Robert Hewlitt Wolfe illustrates

THE NIETZSCHEAN ETHICS

"You wake up, you kiss your wife [...] you go to the house of your greatest enemy, but he doesn't know he's your greatest enemy," he says. "You slip a little poison into his drink, he dies and it looks like natural causes. You don't tell anyone you did it. You go home, you make love to your wife, she has children, 70 years later you die surrounded by all of your children and grandchildren, and on your deathbed, you still know that you killed your greatest enemy 70 years ago, and you still don't tell anyone. You won.

"The most important part of that entire story for a Nietzschean?" Wolfe asks. "The part where you go home and make love to your wife. Because propagation of the species is very important for Nietzscheans. The three great gods for Nietzscheans are Nietzsche, Darwin and Machiavelli. They're really good guys to have on your side in a fight as long as there's no way for them to run away. If they're backed into a corner, these guys are tough, but they want to hit fast, they want to hit early, and they want to hit dirty, and when the enemy is reeling and falling back they want to kill them all, because a good enemy is a dead enemy. The best dead enemy is the dead enemy who didn't even know you didn't like him."

This is an excerpt from an interview by Jeff Bond, first published April 12, 2000 here. -- slipstreaming status: off

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