Ender

I'm wading through it right now and spilling serious ink allover the margins. While i've read a few choice selections, i've never had the time to do a complete read-through. FWIW, my nihilistic professor divides Nietzsche's corpus into four:
I. Early work

• Die Geburt der Tragodic
• Unzeitgemase Betrachtungen
• Menschliches, allzumenschliches
• der Wanderer und Sein Schatten

II. Positivistic:

• die Frohliche wissenschaft
• Morgenrothe

III. Mature

• Also Sprach Zarathustra
• Jenseits von Gut und Bose
• Zur Genealogie der moral

IV. Books of 1888

• Der Fall Wagner
• Gotzen-dammerung
• Der Antichrist
• Ecce Homo
• Dionysos-Dithyramber
• Nietzsche contra Wagner

One thing about the famous section 125 in the Gay Science- my professor doesn't think Nietzsche is strictly talking about the Judeo-Christian God per se, but the "center" of everything, of Truth with a capital "T," due to the metaphors that follow the madman's proclamation. Does Solomon concur on this passage?

I've read all of the books prior to the Antichrist, and most during my trip in Europe a few summers ago.

Looking back, i enjoyed Human, All-Too-Human first because that is where you could see the awkward beginnings of Nietzsche's thoughts. Instead of the fiery Nietzsche most of us know from his latter works, in this weighty volume of 1,400 aphorisms he is much more restrained, more tempered with the "spirit" of Voltaire. I would say that the pseudo-biblical allegory Thus Spoke Zarathustra was the most difficult because i could not simply detox from american analytic thinking and allow metaphors take a life on their own on the wings of my imagination.

~WiGGiN~
((sacrificed to the God of UBB))

[ February 06, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

mac_philo

Since Nietzsche died in 1900, it is hard to understand how anyone could consider him a neo-Nazi.

In any case, I don't think anyone could retain that conviction after having read Nietzsche. He repeatedly refers to himself as an anti-anti-Semite, spends a great deal of time showing how the Jewish God of the Old Testament is superior to the New Testament, he ridicules the anti-Semitism of his contemporaries (especially Wagner), etc., etc.

As pointed out previously, his sister had a disastrous influence on his reputation. Other factors include his writing style; since he was probably the best philosophical writer since Plato it is often not clear what each passage means, facilitating misquotation. Another is his habit of criticizing thinkers by referencing their nationality; when he attacks utilitarianism he doesn't criticize Bentham, he criticizes Englishmen. Only when such passages are taken out of context can they be given a nationalist flavor.