Ideas have consequences, contorted ideas all the more so. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s rhetorical proclivities for metaphorical enigma and hyperbole have been exploited as potential sources of inspiration for egregious acts of terror, most recently in Arizona. Ideas, and Nietzsche’s specifically, must be situated in both their proper intellectual and historical context to be properly understood.
It would be outrageously insensitive to suggest that a more nuanced interpretation of Nietzsche would have prevented Jared Loughner from pulling the trigger on January 8. Clearly, as we have learned from recent revelations of Loughner’s writings and ideas, he was, as Zane Gutierrez attested to, mentally deranged. To incriminate Nietzsche, though, would be anachronistic and based on a specious understanding of his philosophy. In a world of media communications defined by sound bites and a concomitant lack of context, historians have a responsibility to the public to provide the necessary context, the full picture, the long view, whatever one chooses to call it, to promote a more informed and productive public discourse.
Like I said the other day, I’m cheered by the fact that everything I’ve seen written so far has resisted the still-too-common tendency to trot out the same old myths about Nietzsche being some sort of social Darwinist who glorified physical violence over others as a means of proving one’s mastery. But something that still makes me laugh about that is the fact that the first time I ever recall seeing Nietzsche’s name was in a Dean Koontz novel that I read when I was maybe fourteen. I don’t remember the name of it (and I’m too lazy to look it up), but the plot was based on a pair of friends who bond over, among other things, a misinterpretation of Nietzsche and become a sort of serial-killing tag team in order to prove their superhumanity. The detective who cracks the case, speaking for Koontz, laments how often Nietzsche gets misunderstood by such types. If a pulp novelist in the mid-80s knew that much…