Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 10:36:45 -0800
From: evan-AT-steammedia.com (Evan Leeson)
Subject: Re: Better Threads...


Randall said:

 If someone
>wants to <snip>... talk
>about something else. I liked the nascent ideas on Zarathustra, for
>example, where he comes from, why his time has not yet come. (Neither had
>Jesus's...)
>
>For example, I have a Web page on Apollo and Dionysus which briefly
>mentions "The Birth of Tragedy", although many of the thoughts are my own.
>I got an e-mail response from someone who said, "But if you follow
>Nietzsche, you end up with mere..." anarchy, Agave ripping Pentheus's head
>up, etc.
>
>But Freddie knew better than that, both in the original essay and in his
>later writings.
>
>My question would be, perhaps, how we can reconcile John Stuart Mill with
>Nietzsche, understand that democracy is the best of all the bad choices we
>have, try to strengthen things like the First Amendment in the United
>States (the ACLU works hard on this), to protect people like Nietzsche from
>what he rightfully feared as the mob.

You point to a tension in Nietzsche's writing that is not and perhaps
cannot be resolved. Is it as simple as this: Nietzsche only grudgingly
acknowledges the necessity of something like a commonweal. His writing
mainly extols the virtues of and necessity of the exceptional mind, the
mind which questions and smashes down ossified ideas, morals, thinking,
values - idols. He does this with great style and rhetoric. This style
leads many to over-estimate the role of the individual in his thought. For
example, he uses hyperbole when speaking of the "herd". But it is important
to give equal weight to instances when he points to the utter necessity of
the very same herd being. And he also says very clearly that these
exceptional minds should not rule. I point to the section in GS entitled
"The Greatest Danger" (I'll get a number if this is the wrong title). The
last line reads "there is something to be said for the exceptions, provided
they never want to become the rule" or something to that effect. Also, in
another oft misinterpreted section (frequently quoted by Mr. D) Nietzche
speaks of a people as being a way to a few great men - but then adds "and
then to get past them". Instances like this show a very different, ironic
side to Nietzsche that is consistently ignored by those who his to use his
thought to shore up their "Ceasars".

Can this tension be resolved? I don't think it can because it should be a
tension. There should always be a challenge and response. An ongoing
dialectic without resolution. A writer like Nietzsche would have to speak
against democracy in one persona, but he speaks quite differently in his
less hyperbolic voice. Nietzsche is quite clear to point to the synthetic
nature of the subject. I think this is because of this tension that must
exists on the levels of the synthetic individual and synthetic society.
This is where the will operates.

evan




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