Because I'm trying desperately to avoid the Faulkner effect and to remain somewhat coherent with all of the stuff that is tumbling through my head, this is a footnote to the previous--an afterthought, or duringthought that is a digression to the original point.
I've not read much of Nietzsche. Or I have read it and not cared for it because I have not come to it with anything like an open mind. And yet I discover time and again things that he said that resonate and open up new worlds of thought. While he systematically attempted to dismantle Christianity, I wonder if that isn't my misconstruction of his true intent. Perhaps he was dismantling the mythic structure around Christianity that keeps so many people from being good Christians. Dour Soren Kierkegaard did the same starting with his dictum that those who are comfortable with Christ do not know Him.
Honestly, I can't say, but I must say that Dirda quoted at least two or three things from Nietzsche that have given me much cause to rethink.
But honestly, since I'm not inclined to read philosophy anyway, and were I to do so, Plato and Aristotle would be the point at which I would start, Nietzsche, I fear is far down the list and may visit me only in these aphorisms. Nevertheless, he does me a great service even in these short thoughts--because not having them in context, I can take them to mean whatever seems most useful for the time and use them as appropriate, so long as I don't stretch the point and try to explain them to everyone else.
