[Hardy-l] Hardy and Nietzsche...

[Kevin Taylor]

I again stress my feeble memories of Nietzsche from many years ago.  
However, I will sin boldly nonetheless.

Being roughly in the existentialist camp, I think N. would dislike any  
kind of ethic or moral norm. If mercy or lovingkindness is a genuine  
act of the will, then it's okay. But if it's a social ethic or norm  
then it is part of the slave mentality that has warped the greatness  
of the West. So a Hardyan ethic of meliorism or lovingkindness, the  
Christian humanism he has inherited, would be scorned by N.

Norman Vance touches on this a bit in his essay on G. Eliot and Hardy  
in the Oxford Handbook of English literature and theology (OUP 2007,  
ed. Hass, Jasper, and Jay). He cites Hardy's 1902 essay on Maeterlinck  
in Academy and Literature (which is also quoted in the Williams essay  
on N. and Hardy, referenced in an earlier posting in this discussion),  
that N.'s "ruthless moral teaching could bring 'disaster to  
humanity'" (Vance, quoting Hardy). So there's a real debate between  
Hardy and Nietzsche, despite their shared concerns for perspectivism,  
modernity, and destructive institutions.

A friend who recently published on Nietzsche commented that, "If by  
lovingkindness you mean something like "meekness", then you're right  
that that is an element of slave morality for N.  But you're also  
right that the Ubermensch may display mercy, etc but his mercy will  
always be categorically different from what we think of as mercy, i.e.  
as slave morality."

Enslaved at a desk in gloomy, rainy England,
Kevin T.

PS+FYI A while back we noted how sending from Gmail to the listserv  
meant you wouldn't see your own postings. That is no longer true; I  
received my own posting from yesterday within the group digest.
-- 
Kevin Taylor
thomaskevintaylor at gmail.com
darthkt33 at mac.com (AIM)

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