Yesterday's mundane minutiae were replaced today with more thought-provoking material.  At work, I continue to wear a lot of hats, although this week I'm needing to focus on writing up country's with Terry out of the office.  We are once again behind in production, a familiar refrain.  But I always prefer a challenge.  It's getting to that point now.

More importantly, tonight I finished retyping the Nietzsche paper, got it converted to html successfully (at least I think), and posted it on the website.  The paper is sure to upset Randroids who take Ayn Rand's writings about her rejection of Nietzsche at face value, and decide they don't need to bother actually reading Nietzsche.   Interestingly, one fun thing I discovered when I read Nietzsche carefully in graduate school is that the kernel of Rand's notion of the sanction of the victim outlined in Atlas Shrugged and in later non-fiction work is present in Nietzsche's writings on morality.  Rand is known to have studied Nietzsche, and her early writings embrace Nietzsche's view of the heroic (although Rand does indeed have serious epistemological, esthetic, and moral quarrels with Nietzsche); thus, it does not come as a shock that, either consciously (which she denied, portraying her ethical teaching as a complete rejection of Nietzsche -- partially true, in my opinion, because she does NOT reject his notion of the sanction of the victim, she turns it into a philosophical doctrine!) or subconsciously she would wind up adopting and expanding parts of his thought.  This makes her own philosophical contribution no less important or outstanding.

It was fun revisiting that paper tonight, actually.  I think it's a damn fine piece of work.  It only makes me want to go in and do some more close textual analysis of Nietzsche.  Alas, too many projects and too little time.   Speaking of that last, it would now be time to rest.

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