Time is central to Nietzsche’s works. In On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, he lays out a certain attitude towards time—a ‘malady of history’ that characterizes the modern age, and which he ties to the malignant nihilism therein. His commentary on history in this earlier work has oft been reduced to a cultural critique of the bloated and overwrought practice of 19th century history. I will place it in rapport with the Eternal Return, a concept we can comfortably describe as philosophical in the traditional sense of the word. Following some contours of Vattimo’s argument1, I argue that it is only in this oscillation between Nietzsche’s temporally and culturally specific critiques of the era in which he lived and his larger metaphysical …show more content…
Already clear in the Birth of Tragedy is an idea of the intolerability of existence. It is this agonous meaninglessness of the Dionysian that calls for its mediation through the Apollonian. Similarly, Nietzsche speaks of the necessary deception that language in its constitution of truth and thus historicality gives man, without which “[he] would have every reason to flee this existence as quickly as [a stillborn].”5 This contingent quality of truth is therefore our saving grace from the terrible burden of …show more content…
There is an equilibrium of the unhistorical and historical, of forgetting and remembering that, like Greek tragedy, affirms life7. In The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, he gives an account of the historical circumstances of the epoch in which he is living that have lead to the disruption of this equilibrium. Nietzsche finds modern life to have pushed the historical mode of living found in man past its natural limits until it ceases to be a life affirming method of coping with existence—‘it was’ becomes such an immense weight upon us that it crushes us rendering us “fragments and limbs of man,” as Zarathustra
Elie Wiesel’s speech, Hope Despair and Memory gave in 1986 mainly focused on the great importance of remembering past memories that people tend to want to forget. The speech was very successful in persuading the audience to believe in the importance that memory serves us through the great use of pathos throughout the speech, especially the pathos that always comes from any sort of holocaust recollection. Elie uses such sentences as, “a young man struggles to readjust to life. His mother, his father, his small sister are gone. He is alone. On the verge of despair.”(Abrams, 1997) He helps to arise a strong sense of sympathy from the injustices that had plagued this time in history. This use of pathos makes it an effective use of it for it underlines the audience’s attention towards Elie Wiesel and makes them closer to his emotions an...
Although our past is a part of who we are nowadays, we will never be happy if we can never let go of the painful feeling attached to our suffering. In addition, “suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us” (Wiesel 96). We should not be afraid to let go of our haunting past and grow closer to others because “man carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn’t others. It’s ourselves” (Wiesel 15). The wise advice this book gives its audience is one reason it won a Nobel Peace Prize. The books are also part of a very famous Holocaust trilogy, which is one reason it has been so widely read. In addition, it blends everyday stories with Holocaust stories.Therefore, readers are very compassionate towards the narrator and readers create a bond with this character due to his hardships and the similarities he shares with us. Lastly, Day speaks to the needs of the human spirit by intertwining a love story. Readers wonder if his girlfriend will change his attitude towards life because he tells the doctor, “I love Kathleen. I love her with all my heart. And how can one love if at the same time one doesn’t care about life” (Wiesel
Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals can be assessed in regards to the three essays that it is broken up into. Each essay derives the significance of our moral concepts by observing
We have grown weary of man. Nietzsche wants something better, to believe in human ability once again. Nietzsche’s weariness is based almost entirely in the culmination of ressentiment, the dissolution of Nietzsche’s concept of morality and the prevailing priestly morality. Nietzsche wants to move beyond simple concepts of good and evil, abandon the assessment of individuals through ressentiment, and restore men to their former wonderful ability.
