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...

In Season 1, Episode 9 of Six Feet Under , carefree prodigal son Nate learns to accept that everyone must die, regardless of their age and status. This may sound banal, but his coming to terms with so self-evident a fact shows that in the mad to-ing and fro-ing of everyday life there is little room for truth. I first became aware of death when I was still in kindergarten, a mere six-year-old whose world hadn’t extended beyond colouring books and plasticine models. Perhaps it was due to how everyone had been going on about a boy killed in an accident occurring on the main road separating my house and the kindergarten; perhaps it was the dead cat I had seen (and poked with a twig) by the pavement on the way to school; perhaps it was time – but I remember sitting in class (the teacher was showing us how to paint faces on eggshells) and having the most horrible premonition that my grandmother, who was the centre of my world at that time, was going to die. This upset me so much th...