Category: Nietzsche
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Sadness at the Transience of the World
"I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in a letter to Franz Overbeck, dated 24 March 1887. (Quoted in R. Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Penguin, 1982, p. 304) What is the appropriate measure of grief at impermanence? While we are saddened by the transience of things, that they are transient…
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Nietzsche, Truth, and Power
Nietzsche is culturally important, but philosophically dubious in the extreme. Some of our current cultural woes can be ascribed to the influence of his ideas. Suppose we take a look at Will to Power #534: Das Kriterium der Wahrheit liegt in der Steigerung des Machtgefühls. The criterion of truth resides in the heightening of the…
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Nietzsche and the New Atheists
The following quotation from a very interesting Guardian piece by John Gray entitled What Scares the New Atheists (HT: Karl White): [1] The new atheists rarely mention Friedrich Nietzsche, and when they do it is usually to dismiss him. [2] This can’t be because Nietzsche’s ideas are said to have inspired the Nazi cult of…
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The Pig, the Fool, and Socrates
A reader opines: I like animals because I think they're a higher form of life. They have no pretenses about what they are; a dog can achieve levels of serenity and fulfillment of which I cannot conceive by merely being a dog and doing dog things. Myself, on the other hand, I could be the…
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Why do We Obsess Over Ultimate Meaning?
Or if not literally obsess, care deeply? Karl White passes on the following from one of his correspondents: Why are we all so obsessed with infusing things with meaning anyway? Isn't this craving a mere artifact of being brought up under systems of belief that insist on the fact that life has to serve some…
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Lake Sils, Upper Engadin, Switzerland
Mark Anderson, presently on a sort of Nietzsche pilgrimage, sent me this panoramic shot. Left-click to enlarge. Mark explains: The photo shows lake Sils. The little settlement below is Isola. Further to the right, where the lake ends, is Sils-Maria. The large patch of green that may look like an island right up against Sils…
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Nietzsche’s Madness Letters
Hier sind die Wahnbriefe Nietzsches. Auf Deutsch. (Das ist ja richtig was ich jetzt geschrieben habe. Vgl. Auf deutsch oder auf Deutsch?)
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Nietzsche on Prose and Poetry
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book II, sec. 92, tr. Kaufmann: Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry: all of its attractions depend on the way in which poetry is continually avoided and contradicted. Related articles For the New Year Nietzsche and the…
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Nietzsche and the Genetic Fallacy
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Book I, sec. 95: Historical refutation as the definitive refutation. — In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God — today one indicates how the belief that there is a God could arise and how this belief acquired its weight and…
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To Doctor Empiric
When men a dangerous disease did 'scape Of old they gave a cock to AesculapeLet me give two, that doubly am got free From my disease's danger, and from thee. Ben Jonson (1753?-1637) from Epigrams and Epitaphs (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 27. At the very end of the Phaedo, having drunk the hemlock, Socrates is…
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Nietzsche and the Appeal of the Verifiability Criterion
A long-gone blogger once asked: Has anyone ever seen an argument – or even a plea – in favor of the verification principle? I mean, beyond anything that just goes, "Hey, now this is cool. We can bash the ethicists, metaphysicians, and theologians quite thoroughly with this." As a preliminary stab at an answer, consider…
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Giles Fraser Credits Nietzsche with Making a Christian of Him
Two things I like about Fraser's Guardian piece are that he appreciates Nietzsche's deep religiosity and the role that his worship of power played in the development of Nazi ideology. Both of these points should infuriate leftists which of course constitutes an excellent recommendation of them. See Nietzsche and National Socialism. Soteriology in Nietzsche and the…
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A Failed Defense of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism
Prowling the Web for material on Nietzsche and the genetic fallacy, I stumbled across this passage from Merold Westphal, "Nietzsche as a Theological Resource," Modern Theology 13:2 (April 1997), p. 218: Perspectivism need not be presented as an absolute truth; it can be presented as an account of how reality looks from where one is …
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Boethius Contra Nietzsche on Time and Transition
Like Nietzsche, "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things." (Letter to Franz Overbeck, 24 March 1887, quoted in R. Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life, Penguin, 1982, p. 304) Unlike Nietzsche, Iappreciate that the Eternal Recurrence of the Same is no solution. The problem with time is not that it will end, but that its…
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Silenian and Epicurean Sources of “Death is Not an Evil”
Clarity will be served if we distinguish the specifically Epicurean reason for thinking death not an evil from another reason which is actually anti-Epicurean. I'll start with the second reason. A. Death is not an evil because it removes us from a condition which on balance is not good, a condition which on balance is worse…