Monday, February 18, 2008
I've noticed many of the old Chicago crowd are re-reading Nietzsche again, and I had an interesting conversation with a PhD candidate from BC on nihilism at a party last night (after accidentally hitting on his girlfriend). So I tried going through Birth of Tragedy today. From what I read, Nietzsche really didn't have that much to say about love. Not love "agape" or love "philia"; he's all about that love as a moral emotion to affirm life and transcend the old past philosophies. But the eros type of love. That struck me most reading the entire Apollonian and Dionysian diatribe. Yes, the entire disparity of balance between presenting good and evil is written, but I've yet to be rid of my disinterest in his philosophy or to find any connection between reading his books and Valentine's day. Is the will to power romantic?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Nietzsche on love: "Men are like children, and women love children!"
Nietzsche on marriage: "It's probably a bad idea, but sometimes it only stagnates rather than out-and-out injures. But if you're both in it to give birth to the Overman and create something better than yourselves, well, that's pretty cool, I guess. Good luck on that."
Nietzsche on what women like, besides children: "Chicks dig whips."
Nietzsche's attitude to romantic love is, shall we say, extremely pessimistic (in addition to outright misogynistic), but one doesn't have to follow his analysis in all things, any more than one has to accept Aristotle's physics to appreciate his ethics.
As to your disinterest, I'll agree that my affinity for Nietzsche's style and approach has much to do with my intellectual temperament. But I also think he's right on some absolutely fundamental questions of human psychology, epistemology, and the consequences of rejecting a framework of objective meaning.
Patrick: My disinterest with Nietzsche isn't about the questions about moral and intrinsic drive in man. I think my intellectual temperament matches yours, and I agree on his importance in Western philosophy lies in reevaluating the old foundations.
But rather I don't see the pronouncements of 'self over-coming' being revolutionary because Nietzsche's questions were being asked, and better debated, a thousand years earlier by Asian philosophers. The question of 'is there a God' is mute in Buddhism and Confucianism, and was rephrased as 'how should we act if there isn't a God' in some respects of Judaism and early Catholicism. Thus, to me, Nietzsche hasn't revealed anything new about the knowledge of existence's restricting and debilitating ways that permeated the culture I grew up in.
Nemo: Whips are a given. Duh.
Also, I think that the identification of Apollo with philia and Dionysus with eros has some strong points for reflection, even if Nietzsche didn't intend it.
Post a Comment