FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

 

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S

 

Pluralism

We have seen that Nietzsche promotes a number of different values. In some cases, these values reinforce one another. For example, Nietzsche’s emphasis on affirming life could be taken to enhance or to confirm the value of life itself, qua successful expression of will to power, or conversely, one might trace the value of affirmation to its acknowledgment of our inescapable condition as living, power-seeking creatures. Similarly, we saw that both the virtue of honesty and the value of art and artistry play essential roles in support of the person’s ability to affirm life (Anderson 2005: 203–11). Nietzsche appeals to the metaphor of a tree’s growth to capture this sort of organic interconnection among his commitments:

For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to be single in anything: we may neither err nor hit upon the truth singly. Rather, with the necessity with which a tree bears its fruit our thoughts grow out of us, our values, our yes’s and no’s and if’s and whether’s—the whole lot related and connected among themselves, witnesses to one will, one health, one earthly kingdom, one sun. (GM Pref., 2)

However interrelated Nietzsche’s values, though, they appear to remain irreducible to a single common value or principle that explains them all. For example, the account of honesty and artistry explored in sections 3.2.3 and 3.2.4 revealed that the support they provide to the value of affirmation depends on their opposition to one another, as “counterforces” (GS 107): if this is right, then Nietzsche’s various values may interact within an organic whole, but some of the interactions are oppositional, so they cannot all arise from a monistic philosophical system.

That very fact, however, fits nicely with another of Nietzsche’s core values, the value of pluralism itself. For Nietzsche, a person’s ability to deploy and be responsive to a multiplicity of values, of virtues, of outlooks and “perspectives”, is a positive good in its own right. Nietzsche’s defense of this idea is perhaps clearest in the epistemic case, where he insists on the value of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on any question: the thinker must “know how to make precisely the difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge”, because

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival “knowing”; and the more affects we allow to speak about a matter, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our “concept” of this matter, our “objectivity”, be. (GM III, 12)

As the passage makes clear, however, Nietzschean perspectives are themselves rooted in affects (and the valuations to which affects give rise), and in his mind, the ability to deploy a variety of perspectives is just as important for our practical and evaluative lives as it is for cognitive life. In GM I, 16, for example, he wraps up a discussion of the sharp opposition between the good/bad and good/evil value schemes with a surprising acknowledgment that the best of his contemporaries will need both, despite the opposition:

today there is perhaps no more decisive mark of the “higher nature”, of the more spiritual nature, than to be conflicted in this sense and to be still a real battleground for these opposites. (GM I, 16; see also BGE 212; TI V, 3; and EH I)

While efforts to provide a systematic reconstruction unifying Nietzsche’s philosophy around one fundamental thought or basic value retain their attraction for many commentators, it is fair to say that all such efforts have remained controversial. Meanwhile, Nietzschean pluralism has been a major theme of several landmark Nietzsche studies (e.g., Nehamas 1985, Schacht 1983, Poellner 1995, Richardson 2004), and some of the most sophisticated recent treatments of his value theory have returned evaluative pluralism to the center of attention (Railton 2012; Huddleston, forthcoming, b). Huddleston’s view is particularly noteworthy, since he argues that Nietzsche’s conceptions of strength and health—which, as we saw, are connected to the allegedly foundational value of power—are themselves disunified “cluster concepts” involving an internal plurality of separate and irreducible commitments. In fact, Nietzsche’s commitment to pluralism helps us understand how his diverse positive values fit together. From his pluralistic point of view, it is a selling point, not a drawback, that he has many other value commitments, and that they interact in complex patterns to support, inform, and sometimes to oppose or limit one another, rather than being parts of a single, hierarchically ordered, systematic axiology.

