Friedrich Nietzsche

In Out of This World, Peter Hallward argues that Deleuze's philosophy is, in spite of its proclaimed Nietzscheanism, intrinsically nihilistic. This article defends Deleuze against this accusation by reassessing his relationship to Nietzsche. I argue that both thinkers pose a similar problem, that of agency, and that the modus operandi of both for solving it relies on viewing agency as experimentation. The paper highlights the strong pragmatic dimension at play in Deleuze's philosophy: Deleuze aims to penetrate increasingly deeply into this (...) very world and to provide us with tools for intensifying our sensitivity to and engagement with it. To bring this into view, I offer a parallel reading of Nietzsche's and Deleuze's account of the production of our empirical experience, their critical stance towards such experience, and their means of overcoming it by engaging fully with problematic aspects of reality. (shrink)

In this précis of The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (OUP 2021), I summarize the keys claims of the book. The book describes, develops, and defends an underappreciated methodological tradition: the tradition of pragmatic genealogy, which aims to identify what our loftiest and most inscrutable conceptual practices do for us by telling strongly idealized, but still historically informed stories about what might have driven people to adopt and elaborate them as they did. What marks out this methodological (...) tradition, I argue, is that it synthesizes two genres of philosophical genealogy that are standardly set against each other: state-of-nature fictions on the one hand and patiently documentary historiography on the other. These two genres of genealogy are usually taken to be mutually exclusive and to answer to radically different philosophical interests and temperaments. But I offer a systematic account of a tradition that combines both genres into a single genealogical method, augmenting genealogy’s power and range by harnessing the strengths and possibilities of both genres. (shrink)

Esta nueva edición de "Nietzsche. Profeta de una edad trágica", texto aparecido por primera vez en 1945, es mucho más que una reimpresión que busque rescatar del olvido una pieza central de la filosofía argentina. No sólo cuenta con un valioso estudio preliminar que sirve al mismo tiempo de guía de lectura del texto, así como de breve introducción al pensamiento de Carlos Astrada, sino que trashuma entre los palimpsestos que hacen a su historia y sentidos, los cuales se mueven (...) con mayor o menor sutileza entre pasado y futuro, metafísica y política, poesía y filosofía. -/- This new edition of "Nietzsche. Profeta de una edad trágica", a text that first appeared in 1945, is much more than a reprint that seeks to rescue from oblivion a central piece of Argentine philosophy. Not only does it have a valuable preliminary study that serves both as a reading guide to the text and as a brief introduction to Carlos Astrada's thought, but it also wanders among the palimpsests that make up its history and meanings, which move with greater or lesser subtlety between past and future, metaphysics and politics, poetry and philosophy. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill, whose relevance for Nietzsche’s late work has been documented by recent research, is not directly mentioned in On the Genealogy or Morality (1887). This article argues that Mill’s On Liberty (1859) nevertheless played a crucial role in the development of the Genealogy. Following a source-based methodology, three major references demonstrate how Nietzsche used On Liberty as a resource as he initiated and developed his own exploration into the origin of morality. After tracing Nietzsche’s reading of Mill through (...) pencil marks in his copy of On Liberty, I discuss the reappearance of Mill’s motives and terminology as well as the explanatory power of Mill as a source for the respective sections in the Genealogy. It becomes clear to what extent Nietzsche adapts Mill and how he turns Mill’s own weapons against him through skillful transformations. The article concludes that instead of delivering the “better” Mill, Nietzsche builds up a fruitful tension between a then-common take on morality and its transgression. (shrink)

Quid est veritas? Skeptical Implications of Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne. This paper aims to examine the reach of the question “Was ist also Wahrheit?” – which introduces the definition of truth given by Nietzsche in Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (1873). The question has undoubtedly an analogy in the question with which Pilate responds to Jesus in the Gospel of John. Starting with an analysis of the direct and recognized sources of Nietzsche’s text, this contribution (...) shows how the Gospel background is, for Nietzsche, indirectly no less than directly, a crucial comparison that makes a decisive contribution to his conception of language. (shrink)

