Although for the most part we feel a kind of innate resentment towards Nietzsche because of his judgement of our values as "slavish," I think there are other aspects of our lives in which we have so-called "noble" values. In particular, I think our culture's fervent support of capitalist ideals embody this noble mode of evaluation, and frankly I find these very-real values sad and disturbing. For example, in economics (if not in other realms), we say things like "Go big or go home" or "It's a dog-eat-dog world," or something referring to the competition of the market as "Natural selection" or "Social Darwinism." In all these instances, I see people genuinely valuing strength as strength and as good, and I see the "bad"--the small shops, the people who just can't compete with Walmart, farmers who can't sell crops cheaper than Kroger does--truly being a kind of non-consequential, nearly-irrelevant afterthought for those "good."
What this means to me is that we can imagine Nietzschean ideas having some sort of place in our own culture. Although I personally have real moral problems with those particular economic values, I realize that there are some aspects of Nietzsce's philosophy which I feel are truly inspiring and even "correct" to an extent. These portions include (1) the fabrication of the human 'subject'--"there is no 'being' behind doing, effecting, becoming" (Gen. of Morals 481)--and (2) the difference between a 'yes-saying' and a 'no-saying' kind of life--"a question of "how well disposed [...] you would have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal" (Solomon 101).
(1) There is a certain value, I think, to seeing human "beings" as human "doings" or "effectings" or "becomings." It suggests that life is an activity, not a passive mode. If we embrace this idea, we become less apathetic and more engaged in our activities. It gives a feeling of life being a kind of project we set for ourselves in itself. How this way of thinking about a human "doings" would affect our culture today, I don't know.
(2) "Yes-saying," especially in context of Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence" tale, seems to be a good aim, too. As Louise indicated in class, I think there are some people for whom losing there free will would not be the worst thing in the world. This idea would have negative consequences if adopted for how to live one's life, but provides a very wholesome, affirmative way to look at one's life. Seeing everything that has happened, and indeed even everything that will happen, as determined can honestly take away a big weight I think. Even if we act as if we have free will and also don't know the future, saying "yes" to your own inclinations and thoughts as legitimate seems like a positive move for me.
Can you think of other aspects of our culture that embody a noble mode of evaluation besides our capitalism? Are there other parts of Nietzsche's philosophy that really stuck with you as an especially good or important point? What aspects might we want to integate into our culture?
I agree with your evaluation that the overtly capitalistic and individualistic modes of thinking that run through our culture harken to Nietzsche, and in the same breadth I think of Ayn Rand. Her protagonists embrace of "yes-saying" and the action-centric life style of a dissolution of the subject seem to point to her full acceptance of Nietzsche's philosophy. However, I would claim that she perhaps still "harbors some clemency toward the heathen" (to put it like McCarthy) in the sense that without the slavish value system's notion of subject as distinct from action, then her righteous individualism falls apart. Rand's philosophy is a praise of the individual while Nietzsche's is a denial of it. It is her protagonists' heightened senses of self that prompt them to action, while Nietzsche's exemplars have no such slavish sense of self by which they are compelled to act.
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