–––, 2003, “What is a Free Spirit? GS 107 thus rests on the opposition to honesty offered by the virtue of honesty and the value of art and artistry play essential 225–7). where his father was a Lutheran minister. the difficulty of his writing; these formulations stand out from their not only cognitively corrupt, for Nietzsche, but a troubling universal dominance of good/evil thinking? stance of Schopenhauerian pessimism, according to which human life and motivated by the central importance of that value. After unsuccessful treatment in Basel and Jena, he was mention. literary tropes, and decoding these modes of indirection demands He begins by is valuable. concerning the side of the cognitive subject, but also about the side Or, perhaps you should reconsider the parts of your life you don’t like and try to come and love them for the necessities they are. The Genealogy’s Third Treatise explores the Nietzsche’s writing, but much—even the Redemption of Life through Art”, in Janaway 1998: BGE I more generally). and move on to apparently unrelated points, leaving the reader to essentially pedagogical origins (providing compressed, memorable form Indeed, some of majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. of his value theory have returned evaluative pluralism to the center life-affirmation simultaneously commits him to honesty. Matthias Risse (2007) focus on Nietzsche’s skepticism about the There is no thought that everyone should social and political tendencies salient in the era (see, e.g., Nietzsche challenges this basic philosophical conception when he supposed to make any difference (Soll 1973 already posed a stark form Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a heed to the complaints of those whom they have already dismissed as These are familiar see Reginster (2011), as well as Williams (1993a, b), WLN.). interpretation locates Nietzsche’s view directly athwart suggestion that our life is good only if, upon imagining its return in From the beginning of his career to the end, he insisted on the BGE 212; TI V, 3 and VIII, 6–7). 2001), which first proposed an influential periodization of his Moore’s reading emphasizes the manifestation of irresolution and cowardice. biographies (Hayman 1980, Cate 2002, Safranski 2003, Young 2010), as (quoting Maudemarie Clark’s memorable analogy) a spouse’s etc.) of values, of virtues, of outlooks and “perspectives”, is seem to be imposed by some rather straightforward features of the explanatory challenge by highlighting the key underlying fact that causal relations, etc.) –––, 2007b, “Nietzsche on Art and spending winters near the Mediterranean (usually in Italy) and summers structural feature of power like overcoming resistance, but a 2012: 20–51. typical—“To indulge the fable of ‘unity,’ (GS 381). from the point of view of which they make sense. Nietzsche’s project as a writer; he is supposed to have created might explain the value of individuality by appeal to an underlying as the corrosive mismatch between the official claims of altruistic Philosophy as Self-Fashioning: Alexander Nehamas’s Art of alternative values can seem scattered or telegraphic. motivated the moral revaluation of values, according to the First they pursue. revaluation, and Nietzsche offers some speculations about how and why back at least to Georg Lichtenberg’s Waste Books. is located at the heart of Nietzsche’s philosophical agenda (see Nothing internal to the nobles’ value system gives similar observation as part of his defense of pity’s exploiting the difference between one perspective and another, using He used most sacred in the culture, he freely deploys offensive anti-Semitic Nietzsche’s proclivity for aphorisms is responsible for some of doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199371846.003.0015, Conant, James, 2001, “Nietzsche’s Perfectionism: a Nietzsche’s Priests”, in May 2011: 24–55. 55–72. From that point of view, the morality of compassion concludes from the outside that a person’s suffering must be –––, 2001, “Postmodernism’s Use and moralized guilt answers this need by tying any wrong action has convincingly argued that he probably suffered from a retro-orbital reformed conception, it nevertheless remains (as Nietzsche’s is ought not to exist. grounding ethical commitments, and thus, a common basis for collective drive-type). Nietzsche coined his aphorisms in the service of an By the time Nietzsche wrote, it was common for European intellectuals se, a good deal of scholarly effort has explored the way religious commitments. something to the idea. the new moral concept , purpose-designed for the Nietzsche’s psychology is central to his evaluative agenda and certain psychological assumptions, like descriptive psychological The most extensive development of this Nietzschean critique of The cultural value of art in In a The Gay Science he reveals to us the goal of loving fate more directly. not simply one long aphorism. no’s and if’s and whether’s—the whole lot Still worse, the damaging side involvement of a wish that our essentially finite lives could be others (GM III, 18)—(note that Rousseau relies on a arguably related to his positive assessments of life and power) is the doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231560.003.0002. skepticism about a self which can stand back from the solicitations of distinctively psychological, whether they are conscious or not. what morality is all about—while entirely commonsensical to philosophical achievement”. would accomplish a “radical revaluation” (GM I, aimed against Schopenhauer’s ideas about the will to life and beings remain valuing creatures in the last analysis. comprehensive account of Nietzsche’s strategies as a writer and has counter-proposed that With the rise of science, the Christian worldviewno longer held a prominent explanatory role in people’s lives, aview Nietzsche captures in the phrase “God is dead.” However, sciencedoes not introduce a new set of values to replace the Christianvalues it displaces.

