File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 46


Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 20:03:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: Richard W Hancuff <cuff-AT-gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Subject: Re: atheism and recuperatio



On Fri, 11 Aug 1995, Steven E. Callihan wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Aug 1995 Chris wrote:
> 
> >Nietzsche's attempt to destabilize identity was not something, i think,
> >he was willing to extend to the general masses, nor something he thought
> >would ever even appeal to the masses. He was not, and never tried to be,
> >a philosopher of the people. Contemporary philosophers of a Nietzschean

> Chris,
> 
    [deleted text]

> is liable to break _all_ of the china, in other words).  The
> whole question of "elites" in Nietzsche is, I think, highly
> problematic.  That what is valuable is more generally rare does
> _not_ mean that the rare in and of itself necessarily has value.
> Present day socio-political elites I can't help but feel would be
> dismissed by him as simply "slaves become master," pure and
> simple.  A decadent rump-elite, if you will, without an ounce of

	[...]

> words, for a full-throated Dionysian guffaw.  Ultimately, in
> Nietzsche an "elite" only has justification if it is _value
> creating_.  Otherwise, it is only a usurpation, merely "slaves
> become masters."

> ==============================================================================>             Steven E. Callihan -- callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com
> 

I'm currently writing a paper on this issue of Nietzschean elite and its 
relation to academia and the political namecalling (cultural elite) going 
on in American politics...and I have come to the conclusion that 
Nietzsche's elite are pretty much what Steven says--valuable only as 
creators...in other words, elite (which I am equating, and hopefully not 
confusing with N's "higher man") doesn't exist within the confines of our 
society's traditional "elites": money, power, family background; elite 
rather exists in an ability to divorce oneself from present beliefs and 
habits and to, as Steve said, create values for oneself...what I find 
myself doing is defending a kind of created elitism such as results from, 
say seven or more years of graduate work and beyond (not that all who 
complete such work are elite or that not doing so disqualifies one, but 
only as a simple and _constructed_ example of acquired elitism).  
Basically, one who immerses him or herself in intense education (formal 
or not) and succeeds (how to judge that?) places a barrier between him or 
herself and the mass of humanity -- for ex, Einstein, who theorized way 
beyond his time...

Anyway, Nietzsche says it better in BGE section 29...

Rich Hancuff


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