Nietzsche's Ideas Research Articles

Sloterdijk's theory of cynicism, ressentiment and ‘horizontal communication’

This article attempts to bring the work of the German philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk to a wider audience in the English-speaking world. The article makes the case for Sloterdijk's ideas being an important contribution to the analysis and critique of contemporary culture, in particular to the diagnosis of cynicism, the position of the intellectual or critic, and the nature of communication in relation to the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture. The article firstly discusses Sloterdijk's analysis of contemporary cynicism as ‘enlightened false consciousness’ and distinguishes this from gestural critique, or ‘kynicism’. This is then related to the decline of enlightening communication and to what Sloterdijk calls the ‘self-abdication’ of the critical intellectual. In the second part of the article, Sloterdijk's analysis of cynicism is related to communication, in particular to the replacement of ‘vertical’ communication, communication that seeks to make distinctions in cultural value, by ‘horizontal’ communication, which does not. The replacement of ‘vertical’ by ‘horizontal’ communication is then related to Nietzsche's idea of ressentiment, which Sloterdijk sees as evident in contemporary culture.

Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar classicism

Bishop, Paul, and R.H. Stephenson. Friedrich Nietzsche and Weimar Classicism. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005. 281 pp. $80.00 hardcover. The aim of Bishop's and Stephenson's study is to detail the influence on Nietzsche of Goethe's and Schiller's classicist aesthetic, an appreciation of which is deemed key to an adequate understanding of Nietzsche's thought. The two authors present their argument in separate chapters on Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, on the period between 1881 and 1884 in which he conceived Zarathustra and wrote The Gay Science, and on Zarathustra itself. A fourth chapter widens the perspective by outlining the continuing influence of Weimar aesthetics on other authors ranging from Keats and Melville through Kafka and TS. Eliot to Adorno and Habermas. A lengthy appendix describes the genesis of Zarathustra independently of Goethe's and Schiller's influence. The book's introduction lays out what the authors mean by the aesthetics of Weimar Classicism. Its salient characteristic is the movement away from the general and toward the particular (13) of a sensual, this-worldly beauty. Its effect is to challenge any form of subordination to the abstract, be it instrumental reason or Romantic and religious mysticism. This challenge forms the bedrock of Goethe's and Schiller's doctrine-an gospel (97) inherited, the authors argue, by Nietzsche. Drawing knowledgeably on the works of Goethe and Schiller and on a wide range of sources from Nietzsche's oeuvre, including letters and fragments from throughout the Nachlass, this assiduously researched study gives a new resonance to numerous passages and to key terms in Nietzsche's writings. The authors compare the function of words such as Schein, veil, and play in The Birth of Tragedy to their use in Schiller's aesthetics in a variety of interesting ways (33ff.). They go on to read The Birth of Tragedy in view of Goethe's Faust, concentrating on the critique of science-like Faust, Nietzsche's Socrates confronts the limits of knowledge (37)-the triumph of life over pessimism, and the aesthetic heightening of anAugenblick that can carry the weight of eternity (42). They discern the Goethean notion otAugenhlick in Nietzsche's idea of the eternal recurrence as expounded in The Gay Science and in Zarathustra. Exploring how Nietzsche's Augenblick resonates with Goethe's use of the term, the authors conclude that the eternal recurrence functions not just as a moral imperative, as has been previously argued, but as an imperative as well (82). …

