> In short:
> he's important to understand, just skip the goofy stuff
> ("when you go to woman, bring your whip--").
It's important to understand that he was the opposite of a systematic philosopher (of the sort Marx tried to be, for instance). Everything he writes is an aphorism -- an experiment in thinking, if you will. Some of his experiments succeeded, some flopped spectacularly. And very likely he wasn't completely serious in many of them. That quip you quote about "woman," for instance -- who knows what he was trying to say there? Perhaps he was following in the tradition of German philosophers who weren't too successful with the opposite sex and resented their failure, e.g., Schopenhauer. In any case, offhand remarks like that are not anywhere near the core of his world view.
The "Superman" thing has been frequently misunderstood, especially by English-speaker readers of translations who don't understand what he was trying to say in German. Try reading Walter Kaufmann, for example, to get a better understanding.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax