Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return of the same exhibits the preoccupations and limitations of his middle and late periods. It situates Nietzsche in the grand narrative of the history of the misunderstanding of being that Heidegger was striving to map. Yet it thereby neglects the question of the primordiality and insuperability of mood that was a focus of Being and Time and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It does not acknowledge the alternative ontological (...) path pursued by Nietzsche’s engagement with a world and time grounded in joy. This article attempts to defend Nietzsche by means of an appeal to the early Heidegger. (shrink)

Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return of the same exhibits the preoccupations and limitations of his middle and late periods. It situates Nietzsche in the grand narrative of the history of the misunderstanding of being that Heidegger was striving to map. Yet it thereby neglects the question of the primordiality and insuperability of mood that was a focus of Being and Time and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It does not acknowledge the alternative ontological (...) path pursued by Nietzsche’s engagement with a world and time grounded in joy. This article attempts to defend Nietzsche by means of an appeal to the early Heidegger. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Nietzsche should be understood as a “thorough-going nihilist”. Rather than broaching two general projects of destroying current values and constructing new ones, I argue that Nietzsche should be understood only as a destroyer of values. I do this by looking at Nietzsche’s views on nihilism and the role played by Nietzsche’s cyclical view of time, or his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. I provide a typology of nihilisms, as they (...) are found in Nietzsche—negative, reactive and radical—through a close reading of an unpublished fragment in his later notebooks, remnants of which are scattered throughout his published work. I show how the progression between the different stages of nihilism are a “necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto” , with the eternal recurrence of the same playing a vital role in this progression. The last stage of nihilism—radical nihilism—is ambiguous between a life-denying, or passive, nihilism and a life-affirming, or active, one; but, I argue, both kinds of nihilism preclude a construction of new values. But there is an inherent tension within Nietzsche’s account of nihilism insofar as it relies on the eternal recurrence of the same. This tension is brought out nicely by Löwith and partially resolved by Klossowski. There are at least two meanings of the eternal recurrence of the same. In one sense, the cosmological reading, it is intended to make sense of the idea that time is infinite and matter is finite by claiming that every possible combination of matter will recur infinite times. In the other sense, the anthropological reading, it is a kind of thought experiment, analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative: “live in every moment so that you could will that moment back again over and over” . There is a tension between these readings insofar as one must will to live in such a way that they will do it again, over and over , but also that what they do will make no difference, for what one decides to do has been done innumerable times. I argue that this tension can only be resolved by considering Nietzsche as aiming at “goal-lessness as such” and placing him as an active nihilist. (shrink)

This book first published in the year 2021 June. Paperback: 240 pages Publisher: Kuhn von Verden Verlag. Includes bibliographical references. 1). Philosophy. 2). Metaphysics. 3). Philosophy, German. 4). Philosophy, German -- 19th century. 5). Philosophy, German and Greek Influences Metaphysics. 6). Nihilism (Philosophy). 7). Eternal return. I. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. II. Ferrer, Daniel Fidel, 1952-.[Translation from German into English of Friedrich Nietzsche’s notes of 1881]. New Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Many of the notes have (...) never been translated into English before. Go inside the workshop of a great philosopher's mind and read these notes. Table of Contents Introduction and Preface (Pages: 1-11 ) Notebook: 11 = M III 1. Spring - Autumn 1881 11 [1 to 348] (Pages: 12-167 ) Nietzsche’s Notebooks in English: a Translator’s Introduction and Afterward (Pages: 168-183 ) The thought of the eternal return of the same (Pages: 184-197 ) Later Recapitulation note of 1888 14 [188] (Pages: 198-204 ) Rejection of the idea of eternal (Pages: 205 ) Translation of 4 notes by Nietzsche on Perspectivism (Pages: 206-210 ) Nietzsche gets some final few words (Pages: 211-216 ) Bibliographies (Pages: 217-236 ) Project started in summer of 2012. No one else has read this book for errors. As always, any errors, mistakes or oversights etc. are mine alone. Given a couple more years, I could improve this book. This is a philosophical translation and not a philological translation. If you want to get in to more philological details you must learn German (see Nietzschechannel plus many published books on the topics). Translation notes. I have not tried to fix, polish-up, or clarify Nietzsche’s unpublished writings. Some of the translator have really refined Nietzsche’s ideas and positions. I have not “fixed” Nietzsche. I have not dropped or added words or changed the wording to make Nietzsche’s position clearer or stronger (others have done enough damage). Learn German and read the texts in German – my best recommendation and advice to you the reader. There are groups on the internet that work on all the details of translating Nietzsche’s remarks. There are many nuances and shades of the meaning in attempting to translate anyone’s language. Some words I could not translate from German and French; and I left those few words in German, but more words in French. I think most of the French texts are quotes that Nietzsche wrote down from French authors that he was reading at the time he wrote these notes. Reader beware. There are many historical and philosophical allusions as in all of Nietzsche’s philosophical writings and these notebooks are similar. Remember these are “notebooks” and include lots of notes or jottings -- and these are neither fragments nor polished drafts for publication. Nietzsche may have written these notebooks from back to front and re-used various notebooks at a later time. In the German text there are missing punctuations marks, missing quotation marks, missing words, abbreviation of words, miss numbered section, working table of contents for project books he wanted to publish, projects outlined, quotes without quote marks. Enjoy reading and thinking with Nietzsche in his unpublished notes. (shrink)

In this shorter piece, at the instigation of a former philosophy student, I accepted to contribute alongside two other writers to the "Expert Help" rubric, and attempted to explain the genesis in Nietzsche's mind of the conception of the eternal recurrence. I lay stress on both the internal contradiction that the solitary of Sils-Maria was trying to resolve and the secret desire that this cherished and embraced rather than demonstrated theory be true in the face of conflicting evidence, and (...) I furthermore challenge the received view that makes this vision incompatible with a Christian ontology. (shrink)

Published in PoMo Magazine vol. 2, nr. 1 (Spring/Summer 1996) during my years as a grad student at the New School. I examine Nietzsche's presentation of the eternal recurrence, and discuss its interpretations by Heidegger, Bataille, Derrida, Klossowski, Stambaugh, and Vattimo. I will be returning to Nietzsche in the future.

