Philosophy as grotesque: the case of Nietzsche. (original) (raw)
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Studia Philosophica, 2017
In this paper, I examine two exemplary replies to the challenge of history that played a crucial role in the controversies on the nature and purpose of philosophy in the so-called long nineteenth century. Nietzsche and Dilthey developed rather different concepts of philosophy which contrasted with one another, in particular regarding their approach to the history of philosophy. While Nietzsche advocates a radical break with the history of philosophy, Dilthey emphasizes the continuity with the philosophical tradition. I shall argue that these conceptual reorientations are linked to specific social images of the philosopher. Nietzsche, on the one hand, presents us a new version of the philosophical recluse. Dilthey, on the other hand, embraces the idea of a philosophical community and hence emphasizes the collective character of philosophy. The examination of these connections attempts to demonstrate that the history of philosophy should also be studied as a social tradition.
Nietzsche Nietzsche On Making Sense of Nietzsche (Foreword: Nietzsche on Educating his Readers)
EPURE - Presses universitaires de Reims, 2021
Nietzsche's thought is made difficult by the new position he carves out for philosophy by ridding it of the prejudices that have always and unwittingly undermined it. Interestingly, his texts’ typical difficulties, traps, pitfalls, and challenges have been noticed and gradually investigated. But commentators rarely note that Nietzsche does not merely abandon his readers to obscurity and mystery. On the contrary, he drops clues — especially during his last active years — in order to show to the rigorous reader the path of adequate reading, i.e. of philologically rigorous reading. One of his most original traits is that his texts integrate a theory on reading and offer — albeit in a disseminated and challenging way — indications as to how he wishes to be read. La pensée nietzschéenne est difficile du fait de la position sans équivalent que lui confère son souci de reconstruire la réflexion philosophique en la débarrassant des préjugés qui l’ont toujours minée à son insu. Or, si la difficulté des textes, les pièges et les défis qui sont une des marques de sa manière de procéder ont été notés, et progressivement approfondis, par les commentateurs, on a beaucoup moins remarqué que Nietzsche ne se contente pas d’abandonner son lecteur à l’obscurité et au mystère. Bien au contraire, en particulier dans les dernières années de son activité, il égrène des indices destinés à mettre le lecteur rigoureux sur la voie de la lecture adéquate, c’est-à-dire philologiquement rigoureuse. Car c’est bien là l’une de ses originalités foncières: ses textes intègrent une théorie de la lecture, et offrent, de manière il est vrai disséminée et difficile à saisir, des indications sur la manière dont il veut être lu.
The (Meta)Physician of Culture: Early Nietzsche's Disclosing Critique of Forms of Life
Martin Hartmann & Arvi Särkelä (eds.), Naturalism and Social Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives, 2021
Forthcoming in Martin Hartmann and Arvi Särkelä (eds.), Naturalism and Social Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives "Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln Und die andern sind im Licht Und man siehet die im Lichte Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht" Bertolt Brecht, Moritat von Mackie Messer (19: 320) Robin Celikates, Martin Hartmann, Federica Gregoratto, Arto Laitinen, Otto Linderborg, Italo Testa, Thomas Wallgren and to the many commentators, who shall go unnamed, at the Power 2018 Conference at Tampere University, in the von Wright-Wittgenstein Research Seminar at the University of Helsinki, and at the conference "Social Critique and the Concept of Nature"
Dark Potentiality: On the Death of Nietzsche and the End of Philosophy
2021
Originally, I intended to consider the topic of 'transformation' (as it is conceptualized and charged as a cipher for the Dionysian in Nietzsche's philosophy) against the contemporary background of 'capitalist realism'. Crucial for such considerations are the relentless investigations of the cultural theorist, philosopher, and blogger Mark Fisher (1968-2017), as summarized in his small book Capitalist Realism. Is there no Alternative? (Winchester 2009). In my proposal, I therefore asked: But what about the present? What particular position does the Denkfigur of transformation in Nietzsche occupy within the present system of capitalist realism? Has not the idea of transformation by now been replaced by consumerist ideologies of self-optimisation, and transformation 'updated' to improvement? Has not the former σπαραγµός (sparagmós) of body and mind, as celebrated in the ancient Dionysian mysteries, and which was supposed to liberate the 'soul', been replaced by a simulation (cf. Baudrillard 1981) of a soulless body (that can be improved through its adjustment to consumerist behaviour)? Has not the Pythagorean κατάβασις (katábasis) been replaced by a walk into a mirrored and illuminated yoga studio? Has Nietzsche's Dionysian transformation not long been silenced and drained in endlessly capitalized lifestyle obsessions of the so-called "New Age"? Is the Dionysian, is Nietzsche dead? Or, due to our confusion of the ideas of transformation and optimisation, haven't we 'moderns' (cf. Latour 1991) ultimately become Nietzsche's letzte Menschen, who have already seen it all, and have decadently weakened themselves through the excesses of their endless selfreflection? The paper aims to trace whether Nietzsche is the one who laughs at last. Hence, the title of the paper ("Dark Potentiality"), which was taken from a passage of Fisher's book in which he sharply summarizes Gilles Deleuze's (1925-1995) and Félix Guattari's (1930-1992) psychosocially intensive interpretation of capitalism (cf. Deleuze/Guattari 1972/1980): "In their account of capitalism, surely the most impressive since Marx's, Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems" (Fisher 2009, 5). Transformation in this sense would only be a password for a marketable eccentricity whose value of entertainment is greater than its actual existential potential. However, during the preparation of the paper, I encountered another, much more fundamental problem than that of the multipresent reality of capitalism gutting any idea or form of transformation to leave it as an ultimately commercialized and toneless imitation of a faint echo from the past. Of course, this process is obviously and undeniable. The idea of commercializing the existential idea of transformation is just another case of pastiche (cf. Jameson 1991, 16) and recuperation (cf. Canjuers/Debord 1960), whose number is legion. Cultural phaenomena that once were subversive, critical, radical, or revolutionary (as ideas of transformation and progress inherently are) become appropriated, neutralized, and normalized by institutions of power in order to serve the cultural and political status quo of accumulating more power, more money, more sex, more more-ness. Nevertheless, the problem starts much earlier, and like all historical discourses of power, it is a hermeneutic one. The real problem is about the reading of the fundamental conception not only of the idea of transformation, and its place of (dark) potentiality in our capitalistic reality, but above all about the very idea of 'philosophy' itself-i.e. φιλοσοφία (cf. Hadot 1995). What is usually labelled as 'philosophy' and taught within the 'academic' Humanities-can this understanding of 'philosophy' be labelled philosophía at all, or are we actually dealing with a simulation of the ancient Greek idea of philosophía? And how is this simulation of philosophía engineered and entangled with 'capital' and 'realism'? Was the idea of philosophía itself capitalized, or only a misunderstanding reading of philosophía? And can something be capitalized that has been fundamentally misunderstood in the first place? The following ramblings represent a first attempt at these questions.