In the “Whirl of Being.” The Birth of The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Friedrich Hebbel. As a result of dubious editorial policy, Nietzsche research has always dealt only with the text of the later editions of The Birth of Tragedy from 1874/78 and 1886, in the erroneous assumption that these largely resemble the first printing. Surprisingly, the 1872 edition is therefore virtually unknown. It does, however, show significant differences from the later editions, especially since it exhibits a (...) strong influence of Hebbel’s tragic worldview that is later obscured in favor of Wagner. The first edition is more nihilistic, poetic, and powerful; Nietzsche’s later revisions have rather diluted the Birth of Tragedy’s argument and given it a different direction. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Approach to the Political. An Essay on BGE VIII. This article aims to present the aesthetic basis of Nietzsche’s dealings with politics in BGE VIII. In order to fulfill this task, the present text is divided into two parts: in the first part, I discuss how politics appears in BGE VIII as linked to a dispute over the concepts of “Völker” and “Vaterländer.” Understanding the meaning of these concepts requires an analysis of what I call the Nationenfrage. This (...) question characterizes a theoretical effort in Europe to establish an authentic sense of personal and social identity. The contextualization of this theme is decisive for the second part of this article, in which I present Nietzsche’s strategies for carrying forth the debate concerning political phenomena, figures and events, based on purely aesthetic coordinates. The guiding theme will be the political phenomenon of democracy, which Nietzsche approaches both in BGE VIII and GS V. However, my goal is to make clear that Nietzsche’s interest in politics is conditioned by his interest in showing the aesthetic procedure of his philosophizing. (shrink)

Este artigo visa refletir sobre a moral contemporânea a partir da ética de Nietzsche, tendo como foco principal a sua _Genealogia da Moral_ e, como contraponto a ser problematizado, o livro _The weariness of the self_ do sociólogo francês Alain Ehrenberg. De início, para analisar alguns tipos morais relevantes na primeira obra, revisamos o itinerário genealógico entre a “vontade de verdade” cristã e o niilismo budista (ou “ceticismo em matéria de moral”), destacando ainda alguns comentários de Nietzsche em torno de (...) Kant e o utilitarismo inglês. A autocrítica kantiana do conhecimento, afinal, manteve intacta a valoração negativa (cristã) da vida ao não questionar o valor em si da verdade. Por sua vez, ao arrogar o bem definitivo à felicidade, o utilitarismo inglês tornou a compaixão cristã compatível com o “ceticismo em matéria de moral”. A partir disso, argumentamos que a nova figura moralmente exemplar — não sendo mais a do cristão, alvo principal da genealogia nietzschiana — é a do budista, uma vez que este adere integralmente o niilismo. Em um segundo momento deste estudo, problematizamos a tese de Ehrenberg segundo a qual a figura do “indivíduo soberano” teria hoje se tornado hegemônica sob a égide da categoria da depressão. Não sendo concebível, sob o prisma nietzschiano, tal “indivíduo soberano” deprimido descrito por Ehrenberg, observamos, por fim, que é o niilismo que efetivamente se prolifera hoje: a partir da ilusão de superação total da moralidade, a moral contemporânea cultiva a fraqueza e o cansaço fisiológico através de um programa de combate irrestrito ao sofrimento. (shrink)

In this article, I raise an interpretive problem presented by Nietzsche's adulatory attitude toward Epicurus during his middle period. I make the case that Epicurus' ethics is in several major respects identical to that of Schopenhauer. This is problematic for interpreters of Nietzsche insofar as Schopenhauer's ethics provides the main grounds for Nietzsche's emphatic rejection of him as a life-denying ascetic. How is it then, I ask, that the middle Nietzsche felt he was able to embrace Epicurus? I argue that (...) the difference between Nietzsche's appraisals of Epicurus and Schopenhauer can be accounted for in terms of the difference in their respective responses to suffering in general and psychological conflict in particular. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Nietzsche resorts to a typical, ambitious Young Hegelian dialectical grand narrative to dramatically frame Modernity, elevate his own critical theory to unmatchable heights and find for himself a superior, unique position as Critic and Destiny, having as his main enemy the philistines (common human beings), and that which politically corresponds to them: civil society and democracy. Nietzsche’s epochal narrative exhibits a classical dialectical progression from Error/Negation, through Escalation, to Crisis, then Negation of Negation (Inversion), (...) and promised New Age, all of which entails the unwelcome consequences of self-aggrandizing exaggerations, determinism, negativism, binarism, otherworldliness, transhuman idealizations, and racial-caste-hierarchism that compromise the otherwise interesting side of his critical suggestions, once deflated, on culture and morality. (shrink)

