Saturday, April 25, 2009

Natural Leaders.

"Oh, what are they gonna do when the lights go down
without you to guide them all to Zion?
What are they gonna do when the rivers overrun
other than tremble incessantly?"
[Tool, 10,000 Days.]

"Though they were always a threat, the exceptions were nevertheless esteemed because they were useful for the common good of the tribe as its fearless leaders and defenders. But in contemporary Europe they are no longer needed, so they no longer have to be tolerated; the "ultimate consequences" of herd morality render them superfluous. [...] This movement to uniformity prides itself on---it even defines itself by---its tolerance of variety. Nietzsche, however, treats even its opposite extremes, anarchists and socialists, as embodiments of a single moral type. The democratic movement is morally homogeneous; its apparent tolerance of variety masks its intolerance of the one moral difference that matters. [...] Strauss says that Nietzsche makes an appeal "from the victorious herd morality of contemporary Europe to the superior morality of leaders (Führer)." This appeal to a morality no longer known is rendered even more alien and repugnant by Strauss's insistence on Nietzsche's German word Führer. But who are these Führer after all? Their task is to "counteract the degradation of man which has led to the autonomy of the herd.""
[Laurence Lampert, 'Leo Strauss and Nietzsche'.]