At the opening of the first volume of his Deconstruction of Christianity, Nancy argues that “The much discussed ‘return of the religious,’ which denotes a real phenomenon, deserves no more attention than any other ‘return’” (1). This statement may seem paradoxical in light of Nancy’s extensive study of the logic of the return – including, of the divine – in texts such as “Of Divine Places,” Noli me tangere, Dis-Enclosure and Adoration. Nancy does pay considerable attention to (...) something that, according to him, deserves none. In this paper, I examine Nancy’s critique of the “return of religion” in detail and argue that it would be a mistake to assume that Nancy’s understanding of the logic of the “return” is limited to the – largely uninteresting and even dangerous, indeed – return of the Same, just as it is a mistake to assume that the phenomenon known as the “return of religion” merely consists of the dialectical resurgence of a past religious fervour, a step backwards in history. According to Nancy, religion today returns in a way that radically breaks with the logic of the return of the Same and testifies to an eternal return of difference which, paraphrasing Nancy, opens religion to the limitlessness that constitutes its truth. It does, therefore, deserve our attention, yet only insofar as, paraphrasing Nancy, it opens religion to the limitlessness that constitutes its truth (Dis-Enclosure 1), thereby providing us with new resources to think religion in the singular-plural today. (shrink)

For Lowith, the centerpiece of Nietzsche's thought is the doctrine of eternal recurrence, a notion which Lowith, unlike Heidegger, deems incompatible with the will to power.

Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return of the same, seen through the lens of Heidegger’s interpretation, captures the groundlessness of existence in a technological world devoid of normative significance. The author contends that the temporality depicted poetically in the thought of eternal return is the traumatic temporality of human finitude, to which Nietzsche was exposed at the age of 4 when the death of his father shattered his world. Nietzsche’s metaphysical position is seen as a (...) metaphorical window into the phenomenology of finitude and of the struggle to overcome it. (shrink)

In the work of Nietzsche, sacrifice can only sacrifice itself over and over (in an eternal return of the same) because what it seeks to overcome (the nihilistic revelation of truth that sublates sacrifice's negation) makes this sacrifice of itself both necessary and useless. The truth is eternally postponed in a necessary sacrificial gesture that can only sacrifice itself, thereby rendering itself useless. In the attempt to step beyond nihilism, that is, in the attempt to negate (or (...) sacrifice) nihilism, one repeats the negation characteristic of nihilism. One becomes inextricably implicated in the move of nihilistic sacrifice. The sacrifice of the sacrifice characteristic of nihilism, that is, the sacrifice of sacrifice, can only take place as (perform itself as) the impossibility (or eternally postponed possibility) of its realization. One, therefore, produces or performs an interminable step/not beyond, an incessant step beyond that eternally returns. (shrink)

This essay is an interpretation of Nietzsche’s enigmatic idea of the Eternal Return of the Same in the context of his life rather than of his philosophy. Nietzsche never explained his ‘abysmal thought’ and referred to it directly only in a few passages of his published writings, but numerous interpretations have been made in secondary literature. None of these, however, has examined the significance of this thought for Nietzsche, the man. The idea belongs to a moment of (...) ecstasy which Nietzsche experienced during the summer of 1881 in Sils-Maria, in the Swiss Alps. Like Dante, in ‘the middle of life’, he walked down the wooded Alpine slope and entered his own Inferno. On the anniversary of long-buried loss and pain, his psyche was temporarily flooded by archetypal imagery. This event is interpreted in the light of Freud’s theory of repetition compulsion, the uncanny, and the oedipal confrontation with the unconscious. From the turbulent and frightful experience, a symbol of transfiguration emerged in the shape of Eternal Return. Its likeness to Mandala, a Jungian archetype of wholeness and the self, is striking. In the years that followed, Nietzsche produced his greatest works that assured him an unassailable place in Western philosophy. And yet, there was something disturbing about this dream-thought, and Nietzsche shuddered at any mention of the thought. Linking it with the head of Medusa in his unpublished notes, he hinted at its petrifying quality. The beguiling beauty of Medusa makes her an ambiguous symbol of exhilaration, as well as terror. Under her captivating gaze, a hero’s journey towards selfhood becomes a journey into the night of madness. (shrink)

Guided to the notion of the eternal return by the philosophical intuitions of the Greek antiquity, Nietzsche turned to the physical sciences of his day in order to further his inquiry. This extensive intellectual engagement represented a genuine attempt to investigate the possible continuity of meaning between the mythical tradition, on the one hand, and the rational-empirical (i.e. scientific), on the other. In particular, Nietzsche was intrigued by the manner in which the relationship between myth and science played (...) out in the wide-ranging debates on the eternal recurrence and entropy. Obscuring the view, however, lay the debris of metaphysical imports into the discourse of secular modern science. In the course of his ambitious undertaking to disentangle physics from metaphysics, Nietzsche discerned a possibility for synthesising the scientific explanation for his ‘fundamental conception’ (EH: Z, §1) with the mythical wisdom of the ages. His inferences proved nothing short of explosive. The doctrine of the eternal return of the same, instead of the docile cosmic torpor, urged the radical revaluation of all values. The measure of the eternal return’s power was to dissolve its impersonation – the Übermensch – into a form of well-being. Nietzsche was convinced that his ‘mightiest idea’ (NF-1881:11[148]) illuminated the path we must follow lest we wish to incur the full force of the ‘frightening wisdom of Silenus’ (BT: §4). (shrink)

Zarathustra initially describes churches as the stale caves of world-denying priests. However, following his encounter with the eternal return of the same, Zarathustra overcomes this resentful atheism. The pure sky that Zarathustra desires above all else, a sky emptied of the gods, is not visible again through the holes in ruined church roofs, but really thanks to these holes. The pure sky is an image of the world liberated from the teleological time of theistic providence, indeed even (...) from the divine necessity that pantheism attributes to the world. Yet for all that it is god-less, the pure sky is acknowledged to be a gift of the same metaphysical-Christian history of God that it only seems to negate: the sky’s pure eye peers through holes in church roofs. Zarathustra, though an “old atheist,” can now love “even churches.” I call this Zarathustra’s affirmative atheism. I also link affirmative atheism to the conception of eternal recurrence as a self-abolishing anti-teaching. In the eternal return, Zarathustra’s atheism is finally indistinguishable from a history of churches and therefore negates itself. But although it is not a new teaching, affirmative atheism points to something novel. This is an atheism that can no longer be taught in doctrines but must be lived as fate. (shrink)

Propounded in relation to a peculiar mode in the view of an oscillating or cyclic universe, the concept of Return of Power, or of ontic recurrence as further increase in ontic Power signifies the determination of the existing entity according to its own selective recurrence as dialectically exceeding a previous status. Based thus upon the assumption that the actual ontological existence of the entity lies in its own potentiated recurrence (for it is maintained that only what is able to (...) return to itself as potentiated signifies actual ontological existence) and that an ontic eternal return can only occur in terms of further Power, this notion embodies the culminating phase within change as an ultimate overcoming of a previous ontic status or situation respecting the category Power as a primary criterion within a constantly increasing Real (as Power, precisely). An ontic selective ultimate event respecting becoming as a general increment of the Real, this concept exceeds both the ontic dispersion in nothingness of the linear time and the identical ontic repeatability of the Eternal Return of the Same, the latter insofar as asserting the perennial return of man's own status of powerlessness, and as rendering accordingly impossible any actual (dialectical) transition to a well-defined superior ontic phase. (shrink)

