freedom and consciousness. These women saw feminism as the next step to
that higher liberation.
Nietzsche filled them all with hope, and they took turns caring for this
deteriorating, broken man, hopeful that the next book, the next essay, the next
polemic, would be the one that broke open the floodgates.
But for most of his life, his work was almost universally ignored.
Then Nietzsche announced the death of God, and he went from failing
university professor to pariah. He was unemployable and basically homeless.
No one wanted anything to do with him: no university, no publisher, not even
many of his friends. He scrounged together money to publish his work
himself, borrowing from his mother and sister to survive. He relied on friends
to manage his life for him. And even then, his books hardly sold a copy.
Yet, despite it all, these women stuck with him. They cleaned him and fed
him and carried him. They believed there was something in this decrepit man
that could potentially change history. And so, they waited.
A Brief History of the World, According to Nietzsche
Let’s say you drop a bunch of people onto a plot of land with limited
resources and have them start a civilization from scratch. Here’s what
happens:
Some people are naturally more gifted than others. Some are smarter.
Some are bigger and stronger. Some are more charismatic. Some are friendly
and get along easily with others. Some work harder and come up with better
ideas.
The people with natural advantages will accumulate more resources than
others. And because they have more resources, they will have a
disproportionate amount of power within this new society. They will be able
to use that power to garner more resources and more advantages, and so on—
you know, the whole “rich get richer” thing. Run this through enough
generations, and pretty soon you have a social hierarchy with a small number
of elites at the top and a large number of people getting completely hosed at
the bottom. Since the advent of agriculture, all human societies have exhibited
this stratification, and all societies must deal with the tension that emerges
between the advantaged elite and the disadvantaged masses.^5
Nietzsche called the elite the “masters” of society, as they have almost
complete control over wealth, production, and political power. He called the
working masses the “slaves” of society because he saw little difference
between a laborer working his whole life for a small sum and slavery itself.^6