As the title implies, this article asks what an adequate practical ethic is and what a hermeneutic of moral experience can mean for practical ethics. We will use some elements from Ricoeur’s work to examine our view critically and develop it further. We will ask how experience can be an object of hermeneutical study and how we can tie narrativity and normativity together.

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 143-157.

The paper offers a counter- reading to Derrida's “utopian” reading of Nietzsche, focussing instead on Nietzsche's cynical view of friendship, based on the impossibility of being a friend to oneself. Unlike Aristotle, who sees the basis of human political nature in their shared rationality and mutual friendship, Nietzsche sees not only politics, but human beings themselves as being constituted by a violent act of submission, and characterised by an ongoing struggle for power. The paper further examines two intellectual traditions about (...) friendship and politics, one according to which the two are positively related and no real tension could exist between them. Another tradition holds friendship to be irreconcilable with politics. Elements of both traditions can be recognised in Nietzsche who, finding the radical deceptive nature of friendship unacceptable, moves to a solitude which is equally unbearable. For it is precisely the hermit that knows that his solitude makes him into an other to himself, which turns out to be a motive for real friendship, the third element which prevents the lonely hermit from sinking into the depth of self- interrogation. The paper concludes with the recognition that friendship, for Nietzsche, can only have an intermediary function on the way to full realisation of friendship, which will be a friendship of an inner difference or plurality, i.e. on our way to what is ultimately beyond the human condition, to the “over man”. (shrink)

O presente artigo examina o conceito, o diagnóstico e o prognóstico feito por Nietzsche a respeito do niilismo europeu e sua história, e o analisa como uma das mais importantes de suas contribuições para a filosofia e a cultura de nosso tempo.

The articles in this book display the originality and creativity of Eros and Eris, and their important role in the history of our culture, particularly in the history of philosophy and its role in today's systematic philosophy. Although these contributions to a hermeneutical phenomenology in this compilation are organized in a linear-chronological order (treating Homer, Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Cusanus, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Levinas), they all carry out their own hermeneutical movement in the (...) history of philosphy on the basis of a commitment with out life, here and now, and a thematic, professional interest. Among the contributors are: R. Bernasconi, J. Colette, J.F. Courtine, L. Dupré, Kl. Düsing, J. Greisch, J. Kockelmans, P.-J. Labarrière and G. Jarczyk, E. Levinas, Al. Lingis, J.-L. Marion, O. Pöggeler, W. Richardson, P. Ricoeur, J. Sallis, M. Theunissen and S. IJsseling. (shrink)

L'amicizia, secondo Nietzsche, richiede un tipo particolare di conoscenza di sé: quella che consente di nascondersi e che preserva dall'illusione che gli amici possano essere mai completamente trasparenti gli uni agli altri. Questo tipo di conoscenza di sé genera solitudine, che a sua volta suscita un desiderio di amicizia. Gli amici possono essere onesti tra di loro solo quando si consentono reciprocamente di nascondersi e ciò richiede un senso molto acuto della "misura e della medietà", come quello manifestato dal nobile.Friendship, (...) according to Nietzsche, is in need of a particular kind of self-knowledge: the kind that allows one to hide oneself and that prevents one from the illusion that friends could ever be completely open towards one another. This kind of self-knowledge causes solitude, which, in turn, causes a longing for friendship. Friends can only be honest to each other when they allow each other reciprocally their hiding. This demands a very sharp sense of "measure and middle", such as the noble presents it. (shrink)

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The significance of tradition for moral life seems at the same time to be obvious and controversial. Both evaluations refer to the meaning of tradition as the rule that reigns with the force of self-evidence. The first section of the article elaborates a philosophical basis for the significance of tradition. Human life is characterised by logos, which is interpreted as the capacity to understand and communicate meaning. Meaning does not exist outside tradition, taken as the conversation or controversy among different (...) interpretations. The second section of the article concentrates on the ethical meaning of tradition. With the help of Nietzsche, tradition is suggested to be the name for the adequate realization by human beings of their own historicality. (shrink)

