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Sunday, 16 April 2006

Notice how in BGE Nietzsche reverses his earlier valuation of Goethe/Napoleon [NAP] during his Wagnerian period. Then he used Goethe's approbation of NAP; now he emphasises the opposite;

"Let us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Goethe ...[...]:
... 'Voila un homme!'
- that was as much as to say:
'But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!' ".
[BGE 209 (1886)]

To explain this we must realise that NAP is equivalent to a Greek or a Roman of the Classic period. Such a one is in Nietzsche's estimation far superior to any German - apart from perhaps a Goethe!

"Awakening manhood - Napoleon on Goethe".
[WP 422 (1885)]

Let us look also at NAP as a kind of 'artist tyrant' for modern man.

"What a blessing, what a deliverance from a weight becoming unendurable, is the appearance of an absolute ruler for these gregarious Europeans - of this fact the effect of the appearance of Napoleon was the last great proof: the history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of the highest happiness to which the entire century has attained in its worthiest individuals and periods".
[BGE 199]

Here is a transvaluation - to Nietzsche an 'absolute ruler' is the producer of the 'highest happiness'!
Such men are artists of tyranny, sculptors on the mass of man;

"With natures like Caesar and Napoleon, one gets some notion of 'disinterested' work on their marble, whatever the cost in men. On this road lies the future of the higher man".
[WP 975 (1885-6)]

Men of the mass are expendable to Nietzsche's absolute rulers - how close this is to fascism!

"The European of the future ...[...]... such men as Napoleon".
[BGE 256]

"All great artists of government so far;
Confucius in China,
The Roman Empire,
Napoleon,
The Papacy of the Renaissance ..."
[WP 129 (1885)]

Those were the very same models that Ezra Pound took for Fascism!

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