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].)
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?’”
… is forthcoming in August and is now available for pre-order at Amazon. It will be published in both hardcover and Kindle formats. The image is a gray-scale version of the cover.
The book version is based on the script of the 2006 documentary and is now complete with footnotes, index, bibliography, appendices, and other documentation.
Stephen Hicks introduces the philosophy of Existentialism by means of Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that God is dead, reflection on the rise of science and the decline of religion in the modern world, and the early-twentieth-century lived experience of world war, Depression, and the Holocaust. This is from Part 11 of his Philosophy of Education course.
Zeev Sternhell’s The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition (Yale University Press, 2010) is a scholarly study of the most disturbing intellectual trend of the modern world: the ongoing lineage of intellectuals opposed to the Enlightenment tradition of reason, naturalism, individualism, and freedom.
Along the way Sternhell asks, of Nietzsche’s place in the trend, an excellent series of questions:
“When a work is seized upon and shamelessly pillaged, as was Nietzsche’s by the Nazis, should one not nevertheless ask if it did not lay itself open to this treatment? Did not Nietzsche’s long campaign against humanism, equality, and democracy, despite his strong criticism not only of German nationalism but also of nineteenth-century German culture, help, by playing a leading role in the education of two generations of Germans, to open up a breach that permitted this—in itself unacceptable—usurpation? Why did a mishap of this kind not happen to the work of Tocqueville or of Mill?” (pp. 32-33).
Exactly. My thoughts Nietzsche and the Nazis are here.
My “Egoism in Nietzsche and Rand” has come out in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. Here is the abstract for my 43-page study:
“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.”
In the same issue, Professor Lester Hunt has a commentary on my essay and an independent reading of Nietzsche that is very valuable.
This entire issue of JARS is a symposium devoted to essays comparing Friedrich Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. I haven’t read the other contributions yet, but it looks like a lively set.
Posted 4 months, 1 week ago at 1:24 pm. Add a comment
Part One: On Critiquing Altruism 
Part Two: On Egoism
Stephen Hicks introduces the philosophy of Existentialism by means of Friedrich Nietzsche’s claim that God is dead, reflection on the rise of science and the decline of religion in the modern world, and the early-twentieth-century lived experience of world war, Depression, and the Holocaust. This is from Part 11 of his 