Cheerfulness or serenity (Heiterkeit) is one of the most important themes in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Throughout his writings, from first to last, he can be found wrestling with conceptions of cheerfulness and promoting a cheerful mode of philosophizing. Despite the importance and recurrence of the theme of cheerfulness in Nietzsche’s entire œuvre, there have been relatively few studies specifically devoted to it. An important debate on cheerfulness has recently taken place in the literature on Nietzsche between Robert Pippin and Lanier Anderson (...) and Rachel Cristy. Both sides of the debate have explored Nietzsche’s practice of cheerfulness in direct relation to Montaigne. According to Pippin, Nietzsche never succeeds in writing with the kind of cheerfulness of Montaigne. In contrast, Anderson and Cristy have contended that both Nietzsche and Montaigne conceive of cheerfulness as a complex, non-naïve spiritual state or attitude that is to be cultivated through the practice of philosophy as a way of life. According to Anderson and Cristy, this is a deep form of love of life that both Nietzsche and Montaigne practice and perhaps achieve at least in part by and through writing. In this essay, we aim to contribute to this debate by offering a threefold argument. First, we argue that Nietzsche conceives of cheerfulness not only as a psychological ideal, as a desirable state or attitude of the spirit, but also as an aesthetic ideal, as a desirable quality or style of thinking and writing (sections 1–2). Second, we argue that, in addition to Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson is an equally important but neglected influence on Nietzsche’s conception and practice of cheerfulness (section 2). Third, by reconstructing Nietzsche’s self-presentation as a cheerful thinker and writer in the 1886 prefaces and in Ecce homo (1888), we conclude that it is possible to argue that starting from his middle writings Nietzsche thinks and writes cheerfully in some of his works, including a number of his most significant texts (section 3). (shrink)

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight (2018), his latest novel to-date, contains nostalgic elements of strangeness and cartography. In this paper, I short-circuit such themes with health under medical humanities, which heeds a Nietzschean counsel of close reading in literature. To do so, I explore the case of Rachel's illness, namely her epileptic seizures, as an instance that drives her impetus for active forgetting and eventual convalescence. A close hermeneutical reading of the novel can reveal that both of Nietzsche’s ideas on active forgetting (...) and convalescence provide traction in terms of what this paper constructs as Rachel’s pathography or narration of illness. Shifting the focus from the main narrator, Nathaniel, I argue that it is not the novel's reliance on memory but the subplot events of Nathaniel's sister and her epilepsy that form a substantial case of medical or health humanities. (shrink)

Nietzsche is a silent interlocutor in Francis Fukuyama’s polemic The End of History and the Last Man (1992). But Fukuyama, I argue, ignores the rationale behind Nietzsche’s critique of the liberal worldview and misinterprets his call for the revaluation of all values. By exploring the relations between the end of history, the last man and the need for revaluation, this chapter aims to reconstruct the relevant aspects of Nietzsche’s critique of liberalism, which challenges the political vision of The End of (...) History. I contend that Nietzsche’s exposure of the conceptual and value inversions as central yet perilous sources of legitimacy in modern ‘industrial civilization’ continues to resonate today and deserves critical attention. (shrink)

