well a ‘nietzschean’, today, in the age of philosophical fetishism, is someone who will usually demonstrate an anticlimax of character which creates an awkward and incongruous association between nietzsche’s ideas and the ‘nietzschean’. very, very rarely do you find someone to whom nietzsche’s insights really apply, in whom you find real, living, breathing nietzschean activity and energy. merely claiming to agree with his ideas is not enough to be able to say one has experienced the nietzschean, or is a representation of the nietzschean philosophy. still everyone in this age, usually the atheists and fringe thinkers who fancy themselves as bold, original, unorthodox and nonconformist, claim the title ‘superman’, or feel that their lives will at some point present to them the opportunity to become a ‘superman’. but it never happens; the nietzschean formulae is something so radical in intensity and extremity that it is nearly impossible for anyone today to truly approach it… because today most are too mundane and tedious to evoke it’s spirit. you need to find something extraordinarily remarkable to be able to say ‘that is a nietzschean way of life’. what dunamis experienced was this anticlimax of character; his vision of nietzsche did not match in quality those who he found espousing the philosophy. the immediate impression is always the same; these are just some ordinary, mediocre people peddling nietzsche in an attempt to appear tough or noble or courageous. but if one looks closely at the life, they find nothing in it that would warrant any genuine comparison to such. you might say that had such persons not known of nietzsche, you’d notice no difference in them.
dunamis was/is also a spinozist, who’s philosophy of ‘power’ is so all-encompassing as to include even those things nietzsche’s philosophy of ‘power’ would exclude. so dunamis is going to perceive in these self professed nietzscheans a much more narrow understanding of power. this turns the ‘nietzschean’ into a kind of double-caricature which invites even more criticism; one is not only not a nietzschean, but even as such, one would still suffer a naive and stunted understanding of what power is.
but yes, nietzsche is one of the most abused, most hijacked thinkers of all time who’s come to symbolize shallow, subversive trends that people adopt in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the ‘herd’, without bearing any authentic character traits that would separate them as such. a great example of what i mean would be marilyn manson, that talentless freak clown ‘artist’ we hear on the radio. the very first page of his biography is a lengthy quote from WTP (will to power). it is these kinds of people today who think they are nietzscheans.
but you can’t pretend to be nietzschean. that is to say, you can’t tell yourself you are demonstrably nietzschean unless the nature and circumstances of your life are such that they can only be understood through nietzsche’s philosophy. in a sense, the philosophy finds you, not vice versa. the same can be said about kierkegaard’s philosophy. another instance of a way of life so radical it requires a profound change of being in order to ‘live it’. ever met a genuine knight of faith? these dudes don’t play no games, man. what i’m saying is, because of the existential severity of their philosophies, one does not walk casually into them. one gets thrusted, thrown, and pushed into place by extraordinary experiences that seize them and send them into temporary crisis. you could probably include sartre’s philosophy as well. another significant existentialist that demands evasive action and an authentic reorientation of one’s life.
anyway, you see what i mean. the more intense a philosophy is, the easier it is to goof it up, to become a insipid caricature of it. one has a very difficult time living up to nietzscheanism. not so much for living up to hume, or voltaire, or bacon, or any other less existentially forceful philosophy. one says today ‘i’m a kantian’, and goes on doing whatever they’ve always done. but when one says ‘i’m a nietzschean’, we hear the sound of the needle scratching across the record, and then that awkward silence of the anticlimax as we stare in disappointment.