In den Jahren, aud denen WL stammt , legt Nietzsche ein beachtenswertes Interesse für Aristoteles' politische Philosophie an den Tag, und WL kann aus der Perspektive einer Passage der aristotelischen Politik gelesen werden. In beiden Texten geht es um Wahrheit, Moral und Gemeinschaft. Während Aristoteles zufolge der Mensch als Logos-Wesen wesentlich in einer politischen Gesellschaft lebt und somit sich vom Tier und vom Gott unterscheidet, such Nietzsche nach einer Figue, die beide - gegensätzlichen - Positionen in sich vereint. Der Philosoph, (...) den Nietzsche sucht und der er sein will, muss sich einerseits außerhalb Gemeinschaft stellen, von welcher er andererseits Teil sein muss, um sein Aufgabe erfüllen zu können. Er muss sowohl Gott als auch Tier sein. Dass Nietzsche diese Figur jetzt noch nicht findet, macht seinen Text 'unfertig' und erklärt vielleicht, dass er 'geheimgehalten' werden musste.During the years in which Nietzsche write his essay On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense , he seems to have paid a remarkable interest to Aristotle's political philosophy, and TL can be read against the background of a passage from Aristotle's Politics . Both texts concern the relationship between truth, morality, and society. While, according to Aristotle, the human being is, as a logos-being, essentially a political being and therefore to be distinguished from animals as well as from god, Nietzsche seems to be searching for a being which brings both - contradictory - positions together. The philosopher whom he searches for and tries to be, should on the one hand distance himself from society in which he, on the other hand, should participate in order to be able to fulfill his task. He should be god and animal at the same time. Nietzsche does not find this figure yet, which makes his text unfinished and perhaps explains why he had to keep it secret. (shrink)

When we, from a Nietzschean perspective, read through the history of philosophical thinking about friendship, we find that the idealization of friendship leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. This confronts us with the question whether friendship is still possible under nihilistic conditions. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that in our nihilistic condition only something like friendship can save us, but on the other hand that friendship itself has been unmasked and has become impossible by these very conditions. (...) It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well with Nietzsche’s claim that only “the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith‘ will be able to cope with nihilism. We might extend this to a moderate concept of friendship: in an age in which the great ideal of friendship erodes together with all ideality, we can only survive as long as we know that we’re not alone. Maybe that’s friendship: no perfection, no virtuosity, no lofty ideal, but simply this: to know that one is not all alone. (shrink)

Is er een verschil tussen theologie en filosofie, en zo ja, waarin ligt dat verschil? Dat lijkt me de kern te zijn van de punten die Johan van der Hoeven als commentaar naar voren brengt in zijn zeer sympathieke bespreking van mijn bijdrage aan het cursusboek van de Open Universiteit. Ik zal proberen duidelijk te maken waarom ik denk dat dit de kern is, hoewel hij zelf een andere “hoofdvraag” lijkt te formuleren. Maar eerst twee opmerkingen vooraf.

Insofar as the notion of forgiveness stems from the Jewish and Christian traditions, it seems to point at something very extraordinary. Although Christianity recommends or even commissions forgiveness to everybody, it nevertheless seems to consist of something which is not humanly possible: how could one remember the evil committed , and at the same time not blame the one who committed it? By ultimately reserving the entitlement and ability to forgive to God, by describing human forgiveness as a theological virtue, (...) and by emphasizing the gratuitous or gracious character of forgiveness, this tradition seems most of all to show that forgiveness is generally speaking impossible. In this paper, this conception of forgiveness is presented with the help of Jacques Derrida. The question how this apparently impossibility nevertheless sometimes happens is first answered with the help of Thomas Aquinas. Against this background, the paper claims that a ‘secular’ interpretation of forgiveness is also possible, which does justice to its being humanly impossible. Such interpretation describes forgiveness as an intersubjective act. (shrink)