Stranger on Earth

Perhaps the biggest surprise to the 21 st century reader of Twilight of the Idols , assuming he has not read its predecessors, is its aggressive attack on ideas he holds dear and never thinks of challenging. Nietzsche never had an appreciation for liberal politics. This is expressed in clear and therefore philosophically atypical language in Section 38 “My Conception of Freedom.” Of liberal institutions, Nietzsche opines that they “cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is nothing more thoroughly harmful to freedom than liberal institutions” (103). The reason why Nietzsche distrusts liberalism is consistent with his philosophy: liberal ideas “undermine the will to power, they are the leveling of mountain and valley exalted to a moral principle, they make small, cowardly and smug – it is the herd animal which triumphs with them every time” (103). Since liberalism preaches equality, harmony, and attempts to erase dissonance, it is seen by Nietzsche, who...

Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer ( Götzendammerung, oder: Wie man mit dem Hammer philosophirt , 1889), was one of the last two philosophical works (the other being The Anti-Christ ) written by Friedrich Nietzsche at lightning speed (he completed it in a week) before he succumbed to insanity the following year. By this time Nietzsche had already established a name for himself with Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Europe’s literary-philosophical enclaves, though his incorrigible cynicism made him believe that most readers had not adequately grasped the work. In order to rectify the situation, he felt he had to simplify its main ideas and present them in a more digestible format à la Cliff Notes. The result is Twilight of the Idols , a summary of sorts of the philosophical thoughts that had preoccupied him all his life. But the book, furious and acerbic in tone, is also something else: it functions as a metaphorical hammer that seeks to destroy everything that...

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) sets out to achieve two noble goals: to engage the reader in a discourse about human nature and historical continuity, and to entice him to reflect on his relation to the past, the present, and the future. This is no small feat for the Ghostwritten author, and for the reader it is both an incredible intellectual challenge and an irresistible invitation to view life from a perspective not altogether conventional. The new reader is instantly struck by the technically intricate structure of the work: six interlocking storylines, with five of them divided down the middle, separated halfway through the book by a “mirror” – the sixth story inventively entitled “Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.” The novel begins with the Mutiny on the Bounty -inspired “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,” proceeds at a breakneck pace to “Letters from Zedelghem” to “Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery” to “The Ghastly Ordeal ...