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Nietzsche's Revolution
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13147 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1987 |
6,781 Words |
| Author
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Stanley Rosen
Stanley Rosen is professor of political science at the
University of Southern California, Los Angeles. |
Stylistic caution: A: But if everyone knew this, most would be harmed by it. You yourself call these opinions dangerous for those exposed to danger, and yet you express them in public? B: I write in such a way that neither the mob, nor the populi, nor the parties of any kind want to read me. Consequently these opinions of mine will never become public. A: But how do you write, then? B: Neither usefully nor pleasantly--to the trio I have named.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of the passage I have just cited, is today the today the most influential philosopher in the Western, non-Marxist world. The scope of his influence cuts across the traditional lines of theory and practice by which intellectuals and political activists are usually divided. Furthermore, in apparent contradiction to Nietzsche's own assertion that he does not write for the mobs, his doctrines have been disseminated throughout the general public, and not the least among those who have never heard his name or read a page of his voluminous writings.
It is a remarkable fact that Nietzsche, a self-professed decadent, nihilist, atheist, anti-Christ, opponent of academic philosophy, and scourge of socialism, egalitarianism, and "the people"--who espoused aristocratic political and artistic views, insisted upon a rank of human beings, and went so far as to advise men to carry a whip when they visited the women's quarters--is today one of the highest authorities, if not the authority, for progressive liberals, existentialist theologians, professors, anarchist speculators, left-wing critics of the Enlightenment and bourgeois society, propounders of egalitarianism, and enemies of political and artistic elitism, the advance guard of women's liberationists and a multitude of contemporary movements, most if not all of which seem to have been castigated by Nietzsche's unparalleled rhetorical powers.
Although it is not discussed explicitly by statesmen and political commentators of the mass media, Nietzsche's dominance is a political fact of the highest importance. One might go so far as to say that the degree to which we become aware of Nietzsche's revolutionary stature, as he intended it, rather than as he presented it disguised by a variety of rhetorical masks, determines whether we belong to the mob or to those whom Stendhal, a favorite of Nietzsche, called "the happy few." To understand Nietzsche is far from simple, but it is not impossible. The importance of such an understanding, not merely for scholarly reasons, but with respect to the health of the republic, amply warrants our making the
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