From: ANONYMOUS
To: rrichter@acad.ursinus.edu
I have just read your welcome and introductory comments, as well as your summary notes on Debra B. Bergoffen's article, "Nietzsche's Madman: Perspectivism without Nihilism." Without reading the article (which I intend to do within the next few days) I will reserve from presenting any extended critique.
However, based upon your summary notes, where you quote from Bergoffen's article, that Nietzsche argued that "decentered perspectivism is less repressive than the absolute of the perspective center" (p. 57). You then say, presumably summarizing the point Bergoffen is attempting to make, that "[u]nderlying [Nietzsche's affirmation of perspectivism was his objective to lift REPRESSION, which grows out of the desire for the absolute." One may find it well to ask, who, according to Nietzsche, was repressed?
Again, having not read Bergoffen's essay, I can only go on the summary notes that you have provided. However, I think that Bergoffen is simply perpetuating a most damaging and distorting view of Nietzsche - that Nietzsche was, somehow, egalitarian. I assure you that Nietzsche was not a democrat. Nietzsche was certainly critical of western thought's apparent ossification in an "immutable hierarchy of values (p. 63).
However, Nietzsche sought to replace the present heirarchy with a new HIERARCHY. If one attempts to find in Nietzsche a new understanding or basis for liberalism (I mean this both in the classical sense as well as the "New Deal" and "Great Society" senses) then one will do so only by distorting Nietzsche's texts ... that is, only an act of philosophical and intellectual disingenuousness of high degree could argue that Nietzsche sought to show us, each and everyone of us, how we might aspire to fulfill a desire "for singularity" and personal uniqueness. I would suggest that Nietzsche did view the philosophical tradition as repressive ... but of Nietzsche and his kind, the PHILOSOPHER ... the free spirit who just as Socrates and Jesus in the west and Buddha in the east would create a moral-political scheme by which generations to come would orient their lives ... thus, Nietzsche sought to free philosophy, not the repressed or oppressed masses.