 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/

Quotes by Nietzsche

Christianity’s Origin
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Christianity as antiquity.– When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God’s son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed – whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions – is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross — how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.405, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life’s nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in “another” or “better” life.
from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, p.23, Walter Kaufmann transl.
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Change of Cast. — As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples.
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.118, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Blind pupils. — As long as a man knows very well the strength and weaknesses of his teaching, his art, his religion, its power is still slight. The pupil and apostle who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety he feels toward him, pays no attention to the weaknesses of a teaching, a religion, and soon usually has for that reason more power than the master. The influence of a man has never yet grown great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to achieve victory often means merely to unite it with stupidity so intimately that the weight of the latter also enforces the victory of the former.
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.122, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Speaking in a parable.–A Jesus Christ was possible only in a Jewish landscape–I mean one over which the gloomy and sublime thunder cloud of the wrathful Yahweh was brooding continually. Only here was the rare and sudden piercing of the gruesome and perpetual general day-night by a single ray of the sun experienced as if it were a miracle of “love” and the ray of unmerited “grace.” Only here could Jesus dream of his rainbow and his ladder to heaven on which God descended to man. Everywhere else good weather and sunshine were considered the rule and everyday occurrences.
from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, s.137, Walter Kaufmann transl
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The first Christian. All the world still believes in the authorship of the “Holy Spirit” or is at least still affected by this belief: when one opens the Bible one does so for “edification.”… That it also tells the story of one of the most ambitious and obtrusive of souls, of a head as superstitious as it was crafty, the story of the apostle Paul–who knows this , except a few scholars? Without this strange story, however, without the confusions and storms of such a head, such a soul, there would be no Christianity…
That the ship of Christianity threw overboard a good deal of its Jewish ballast, that it went, and was able to go, among the pagans–that was due to this one man, a very tortured, very pitiful, very unpleasant man, unpleasant even to himself. He suffered from a fixed idea–or more precisely, from a fixed, ever-present, never-resting question: what about the Jewish law? and particularly the fulfillment of this law? In his youth he had himself wanted to satisfy it, with a ravenous hunger for this highest distinction which the Jews could conceive – this people who were propelled higher than any other people by the imagination of the ethically sublime, and who alone succeeded in creating a holy god together with the idea of sin as a transgression against this holiness. Paul became the fanatical defender of this god and his law and guardian of his honor; at the same time, in the struggle against the transgressors and doubters, lying in wait for them, he became increasingly harsh and evilly disposed towards them, and inclined towards the most extreme punishments. And now he found that–hot-headed, sensual, melancholy, malignant in his hatred as he was– he was himself unable to fulfill the law; indeed, and this seemed strangest to him, his extravagant lust to domineer provoked him continually to transgress the law, and he had to yield to this thorn.
Is it really his “carnal nature” that makes him transgress again and again? And not rather, as he himself suspected later, behind it the law itself, which must constantly prove itself unfulfillable and which lures him to transgression with irresistable charm? But at that time he did not yet have this way out. He had much on his conscience – he hints at hostility, murder, magic, idolatry, lewdness, drunkenness, and pleasure in dissolute carousing – and… moments came when he said to himself:”It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.”… The law was the cross to which he felt himself nailed: how he hated it! how he searched for some means to annihilate it–not to fulfill it any more himself!
And finally the saving thought struck him,… “It is unreasonable to persecute this Jesus! Here after all is the way out; here is the perfect revenge; here and nowhere else I have and hold the annihilator of the law!”… Until then the ignominious death had seemed to him the chief argument against the Messianic claim of which the new doctrine spoke: but what if it were necessary to get rid of the law?
The tremendous consequences of this idea, of this solution of the riddle, spin before his eyes; at one stroke he becomes the happiest man; the destiny of the Jews–no, of all men–seems to him to be tied to this idea, to this second of its sudden illumination; he has the thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of lights; it is around him that all history must revolve henceforth. For he is from now on the teacher of the annihilation of the law…
This is the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity. Until then there were only a few Jewish sectarians.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak, s.68, Walter Kaufmann transl.
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The persecutor of God. — Paul thought up the idea and Calvin rethought it, that for innumerable people damnation has been decreed from eternity, and that this beautiful world plan was instituted to reveal the glory of God: heaven and hell and humanity are thus supposed to exist – to satisfy the vanity of God! What cruel and insatiable vanity must have flared in the soul of the man who thought this up first, or second. Paul has remained Saul after all – the persecutor of God.
from Nietzsche’s The Wanderer and his Shadow, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Christianity’s Nature
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The everyday Christian. — If the Christian dogmas of a revengeful God, universal sinfulness, election by divine grace and the danger of eternal damnation were true, it would be a sign of weak-mindedness and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle or hermit and, in fear and trembling, to work solely on one’s own salvation; it would be senseless to lose sight of ones eternal advantage for the sake of temporal comfort. If we may assume that these things are at any rate believed true, then the everyday Christian cuts a miserable figure; he is a man who really cannot count to three, and who precisely on account of his spiritual imbecility does not deserve to be punished so harshly as Christianity promises to punish him.
