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Showing posts from April, 2014

The Ways of Weakness and Strength

Although the general tone is the same, Julian Young's analysis of Beyond Good and Evil is a bit broader and takes in more source material than Curtis Cate (see previous post).  While Young for the most part agrees with Cate, he offers a sharpened context for understanding Nietzsche's powerful and controversial critique of modernity. Christianity, democracy, feminism, socialism, and other cultural forces threaten the "degeneration" (as opposed to the elevation) of humanity.  They are cancerous forces without essential positive effect.  They all contribute to the rise of 'the herd' and the absurd, to Nietzsche, power of 'slave morality' as a force in culture. I find that Nietzsche is not as 'free' of cultural influences as he would like would like to believe.  He has an orthodox Prussian mentality , as I have noted several times previously in this blog (see here , here , and here ).  His criticism of women and the feminist movement, for exam