The four short works in Untimely Meditations were published by Nietzsche between 1873 and 1876.They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship between art, science and life. They also include Nietzsche's earliest statement of his own understanding of human selfhood as a process of endlessly 'becoming who one is'. As Daniel Breazeale shows in his introduction to this (...) new edition of R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays, these four early texts are key documents for understanding the development of Nietzsche's thought and clearly anticipate many of the themes of his later writings. Nietzsche himself always cherished his Untimely Meditations and believed that they provide valuable evidence of his 'becoming and self-overcoming' and constitute a 'public pledge' concerning his own distinctive task as a philosopher. (shrink)

The four short works in Untimely Meditations were published by Nietzsche between 1873 and 1876.They deal with such broad topics as the relationship between popular and genuine culture, strategies for cultural reform, the task of philosophy, the nature of education, and the relationship between art, science and life. They also include Nietzsche's earliest statement of his own understanding of human selfhood as a process of endlessly 'becoming who one is'. As Daniel Breazeale shows in his introduction to this (...) new edition of R. J. Hollingdale's translation of the essays, these four early texts are key documents for understanding the development of Nietzsche's thought and clearly anticipate many of the themes of his later writings. Nietzsche himself always cherished his Untimely Meditations and believed that they provide valuable evidence of his 'becoming and self-overcoming' and constitute a 'public pledge' concerning his own distinctive task as a philosopher. (shrink)

Most accounts of recent French intellectual history are organized around a fundamental rupture, which divides thought and thinkers into two eras: ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. But the attempts to identify the features which characterise these eras seem, at best, inconclusive. In this paper, I examine this rupture, by way of a comparison of two thinkers representative of the divide. Sartre seems as uncontroversially modern (and therefore out of date) as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s work is often taken to be (...) definitive of postmodern thought. In addition, the two engaged in a brief polemic which concerned, precisely, each other’s relevance to our times. Each attacks the other’s work as untimely, as out of step with today. In the end, however, it is precisely this very aspect of their work - the fact thatit is untimely - which constitutes its strongest claim to being postmodern. If this is the case, however, then the attempt to locate a point of rupture in intellectual history, before which thinkers are irrelevant and after which they speak to us, must fail.L’histoire du mouvement intellectuel français des dernières années est organisée autour d’une rupture qui sépare la pensée et les penseurs en deux categories: ‘moderne’ et ‘postmoderne’. Or les tentatives d’identification des traits qui caractérisent ces catégories demeurent peu concluantes. Dans cet article, j’examine cette rupture en comparant deux penseurs représentatifs de cette ligne de partage. Sartre semble aussi moderne (et donc obsolète) quefaire se peut, alors qu’on rapproehe communément I’oeuvre de Foucault à la pensée postmoderne. Par ailleurs, les deux se sont engagés dans un débat qui portait précisément sur leur pertinence respective pour notre temps. Chacun accuse I’autre d’être intempestif, c’est-à-dire de ne pas être actue!. Cependant, il ressortira à la fin que c’est précisément cet aspect de leur pensée qui justifie de la façon la plus décisive leur prétention à la postmodernité. Si tel est le cas, par contre, la tentative de localiser un point de rupture dans I’histoire intellectuelle à partir duquel un penseur devient pertinent doit échouer. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore what the concept of interdisciplinarity can bring to our developing understanding of education as a field of enquiry. We shall draw upon some recent writing on the disciplines of education in order to explore the potentially negative consequences of the way in which the disciplines are institutionalised and territorialised. We also assign some prominence to a personal account of an eminent anthropologist's perambulations through a disciplinary landscape in order to put forward an (...) initial, tentative view of interdisciplinary endeavour. Nietzsche's essay 'Schopenhauer as educator' and the distinction between measurable time (chronos) and lived time (kairos) are the vehicles through which the authors explore the nature of intellectual inquiry. They also consider the implications of the prevalence of spatial and cartographic metaphors in scholarship in this area of enquiry, and reflect on the contrasting notions of habitation and occupation. They put forward the view that the key to understanding the role of the disciplines of education is in exploring the reciprocal relations between the lives of academics and the institutions of the disciplines (books, articles, reports, societies, journals, conferences, networks), between personal narrative and grand narrative, and in attempting to reconcile full-bodied being and the ghostly life of 'pure knowledge'. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger's thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche's has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and the Western philosophical tradition developed. With his new reading, Heidegger delineates three Nietzschean modes of history, which should be understood as grounded in (...) the structure of temporality or historicity and also offers a metaphysical determination of life and the essence of humankind. Ullrich Hasse and Mark Sinclair offer a clear and accessible translation despite the fragmentary and disjointed quality of the original lecture notes that comprise this text. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation presents crucial elements for understanding Heidegger's thinking from 1936 to 1940. Heidegger offers a radically different reading of a text that he had read decades earlier, showing how his relationship with Nietzche's has changed, as well as how his understandings of the differences between animals and humans, temporality and history, and the Western philosophical tradition developed. With his new reading, Heidegger delineates three Nietzschean modes of history, which should be understood as grounded in (...) the structure of temporality or historicity and also offers a metaphysical determination of life and the essence of humankind. Ullrich Hasse and Mark Sinclair offer a clear and accessible translation despite the fragmentary and disjointed quality of the original lecture notes that comprise this text. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive interpretation of Nietzsche’s Untimely Meditations. It argues that the four Meditations—which Nietzsche said “deserve the greatest attention for my development”—are not separate pieces, but instead form a unified philosophic narrative that constitutes his first attempt to diagnose and cure the spiritual ailments whose causes he traced to modern culture and science. Taking Nietzsche’s commentary on the four essays in his autobiographical work Ecce Homo as its interpretive guide, this book also shows (...) that the Untimely Meditations contain early expositions of concepts like the last man, the overman, the new philosopher, the creation of values, and the malleability of nature—all staples of his later philosophy. (shrink)

