Kantianism, Platonism, the Kabbala (he was operating during the 20's and 30's, so don't worry about his being a Madonna convert), Marxism, Jung, etc...etc...and yet, heeding many, he followed none. He's not a Nietzschean thinker, by any means, but there are occasional, unexpected touchstones. i have to admit, he's a particular favorite influence of mine that i feel is a bit neglected.

Other random recommendations: Douglas Hofstadter, Isaiah Berlin, Guy Davenport, Stanislav Lec, Paul Valery, Soren Kierkegaard...blah, blah, blah...

Razzleg, thanks very much for all this. Some I've already read, but you've suggested quite a few authors new to me. For one, I'll take a look at Montaigne.
After that there are some names lower down I've not even heard of. They're all noted down now...thanks again.

Thumbs up for the blah blah blah little touch Razzy !

While i totally recommend you read a translation of Montaigne's essays (the Frame translation is probably the best in english), there is also an excellent English-language book, recently published, about Montaigne -- his life, and his essays -- called: "How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer", written by Sarah Bakewell. It is excellent -- it is well written, it is concise, it is historically responsible, and it is rewarding. Original texts are an important thing, but this is a secondary source that definitely holds its own.

Thanks again Razzleg, though I've already opted for the Essays Selection. Hopefully will arrive soon...

I was kidding.

I spelled his name wrong, sorry, it's Elmore Leonard, a crime writer of some repute.
I've friends who are interested in Nietzsche, but I'm not as interested as others.

A keen person on a2k about him is JLNobody - you could look up his posts. Worth it, he's smart.

I suggest "Nietzsche Is Dead" by G.O.D. (The punctuation in the byline suggests that the author's name is either his initials (unlikely though possible) or else an acronym. My own speculation is that it's an acronymic alias, but it's not explained in the text or on the cover. The book is self-published (not unlike some of Nietzsche's best known works) but occasionally it shows up in used collections. There is no copyright date.)

Excerpt (from the Introduction):

"Nietzsche was a man of many contradictions. He rejected the concept of objective truth, but when asked if "There is no objective truth" is objectively true, and if not, why anyone should listen to him, he paused for several moments in silent contemplation before replying "I'll have to get back to you on that one".

"Nietzsche asserted that God was the sole possible source for objective value judgments and, asserting that God was dead, proclaimed the death of morality. He seems to have overlooked both the biblical characterization of mankind as being made in God's spiritual image (from which it follows that man is endowed with the faculty for independent determination of moral truth), as well as purely secular moral philosophy which holds that morality follows from self evident truths and can be directly apprehended.

"Modern readers may have difficulty understanding how someone who categorically denies both objective truth and objective moral values can criticize so vituperatively both the ideas and the moral vigor of others, sneering at the crapulosity of their tenets and values; but the methodology of historical criticism requires us to place his writings in both the personal context of narcotic abuse, and the cultural context of 19th century German philosophy, which was mired in ill-conceived vagueries buoyed only by the vehemence of personalities and their never ending academic fueds.

"In short, Nietzsche was a man who didn't believe in angels but who dedicated his life to ferocious disputations about how many angels could dance on a head of a pin, and whether they would prefer stately waltzing or abandoned tarantelllas."

Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand