Horror -- The horror of existence -- Dionysian terror -- Tragedy -- Rebirth of the Greek ideal -- Dionysian life -- Three visions -- Truth -- The true and the good -- Avoiding the truth -- Taking to be true -- A consistent account of truth -- Chaos, the self, and will to power -- Meaningless suffering -- God is dead -- Chaos -- The Kantian self -- Forgetfulness -- The composite self -- Will to power -- Perspectivism -- The (...) Übermensch and eternal recurrence -- Nihilism and the Übermensch -- Eternal recurrence -- Eternal recurrence, chaos, and the self -- Eternal recurrence continued -- Eternal recurrence and the horror of existence -- Loving every moment -- Innocence and redemption -- Discipline and pity -- Eternal recurrence and others -- Eternal recurrence and the categorical imperative -- Abolition of the true world and the affirmation of life -- Masters, slaves, and Übermenschen -- Masters and slaves -- The slave and the Übermensch -- Christianity, guilt, and the ascetic ideal -- A roman caesar with christ's soul -- Virtue -- The truth of Nietzsche's doctrines -- Metaphysical truth -- The truth of the horror of existence -- The value of illusions -- Contradiction between doctrines -- Should we accept Nietzsche? -- Covering up for Nietzsche -- Pity and compassion -- Best argument for nietzsche -- Benefiting culture -- Against Nietzsche. (shrink)
The question has been raised whether Nietzsche intends eternal recurrence to be like a categorical imperative. The obvious objection to understanding eternal recurrence as like a categorical imperative isthat for a categorical imperative to make any sense, for moral obligation to make any sense, it must be possible for individuals to change themselves. And Nietzsche denies that individuals can changethemselves. Magnus thinks the determinism “implicit in the doctine of the eternal recurrence of the same renders any imperative impotent.… How can (...) one will what must happen in any case?” At the other end of the spectrum, those who do hold that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative, for their part, tend to ignore or deny the determinism involved in eternal recurrence. This article explores the extent to which it can be claimed that eternal recurrence is like a categorical imperative without downplaying Nietzsche’s dterminism. (shrink)
Nietzsche’s concept of the self grows out of Kant—and then attempts to subvert Kant. Nietzsche agrees that a unified subject is a necessary presupposition for ordered experience to be possible. But instead of a Kantian unified self, Nietzsche develops a conception of the self of the sort that we have come to call postmodern. He posits a composite bundle of drives that become unified only through organization. This subject is unified, it is just that its unity is forged, constructed, brought (...) about by domination. But if the self is a bundle of struggling and shifting drives, how could it remain unified over time? Nietzsche’s concept of the self requires his doctrine of eternal recurrence, which promises that I will remain the same, exactly and precisely the same, without the slightest change, not merely throughout this life, but for an eternity of lives. (shrink)
This article examines Hegel's treatment of self-consciousness in light of the contemporary problem of the other. It argues that Hegel tries to subvert the Kantian opposition between theoretical and practical reason and tries to establish a form of idealism that can avoid solipsism. All of this requires that Hegel get beyond the Kantian concept of the object - or the other. Hegel attempts to establish an other that is not marginalized, dominated, or negated. What he gives us is a valuable (...) alternative to post modernism, which attempts instead to deconstruct or dissolve the other. Key Words: mastery • objectification • recognition • self-consciousness • solipsism. (shrink)
For different feminist theorists, housework and child rearing are viewed in very different ways. I argue that Marx gives us the categories that allow us to see why housework and child care can be both a paradigm of unalienated labor and also involve the greatest oppression. In developing this argument, a distinction is made between alienation and oppression and the conditions are discussed under which unalienated housework can become oppressive or can become alienated.
This book traces the development of Marx's ethics as they underwent various shifts and changes during different periods of his thought. In his early writings, his ethics were based on a concept of essence much like Aristotle's, which Marx tried to link to a principle of universalization similar to Kant's "categorical imperative." In the period 1845-46, Marx abandoned this view, holding morality to be incompatible with his historical materialism. In the later work he was less of a determinist. Though he (...) no longer wished to reject morality, he did want to transcend a morality of burdensome obligation and constraint in order to realize a community built upon spontaneous bonds of solidarity. (shrink)
A careful study of the concept of essence which is found in Marx''s early writings will show that his theory of knowledge does not involve, as is often claimed, the acceptance of an unknown thing-in-itself and does not imply that we can only know objects as they have been constituted for-us. We can know things as they are in-themselves. To show this will also require that we recognize and explain how the early Marx can hold that the object of knowledge (...) is both constituted and that it reflects or copies things as they are in-themselves. (shrink)
