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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

a Dionysian affirmation of the world « Previous | |Next »
December 25, 2005

A quote from Nietzsche's The Will to Power (pp. 84-5):

My new path to a 'Yes'. -- Philosophy as I have hitherto understood and lived it is a voluntary quest for even the most detested . . . side of existence . . . . 'How much truth can a spirit endure, how much truth does a spirit dare?' -- this became for me the real standard of value. Error is cowardice -- every achievement of knowledge is a consequence of courage, of severity towards oneself, of cleanliness towards oneself -- Such an experimental philosophy as I live anticipates experimentally even the possibility of the most fundamental nihilism; but this does not mean that it must halt at a negation, a No, a will to negation. It wants rather to cross over to the opposite of this -- to a Dionysian affirmation of the world as it is, without subtraction, exception or selection - it wants the eternal circulation: -- the same things, the same logic and illogic of entanglements. The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian relationship to existence -- my formula for this is amor fati.

It is part of this state to perceive not merely the necessity of these sides of existence hitherto denied, but their desirability; and not their desirability merely in relation to the sides hitherto affirmed (perhaps as their complement or precondition), but for their own sake, as the more powerful, more fruitful, truer side of existence, it which its will finds clearer expression (Section 1041).


It is not just countering the negative with the positive (affirmation of life).It also involves an unblinking and unbroken courage in the face of the horror and terror of life.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:49 PM | | Comments (0)
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