Life is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the weaker, suppression, hardness ... and, at least and mildest, exploitation...

Name	Friedrich Nietzsche
Life	1844 - 1900
Country	Germany
Category	Realism
Wikipedia	>>

Nietzsche is the literary Darwin. Less than two percent of mankind has something like a college education. Of these few study difficult material, such as Darwin's theory. But when Nietzsche describes the same reality in words that go directly to the heart, many more digest them. We hate to see reality as it is. But we must. Because if we don't, it is even more likely that we will repeat its inhuman ugliness. Rulers have often punished messengers who carry undesired information. Darwin was much maligned by his contemporaries. Nietzsche is still used as a spittoon. Nietzsche forces us to go back to the old problem mentioned on page 00. Those who see him as expressing a normative desire for a nihilistic power game, without any restraints, condemn him as a forerunner, perhaps even a founder, of national socialism. Those who see him as having an unusually realistic analytical capacity admire his clairvoyant ability to foresee the approaching horrors of the coming century. Note carefully the last words in the quotation above, reminding us of Samuel Johnson: exploitation is the "least and mildest" of the ugly sides of reality. If mankind is unable to do away with the Darwinist struggle, isn't democratic capitalism the "mildest" form we know? Personally, I have no doubt that Darwin's and Nietzsche's analysis of reality is highly realistic. History can, as I have shown, be seen as a 10,000 year sequence of holocausts. Darwin saw deep in its animal origin, Nietzsche into its bestial human continuation. Personally, however, I also have no doubt that normatively the ideas of Giambattista Vico are superior. Man's predatory nature can be somewhat controlled with

the help of good institutions. Burial, that is, respect for life even after death, is necessary. Marriage, the loving cooperation between two individuals in educating the next generation of civilized young men and women, is equally so. And given man's low capacity for rational acting, these and other civil institutions must be backed up by religion. If curses don't work and cures don't cure, what do we do? Why not forget about eternal revenge and bet on human rights? Even if still weak, this is, indeed, a new trend. Two events in the year 2000 may be taken as symbols for a "milder" future to come. Nietzsche saw how nihilistic rulers had abused all nice ideas in history, even the religious ones. Now the Pope has asked forgiveness for all the cruelties in which the Church, for centuries, has been an active or a passive participant. Sometimes nice words are not enough. Harsher means must be applied. In early 2000, the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal sentenced a general to 45 years in prison for crimes against humanity. This is truly important! The Nuremberg sentences after the Second World War were based on retroactive law, which is bad. However understandable, the hanging of Eichman was an act of primitive revenge without end. But this new sentence is based upon valid international law. It tells generals the world over that crimes against the enacted human rights, committed by soldiers under their command , will be punished. Perhaps we can see these events as two swallows telling us that a new spring will come in human history. They give us some hope that Pericle's Athenian respect for the rule of law upon which Western civilization is built will be raised into a civic religion for a global community.