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NIETZSCHE

                                             April 22, 2010
                                             May   21, 2010

David B. Allison, "On Reading the New Nietzsche" (2001),
apparently an update of his "The New Nietzsche" (1977).

  This looks like
  a pretty good          And my Philosophy
  book...                spies tell me it      This comes as a minor
                         was well recieved.    suprise to me, because
  But he presents what                         when I took a class
  is to my eye a                               from Allison as an
  sanitized Nietzsche.                         undergrad at Stony
                                               Brook -- circa 1977,
  He quotes the line:     (prefix, p ix)       actually -- I got the
                                               impression that he was
  "I would like to _take away_                 a serious poseur.
  from human existence some of
  its heartbreaking and cruel                      He was giving fast-talking,
  character"                                       incoherent lectures that
                                                   didn't seem to mean much
                                                   when you drilled down into
And yet, there are other places                    them.
where I remember Nietzsche speaking
approvingly about wanting to make                     I remember him nervously
mankind "more evil": "More evil,                      smoking his dark brown
deeper, but also, more beautiful."                    European cigarettes
(or words to that effect).                            at a rapid pace.

There's a heavy metal quality                            I was once running
to a lot of Nietzsche's                                  for a train, and
jamming: he likes the sound                              he made a face at
of the Strum und Dang, and                               me, yelling at me
doesn't care to moderate it                              to slow down.
for any boring old reasons       WORDS_WITH_WHIPS
like morality.                                               Now that's
                                                             Philosophy for
                        Granted that he was                  you, eh?  Got
                        effectively smeared                  to take time to
                        after his death with                 smell the flowers.
                        false claims of support
                        for Nazism (actually he                (Actually, in
                        was explicitly critical                those days I
                        of anti-semitism) still,               *liked* running
                        it would seem that there               for the train.
                        are reasons his writings               There aren't
                        appealed to people like                many physical
                        Nazis, there are reasons               contests built
                        they wanted to claim him               into a typical
                        as one of their own.                   American's
                                                               world.  But
                               UGLYBEAUTY                      obviously I was
                                                               just not
                                                               *engaged with
                                                               life*.)

                                                                  TRAIN_RUNNER




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