Tuesday, January 06, 2004
(12:26 AM) | Anonymous:
Nietzsche as role-model
First of all I would like to announce something very special to me; I was finally given something on my wishlist! A very big thanks goes to the "anonymous" donor who bought me Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Maybe I will also be on the path to Ultimate Knowledge soon and by soon I mean starting in the summer.
I have been reading Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist by Walter Kaufmann for about a little over a week now and it has really helped bring some of my own thoughts on Nietzsche’s philosophy into focus.
My interest in Friedrick started very early on in my intellectual endeavors. Certain Christian apologists would mention him and cause a certain voice to sound in my head, "He'll make you lose your faith boy, better avoid this one." So I did, all the while thinking that these Christian apologists had taken care of him for me anyway. I was forced to really confront him, and that nagging suspicion that he was really right, in my Intro to Philosophy course. After talking about my apprehension with Craig I decided to understand Nietzsche, to listen to him as a friend and, as all good friends do, to put myself in his path despite what ills may befall me. Rather unwisely I started with his Zarathustra because of the aesthetic value of the very cheap and vintage looking hardcover offered by Modern Library. Even though I read quite a bit too much into the text it was still one of the biggest influences on my own burgeoning thought and I re-read passages quite often. After that I moved on to making my way through The Anti-Christ and Twilight of the Idols and from there to infinity. I often find myself always looking for people to talk about Nietzsche, which is what first led me to Deleuze and Bataille. I sampled Foucault, whom I ultimately found to not be as cool as everyone made him out to be, but I still to read him more because I heard he based his whole method on Nietzsche's idea of Genealogy.
Because of this admiration for Nietzsche I announce my intent to make a series of posts to be undertaken in a critical and scholarly manner, at least as those words apply to the better part of the blogosphere. For the next couple of days I will try to prepare some short essays on Nietzsche's philosophy as a way to live without being a systematic ethics. I find him to be a role-model, which is more than a mere educator, and I hope to explain what I think that term means in reference to a man who called himself the Antichrist. So, tomorrow I plan to write on Nietzsche and how to deal with the divine.