The Absent Foundation

Nihil est sine ratione, "nothing is without reason." For everything that is, there is an answer to the question why it is just so and not otherwise-and, ultimately, there is a reason (ratio) grounding the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Reality as a whole is thus "rational" or "reasonable," in the sense that everything is based on something and has a "why" or a "how come" that grounds it, rendering it comprehensible and meaningful and thus letting it be part of meaningful reality. Nothing is without something that lets it be what it is. This is the famous "principle of reason" (principium rationis)-in a slightly different formulation, the "principle of the restoration of sufficient reason" (principium reddendae rationis sufficientis)-which was first explicitly formulated in these words by G. W. Leibniz, although not as a doctrine of his own but as a fundamental and generally accepted philosophical principle. There is in Nature a reason [ratio] why something should exist rather than nothing. This is a consequence of the great principle that nothing comes to be without reason, just as there also must be a reason why this exists, rather than something else.1 Indeed, in one form or another, the principle of reason has been an integral part of Occidental metaphysics ever since antiquity. The central issue of Aristotle's Metaphysics-the question which Heidegger names the leading question (Leitfrage) of Occidental metaphysics as a whole-concerns that-which-is, beings.2 What is a being as such? What is a being insofar as it is a being? Or, as Aristotle reformulates the question, what is the being-ness (ousia), the fundamental being-character, of beings as such? For Aristotle, the first essential characteristic of being-ness is fundamentality, foundationality.3 What truly is must be a hypokeimenon (in Latin substantia, "substance," or subiectum, "subject")-literally, something that "lies beneath" as an ontological basis or foundation, letting other, dependent beings be while itself remaining ontologically independent. The most being of all beings is that on which all other beings are dependent but which is itself absolutely independent of anything beyond itself. The ontological investigation of Books Zeta, Eta, and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics thus finds its culmination in the theology of Book Lambda-a discussion of God as the absolute, the most fundamental and necessary being-ness and principle. The Aristotelian notion of God as absolute self-awareness, as perfect being in-itself and for-itself, was then taken over by medieval Scholasticism-for St. Thomas, God as the uncreated creator and the ultimate cause of things is not only the most being of beings (maxime ens) but subsistence and permanence, that is, being-ness, as such (ipsum esse subsistens).4 Heidegger's famous genealogy of modernity shows how, since Descartes, the self-conscious I, now interpreted with regard to the absolute and immediate self-certainty of the cogito, gradually replaces God as the fundamental subject of reality. As modern metaphysics unfolds, human subjectivity as the basis of meaningfulness becomes more and more absolute, and self-sufficient; this "subjectivization" culminates in Nietzsche's idea of the "superhuman" subject who no longer simply apprehends given objectivity but instead gives itself its own "truths" as fuel for its essence, i.e., the ceaseless will to self-enhancement.5 In asking its leading question concerning the being-ness of beings, the metaphysical tradition has, according to Heidegger, constantly sought a supreme, ideal form of being-ness which all beings could be referred back to and founded upon. Yet from Plato to Nietzsche, metaphysics has been unable to radically pose what Heidegger calls the "basic question" or "fundamental question" (Grundfrage) of philosophy;6 it has never really inquired into the origin of its own "rationality." What are the experience of ideal being-ness as something foundational and the subsequent metaphysical demand for foundations in themselves based on? …

New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism by Bernice Glatzer s> Rosenthal (review)

