Frank Thermitus says prepare for the worst to achieve the best. Rather than imagining an ideal world, Stoics try to manage their emotions in order to deal with the world as it is. With this in mind, Stoicism would suggest that people of color should begin each day by reminding themselves, “I will face racism, …
Fintan Neylan explains the realism Maurizio Ferraris introduces in his Introduction. At the opening of his 1907 lecture series ‘Pragmatism’, William James commented on the growing disparity between academic philosophy and a philosophy whose relevance ordinary people would feel in their lives. This latter philosophy would be one which truly mattered to us, James claimed, …
Psychiatrist Eva Cybulska provides a psychological interpretation of Nietzsche’s Eternal Return. “Even as ‘a philosopher’ I still did not express my essential thoughts (or ‘delusions’).”Friedrich Nietzsche, in a letter to Overbeck, April 1883 “Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.”Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus The influence of …
Bill Cooke on the humanist value of Nietzsche. The story of the long rehabilitation of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) after being unfairly implicated in the rise of Nazism is well known. But the time may be coming when another daring rescue operation will be called for. For several years now, Nietzsche has been hailed as one …
An introduction by H. James Birx. “Let us assume that people will be allowed to read [my work] in about the year 2000.”Nietzsche, 24 September 1886” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche has emerged as the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, although both controversy and confusion surround his life and thought. He was born on 15 …
J. Harvey Lomax on the love of eternity. Dedicated to Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer on his 100th birthday. “Docemur disputare, non vivere.”(“We are taught how to discuss and debate, but not how to live.”)Seneca Epistulae morales 95, 13 In the twentieth century “the plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, erupted once again …
Nietzsche rejected all conventional morality but he wasn’t a nihilist – he called for a “re-evaluation of all values”. Alexander V. Razin describes the gulf separating him from that other great moralist, Immanuel Kant. Friedrich Nietzsche presented the world with a philosophy of life that called for a rigorous reevaluation of all values. His critical …
H. James Birx looks at Darwin’s profound influence on Nietzsche’s dynamic philosophy. The scientist Charles Darwin had awakened the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche from his dogmatic slumber by the realization that, throughout organic history, no species is immutable (including our own). Pervasive change replaced eternal fixity. Going beyond Darwin, the German thinker offered an interpretation of …
Peter Benson tells us how critiques of both Marx and capitalist society have evolved in France, with special reference to Jean Baudrillard and Bernard Stiegler. In 1989, when the Soviet Union imploded and its satellite states chaotically collapsed, there were those in the West who declared that communism had been not only defeated but refuted. …
Robin Rymarczuk is Michel Foucault’s ‘friend’. Facebook was founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University room-mates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. What started out as an on-campus online ‘hot or not’ tool resulted in the registration of a billion users by 2012. Its rapid growth and …