Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 13:36:35 -0400 (EDT) From: "John B. Morgan" <jbmorgan-AT-umich.edu> Subject: Re: the 1888 works On Mon, 31 Jul 1995, Christopher Coleman wrote: > I am particularly interested in those five strange books that N. > wrote in 1888 (the year before his collapse): The Case of Wagner, > Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and Nietzsche > contra Wagner. BGE, Genealogy, and Zarathustra have been > and will continue to be studied exhaustively, but these books > seem to exist at the fringes of the Nietzschean canon. > Why have these books been marginalized (if they really have been. I > could be completely mistaken)? We certainly can no longer dismiss > them as the ravings of a madman. You're right, they should not be dismissed. There are many people who seem to want to take Nietzsche in part without wanting to embrace the whole, primarily I think because they are afraid of what might be in there. The late books that you mentioned contain a lot of his most volatile stuff. TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS is, for example, the most blatantly anti-democratic of N.'s works. And even the chapter headings of ECCE HOMO are off-putting to some people (humorous to others). However, it seems to me that these books reflect the natural development of N.'s thought, and to dismiss them as the work of a madman is to dismiss the working out of the ideas of the earlier writings. John Morgan, Research Secretary "The best lack all conviction, The University of Michigan while the worst Alzheimer's Disease Research Are full of passionate intensity." Center (MADRC) --Yeats, "Second Coming" jbmorgan-AT-umich.edu --- from list nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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