348 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 cinematic moments, which gives the book an added dimension no doubt unplanned by the author. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies MILENAMICHALSKI University College London Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer. NewMyth,New World: From Nietzsche toStalinism. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 2002. xv + 464 pp. Illustrations.Notes. Index. $45.00. THIS is an ambitious and stimulating book that ought to provoke lots of discussion. Bernice Rosenthal's aim is to excavate the 'long-obscuredtrail of ideas influencedby Nietzsche' in late imperialRussia and the earlydecades of Soviet rule (p. i). Focusing on culture, Rosenthal uncovers an enormous range of Nietzschean influence. She notes the influence of Nietzsche on symbolists,philosophers,Marxistsand futurists;arguesthat therewas a strong Nietzschean influence on the early Bolsheviks,notably on Bukharin,Gor'kii, Lunarcharskiiand Trotskii; and suggests that the Stalin cult and the great culturalprojectsof the Stalin era grew out of a culturethat was deeply shaped by Nietzschean ideas. According to Rosenthal, Nietzsche 'reinforced hard interpretationsof Marxism',and contributedto contemporaryadmirationfor the quality of 'hardness' (pp. I26, IOI, 124). She argues that Soviet voluntarism drew much of its inspiration from Nietzsche's thought; indeed, she sees Stalinism 'through a Nietzschean prism that centers on the will to power' (p. 236). Rosenthal does not argue that Nietzsche's influence was always direct; rather, his ideas 'shaped the wider culture' and created what she callsa 'Nietzschean agenda', involvingthe espousalof new values and new ideas, and the quest for new artforms, a new moralityand a new type of man and woman (p. 3). While not denying the ideocratic, partocraticand utopian aspects of the Soviet regime emphasized in different ways by Walicki, Malia and Nekrich and Heller Rosenthal assertsthat Communism was an alien doctrine imposed from above and by force, and treatsthe ideology as a myth in Nietzschean terms(p. 23). The difficultywith this kind of intellectual history is in proving the case. Rosenthal is well aware of the problem. As well as noting many instancesof a direct Nietzschean influence, Rosenthal observes that Bogdanov's egalitarian collectivism was 'possiblyinfluenced' by Nietzsche's praise of Dionysian rites (P. 75), that Bukharin'sendorsement of brutalitywas 'probablycoloured by' Nietzsche's thinking (p. I40), and that Nietzsche's aphorisms 'might well have' appealed to Stalin (p. 354). Charting intellectual influences can be difficult.As Rosenthal notes, the culture of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsiawas alreadyfertilesoil forNietzschean ideas, and it is not easy to declare definitively that Bolshevism owed its maximalism more to Nietzsche than to other thinkers and currents of thought. Since Rosenthal generally looks at thinkersand ideas through a Nietzschean prism, and does not always fullyexamine counter-arguments,therecan be a sensethat sheis exaggerating her case. In spite of this, Rosenthal's central argument is well made. She establishes convincingly that Nietzsche provided some of the Bolshevikswith a language REVIEWS 349 and outlook that suited their purposes, and that to some degree he played a role in shaping those purposes. She is surely right in emphasizing the voluntaristand mythical featuresof the Soviet project, and to show that there were important Nietzschean dimensions to them. Furthermore,although the Nazi system is not a central feature of Rosenthal's enquiry, she effectively draws out some of the common Nietzschean features in Stalinist and Nazi thinking.Primarily,Rosenthal showshow the Soviet projectinvolved the kind of 're-evaluation of values' that Nietzsche had called for. There is a lot of fascinatingmaterialin the book. Forexample, there arehelpfulanalysesof the two main texts on Nietzsche publishedin the USSR in the early Stalinperiod: M. G. Leiteizen's Nietzsche andFinanceCapital(I928) and B. M. Bernadiner's ThePhilosophy ofNietzsche andFascism (I 934). The way in which Bolsheviks learned to justify violence has been wellcharted by historians, and indeed Rosenthal's analysis of the way Nietzsche contributed to the culture of violence is helpful. Attitudes to lying have generally received less attention. Rosenthal takes the view that 'Stalinism required illusions' (p. 365). She states that socialist realism was founded on the idea of 'art as a lie', and that while that idea did not originate with Nietzsche, he articulateditforcefullyandprovidedaphilosophicaljustification of it. In workslike TheWilltoPower and TheAntichrist, Nietzsche defended the intellectual pursuitof truth,while at the same time endorsing the necessityto tell lies for...

<i>Run Lola Run</i> at the Dawn of Postmodernity

Using Run Lola Run as an example of hyper-filmic or alternative-ending movies that go back to Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), this article suggests that these and future films will inevitably present multiple endings that are to be accepted simultaneously in spite of their incongruities. This multiplicity of options is the result of the easily available resources made possible by the Web, as well as the latest advances in supersymmetrical physics. Moreover, these new discoveries, taken together with the worldviews such discoveries engender, are connected with Nietzsche's ideas about eternal recurrence and to the cyclical vision of the world first envisioned in Hindu philosophy.

Контрдесоматизація у Ніцше, або нігілізм як віталізм

The article analyses the relevance of Nietzsche's ideas on life and the body in the general context of the Western philosophical tradition. The author comes to the conclusion that Nietzsche's vitalism, which she interprets as a "counter-desomatisation" of a human being, has not yet lost its heuristic potential and continues to excite the philosophical conscience of new generations.