What changes is rather the understanding of art's content what in the late stages of his work Nietzsche calls the ‘Wisdom of Dionysus’, an expression he already employs in BT . However, now this wisdom is not a source of consolation anymore, but rather of an attitude pushing toward the affirmative overcoming of oneself . This wisdom, flows from a proper metaphysical understanding of life, which is now finally unbounded by any suspect metaphysical duality. Hence, I hold that it is not too daring to see in this wisdom a new ‘unblinded metaphysics’ that the author resorts to herald in his 1880’s writings, and which also springs from the Will, now conceived as Will-to-Power. If now the tension of Apollo and Dionysus falls in the field of ‘Socratism’, we can still see in the satyrs' chorus an anticipation of Nietzsche's later themes as he himself acknowledges toward the end of the Attempt to Self-Criticism . Simply, the affirmation of existence now takes place without any reference to some metaphysical framework smelling of Socrates or even Hegel, but rather in the drive of the Will to Power
In The Landscape of History, John Lewis Gaddis makes a cohesive argument concerning about the debate over the objectivity of truth by stating “objectivity as a consequence is hardly possible, and that there is, therefore, no such thing as truth (Gaddis 29). The question for objective history has long been debated by numerous historians, and the differing viewpoints of history have led to a transition in our ways of thinking in the modern world. Ultimately, the question that this paper focuses on is: to what extent is history objective? Along with this, the relation to historical consciousness and the challenges of living in modernity will also be assessed. This paper will analyze the texts of John Lewis Gaddis, Nietzsche and the Birth of Tragedy, Modernity and Historical Vision, Living in Modernity, and Hermeneutics. Finally, the paper will argue that history is not largely objective, and is fundamentally shaped through the historian’s subjectivity.
By looking at one of Nietzsche’s specific postulations of perspectivism, we can get a better idea of precisely how this term applies to his philosophy and how it relates to the “tru...
Nietzsche has an interesting view of history; he saw it as a necessity for men, but that we also need to forget it. He saw history as a service to life and that the necessity of history is for man to be a historical being. However, Nietzsche also saw too much history as being detrimental and creates a generation of cynical people. He used the term “inwardness” defined as man’s “chaotic inner world” filled with “knowledge, taken in excess without hunger, even contrary to need” that “no longer acts as a transforming motive impelling to action and remains hidden” (Nietzsche 24). Nietzsche believed that history should be a balanced contemplation between historical and unhistorical to preserve life. He writes in his scholarship On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life that “the unhistorical and historical are equally necessary for the health of an individual, a people and a culture” (10). Within the historical, Nietzsche named the three types the monumental, antiquarian and the critical.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense represents a deconstruction of the modern epistemological project. Instead of seeking for truth, he suggests that the ultimate truth is that we have to live without such truth, and without a sense of longing for that truth. This revolutionary work of his is divided into two main sections. The first part deals with the question on what is truth? Here he discusses the implication of language to our acquisition of knowledge. The second part deals with the dual nature of man, i.e. the rational and the intuitive. He establishes that neither rational nor intuitive man is ever successful in their pursuit of knowledge due to our illusion of truth. Therefore, Nietzsche concludes that all we can claim to know are interpretations of truth and not truth itself.
Several years after the completion of his chief work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and shortly before his final mental collapse, Nietzsche pinpointed in retrospect its central concern: "the fundamental conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest form of affirmation which can possibly be attained" (6: 335). To have admitted that the most important philosophical project of his life was the construction of a formula which could overcome nihilism and affirm life, betrayed not only what he believed to have been his greatest achievement. It also shows to what extent he was influenced by one of his idols and at the same time one of his greatest philosophical enemies: that philosopher of the "denial of life," Schopenhauer.
While both playwrights elaborate their arguments more completely as each play progresses, the fundamental thematic groundwork has been laid by this initial conflict between Pentheus and Teiresias. Reconciliation and inclusion are introduced and fostered by their debate and absolutism, in its many forms, is eventually punished. By extending his concept of Dionysian worship to the exploration and expression of a singular personal knowledge of self, Wole Soyinka pushes Euripedes potent ethical argument past its historical boundaries, making it particularly relevant and accessible to a modern audience.
In one of Asimov’s earliest and most-loved pieces, “Nightfall,” the theme of man inability to alter the future regardless of free will is quite clear. Asimov rejects the age-old adage that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Instead, he emanates a general tone that even those who do know history are doomed to repeat it, as evidenced by the events and people of Lagash.
According to Nietzsche certain situations make to deep of an impact on us. We tend to take things too personally and lock incidents in our memory.
In his book Birth of Tragedy he argues for his interpretation of the creative forces behind Greek Art as a balance between...
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music. 1872. In The Birth of Tragedy and The Case