More than sixty years after its first publication in Germany in 1935 by its then emigré author, and more than thirty-five years after its republication in Germany by an author who had returned via Italy, Japan, and the United States, Löwith’s classic study has finally been translated into English. His work thus joins that of Karl Jaspers and of his teacher, Martin Heidegger, all central interpretations of Nietzsche’s work written by his compatriots during the decade that witnessed the collapse which (...) his works so insistently and uncannily prophesied, if not encouraged. It is thus not merely an important interpretation, but itself part of our fast-closing century’s intellectual history. Löwith’s view of Nietzsche as the philosopher who undertakes “the anti-Christian repetition of antiquity on the peak of modernity” or who attempts to overcome nihilism by affirming an “eternally recurring existence amidst the naturelike world of all that is”, has in fact been accessible to readers before the translation of the present book. It figures prominently in From Hegel to Nietzsche, and in Meaning in History whose final section is entitled “Nietzsche’s Revival of the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence.” Although the main lines of Löwith’s interpretation have not changed, there is no denying the value of having his detailed interpretation finally available to English readers. The work’s lengthy third chapter, “The Unifying Fundamental Idea in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” is its indispensable core, detailing the eternal recurrence as the fundamental idea of Nietzsche’s philosophy through an analysis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and outlining two conflicting interpretations of this idea, the “anthropological”, with its focus on “willing the idea,” and the “cosmological”, where the idea reintegrates humanity into an ever-recurring world indifferent to its projects. The two chapters preceding it characterize Nietzsche’s philosophical discourse as a paradoxical “system in aphorisms” ; and present the familiar tripartite periodicization of Nietzsche’s philosophy, with Zarathustra as the apogee. The chapters that follow it do not have quite the unity or philosophical penetration of the first three. Chapter 4 concerns itself with the relation of Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity to his affirmation of a Greek and specifically Heraclitean nature. Chapter 5 discusses the way in which the problems of history and fate and freedom and necessity are dealt with in some of Nietzsche’s early writings, laying the groundwork for the problem of “willing necessity” that seems present in the eternal recurrence. In the following chapter we are presented with a history of modern philosophy from Descartes to Marx as a history of the “loss of the world” by a humanity lost in the “desert of its freedom”. We are then offered, in the seventh chapter, a detailed analysis of Kierkegaard’s conception of “repetition” and Otto Weininger’s ethical conception of “recollection” as alternatives to Nietzsche’s conception of eternal recurrence. It is not at all clear that this last maintains its interest sixty years later, and the same doubt arises regarding several, though certainly not all of the books reviewed in his Appendix, “On the History of the Interpretation of Nietzsche ”. The work’s final chapter, “The Critical Yardstick for Nietzsche’s Experiments,” summarizes the significance of Nietzsche’s project as a “return to nature,” to the “physis of the world,” once the metaphysical God is gone as a support for any teaching about man. Löwith concedes that Nietzsche failed fully to separate himself from the Christianity that haunted him as a negation, but implies that his program, determined by the fact that “he decided against God and for the world”, is of enduring significance. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Eternal Return (ER) is interpreted in many ways, including by him. I present it as a hermeneutic device, a way of reading texts, especially those whose influence threatens one’s authorial autonomy and/or are later difficult to take ownership of due to philosophical growth. It returns past texts with new interpretations, similar to the way ER leads one to embrace one’s past without changing anything, which radically changes everything from a resented painful burden into a celebrated enhancement of (...) freedom and power. I show how he could have derived the idea from Schopenhauer, his own embarrassing past, by performing the technique on Schopenhauer. The same attitude toward past texts of recreating them according to one’s present interests and concerns simultaneously releases one’s present texts for future readers to impose their readings onto them, just as Zarathustra tells his followers not to follow him. Heidegger takes the idea up in a far more nuanced account than he is usually given credit for and applies it, among other places, to the history of philosophy. All philosophers say the same as it keeps returning. Derrida then recreates this as iterability, the deconstruction of the no/change dichotomy that Nietzsche began. (shrink)

The ancient doctrine of the eternal return of the same embodies a thoroughgoing rejection of the hope that the future world will be better than the present. For this reason, it might seem surprising that Leibniz constructs an argument for a version of the doctrine. He concludes in one text that in the far distant future he himself ‘would be living in a city called Hannover located on the Leine river, occupied with the history of Brunswick, and (...) writing letters to the same friends with the same meaning.’ However, his argument concludes not that the future will be absolutely identical to the present, but rather that any finite description of the present and future worlds would be identical. In this way, the argument leaves room for the promise of a different and better future—even if it is one that could not be recognized by us as such. (shrink)

While it seems to be evident that the vision of the eternal return of the same is the solution to the riddle mentioned in "On the vision and the riddle," exactly what constitutes the riddle is anything but clear. Li ke all good riddles the solution demands a paradigm shift. Nietzsche's riddle is solved by a radical rethinking of the concept of time, from a straight line to a circle. I give a detailed account of how Nietzsche's (...) riddle is formulated in such a way tha t the eternal return of the same is the only possible solution. (shrink)

Shuzo Kuki is a Japanese philosopher, belonging to the Kyoto school, who lived about a hundred years ago. He learned philosophy in Europe and developed an original theory of contingency, by accommodating the Asiatic way of thinking on the one hand, and Western philosophy on the other. In this article, I show that we can find similarities between his theory of contingency and the philosophy of Deleuze, especially in regard to the subject of temporality and eternal return. Needless (...) to say, the theory of the third time is a crucial theme in Difference and Repetition, and is closely related to the time of eternity, and the original or primitive contingency. Taking into consideration these aspects of time is indispensable in examining in depth the concepts of difference and virtuality. Kuki's theory of contingency, which incorporates early twentieth-century European philosophy, elucidates these concepts in an unexpected way. Therefore, my aim in this article is not to attempt a comparison between Eastern and Western thought by quoting Deleuze, but to illustrate a hidden lineage of thought, which runs from the nineteenth century into the philosophy of virtuality of the twentieth century. This same lineage appears in Japan in Kuki's theory, and Deleuze's thought is, at least in one aspect, a modern manifestation of the same roots. (shrink)

This article investigates the constitutive ties of modernity and the modern subject to the phenomenon of boredom, through its interpretation by Walter Benjamin. The nineteenth century—with Paris as its capital—forms the material for this interpretation, and the fragmentary constellations of quotation and reflection in Convolute D of The Arcades Project present boredom both in its social aspect (the city as protagonist) and as experience. A number of the forms of boredom is thus elaborated: the relation of city dweller to nature (...) and the cosmos, as weather; in its temporal orientation, as waiting; the mechanistic character of the modern world and its subject, as repetition; in the cycles of production and consumption, as the ideological boredom of the ruling class. Among three of Benjamin’s typologies for the bored modern subject—the gambler, the flaneur, and the one who waits—I turn particularly to the experience of the flaneur, the dedicatee of Convolute D. In flaneurie the experience of boredom is accumulated and distributed, and in this way the flaneur is in the city but also constitutes and memorializes it, as boredom. This ambivalent relation to the urban fabric and landscape is also captured in his characteristic observation and exhibition, his consumption without acquisition and without production. After considering some possible antitheses to Benjamin’s types of boredom, I conclude with the reflection that passing over boredom to its opposite would require the overcoming of modern subjectivity itself. (shrink)

Jean-Michel Rabaté uses Nietzsche's image of a "pathos of distance," the notion that certain values cannot originate in a community but are created by a few gifted and lofty individuals, as the basis for a wide-ranging investigation into the ethics of the moderns. The expression of "pathos of distance" impressed would-be modernists like the American James Huneker and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats as they confronted the new in the arts. Later, it helped Deleuze and Barthes make sense of (...) modernity when they tried to tease out all the implications of "distance." Despite Benjamin criticism of Nietzsche's doctrine of the "eternal return of the same" in the Arcades Project, in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" Benjamin envisions a redeemed history that follows Nietzsche's basic intuition about the need to make every moment count for history. By first establishing this unlikely meeting of Nietzsche and Benjamin through their ideas of history and ethics, Rabaté is able then to provide an original genealogy for the ethics of the modern, moving through figures and moments as varied as Yeats and the birth of Irish Modernism, the ethics of courage in Virginia Woolf, Rilke, Apollinaire, and others in 1910, Gide and Genet's ethical impulse to combine erotic liberation with the motivation for political revolution, and Derrida's reading of Joyce's Ulysses and a modern mode of writing that sought to get closer to the senses. The result is a fascinating critique of Nietzsche, Benjamin, affect theory, and the origins of the ethics of modernism. (shrink)

Comment défendre le griffon, disaient les uns, si cette animal n'existe pas? — Il faut bien qu'il existe, disaient les autres, puisque Zoroastre ne veut pas qu'on en mange.” Zadig voulut les accorder, en leur disant: “S'il y a des griffons, n'en mangeont point; s'il n'y en a point, nous en mangerons encore moins, et par là nous obéirons tous à Zoroastre.VoltaireAt the end of the millenium in our Occident with its ambiguous triumphs, the most crippled stranger, suddenly lost, is (...) not necessarily the Siberian hunter. (shrink)

There is a long and successful scholarly tradition of commenting on Nietzsche’s deep affinity for the philosophy of Heraclitus. But scholars remain puzzled as to why he suggested at the end of his career, in Ecce Homo, that the doctrine he valued most, the eternal recurrence of the same, might also have been taught by Heraclitus. This essay aims to answer this question through a close examination of Nietzsche’s allusions to Heraclitus in his first published mention of (...) class='Hi'>eternal recurrence in The Joyful Science and in a related set of notes from the period when he was formulating and defending his doctrine of eternal recurrence while writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The key to answering this question, it is argued, is that Nietzsche came to believe that the doctrine of eternal recurrence, when properly understood as requiring identical repetition, has to presuppose a Heraclitean reality of eternal, absolute, and universal flux. (shrink)

The doctrine of eternal recurrence in Nietzsche is an essentially ecstatic doctrine. It is also strangely incommunicable. Here the ecstasy that reveals singularizes. The essential revelation closes the one to whom it is given in his own singularity ; only a singularity opens to the abysses and the Dionysian truth. Heidegger could then see in it an ontological doctrine. And an authentifying-singularizing-doctrine. Not, though, the same as his own. For Heidegger could suggest that the time horizon in which (...) this doctrine conceives Being in its Becoming-the "deep eternity"-is in fact not a deep structure of time, but the linear time of an eternity of instants. Eternity is not deep. In addition the subject of the Nietzschean ecstasy-which longs for eternity- cannot appropriate itself, cannot become a whole, cannot really achieve singular existence. Are these Heideggerian thoughts criticisms of the Nietzschean experience? Is the deep ontological truth to be then sought elsewhere? Is the wholeness of one's own life- the essence of this existence- to be then sought in another experience of the time-horizon of Being? Or else do these Heideggerian observations not rather point to another structure of the thought involved-something like a surface thought? And to another structure of the one smitten by this thought-a singularity that exists only in a circle of continuous metamorphoses? Some deconstructive work by Derrida encourages us to look in this direction. (shrink)

In The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (1949), Nishitani Keiji provides a thoroughgoing questioning of the theme of nihilism in Japan. Yet, while the text contains a sharp and penetrating interpretation of Heidegger, it focuses on the early Heidegger, whose thinking had not yet ventured into the theme of nihilism. The relationship between Heidegger and Nishitani thus contains a certain “gap” that needs to be investigated. This study takes a cue from the appendix to the The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, “Nihilism and Existence (...) in Nietzsche,” in order to clarify the differences between Heidegger and Nishitani vis-à-vis Nietzsche’s nihilism. Through this process, we will come to know the difference in their positions on who is the “subject (主体)” of nihilism in terms of their interpretations of a constellation of Nietzsche’s key terms, such as “will to power,” “the eternal return of the same,” the “overman,” “amor fati,” and so forth. From there, we will further identify some of the issues involved in their particular understandings of nihilism, and present a perspective on “contemporary nihilism.” I argue that central to their differences is the status of “morals” in nihilism. (shrink)

This article elaborates a claim, first introduced by Wilhelm Dilthey, that metaphysics represents an illusory flight from the tragedy of human finitude. Metaphysics, of which psychoanalytic metapsychologies are a form, transforms the unbearable fragility and transience of all things human into an enduring, permanent, changeless reality, an illusory world of eternal truths. Three “clinical cases” illustrate this thesis in the work and lives of a philosopher and two psychoanalytic theorists: Friedrich Nietzsche and his metaphysical doctrine of the eternal (...) return of the same, Sigmund Freud and his dual instinct theory, and Heinz Kohut and his theoretical language of the self. It is contended that the best safeguard against the pitfalls of metaphysical illusion lies in a shared commitment to reflection on the constitutive contexts of all our theoretical ideas. (shrink)

This long overdue English translation of Karl Löwith's magisterial study is a major event in Nietzsche scholarship in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Its initial publication was extraordinary in itself—a dissident interpretation, written by a Jew, appearing in National Socialist Germany in 1935. Since then, Löwith's book has continued to gain recognition as one of the key texts in the German Nietzsche reception, as well as a remarkable effort to reclaim the philosopher's work from political misappropriation. For Löwith, the centerpiece of (...) Nietzsche's thought is the doctrine of eternal recurrence, a notion which Löwith, unlike Heidegger, deems incompatible with the will to power. His careful examination of Nietzsche's cosmological theory of the infinite repetition of a finite number of states of the world suggests the paradoxical consequences this theory implies for human freedom. How is it possible to will the eternal recurrence of each moment of one's life, if both this decision and the states of affairs governed by it appear to be predestined? Löwith's book, one of the most important, if seldom acknowledged, sources for recent Anglophone Nietzsche studies, remains a central text for all concerned with understanding the philosopher's work. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207. “Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89) Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising mainly (...) the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101) Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.” Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit , the same one that invented the maxim μηδ?ν ?γαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94) Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput . *** To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return . Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time .” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today. *** “I do not guarantee a single word.” (Karouzos, 1993, II, 454) Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances , it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75) Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)” It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return : Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forget that this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the dark paths of this world. (2002, 88) This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life: after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do we exist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5 But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith. Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem . It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns. *** PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESS When I was young I used to pin down cicadas and step on ant nests. I used to stand there silent for hours. With threads I decapitated bees. Now I am a dead man breathing. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.) The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry. Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time? WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANING Living the coldest mauve night right across Parthenon I went to take a piss on some foliage and I was enjoying the foliage as it was steaming. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 340) Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17) Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295) *** “Life is not there to verify theories.”7 The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369) Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time. It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns . But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly— nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a ), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world: I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] But I am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say, a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without being endangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history. (2002, 32) It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise. “To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17) Athens, Greece July 10, 2011 NOTES 1 “ Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘… quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus ’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233). 2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First : there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962) 3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9. 4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service. 6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4) 7from a TV interview. THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS From Redwriter [ Ερυθρογρ?φος ], in Collected Works, Vol . II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.] JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS* Why were we once saving till the fifth day the Paschal lamb? The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat we ought to cleanse all of our senses. To give life to the whitest wave miraculous odors in the extension of the chest. Ideals to death. For us to witness the illustrious dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be a deeply carved ornament on the fore we named will. Then many deer running amidst the evergreen growth with watery hymns, then, the unintended angels descending with heights spiraling in their momentum offer themselves to the luminous Adventure. Whence the need for speech and our sufferings covered with flags like the glorified dead. An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant and fragrant holocausts within the tired horizons and the exhausted breadths with joys of the mistletoe on fire and shivering all of the green-leaved love. Something would have chirped again had we not driven it away— maybe the ewe’s grass. Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection— maybe the grace of spring. But now our heart is fiercely blinded, withdrawn to the appearances of Hades. Silence and ice incessantly cover the Infant Spirit in thatched times. While the cherry trees are dreaming faintly glowing in absolute darkness there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate in labs with automatic colored lights. How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb? We have forked the stars. We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime with plucked chimeras in our hands. Avenged relentlessly by science. *Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter. ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ Γιατ? κρατο?σαμε κ?ποτε ?ς την π?μπτη μ?ρα το πασχαλιν? πρ?βατο; Τα κε?μενα λ?νε: μ’ αυτο? του θ?ματος το κρ?ας ?πρεπε να καθαρ?σουμε ?λες τις αισθ?σεις. Για να δ?σουμε κ?μα στη ζω? λευκ?τατο θαυμ?σιες ευωδι?ς στην ?κταση του στ?θους. Ιδανικ? στο χ?ρο. Για να βλ?πουμε τα λαμπρ? χαρ?ματα του ?ψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχ? στ?λισμα βαθυχ?ρακτο της πλ?ρης που την ε?παμε θ?ληση. Τ?τε πολλ?ς δορκ?δες τρ?χοντας αν?μεσα στην καταπρ?σινη φ?ση με τους υδ?τινους ?μνους, τ?τε, κατεβα?νοντας οι αθ?λητοι ?γγελοι με κυλινδο?μενο το ?ψος στην ορμ? τους χαρ?ζονται της αστραφτερ?ς Περιπ?τειας. ?θεν η μιλι? γι’ αυτ? χρει?ζεται και τα δειν? σκεπ?ζονται ωσ?ν τους τιμημ?νους νεκρο?ς με σημα?ες. Ασ?ματο δ?χτυλο δε?χνει τα φλογ?δη και μοσχοβ?λα ολοκαυτ?ματα στους κουρασμ?νους ορ?ζοντες στα εξουθενωμ?να πλ?τη καθ?ς αν?βουν οι χαρ?ς του νερα?δ?ξυλου και τρ?μει ολ?κληρη η πρασιν?φυλλη αγ?πη. Κ?τι θα κελαηδο?σε π?λι αν δεν το δι?χναμε— μπορε? της προβατ?νας το χορτ?ρι. Κ?τι θα μας καλο?σε στην απ?ραντη αν?σταση— μπορε? του ?αρος η χ?ρη. Μα η καρδι? μας ?γρια τυφλ?θηκε π?ρασε στα φαιν?μενα του ?δη. Σιγ? και π?γος αδι?κοπα σκεπ?ζει στους αχυρ?νιους καιρο?ς το Ν?πιο Πνε?μα. Την ?ρα που ονειρε?ονται οι βυσσινι?ς και λ?μπουν αμυδρ? μεσ’ στο απλ?τατο σκοτ?δι τ?ποτα δε στοχ?ζονται οι βαβυλ?νιοι στα εργαστ?ρια με τ’ αυτ?ματα χρωματιστ? φ?τα. Π?ς να χαρο?με πια την π?μπτη μ?ρα του προβ?του; Φουρκ?σαμε τ’ αστ?ρια. Γ?ναμε σιγ?-σιγ? δ?θεν υπ?ροχοι με μαδημ?νες χ?μαιρες στα χ?ρια. Μας ν?μεται σκληρ? η επιστ?μη. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.] DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean theorem. Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed Sets Christ. Christ the tessellation of massive particles Christ the zero mass. Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust. We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something— Observed means observer and Hekate The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte banqueters demons from today. ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ Χριστ?ς η ορθ? γων?α· Χριστ?ς το πυθαγ?ριο θε?ρημα. Χριστ?ς ο απειροστικ?ς λογισμ?ς ?νωθεν ?λβια Χριστ?ς τα Σ?νολα. Χριστ?ς η ψηφιδογραφ?α στα μαζικ? σωμ?τια Χριστ?ς η μ?ζα μηδ?ν. ?ρα ψεκ?ζουμε αριθμο?ς και πεδ?α λαγνε?ας. Ε?μαστε τυφεκιοφ?ροι νοσο?σης λογικ?ς και κ?τι-- παρατηρο?μενο σημα?νει παρατηρητ?ς και Εκ?τη σκ?τος το π?μφωτο και φως εν τ? σκοτ?? η Αστ?ρτη συνδαιτημ?νες δα?μονες απ’ ?ρτι. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472]. CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin) Α I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the earth etc. of Baudelaire /. Β I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter. Γ Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps. Δ Cutting down on prospective mistakes. Ε Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings. Ζ The Poet has nothing / see the departed /. Η I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana. Θ Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc. Ι The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down. Κ And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language. Λ And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor. Μ On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot. Ν Flamebred and never redeemed. Ξ The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change! Ο The Poet is twilit. Π He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections. Ρ He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance. Σ He follows behind the mother. Τ Eveningless when it comes to age. Υ I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further. Φ In a higher despair. Χ In a brighter quintessence. Ψ In one sensation that lifts off. Ω Forgiving everyone. CREDO (ως ε?θισται να λ?με λατινιστ?) Α Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν εκτ?ς ουρανο? / φυγ?ς θε?θεν και αλ?της, Εμπεδοκλ?ς / και επ? της γης / εξ?ριστος π?νω στη γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελα?ρου /. Β Πιστε?ω εις ?να Υπολογιστ?ν εντ?ς κεραυνο? και δια της ?λης. Γ Υποφ?ροντας ?χραντα / ουσιαστικ?ν / ο Ποιητ?ς ανατε?νεται βραδυφλεγ?ς αυτ?χειρας εξυπακο?οντας πολ?ωρους ?πνους. Δ Τα υποψ?φια λ?θη λιγοστε?οντας. Ε Ορατ?ν τε π?ντων και αορ?των ιερουργ?ντας την αποκρομμ?ωση. Ζ Ο Ποιτ?ς ?χει τ?ποτα / βλ?πε τους αναχωρ?σαντες /. Η Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: η τρ?λα μ’ αρ?σει· γελοιοποιε? την ?παρξη· ας αν?ψω απ’ τη μ?να μου. Θ Συνταχτικ? δεν το γνοι?ζεται στην προσταγ? της μουσικ?τητας. Μαζ? και μ’ ?λλες ακ?μη λευτερι?ς, και τα νυ πα?ζονται κατ? την ?ννοια ?χος οπουδ?ποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμ?να εδ?, το χειμ?να εκε?· δε θ? ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγι?σουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ. Ι Ο Ποιητ?ς γυμν?ζει τη σκ?ψη σε απογ?μνωση. Κ Κι αν ε?ναι ?λληνας οφε?λει να σπουδ?ζει π?ντοτε της Αττικ?ς τη λεπτ?τητα, σε φως, βουν?, χωρ?φια και θ?λασσα. Διδ?σκει γλ?σσα η λεπτ?τητα το?τη. Λ Κι αν ε?ναι βαθι? πεπρωμ?νος ο Ποιητ?ς εκφρ?ζει το ανεξ?γητο του εξηγητο?· τυγχ?νει ν?μιμος δι?δοχος του επιστ?μονα και προκ?τοχ?ς του. Μ Στον αφρ? δεν ?χει δι?ρκεια· στο πατοκ?ζανο μα?νεται ο Ποιητ?ς. Ν Φλογοδ?αιτος και ποτ? ξελυτρωμ?νος. Ξ Ο Ποιητ?ς κ?ποτε πρ?πει να λ?ει: μεγ?λη καταν?λωση παρουσ?ας – γενε?τε και λ?γο μοναξι?ρηδες! Ο Ο Ποιητ?ς ε?ναι αμφ?φλοξ. Π Επιδ?χεται θαν?τους και αναστ?σεις. Ρ Ακροθωρ?ζει και υπ?ρχει σε ξαφνοκο?ταγμα. Σ Ε?ναι ουραγ?ς της μητ?ρας. Τ Αν?σπερος απ? ηλικ?α. Υ Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: να συμπ?σουν οι αγν?τητες. Μ?χρι την Κ?ρινθο του Σ?μπαντος ? μακρ?τερα. Φ Σε αν?τερη απελπισ?α. Χ Σε φαειν?τερη πεμπτουσ?α. Ψ Σε μια α?σθηση που πτηνο?ται. Ω Συγχωρ?ντας τους π?ντες. From Large Sized Logic [ Λογικ? μεγ?λου σχ?ματος ], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3]. (shrink)

