No need to go to extremes, is there?
No, it is very, very, very bad writing. I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, but I have read The Fountainhead. There’s a scene at a party where Toohey instantly recognizes Roark, whom he has never met before and of whom he has heard little, as his mortal enemy, a truly creative genius. Very, very, very bad writing. If Rand’s actual view of the universe was anything like this, she should never have been allowed to run around loose.
But again, this is a method of describing the visual aspects of her ideas. If I am not mistaken, she is talking about the confidence, lack of guilt, and other things which can be shown in one’s personal habits. She is describing the way that these mental states can be accepted very deeply into the subconcious if you will. To the point that they show themselves to people aware enough to look.
If you read the quote I posted above, you will notice that she goes to extreme lengths to stress the idea that rationality is a virtue which can be accepted at very deep emotional levels. It is one of the odd characteristics of her philosophy IMHO. In her fiction, she attempted to show this concept with visual language as well as internal dialogues.
It is always possible that I am not understanding something she has written. I am distressed that I cannot remember any of the scenes you guys have brought up clearly.
I shal surely have to take drastic measures. 
As I noted above, I have read little of Nietzsche and know him mainly through the accounts of other philosophers. The following comes from * A History of Western Philosophy* (1945) by Bertrand Russell, chapter XXV. Those of you who are better acquainted with Nietzsche’s writings, please tell me whether or not this account misrepresents his system:
So. Is this analysis (pretty thoroughly supported by direct quotations, which so far as I know are perfectly accurate quotations) an unfair representation of Nietzsche’s thought?
On a lighter note: I remember a classic cartoon by Gahan Wilson. A professor-type is sitting in a bar. Next to him is a huge android robot. The professor says to the bartender: “He’s programmed to take me home the moment I start quoting Nietzsche.”
Ah, then you don’t know him at all. I don’t mean for that to sound condescending, it’s just that Nietzsche has been the victim of so much misinterpretation and outright lies that it’s more important than usual to go to the primary texts. And even then Nietzsche himself said that he didn’t expect anyone to understand his work unless they read each of his books carefully and in order. Which may be too much to ask, so it is arguably his own fault that so many readers misunderstood his meaning.
*A great and important book, but it’s worth mentioning up front that Russell despised Nietzsche. If you look through the section he wrote on Nietzsche you’ll see that he even admits his argument against Nietzsche is based “not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to emotions”.
*Yes. It’s completely unfair. I don’t recognize all of his Nietzsche quotations, but those that I do are taken out of context and I do not believe his summaries reflect Nietzsche’s intent at all. Nietzsche’s eccentric writing style and his abovementioned expectation that his books be read completely and in order make him particularly vulnerable to out-of-context quotes. Russell has also made the common and understandable but nonetheless major mistake of confusing Nietzsche’s descriptions of the past with what he wanted for the future.
Again, the “nobles” or “master races” of history are not the same as the Übermensch, “liberated spirits”, or “philosophers of the future”. I cannot stress this enough. The former might be a kind of Alexander the Great type, but the real-life person who came closest to embodying Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch was Goethe. He even credited Goethe with inventing an idea of the ideal human essentially the same as his own “liberated spirit”.
I think it’s very important to keep in mind that “bungled and botched” for FN would certainly include all the future NSDAP cadre from top to bottom. He denounced German nationalists (future Nazis), even suggesting replacing them with Jews for the good of the Germany**. FN might have expressed contempt for common masses frequently, in large part as rhetorical device, I believe. He never expressed anything but disgust regarding any political movement, especially one driven by mob ideology. He was an extreme individualist, I think.
** Section 251 from “Beyond Good and Evil” is particularly telling in that respect, I think.
Russell also says, in the same chapter:
Is it true Nietzsche accused Wagner of being a Jew, and meant it as an insult?
