Thought-Factory.net Philosophical Conversations Public Opinion philosophy.com Junk for code
PortElliot2.jpg
'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'
RECENT ENTRIES
SEARCH
ARCHIVES
Weblog Links
Library
Fields
Philosophers
Writers
Connections
Magazines
E-Resources
Academics
Other
www.thought-factory.net
'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'

Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human « Previous | |Next »
December 7, 2006

I have just bought Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human: A Book for free Spirits (2 vols) ---his expression of a personal and cultural crisis in which he starts to put the Enlightenment (Voltaire) and Romanticism (Schopanhauer and Wagner) into question. Nietzsche, as a free spirit, stands in the former tradition to dig himself out of the latter. It is a neglected text--I read a musty old library copy ten years ago ---one that is generally seen to be of little interest to those postmodernists interested in Nietzsche.

The style is aphoristic in the manner of a Montaigne or La Rochefoucauld. The text is written by a cultural critic who is engaged in a diagnosis of what ails his culture and threatens its future; a critic working within the Enlightenment tradition of radical ethical critique; one who works away to expose illlusions, false hope and dangerous palliatives so as to ensure a future worth having and a life worth living.

It reaches back beyond the Enlightenment to classical philosophy's medical/ethical conception of philosophy ( eg., as practised by Epictetus or Seneca), as an art of healing us from the suffering caused by believing in bad ideas. bad ideas make us sick and unhappy. So we need some diagnosis and therapy to recover our health. It is this conception of philosophy----spirit physicians is what Nietzsche calls its practitioners--that is overlooked by much of the secondary literature on Nietzsche.

next

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:23 PM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

Earlier today it occurred to me that we might be able to get a handle on "the Ubermensch" through a v very close, detailed reading of how Nietzsche describes what is "human." If we can get a firm grasp on what is "human," we'll be in a much better position to understand what it could mean to go beyond the merely human condition.

At present I'm thinking that the human condition is going to get characterized in HAH by way of a naturalistic analysis of resentment and the need for transcendence -- a naturalistic analysis of anti-naturalism, if you will. The "Ubermensch" would then be interpreted as a stage of existence in which naturalism is affirmed (anti-anti-naturalism is rejected) without giving up on transcendence and tranfiguration.

Dr.
the trajectory from fettered spirit is to free spirits could be one of becoming post-human. That is how many understand in a digital culture.