Replies to Wallace, Queloz, and Kirwin Reginster, Bernard
European journal of philosophy,
June 2023, 2023-06-00, 20230601, Volume:
31, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In this article, I reply to the comments offered by R. Jay Wallace, Matthieu Queloz, and Claire Kirwin on my book, The Will to Nothingness. An Essay on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (OUP, 2021). ...These comments and my replies cover central features of the book, including my analysis of ressentiment as an expression of the will to power; the concept of self‐undermining functionality I introduce to make sense of Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal; and my reasons for omitting to examine the “unconditional will to truth,” which he presents as the latest embodiment of this ideal.
Abstract We suffer from genealogical anxiety when we worry that the contingent origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine or cast doubt on those representations. Is such ...anxiety ever rational? Many have apparently thought so, from pre-Socratic critics of Greek theology to contemporary evolutionary debunkers of morality. One strategy for vindicating critical genealogies is to see them as undermining the epistemic standing of our representations—the justification of our beliefs, the aptness of our concepts, and so on. I argue that this strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Instead, I suggest that critical genealogies can wield a sort of meta-epistemic power; in so far as we wish to resist the genealogical critic, we are under pressure to see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a certain kind of good luck: what I call genealogical luck. But there is also a resolutely non-epistemic way of understanding the power of critical genealogies, one that is essential, I argue, for understanding the genealogical projects of various theorists, including Nietzsche and Catharine MacKinnon. For critical genealogies can reveal what it is that our representations do—and what we, in turn, might do with them.
The elucidation and exact determination of what may have been the sources, authors or ideas that decisively influenced the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and how such theoretical-conceptual ...references could have been incorporated and expressed later in the full extent of his work, constitutes one of the most complex and difficult issues to address for specialized academic research. To materialize this research task is directed this article, seeking to provide a reading strategy that allows focalized visualization of certain central elements of Nietzschean reflection that are not always well recognized in the respective research, when they are not completely denied in the interpretive corpus that has been established in relation to his philosophical work. Based on specialized research, this article aims to clarify the impact that the philosopher F A. Lange s thought on Nietzsche could have had; especially recognizing certain elements of the critical philosophy of Kant that having been initially collected by Lange, were then inherited as remnants by Nietzsche, although also modified in his work, a phenomenon that we have called "radical criticism" Keywords: Nietzsche, Lange, Kant, Radical criticism, Epistemology. Se trata de un enclave analítico ya bastante bien asentado por la crítica experta, que puede servirnos como punto de anclaje o de inicio para sostener una lectura referida a la influencia kantiana presente en la obra de Nietzsche, una vez que a ella se asocia la figura de Lange, pensador "cuyas influencias en la formación filosófica del joven Nietzsche es, sin duda, de una importancia similar a la de Schopenhauer, aunque aparezca menos explícita" (Sánchez-Meca 2011: 20).
Abstract Based on Giorgio Colli's theoretical stance and his interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche, this paper intends to sketch a philosophical alternative that faces the devastating criticism ...regarding the power of language inaugurated by the German thinker, taking as a basis for such a proposal the concept of expression. With this, we seek to provide a new way of tracing the boundaries of language beyond the world of representation and much closer to the individual's immediate experience of the world of phenomena, appearance and ways of naming what happens moment by moment. Keywords: expression, language, phenomenon, appearance, representation. Más allá de afirmar que Nietzsche fue un genio de la percepción y consiguió comprender con clarividencia las artimañas metafóricas del intelecto humano, que su talento filosófico sobrepasa la media y ha de ser valorado como un pensador extemporáneo, que no podemos más que alabar sus elucubraciones y aferrarnos a sus intempestivas campañas como fieros discípulos de un legado ya lo bastante público; el trabajo por hacer no puede relegarse a seguir huellas y enfurecer discursos, ya de por sí, iracundos y nostálgicos.