Nietzsche commits himself to a practice of honesty (Ehrlichkeit) in Schopenhauer as Educator. I argue that this practice is an adaptation of Diogenes’ parrhēsia, the Cynic virtue of outspokenness, and that Nietzsche’s commitment to Ehrlichkeit increases from 1874–1888. I emphasize the interpersonal dimensions of Ehrlichkeit and parrhēsia, and I resist the widespread tendency to conflate Nietzsche and Diogenes in terms of shamelessness. I demonstrate how, using Diogenes as an exemplar, Nietzsche gradually renounces the scholarly pretence of hiding the personal significance (...) of his opinions behind needlessly theoretical language. This development culminates in his explosive autobiography, Ecce Homo, which I interpret against the grain of Nietzsche scholarship as the book of Ehrlichkeit, not Redlichkeit, par excellence. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is devoted to the work of a Russian revolutionary, writer and Marxist theorist V. I. Zasulich. The subject of consideration is the historical and philosophical views of the thinker, which are analyzed on the basis of her work on modern idealism and one of its brightest representatives – F. Nietzsche. The purpose of the work is to analyze V. I. Zasulich’s ideas about the philosophy of F. Nietzsche. Theoretical analysis. The works of V. I. Zasulich devoted to (...) the problems of research are highlighted, the thinkers whose views gave rise to her statements about F. Nietzsche are described. In the article, with the help of a systematic analysis, the socio-economic prerequisites of the philosophy of F. Nietzsche are revealed, the social base of his views is indicated, the thoughts of a German philosopher refl ecting the bourgeois worldview are highlighted. Conclusion. The conclusions of V. I. Zasulich are sustained in the spirit of a dialectical-materialistic approach, which is characterized by the allocation of economic conditions and the social base of philosophical views, consideration of the role of ideology in the development of society, the allocation of progressive and regressive trends of this development. However, having no thorough theoretical training, V. I. Zasulich not only does not single out the theoretical sources of the philosophy of F. Nietzsche, but also does not cover all its aspects. (shrink)

Apresenta a vida e fragmentos dos escritos de S. Francisco de Assis, em sentido positivo, a partir de chaves de leitura dos conceitos de dionisíaco e amor fati no filósofo germânico F. Nietzsche, bem como da integração do naturalismo em seus escritos.

Com os conceitos de vida como “organismo em interação com o meio”, de John Dewey, e de vida, como “vontade de potência”, de Friedrich Nietzsche, elaborados em resposta à problemática envolvendo questões de experiência estética, buscamos, no presente artigo, analisar possíveis similaridades entre eles e, assim, destacar a relevância atual dessas abordagens para se pensar uma estética menos canônica, mais atenta aos afetos e, portanto, mais próxima da vida.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo descrever e investigar a crítica nietzschiana a Teoria do Conhecimento e em que consiste o conhecimento para o filósofo. Com isso, evidenciamos que o método genealógico desenvolvido por Nietzsche viabiliza não somente solapar as posturas dogmáticas em relação ao conhecimento, mas também lançar bases para uma outra concepção de conhecimento onde o caráter perspectivístico da efetividade seja posto em destaque, possibilitando um permanente trabalho de investigação das condições de possibilidade de constituição das instâncias avaliativas (...) através das quais o ser humano se orienta. (shrink)

O presente trabalho busca desenvolver uma compreensão a respeito do conceito de trágico presente na obra de Friedrich Nietzsche, a partir de uma análise de O Nascimento da Tragédia. Discutimos as características da estética nietzschiana pensando o trágico utilizando as imagens poéticas de Apolo e Dioniso. Dessa forma o pensamento trágico aparece para Nietzsche como alternativa à metafísica tradicional e ao pessimismo de Schopenhauer. Nietzsche propõe uma reabilitação da arte e da vida pela retomada do movimento originário do devir.

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as relações entre o niilismo e as potências do falso, a partir dos conceitos de vida, arte e a crítica à vontade de verdade na filosofia de Nietzsche e no cinema de Orson Welles, através do filme A marca da maldade. O niilismo caracterizado como o movimento de deslocamento do centro de gravidade da vida e a invenção de outro mundo, o mundo verdadeiro, empreendida como forma de vingança articula-se com a vontade de verdade. (...) Nietzsche realiza por meio do método genealógico uma crítica ao valor da verdade. O homem verídico é, assim, a manifestação de uma vontade de nada que nega e deprecia a vida. A arte valoriza a aparência e faz emergir as potências do falso reestabelecendo a vida como vontade de aparência. (shrink)