'Labyrinths of the future': Nietzsche's genealogy of European nationalism

In light of the continued primacy of national identities in European politics, this article considers the earlier and largely unexplored genealogy of modern European nationalism advanced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche towards the end of the nineteenth century. It argues that by analysing the rise of modern nationalism in Europe within the broader context of European nihilism, Nietzsche was able to gain original insights both about the appeal of national ideas in Europe and about why such ideas were perpetuated. On the basis of this unique understanding Nietzsche subsequently developed an innovative critique of modern nationalism that remains pertinent not only for the contemporary debate on Europe, but also for current attempts to theorize the rise of modern nationalism in Europe. Nietzsche's own idea of the 'good Europeans', in turn, is one that transcends nationalist perspectives without, however, replacing the former with an essentialist idea of Europe.

Postmodernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche

I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self‐construction in arguing for the claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving the way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self‐creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses the strength to reinterpret history as a pathway to “the problem that we are”. Nietzsche agrees with the postmodernists that unity is not a pre‐given, however he would disavow their rejection of unity as a goal. Where the postmodernists celebrate “the death of the subject” Nietzsche rejects this valorization of disunity as a form of Nihilism and prescribes the creation of a genuine unified subjectivity to those few capable of such a goal. Postmodernists are nearer Nietzsche's idea of the Last Man than his idea of the Overman.I define postmodernism as incredulity towards meta‐narratives.Jean‐François Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition.When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle: only if you are an architect of the future and know the present will you understand it.Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.”

Postmodernism's Use and Abuse of Nietzsche

I focus on Nietzsche's architectural metaphor of self-construction in arguing for claim that postmodern readings of Nietzsche misunderstand his various attacks on dogmatic philosophy as paving way for acceptance of a self characterized by fundamental disunity. Nietzsche's attack on essentialist dogmatic metaphysics is a call to engage in a purposive self-creation under a unifying will, a will that possesses strength to reinterpret history as a pathway to the problem that we are. Nietzsche agrees with postmodernists that unity is not a pre-given, however he would disavow their rejection of unity as a goal. Where postmodernists celebrate the death of subject Nietzsche rejects this valorization of disunity as a form of Nihilism and prescribes creation of a genuine unified subjectivity to those few capable of such a goal. Postmodernists are nearer Nietzsche's idea of Last Man than his idea of Overman.Article

Nietzsche for nurses: caring for the Übermensch

Abstract We hear much these days of lifelong learning and higher levels of nursing practice. We have even been introduced to the concept of the supernurse. This paper seeks to contribute an ethico‐political dimension to the largely performative uses of these terms in contemporary nursing politics. This is done by exploring the promise of certain elements of Nietzsche's philosophy for nursing. Certain major Nietzschean themes are outlined in the context of modernity followed by their exploration in a nursing context. These themes come principally from Thus Spake Zarathustra, and include not only that of Übermensch (Superman), but also the related ideas of eternal recurrence, nihilism, and the last Man. It is argued that the conditions in which nurses now learn and practice have become increasingly instrumentalized and technorational to the extent that they are in danger of effecting a nihilism in what becomes a culture of perpetual obligation to those who would seek to measure our performance. It is against this background that Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch is explored as a figure for self‐overcoming the professional subjectivity that may be constructed in the face of these conditions. However, it will be seen that this raises certain issues which beg the question of the productive value of Nietzsche's philosophy in this particular context. At this point, in the last part of the paper, by considering the tensive relation between the discourse practices of present‐day managerialism and nursing ethics, it is argued that it is these very problems that present the Übermensch as a tensive but potentially productive figure for nursing and nurse education in its broadest sense.

