On Nietzsche

First, this isn’t a great introduction to Nietzsche: Tanner just throws you in and spends his time sparring with other Nietzsche scholars. Second, Tanner is hilarious. Nietzsche has a line in Beyond Good and Evil that runs something like, “We asked rather about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?” Tanner’s response:

It is a quite different matter from being […] complacent about the lack of rigor with which one looks for truth as almost everyone is on all important issues. And it is also different from wanting to believe what is in fact false, though we do not know that. There is nothing odd in saying ‘Many of my beliefs are false,’ which any sane person will agree to: But there is a terminal oddness in saying ‘Many of my beliefs are false, including the following…’

Tanner is worth reading for moments like that alone.