Self-censorship: the modern scourge
Grow some balls, people, and express that unpopular opinion.
Thursday, 30 November 2017
Spiked, November 30, 2017
Self-censorship: the modern scourge
Grow some balls, people, and express that unpopular opinion.
Monday, 27 November 2017
In Spiked, November 24, 2017
Freed from Britain, Trapped by the EU
Ireland fought for independence yet now wants to give it up to Brussels.
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Praise for Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times
'A positive and insightful reading of Nietzsche which applies his thinking in a most illuminating way to the confusions and superstitions of our times.' - Roger Scruton
'A must-read. Nietzsche is just the blowtorch we need for our snowflake culture.' - James Delingpole, columnist, The Spectator
'Brilliant! I never thought I'd thoroughly enjoy — let alone find inspirational and often funny — a book on Nietzsche.' - Ruth Dudley Edwards, writer and broadcaster
'A Must Read. Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times by Patrick West. Absolutely brilliant. Thought-provoking, witty & challenging.' - Austin Williams, Director, Future Cities Project
"[West] asks Nietzsche to judge us. And it is an incredibly rewarding move… When it comes to examining Nietzsche in his own time, Get Over Yourself provides some much needed mythbusting." - Fraser Myers, Spiked
"A bracing exercise in imaginative philosophy, in which a cultural critic wonders what Nietzsche would have made of our narcissistic age.", The Tablet
"West performs a laudable task in highlighting a caustic Nietzschean corrective to today's melange of competing virulent and partisan beliefs and attitudes . At the same time, Get Over Yourself makes for a lively introduction for those who would like to go deeper into to Nietzsche’s often confounding and puzzling works." - Geoff Ward, Medium.com
"[A] stimulating and challenging book… West's book is a lively introduction to someone whose writings, especially his notion of the 'will to power', have been so fatally misunderstood by a later German generation." - Francis Phillips, The Catholic Herald
Get Over Yourself, Nietzsche For Our Times is available at Amazon.co.uk (★★★★½) and Amazon.com (★★★★★)
Tuesday, 21 November 2017
Spiked, November 17, 2017
Men are not a different species
Gender determinism has returned in PC form.
Monday, 13 November 2017
Spiked, September 29, 2017 (by Fraser Myers)
If Nietzsche were alive today...
Patrick West’s new book casts a searching, Nietzschean eye over the present.
By Fraser Myers
By Fraser Myers
The Catholic Herald, September 25, 2017 (by Francis Phillips)
Instead of complaining about hardship, Nietzsche taught us to embrace it in order to overcome it
by Francis Phillips
In 'I-M' magazine, 2017
Nietzsche for Our Times
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is best known for his declaration that “God is dead”. These words appear in his allegorical masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book in which he warned that even though many people no longer believed in Christianity, our moral system was still underpinned by moribund Christian notions of “good” and “evil”. It was thus imperative that we should rethink our values. Nietzsche foresaw a crisis in civilisation as the foundations of a moral system based on Christianity was collapsing. He correctly predicted that after him “there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before”.
Nietzsche believed that life was inevitably about struggle and suffering. But he proposed that instead of trying to diminish pain and unhappiness, or try to avoid it, we should instead embrace strife and woe in order to overcome it. His idealised person, his Übermensch, or “Superman”, is a radical individualist who triumphs over obstacles and difficulties, who liberates himself or herself from religious dogma and secular “herd” mentalities, and who eternally strives to become a better and higher version of themselves. “What does not kill me makes me stronger” is one of his most enduring sayings, as his maxim: “Live Dangerously!” Get Over Yourself takes Nietzsche’s philosophy to understand our society, and takes our society to explain his philosophy. In our age of identity politics, therapy culture, safe spaces, religious fundamentalism, virtue signalling, Twitterstorms, public emoting, dumbing down, digital addiction and the politics of envy, the book introduces Nietzsche’s philosophy by putting the man in our shoes.