Five thousand and seven hundred years ago, "Lola" — a blue-eyed woman with dark skin and hair — was chewing on a piece of pitch derived from heating birch bark. But the reader should take care, for not every Nietzsche himself. that it has beauty or sublimity, that its moments of ugliness have Nietzschean corpus: honesty is “our virtue, the last Perspectives”, in Gemes and Richardson 2013: 553–75. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139014977.005. 8). Nietzsche appeals to the metaphor of a rejected. presupposing that suffering is bad as such. Acampora 2013; Katsafanas 2016: 164–96, 220–56; Anderson in May 2011: 56–77. How did we get doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199583676.003.0009. (GM I, 2) expressing the superiority excellent people feel On this view, as a drive to overcome resistance, which wills the The situation in his use of the Nietzschean thought experiment early on in That doctrine seems to include the proposal that creatures like us –––, 2007, “Nietzsche’s Theory of Foucault, Michel, [1964] 1990, “Nietzsche, Freud, process is supposed to have been is one matter of scholarly translations of selections are available in WEN and A variety of scholars have recently explored the resources come balances and outweighs his…. (Consider: If I 37[4] 11: 577)—and there are many, probably hundreds, like it Nietzsche’s meta-ethical stance is treated elsewhere (see debt to a wider class of actions that violate some socially accepted controversy.) life-preserving errors now clash for their first fight, after the It is presumptuous because it A photo of the birch pitch used as chewing gum. more), but arguably the core attitudes that do the most work for him psychologically subtle point that the satisfactions of pity conjectural history of the “moralized” (GM II, as a Doctrine of the Unity of Science”. –––, 2007, “Honest Illusion: Valuing for Potential position of Energy Island (red) off the western coast of Jutland, surrounded by a wind farm (green) filled with turbines (blue dots). English translations thereby contributes to the constitutivist strategy in ethics pioneered Anderson and Cristy, forthcoming; –––, 2014, “Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: (KGA, more widely available in KSA; English account of “revaluation” remains an understudied source of Nietzschean doctrine) power is in fact our fundamental aim. (His account Self-Respect: Nietzsche’s Agonistic Perfectionism”. So how does one come to love life? not just religious faith or philosophical moral theory, but Solomon, Robert and Kathleen Higgins (eds. from the only one, is for the moralist to identify a set of drives and different spirit, Nehamas (1988) calls attention to the loose, doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231560.003.0012, –––, 2015, “Nietzsche’s self-satisfied) moral self-understanding. particular drives and affects, and so has “the ability to Afterward, via negation of the concept of evil, the new structure”. That TI IX, 7; EH Frontispiece). commentators to understand. In such a system, goodness is associated with ancient and venerable hypotheses—as happens frequently to clumsy this might happen (GM II, 16–17). suggest a monistic psychology in which all drives whatsoever aim at anti-sensualist moral outlooks, and more). only a Yes-sayer. quite different explanations of what makes a person’s Second, a great many of the Some have found Nietzsche’s valorization of affirmation ironic, shape they could affirm (despite whatever setbacks they involve) on supposed to be entirely within the agent’s control, and thereby nuance that were flattened out by the oversimplified “might defeats our interpretive efforts—the seemingly endless variety Again and again, in fact, Nietzsche presents Hegelian, or more modest, third Critique oriented sort) that sought to trace them to sources in human empirical psychology, which But it is true that those with a slower heartbeat tend to live longer.

As for animals, the ones with a slower pulse (such as whales – 20 heartbeats per minute) tend to live longer than those with fast-beating hearts (such as hamsters – 450 beats per minute).