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.116, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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What a crude intellect is good for.– The Christian church is an encyclopaedia of prehistoric cults and conceptions of the most diverse origin, and that is why it is so capable of proselytizing: it always could, and it can still go wherever it pleases and it always found, and always finds something similar to itself to which it can adapt itself and gradually impose upon it a Christian meaning. It is not what is Christian in it, but the universal heathen character of its usages, which has favored the spread of this world-religion; its ideas, rooted in both the Jewish and the Hellenic worlds, have from the first known how to raise themselves above national and racial niceties and exclusiveness as though these were merely prejudices. One may admire this power of causing the most various elements to coalesce, but one must not forget the contemptible quality that adheres to this power: the astonishing crudeness and self-satisfiedness of the church’s intellect during the time it was in process of formation, which permitted it to accept any food and to digest opposites like pebbles.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 70, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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The despairing.– Christianity possesses the hunters instinct for all those who can by one means or another be brought to despair – of which only a portion of mankind is capable. It is constantly on their track, it lies in wait for them. Pascal attempted the experiment of seeing whether, with the aid of the most incisive knowledge, everyone could not be brought to despair: the experiment miscarried, to his twofold despair.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 64, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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The compassionate Christian.– The reverse side of Christian compassion for the suffering of one’s neighbor is a profound suspicion of all the joy of one’s neighbor, of his joy in all that he wants to do and can.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 80, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Doubt as sin.– Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature- is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 89, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Other fears, other securities.– Christianity had brought into life a quite novel and limitless perilousness, and therewith quite novel securities, pleasures, recreations and evaluations of all things. Our century denies this perilousness, and does so with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it the old habits of Christian security, Christian enjoyment, recreation, evaluation! It even drags them into its noblest arts and philosophies! How worn out and feeble, how insipid and awkward, how arbitrarily fanatical and, above all, how insecure all this must appear, now that the fearful antithesis to it, the omnipresent fear of the Christian for his eternal salvation, has been lost.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 57, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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What distinguishes us [scientists] from the pious and the believers is not the quality but the quantity of belief and piety; we are contented with less. But if the former should challenge us: then be contented and appear to be contented! – then we might easily reply: ‘We are, indeed, not among the least contented. You, however, if your belief makes you blessed then appear to be blessed! Your faces have always been more injurious to your belief than our objections have! If these glad tidings of your Bible were written on your faces, you would not need to insist so obstinately on the authority of that book… As things are, however, all your apologies for Christianity have their roots in your lack of Christianity; with your defence plea you inscribe your own bill of indictment.
from Nietzsche’s Assorted Opinions and Maxims,s. 98, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Christianity’s Destiny
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Historical refutation as the definitive refutation.– In former times, one sought to prove that there is no God – today one indicates how the belief that there is a God arose and how this belief acquired its weight and importance: a counter-proof that there is no God thereby becomes superfluous.- When in former times one had refuted the ‘proofs of the existence of God’ put forward, there always remained the doubt whether better proofs might not be adduced than those just refuted: in those days atheists did not know how to make a clean sweep.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 95, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation – all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration.
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.27, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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Destiny of Christianity. — Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to be able to lighten it. Consequently it shall perish.
from Nietzsche’s Human, all too Human, s.119, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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At the deathbed of Christianity.– Really unreflective people are now inwardly without Christianity, and the more moderate and reflective people of the intellectual middle class now possess only an adapted, that is to say marvellously simplified Christianity. A god who in his love arranges everything in a manner that in the end will be best for us; a god who gives to us and takes from us our virtue and our happiness, so that as a whole all is meet and fit and there is no reason for us to take life sadly, let alone exclaim against it; in short, resignation and modest demands elevated to godhead – that is the best and most vital thing that still remains of Christianity. But one should notice that Christianity has thus crossed over into a gentle moralism: it is not so much ‘God, freedom and immortality’ that have remained, as benevolence and decency of disposition, and the belief that in the whole universe too benevolence and decency of disposition prevail: it is the euthanasia of Christianity.
from Nietzsche’s Daybreak,s. 92, R.J. Hollingdale transl.
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After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave – a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. -And we- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, s.108, Walter Kaufmann transl.
~www.theperspectivesofnietzsche.com/nietzsche/nchrist.html

