Nietzsche's Notion Research Articles

Responses to Conway, Mooney, and Rorty

Dan Conway has highlighted two important points and I would like to try to draw some connections between the two. One concerns the nature of modern social dependencies , what is lost when such dependence is denied or evaded, what is gained when it is acknowledged and embraced. I have posed this issue by making use of the Hegelian language of recognition, misrecognition, mutuality, independence and dependence, and so forth, and thereby claimed in James’s name that the issue at stake is the achievement of a kind of freedom. Paradigmatically, in the cases of Strether and Isabel, this amounts to something like ‘having a life of one’s own’, or being able to recognize oneself in one’s deeds and projects. This will raise a question about the nature of the freedom at stake here (an ‘expressivist’ understanding), a question raised by Ed Mooney that I address in the next section. Conway also takes note of such a claim about an ‘achievement’ and notes the relevance of the Nietzschean notion of ‘becoming who one is’, wherein having become a self, a subject who leads a life, has a life of one’s own, can be considered the central aspect of freedom and cannot be considered a Ž xed result achieved or a stable truth revealed. Such a link between such becoming and such social dependence is the topic I want to stress. Conway’s summary of the points:

Egon Schiele's Treescapes. Work and world: unframing the autonomous landscape

An Austrian Expressionist known primarily for his portraits and self‐portraits, Egon Schiele was also a prolific landscape painter. Focusing on the Kantian notions of autonomy and disinterested pleasure, this article considers a series of treescapes painted between 1911 and 1913 in which Schiele systematically undermines the processes of framing which make possible not only the modern landscape but the work of art as an object of aesthetic contemplation. Challenging the frame's capacity to delineate neatly between work and world, these images refuse the retreat into aestheticization demanded of the independent landscape and insist instead on the fluidity of the relationship between painting and beholder. Conforming therefore to a Nietzschean notion of passionate spectatorship, the treescapes should also be considered in the context of Vienna's notorious Sprachkrisis, which posited the failure of language to express the unsayable. The essay proposes that Schiele's disintegration of the frame's integrity by calling attention to its usually invisible mechanisms may be seen as an attempt to establish an image‐based system of communication when language has become suspect as a viable means of interchange.

On the Presence of Bergson in Deleuze's Nietzsche

Gilles Deleuze's early years were occupied by a number of studies on individual figures belonging to the history of Western philosophy and literature, a move that he later interpreted as the attempt to give voice to a "minor tradition." This minor tradition included, in sequence, Hume, Nietzsche, Bergson, Spinoza, and Kafka. As any reader of Deleuze knows very well, the nature of Deleuze's relation with each of these authors is anything but critical neutrality and commitment to comprehensive explanation. Deleuze isolates a specific instance of each thinker and exposes it to a process of transvaluation, by which it becomes a crucial operator in his own conceptual system. Because each of these sources becomes integral part of Deleuze's philosophical apparatus, it is crucial to comprehend them not only separately but jointly, as they act upon one another. My objective in this essay is to question the most commonly accepted interpretation of the Nietzsche-Bergson sequence within Deleuze's minor tradition. Deleuze's best known study on Bergson, Bergsonism,1 came out in 1966, which is four years later than his volume on Nietzsche and Philosophy, published in 1962. At least from a chronological point of view, it would then seem that Nietzsche's influence on Deleuze precedes that of Bergson, and not the reverse. I wish to question this point. Not only chronologically Deleuze encounters Bergson before Nietzsche, but in my reading, his interpretation of Nietzsche remains deeply influenced by Bergson. In the following pages, I am going to elaborate this position by focusing on a much earlier essay than Bergsonism, still unpublished in English, entitled "La conception de la difference chez Bergson,"2 of which Bergsonism is an expansion and more elegant presentation. My interest in this essay is precisely that of accessing Deleuze's not-yet-Nietzschean reading of Bergson, which will allow me to show how ontologically indebted to Bergson is his reading of Nietzsche.3 While working on the essay on Bergson in the mid-50s, Deleuze had already committed to his life-long crusade against what he came to see as the fundamental "negativity" permeating the dialectical branch of the rationalist tradition, codified by Hegel. Such a negativity brings philosophy to entertain, in Deleuze's terms, a generic or external relationship with things, instead of a positive, that is, concrete or internal relationship with them.4 Bergson's gift to philosophy is, in Deleuze's perspective, to have articulated the possibility of such a positive relationship thanks to the notion of"internal difference." I wish to suggest that this Bergsonian pair, external-internal, is at the core of the tension that Deleuze will later identify as Nietzsche's own gift to philosophy: the tension between reactive and active forces. And it is on this same basis that the Nietzschean notion of affirmation is interpreted by Deleuze through the lens of Bergsonian duration and virtuality. Let me begin by explaining the external-internal pair in relation to the notion of difference. Dialectical thought, Deleuze suggests, has fundamentally misinterpreted identity. For Hegel specifically-but the claim extends to the Cartesian and even Platonic brand of rationalism at large-the difference between one entity and another, what allows us to identify it, is established in contrast to what it is not. Why is this difference "external" to the entity in question or the properties that make it up? Because difference is unnecessarily translated into negation. In Hegel's terms, it is only via the universal that the particular becomes accessible to knowledge, the universal being the negation of the particular. Subsuming difference under negation is, thus, the major mistake Deleuze imputes to the dialectical tradition. It is the detour through negation that keeps the dialectical conception of difference "external" to difference itself, or difference in kind. If we want to reach difference in kind, we cannot address the entities and their properties externally, by negatively comparing them to all others, but internally, that is, by asking what are the "things themselves" rather than what they are not. …

