[PREV - SHINING_EXISTENTIALISM]    [TOP]

SHINING_NIETZSCHE

                                             June 12-14, 2011

                                                    ALL_THINGS_SHINING
From Dreyfus & Kelly, from p.21
("Our Contemporary Nihilism"):

   "Frederich Nietzsche, the great German philosopher of
   the late nineteenth century, famously claimed that God
   is dead.  What he meant by this is that we in the
   modern West no longer live in a culture where the basic
   questions of existence are already answered for us.
   [...] Nietzsche thought that nihilism was a great joy,
   since it frees us to live any life we choose, but many
   find it horrifying instead."


      I get the sense that Dreyfus and
      Kelly haven't read much Nietzsche,
      or have carefully edited their
      memories of it, because there's
      more to Nietzsche than heroic
      self-reinvention.

      Nietzsche did have some
      things to say about mass
      experience (Dionsyian              TRAGEDY
      ecstasy, yes?)

   You could argue that
   Nietzsche came to a
   similar conclusion to
   theirs: Nietzsche's
   answer to "the death of
   god" is a return to the               Dreyfus & Kelly, claim
   classic Greek pagan gods              (p.221-2 "Conclusion") to be
   (he claimed to be the                 offering up a new
   last worshiper of                     interpretation: "Others talk
   Dionysius).                           about God's absence,
                                         withdrawal, or death.  But
                                         the picture we are offering
                                         turns on its head the
                                         traditional
                                         twentieth-century narrative.
                                         The gods have not withdrawn
                                         or abandoned us: we have
                                         kicked them out."

                                            Nietzsche, in fact,
                                            actually wrote
                                            something like:
                                            "God is dead, *and we
                                            have killed him*".




--------
[NEXT - SHINING_SHOULD]