As to your quotes, you are quoting a man whom was terribly sickly and half blind through his whole life. The best biographical sources say that he probably only had sex once, and that ended up driving him crazy, completely blind, and ultimately killing him. Of course a person like that would have to give a huge amount of lip service to a "Superman"...wouldn't he?
Precisely. From the point of view of a healthy and balanced life he was the very embodiment of "the botched and the weak" he held in so much contempt. I would venture to say that it was basically self-hate that inspired him. And the irony of it all is that in a world built entirely on his own ideas he would have been among the first to be annihilated, as it happened daily in Sparta, for instance. Moreover, in
Thus spake Zarathustra he states explicitly that the ideas of the sick and the disabled are not as good as those of the healthy and the vigorous --- and in so doing he condemns himself.
I don't consider myself a Nietzschean. That was something I was for most of my life, and I ended up bitter and lonely. Just like him.
I still profoundly admire his work.
When I was a teenager I adored him. But then, fortunately, I realized the terrible danger that lurks in his ideas --- precisely that bitterness and loneliness you experienced yourself --- and abandoned them. I think some of his writings should bear a warning: "Taking this book too seriously can gravely damage your mental and physical health".
For me the ultimate test for a
thinker --- I deliberately avoid the term
philosopher --- and especially for a social thinker such as Nietzsche is this: would I want to live in a world organized according to his principles? In the case of Nietzsche, my answer is a resounding
NO!That being said, I understand and respect your admiration for him and I haven't the slightest intention to try to diminish it. Actually, I apologize for this intrusion but a Roman Catholic who admires Nietzsche is not something one encounters often. (And guess what: I'm an Orthodox who admires Pascal, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer... )
