In order to analyze Nietzsche's critique of anti-Semitism, one must delve within the paradox of Nietzsche's existentialism. The essays written by Nietzsche in the last five years of his sane life are suffused with contempt for the broad

National socialism in Germany, and socialism in general, is noted for its dogmatism. The Nazi regime burned hundreds of thousands of books. It enforced a tenuous national consensus. It advocated a specific set of ideas about which people were generally not allowed to disagree. Dissenters were often severely punished. Nietzsche surely would have railed against this kind of dogmatism as he railed against the dogmatists of his day.

Self-determination is crucial at all levels of Zarathustra's philosophy. Self-determination has been an important ideal in other philosophies as well, to be sure, particularly in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, a movement that is in several ways incompatible with the thought of Zarathustra. What the Enlightenment and Zarathustra have in common is the idea that a moral order cannot be imposed on human beings from the outside-by authorities, social institutions, or traditions, for example. But in Zarathustra's philosophy self-determination becomes a much more radical concept than it is in the writings of Kant or other Enlightenment thinkers. For in Kant's ethics the goal is still to find moral rules and guidelines that are "objectively" valid, rules that are binding for all rational beings because they are grounded in the very nature of rationality. For Zarathustra there is neither a divine authority that could impose binding values, nor a recognizable cosmic order on which objective values could be based, nor a rationality that is common to all human beings. Thus human beings are not only independently responsible for living up to moral standards, but also for creating such standards in the first place. For Zarathustra nothing is "given," neither a moral order, nor a pre-established meaning of life or of the universe. Any such thing has to be brought about by the creative will of individuals who are capable of such feats, such as Moses or similar lawgivers. Self-determination, in other words, is not just a matter of exercising autonomy in a structured and established world, but almost something like creating a world out of chaos.

Socialism, Nietzsche suggests, is a political manifestation of the slave morality that seeks to negate life because "Life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation." The socialists want to realize a utopia that Nietzsche says is both unachievable and undesirable. A world in which everyone is peaceful and equal, he says, would produce nothing of value. Everything would be "common." In order for "the good" to show up, there must be some "bad." A world without these values would be a world of "nothingness," "a world of nihilism."

masses of humanity, Malthusian diatribes against equality and inferior humanity, hymns of praise to militarism and the merits of war together with his advocacy of the "overman" -the Übermensch. All of these aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy were frequently discussed by Hitler as a method of gaining political backing. However Hitler's most common methods were the teachings of Zarathustra.

For Nietzsche, anti-Semitism's odor is distinct-it "stinks of ressentiment" , as he might argue, did the German Nazi regime. Nietzsche is no friend of National Socialism, and though he was appropriated by the Nazis and blamed for Nazi thinking, his works indict the kind of nationalist, socialist, mass-movement that swept through Germany in the early twentieth century.

Socialism is anathema to an aristocratic society because it seeks to make everyone equal, whereas Nietzsche argues that social stratification is not only inevitable, but positively beneficial and necessary for the advancement of the species. Nietzsche's writings, then, are a response to the political realities of Europe in the late nineteenth century wherein Nietzsche sees socialism as the wave of the future:

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Approximate Word count = 3744
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)