The essay reflects on Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation, ‘On the Use and Disadvantage of the Study of History for Life’, especially as Heidegger reads it in section 76 of Being and Time and as Derrida reads Heidegger's reading of it. Derrida's concludes his first seminar on Heidegger, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l'Histoire; Cours de l'ENS-Ulm 1964–1965, by reflecting on Heidegger as a Nietzschean antiquarian.

Independently of whether an object of experience becomes a candidate for being a part of the self or a part of the external world, it is always given to us as just an object of experience. The observer-observed relation can be seen as a type of relation with many instances, both between the self and different objects of experience and between any given object of experience and different selves. The self is situated in a spatial grid, where the latter can (...) be characterised as an array of relations, of which the relata include both observers and observed. The world, understood as independent existence, including the self, is empty. However, Paolo Bozzi’s method for identifying the self and delimiting its independent existence from the external world has taught us just the opposite lesson. Bozzi’s project is to teach us how to use them, and to recognise that they allow a self to be situated in a world of objects. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzsche-Studien Jahrgang: 44 Heft: 1 Seiten: 462-486.

Focusing on the close connection between Friedrich Nietzsche's historical thought and the discourse of German historicism in the second half of the nineteenth century, this article argues in a thick contextual reading that Nietzsche's second VomNutzenundNachtheilderHistoriefürdasLeben(1874), needs to be understood as a reflection on the political dimension of historical consciousness, outlining what I shall term a In contrast to the standard emphasis on Nietzsche's presumed aestheticism, he is shown to react to rather specific developments within the contemporary intellectual context, such (...) as the establishment of specific historical foundation myths for a new German nation state, exemplified by the public monuments and commemorations of the 1870s, the effect of such foundation myths on the political imagination of historical scholarship, and the intellectual antagonism between Basel's and the German nation state. (shrink)

Nietzschean Meditations takes its inspiration from the version of Nietzsche that was popular before the Second World War, which stressed the 'Zarathustrian' elements of his thought as the harbinger of a new sort of being - the Ubermensch. The book updates the image of this creature to present a version of 'transhumanism' that breaks with the more precautionary and pessimistic approaches of humanity's future in contemporary 'posthumanist' thought. Fuller follows Nietzsche in discussing deeply and frankly the challenging issues that (...) aspiring transhumanists face. They include their philosophical and especially theological roots, the implications of transhumanism for matters of life and death, and whether any traces of classical humanity will remain in the 'transhuman' being. (shrink)

