Category: Nietzsche
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Nietzsche’s Definition of ‘Nihilist’
Der Wille zur Macht #585 (Kroener Ausgabe): Ein Nihilist ist der Mensch, welcher von der Welt, wie sie ist, urteilt, sie sollte nicht sein, und von der Welt, wie sie sein sollte, urteilt, sie existiert nicht. A nihilist is one who judges of the world as it is, that it ought not be, and of…
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Best Evidence of the Greatness of This Country
Keith Burgess-Jackson writes: The best evidence of the greatness of this country is that people are clamoring to get into it. Almost nobody—including self-loathing progressives—wants to leave it. It is also the best evidence of the failure of Communism and those socio-political schemes that are ever on the slouch toward Communism. They needed walls to…
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The Eternal Return of the Same Old Same Old
A redemption from transitoriness that consists of an endless repetition is no redemption at all. An eternity of the same old crap is still crap. It is actually worse than transient crap. It is Crap Eternalized, nihilism on stilts. Pious Nietzscheans will be shocked at my irreverence. But wasn't it his irreverence that attracted their…
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On Writing for Money
From an NYT interview with Christopher Hitchens on the occasion of the publication of his memoir Hitch-22: Did you write the book for money? Of course, I do everything for money. Dr. Johnson is correct when he says that only a fool writes for anything but money. It would be useful to keep a diary,…
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Nietzsche
His was the throbbing heart of the homo religiosus wedded to be bladed intellect of the skeptic.
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Soteriology in Nietzsche and the Question of the Value of Life
Giles Fraser in his provocative Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief (Routledge 2002) maintains that "Nietzsche is obsessed with the question of human salvation" and that his work is "primarily soteriology." (p. 2) I don't disagree with this assessment, but there is a tension in Nietzsche that ought to be pointed out, one that Fraser, from…
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Life Without Questioning
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book One, Section Two (tr. Kaufmann): . . . to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors [discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.19] and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning,…
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For the New Year
One of the elements in my personal liturgy is a reading of the following passage every January 1st. I must have begun the practice in the mid-70s. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Four, #276, tr. Kaufmann: For the new year. — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I…
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Nietzsche, Guilt, and Incoherence
I love reading Nietzsche, just as I love reading his opposite number, Kierkegaard. There is much to admire in them: their stylistic brilliance, the penetration of their psychological insight, the singlemindedness of their quest for truth. They are about as far away as one can get from the mere professor of philosophy. Nevertheless, both were…
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Nietzsche on Bentham, Mill, & Co.
"If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does." (Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows," #12.) The art of the aphorism at its best. In all fairness to the English I should point out that it was…
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Nietzsche on Causa Sui and Free Will
Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 21 (tr. W. Kaufmann): The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for "freedom of…
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Life Without Questioning
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book One, Section Two (tr. Kaufmann): . . . to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors [discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.19] and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning,…
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Marriage a Long Conversation?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All-Too-Human (tr. W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 59): Marriage as a long conversation. When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but the most time during the…
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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…