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Tuesday 20 December 2005

Nietzsche derived his type of the superman from the ancient Greeks whose achievements in art,philosophy and statesmanship were truly extra-ordinary.It was the will to encom-pass and even sur-pass the Greeks that fueled the life-philosophy of the superman.

The basic qualities of the superman type as described by Nietzsche are;absolute affirmation,even of the tragic aspects of life,and directed,strong,will to power.

The superman implies an Order of Rank.
The most fundamental division is between Master and Slave.
The Slave is typically full of festering unrequited revenge and sublimated drives,which will periodically erupt into the Slave Revolt in Morals.
The Master,the superhuman,is able to requite immediately;his drives glory in the joyful wisdom of their fulfillment.
The Slave, meanwhile,in all his self-pity,regards his master as 'evil',ruthless,arrogant and cruel;in short,he resents him.
The Slave works day and night on crafty plans to overthrow his masters.
The Master though,proud and cheerful as he is,knows nothing of the devious labyrinthine regions of the slave's twisted soul.
He finds the mal-formed slave to be of a lower species-a subhuman-;a caricature of the true noble human being.
The master will be brutal towards the slave at times,but he cannot 'hate' such a botched creature.

Within the masterculture is a basic tension which Nietzsche calls the Dionysian/Apollonian.This goes back of course to the Greek model for the superman type,which has its roots in the barbaric inhuman substratum of the Dionysian.

Out of this evolves the pristine Apollonian,who is the apogee of reason,restraint and harmony-the will to purity.This is the Aryan ideal which is periodically submerged [within the masterculture] into the terrifying bestiality of the oriental Dionysian.
This dynamic drives on masterculture;the superman always contains inhuman aspects so that he is also both beast and superbeast. It is this primal Dionysian aspect that the slave propaganda latches onto to create a distortion,and calls his Master the 'evil oppressor'.

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