Gottfried & Blicero

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Paul Mackin wrote:

> You wouldn't say however that one can't have accepted the
> essential position of  Nietzsche and still see the "need to be good to
> each other." Not based on any philosophical reasoning, perhaps totally
> without foundation, but practically necessary. We're probably both
> Nietzschites (as I suspect are most p-listers) but we need to be good to
> each other. Even Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, the ultimate ubermenshen, had
> families and friends.

I'm sure many writers have made the point about our living in
two worlds utilizing separate and distinct sets of guidelines. One
expression of the idea, from Lionel Trilling's "Sincerity and
Authenticity," (which doesn't seem to me to be foreign to the present
context) is as follows:

It would of course be absurd to say that the lives we actualy live are
controlled by the present-day repudiation of the old visionary norm. As
householders, housekeepers, and parents we maintain allegiance to it in
practice, possibly even in diffident principle. But as READERS, as
paricipants in the conscious, formulating part of our life in society, we
incline to the antagonistic position."

			P.