TTBOOK GEMS

Alexander Nehamas (GEMS - from program #04-03-07-A: BIRTH, SCHOOL, WORK, DEATH)

The following is from an interview Alexander Nehamas did with Steve Paulson on the Public Radio International program To the Best of Our Knowledge. Alexander Nehamas is a professor of philosophy and comparative literature at Princeton University. He's also the author of Nietzsche: Life As Literature.

Intellectual Terrorist

Nehamas: In Nietzsche, everything almost makes sense. And I say "almost" on purpose because even if you don't agree with Nietzsche, and it's very difficult to just agree with him, he brings you to a point where you think you almost have it. And then he leaves you. You can't make it all into a beautiful, coherent whole. You can't give answers to the questions he raises. But that's part of his purpose. His purpose is to get you extremely upset if he possibly can, just the way that the new artists or whatever get you to be upset. And then having pulled at least some of the rug out from under your feet, to say if you want a rug, you weave it.

Paulson: He basically wanted to throw intellectual bombs?

Nehamas: Yes. And that's why he calls himself dynamite. Very appropriate. He says, ‘I'm not a man. I am dynamite." It's exactly that. It's inappropriate maybe today to use the term but he is, in a serious sense, an intellectual terrorist. But he is a terrorist by means of intellectual weapons. And that I think is extremely important. He does want people to get frightened because he thinks the world is a frightening world and that we whitewash it all the time. We don't see how much more complicated we ourselves are, how much baser our motives and sometimes our goals are, than we don't give ourselves credit for.

Alexander Nehamas (GEMS - from program #04-03-07 - A: BIRTH, SCHOOL, WORK, DEATH)

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