/lit/ - Literature

>>9042212
>>9042435

so, in cursory form, this idea is the following:

for plato: the golden philosopher, who is set to dominate the silver and bronze classes, also needs those classes, and hence cannot eradicate them (engage via noble lie)
for augustine: the christian, who is set to dominate the heathen, also needs those heathens to exist, and hence cannot eradicate them (engage via conversion (discipline, law and "education") and, as nuclear option, jus belli)
for the meideval christians/early americans, especially john winthrop: again the christian, and what would become the white landed/propertied christian male, is set to dominate everyone else (especially slaves/the colored races), also needs everyone else to exist, and hence cannot eradicate them (engage via discursive forms of domination: religion, economics, law)
for burke: the ruling aristocracy, with its traditions and manners and religion, is set to dominate the lower social orders, and needs the lower social class to exist, and hence cannot eradicate them (engage via aesthetics)
for nietzsche: the overman is set to dominate the final man, who he needs to exist, and hence cannot eradicate (engage via--returning to plato--the "noble lie," here individualized and turned into the perversion of hegel's "weltgeist")

so i think one thread to draw between these authors--and this is really and admittedly to discount their grand complexities and focus only on a single connecting, self-selected thread--is exactly the capacity to build theories around this idea of the principle of plentitude and the great chain of being i mentioned here: >>9042435.
so while i think you are right to point how "telos" operates, in nietzsche's critique, as just one more discourse of power, i think there is ample evidence to show how telos-as-a-conceptual-structure haunts a lot of western thought, and is used upon which to hinge a lot of hierarchical justifications

does that make a little more sense? and i am curious: you are not a professor or phd? what other subjects interest you--and why nietzsche specifically?