Natural Law reading group, Week 8, RAW on Nietzsche

Nietzsche in 1869 (public domain photo). 

This week's focus for the Natural Law reading group is the piece "F.W. Nietzsche: A New Writer," only six pages long, published in 1984 in the New Libertarian. Wilson is always enjoyable when he is explaining his enthusiasm for a particular writer or artist. 

Here is the bit that I imagine being made into a meme by Rasa:

To live in the Nietzschean multi-varied universe, to pick one's values out of infinite possibilities, sames like painful choice to the existentialist, blasphemy to the Christian, monstrosity to the Objectivist; but is is actually only to become consciously an artist. All art begins with Chaos, with infinite vistas suddenly opening, and proceeds through play and permutation into new Creativity (the sublimated Will to Power, Nietzsche calls it) -- going from the ridiculous to the sublime, as it were.

Or as Nietzsche sums it up in one lightning-like sentence, "One must have Chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star."  

In "Left and Right: A Non-Euclidian Perspective," RAW wrote about Nietzsche, ""I still re-read one or two of his books every year, and get new semantic insights from them."

I have never read Nietzsche -- he's one of those writers that I know I ought to read but haven't gotten around to -- so I'm at a disadvantage this week. Still, I'm not completely helpless.

1. RAW's interest in Nietzsche raises the question of where to begin with the philosopher's writings. As I noted in a 2017 blog post, Eric Wagner's often-useful An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson lists two books that RAW said everyone should read:  Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. In one list, RAW specifies the H.L. Mencken translation of The Anti-Christ. 

2. The comments in that 2017 blog post are very helpful. There are recommendations on what Nietzsche works to read and comments on the philosopher's influence on other writers. And there's this from RAW biographer Prop Anon: "RAW read started reading a lot of Nietzsche when struck by depression during his Berkeley days. He said N's words really helped.

"Then when he was in Ireland he read even more Nietzsche, whose polemic style, along with Swift, greatly influenced his approach to The New Inquisition and Natural Law."

3. There is also an interview by Mark Dery, cited in this blog post. Here is a perhaps useful bit:

Dery: You’ve mentioned Nietzsche. In your introduction to Semiotext(e) SF, you wrote, “I, like Bob Black, have a Nietzsche trigger finger.” What did you mean by that?

Wilson: Bob Black used that expression before me; I was giving him credit for it. I don’t know what he meant, but what I meant was that, like Nietzsche, I philosophize with a hammer. Nietzsche gave me the problem I’ve wrestled with all my life, which is: Why do I choose one course as better than another? He undermined all my traditional morality and yet I haven’t become a mass murderer, so I must have a morality, but what’s it based on?

I’ve struggled with that problem all my adult life and although I don’t claim to have solved it, I think I’m beginning to shed some light on it after decades of mulling it over. My morality derives from the world I will to exist. The concept that all men are created equal is obviously not true – some are taller, some write better poetry, etcetera – but that concept represents an affirmation of a certain type of will, the democratic will, which Nietzsche didn’t like, whereas I do. This allows me to be a First Amendment absolutist even though I’m a relativist philosophically; I will a world in which there are no interferences with freedom of expression. I don’t claim I can prove that such a world should exist, just that I wish it existed. That’s how you can be an absolutist and a relativist at the same time.