Reading Lesley Chamberlain’s Nietzsche in Turin. The break with Wagner hurt but it had to be. Because Wagner’s work was fundamentally dishonest. Maybe pusillanimous is the word. FWN thought, of course, that man needed to face up, and gladly, to the reality that there is no God, or gods; this did not mean that men should adopt an unfeeling or mechanical materialism or positivism, nor that atheism compelled man to be unspiritual. But who had the strength for this? Not everyone, not most. One possible name for some who do is Ubermensch, whose prophet is Zarathustra. (I need to read Thus Spake Zarathustra again.)

Now, a question, and a task: Where or how does this fit my own thinking? On the face of it, or from a certain angle, it doesn’t fit too badly. Because my faith in the intelligence of the masses of people has its limits. And there is the rub with both democracy and leftism. Both are heavily invested in the idea that the masses, or the 99 percent, or the proletariat, or an electoral majority, are likely to make good decisions. A gamble, but perhaps it seemed a good bet in the 18th and 19th centuries. And for many reasons, tribalism and short-sightedness prominent among them, the centuries since have provided ample reason to question it, regardless of all the best efforts of revolutionary parties or whoever else to shift the zeitgeist in progressive directions. But, especially at a time like this, I don’t care to abandon either leftism or libertarian democracy, because I shudder at the alternatives. So I guess I’m back to a question I posed back in the nineties in an essay on Nietzsche and Marx: Can there be a revolutionary Ubermensch, or can the Ubermensch be a revolutionary?