The 21st century has seen the dawn of the new digital age of hyper-connectivity, censorship on campuses, religious fundamentalism and political populism against “the elites”. It’s an age in which Nietzsche’s ideas are acutely relevant. He was a radical individualist who scorned the base thinking of groups, who spurned resentment and ideologies. If Nietzsche railed against the “herd” mentality, lamenting the expansion of democracy in his own times, he would today be aghast at the incessant chatter of social media today. “O you poor devils in the great cities of the world, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens”, he wrote in 1881.
In an age of Twitterstorms and trolling, his words on the dangers of mob-rule are pertinent. He had warned of the “lustful greed, bitter envy, sour vindictiveness” that characterised “mob pride”. He would have agreed that we needed “digital detox”, esteeming as he did quiet and solitude.
“Live dangerously” is a declaration that students of today with their “safe spaces” and books with “trigger warnings” would do well to take heed. Nietzsche wrote about the aggressive morality of self- proclaimed victims, which we should bear in mind when people complain about being “offended” and their feelings being “hurt”, and demand censorship as recompense.
Full article can be found here:
http://www.i-m-magazine.com/nietzsche-for-our-times
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is best known for his declaration that “God is dead”. These words appear in his allegorical masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a book in which he warned that even though many people no longer believed in Christianity, our moral system was still underpinned by moribund Christian notions of “good” and “evil”. It was thus imperative that we should rethink our values. Nietzsche foresaw a crisis in civilisation as the foundations of a moral system based on Christianity was collapsing. He correctly predicted that after him “there will be wars the like of which have never been seen on earth before”.
Nietzsche believed that life was inevitably about struggle and suffering. But he proposed that instead of trying to diminish pain and unhappiness, or try to avoid it, we should instead embrace strife and woe in order to overcome it. His idealised person, his Übermensch, or “Superman”, is a radical individualist who triumphs over obstacles and difficulties, who liberates himself or herself from religious dogma and secular “herd” mentalities, and who eternally strives to become a better and higher version of themselves. “What does not kill me makes me stronger” is one of his most enduring sayings, as his maxim: “Live Dangerously!” Get Over Yourself takes Nietzsche’s philosophy to understand our society, and takes our society to explain his philosophy. In our age of identity politics, therapy culture, safe spaces, religious fundamentalism, virtue signalling, Twitterstorms, public emoting, dumbing down, digital addiction and the politics of envy, the book introduces Nietzsche’s philosophy by putting the man in our shoes.
The 21st century has seen the dawn of the new digital age of hyper-connectivity, censorship on campuses, religious fundamentalism and political populism against “the elites”. It’s an age in which Nietzsche’s ideas are acutely relevant. He was a radical individualist who scorned the base thinking of groups, who spurned resentment and ideologies. If Nietzsche railed against the “herd” mentality, lamenting the expansion of democracy in his own times, he would today be aghast at the incessant chatter of social media today. “O you poor devils in the great cities of the world, you gifted young men tormented by ambition who consider it your duty to pass some comment on everything that happens”, he wrote in 1881.
In an age of Twitterstorms and trolling, his words on the dangers of mob-rule are pertinent. He had warned of the “lustful greed, bitter envy, sour vindictiveness” that characterised “mob pride”. He would have agreed that we needed “digital detox”, esteeming as he did quiet and solitude.
“Live dangerously” is a declaration that students of today with their “safe spaces” and books with “trigger warnings” would do well to take heed. Nietzsche wrote about the aggressive morality of self- proclaimed victims, which we should bear in mind when people complain about being “offended” and their feelings being “hurt”, and demand censorship as recompense.
Full article can be found here:
http://www.i-m-magazine.com/nietzsche-for-our-times
Spiked, November 11, 2017
Remember, the past is a foreign country
It’s wrong to judge people of the past by today’s moral standards.
Spiked, October 26, 2017
Genderfluidity is the latest fashion craze
Why being trans is all the rage among the young and the famous.
Spiked, October 5, 2017
How the left and right switched places
It’s now the left that views Man as fallen and corrupt.
Spiked, September 8, 2017
An all-female Lord of the Flies would be just as savage
In desperate times, gender differences wither away.
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