THE REBIRTH OF MYTH?: NIETZSCHE'S ETERNAL RECURRENCE AND ITS ROMANTIC ANTECEDENTS

AbstractThere is increasing evidence of the influence of various Romantic thinkers on Nietzsche's early philosophy, especially on The Birth of Tragedy, with its announcement or prediction of a rebirth of myth. The prophetic Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Nietzsche introduced with the words "tragedy begins," expresses his later philosophy, particularly his central doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence, in symbols, parables, and riddles, suggesting an attempt at mythopoeia. However, the critical, ironic, and parodying elements in Nietzsche's later philosophy have led to its characterization as "antimyth." This essay demonstrates that Nietzsche's idea and symbolism of the Eternal Recurrence as a temporal cycle of opposites represented by various forms of the circle, especially the ouroborus or serpent biting its own tail, and associated with Zoroaster, Heraclitus, and Dionysus, was influenced by the tradition of Romantic mythology. Before the publication of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche encountered the writings of Johann Jakob Bachofen and Friedrich Creuzer, where the cycle of opposites is identified as a specifically mythic idea, which developed later into a philosophy, as metonymically represented in the relationship between the myth-maker Zoroaster and the philosopher Heraclitus. In The Birth of Tragedy, the cycle of opposites became for Nietzsche a symbol of the unity of myth and philosophy, and the rebirth of the former from the self-overcoming of the latter. This symbol continued to serve Nietzsche throughout his career as a model for his own development as a philosopher. The Eternal Recurrence appears to have been his own attempt to unite myth and philosophy, through the transformation of an originally Romantic mythological idea into its opposite, and the adoption of a symbolic and "mythic" style of expression.

The seductive waltz: Rhetoric and contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche

This essay argues that the most significant influences on postmodern rhetorical theory are rooted predominantly in the philosophical ideas of one thinker‐Friedrich Nietzsche. Yet the particular Nietzschean ideas upon which many postmodern rhetorics are based were abandoned by Nietzsche as his epistemological and ontological views developed over the course of his career. Nietzsche's mature thought is viewed as wholly incompatible with currently fashionable postmodern rhetorics. Sections of the essay: (1) establish the Nietzschean grounding for postmodern rhetorics; (2) detail Nietzsche's mature epistemology and ontology; (3) suggest the form a rhetoric based on Nietzsche's later philosophy would likely take; and (4) discuss implications for contemporary rhetoric.

Beyond the politics of positionality: deconstruction and feminism

The article commences with a discussion of Derrida's alleged anti-feminist position. We argue that, given his distinction between ‘reactive’ and ‘maverick’ feminism, this is an over-simplification. A correlation is drawn between the latter form of feminism and deconstruction by showing that both maintain a relation to the ‘beyond’ of the established logocentric system. The second section of the article deals with the placing of woman in Derrida's Spurs. It is shown that Derrida affirms Nietzsche's idea of the ‘Dionysiac woman’ who is, like the maverick feminist, not totally determined within the phallogocentric system. Woman, in Derrida's reading, becomes that which is not fully determinable. We conclude that this undecidability, rather than hindering its political activity, helps feminism in dealing with the diversities within the movement.

"Solar love": Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty and the fortunes of perception

Both Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty repudiate the “mirror” view of perception and embrace what Nietzsche refers to as “solar love” or creative perception. I argue that Merleau-Ponty thinks of this type of perception primarily in terms of “convergence” and Nietzsche in terms of “divergence.” I then show how, contrary to their own emphases, Merleau-Ponty's notion of flesh” and Nietzsche's idea of “chaos” suggest that convergence and divergence are abstractions from an ontologically prior realm of “hybrid perceptions.” In this realm, each perception is shot through with the others, simultaneously inside and outside one another. The creative tension among these perceptions continually produces new perspectives or voices, that is, a realm whose very being is metamorphosis. Moreover, this realm of hybrid perceptions suggests a political principle that might prove attractive for communities in an age of diversity and cultural hybridity.