Friedrich Nietzsche//Φρίντριχ Νίτσε

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history. Beginning his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy, he became the youngest-ever occupant of the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, at age 24. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother (until her death in 1897) and then his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900.
Nietzsche’s body of writing spanned philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, aphorism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for metaphor and irony. His thought drew variously on philosophy, art, history, religion, and science, and engaged with a wide range of subjects including morality, metaphysics, language, epistemology, value, aesthetics, and consciousness. Among the chief elements of his philosophy are his radical rejection of the existence and value of objective truth; his atheistic critique of religion and morality, and of Christianity in particular, which he characterized as propagating a slave morality in the service of cultural decline and the denial of life; his characterization of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power; and the aesthetic affirmation of existence in response to the “death of God” and the profound challenge of nihilism. His later work, which saw him develop influential (and frequently misunderstood) concepts such as the Übermensch and the doctrine of eternal recurrence, became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome social, cultural, and moral contexts toward a state of aesthetic health.
After his death, Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche became the curator and editor of her brother’s manuscripts, reworking Nietzsche’s unpublished writings to fit her own German nationalist ideology while often contradicting or obfuscating his stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through these published editions, Nietzsche’s name became associated with fascism and Nazism, although 20th-century scholars have contested this interpretation of his work. His thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s, and his ideas have since had a profound impact on twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, psychology, politics, and popular culture.
Φρίντριχ Νίτσε
Ο Φρίντριχ Βίλχελμ Νίτσε (γερμ. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) (Ραίκεν, 15 Οκτωβρίου 1844[1] – Βαϊμάρη, 25 Αυγούστου 1900[1]) ήταν σημαντικός Γερμανός φιλόσοφος, ποιητής, συνθέτης και φιλόλογος. Έγραψε κριτικά δοκίμια πάνω στην θρησκεία, την ηθική, τον πολιτισμό, την φιλοσοφία και τις επιστήμες, δείχνοντας ιδιαίτερη κλίση προς την χρήση μεταφορών, ειρωνείας και αφορισμών.
Οι κεντρικές ιδέες της φιλοσοφίας του Νίτσε περιλαμβάνουν τον “θάνατο του Θεού”, την ύπαρξη του υπερανθρώπου, την ατέρμονη επιστροφή, τον προοπτικισμό καθώς και την θεωρία της ηθικής κυρίων – δούλων. Αναφέρεται συχνά ως ένας από τους πρώτους «υπαρξιστές» φιλοσόφους. Η ριζική αμφισβήτηση από μέρους του της αξίας και της αντικειμενικότητας της αλήθειας έχει οδηγήσει σε αμέτρητες διαμάχες και η επίδρασή του παραμένει ουσιαστική, κυρίως στους κλάδους του υπαρξισμού, του μεταμοντερνισμού και του μεταστρουκτουραλισμού.
Ξεκίνησε την καριέρα του σαν κλασικός φιλόσοφος, κάνοντας κριτικές αναλύσεις σε αρχαιοελληνικά και Ρωμαϊκά κείμενα, προτού εντρυφήσει στην φιλοσοφία. Το 1869, σε ηλικία 24 ετών, διορίστηκε καθηγητής στο πανεπιστήμιο της Βασιλείας, στην έδρα της Κλασικής Φιλολογίας, όντας ο νεότερος που έχει πετύχει κάτι ανάλογο. Παραιτήθηκε το καλοκαίρι του 1879 εξαιτίας των προβλημάτων υγείας που τον ταλάνιζαν σχεδόν όλη του την ζωή. Σε ηλικία 44 ετών, το 1889, υπέστη νευρική κατάρρευση, η οποία αργότερα διεγνώσθη ως συφιλιδική «παραλυτική ψυχική διαταραχή», διάγνωση η οποία αμφισβητείται. Η επανεξέταση των ιατρικών φακέλων του Φρειδερίκου Νίτσε δείχνει ότι κατά πάσα πιθανότητα πέθανε από όγκο στον εγκέφαλο, ενώ η μετά θάνατον σπίλωση του ονόματός του οφείλεται κυρίως στο αντι-ναζιστικό μέτωπο. Τα τελευταία χρόνια της ζωής του ανέλαβε την φροντίδα του η μητέρα του, μέχρι τον θάνατό της το 1897, και έπειτα η αδελφή του, Ελίζαμπεθ Φούρστερ-Νίτσε, μέχρι τον θάνατό του, το 1900.
Εκτός από την φροντίδα του, η Ελίζαμπεθ Φούρστερ-Νίτσε ανέλαβε χρέη εκδότριας και επιμελήτριας των χειρογράφων του. Ήταν παντρεμένη με τον Μπέρναρντ Φούρστερ, εξέχουσα μορφή του γερμανικού εθνικιστικού και αντισημιτικού μετώπου, για χάρη του οποίου ξαναδούλεψε αρκετά από τα ανέκδοτα χειρόγραφα του Νίτσε, στην προσπάθειά της να τα «μπολιάσει» με τις ιδέες του, αντιβαίνοντας ριζικά με τις απόψεις του φιλόσοφου, οι οποίες ήταν ξεκάθαρα εναντίον του αντισημιτισμού και του εθνικισμού (βλ. Η κριτική του Νίτσε στον Αντισημιτισμό και τον Εθνικισμό). Με την βοήθεια των εκδόσεων της Φούρστερ-Νίτσε, ο Νίτσε έγινε συνώνυμο του Γερμανικού μιλιταρισμού και του Ναζισμού, αν και αρκετοί μελετητές του στο δεύτερο μισό του 20ου αιώνα έχουν καταφέρει να αντιστρέψουν την παρερμήνευση των ιδεών του.
~Wikipedia in both English and Greek http://www.wikipedia.org

