A.D. 2000: Year of Nietzsche?

Re “Allan Bloom As Best Seller” (Book Review, Aug. 30, I’m sure Nietzsche would be delighted at his villainous stature here in the late 20th century, though Max Weber would be disgusted by his characterization as a myrmidon of Nietzsche. Some of Weber’s writing reveals a heavy Nietzschean influence, sometimes bordering on plagiarism, but Weber himself characterized Nietzsche as “the painful residue of the bourgeois philistine.”

As Nietzsche foresaw, great mischief has been done with his writings in the 20th Century. Both Nazi propagandists and respected philosophers have gravely misrepresented his work. He remarked in one of his later letters that his books would not elicit serious study until the year 2000. Considering that Walter Kaufmann’s superlative translation and exegesis have liberated Nietzsche to the English-speaking world only in the last 30 years, that timetable appears to be working out well.

RONALD BRUNO

Huntington Beach