Beginning with the Untimely Meditations (1873) and continuing until his final writings of 1888-9, Nietzsche refers to humility (Demuth or a cognate) in fifty-two passages and to modesty (Bescheidenheit or a cognate) in one hundred and four passages, yet there are only four passages that refer to both terms. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, he often speaks positively of modesty, especially in epistemic contexts. These curious facts might be expected to lead scholars to explore what Nietzsche thinks of humility and (...) modesty, but to date there have been no systematic analyses of Nietzsche’s reflections on these dispositions. In this chapter, I fill that gap in the literature using semantic network analysis and systematically-guided close-reading. In so doing, I show that Nietzsche sharply distinguished between humility and modesty, considering the former a vice (for certain types of people in certain contexts) and the latter a virtue (again, for certain types of people in certain contexts). (shrink)

Nietzsche’s four Untimely Meditations are a set of works generally rather neglected of this author. They are, however, the outcome of a project placed in a critical situation, along the development of Nietzsche as philosopher. By beginning, particularly, with an analysis of the first Meditation, David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, and of the third one, Schopenhauer as educator, we will try to show two philosophical perspectives which, launched in the Meditations, will carry Nietzsche’s path until (...) its end: the path of an “ontology of the modernity”, according with the expression of Foucault, and that of a philosophy as “way of life”, according with the expression of Hadot. (shrink)

Unfashionable Observations - often translated as the Untimely Meditations or Thoughts Out of Season - is made up of four independent essays written between 1873 and 1876. The book remains a puzzle: what structure, principles and arguments underlie the essays? Presupposing no prior knowledge of Nietzsche or the text, Jeffrey Church sets the essays in historical and philosophical context, guides you through the text section-by-section and develops a structural overview of each essay. He reveals how the common themes (...) of freedom, culture and genius unify the essays" -- Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Taking Nietzsche's II Untimely Meditations and the uses of history he proposes, the aim is to show how history and philosophy of history become constituded as knowledge and genealogical method in the transition from the Medieval Philosophy to the Renaissance, particularly and principally from W Rolewinck to Erasmus of Rotterdam.

I approach the idea of empirical turns and transcendental theories indirectly. I do not start “post-“ or “neg-” anything; instead I begin pre-philosophically—that is, before everyone has a position and opposes other positions—with Heidegger’s “preparatory hermeneutical” question: As whom and with what concerns do empirically or transcendentally minded philosophers of technology respond to their experience of technoscientific life? For example, in his second Untimely Meditation, Nietzsche identifies his concern as one of “taking advantage” of historical knowledge “for life,” that (...) is, he understands himself to be motivated by a life-driven, not scientific “need.” But how are “needs” in Nietzsche’s sense to be distinguished? The question leads straight to Heidegger’s idea of a hermeneutics that comes “before philosophy”—a “hermeneutics of facticity” that considers “what goes on in [i.e., motivates] a philosophy before it becomes what it is”? I argue that once Nietzsche’s notion of need is expanded and deepened in Heidegger’s direction, we gain some clarity about how to appropriate any information “for life,” whether it is science-based, culturally operative, or phenomenological. I then consider Ihde, Stiegler, and the future prospects of empirical turns and transcendental theories in light of this idea. (shrink)

There have been many (and good) analyses of the Spanish left-populist party Podemos (2014-16) in terms of ideology, politics and class. However, this chapter focuses on an almost completely neglected dimension of its rise and fall: temporality. Firmly based on Nietzsche’s distinction in the Second Untimely Meditation between three “species of history” –the antiquarian, the critic and the monumental–, and moving on to Heidegger’s reinterpretation, which sees it as corresponding to the three “ecstatic times” –past, present and future–, the (...) following chapter applies this framework of analysis to the realm of politics by creating three different characters which may explain its relationship with time: the nostalgic (past), the opportunist (present) and the utopian (future). Through a detailed analysis of Podemos as a case study, the following chapter proposes that its internal conflict between the followers of Pablo Iglesias, Íñigo Errejón and the Anticapitalist Left cannot be only explained by recourse to the traditional categories of ideology, politics and class, but also more fundamentally as a dispute over time itself, in which the pablistas represented the primacy of the past (nostalgia), the errejonistas, the present (opportunity), and the anticapitalistas, the future (utopia). Since these three characters are equally one-sided if taken separately, this chapter ends with an attempt at a reconciliation of the three ecstatic times in a political reformulation of being-as-a-whole-within-time-ness. (shrink)

