Then, during his brief career in the cavalry, he tore several muscles in his side, and while serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war, contracted a number of diseases. There probably are not many men who had more reason than Nietzsche to feel resentful and miserable: he grew up a sickly child, prone to severe headaches which often left him literally blind with pain. Today, Nietzsche tends to be thought of as a depressive nihilist, a man who believed in nothing, and an apologist for the atrocities of fascism-but no description could be further from the truth. I can think of few instances where an author's reputation is more different from the reality of who he was, what he believed, and what he wrote-perhaps only Machiavelli has been as profoundly misunderstood by history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |