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December 17, 2004
This conference on Nietzsche looks interesting. It asks some good questions:
"Does Nietzsche, as some critics have argued, merely idealise time, transitoriness and difference in the same way that his predecessors idealised permanence, being and identity? What are the new conceptions of time that Nietzsche has to offer? What kind of historian was Nietzsche himself? What kinds of 'temporal' histories and 'historical' philosophies did Nietzsche write/or fail to write?"
A good chance to explore the eternal return chestnut.
As an aside the more I struggle with Klossowski on this the more I come to appreciate Joannes insights about text, subjectivity and reading. She says that
"...reading philosophical texts—and Nietzsche’s in particular—accomplishes a formative function in the subject’s life, specifically in terms of identity and desire. Acquiring the ability to ‘read’ and assess a philosophical text necessitates the incorporation of its structures and values. Reading requires a reorganisation of the self according to the imperatives of the text, to the extent that one becomes a product of the text one reads."
How true.
Maybe that is why I struggle with Klowwoski's text on Nietzsche. I resist becoming a product of this text.
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I think some might suggest that is precisely the 'gift' of literature (as something being worthy of wearing inverted commas, and as a side note I will gladly argue with anyone who asserts that such commas are *never* appropriate); 'literature' resists/desists/defers (Lacou-Labarthe) any completely satisfactory incorporation, etc. And yet what if text is all there *is*...at the end of the day. Anyway I admire your persistence with a work that clearly resists on a number of levels. Just wondering what a *successful* rendering as "product" might mean.
When Rene Girard claims that all human relations are simply based on imitation, I get a little weary. Or leary, or something. Even if one could successfully trace the origins of individual palimpsests of personality, habit, belief,etc. I'm not sure any problems would be solved. But it's certainly still true (that we are products in this sense), if one can still, thank ___, allow for the madness of decision.
Sorry these comments are admittedly scattered and unclear. Hopefully someone can make some sense of them.