He is. Anyone who has the slightest interest in what Nietzsche was dealing with should just read Emerson instead. Emerson was a massive influence on Nietzsche, and as I've said before: Everything good in Nietzsche was ripped off from Emerson, and everything good in Emerson is better than Nietzsche's ripoffs.
To add to
Rimbaud's response - which is correct in that not understanding Nietzsche hasn't stopped idiots from praising him for shit that he himself would've abhorred - Nietzsche's first real "direction" in philosophy was to critique the nihilism of Arthur Schopenhauer. It's not an exaggeration to say that critiquing and overcoming nihilism was Nietzsche's
raison d'être.
Emerson's Over-Soul > Nietzsche's ripoff Overman
Perfect description. Succinct and spot-on.
Yep.
Beyond Good and Evil is a prototypical troll post
For another Bruce line in this vein, here's a note that he made in 1963 while studying philosophy at the University of Washington:
"Many philosophers are among those who say one thing and do another, and the philosophy that a man professes is often quite other than the one he lives by. Philosophy is in danger of becoming more and more only something professed."
Bruce's philosophy also has a ton of affinities with Emerson's philosophy. You could even connect him to Thoreau - not insignificantly a disciple of Emerson's - who observed in
Walden that "there are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers … To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates … The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity … and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men."
I could do this all day, but I'll rein myself in for now. But yes, Lee > Nietzsche
Rimbaud ragging on the dragon?
In Bruce's defense:
1) Genius isn't something special out of the reach of certain people. It's there for the taking. This is an idea that crops up all over philosophy, most relevantly for my purposes in Emerson and his notion of self-reliance. But even if you go all the way back to someone like Boëthius, who said that "there are certain common conceptions of the mind which are self-evident only to the wise," you still get the same basic idea: That wisdom isn't
extraordinary, it's just that most people bury their wisdom under nonsense. Hence Bruce's ideas to the effect that cultivation "is not a daily increase but a daily decrease" and that the process of wisdom is the stripping away of inessentials.
2) "Life as many people experience it" doesn't mean shit if those people are experiencing it wrong
3) Your last point was argued explicitly by Bruce himself and articulated as what he called "the three stages of cultivation." As he wrote in his unpublished 1963 book on kung fu (posthumously published as
The Tao of Gung Fu):
"There are three stages in the cultivation of gung fu. Namely, the Primitive Stage, the Stage of Art, and the Stage of Artlessness. The Primitive Stage is the stage of ignorance in which a person knows nothing of the art of combat and in a fight he simply blocks and hits “instinctively.” The second stage (the Stage of Art) begins when he starts his training in gung fu. In his lessons, he is taught the different ways of blocking and striking, the forms, the way to stand, to kick, etc. Unquestionably he has gained a scientific knowledge of combat, but his original “self” and sense of freedom are lost. His mind “stops” at various movements for intellectual analysis and calculations. His action no longer flows by itself. The third stage (the Stage of Artlessness) arrives when his training reaches maturity; his techniques are performed on an almost unconscious level without any interference from his mind. Instead of “I hit,” it becomes “it hits!” This is the stage of cultivated ignorance. In other words, before I learned martial art, a punch was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned martial art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Finally, after I understood martial art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick.
These three stages also apply to the various methods being practiced in gung fu. Some methods are rather primitive with jerky, basic blocking and striking; on the whole, they lack the flow and change of combination. Some “sophisticated” systems, on the other hand, tend to run to ornamentation and get carried away with grace and showmanship. They, whether from the so-called external (firm) or internal (gentle) school, often involve big or fancy motions with a lot of complicated steps or circles toward a single goal. They are too philosophically involved (intellectually bound) and do not want to come off with sophistication. It is like an artist who, not satisfied with drawing a simple snake, proceeds to put four beautiful and shapely feet on the snake! When grasped by the collar, for example, these practitioners would “first unbalance and/or side step” (this, of course, is the divine principle of the circle—in order to do something you must first give) or break loose forcibly by striking the opponent’s hand (thus tearing one’s shirt), or “flow” with the movement and dissolve by turning or running circles (providing, of course, that your opponent just stands there holding on and watching all of this)—then they would strike and/or kick and/or lock and break the joints and/or throw their opponent. However, the direct way is to let him have the pleasure of grasping the collar and simply punch him in the nose! (To some martial artists of distinguishing taste, this would be a little bit unsophisticated, too ordinary and unartful.) On the whole, the followers of these methods are either too intellectually bound or too physically bound and do not wish to see the plain truth.
Which leads us to the schools of profound simplicity, a natural result of exhaustive experimentation of highly sophisticated complexity. All techniques are stripped to their essential purpose and the utmost is now expressed and performed with the minimum of movements and energy. There is no ornamentation or waste, and everything becomes the straightest, most logical simplicity of common-sense (this Stage of Simplicity is not basic or primitive and cannot be achieved without going through the second stage)."