Lunar Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction and Thought

This text reflects on nine writers and philosophers, including Heidegger, Derrida, Blanchot and Holderlin, in a personal exploration of the meaning of sensual love, language, tragedy and death. The moon provides a unifying image that guides Krell's development of a new poetics in which literature and philosophy become one. The author pursues important philosophical motifs such as time, rhythm and desire, through texts by Nietzsche, Trakl, Empedocles, Kafka and Garcia Marquez. He surveys instances in which poets or novelists explicitly address philosophical questions, and philosophers confront literary texts - Heidegger's and Derrida's appropriations of Georg Trakl's poetry, Blanchot's obsession with Kafka's tortuous love affairs and Garcia Marquez's use of Nietzsche's idea of the Eternal Return - all linked by the tragic hero Empedocles. In his search to understand the insatiable desire for completeness that patterns so much art and philosophy, Krell investigates the identification of the lunar voice with woman in various roles - lover, friend, sister, shadow and narrative voice.

Odd bedfellows: Nietzsche and Mill on marriage

This paper examines Nietzsche's views on love and marriage in the works of his middle period. Contrary to the general consensus in the secondary literature regarding Nietzsche's ideas on these matters, it shows that he offers several positive reflections on love and marriage. Indeed, at times he accepts that friendship is possible between the genders and even models marriage on friendship. Modelling marriage on friendship creates an overlap between Nietzsche's thought and that of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor. However, it is argued here that, albeit for different reasons, none of these visions of marriage as friendship succeeds in fully accommodating sexuality.

Perpetual war, or 'war and war again'

This article seeks to explore the way that warfare, and categories gleaned from warfare and military practice, are used in the work of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault. Despite their profound political and theoretical differences both writers seek to understand politics and society through the idea of war. Because both writers resist the use of the state-civil society distinction their account of war renders it a perpetual phenomenon of the social and political order; this creates difficulties concerning fascism, though for different reasons. At the same time the article explores the similarities and differences in the way both Schmitt and Foucault appropriate Hobbesian and Nietzschean ideas and motifs.

Zoshchenko and Nietzsche's Philosophy: Lessons in Misogyny, Sex and Self-Overcoming

riedrich Nietzsche's ideas influenced Mikhail Zoshchenko in ways far more profound and lasting than scholars have thus far recognized. In its most significant aspect, the influence of those ideas told in the emergence within Zoshchenko's work of a serious interest in psychology. In this investigation, therefore, we stand to gain insight into the course his surprising career took when that interest began to make itself felt. In the end, however, Nietzsche influenced Zoshchenko in various and contradictory ways. But once that influence is laid out, we shall have brought Zoshchenko's career into better focus and will, as an incidental benefit, be in a position to grant him his rightful place in the history of Nietzsche's influence in Russia. Through his widow's, Vera Vladimirovna Zoshchenko's, memoirs and Vera Von Wiren's writings, we have long known of Zoshchenko's enthusiasm for Nietzsche in 1918-20, when he was in his mid-twenties. In her memoirs, Vera Vladimirovna wrote that the winter of 1918 passed for her husband under the sign of Nietzsche.2 Zoshchenko wrote her in 1920 that he was sending [her] two of my most beloved books, of course, Blok, and, of course, Nietzsche.3 During this formative period of

Nietzsche's critique of modernity: some implications for the study of communication

SUMMARY This article explores Nietzsche's critique of modernity by examining his treatment of the problem of truth and his attack on Christian morality. The relevance of these topics for an understanding of some issues of concern to communication scholars, inter alia within the context of apartheid, is also considered. In dealing with truth Nietzsche argues that the guiding belief that the (Christian) God is truth and truth therefore divine manifests itself in the ascetic ideal which informs philosophy and science as much as it informs religion. Nietzsche's genealogical analysis of the roots of Christian morality shows how the triumph of slave over master morality changed the entire Western form of life and gave substance to what is known as ‘modernity’. He highlights, in particular, the negative consequences for human life of the unegoistic morality of pity characterising slave morality. In the application of some of Nietzsche's ideas to communication special attention is paid to unquestioned assumptions concerning communication and to stereotyping. Nietzsche's interpretation of levelling is also discussed and it is shown, with reference to a few examples, how communication study in apartheid South Africa reflects the ascetic ideal.

How Nietzsche's Idea about Language Came to be Transformed into Derrida's Ideology of Deconstruction

How Nietzsche's Idea about Language Came to be Transformed into Derrida's Ideology of Deconstruction