File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9804, message 6


From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 13:25:37 -0500
Subject: How the silence of compact majorities smacks of reaction



--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Thacker should not flatter himself with impudent self-admiration -
"doing harm to stupidity" wasn't directed at him, or *only* at him. 
Would that we were we so lucky that he would be the only, and the first
and the last (to top it all), on this list to regurgitate the inanities
that supposedly prove that Nietzsche was a depressive fascist
monomaniac! 

There are 304 subscribers to this list.  Of those, maybe 10 seem not to
be directly affiliated with the official academia.  Judging by the
number of those actively intervening on the list, say a generous maximum
of 30, 90% of the remaining keep their silence practically all of the
time and form thereby the compact silent majority of spectators.  If we
discount, say, five or six of the active subscribers which, to various
degrees, do differ from the Judgement of God passed by Thacker on the
arraigned Nietzsche - we can expect that he will meet with the silent
approbation of a majority, and there should be no shortages of Rachels
to support his McCarthyist indictment of Nietzsche ("he was also
anti-woman"...by the way Rachel, it wasn't Lisbeth's hubby who messed
with the manuscripts...).  If half of the list, say, have no opinion on
the matter (probably they have never even read Nietzsche, so that we
remain generous), one may, no matter how illegitimately, infer that the
other half has read Nietzsche with the eyes of dangerous sisters.  

Curious though, as all this is about silence - that inquisitorial
academic censorship, that German dialectical specialty, unbreakable
silence, walls of silence.  "Silence on the defence of Nietzsche?  Well,
he must be guilty!  Nevertheless we must search for the value of
Nietzsche by disregarding his critique of the priest and his diagnosis
of the nihilist sickness..."  

In 1944, during delivery of his commentary on the Battle of the Warsaw
Ghetto, S. Mendelsohn at the Yiddish Scientific Institute said-

"Unheard were not only the voices of the two small towns of Krynski and
Nieswiez, about whose struggles we unfortunately know nothing but that
they took place, but even the great battle of the Warsaw Ghetto did not
accomplish this purpose [of jolting the public].  That this happened was
not the guilt of the fighters.  They were guilty only of credulity.  It
is with great pain of humiliation, that we must admit the call to the
world remained unheard."

Lambda C, still guilty of credulity (still writing)

For a flat-footed idealist, any volume will sound shrill.  Silence, we
presume, would have been more accommodating.


	--- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005