Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life Book

Everyone instinctively knows which parts of Friedrich Nietzsche's work must be played down or rendered harmless'and there are many. The results went on display a while back in the Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, or as I like to call it, Honey I Shrunk Zarathustra! Even that "God is dead" business, which was none too scandalous in 1882, is now teachable only with a nervous eye on the frowners in class. (He only said "God," kids, he said nothing about Allah!) The man himself would not have been surprised by the turn things have taken. If he were still up in the Alps, he would be nodding grimly down at the many atheists, feminists, and homosexuals who welcome the growing presence of a religion that reviles them. This was what Nietzsche meant by decadence: a readiness to act against one's own obvious interests. But we may now use that word only with a smile, when the dessert comes out.

Harder to render campus-friendly is Nietzsche's more straightforward disciple Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), who was buried with a copy of Zarathustra. The good news is that he refused to serve the Nazis. The bad news? They were too left-wing for his liking. That's not quite as awful as it sounds. As far as he was concerned, all ideologies catering to the human herd, from communism and Hitlerism to liberal democracy, were on the left and beneath contempt. What he wanted was a German Caesar and a meritocratic elite of true individuals with'to quote a Nietzschean pop song'no time for losers. This still makes him a fascist in the catch-all sense now current.