ALBERT CAMUS

Albert Camus (1913—1960)
Albert Camus was a French-Algerian journalist, playwright, novelist, writer of philosophical essays, and Nobel laureate. Though neither by advanced training nor profession a philosopher, Camus nevertheless through his literary works and in numerous reviews, articles, essays, and speeches made important, forceful contributions to a wide range of issues in moral philosophy – from terrorism and political violence to suicide and the death penalty. In awarding him its prize for literature in 1957, the Nobel committee cited the author’s persistent efforts to “illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time,” and it is pre-eminently as a writer of conscience and as a champion of imaginative literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth that Camus was honored by his own generation and is still admired today. He was at the height of his career, at work on an autobiographical novel, planning new projects for theatre, film, and television, and still seeking a solution to the lacerating political turmoil in his native Algeria, when he died tragically in an automobile accident in January, 1960.
Albert Camus quotes//Γνωμικά του Αλμπέρτου Καμύ
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Δεν θα είσαι ευτυχισμένος αν συνεχίσεις ν’ αναρωτιέσαι τί είναι ευτυχία. Δεν θα ζήσεςι ποτέ τη ζωή αν συνεχίσεις την αναζήτηση για το τί είναι η ζωή.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

Στο μέση του χειμώνα διαπίστωσα ότι κρύβω μέσα μου ένα ακατανίκητο καλοκαίρι.

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

Ο άνθρωπος είναι το μοναδικό ον που αρνείται να παραδεχτεί ποιος είναι.

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

Κανείς δεν καταλαβαίνει ότι μερικοί άνθρωποι σπαταλούν πολλή ενέργεια για να `ναι απλά φυσιολογικοί.

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

Ν’ αυτοκτονήσω ή να πιω ένα καφέ;

“Live to the point of tears.”

Ζήσε μέχρι σημείου δακρύων.

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”

Γνωρίζεις τί υπέροχο είναι να σου απαντούν, ‘ναι’ δίχως καν να έχεις κάνεικάποια σαφή ερώτηση;

~ Μετάφραση στα ελληνικά Μανώλη Αλυγιζάκη/translation by Manolis Aligizakis

ETERNAL RECURRENCE

NIETZSCHE: Eternal Recurrence in True Detective

19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more?’”
Nietzsche was profoundly affected by the concept of Eternal Recurrence. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, he referred to it as the “mightiest thought.” It is important to note, however, that Nietzsche did not introduce the theory of Eternal Recurrence. It is found in Ancient Egyptian and Indian philosophies. But Nietzsche’s practical application of the idea is innovative.
Instead of asserting Eternal Recurrence as a metaphysical truth, Nietzsche presents it to the reader as a hypothetical test to determine whether one is living a worthwhile life. Supposing that someone tells you Eternal Recurrence is true, that you will need to live your life over and over again for eternity, Nietzsche asks: “Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’” The person who embraces Eternal Recurrence as a blessing from the divine is living a worthwhile life. On the other hand, the person who curses Eternal Recurrence as a torment sent from the devil ought to consider changing the path of life on which he is treading.
To conclude, Eternal Recurrence is the theory that time is like a circle, and that the life we live now, we will live innumerable times more for eternity. In short, our lives are like DVDs. Nietzsche introduces an innovative interpretation of this ancient concept. He is unconcerned about the validity of the theory, but rather presents the concept as a hypothetical test. In order to pass the test, one must live so “that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

