In contemporary western society many have heard of Nietzsche but may not have read any of his works. Do people in the West understand his work?
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Probably not. The core issue, as taken up by Bataille, is the creation of a new sense of ethics out of the womb of Christianity, as it were. If you do not understand that Christianity is not the polar opposite of Nietzsche, but rather a system to be transcended, the existence of which if very necessary for this Nietzschean purpose, then you do not understand Nietzsche's project overall. What has happened with many who interpret Nietzsche as standing in polar opposition to the values of Christianity, rather than in dialectical transcendence of it, is that they merely enshrine the sterile values of narcissism, and make them the norm. But this is not the Nietzschean project. You can't create a system of ethics if nothing is at stake, and for the narcissist, nothing really is at stake except his or her own survival. At core Western narcissism is empty and spiritually abortive.
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