Heidegger

michaelP wrote:

>> One of the students came to the attention of the authorities almost
>> immediately after the shootings. Sledge said Woodham, upon arriving at the
>> school last Wednesday, gave him notebooks of writings that seemed to include
>> an explanation for the killings. Sledge provided copies of one page from the
>> notebooks to several reporters.
>>
>> “I am not insane,” the page reads. “I am angry. I am not spoiled or lazy,
>> for murder is not weak and slow-witted. Murder is gutsy and daring. I killed
>> because people like me are mistreated every day. I did this to show society,
>> ‘Push us and we will push back.’ “
>>
>> The page ended with a passage from Nietzsche that asked, “How shall we
>> comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
>
> But this notion of revenge from resentiment and simple frustrated anger is
> exactly what Nietzsche would never have sanctioned; also, the “murdering” in
> the (mis)quoted {I mean, misunderstood to the point of insane reversal}
> surely refers to the metaphysical killing of the Platonic idea (as be-ing),
> the upside-down turning of Platonic metaphysics (as poetically rendered by
> Nietzsche in his ‘death of god’), and certainly not imbecilic murderous
> rampages (laughably ‘justified’ by misread, misunderstood, quotes
> from/references to poor Nietzsche) of the kind reported. My feeling is that
> Nietzsche wouldn’t have wiped his arse with such reports…

I agree, imbecilic rampages … but what about *daring* ones? The
parallel in Heidegger: not a mechanized holocaust … but what about an
*authentic* one? So I think your nuance may be accurate and yet
superficial, since even if the two murderers had one component of
ressentiment, wasn’t there also an authentically Nietzschian recognition
by both of them? Or is it an utter coincidence that both received from
him their inspiration?

Posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 6:30 am
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