Nietzsche’s influence, on Nazism…and on Gurdjieff?
Endless efforts to resolve the influence of Nietzsche on Nazism, another here.
What is even more elusive, so elusive it doesn’t occur to people, is the influence of Nietzsche on Gurdjieff.
To be clear, Gurdjieff was too cunning to fall for Nietzsche’s loudmouthing, but one has to wonder that Gurdjieff felt emboldened to attempt a concealed reactionary movement, givent the evidence from Nietzsche et al. that such a movement could succeed by appealing on the surface to liberal-minded modernists.
This happened successfully with Nietzsche even though he never tried to conceal anything, witness th e way that, with postwar commentators such as Kauffman, Nietzsche was rehabilitated to the point that he became a fixture of academic and other thought.
A similar, though concealed, effect is obviously visible in Gurdjieff. Gurdjieff, however, rarely spoke his mind.
How many know, as Bennett reminds us, that Gurdjieff disapproved of the abolition of slavery?!!
And, of course, the interest of Ouspensky in Nietzsche shows the card face up with respect to the Gurdjieffians, if not the groupies.
