From: "Evan A. Leeson" <evan-AT-monsterchops.com> Subject: Re: Nietzsche was an optimist Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 17:53:04 -0800 The type manifesting in Paul Bryant wrote >There is ample reason here to > detest Nietzscheans, and perhaps even Nietzsche > himself for rendering such slavish appropriations > possible. I gather from this we are to detest - to hate, to loathe - Nietzsche for the 'dangers inherent' in his works. Why would I want to spend any time doing this? Do we want exact some revenge from the ghost of Nietzsche for the horrors of the camps, or perhaps just for the way the Objectivist Society on campus keeps pitting Nietzsche against Rand. Do we reach a point where we have loathed enough, hated sufficiently that we may then move on to dwell solely on the beneficial insight of his work? Do we hate adequately, and keep an accounting of that hating, so we may answer when confronted with the perenial 'what about the Nazis' question that we have hated Nietzsche 146 units of hate and have thus expelled any culpability or complicity? Is this loathing a distilling process? Or is it an Augustinian device preventing erection of too much yes-saying in the world? Perhaps I have misunderstood you. Perhaps I have mistakenly labelled you reactive, and you are actually quite different, really after something else when you say we should detest Nietzsche. It may be that, like Hitler strutting with Nietzsche's own walking stick, I have misinterpreted you and have used your words for some unintended purpose. For my error think I shall detest...you. For the New Year - I still live, I still think: I still have to live for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is to run across my heart this year - what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be a Yes-sayer. GS 276 --- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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