Wisdom about the challenge of learning from a great genius and then finding one’s own path. Here is Zarathustra:
“Now I go alone, my disciples, You too, go now, alone. Thus I want it. Go away from me and resist Zarathustra! And even better: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he deceived you. The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must be able to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a student. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath? You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you. You say that you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers—but what matter all believers? You have not yet sought yourselves; and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The image is Caspar David Friedrich’s “The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” [circa 1818].)
Here is a fascinating short article in the British Journal of Medicine by Robert N. Proctor, professor of the history of medicine at Penn State University:
The campaign was mounted despite the arguments that (1) taxes on tobacco were a significant source of income for the German government and (2) the tobacco industry provided thousands of jobs. Political principles were at stake.
The chief anti-smoking activist, one Adolf Hitler, stated that “Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.”
I gave the Nazi anti-smoking campaigns a passing mention in Nietzsche and the Nazis, in the context of discussing the Nazis’ socialization of the body politic, and Proctor has developed the anti-smoking theme in much greater detail.
Greater Buenos Aires has a population of around 13 million. How do they all get to work, school, and visiting grandmother in the old neighborhood? Many drive, but here’s an an interesting tidbit about its unique mix of private and public transportation:
“There are over 150 city bus lines called Colectivos, each one managed by an individual company. These compete with each other, and attract exceptionally high use with virtually no public financial support. Their frequency makes them equal to the underground systems of other cities, but buses cover a far wider area than the underground system. Colectivos in Buenos Aires do not have a fixed timetable, but run from 4 to several per hour, depending on the bus line and time of the day. With very cheap tickets and extensive routes, usually no further than four blocks from commuters’ residences, the colectivo is the most popular mode of transport around the city” (Wikipedia).
By contrast, many U.S. city governments continue to experiment with top-down, politically-enforced, and economically wasteful public transportation systems. Here is John Catoe, the general manager of the Washington, D.C., Metro system:
“One thing that it is important to understand though is that the fares only pay a portion of the operating budget. This year, about 53%. If you add the money we earn from advertising and other sources, we cover about 60% of the cost. In fact no transit agency in the country makes a profit or breaks even. The rest comes from the local governments that partner with Metro.” [Emphasis added.]
The abstract: “Philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand are often identified as strong critics of altruism and arch advocates of egoism. In this essay, Stephen Hicks argues that Nietzsche and Rand have much in common in their critiques of altruism but almost nothing in common in their views on egoism.”
My opening paragraph: “To what extent is Ayn Rand’s ethical theory Nietzschean? Three Friedrich Nietzsches are relevant to making that judgment. …”
The major sections of the article:
Part One: On Critiquing Altruism
Three Nietzsches and Ayn Rand
Some intellectuals on Nietzsche and Rand
Egoism, altruism, and “selfishness”
A Nietzschean sketch God is dead
Nihilism’s symptoms
Two bio-psychological types
Psychology and morality
Genealogy
Comparing Nietzsche’s and Rand’s critiques of altruism
Rand’s break with Nietzsche’s critique
Part Two: On Egoism
Rand’s egoism
Nietzsche’s rhetoric and system
The major differences between Nietzsche and Rand Are individuals real?
Do individuals have free will?
What is the source of moral values?
How does the self identify its nature and values?
Are individual selves ends in themselves?
Are fundamental values universal?
Are the relations of individuals win/win or win/lose?
Rights, liberty, equality before the law?
Slavery and freedom, war and peace
Conclusion
“Friedrich Nietzsche’s grandmother had some private letters in her possession from the circle surrounding Goethe. These letters came into the possession of Nietzsche’s aunt and uncle—who destroyed them. The uncle’s reason was this: ‘The brutal revelation of private relations upset him deeply. He did not grant the public any right to them as a national property … . The ideological philistines quibble shamelessly and shortsightedly enough over the well-reflected statements of the few great men of a century; why allow them to take a look into the intimate sphere, which evokes misunderstandings from the very first?’”
From the Department of Collegial Zingers, here is W. K. Clifford on an intellectual acquaintance:
“He is writing a book on metaphysics, and is really cut out for it; the clearness with which he thinks he understands things and his total inability to express what little he knows will make his fortune as a philosopher.”
(Quoted in Brand Blanshard’s On Philosophical Style, Manchester University Press, 1954, p. 28; a more recent edition is here).
Mathematician Clifford (1845-1879) was also the author of the important “The Ethics of Belief,” in which he argues that “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
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Part One: On Critiquing Altruism 
Part Two: On Egoism
Stephen Hicks contrasts modernism’s and pre-modernism’s philosophical themes. This is from Part 14 of his 