This article begins with a short reconstruction of the long-forgotten Death of God movement and its development of the concept of a Radical Theology during the 1960s in the United States of America ...and in Western Germany (The “Death of God” as a Signature of Secular Culture). In my view, protestant theology and the church have thus far failed to discuss Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “Death of God” as a genuine signature of modernity in a constructive way. In refusing the debate, they did not see the theological potential of the diagnostic and ambiguous metaphor “Death of God” as a “tremendous event still on its way”. With regard to a current perspective on Radical Theology (The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism and the Renaissance of Radical Theology), the intention is a creative and radical interpretation of this heretical concept as a step towards a modern religiosity after (the Death of) God which includes a new awareness of the finitude of human life and of its limitations. The theological symbol of the “Death of God” in my concept of “Heretical Religiosity” leads to a new approach to the theology of wisdom as symbolized in the Hebrew Bible by the book of Ecclesiastes (Heretical Religiosity: Radical Theology and Wisdom Literature in the Hebrew Bible).
El presente artículo indaga por la recurrencia de las pandemias en la sociedad contemporánea y sus impactos, a propósito de la emergencia sanitaria experimentada en el mundo por cuenta de la pandemia ...del Covid-19 en Colombia y el mundo. Para tal fin, se realiza un análisis del impacto de las pandemias con cierta trazabilidad histórica, seguido de una exploración teórica de la coyuntura actual, observada a través de la noción del eterno retorno planteada por el filósofo alemán Friedrich Nietzsche y las perspectivas de algunos filósofos contemporáneos acerca de este fenómeno que ha impactado la vida de todos los individuos y que, sin duda, sugiere enormes cambios y desafíos para el desarrollo de la vida futura
The fact that Bernard Williams' writing is at times compressed, intense, almost epigrammatic, is acknowledged by many different reviewers of his work. Are these just incidental features? Or do they ...have any philosophical significance? The aim of this article is to study those features of Williams' style as part of a stylistic method that I (and Williams) refer to as compression. In the course of my paper, I will reflect on the idea of compression as a stylistic method for doing more with less in philosophical (and musical) writing; then I will take an excursus on some properties of Nietzsche's aphoristic writing (properties that can be found in Williams' writing as well); finally, I will locate some stylistic affinities between Williams and Nietzsche: from the image they both use to describe their philosophical style to the use of different devices (rhetorical questions, the use of em‐dashes, humor…) they both employ—devices that embody a free spirit they revealed in their own writing and towards their own environment.
The article examines two claims made by Antoine Panaïoti: (1) That both Nietzsche and Buddhists denounce the self as a misleading fiction. (2) That Buddhist compassion is close to a “compassion of ...strength” that Nietzsche approves. This article agrees with (1) and disagrees with (2). The descriptive metaphysical commitments of Nietzsche and Buddhism are subordinate to their divergent normative projects. Both reject a single, enduring, and independent self; but where Mahāyāna Buddhism advocates care or compassion toward all sentient beings, Nietzsche questions the value of compassion, holding that suffering is not bad in itself. Some recent commentators suggest that a text by the Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva offers an argument from “no‐self” to universal compassion. Nietzsche disputes this connection; and Śāntideva's Madhyamaka position, in which nothing has an intrinsic nature, cannot easily counter Nietzsche's claim that suffering is not intrinsically bad. Nietzsche's privileging of states of “becoming,” “discovering,” or “creating” oneself sets him deeply at odds with Buddhism. For Buddhists the fundamentally problematic attitude is a pre‐theoretical sense of self, “egoism,” or “self‐grasping” which is at the root of human craving. Agreeing with the philosophical claim that there is no self is not sufficient to dispel this pre‐theoretical orientation.
Nietzsche on the good of cultural change Cristy, Rachel
European journal of philosophy,
December 2023, 2023-12-00, 20231201, Volume:
31, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with ...motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing.
This article draws on the analysis of Roman law and on the Jewish tradition of lamentation to offer an original reinterpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. According to Nietzsche, ...an archetype of a successful revolt against injustice is to be attributed to the Jews—as the ones who were able to carry out “the most spiritual revenge” against the Roman “masters” by transvaluing their values. The analysis of ancient Roman law helps to illuminate Nietzsche’s enigmatic account of the “law of the masters” against which the transvaluation of values takes place. Certain structural elements of the language of lament are then envisioned as a resource for leaving the Roman legal order behind and, surprisingly, for bringing out the very meaning of the modern conception of “rights.”
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