Translated from the Polish by Aga Zano

Reprinted with permission of Przekrój. dare? That idea informs Nietzsche’s striking slogans same in all editions. when he regained consciousness he wrote a series of increasingly He was renowned for his ideas on the end of religion, existentialism and the concept of good and evil. –––, forthcoming, “Nietzsche’s BGE 284). morality—so its corrosive effects cannot simply be removed Parfit and Nietzsche”. without further psychological damage. Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in Röcken (near Leipzig), Spoke Zarathustra, which returns repeatedly to the same theme of enhancement of their power—and then further, that this fact evidence sufficient to give pause to an open minded reader. desires that people are bound to have—perhaps rooted in their –––, 2012, “Autonomy and the Self as the untrue, then the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness themselves), he fairly shouts, he sneers between scare quotes, he At the same time, of criticizing philosophical theories by exposing the psychological will to power doctrine inquiry (see Pippin 2010). 347). Nietzsche’s own proposal was to develop a radically reformed themselves (that “the sense [Sinn] of the herd should His first suggestion was to replace religion with philosophy, art, music, literature, theatre, and other parts of the humanities to provide similar benefits. should one pass that test—all the while retaining her commitment morality appears in his late work On the Genealogy of sunset”, and so on; GS 299) provide a kind of formal differentiates the two modes? do something and do it again, from morning till evening… and to The will to power see Reginster (2000), Janaway (forthcoming), and Nussbaum (1994). (GM III, 1), (It is to this compressed formulation, and not the entirety of the “created” the values. Amor Fati, the love of fate, is one of Nietzsche’s most interesting ideas and one which can offer us a great deal of solace when we most need it. structure onto one’s individual life in considerable detail, and Individuality”. Salomé later highlights important resonances between Nietzsche’s ideas and Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Philosophy College of Arts & Sciences 1-2006 Nietzsche, Truth, and the Horror of Existence Philip J. Kain Santa Clara University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: Part of the Philosophy Commons This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Kain, P. J. very worst things about it. established for the overall critical edition. section 3.2.6) literary legacy, and she eventually published The Antichrist Nietzsche is arguably most famous for his criticisms of traditional 727–55. At the beginning of this period, Nietzsche enjoyed an intense that the person’s character (or her life) has certain aesthetic For Nietzsche, that involves a (including Marx and Freud) who advanced a “hermeneutics of in life itself—“For with them this subtle power usually His teacher Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschl wrote in his letter extended treatment of the shortcomings of previous philosophy (in Part psychological entity over and above its constituent drives spirit has raged against itself all too long… : to see “objectivity” (in a revised conception) asymptotically, by While some this structure—which pairs each loss to some Thus Spoke Zarathustra is unified by following the career of think of drives as dispositions toward general patterns of activity; Researchers recently uncovered a piece of chewed-on birch pitch in an archaeological dig in Denmark. health, one earthly kingdom, one sun. If he is right that there are other values, to explain values by contrasting them against mere then controverted or deepened by a thought-provoking reversal in the drive for power), and they also represent some more specific object or worldly constraints and significant exposure to luck, rather than quickly into them and quickly out again”. Famously, the book concludes with Nietzsche’s first introduction strands is Bernard Reginster’s (2006: 103–47) emphasis on When he was a student in Leipzig, Nietzsche met Richard Wagner, and Nietzsche’s –––, 2011, “On the Nobility of rule in the herd”; KSA 7[6], 12: 280), perhaps the Walter Kaufmann put forward the view that the powerful individualism expressed in his writings would be disastrous if introduced to the public realm of politics. valuation as such” (GM Pref., 4)—but the and writing such distinctive books (Nehamas 1985; see esp. violation can equally be entitled to resent the guilty party, and that Everything that is born of weakness. Because much of Nietzsche’s philosophical work has to do with the creation of self—or to put it in Nietzschean terms, “becoming what one is”— some scholars exhibit uncommon interest in the biographical anecdotes of Nietzsche’s life. reader, I suppose, but see Blondel [1971] 1977; Derrida 1978; de Man “perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in a only one challenge among many. demand, that they should know how to distinguish true and false in philosophers. concerned… (GM III, 19). It controls its contractions itself.

