Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Beyond Dualism And Monism: Bergson’S Slanted Being, Messay Kebede

Messay Kebede

There is an old but still unresolved debate pertaining to the question of Bergsonian monism or dualism. Scholars who think that Bergson is ultimately monist clash with those who claim that he has consistently maintained a dualist position. Others speak of contradiction and point out his failure to reconcile dualism with monism. What feeds on the debate is Bergson’s undeniable change of direction: while his first book is flagrantly dualist, his second book takes a sharp turn toward monism. Without denying the intricacy generated by the change of direction, this paper argues that the originality of his position is overlooked …

Nietzsche And Emancipatory Politics: Queer Theory As Anti-Morality, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

The Vision Of Nietzsche, Philip Novak

Philip Novak

God is dead, there are no universal truths, no morality. We stand alone in the universe ... Nietzsche conjured up nihilism, embraced it, then discovered that this philosophy was untenable. But out of his struggle emerged his great redemptive vision - the will to power of the Superman. This powerful book presents an introduction to Nietzsche's life, while carefully selected excerpts from his writings show the development of his thinking. Finally Novak compares Nietzsche's ideal of the Superman with Buddhism's tried and tested notion of the Bodhisattva.

Ought We To Forget What We Cannot Forget? A Reply To Sybille Schmidt, Attila Tanyi

Attila Tanyi

This is a short response to Sybille Schmidt's paper (in the same volume) "Is There an Ethics of Forgetting?". The response starts out by admitting that forgetting is an essential function of human existence, that it serves, as it were, an important evolutionary function: that it is good, since it contributes to our well-being, to have the ability to forget. But this does not give us as answer, affirmative or not, to Schmidt’s title question: “Is There an Ethics of Forgetting?” The main impediment to answering this question, certainly to answering it in the affirmative, seems to be a problem …

Literature And The Passion Of Virtue, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

No abstract provided.

Of Buggers And Gods: Friendship In Ender’S Game, Jeffery Nicholas

Jeffery Nicholas

Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a genius—a boy wonder who shouldn’t exist except that his older siblings showed such promise that the government allowed his parents to have a “Third.” Ender is so smart that he never loses a military strategy game at a school for geniuses. He’s such a genius that when fighting the alien buggers, he loses a few battles but wins the war. Orson Scott Card writes the story of Ender to make us believe that Ender’s genius rests on his ability to empathize with his enemy so that he can anticipate their strategy and use it to …

Nietzschean Narratives Of Hero And Herd In Walt Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

A critical reading of the Nietzschean politics of the Walt Disney/Pixar film The Incredibles.

Le Zarathoustra De Nietzsche Et Le Style Parodique. A Propos De L’Hyperanthropos De Lucien Et Du Surhomme De Nietzsche, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

Abstract Nietzsche’s Übermensch is derived from Lucian of Samosata’s term hyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances in the context of that terminological origination in Lucian’s Kataplous — literally: sailing into port — referring to the journey of the soul into the afterlife, as escorted by Hermes and ferried by Charon along with myriads of others facing the same fate. The Kataplous he tyrannos, a title usually rendered as the Downward Journey (or The Tyrant), is a Menippean satire telling the tale of the “overman” supposed superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly life …

Nietzsche And Eros Between The Devil And God’S Deep Blue Sea: The Problem Of The Artist As Actor–Jew–Woman, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

In just one aphorism in The Gay Science, Nietzsche arrays “The Problem of the Artist” in a complex, highly reticulated constellation. Addressing every member of the excluded grouping of disenfranchised “others,” Nietzsche turns to the destitution of a god of love keyed to the self- or inward-turning absorption of the human heart. His ultimate and irrecusably tragic project to restore the innocence of becoming requires the affirmation of the problem of suffering as the task of learning how to love. Nietzsche sees the eros of art as what can teach us how to make things beautiful, desirable, lovable in the …

Zu Nietzsches Stil, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

Das Thema von Nietzsches Stil ist hier sowohl von Bedeutung als Frage nach dem Wesen jenes Stils wie auch als Frage danach, was er in philosophischer, nicht einfach in asthetischer oder literarischer Hinsicht erreicht hat. Hier wird nachgelegt, dass die Kunst des Lesens, die technische Kunst des hörens als eine Art des Hörens in einer philosophischen Seinsweise zu verstehen sei. Damit setzt sie nicht allein eine diskursive Kunst musikalischen Gespürs seitens des schreibenden, sondern eigentlich auch seitens des Lesenden voraus. Untersucht wird vor allem, Nietzsches Aphorismos im Rahmen des Antisemitismus. Diese außerordentlich komplexe innere Ausrichtung von Nietzsches Stil ist die …

