Solomon, Robert C. - Living with Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist” has to Teach Us

How can we go on living with Nietzsche? The mere mention of his name evokes a ferocious emotional reaction, not only in the university (where he threatens to become a cliché), but on the street, in movies both comic and somber (Blazing Saddles, The Doors), in board- and dorm rooms as well as seminar rooms. If "Nietzsche" has come to signify the pop-postmodern pretensions of a superficial education, Nietzsche is also associated with an adolescent fascination with the dark, the deep, the forbidden. He serves as an excuse to talk about—if not to practice—the immoral, the blasphemous, the sacrilegious. He is an unabashed elitist, writing for "the few," contemptuous of "the herd" (everyone else). And here, of course, lies the problem.