{Overman or Last Man?}[29th April 1990]

 [Redbook7:130][19900429:2340]{Overman or Last Man?}[29th April 1990]

19900429.2340

[This journal entry begins with a photocopied extract from the Times Literary Supplement of the last page, headed ‘NB: Doing it my way – or your way’, of ‘a shortened version of a paper [by David E. Cooper] to be read at the conference “Nietsche’s Moment” on April 28 at the University of Essex, of which the words most relevant to what follows here are: ‘But [Nietzche] was not certain, and nor can we be, whether the moral development he predicted would represent, in Zarathustra’s terms, “weariness” or “sloth”. Would the absence of commitment, of “decisive and hard ‘Yes’s’”, reflect temporary exhaustion, a respite from the struggle to which these may indeed have led? – in which case there will one day be a reawakening. Or would it represent the victory of “sloth”, the nihilistic sense that there can be nothing worth affirming or negating? – in which case the time of the “last man” is indeed come, “when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!”]

[PostedBlogger25042021]