Dear Readers,In this issue, several authors contribute their insights on social and political themes in Nietzsche: Robert Miner looks to the works of the “middle period” to add nuance to Nietzsche’s critical attitude to socialism; Birte Loschenkohl asks again what Nietzsche has in mind with his enigmatic call for “great politics,” arguing that Zarathustra holds the key to understanding his vision; and Sacha Golob looks back to the second Untimely Meditation to analyze Nietzsche’s views on education and the role (...) that exemplary figures like Schopenhauer can and should play in that process. Iain Morrison, too, by focusing on the question of how drives and affects create the systems of value that take hold within... (shrink)

In 1872 Nietzsche shocked the European philological community with the publication of the Birth of Tragedy. In this fervid first book Nietzsche looked to ancient Greek culture in the hope of finding the path to a revitalization of modern German culture. Cultural health was at this point unquestionably his paramount concern. Yet postwar Nietzsche scholarship has typically held that after his Untimely Meditations which followed soon after, Nietzsche’s philosophy took a sharply individualist turn—an interpretation largely due to Walter (...) Kaufmann’s noble and influential effort to counter the Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche by stressing Nietzsche’s anti-political individualism and downplaying his seemingly more noxious Kulturphilosophie. But even after Nietzsche gave up on the idea of German culture as something blessed with inner truth and greatness and Nietzsche gave up on the idea of German culture as something blessed with inner truth and greatness and pregnant with the potential for renewed splendor–heaping scorn instead on the Germans and their newly-founded Reich–he still, I argue, continued to take culture, as a collective social achievement, to be something of prime importance. Indeed, it is for this reason that he took the flourishing of great individuals–especially artists and intellectuals–to be vital. Their singularity and their excellence redeems the decadent cultural landscape from the bovine blight of the “last man” and the self-satis!ed, uncreative, and barren mediocrity he represents. My dissertation uses Nietzsche’s perfectionistic ideal of a flourishing culture as a point of departure for investigating many of the central themes in his work: his criticism of the ideals enshrined in conventional morality; his attack on Christianity; his celebration of individual human excellence and cultural accomplishment; his lamentations about cultural decline; his troubling remarks about the need for slavery (“in some sense or other”) if a society is to flourish; and his grand ambitions for a “revaluation of all values.”. (shrink)

