> > If you substitute aesthetics -perhaps more precisely, a
> > physiognomic desire for
> > creative effulgence in cognitive and emotive performances- for
> > morality I'll
> > happily agree. As long as you don't regard my claim as a mere
> > cliche, you know,
> > like the one asking us to imagine Nietzsche with good
> > digestion....Moral
> > vocabularies/idioms are fetters when it comes to political
> > struggles, imo.
I think we're basically on the same page. IMO, the vast majority of left political engagement in the U.S. (the Catholic Worker movement being a good example) is motivated by the type of (essentially Christian) morality Nietzsche criticizes. A left invigorated by " a physiognomic desire for creative effulgence in cognitive and emotive performances" would be a lot better than the one we're presently stuck with in the U.S. today. Class struggle itself is a creative process: one which eventually gives birth to new values (hence the difficulty of defining at this moment "genuine democracy" or "equality" -- or, for that matter, having these notions serve as the basis of one's political engagement).
Ravi responded to Eubulides:
> But I am not speaking here of mere vocabularies ( 1/2 ;-) ), but of a
> way of life and of action, of rejection of a sort of wilful
> ignorance. How unfettered would the world after the "seizure of power
> by the working class" be, especially if it is built on power
> politics? At least in my experience, leftists outside the US
> recognise (and quite explicitly at that) the moral foundations of the
> very possibility of [human] existence and survival, contrary to [what
> I understand as] Nietzsche's unipolar physical anthropology. And
> despite all the claims of the acolytes, it seems to me even from my
> paltry reading of Marx that he too was quite aware of this. And
> unlike the dude (WD? WK? Sorry!) I was responding to, I think that is
> to Marx's credit. I am afraid what Nietzsche offers in contrast is
> just a lot more sophisticated precursor (sophisticated especially in
> his -- IMHO -- correct identification of certain aspects of 'slave
> morality') to Rand.
I am not suggesting that working class power politics must lack any sort of normative vision that is incompatible with the establishment of some sort of miserable tyranny worse than capitalism. Nietzsche doesn't oppose normative visions generally (he's always writing about "creating new values," etc.). N. writes in opposition to the religious and secular versions of Christian morality specifically -- the same values that continue to motivate most left politics in the U.S. today.
-WD