Scribble on Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900)

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan

Nietzsche could be said to straddle the fine line between genius and insanity. His polemical style occasionally degenerated into ranting, but no one can dispute the imagination and profundity of his ideas. He made no effort to form a coherent system, instead attempting a 'revaluation of values', through an attack on the herd-morality of Christianity, most widely known for his misunderstood notion of the Superman. Described as nihilistic, he could perhaps be better appreciated as promoting a means of existence, 'beyond good and evil', both of which are constructs which become meaningless in a godless world. His death in 1900 after 10 years of madness, probably brought on by the tertiary stages of syphilis, gave his sister and others the chance to abuse and manipulate the wild spirit of his writings by portraying him as the philosophic inspiration behind the Nazi cause.

"God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown." - Nietzsche