The Review Section of the Australian Financial Review(subscription required) has an article entitled 'Nietzsche for Beginners' by a Martin Leet, a research fellow in the Brisbane Institute in the sunshine state of Queensland. I was intrigued.

How would Nietzsche be presented to the finance capitalists who love to make a fast buck from a tricky deal and then spend it on high status consumption goodies because they deserve it. Ethics and nihilism, after all, is a long way from their playing around with exchange rates, or the gouging management fees charged by merchant bankers.

The hook for the article is Greg Curtis' biography of Nietzsche. The article highlights Nietzsche's self overcoming understood a questioning the unconscious assumptions of one's culture. So far so good. The questioning that Nietzcshe undertook were those relating to democracy and liberalism which lead to mediocrity, dilettantism and nihilism. Wow, that would get our budding entrepreneurial financiers interested I thought. Since they are into strength and freedom in a big way, they would read on. I do.

The idea of the art of living --a conditioning of the instincts to produce a decent human being --is introduced along with the sickness of modern culture and a sickly Nietzsche taking on the problems of European culture. This is a Nietzsche who says a yes or no to life and directs his barbs at a decaying Christianity; one who sees that Christianity's emphasis on guilt and the sinfulness of human beings makes us unhappy.

Leet does not see Nietzsche dumping morality as such.He acknowledges the turn back to the Greeks, to an ethics that enhances or says yes to life; one that involves a process of becoming and training.Instead of exploring this conception of an ethical philosophy as a way of life, Leet moves on to talk about art, Wagner and culture.