Nietzsche's notion of amor fati

In this paper I advance an interpretation of Nietzsche's notions of amor fati and eternal recurrence in which they are taken to delimit the project of becoming well-disposed to life and oneself. I argue that interpreted in this way these notions do not have the problematic implications which stand in the way of our adopting them and, in fact, cast light on how we may theoretically understand and practically live our lives.

L'Eternel retour: Reflection of the Occupation's Crisis in French Masculinity?

RELEASED IN OCTOBER 1943, L'ETERNEL RETOUR's re-working of the legend of Tristan and Iseult in a stylized but contemporary setting was the film event of that year. With a screenplay by Jean Cocteau, the film was the most popular film of the entire Occupation period (Crisp). Along with La Nuitfantastique (L'Herbier, 1942) and Les Visiteurs du soir, the most successful film of 1942, it was seen as part of a new trend in French cinema. Like Les Visiteurs du soir (directed by Marcel Carnm and scripted by Jacques Pr6vert), L'Eternel retour was praised for its aesthetic qualities. Most critics saw in it an escape from the daily life under the Occupation into a fantastic, poeticized world of heightened aspirations and emotions. If some were critical of the incorporation of elements reflecting Cocteau's poetic universe,1 they nevertheless applauded the film's imaginative combination of modern setting and universal theme, its stylized settings, lighting, costuming and acting style. Credit for the film's success was accorded not just to Cocteau, but to director Jean Delannoy, cinematographer Roger Hubert and music coordinator Georges Auric. Whatever the contributions of Cocteau's collaborators, it is evident that the film not only derives its inspiration from Cocteau, for whom its realization was a long-cherished dream, but that he also played a major role in the designing, casting and editing. According to actor Jean Marais, Cocteau's presence at the shooting was enough to affect the mood of the film, giving a more poetic edge to Delannoy's otherwise rather leaden direction (Marais 147).2 L'Eternel retour was Cocteau's first major step into film-making since the experimental Le Sang d'un porte (1930). He prepared himself for the task by working on Serge de Polignac's Le Baron fantdme (1943), writing the dialogues and taking on the small role of the eponymous baron. In L'Eternel retour, Cocteau aimed to elevate a modern story to the status of myth (Art of Cinema 189) by proving that Nietzsche's notion of eternal return could be applied to the fate of the doomed lovers whose story is relived by others, without their even realizing it. The Tristan and Iseult of legend become blonde-haired Patrice and Nathalie (Jean

Nietzsche's reading of the sophists1

Until recently, scholars have tended to credit two nineteenth-century thinkers, G. F. Hegel and George Grote, for initiating the modem rehabilitation of the sophists.2 But in the past several years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to draw inspiration from the writings of another nineteenth-century figure, Friedrich Nietzsche. Among those taking this Nietzschean turn, Mario Untersteiner utilizes Nietzsche's conception of the tragic in his account of Gorgias's epistemology (101-205), a reading Eric White supplements with Nietzsche's notion of the (38). Victor Vitanza, characterizing Nietzsche as a dionysian Sophist, draws from Nietzsche's tropological model of language to illuminate the sophists' own rhetoric (Sub/Versions 112; Notes 131); and David Roochnik contends that Nietzsche's critique of reason illuminates the sophists' own misology (Tragedy 50, 155, 162). In the sphere of ethics, E. R. Dodds maintains that Nietzsche's immoralism is similar to the egoism of Gorgias's student Callicles (387-91), and Daniel Shaw contends that Nietzsche's critique of morality iterates the sophists' notion that moral valuations remain matters of opinion (339). Concerning methodology, John Poulakos argues that Nietzsche's genealogical approach is most suited for interpreting the sophists (Interpreting 219-21); and Susan Jarratt credits Nietzsche's method as authorizing her own re-reading of the sophists (xix). But whereas they have drawn on a variety of Nietzsche's ideas and interpretive strategies to advance what Jacqueline dc Romilly characterizes as a Nietzschean interpretation of the sophists (Sophists xi), none of these scholars has systematically examined Nietzsche's own quite specific and extensive writings about the sophists. The untoward result is that we possess a variety of Nietzschean readings of the sophists that tend to silence Nietzsche's own distinctive voice. This tendency to overlook Nietzsche's own specific remarks about the sophists is quite understandable, for Nietzsche never wrote a systematic treatise on the sophists and instead discussed them in a rather fragmentary manner in a variety of texts over a period of almost two decades. Further, with the exception of three quite brief passages-in Human, All-Too-Human 221, Dawn 168, and the Ancients, Twilight of the Idols 2-Nietzsche did not publish any of his remarks about the sophists, confining his discussions to his 1872-1873 lecture notes in the history of Greek rhetoric (Description of Ancient Rhetoric and

