Nothing becomes clear in Thus Spake Zarathustra. For as much as is written about the ubermensch, for as much as freshmen in a survey course talk about it, remarkably little is provided about it (and, after speaking with a Nietzschean scholar, this reader was told most of it comes from Nietzsche's incomplete and deteriorated notes rather than a published work).
J
I read it quite recently. I found it fairly interesting as a book, but as a philosophical text, found it fairly unenlightening. I find myself distanced from Neitzsche's views on the philosophical spectrum, but I don't honestly feel that if I was an existentialist I would find the book any more enlightening.
Okay, I agree, I used the wrong word, nothing becomes *clear* in Zarathustra. It's quasi-religious text, an outburst of elaborate prose-poetry, wisdom rather than philosophy; but surely Nietzsche realised that his theory of Eternal Recurrence could never be nothing more than a subjective-metaphysical ideal/notion.... I suspect he fell in love with the idea then gradually realised he could go nowhere with it philosophically. I reckon he cunningly knew that the ideas/beliefs that prove to be the most successful are the ones which cannot be verified as being either true or false. Reincarnation, eternal recurrence - they're in the same league.Originally Posted by Jack of Hearts
Apparently it's in the research that he intended eternal recurrence to be cosmological, that he saw space not as empty but as an expression of action, positively curved and therefore cyclical- this according to many sources, not the least of which is Walter Kaufmann... it seems his cosmology borrows heavily from pre-Socratic philosophy (especially from Heraclitus and Anaximander).
Beyond that, this reader doesn't have any knowledge to comment on the rest of your post. Except, perhaps, to say lower division philosophy does treat eternal recurrence (and teach it) in the way you've presented it, for better or worse, at every university this reader has been at.
J
In Ecco Homo Nietzsche confirms the eternal recurrence is an IDEA,his real idea form the abyss. In other words its a tool to give meaning to his life whatever suffering he has to bear within it. Nietzsche understood as well as anyone that its not always what is real that matters but what is believed... As pilate said to jesus 'And what is truth'?
If eternal recurrence is from the abyss, it is a true monster.
Ps how would a society be like full of supermen, if they are, as portrayed, solitary, anarchic and wild, dionysiac; then again about the apollinian and dionysiac balance presented in the birth of tragedy, i did or could not see the balance, even those wild passions of nietzche went mad in furies and frenzies, so i dont see his philosophy meant for "healthy" people, eventhough he mentions it continually with his adoration of sex, his view of freedom and as i see positive possibilities of man, but the "shadow" that follows the traveller becomes him....
Nietzsche is a devil, now that's new, not.
Yes, Nietzsche's attempt to conceptualize an ideal version of man shows to me that he lacked wisdom and became intoxicated with his own self-importance and creative verve.
He flamed idealism and then tried to create his own ideal vision with the ubermensch. He should've jacked in when he arrived at his ultimate nihilism - "Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless."
But he couldn't resist being *the world-historic monster*. He knew only too well that people would take his philosophy and run with it into horror. I guess in the end he was *human, all too human*. He never truly rid himself of the religiousness he so vehemently attacked.
Nietzsche flamed and never lied, which is more than can be said for some people.
He was a master manipulator of words ... that's fairly close to lying.
What is truth?
Clever lies.
Possibly.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote