We do not complain of nature as immoral because it sends a thunderstorm and makes us wet, — why do we call those who injure us immoral? Because in the latter case we take for granted a free will functioning voluntarily; in the former we see necessity. But this distinction is an error. Thus…
I read a passage from Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human about justice. The words stayed with me as if barbed. Nietzsche refers to a passage written by Thucydides (431 BC), his account of the war between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides recounts a negotiation between Athenian ambassadors and representatives of Melos, a island community in…
There is thus and element of truth in a joke about a young Christian girl’s ideal prayer to the Virgin Mary: “O thou who conceived without having sinned, let me sin without having to conceive!” –in the perverse functioning of Christianity, religion is, in effect, evoked as a safeguard allowing us to enjoy life…
How far the perspectival character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without sense, does not become “meaninglessness”. Whether on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation –that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously…
How far the perspectival character of existence extends or indeed whether existence has any other character than this; whether existence without interpretation, without sense, does not become “meaninglessness”. Whether on the other hand, all existence is not essentially actively engaged in interpretation –that cannot be decided even by the most industrious and most scrupulously…
I take this explanation from the street. I heard one of the common people say, “he knew me right away.” Then I asked myself: What is it that the common people take for knowledge? What do they want when they want “knowledge”? Nothing more than this: Something strange is to be reduced to something…
…we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also “act” in every sense of that word, and yet none of all this would have to “enter our consciousness”. The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Man… as the most endangered animal, he needed…
The intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified-and eventually knowledge and the striving for the true found their place as a need among other needs. Henceforth not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power; all “evil” instincts were subordinated to knowledge,…
Over one man/woman necessity stands In the shape of his passions, over another the habit of hearing an obeying, over a third as a logical conscience, over a fourth as caprice and a mischievous pleasure in escapades. These four will, however, seek freedom of their will precisely where each of…
To live alone one must be an animal or a god –says Aristotle. There is yet a third case; one must be both –a philosopher. Twilight of the Idols, By Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. by R. G. Collingdale Maxims and Arrows 3 …philosophy once again pose(s) the same question(s) as they did 2,000 years ago:…
