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Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities

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Nietzsche is a clever sort of 'poor devil', efficient. Graduate from retail demonic to the wholesale of cultural sabotage with an exoteric doctrine of 'eternal return' and the 'will to power', as a good baited hook for frustrated esthetes, last men, and those suddenly rendered guilty they show a moral sense. Recruit them for the bad guys. Nietzsche is worth a thousand Al Quaeda.
This useful work produces from a hum drum starting point an illuminating x-ray of Nietzsche, his milieu,and his successors, from Heidegger to Strauss and Derrida. Along the way is an illuminating portrait of Nietzsche's early years and education, the episode with Wilamowtiz-Mollendorff, and his critique of The Birth of Tragedy. Quite alarming is the depiction of Strauss as an 'esoteric' Nietzschean behind his polished gems of cultural reaction. Since he is now the closet guru of the current Washington set I would be geunuinely worried if we had a 'exoteric' Nietzschean gang in, or in the shadows near, the White House. They made need a debriefing on the 'will to power'.