The Sculptor of the Overman and the Dithyrambic Artist: Michelangelo and Wagner in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This paper draws on the work of Mazzino Montinari in order to explore the relations between Nietzsche’s image of Michelangelo and specific elements of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These elements concern the idea of the overman and the figure which is sleeping in the stone. A biography of Michelangelo by the art historian Herman Grimm, a correspondent of Ralph Waldo Emerson, may be the source of (...) Nietzsche’s reference to a mysterious statue described in the chapter “Of Those who are Sublime”. Moreover, Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone may help to explain the relationship between Wagner and the sculptor. One way to understand the context of this image is to return to the fourth Untimely Meditation - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth - in which Nietzsche portrays Wagner as both a sculptor and a dithyrambic artist. Some years later Zarathustra/nietzsche will himself appear as the sculptor of the overman and as the authentic dithyrambic poet, that is the authentic “musician of the future”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to My CriticsMargaret Watkins (bio)Science is related to wisdom as virtuousness is related to holiness; it is cold and dry, it has not love and knows nothing of a deep feeling of inadequacy and longing. It is as useful to itself as it is harmful to its servants, insofar as it transfers its own character to them and thereby ossifies their humanity. As long as what is meant (...) by culture is essentially the promotion of science, culture will pass the great suffering human being by with pitiless coldness, because science sees everywhere only problems of knowledge and because within the world of the sciences suffering is really something improper and incomprehensible, thus at best only one more problem.1When Nietzsche writes these words in “Schopenhauer as Educator” in 1874, nearly a century after Hume’s death, he is not using “science” (Wissenschaft) to refer only to what we now know as the natural sciences. Indeed, as another essay in the Untimely Meditations makes clear, history is as much, if not more, in Nietzsche’s sights as biology or physics. He is naming a peculiar irony here: in the quest for a certain kind of progress—the progress of knowledge—we can end up killing any hope of progress for life. Certain methods of historical study are forms of enquiry whose spiritless effect is to “let the dead bury the living.”2 Our relentless quest to catalog and preserve the old robs us of the higher ways we might learn from it, or overcome it. We “historians of philosophy” can do this by reading past philosophers as dead artifacts, focusing intently on how they were responding to their particular contexts and pursuing their own projects. As indispensable as such study is, it can kill the texts’ potential to continue to inspire and inform philosophical thought of our own. [End Page 163]In writing The Philosophical Progress of Hume’s “Essays,” my hope was to counteract this tendency in myself and in readers of Hume—to show that these works often neglected by contemporary philosophers are still capable of inspiring life-giving, generative philosophical thought. (I do not say they are of more than “mere” historical interest; abusing the study of history with such a pernicious adverb runs counter to every fiber of my being.) Such thought need not be optimistic, encouraging, or even morally admirable at every step. It need simply inspire our own thought, activate that love of truth that Hume says can never “be carried to too high a degree,” or (preferably and) show us how that truth matters for human life (EHU 5.1).3My attempts to achieve this aim have two primary modes: showing that the Essays can inspire vital philosophical reflection and arguing that they are themselves philosophical or works of philosophy. To put my cards on the table: the enemies within (and without) that run counter to this effort are the tendency to put a piece of philosophical writing under a microscope (whose lens might be analytic or historical) without ever asking why it matters, and the tendency to dismiss the writing as philosophical because it does not fit neatly into one of the current categories of our discipline or our understanding of “the” early modern philosophical project.I am therefore pleased that both my generous interlocutors, Jacqueline Taylor and Andre Willis, recognize my attempt to extend as well as explain Hume’s insights. There is far too much insight in their own contributions for me to do justice to. I will therefore limit my discussion to three main topics: the notion of Humean public spirit I attempt to elucidate in the book, the related problems of analytic distance, and the pressing question of the difference between Hume’s projects in other philosophical works—especially the two Enquiries—and his projects in the Essays.Although there is no essay called “Of Public Spirit,” it is still a significant concept for the Essays. The initial advertisement to the 1741 volume of Essays, Moral and Political included this observation: “Public Spirit, methinks, shou’d engage us to love the Public, and to bear an equal Affection to all our Country-Men; not... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This review essay responds critically to the English translation of Domenico Losurdo’s monumental Friedrich Nietzsche: Aristocratic Rebel. It sets out to clearly identify and examine Losurdo’s two tasks in Nietzsche: firstly, his reconstruction of Nietzsche’s intellectual itinerary, from his earliest works until his descent into madness, in the context of later nineteenth-century social, political, philosophical, and eugenic sources; and secondly, to “interpret the interpretations”, and understand how Nietzsche’s avowed “aristocratic radicalism” could have informed thinkers from across the political spectrum, (...) at the same time as Losurdo contests the cogency of “progressive” readings of Nietzsche as based upon a selective “hermeneutics of innocence” which involves suppressing the recurrent, darker registers of his texts. The essay also unpacks Losurdo’s two hermeneutic strategies in this magnum opus. Firstly, we examine his “unifying” claim that Nietzsche, as a great thinker, had a coherent but evolving vision, from Birth of Tragedy through to his final works, unified by his metapolitical intention to overcome democratic, liberal and socialist modern egalitarianisms, by tracking them back to their roots in the Old Testament and classical antiquity. Secondly, we critique his contextualizing methodology which resituates the author of the “untimely meditations” within the debates of his day concerning modernity, slavery, liberalism, socialism, massification, Darwinism, and eugenics. To close, I proffer some brief comments concerning the significance of Losurdo’s work in the present moment, as the Far Right globally reasserts itself. (shrink)

