Nietzsche : Forum : Essay I'm working on


Essay I'm working on

16 Years Ago


I am currently working on an essay critically relating Kierkegaard's repetition with Nietzshe's Beyond Good and Evil. The topics of the essay is how each of the thinkers in their texts' deal with the metaphysical concept of the "I" - the problems taken up by each, and to what extent they are complimentary to the problems. Also the way each thinker deals with the concept of memory in relation to the concept of "I" and in which ways they are complimentary to each other etc etc.
I was wondering if you good folk have any ideas if you are familiar with these texts and what way you would deal with this juxtiposition.

Cheers.

[no subject]

16 Years Ago


hello. kierkegaard's repetition is similar to nietzsche's eternal recurrence and both theories stems from heraclitus's flux, somewhat. martin buber wrote a book on the metaphysical i: i/thou.
the individual is a myth. we are an accumulation of our history and environment and as young adults who influences us to convince ourselves of our convictions or loss of convictions.

[no subject]

16 Years Ago


I think that especially for Kierkegaard the I would be an absurdity because it is a bourgeois kind of notion of the good life, with Kierkegaard I think that faith is always the most important notion, so the I for Kierkegaard is a mask we create in order to run away from being faithful. For Nietzsche there is a certain similarity, in that the common notion of I is rooted in slave morality, so I is a false sense of self, because it indicates the mass-consumption intoxication of being-slave. Kierkegaard's faith would for Nietzsche be that bold courage to truly be I, so a paradixical kind of move of an I which forgets itself.

Steven

[no subject]

