> THUS ATE ZARATHUSTRA
> by WOODY ALLEN
>
>
> There's nothing like the discovery of an unknown work by a great thinker
> to set the intellectual community atwitter and cause academics to dart
> about like those things one sees when looking at a drop of water under a
> microscope. On a recent trip to Heidelberg to procure some rare
> nineteenth-century duelling scars, I happened upon just such a treasure.
> Who would have thought that "Friedrich Nietzsche's Diet Book" existed?
> While its authenticity might appear to be a soupçon dicey to the
> niggling, most who have studied the work agree that no other Western
> thinker has come so close to reconciling Plato with Pritikin. Selections
> follow.
>
> ·
>
> Fat itself is a substance or essence of a substance or mode of that
> essence. The big problem sets in when it accumulates on your hips. Among
> the pre-Socratics, it was Zeno who held that weight was an illusion and
> that no matter how much a man ate he would always be only half as fat as
> the man who never does push-ups. The quest for an ideal body obsessed
> the Athenians, and in a lost play by Aeschylus Clytemnestra breaks her
> vow never to snack between meals and tears out her eyes when she
> realizes she no longer fits into her bathing suit.
>
> It took the mind of Aristotle to put the weight problem in scientific
> terms, and in an early fragment of the Ethics he states that the
> circumference of any man is equal to his girth multiplied by pi. This
> sufficed until the Middle Ages, when Aquinas translated a number of
> menus into Latin and the first really good oyster bars opened. Dining
> out was still frowned upon by the Church, and valet parking was a venal sin.
>
> As we know, for centuries Rome regarded the Open Hot Turkey Sandwich as
> the height of licentiousness; many sandwiches were forced to stay closed
> and only reopened after the Reformation. Fourteenth-century religious
> paintings first depicted scenes of damnation in which the overweight
> wandered Hell, condemned to salads and yogurt. The Spaniards were
> particularly cruel, and during the Inquisition a man could be put to
> death for stuffing an avocado with crabmeat.
>
> No philosopher came close to solving the problem of guilt and weight
> until Descartes divided mind and body in two, so that the body could
> gorge itself while the mind thought, Who cares, it's not me. The great
> question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done
> about alphabet soup? It was Leibniz who first said that fat consisted of
> monads. Leibniz dieted and exercised but never did get rid of his
> monads-at least, not the ones that adhered to his thighs. Spinoza, on
> the other hand, dined sparingly because he believed that God existed in
> everything and it's intimidating to wolf down a knish if you think
> you're ladling mustard onto the First Cause of All Things.
>
> Is there a relationship between a healthy regimen and creative genius?
> We need only look at the composer Richard Wagner and see what he puts
> away. French fries, grilled cheese, nachos-Christ, there's no limit to
> the man's appetite, and yet his music is sublime. Cosima, his wife, goes
> pretty good, too, but at least she runs every day. In a scene cut from
> the "Ring" cycle, Siegfried decides to dine out with the Rhine maidens
> and in heroic fashion consumes an ox, two dozen fowl, several wheels of
> cheese, and fifteen kegs of beer. Then the check comes and he's short.
> The point here is that in life one is entitled to a side dish of either
> coleslaw or potato salad, and the choice must be made in terror, with
> the knowledge that not only is our time on earth limited but most
> kitchens close at ten.
>
> The existential catastrophe for Schopenhauer was not so much eating as
> munching. Schopenhauer railed against the aimless nibbling of peanuts
> and potato chips while one engaged in other activities. Once munching
> has begun, Schopenhauer held, the human will cannot resist further
> munching, and the result is a universe with crumbs over everything. No
> less misguided was Kant, who proposed that we order lunch in such a
> manner that if everybody ordered the same thing the world would function
> in a moral way. The problem Kant didn't foresee is that if everyone
> orders the same dish there will be squabbling in the kitchen over who
> gets the last branzino. "Order like you are ordering for every human
> being on earth," Kant advises, but what if the man next to you doesn't
> eat guacamole? In the end, of course, there are no moral foods-unless we
> count soft-boiled eggs.
>
> To sum up: apart from my own Beyond Good and Evil Flapjacks and Will to
> Power Salad Dressing, of the truly great recipes that have changed
> Western ideas Hegel's Chicken Pot Pie was the first to employ leftovers
> with meaningful political implications. Spinoza's Stir-Fried Shrimp and
> Vegetables can be enjoyed by atheists and agnostics alike, while a
> little-known recipe of Hobbes's for Barbecued Baby-Back Ribs remains an
> intellectual conundrum. The great thing about the Nietzsche Diet is that
> once the pounds are shed they stay off-which is not the case with Kant's
> "Tractatus on Starches."
>
> Breakfast
> Orange juice
> 2 strips of bacon
> Profiteroles
> Baked clams
> Toast, herbal tea
>
> The juice of the orange is the very being of the orange made manifest,
> and by this I mean its true nature, and that which gives it its
> "orangeness" and keeps it from tasting like, say, a poached salmon or
> grits. To the devout, the notion of anything but cereal for breakfast
> produces anxiety and dread, but with the death of God anything is
> permitted, and profiteroles and clams may be eaten at will, and even
> buffalo wings.
>
> Lunch
> 1 bowl of spaghetti, with tomato and basil
> White bread
> Mashed potatoes
> Sacher Torte
>
> The powerful will always lunch on rich foods, well seasoned with heavy
> sauces, while the weak peck away at wheat germ and tofu, convinced that
> their suffering will earn them a reward in an afterlife where grilled
> lamb chops are all the rage. But if the afterlife is, as I assert, an
> eternal recurrence of this life, then the meek must dine in perpetuity
> on low carbs and broiled chicken with the skin removed.
>
> Dinner
> Steak or sausages
> Hash-brown potatoes
> Lobster thermidor
> Ice cream with whipped cream or layer cake
>
> This is a meal for the Superman. Let those who are riddled with angst
> over high triglycerides and trans fats eat to please their pastor or
> nutritionist, but the Superman knows that marbleized meat and creamy
> cheeses with rich desserts and, oh, yes, lots of fried stuff is what
> Dionysus would eat-if it weren't for his reflux problem.
>
> Aphorisms
> Epistemology renders dieting moot. If nothing exists except in my mind,
> not only can I order anything; the service will be impeccable.
> Man is the only creature who ever stiffs a waiter.