The Birth Of Kd Lang’S Hallelujah Out Of The ‘Spirit Of Music’: Performing Desire And ‘Recording Consciousness’ On Facebook And Youtube, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

The Hallelujah Effect on the Internet The initial focus of this essay, apart from important preliminary references to Leonard Cohen is on kd lang, not as composer (although she is one) but musical performer and not as guitarist (although she is one) but as a singer and although her live performances have to make all the difference, very specifically, for the sake of any analysis, specifically as her singing is available in video format on YouTube. Of course there are many readings of kd lang and popular music, and of course most of them focus on the way she dresses, …

Greek Bronze: Holding A Mirror To Life, Expanded Reprint From The Irish Philosophical Yearbook 2006: In Memoriam John J. Cleary 1949-2009, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

To explore the ethical and political role of life-sized bronzes in ancient Greece, as Pliny and others report between 3,000 and 73,000 such statues in a city like Rhodes, this article asks what these bronzes looked like. Using the resources of hermeneutic phenomenological reflection, as well as a review of the nature of bronze and casting techniques, it is argued that the ancient Greeks encountered such statues as images of themselves in agonistic tension in dynamic and political fashion. The Greek saw, and at the same time felt himself regarded by, the statue not as he believed the statue divine …

On The Order Of The Real: Nietzsche And Lacan, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

Words In Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy And Poetry, Music And Eros In Hölderlin, Nietzsche, And Heidegger, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

Early Continental Philosophy Of Science, Babette Babich

Babette Babich

No abstract provided.

Philosophically Thinking Through Nihilism: The Reclamation Of Embodied Thought For Enhancing Cultural Practices, James Magrini

James M Magrini

No abstract provided.

Reading Nietzsche In The Wake Of The 2008-09 War On Gaza, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

A psychological reading and political application of Nietzsche's categories of master and slave morality to Israel's 2008-09 war on Gaza.

Art Of Life: Gauguin’S Language Of Color And Shape, Eva Maria Raepple

Eva Maria Raepple

Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth century philosopher (1844 -1900), whose works speak of his unyielding search for an art of life, warns of the serpent’s promise, a promise that according to Genesis 3 foreshadows tribulations. On the stage of life the promise to know, to know as a subject that actively grasps the world, is an alluring, call, one that permits free spirits to explore and design life as a work of art beyond the confines of the herd. A changing role of the knowing and imagining subject in the nineteenth century enticed philosophers and inspired artists, unleashing their creativeness to …

Truth, Art, And The "New Sensuousness": Understanding Heidegger's Metaphysical Reading Of Nietzsche, James Magrini

James M Magrini

This article takes a critical look into Heidegger’s reading of Nietzschean metaphysics in the context of art and finds certain discrepancies in Heidegger’s texts. Heidegger’s claim is that Nietzsche has had some difficulty in discussing the problem of truth, being, and becoming in terms of how the Western tradition of philosophy has understood it. In the context of art, Magrini traces the path that Heidegger took in understanding Nietzsche’s notion of nihilism and finds that Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is actually an attempt to elevate the latter as a timely philosophical force whose thought moves away from the rote and …

Aligning Nietzsche's "Genealogical" Philosophy With Democratic Educational Reform, James Magrini

James M Magrini

No abstract provided.

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

No abstract provided.

Saying Yes To Being: Sartre's Amor Fati, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly

In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche introduces the idea of amor fati, or “love of fate,” an idea that he further explores in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Ecce Homo. This idea of amor fati seems in some ways another formulation of eternal recurrence: how can one will that which already is, that over which we have no control, that which is necessary? On one level, it addresses the literal possibility of eternal recurrence, as well as commonly held ideas about fate and destiny. On another level, however, it addresses the bare fact of being human- that being …

Albert Camus And Friedrich Nietzsche: At The Crossroads Of Philosophy And Literature, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly

Western philosophy essentially began as a dramatic form in the dialogues of Plato, but quickly was converted to a subject for study, something analyzed, systematized, and to a large extent removed from everyday experience. Indeed, most think of philosophy as a subject that has no relevance to common existence, even though it undoubtedly always begins there. Attempt at dialogue, or dramatic form of any kind, in philosophy since Plato has generally been either ignored or ineffective. However, with Friedrich Nietzsche, literary forms other than the treatise were re-introduced to Western philosophy in such a way that they no longer could …

(Im)Material Devils: The Question Of Responsibility In The Holocaust In Thomas Mann’S Doctor Faustus, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly