File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2000/nietzsche.0003, message 3


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




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