The Idealized Nietzsche

I have spent a lot of time around the writings of Nietzsche. I loved Thus Spake Zarathustra when I discovered it in a library at an art college where the old bag I was being exploited by, was taking expensive, and in her case, frivolous, art lessons.

Later I discovered the connection between Raskalnikov and Zarathustra's creator. I recognized that Raskalnikov was Dostoyevsky's fictionalized version of the great philosopher. Nietzsche had an emotional break down once over the beating of a horse. The same thing happens to Raskalnikov in Crime and Punishment. When I saw this I felt there must be a connection.

Everyone would like a piece of Nietzsche, still. He is often claimed by both Christians and atheists. His sister is the source on whom the debate hangs. She made statements, of her invalid brother, that he really did not despise Christians, the way he was thought to. This is taken by the atheistic gas bag H. L. Mencken, and used to restate, and confirm, that she was using his image, which she was, to make a self promoting claim about her brother, to sell his work. Mencken says that Nietzsche really did despise everything about Christianity and wished for it to be abolished in the foreword of his translation of The Anti-Christ.

The works about Nietzsche that are used to "prove" that he went insane, are the ones he wrote as a prisoner of his sister, in asylums. I found in one of these collections of letters to a correspondent who was providing him with books and supplies. He praised the Polish Revolution that had been led by a Christian King to raise the only democratic republic of its kind. the other proof is the writing that he did that he attempted to metaphysically eliminate the hospital by writing about himself in grandiose language. I do not see why a great man who loved liberty is considered insane for fighting his incarceration in the only way available to him, his writing and philosophy.

There is a difficulty in his kind of philosophizing. It is aptly raised even by the moronic atheists, who see it. And that is the impossible nature of making an absolute from strong passions for justice, and drawing definitive statements that are true.

The nihilist's philosophy was one where destruction of the oppressive and corrupt society was preferable to living with it. It was credited to Nietzsche and was around to assist with the destruction of the Russian Tsarist empire. Dostoevsky must have had a profound relationship to the little German devil who propelled all those Russian lads into action. He hoped to stave off the excesses of the revolution and preserve morals in the people of his country against the onslaught of the "men of action" who were taking over.

So he wrote a competing character. A version of Nietzsche who has a simple Christian heart and who tries to become a Napoleon and fails because he cannot escape his own true religion. He also fails because his plan is ridiculous. How is a bag of pawned crap going to fund his rise to power anyway? He should have just went someplace and had a good time with it until they caught him. He might have still married the little prostitute and had his soul saved in Siberia.

Dostoevsky was a Christian. He created a fictionalized Nietzsche, to control him, and guide him, ultimately, to a better end.