From 2001 to 2004, Alain Badiou's lectures focused on the relationship between philosophy and the present moment. The "end of metaphysics," the "death of God," the meaning of life, the goals of society, and other perennial topics raise the question as to whether philosophy can ultimately be contemporary with individual human experience as its object. How can the present moment be legitimately addressed? In response to the classical philosophical issue of existence, Alain Badiou reflects on time not in the sense (...) of its constant unfolding but of its urgency in the present, of being fully engaged with what is taking place in our own lives. The seminar addresses the most fundamental role of philosophy: for Badiou, it cannot confine itself to narrow academic issues but must always return to its eternal question--what does it mean to be fully human, a subject, rather than merely an individual, a speaking animal? This book contains some of Badiou's most inspiring and original work, involving ideas very much at odds with the emphasis one finds in much postmodern philosophy on limitation, repetition, and death. At the same time, Badiou's ideas here are quite different from the modes of "vitalism" that we find in such modern thinkers as Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze. For Badiou, the distinctively human characteristic is the possibility of living one's life oriented by one or more truths--that is, intrinsically egalitarian and universalist ideas that are developed collectively in a variety of human practices. This seminar will serve as an ideal introduction to the practical as well as conceptual possibilities that Badiou's thought implies for human life. (shrink)

Genealogy is a critical method employed most notably by Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Although he does not explicitly acknowledge it, Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian linguist and philosopher of language, also uses this method. I examine the way these three thinkers construe both the critical and the affirmative roles of genealogy. The 'affirmative role' refers to what genealogy itself valorizes in exposing the limits of the universal claims it critiques. I identify three tasks of the critical role of genealogy and (...) explore what I feel are two limitations of its affirmative side: the anonymity of Nietzsche's 'eternal return of the same' and the indeterminacy of Foucault's 'undefined work of freedom'. I argue that a judicious use of Bakhtin's notions of 'voice' and 'dialogized heteroglossia' can help genealogy to overcome these two limitations without resurrecting the totalizing systems of thought that all three thinkers repudiate. Key Words: Bakhtinian 'voice' • Friedrich Nietzsche • genealogy • 'heteroglossia' • Michel Foucault • Mikhail Bakhtin • multi-voiced body • power resistance • will-to-power. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality warns that revenge’s reactiveness can jeopardize salutary change in shared values. I identify an overlooked revenge-mitigating praxis in the spatial movements of Nietzsche’s fictional prophet Zarathustra, who seeks collaborators to overcome Christian morality and create new world-affirming values. Zarathustra’s well-known response to revenge, specifically the revenge against time undergirding interpersonal revenge, is willing the eternal return of the same. But he also exemplifies a more available response. “Passing by” is a coming (...) close to, followed by a veering away from, the most insistent embodiments of reigning values. Although Nietzsche inspires agonistic political theory, Zarathustra avoids direct contest in the usual late modern milieux, which he finds constitutively vulnerable to revenge. When revenge floods the communal passional reservoir, it forestalls recovery—essential to new-values creation—of passions effaced by reigning values. Zarathustra still approaches the usual milieux to know the present-past as the raw material of the future. But by then veering away he practices relaxing his value-creative will and not raging against the present-past. Repeated passing by helps him accept and thus better take up the raw material of the future and accept value change’s slow temporality. Since passing by’s concern is the value horizon, not the political sphere, and since it minimizes direct resistance, it may be less reactive to the political sphere than directly contestatory versions of “refusal.” Analysis of Gandhi’s value-praxis confirms passing by as a tactic for less reactive value-creation and as a lens on the reactiveness of different value-praxes. (shrink)

Leo Strauss's philosophical Bewegung in light of Nietzsche -- The will to power and the philosopher of the future -- Philosophy and the natural right of the eternal return of the same -- The anti-theological religion of the eternal return.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"He Who Eats Me Will Live Because of Me":Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas's Johannine Theology of the Missions of the Divine PersonsDaniel M. Garland Jr.IntroductionIn the Bread of Life Discourse of John 6, Jesus begins his teaching by stating that he is the true bread from heaven sent from God to give life to the world. After "the Jews" (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι)1 boast that Moses gave their fathers manna to eat (...) in the wilderness, Jesus makes a contrast between the manna in the wilderness and himself as the "bread of life" (6:35). While the title "Bread of Life" carries a metaphorical sense, Jesus climaxes his discourse by [End Page 1171] insisting that believers eat of (ἐσθίω) or gnaw on (τρώγω) his flesh and drink his blood. Then, in John 6:57, Jesus makes the startling claim: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats [τρώγω] me will live because of me." Jesus, here, connects his mission with the giving of his flesh as food for eternal life. At the same time, Jesus declares in John 17:3 that eternal life is predicated on the knowledge of God the Father and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. There seems to be a tension here in John's Gospel. Do we have eternal life by eating or by knowing?This article will explore the gift of eternal life communicated through the sacramental eating and drinking of Christ's body and blood and its relation to our coming to know the Father and the Son. It will be divided into two main parts. The first part will explore this as revealed in the text of the Gospel of John by examining what it means "to know God." Next, I will show that Jesus has the power to give eternal life because he is Life itself and that John points to the root of this power as being derived from Jesus's procession from the Father. Then, I will take up Jesus's mutual abiding/indwelling language in John 6 and elsewhere in the Gospel and how this contributes to bringing eternal life to believers. The second part will show how St. Thomas's teaching on the missions of the divine persons further clarifies Jesus's teaching in the Gospel of John that eternal life comes about through both eating Christ's flesh and coming to the knowledge of the Father and the Son and also gives greater theological insight into the Johannine theology of the Eucharist as the source of eternal life.Gospel of JohnJohn 17 and the Relational Name of the Father and the Son in Relation to Eternal LifeIn John 17, Jesus prays from the vantage point of already having completed (17:4; τελειώσας) the work that the Father has given him to do. The work that Jesus speaks of is both a past event, consisting of the signs that witness that the Father has sent him (see 5:36; τελειώσω), but also the future event of the Cross(see 19:30; τελειώσω),2 Here, Jesus requests glorification by the Father in order that he, as Son, may glorify the Father in return. This mutual glorification is rooted in the power (ἐξουσίαν) that the Father has given to the Son over all flesh—the power to grant eternal life (17:2). Jesus [End Page 1172] then defines eternal life in 17:3 as "to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent." There is an intimate connection, here, between knowing the Father ("the only true God") and Jesus. Eternal life is not merely knowledge of the Father, but knowledge of the Father as the one who sent the Son.3 How does one know the Father? John 17 suggests that it is through the revelation of his name. There is a repeated refrain in John 17 of Jesus making known the Father's name (17:6, 26) and keeping them in this name (17:11, 12). Looking back in the Gospel, we can recall that in John 5:43, Jesus associates the "Father's name" with his mission: "I have come in my Father's name." The same can... (shrink)

The practical difficulties that trouble any effort to discuss “pluralism” in American literary studies can be glimpsed in the following exchange. In a 1980 interview in the Literary Review of Edinburgh, Ken Newton put this question to Derrida:It might be argued that deconstruction inevitably leads to pluralist interpretation and ultimately to the view that any interpretation is as good as any other. Do you believe this and how do you select some interpretations as being better than others?Derrida replied:I am not (...) a pluralist and I would never say that every interpretation is equal but I do not select. The interpretations select themselves. I am a Nietzschean in that sense. You know that Nietzsche insisted on the fact that the principle of differentiation was in itself selective. The eternal return of the same was not repetition, it was a selection of the more powerful forces. So I would say that some are more powerful than others. The hierarchy is between forces and not between true and false.1­­The irony of Newton’s identification of pluralism with the very interpretive irresponsibility that it accuses others—Derrida foremost among them—of embracing is certainly not lost on those critics who call themselves pluralists; it comes as no surprise to them that Derrida declines to join their company. Nevertheless, the breezy gloss of pluralism as “the view that any interpretation is as good as any other” is bound to seem plausible to the large numbers of readers for whom the word denotes a generalized tolerance the refusal of dogmatism. That Derrida should be called upon to dissociate himself from pluralism is in fact symptomatic of the profound confusion surrounding the term. At present, the pervasiveness of such loose talk compels pluralists to defend themselves regularly against this kind of misinterpretation. Thus, the colloquial reading of pluralism that construes it as mere relativism, the absence of principled constraints, is frequently acknowledged, if only to be rejected. Even Bruch Erlich must emphasize that pluralism does not want “a totally free critical market, for that involves the proliferation of a hundred flowers, what Booth dismissively terms ‘chaotic warfare.’ ”2 1. James Kearn and Ken Newton, “An Interview with Jacques Derrida,” Literary Review 14 , p.21.2. Bruce Erlich, “Amphibolies: On the Critical Self-Contradictions of ‘Pluralism,’ ” this volume, p. 527; all further references to this essay will be included in the text. Ellen Rooney teaches English and women’s studies at Brown University. She is currently at work on a study entitled Seductive Reasoning: Pluralism and the Problematic of General Persuasion. (shrink)