The latest book by the Slovenian critic Slavoj Zizek takes the work of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the beginning of a dazzling inquiry into the realms of radical politics, philosophy, film (Hitchcock, Fight Club ), and psychoanalysis. Of Organs without Bodies Joan Copjec ( Imagine There's No Woman ) has written: "With all his ususal humor and invention, Zizek -- the acknowledged master of the 180 degree turn -- here takes a trip into "enemy" territory to deliver Deleuze of (...) a marvelously rebellious child, one that seriously challenges Deleuze's other progeny with a surprising but convincing bid for succession. Those who thought Deleuze's forward march into the future would follow a straight path are forced to rethink their stance. From now on all readings of Deleuze will have to take a detour through this important -- even necessary -- book." Eric Santner ( On the Psychopathology of Everyday Life ) describes Organs without Bodies as offering "an entirely new degree of conceptual clarity and political urgency. Through his deep engagement with the logic of Deleuze's project, Zizek opens up new possibilities of thought beyond the terms of the current political debates on globalization, democratization, war on terror. Once again, Zizek has produced an utterly timely and radically untimely meditation." Recently profiled in The New Yorker , and hailed by the Village Voice as "the giant of Ljubljana," Zizek is one of the most provocative and entertaining thinkers at work today. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo do presente ensaio consiste em esclarecer a concepção nietzschiana de ceticismo presente em Schopenhauer como educador - em especial, à luz do §3 da aludida obra. Sem passar ao largo das principais preocupações de Nietzsche em sua filosofia de juventude como um todo, bem como do horizonte hermenêutico pós-kantiano que lhe é contemporâneo, o texto conta enfatizar que, na terceira Consideração extemporânea, Nietzsche está sobretudo preocupado com as consequências corrosivas do ceticismo à filosofia, e, potencialmente, à inteira (...) cultura de sua época, razão pela qual estaria empenhado, já, na elaboração de uma sabedoria capaz de neutralizar tal periculosidade, fornecendo uma orientação aos nossos mais profundos e efetivos problemas vitais.: This article aims at clarifying Nietzsche’s conception of scepticism in Schopenhauer as Educator - especially in light of its third section. Without ignoring Nietzsche’s principal concerns within his early writings as a whole, as well as their post-Kantian hermeneutic framework, the text intends to highlight that, in the third Untimely meditation, Nietzsche is principally concerned with the detrimental consequences of scepticism for philosophy and potentially for the entire culture of the age, so that he would already be committed to creating a kind of wisdom capable of neutralize such a dangerousness, providing a guidance for our most deep and real vital problems. (shrink)

Nietzsche's Critique of Staticism Manuel Dries Part 1: Time, History, Method Nietzsche's Cultural Criticism and his Historical Methodology 23 Andrea Orsucci Thucydides, Nietzsche, and Williams 35 Raymond Geuss The Late Nietzsche's Fundamental Critique of Historical Scholarship 51 Thomas H. Brobjer Part II: Genealogy, Time, Becoming Nietzsche's Timely Genealogy: An Exercise in Anti-Reductionist Naturalism 63 Tinneke Beeckman From Kantian Temporality to Nietzschean Naturalism 75 R. Kevin Hill Nietzsche's Problem of the Past 87 John Richardson Towards Adualism: Becoming and Nihilism in Nietzsche's (...) Philosophy 113 Mamuel Dries Part III: Eternal Recurrence, Meaning, Agency Shocking Time: Reading Eternal Recurrence Literally 149 Lawrence J. Hatab Suicide, Meaning, and Redemption 163 Paul S. Loeb Nietzsche and the Temporality of (Self-)Legislation I91 Herman W. Siemens Part IV: Nietzsche's Contemporaries Geschichte or Historie? Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Philological Studies 213 Anthonyl K. Jensen 'An Uncanny Re-Awakening': Nietzsche's Renascence of the Renaissance out of the Spirit of Jacob Burckhardt 231 Martin A. Ruehl Part V: Tragic and Musical Time Metaphysical and Historical Claims in The Birth of Tragedy 275 Katherine Harloe Nietzsche's Musical Conception of Time 291 Jonathan R. Cohen. (shrink)

The practice of preserving various parts of urban landscapes for historical purposes raises a variety of normative, metaphysical, and conceptual questions that invite philosophical analysis. The normative questions are particularly interesting. Why should we preserve historical sites? What sites are worth preserving? How should they be preserved and interpreted?1 In this essay, I apply Nietzsche’s theories of history and culture as found in the first two Untimely Meditations to provide a fresh critical framework to some normative questions raised (...) by a particularly difficult instance of historical preservation; namely, the preservation of Confederate monuments. This framework allows me to argue that some monuments should be removed from their prominent public sites, while others should be retained and reinterpreted. (shrink)

For Nietzsche, a phenomenon, a belief, a mode of knowledge, or of subjectivity, confronts us with the possibility of creating, rather than presupposing, the criteria for its evaluation. In his Untimely Meditations, he widened the parameters of criticizability in just this way, proposing that history might be evaluated from the criterion of whether it is good or bad for life. Nietzsche provokes us to ask what the right question is to bring to history. Stepping back to formulate a (...) response might allow us to appreciate the difference between interrogating the accuracy of historical accounts and assessing their effects. (shrink)

