ABSTRACT
There is a feature of Nietzsche’s educational thought that will be unpalatable to some. This is its ‘aristocratic’ nature: ‘true’ education is only for the few. Realstudien, we saw, which do not belong in ‘true’ education, are nevertheless appropriate for the many; and for the ‘herd’, it is not an education in values, but moral training, that is in order. This ‘aristocratic’ element, perhaps because it has been found unpalatable, is ignored by many commentators-or pushed to the sidelines, or treated as an unfortunate growth that can be cauterized without damage to the body of Nietzsche’s educational thought.(1) But this cannot be right. ‘Aristocratism’ runs through, even organizes, the whole of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is not only ‘our educational institutions’, but socialism, religion, morality, popular culture, everything that draws Nietzsche’s fi re, which are decried because of their ‘levelling’ tendency, their threat to the possibility of authentic living by the few capable of it. Zarathustra descended among men to ‘teach them the overman’, and there are few of Nietzsche’s main ideas that are not geared to this central lesson.
