File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 76


From: Sam Binkley <binkley-AT-echonyc.com>
Subject: Re: Is Nietzsche obsolete?
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 10:27:59 -0400 (EDT)


Nietzsche? Obsolete? 

How can this question be asked without completely overlooking the real 
content of his work.  What then might determine the terms of 
obsolescence? machines become obsolete as better ones are invented, 
"better" being the given term of a specific task at hand.  Has someone 
devised a more economical means for describing the death of god, given 
the available resources allowed for doing so? This kind of thinking seems 
grossly modernist, and assumes the necessary development that considers 
thinker after thinker in tidy linear trajectories...

8 track tapes are obsolete. Nietzsche, if nothing else, was "untimely", 
that is, he broke with his 
time not in a manner that worked in advance of his time (like a painter 
or musician or technological gadget is said to be 'ahead of its time') or 
made some appeal to nostalgia from a position of (classical)  
obsolescence to his  time, but simply operated outside and against his 
time. Thus he was necessarily misrecognized by a time that had not 
evolved a faculty for comprehending his thought.  I think this remains 
the case. 


sam


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