A basis of comparison for you Nietzsche worshippers: [link|http://www.thepublicinterest.com/current/article1.html|Leo Strauus, a philosopher for grownups].

Strauss deploys historicism\ufffds own arguments against itself. Historicism maintains that every trans-historical teaching - every teaching that claims for itself universal validity - is in the decisive sense mistaken. All human thought, it holds, has been and will always be \ufffdhistorical,\ufffd subject to crucial limitations imposed by its age and of which it is necessarily unaware. Yet, Strauss notes, this claim itself is trans-historical: \ufffdHistoricism thrives on the fact that it inconsistently exempts itself from its own verdict about all human thought. The historicist thesis is self-contradictory or absurd.\ufffd

Strauss also employs historicism\ufffds appeal to experience against its claims. According to historicism, the \ufffdexperience of history\ufffd shows that all teachings of the past rest on a dogmatic foundation, that in their origin things were taken \ufffdfor granted which must not be taken for granted.\ufffd Historicism claims that thinkers of the past were characteristically under the spell of their historical situation: Plato could not see beyond the horizon of the Greek city, Hobbes could not look beyond that of the English civil war. Yet Strauss, without taking explicit notice of Martin Heidegger, observes that the most theoretically sophisticated form of historicism, \ufffdradical historicism,\ufffd does not itself call the \ufffdexperience of history\ufffd into question: That vague and indistinct \ufffdexperience\ufffd is taken for granted. Strauss declares that he (or \ufffdwe\ufffd) cannot even attempt to discuss radical historicism\ufffds critique of classical metaphysics. Instead, he begins to prepare his case for the possible existence of natural right by appealing to his readers\ufffd own experiences - \ufffdthe evidence of those simple experiences regarding right and wrong which are at the bottom of the philosophic contention that there is a natural right.\ufffd

In treating positivism, Strauss turns to Max Weber\ufffds thesis that scientific inquiry is competent to speak only to questions of \ufffdfact\ufffd as opposed to those of \ufffdvalue.\ufffd In so doing, Strauss shifts the focus of his discussion from the possibility of natural right to that of a social science that issues in normative evaluations, and eventually to the question of the philosophic life. In a manner akin to his treatment of historicism, Strauss allows Weber\ufffds practice and common sense to undermine Weber\ufffds own thesis. Strauss is particularly struck by Weber\ufffds professed inability to make a reasoned and reasonable choice between the prospects of spiritual revival and passionless vulgarity. Strauss does not here attempt to supply the reasoning that would underlie such a choice and that Weber asserts cannot be supplied. Instead, Strauss includes examples that illustrate both the nihilistic implications and the amazing philistinism of unqualified relativism: \ufffdThis amounts to an admission that the way of life of \ufffdspecialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart\ufffd is as defensible as the ways of life recommended by Amos or by Socrates.\ufffd Strauss\ufffds examples are designed to counter Weber\ufffds assertion by providing his readers with a simple experience of high and low.

In describing Weber\ufffds position as \ufffdnoble nihilism,\ufffd Strauss indicates that his relativism stems not from simple indifference to the high, but from his passionate though fruitless search to discover grounds for the experience of the noble or high. Strauss vindicates Weber\ufffds intelligence at the expense of Weber\ufffds own formal position. He shows that Weber consistently violates - indeed, had to violate - his own injunction against using terms of normative evaluation. In fact, as Strauss develops his discussion, we see that Weber\ufffds position - his despair of the very \ufffdidea of science\ufffd - is due not to his blindness to the lives recommended by the prophet or the philosopher, but to his inability to justify the life of science or philosophy against the claim of divine revelation. In any event, Strauss is not tempted by Weber\ufffds path of despair. He instead uses the moment of natural right\ufffds complete abandonment to see if its origin can be successfully reproduced.

I say:

Note the following: logical analysis, attention to evidence, mindfulness of practical consequences, rejection of both determinism and nihilism, non-selective opposition to tyranny as such, and within these contraints - what Burke might have called a "liberty under law" of thought. He also appreciated true depth of meaning, in the form of exotericism.

Strauss had the best of both worlds: freedom within sanity, while today's Left-dominated pseudo-thinkers have the worst of both worlds: insanity within a straitjacket ideology. And no depth of meaning at all, despite their pretensions to profundity. Barely even one level of meaning, as Sokal's famous hoax proved.

And Nietzsche ultimately didn't have much of either world, or indeed of any adult world. He had all the freedom of an epilectic seizure, and as much sense of direction as a microscopic particle under the influence of molecular buffeting. But hey, he sure was entertaining. Sort of the [link|http://www.skepticfiles.org/subgen/subidoc.htm|Ivan Stang] of his day.

Come to think of it, do I detect Rev. Stang's influence in Ashton's prose style?

I'm not impressed by whatever people read into him. With a real philosopher, you don't have to read in. You can read out. He gives you something to think about that maybe you didn't bring with you.

Interpretations are a dime a dozen. If you take any interpretation of Nietzsche seriously then you're a sucker. He's the Wizard of Oz. On a good day, the man was a flimflam artist. On a bad day, he was simply incoherent. There's no there there. You gaze into the void until you hallucinate whatever happens to be behind your eyeballs.

As the Reverend Stang once said, don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. Pull the wool over your own eyes! At least that way you'll know it's wool!

Total slack!!!

By the way, if anyone is having trouble wrapping his head around the notion of Eternal Return, I recommend The Book of the Subgenius, page 135. Spells it all out quite nicely.