I do not remember hearing from any reliable source that Nietzsche ever attempted to insult Wagner by calling him a Jew, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. However, as I have already explained, Wagner was notoriously anti-Semitic and Nietzsche was notoriously anti anti-Semitic. This was one of the primary factors in the breakdown of their once-close friendship. If you wanted to insult a former friend who held anti-Semitic beliefs you found loathsome, what better way to do so than to suggest that he was actually Jewish himself and thus not only a racist but a huge hypocrite? (It’s not beyond possibility that this was even true; some historians suspect that Wagner actually did have some Jewish heritage that he wished to hide.) I don’t think this would make Nietzsche an anti-Semite himself though, which I believe was what you were trying to suggest, isn’t it?
But really, I don’t have the time or energy to sit around debunking every line Russell ever wrote about Nietzsche. If you want to believe everything Russell said then go right ahead, but if you want to make any serious criticism of Nietzsche you’ve got to look at what the man actually said, not what Russell said he said or what Russel said he meant.
I didn’t read any philosophical works of Russell, but the quote you provided seems to be extremely biased. One has to walk a very narrow line here not to be accused of being a fascist, but I’ll try nevertheless. Let’s consider it very carefully.
First, the term “certain glee” is extremely subjective, pulled out of thin air, followed immediately by insinuation that FN “would have been happy if he had lived to see the fulfillment of his prophecy”. Let’s consider then, what “prophesy” was that? Apparently, “annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, …the like of which has never been seen before”, another words “an era of great wars” of XX century. Now, predicting the future is the best possible qualification of great thinker; besides, FN was not unique in his predictions; few more of XIX century thinkers were full of gloomy forebodings about Germany’s and Europe’s future, notably Heine. Why is BR trying to smear FN with feeling “certain glee” and being “happy” about his predictions? I didn’t notice any sense of “glee” and “happiness” in FN own words on the subject.
Second, who are those “bungled and botched” that FN foresees as being “annihilated”? Certainly not ethnic minorities of Europe, for FN never ever advocated that, as we established already. OTOH, they most certainly include “the Socialists with their championship of workmen and the poor”, as Russell himself quotes. Which means they include:
[ol]
[li]RSDRP(b) = Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (bolshevik faction)[/li][li]NSDAP = National Socialist German Workers Party[/li][/ol] If so, weren’t those exactly the two entities ultimately responsible for the most killing and dying in the wars of XX-th century? Couldn’t have Russell, purportedly one of the greatest minds of the XX-th century, made a connection, if he only wanted to?
Finally, who is that “man of the future” whose “object is to attain that enormous energy of greatness… by means of discipline and also by means of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which yet can avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before.”?
That’s right, it’s Us. We are at that position now.
It’s Us who inherited the world after “annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched”.
It’s Us who “yet can avoid going to ruin at the sight of the suffering created thereby, the like of which has never been seen before”.
It’s Us who can “attain that enormous energy of greatness”.
FN is talking to Us, over the decades, over the wars, over all the pain and suffering of billions of people…
Oh, I should have clarified this point earlier, but at the time Russell wrote A History of Western Philosophy, scholars had yet to undo the damage done to Nietzsche’s body of work by his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. She had control of his writings during the period when he was alive but incapacitated, and for many years after his death until she herself died in 1935. She re-edited and re-wrote things and encouraged interpretations far different from what her brother intended in order to advance her own position. This is especially true of The Will to Power, which existed only as notes at the time of Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. The book as it first appeared in print was what Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s had cherry-picked from the notes, often taking things entirely out of context and even using lines Nietzsche had crossed out or corrected himself.
Much of what Russell says about Nietzsche’s work may actually be a fair description of what Russell read, but that’s something far removed from what Nietzsche really wrote. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche left her brother’s work “safe” in the hands of the Nazis when she died. (Hitler attended her funeral in person, and the Nazi Party built a monument for Nietzsche just a few years later.) It wasn’t until well after WWII that scholars were willing and able to uncover the original versions of his writings.