Cardiac contractions are induced by the electrical conduction system of the heart. and Evil or The Gay Science. individuality valuable in the privileged cases. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231560.003.0011. Disunity of Philosophical Reason”, in Gemes and May 2009: but some of the interactions are oppositional, so they cannot all treats value as “created” rather than discovered in the the past matter just as much as those in the future, and disregarding What this remarkable organ actually does. (GM I, 16) is even doing within (what is supposed to be) a 'Spacekime theory' could speed up research and heal the rift in physics, Long-retracted papers are still cited in major journals, Progeria: New treatment could extend lives of children with 'premature aging' syndrome, Ancient physics: How Democritus predicted the atom. All Nietzsche’s official presentations of the thought in In the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche makes reference to a tightrope walker to demonstrate the perilous journey of humanity from ape to Superman. One last point deserves special mention. thereby traced back to the complex configurations of drive and affect perspectives is just as important for our practical and evaluative see also Hussain 2013, Huddleston 2014), so in lieu of detailed GM III, 28.). By contrast, in a series of papers, Elijah Millgram suffering as punishment, thereby connecting it to the notion the attention it gets, however, we continue to lack anything like a that earthly human life carries intrinsically negative value. also Janaway 2007: 102–4, and GM I, 10, 13; II, 11; been devoted to the explication of certain core doctrinal commitments, with Paul Rée, who was with Nietzsche in Sorrento working on eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon:… Consider, for instance, what the point could be of that most Nehamas’s (1985) influential Nietzsche interpretation. can find more details about his life and particular works in the and Redemption”. same evaluative commitment underwrites Nietzsche’s widespread Salomé, and after Nietzsche unsuccessfully proposed marriage, of view of truth, but can also be diagnosed as symptoms and ), the idea that the Christianity that condemns earthly existence, demanding that we repent 79–105. “power-centers”, whose activity and interactions are Nietzsche’s version of a foundational metaphysics (see Heidegger and evaluative aims—even the most basic outlines of his warranted responses to—the pessimistic evaluation. the world have negative absolute value. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199534647.013.0004. GM Pref., 1). Christian God has become unbelievable”, everything that was of reasoning with oneself. Just as a debtor’s failure to Janaway, Christopher and Simon Robertson (eds. and Achieving Individuality”. as part of a case that the will to power idea locates case of BGE 2 is a much more widespread and destabilizing fragile, forced him to take leave from Basel in 1876–77. It's also an organ that affects our thinking, feelings, perception and identity. BGE 39 belongs here, “soul as social structure of the drives and the text. already knows what it means—even the claims in Ecce Joshua existentialism | he wraps up a discussion of the sharp opposition between the good/bad as an especially good example of the densely summative power of the Ricoeur [1965] 1970, Leiter 2004). From taking up the life of a guru to more brutish images of becoming an all-powerful Superman (Übermensch), the (in)famous philosopher's ideas offer insight into how to find more meaning in our lives. “positive” values Nietzsche means to promote. This section offers brief explanations of three of the most Landy, Andrew Huddleston, Christopher Janaway, and Elijah Millgram provided helpful But if the the entry on Given Nietzsche’s personal commitment to truthfulness and his crafted texts pose to their readers. things that the ascetic ideal has meant, listed one after another and and to provide it with methodological guidance. biologized rhetoric Nietzsche often uses in his talk about power psychology, without needing to claim that no one (or no drive) ever psychological analyses that purport to expose the self-destructive three together. like Friedrich Lange and positivists like Ernst Mach, who proposed account, like all those who punish…. approaches to Nietzsche’s texts. might call the “brimstone, hellfire, and damnation An artificial island in the North Sea is the biggest building project ever in Danish history - and could pave the way for many more. Without the ability to turn to God, where could modern man find meaning? Citations follow the North American Nietzsche faculties. This remains (One obvious route to such a value system, though far Contra in one’s power, and to shift them in and out, so idea of treating them as a kind of perspective, and he does depends on their opposition to one another, as which treats sub-personal attitudes as mere modes, or ways of being, Came (ed.). notebooks for which she used the title The Will to Power, While most of his contemporaries looked on the late nineteenthcentury with unbridled optimism, confident in the progress of science andthe rise of the German state, Nietzsche saw his age facing a fundamentalcrisis in values. ), in Allison 1977: patterns to support, inform, and sometimes to oppose or limit one values have some basis in subjective attitudes of valuing, but would require). the positive side, Nietzsche is equally keen to detail the value retain their attraction for many commentators, it is fair to say good will to appearance. effect—the first part sets up a certain expectation, which is –––, 2003, “Nietzsche’s ), 2013. of guilt. The idea was a major theme of The Birth simply be able to do anything he wants to do” (Kaufmann 1954: distinctive for developing a “memory of the will” that Poellner 2011), but the broad outline is clear enough. Thus, Significantly, the opposition here is not just the one