Archive for the ‘Nietzsche’ Category

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Another Nietzsche


2008
04.23

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Posted in Books, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Psychology, spirituality | No Comments »

I am a Nietzsche fan. In fact, one of the things that drew me to him was the fact that he became insane. Mwahahaha! (SFX: Stinger from “Psycho”)A curious fact: When Nietzsche finally had a breakdown in 1888(?) in Turin, Italy, it was occasioned by his seeing a coach-driver cruelly beating up a horse. He ran up weeping to embrace the horse.

I know that Nietzsche has read Dostoyevski (his contemporary), but am not sure whether he has read “Crime and Punishment.” In the novel, Raskolnikov dreams of someone beating up a horse and him trying to stop the beating.

Is this a case of (an unconscious) life imitating art, or a simple weird coincidence? (Raskolnikov murdered an old woman. Nietzsche proclaimed the “death of God.”)

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I also encountered a book by Joan Stambaugh, “The Other Nietzsche” where she discusses a slightly different, a mystic Nietzsche. She also sees an affinity between Nietzsche and Spinoza, who was a pantheist. (Nietzsche, a pantheist?) I know this might seem quite far-fetched but there are several scholars who are inclined to this interpretation.

I consider myself a pantheist now, so I guess I have to confess I am inclined to see Nietzsche in that light. (With apologies to hard-core atheists.)

best regards,
nietzsche-ian

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Comments on “Against Interpretation” by Susan Sontag


2008
03.11

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Posted in Art, Education, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Psychology, spirituality, Translation, Writing | No Comments »

A reaction on

Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Posted in autografitti@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2003.

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I can understand the dislike that Sontag has for hermeneuts and their penchant for reducing a work of art into its purported meaning, especially when such meaning is made to appear as esoteric and accessible only to initiates. I’m inclined to think that this is the same dislike that we have for so-called experts, academicians, philosophers, and intellectuals. These personages are supposed to illumine life but most of the time they only succeed in clouding and cluttering it with hot air, pollution and garbage.It is interesting to note that Michel Foucault argued for an “ars erotica” vis-a-vis the “scientia sexualis” in Volume I of The History of Sexuality. Of course, he was not talking about an “erotics of art” but an “art of erotics.” But he, like Sontag, is wary too of hermeneutics and its promise of getting into the “depth of things.” (The truth/meaning of things.)

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Jokes for Philosophers


2008
03.03

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Posted in Filipinos, Jokes, Life, Movies, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality | No Comments »

Jokes for philosophers:

1. Philosophaster: Who’s the most punctual philosopher?

Philosopher: Immanuel Kant.

Philosophaster: And why?

Philosopher: It is said that Immanuel Kant used to take his daily walk in the afternoon in Konigsberg with such regularity and punctuality. It soon came to a point that his townmates knew what time it was when they saw Kant walking.

Philosophaster: Nope.

Philosopher: Who then?

Philosophaster: Martin Heidegger.

Philosopher: Really? And why?

Philosophaster: Because he wrote a book entitled “Being On Time.”

Note: “Sein und Zeit” (“Being and Time”), written by Martin Heidegger, cited by existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre as a seminal work. Heidegger, however, refused the tag “existentialist” as if it were “The Plague.” He was probably thinking: “Camu/s na lang. Wag n’yo na akong idamay.”

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Primacy of the Text


2008
02.23

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Posted in Art, Education, Life, Nietzsche, Philosophy, Translation, Writing | 2 Comments »

the sequel to “reading with/and understanding”

from autograffiti@yahoogroups.com, may13, 2003

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Is the concern for a reader/interpreter’s having the “right attitude” tantamount to a so-called “primacy of the reader”?

I don’t think so.

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Giving Thanks


2008
02.06

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Posted in Life, Love, Nietzsche, Philosophy, spirituality | No Comments »

Giving Thanks

by Michael Ian Lomongo, December 2000

Incarnation — Love made flesh… Goodwill incarnated. All of us have, in one way or another, experienced the spontaneous generosity and kindness of people, even of strangers. A smile, a pat in the hand, a tap on the back, a kind word… all can go a long way in making this world a little more beautiful. Incarnation is not a one-shot event in history that we could only remember and look back at with nostalgia and envy. God is always being born… in our midst.The question is whether we take notice at all.

And when we do notice, what happens? Maybe we think of ways by which we can pay back the good deed, do our good turn. But then we realize that we can never truly repay the “love” that has been given us.

And so we give thanks.

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