>
>I don't think you have to make Nietzsche into a paid up member of the
>Nazi party to do him down. Of course we know that he couldn't be,
>because there was no NSDAP. But it's hard to ignore that his social and
>political views are viciously reactionary, hostile to democracy and
>labour.
Oh, absolutely! There's a lot to beat up on in Nietzsche, and I have said so here. I think my words were something like, there's a lot in N that liberals and socialists can't stomach, including the stuff you mention. One might add his appalling misogyny ("When you go to the woman--remember your whip!" --One wonders what Lou Andreas-Salome thought of that.)
(see him On the Labour Question - 'why was it even asked').
>These views, views he wears on his sleeve, may it be said (unlike, say,
>Gottlob Frege, who could make a reasonable case that his authoritarian [do
>you mean antisemitic?]
>leanings were of no account to his logic), were those that were common
>amongst educated Germans. Much more so than anti-Semitism,
>anti-democracy and anti-labour were the stock in trade of the German
>intelligentsia in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
>
>The question then is does it make any difference to his philosophy?
Sure it does. But leave the Nazis out of it.
jks
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