In the work of Nietzsche, sacrifice can only sacrifice itself over and over because what it seeks to overcome makes this sacrifice of itself both necessary and useless . The truth is eternally postponed in a necessary sacrificial gesture that can only sacrifice itself, thereby rendering itself useless . In the attempt to step beyond nihilism, that is, in the attempt to negate nihilism, one repeats the negation characteristic of nihilism. One becomes inextricably implicated in the move of nihilistic sacrifice. (...) The sacrifice of the sacrifice characteristic of nihilism , that is, the sacrifice of sacrifice, can only take place as the impossibility of its realization. One, therefore, produces or performs an interminable step/not beyond, an incessant step beyond that eternally returns. (shrink)

This book is both a concise and lucid introduction to Nietzsche and an original contribution to critical debates concerning Nietzsche interpretation and reception. This overview takes issue with the prevailing tendency to focus on Nietzsche’s later work, which reaches its extreme with Heidegger’s almost exclusive focus on the group of late notes posthumously collected as The Will to Power. Vattimo aims to mediate between two prominent hermeneutic readings of Nietzsche: Wilhelm Dilthey’s view that Nietzsche’s work fits into the nineteenth-century tradition (...) of the philosophy of life and Heidegger’s belief that Nietzsche is best understood as the author of a pair of ontological doctrines, the will to power and the eternal return of the same. Vattimo aims to show that Nietzsche’s early interest in cultural and historical criticism can be found throughout his corpus and that it informs, and helps to explain, Nietzsche’s later doctrines and writings. This allows us to understand these later doctrines in a deeper way, to see their connections with his wider concerns, and thus to make greater sense of Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole. This working hypothesis guides Vattimo through his elegant exposition of the basic views of the early and late Nietzsche, from the philological beginnings and the musings on Dionysus through the so-called positivist phase of the middle period up to the philosophy of Zarathustra and the fragmented insights that bespeak the will to power. Throughout, Vattimo’s intellectual agenda is to present the philosophical relevance of a cultural criticism that does not let itself be reduced to a merely literary presentation of the psychology of decadence and nihilism, or to the grand ontological-metaphysical finale that Heidegger had in mind in his monumental Nietzsche studies. As an appendix, Vattimo provides a history of Nietzsche reception in Europe that counters the narrow Anglo-American bias of much English-language Nietzsche scholarship. (shrink)

Nietzsche regarded 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his most important work, and his story of the wandering Zarathustra has had enormous influence on subsequent culture. Nietzsche uses a mixture of homilies, parables, epigrams and dreams to introduce some of his most striking doctrines, including the Overman, nihilism, and the eternal return of the same. This edition offers a new translation by Adrian Del Caro which restores the original versification of Nietzsche's text and captures its poetic brilliance. Robert Pippin's (...) introduction discusses many of the most important interpretative issues raised by the work, including who is Zarathustra and what kind of 'hero' is he and what is the philosophical significance of the work's literary form? The volume will appeal to all readers interested in one of the most original and inventive works of modern philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche regarded 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' as his most important work, and his story of the wandering Zarathustra has had enormous influence on subsequent culture. Nietzsche uses a mixture of homilies, parables, epigrams and dreams to introduce some of his most striking doctrines, including the Overman, nihilism, and the eternal return of the same. This edition offers a new translation by Adrian Del Caro which restores the original versification of Nietzsche's text and captures its poetic brilliance. Robert Pippin's (...) introduction discusses many of the most important interpretative issues raised by the work, including who is Zarathustra and what kind of 'hero' is he and what is the philosophical significance of the work's literary form? The volume will appeal to all readers interested in one of the most original and inventive works of modern philosophy. (shrink)

This review essay focuses on the recent two-volume Nietzsche-Kommentar which is devoted to Also Sprach Zarathustra but it utilizes the slightly earlier one on Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. This essay is centred upon four key Nietzschean themes: the death of God, the Übermensch, Zarathustra's animals, and the eternal return of the same. The works by Grätz and Kaufmann are detailed and massive commentaries on two of Nietzsche's greatest books and are recommended for all who are intent on understanding (...) Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)

Just how eternal is the Eternal Return? This article examines how Foucault's readings of Nietzsche and of Deleuze critically revise the Return so as to arrive at a concept of contingency that is itself contingent. I argue that this archaeological/genealogical rereading problematises the Return as presented in Difference and Repetition; when the Return is presented as ‘the form of change [that] does not change’, it risks returning eternally to the Same – for all (...) its avowed affirmation of difference. By returning the Return to its own historically contingent epistemic conditions of possibility, Foucault repeats Deleuze's philosophy with maximum difference. (shrink)

Edelstein's death in 1965 came when he had completed only four of eight projected chapters on the idea of progress in antiquity, and these four chapters in the history of this idea take us from Xenophanes to the start of the Augustan Age. What the book is best in is scholarship of the footnote sort. Edelstein's major thesis is that the ancients exhibited something more than an isolated or peripheral interest in progress, and that, consequently, the supposed antithesis between the (...) pagan, cyclic notion of time and the Christian, linear and progressive notion of time is a misguided oversimplification. But in his introduction, in which he discusses the notion of progress in general, Edelstein has failed to give an account of the relation of the notion of progress to the notion of historical time which would provide the critically justified ground for saying that emphasis on progress requires similar conceptions of time. Progressivism, after all, is, and in antiquity often was, compatible with catastrophism; and the latter is, at least in its ancient garb, out of step with the eschatological notion of history which finds expression in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. What Edelstein has done is to draw our attention to the polymorphous and detailed thought on progress in antiquity—often despite his own attempts to force a unity or organicism on the phenomena where there appears to be none. But when we go in search of the wider context, the conviction persists that the repeated forms and instances of progressivism in antiquity strain at but do not break free from the hegemony of moira and eternal return—even though it be not eternal return of the same.—E. A. R. (shrink)