The Book of Evidence

The Book of Evidence is ostensibly a murder story, but the story itself is not of the first importance. The key to the novel lies in the telling. Freddie Montgomery is unable to imagine the woman he kills vividly enough because his imagination is caged by art. His way of perceiving reality is tainted by artistic precedents. The world depicted in the novel is an extension of the Nietzschean ideas informing Mefisto, in particular by exploring Nietzsche's notions as to the nature of evil and badness. Like many Banville protagonists before him, Freddie is essentially an artist whose art conceals art. By dint of a rich number of intertextual references to Nabokov's Lolita, The Book of Evidence creates a narratorial consciousness that assesses life in terms of literature, film and art. Freddie names his paramount sin as a failure of imagination. His book of evidence effects an act of parturition by caging the murdered victim in a work of art. Freddie's redemption lies in an acknowledgement of the disjunction that exists between the artistic and the commonplace world and the impossibility of ever bridging the gap.

Living the Symptom

The problems which psychotherapists are asked to resolve are often the very experiences which the patient should be living. This paper describes how easily the therapist can collude with the patient's rejection of life by agreeing to remove a symptom. After differentiating two therapeutic attitudes, the attitudes of "Merlin" and "Christ," the case of a patient whom the author refused to treat for her "insomnia," lest he collude with her rejection of lie, is considered. Finally, Nietzsche's notion of amor fati and Tillich's view of courage are examined in terms of their usefulness in therapy.

THE INFLUENCE OF MONTAIGNE ON NIETZSCHE: A RAISON D’ETRE IN THE SUN

Three aspects of the relationship Nietzsche-Montaigne:1) How Montaigne's balance of soul and body inspires Nietzsche's notion of philosophy as a part of physiology2) The way in which Nietzsche forms his understanding of style from Montaigne, and without being imitative, does have rhetorical and stylistic affinities with the Frenchman and3) Montaigne's authentic self-reprensation in the « Essais » as a model of honest, creative valuing, which is the ideal of Nietzschean aspitation, prerequisite to any Ubermenschlichkeit

A Macro Sociology of Emotion: Class Resentment

Emotion inheres simultaneously in individuals and in the social structures and relationships in which individuals are embedded. Beginning with a critical examination of T.H. Marshall's account of class resentment, this paper considers the emotional patterns of resentment in class inequality, in trade cycle changes in costs and opportunities for income, and in class cultures. Arising from social relationships, emotion is the basis of action that subsequently affects the structure of social relationships. Thus emotion connects phases of social structure separated by time. The purpose of this paper is to expand the consideration of emotion to a macroscopic conceptualization. I do so by demonstrating both the place of an emotion, resentment, in class structure and its significance for class processes. Class rather than some other aspect of social structure is treated because although the class literature is well developed, scholars now recognize an impasse in class analysis, which the conceptualization of emotion presented here can overcome. The structural basis of resentment was explored in Max Scheler's (1961) Ressentiment, first published in 1912. The scope of the present work differs from Scheler's classic study in three fundamental ways. First, Scheler used the term ressentiment in a limited sense drawn from the Nietzschean dichotomous states of being, as either power or impotence: ressentiment is the condemnation of what one secretly craves but cannot achieve. In the present paper, resentment is used in a more prosaic and more conventional sense. The Nietzschean notion, however, gives special place to unacknowledged resentment as an explosive force in social relations, and thus removes it from the plane of consciousness; we shall return to this point below. Second, Scheler conceptualized social structure at the level of social roles. In this respect he anticipated elements of Robert Merton's account of social structure and anomie, and is acknowledged for having done so (Merton 1968, pp. 209-10). Although this paper includes role-related categories such as reference group behavior, the conceptualization of social structure here has a wider scope that includes class systems. Finally, Scheler understood emotion psychologically, as referring to internal states. The treatment of resentment in the present paper is predicated upon the social dimensions of emotion. Emotion and social class occupy ostensibly quite different existential and theoretical domains. Persons have emotions but belong to classes: emotions are psychophysiological phenomena of micro-sociological or social psychological concern, whereas classes are socioeconomic phenomena of macro-sociological or political economic concern. Yet class theorists are beginning to recognize the limitation of structural accounts; they cannot show,