File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 3


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                                               
  





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