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Editorial

Nietzsche’s Hammer

by Tim B-Gray

Friedrich Nietzsche is not known as a positive guy. Most accounts of him give us a tender and morose misanthrope consistently repulsed by everything he saw around him (unless he saw a mountain; he liked mountains). As a philosopher, he is widely seen as a destructive force, tearing down anything that gave off the slightest whiff of tradition or convention. There’s little doubt Nietzsche would be proud of this reputation; in his chest-puffing autobiography Ecce Homo, he described himself as “dynamite”. Whilst there is no shortage of evidence for Nietzsche’s demolition programme, it is on particularly clear show in 1888’s Twilight of the Idols.

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