Philosophy and Truth offers the first English translation of six unpublished theoretical studies written just after the publication of The Birth of Tragedy and simultaneously with Untimely Meditations. In addition to the texts themselves, which probe epistemological problems on philosophy's relation to art and culture, this book contains a lengthy introduction that provides the biographical and philological information necessary for understanding these often fragmentary texts. The introduction also includes a helpful discussion of Nietzsche's early views concerning culture, knowledge, (...) philosophy, and the Greeks. (shrink)

Der Problemrahmen des Konflikts zwischen Liebe und Gerechtigkeit beschäftigt Nietzsche von der zweiten Unzeitgemässen Betrachtung bis zu Also Sprach Zarathustra. Die aktuelle philosophische Debatte ist hauptsächlich auf soziale Gerechtigkeit forkussiert. Nietzsche geht aber darüber hinaus und setzt sich mit jenen Aspekten dieser fragestellung auseinander, die auf ihrem Verstädnis als ethisches Problem in der individuellen Einstellung zur Erkenntnis beruben. Die Spannung zwischen Liebe und Gerechtigkeit erscheint als Grundgestal des inneren Konflikts einer Lebensform, die dem Streben nach Erkenntnis Verpflichtet ist. in diesem (...) Sinn ist Nietzsches Reflexion über jene Problematik mit dem philosophischen Rahmen verbunden, dem Gedanken wie die Lehre ver der "völligen Unverantwortlichkeit des Menschen", amor fati und die ewige Widerkehr des Gleichen zugehören.Nietzsche treats the conflict between love and justice in his works from the second of his Untimely Meditations to Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While current philosophical debates discuss this conflict with reference to social justice, Nietzsche focuses mostly on aspects arising from understanding it as an ethical problem regarding the individual's attitude towards knowledge. He thus treats the conflict between love and justice as the fundamental form of conflict internal to a form of life committed to knowledge, and his reflections are strictly connected with the broader philosophical framework from which emerge his doctrines of 'man's complete lack of responsibility', amor fati, and the eternal return. (shrink)

A fresh interpretation of Jeremy Bentham, finding that his “radical foolery” embodied a social ethics that was revolutionary for its time. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is best remembered today as the founder of utilitarianism (a philosophy infamously abused by the Victorians) and the conceiver of the Panopticon, the circular prison house in which all prisoners could be seen by an unseen observer—later seized upon by Michel Foucault as the apotheosis of the neoliberal control society. In this volume in the Untimely (...) Meditation series, Christian Welzbacher offers a new interpretation of Bentham, arguing that his “radical foolery” (paraphrasing Goethe's characterization of Bentham) actually embodied a social ethics that was new for its time and demands proper historical contextualization rather than retroactive analysis from the vantage point of late capitalism. Welzbacher provides just such an analysis, offering an account of the two great utilitarian projects that occupied Bentham all his life: the Panopticon and the Auto-Icon. Welzbacher rescues the Panopticon from the misapprehensions of Foucault, Orwell, and Lacan, arguing that Bentham saw the Panopticon as a pedagogical instrument incorporating the tenets of reason; construction and function, plan and influence, architecture and politics are brought into alignment. Bentham extolled the discovery in words that could easily be ascribed to Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, or any other modernist architect. The Auto-Icon expressed Bentham's theories that the dead should benefit later generations; these theories were effectively sealed when Bentham decided to have his body preserved and put on display. (It can be seen today in a cabinet at University College London.) He also donated his inner organs to science—a practice outlawed at the time—and posthumously stage-managed his own ceremonial autopsy. Welzbacher reveals a Bentham who raised questions that feel familiar and current, invoking topoi that would come to define the modern era and that reverberate to this day. (shrink)

ASKED WHETHER, in the light of recent attempts to use philosophy to change our goals and to help transform society, he saw a social mission for his philosophy, Heidegger gave a negative reply: "If one wants to answer this question, one has to ask first: what is society? and consider that society today is only the absolutization of modern subjectivity and that from this perspective a philosophy which has overcome the stand-point of subjectivity is not even permitted to participate in (...) the discussion." What rules out such participation is the fact that Heidegger’s thinking, as he himself interprets it for us, has pushed beyond his own time in such a way that given all that the age considers important it must seem beside the point. The work of the later Heidegger is an extended untimely meditation. This untimeliness helps to explain the apolitical character of this work. (shrink)

