Serious Topics
Sept 22, 2017 23:20:01 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2017 23:20:01 GMT -5
The nineteenth century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, famously concluded that 'Gott ist tot'. What did he mean? God is dead, although he added that there may still be caves in which his shadow will still be shown. God's death was supposed to be a liberating event, just as Christians have always argued that Christ's resurrection is a liberating event. In the very first of his books, 'The Birth of Tragedy', Friedrich Nietzsche uses this phrase three times:
What he is saying, I think, is that the greatness of the early Greeks, before Socrates, lay in their tragedy. He never really forgave the trivialising practice of rationalising everything with Socratic argie-bargie, or indeed, Plato for setting up a hero whose main qualities are those of talking everybody else into the ground, as has occasionally been attempted here in 'Serious Topics'. Nietzsche may be asking, as indeed Shakespeare and Goethe occasionally ask, is the whole world really to be taken seriously, or is it not a great game, a great play like 'Hamlet' or 'Faust', some kind of drama played out by we know not whom, as a spectacle for we do not know whom? Can we make sense of such an aesthetic justification for mankind?
Plato wrote that the sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin. Curiously, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and little c all seem to agree with Plato on that, but on little else. Indeed, little c constantly wonders what he is going to do now. Serious students of philosophy often regard Kant, rather than Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, as the greatest philosopher since the ancient Greeks. Kant was exceptionally penetrating, and he was able to see where an intellectual problem lay in something which had previously been taken for granted. Additionally, he was exceptionally good at seeing how his arguments fitted together into a greater whole, and how one thing might alter everything else.
Unfortunately, whereas Nietzsche is easier to read, and Wittgenstein often quite hilarious, Kant can seem quite impenetrable.
"It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that the being of man and the world are eternally justified."
What he is saying, I think, is that the greatness of the early Greeks, before Socrates, lay in their tragedy. He never really forgave the trivialising practice of rationalising everything with Socratic argie-bargie, or indeed, Plato for setting up a hero whose main qualities are those of talking everybody else into the ground, as has occasionally been attempted here in 'Serious Topics'. Nietzsche may be asking, as indeed Shakespeare and Goethe occasionally ask, is the whole world really to be taken seriously, or is it not a great game, a great play like 'Hamlet' or 'Faust', some kind of drama played out by we know not whom, as a spectacle for we do not know whom? Can we make sense of such an aesthetic justification for mankind?
Plato wrote that the sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin. Curiously, Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and little c all seem to agree with Plato on that, but on little else. Indeed, little c constantly wonders what he is going to do now. Serious students of philosophy often regard Kant, rather than Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, as the greatest philosopher since the ancient Greeks. Kant was exceptionally penetrating, and he was able to see where an intellectual problem lay in something which had previously been taken for granted. Additionally, he was exceptionally good at seeing how his arguments fitted together into a greater whole, and how one thing might alter everything else.
Unfortunately, whereas Nietzsche is easier to read, and Wittgenstein often quite hilarious, Kant can seem quite impenetrable.