ΝΙΤΣΕ: Η Αιώνια Επιστροφή για τον Άνθρωπο Ερευνητή

Ο φιλόσοφος του 19ου αιώνα Νίτσε έγραψε κάποτε, « Τί θα γινόταν αν κάποια στιγμή ένας δαίμονας ερχόταν κρυφά εκεί στην μοναξιά σου κι έλεγε: Η ζωή σου όπως την ζεις και την έχεις ζήσει στο παρελθόν, θα την ζήσεις ξανά στο μέλλον όχι μία φορά μόνον αλλά πολλές φορές;» Η έννοια της Αιώνιας Επιστροφής αναλύεται και σύμφωνα με το Νίτσε βλέπουμε και την πρακτική εφαρμογή της.
Η έννοια αυτή είχε μεγάλη επιρροή στη σκέψη του μεγάλου γερμανού φιλόσοφου. Στο Ζαρατούστρα του την ονομάζει την πιο δυνατή σκέψη. Αλλά είναι απαραίτητο να σημειώσουμε ότι η έννοια αυτή της Αιώνιας Επιστροφής δεν ήταν του Νίτσε. Προέρχεται από την αρχαία Αίγυπτο και την Ινδική φιλοσοφία. Αλλά η πρακτική εφαρμογή της έννοιας που προώθησε ο Νίτσε είναι πραγματικά καινούργια. Αντί να δεχτεί την έννοια της Αιώνιας Επιστροφής σαν μια μεταφυσική αλήθεια ο Νίτσε την προτείνει στον αναγνώστη σαν ένα υποθετικό τρόπο διαγωνισμού για να καταλάβει ο καθένας αν ζει τη ζωή του με αξιόλογο τρόπο. Αν κάποιος μας βεβαιώσει ότι η Αιώνια Επιστροφή είναι πραγματικότητα, ότι θα πρέπει να ζήσεις τη σημερνή σου ζωή ξανά και ξανά στον αιώνα τον άπαντα, ο Νίτσε ρωτά: «Θα `πεφτες κάτω στο χώμα και θα έτριζες τα δόντια σου και θα καταριόσουν το δαίμονα που σου μίλησε; Ή θα ήταν σαν να ξαναζούσες τη στιγμή που θα του απαντούσες : ‘Είσαι θεός και ποτέ δεν άκουσα κάτι πιο άγιο και πιο θεϊκό.’
Εκείνος που θ’ αγκάλιαζε την έννοια της Αιώνιας Επιστροφής σαν ευλογία από το Θεϊκό είναι το άτομο που ζει μια αξιόλογη ζωή. Αντίθετα εκείνος που καταριέται την Αιώνια Επιστροφή σαν ένα βασανιστήριο που του έστειλε ο δαίμονας θα ήταν σωστό να αναθεωρήσει το κάθε τι και ν’ αλλάξει τον τρόπο ζωής του.
Η Αιώνια Επιστροφή είναι η θεωρία ότι η ζωή είναι ένας κύκλος και ότι τη τωρινή μας ζωή την έχουμε ζήσει πολλές φορές. Ο Νίτσε αδιαφόρησε αν η θεωρία ήταν αληθινή ή όχι αλλά την παρουσίασε σαν ένα υποθετικό τρόπο δοκιμασίας κι εξέτασης. Για να περάσει κάποιος τις εξετάσεις αυτές πρέπει να ζει έτσι που να μην επιθυμεί τίποτα απολύτως διαφορετικό ούτε στο μέλλον, ούτε τώρα ούτε στο παρελθόν του για όλη την Αιωνιότητα.

~Original Article in English from the blog The Great Conversation

https://orwell1627.wordpress.com/

~Translated into Greek by Manolis Aligizakis