Kanye is the New Nietzsche

Whenever Kanye makes an outrageous statement, we all turn into hypocrites. Our society idealizes idol-smashers — so long as they are not targeting our idols.

Nietzsche, the man who taught us to ‘Philosophize with a Hammer’, is one of history’s great idol-smashers (second perhaps only to Abraham). Today, we praise Nietzsche’s polemics and condemn his dismissive contemporaries. Rarely do we sympathize with their outrage. This is because their idols are not ours. Nietzsche attacked Christianity, Philosophy, the social conventions of his time — but if he were alive today, he would have done the same to our institutions. Somehow, I doubt we would be as praiseworthy as we are looking back.

Kanye may not be able to express himself like Nietzsche, but he is currently philosophizing with a hammer.

Every chance he gets he tells us that he is not concerned with contemporary criticism. His concern is for posterity — which always seems to look favourably upon past attacks on convention. Like Nietzsche, he believes that the future should be the ‘cause of your today’.

If, like me, you find yourself offended, it’s probably because it’s your idol, and if you’re worried about what his words might do, you have to ask yourself: “Is my idol that fragile?”

Nietzsche, who spoke of ‘sounding out idols’, proposed that we pose questions with ‘a hammer’, in order to ‘hear as a reply that famous hollow sound which speaks of bloated entrails’. Kanye is currently knocking, what do we hear in response?