16 Years Ago


The true nature of personal identity is an idea that has been worked and reworked throughout the history of philosophy. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche when they wrote Repetition and Beyond Good and Evil were writing in response to thousands of years of philosophical dialogue that influenced their points of view and many of the problems posed by philosophy in relation to personal identity are brought up in the two thinkers� texts however. The fact that they had not influenced each other makes a comparison quite interesting as it offers a chance to juxtapose some of their ideas that were independent of each other. Differing theories have held different keys to unlocking the doors of understanding the self since the beginning of the metaphysical debate. Beginning with Plato, the self had become separated from the physical and organized into the Tripartite Soul. Christianity came along and synthesized the Platonists� claims of the self into their religion. Modern Philosophy broke out with Descartes claiming that the only truly knowable fact is that there is a thinking being, an �I� which is responsible for all thought and thus the only thing that is indisputable � something to build a foundation on. Descartes posed what Nietzsche would call an atomistic concept of the �I� a concept that has been disputed by empiricists such as Hume. Hume argued that an �I� can only exist as a collection of sense impressions and that it is a multitude of forces that results in an ever changing �I�. It is with this concept of a multi-faceted �I� that Nietzsche introduces some of his own ideas and forges a clear idea of memory that helps explain the identity.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in their respective texts Repetition and Beyond Good and Evil lay out some key ideas that in a close and comparative examination challenge some philosophical claims about the ideas of self-identity and memory. The way in which Kierkegaard and Nietzsche deal with memory is crucial to the development of self-identity in the two texts. The two thinkers can be juxtaposed very well in relation to certain ideas but on others they can offer good criticisms of each other that also allows for further ideas to present themselves dialectically.
Repetition for Kierkegaard is a way of reconciling time in relation to human beings who find themselves stuck between the past and future in the ever-changing moment. Willing a repetition is to constantly affirm something new by nature of it being repeated.
The dialectic of repetition is easy, for that which is repeated has been � otherwise it could not be repeated � but the very fact that it has been makes the repetition into something new. When the Greeks said that all knowing is recollecting, they said that all existence, which is, has been; when one says that life is a repetition, one says: actuality, which has been, now comes into existence.
The problem of motion is important throughout Repetition and Kierkegaard was especially concerned with the possibility of temporal motion. For it is with temporal motion that humans understand their own experiences and act in relation to the past and future, for Kierkegaard the moment and the possibility of its repetition is crucial to living. The repetition allows for the moment to be related through its similarity with past moments while being differentiated in its not being identical to them, allowing for temporal motion to be grasped. Part of the repetition is involved in forming certain characteristics of an individual self so as to be able to relate an identity of oneself temporally with his/her past and future so as to continue living.
Part of the concept of repetition in Kierkegaard�s text is how one uses it effectively and whether it is possible in certain cases. The synonym that Kierkegaard writes under (Constantin Constantius) is obsessed with a repetition of his trip to Germany that ultimately fails partly due to his character as a meticulous observer. This brings up questions of what role repetition has in building character or self-identity and the other way around. When discussing the theatre Constantin notes that:
there is probably no young person with any imagination who has not at some time been enthralled by the magic of the theatre and wished to be swept along into that artificial actuality in order like a double to see and hear himself and to split himself up into every possible variation of himself, and nevertheless in such a way that every variation is still himself. [�] In such a self-vision of the imagination, the individual is not an actual shape but a shadow, or, more correctly, the actual shape is invisibly present and therefore not satisfied to cast one shadow, but the individual has a variety of shadows, all of which resemble him and which momentarily have equal status as being himself.
In this passage he reveals a great deal about the development of self-identity in relation to repetition. At a young age the future is pure potential as is the possible self-identity that follows with age. The more potential for self-identity, the less chance of a repetition, or rather the inverse, repetition forges self-identity by its nature of repeating that which is known and familiar. Through experience in choices and in repeating certain choices over and over the activity becomes part of who we are as individuals. For example a student chooses to learn French and read French books, newspapers, and magazines will become more akin to French ideas and so become, to a certain extent, a more French person with characteristics of a French person rather than say if they had learned Chinese or German. So while repetition forges a self-identity early on in life, one would assume it would become easier as time goes by to continue a repetition or as some people are described, as being stuck in their ways.
Nietzsche�s concept of memory and self-identity though differing from Kierkegaard�s adds perhaps a bit more depth and understanding to a concept of a developing and livable human experience. Nietzsche is immediately suspicious of terms like self-identity as some unified atomistic force or entity.
That the soul is something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, that it is a monad, atomon: this belief must be thrown out of science! [�] The path lies open for new versions and sophistications of the soul hypothesis � and conepts like the �mortal soul� and the �soul as subject-multiplicity� and the �soul as a society constructed out of drives and effects� want henceforth to have civil rights in the realm of science.
For Nietzsche an identity could be composed of multiple forces or wills each of which may be at the individual moment causing tensions that lead to an ultimate will or the strongest among many wills assuming a role of influence or power. The will to power is a force that attempts to exert energy on the world in a culmination of action. The will to power for Nietzsche is life. �Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength � life itself is a will to power� but Nietzsche does not mention necessarily a consistent will to power but merely its presence in a living thing. It may be that any will has the potential to be a will to power or that all wills are will to power in a web of tensions which results in a single will becoming fulfilled.
The implications of looking at self-identity in this manner are huge. Perhaps having a concept of self-identity in the first place is just a tool that assists in allowing us to function in a certain way as to exert energy. Perhaps the foolish atomism allows for a pattern of thinking that is conducive to exerting energy on the world around us and so it is merely a sub-conscious trick that allows us to exist in a more complex world.
For Nietzsche memory is something used as a tool in developing a concept of a self-identity that aids in the exertion of energy. Memory is not something that is depended on as truth for it can be strangely misleading and false at times. Memory is something that may be rearranged to in order to forge a concept of events and may make living a certain life possible. For instance in the film Memento the main character Lenny was able to recreate the memory of his wife and confuse it with Sammy Jenkis� story in order to continue living and acting out his project � killing �John G.�
Anyone [�] who has learned not just to accept and go along with what was and what is, but who wants it again just as it was and is through all eternity, insatiably shouting da capo [from the beginning] not just to himself but to the whole play and performance, and not just to a performance, but rather, fundamentally, to the one who needs precisely this performance � and makes it necessary: because again and again he needs himself � and makes himself necessary. - - What? And that wouldn�t be � circus vitiosus dues [God as a vicious circle]?
Perhaps a repetition is what is required to consciously affirm the false atomistic self-identity that has been imposed upon us by a sub-conscious will to allow us to discharge energy. A forged memory in this instance would allow for us to actively forget everything that does not fit into our false identity and allow us to make do with what is left of our self-identity to repeat our identity and project from moment to moment and thus exert energy or in other words live. In this a Kiekegaard�s Repetition allows for a more refined concept of what Nietzsche was attempting with a soul being composed of a multitude of tensions. For an individual, repeating and actively forgetting in order to arrange a concept of a unified self-identity is crucial to acting in the world but for a culture or a people this repetition is also crucial for maintaining an identity.
For the Young Man, a repetition of devotion to his beloved was impossible for as a poet seeking the idealistic he could not repeat a devotion to the actual. The Young Man�s attempt to do this led to despair and suffering which was only ended by being released by his beloved. This is where the Young Man achieved a repetition, regaining what had been but not as the same person. He had achieved the poetic transcendence that he yearned for and that he used the girl for.
I am myself again. This �self that someone else would not pick up off the street I have once again. [�] I am unified again. [�] Is there not, then, a repetition? Did I not get everything double? Did I not get myself again and precisely in such a way that I might have a double sense of its meaning?
In this repetition the Young Man became a new person but all the same in a unified sense of the �self.� In achieving the repetition it may be that the Young Man had changed some part of his self-identity that allowed him to continue creating and exerting energy through poetry but he did not remain the same �self� at all and to repeat: �the very fact that it has been [repeated] makes the repetition into something new.