Reading Nietzsche
I continue to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra. To supplement the primary source, I am working my way through Hiking With Nietzsche- On Becoming Who You Are by John Kaag. Professor Kaag teaches philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He approaches Nietzsche’s words as vectors for a life-long workout of sorts, a discipline placing rigorous demands upon the mind and the body. Nietzsche’s stories and metaphors are probing, touching the foundation of our ideals, and of the stories that we moderns tell about ourselves. These words from Kaag’s book captured my attention this morning.
In the three hundred years between the death of Augustus and the reign of Constantine in the fourth century, Romans went from worshiping a masterly man-god to venerating an emaciated Jew hung unceremoniously on a cross.
….the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire…
Hiking With Nietzsche by John Kaag p 124
That is a statement of matchless clarity.