Nietzsche stands alone among the great nineteenth-century philosophers of history to have been trained and employed as an historian. As a classical philologist, he was trained not only in Ancient languages, but also in the methods of critical hermeneutics, textual genealogy, and cultural theory. Despite this there has been comparatively little scholarly attention paid to Nietzsche's most pointed reflection on history: _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life _, the second of his _Untimely Meditations_. In this monograph, Anthony (...) K. Jensen demonstrates how ‘timely’ this work of Nietzsche’s is, revealing a text that offers insight into the most important aspects of Nietzsche’s then-contemporary philosophy of history, including teleological theories, Hegelianism, Positivism, romantic historiography, classical philology, and the role of history in education and politics. Using a straightforward and conversational approach, Jensen contextualizes the figures and movements that serve as Nietzsche’s interlocutors, and situates this text within Nietzsche’s larger philosophical project. Through an examination of Nietzsche's views, the author argues for the contemporary philosophical relevance of _On the Uses and Disadvantage of History for Life_, and advances the scholarly discussion of this oft-overlooked but nevertheless essential text. (shrink)

Resumo: A Segunda consideração extemporânea geralmente é tida em conta por filósofos e historiadores, em razão de sua crítica ao que Nietzsche classifica como “doença histórica”,. Isso por uma boa razão: a crítica de Nietzsche tem como alvo não apenas a famosa tríade composta por historiadores monumentais, antiquários e críticos, mas também suas modalidades contemporâneas em historiografia e teleologia científicas. O que frequentes vezes é desconsiderado é que o próprio Nietzsche expõe - ainda que numa retórica altamente estilizada - uma (...) concepção afirmativa da história. Essa concepção, como eu proponho, faz o leitor retornar ao enunciado que inaugura o livro, qual seja, o Ceterum Censeo, de Goethe. A demanda de Nietzsche de que a história serve à vida é uma nova aplicação da teoria de Goethe do crescimento morfológico como consequência de forças polares concorrentes para o reino da história. Uma vez que Goethe tinha os organismos vivos como a crescer por meio de forças em concorrência, também Nietzsche entendia que os indivíduos e culturas cresciam por meio de uma história considerada, acima de tudo, uma espécie de arena competitiva em que se expressam impulsos antagonistas.: The second Untimely Meditation is usually regarded by philosophers and historians for its critique of what Nietzsche labels ‘historische Krankheit’. This is for good reason, as Nietzsche’s critique not only targets the famous triad of Monumental, Antiquarian, and Critical historians, but also his contemporary fashions in scientific historiography and teleology as well. What is too often overlooked is that also Nietzsche exposits -- albeit in highly-stylized rhetoric -- an affirmative vision of history. This vision, I argue, returns the reader to the opening sentence of the book, namely, the Ceterum Censeo from Goethe. Nietzsche’s demand that history serve life is a novel application of Goethe’s theory of morphological growth as a consequence of polar competing forces to the realm of history. As Goethe thought living organisms grow by means of intrinsic competitive forces, so Nietzsche thought individuals and cultures grow by means of a history that is, above all, considered as a sort of competitive arena in which to express antagonistic drives. (shrink)

Philosophical Writings, part of the German Library Series contains essential portions of the theses that make Nietzsche the most controversial of philosophers. It includes: The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, Untimely Meditations, Human, All too Human, and other works. Included are Preface to Richard Wagner, On Truth and Falsity in their Extramortal Sense, The History of an Error, We Antipodes, Geneaology of Morals: A Polemic, and On the Pathos of Truth. Although his reputation (...) has bordered on notoriety, Nietzsche's influence has unquestionably not diminished with time, and our fascination with him will be further fed by the publication of this volume. >. (shrink)

In the Germany of the 1860s and 1870s, the problem of the value of life was urgently debated, as a consequence of the two culture-defining systems of thought that had risen to prominence in those decades—Schopenhauerian Weltschmerz and the theory of evolution—and the degree to which they could be reconciled. On one hand, the struggle for existence affirmed the pessimistic inference as to the suffering and meaninglessness of the cosmos; on the other, it appeared to promise moral and material improvement (...) in human affairs. This article reconstructs the historical connections between the emergence of pessimism and Darwinism, most clearly represented by the work of Eduard von Hartmann, and it argues that Nietzsche’s programmatic statements on life, culture, and pessimism, from the Untimely Meditations on, are best understood in light of this context and his engagement with Hartmann’s writings. (shrink)