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Author Topic:   Kierkegaard and Nietzsche
Heart--Shaped Cross
Knowflake

Posts: 7201
From: 11/6/78 11:38am Boston, MA
Registered: Aug 2004

posted April 04, 2008 02:52 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Heart--Shaped Cross     Edit/Delete Message
from the essay by Karl Jaspers:


The contemporary philosophical situation is determined by the fact that two philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who did not count in their times and, for a long time, remained without influence in the history of philosophy, have continually grown in significance. Philosophers after Hegel have increasingly returned to face them, and they stand today unquestioned as the authentically great thinkers of their age. Both their influence and the opposition to them prove it...

In the situation of philosophizing, as well as in the real life of men, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche appear as the expression of destinies, destinies which nobody noticed then, with the exception of some ephemeral and immediately forgotten presentiments, but which they themselves already comprehended.

As to what this destiny really is, the question remains open even today. It is not answered by a comparison of the two thinkers, but is clarified and made more urgent. This comparison is all the more important since there could have been no influence of one upon the other, and because their very differences make their common features so much more impressive. Their affinity is so compelling, from the whole course of their lives down to the individual details of their thought, that their nature seems to have been elicited by the necessities of the spiritual situation of their times. With them a shock occurred to Western philosophizing whose final meaning cannot yet be estimated...

Their thinking created a new atmosphere. They passed beyond all the limits then regarded as obvious. It is as if they no longer shrank back from anything in thought... This questioning is never simply hostility to reason; rather, both sought to appropriate limitlessly all modes of rationality. It was no philosophy of feeling, for both pushed unremittingly toward the concept for expression. It is certainly not dogmatic skepticism; rather their whole thought strove toward the genuine truth.

In a magnificent way, penetrating a whole life with the earnestness of philosophizing, they brought forth not some doctrines, not any basic proposition, not some picture of the world, but rather a new total intellectual attitude for men. This attitude was in the medium of infinite reflection, a reflection which is conscious of being unable to attain any real ground by itself. No single thing characterizes their nature; no fixed doctrine or requirement is to be drawn out of them as something independent and permanent.

Out of the consciousness of their truth, both suspect truth in the naive form of scientific knowledge. They do not doubt the methodological correctness of scientific thought. But Kierkegaard was astonished at the learned professors; they live, for the most part, with science, and die with the idea that it will continue, and would like to live longer that they might, in a line of direct progress, always understand more and more. They do not experience the maturity of that critical point where everything turns upside down, where one understands more and more that there is something which one cannot understand. Kierkegaard thought the most frightful way to live was to bewitch the whole world through one's discoveries and cleverness -- to explain the whole of nature and not understand oneself. Nietzsche is inexhaustible in destructive analyses fo types of scholars, who have no genuine sense of their own activity, who can not be themselves, and who, with their ultimately futile knowledge, aspire to grasp Being itself.

Against the System

The questioning of every self-enclosed rationality which tries to make the whole truth communicable made both radical opponents of the "system", that is, the form which philosophy had had for centuries and which had achieved its final polish in German idealism. The system is for them a detour from reality and is, therefor, lies and deception. Kierkegaard granted that empirical existence could be a system for God, but never for an existing spirit; system corresponds with what is closed and settled, but existence is precisely the contrary. The philosopher of systems is, as a man, like someone who builds a castle and lives in a hovel next door. Such a fantastical being does not himself live within what he thinks; but the thought of a man must be the house in which he lives or it will become perverted. The basic question of philosophy, what it is, and what science is, is posed in a new and unavoidable form. Nietzsche wanted to doubt better than Descartes, and saw in Hegel's miscarried attempt to make reason evolve nothing but Gothic heaven-storming. The will-to-system is, for him, a lack of honesty.

Being as Interpretation

What authentic knowing is, was expressed by both in the same way. It is, for them, nothing but interpretation. They also understood their own thought as interpretation.

Interpretation, however, reaches no end. Existence, for Nietzsche, is capable of infinite interpretation. What has happened and what was done is, for Kierkegaard, always capable of being understood in a new way. As it is interpreted anew, it becomes a new reality which yet is hidden; temporal life can therefor never be correctly understood by men; no man can absolutely penetrate through his own consciousness.

Both apply the image of interpretation to knowledge of Being, but in such a fashion that Being is as if deciphered in the interpretation of the interpretation. Nietzsche wanted to uncover the basic text, homo natura, from its overpaintings and read it in its reality. Kierkegaard gave his own writings no other meaning then that they should interpret again the original text of individual, human existential relations.

Masks

With this basic idea is connected the fact that both, the most open and candid of thinkers, had a misleading aptitude for concealment and masks. For them, masks necessarily belong to the truth. Indirect communication becomes for them the sole way of communicating genuine truth; indirect communication, as expression, is appropriate to the ambiguity of genuine truth in temporal existence, in which process it must be grasped through sources in every Existenz.

Being Itself

Both, in their thinking, push toward that basis which would be Being itself in man. In opposition to the philosophy which, from Parmenides through Descartes to Hegel said, Thought is Being, Kierkegaard asserted the proposition that Faith is Being. Nietzsche saw the Will to Power. But Faith and Will to Power are mere signa, which do not connote what is meant but are themselves capable of endless explication.

Honesty

With both there is a decisive drive toward honesty. This word for them both is the expression of the ultimate virtue to which they subject themselves. It remains for them the minimum of the absolute which is still possible although everything else becomes involved in a bewildering questioning. It becomes for them also the dizzying demand for a verasity which, however, brings even itself into question, and which is the opposite of that violence which would like to grasp the truth in a literal and barbaric certitude.

Their Readers

One can question whether in general any thing is said in such thought. In fact, both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were aware that the comprehension of their thought was not possible to the man who only thinks. It is important who it is that understands. They turn to the individuals who must bring with them and bring forth from themselves what can only be said indirectly. The epigram of Lichtenberg applies to Kierkegaard, and he himself cites it: "such works are like mirrors; if an ape peeks in, no apostle will look out." Nietzsche says one must have earned for oneself the distinction necessary to understand him. He held it impossible to teach the truth where the mode of thought is based. Both seek the reader who belongs to them.

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Charlotte
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From: USA
Registered: Apr 2004

posted April 06, 2008 06:56 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Charlotte     Edit/Delete Message

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Heart--Shaped Cross
Knowflake

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From: 11/6/78 11:38am Boston, MA
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posted April 09, 2008 03:49 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Heart--Shaped Cross     Edit/Delete Message

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ListensToTrees
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From: Infinity
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posted April 09, 2008 04:45 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for ListensToTrees     Edit/Delete Message
Indeed, indeed.....the eye of the beholder and the doors of perception....there I go again, my favourite words.

Descartes wrote "I think, therefore I am".
But I often wonder if it is "I desire, therefore I am". For without desire, there would be no movement....just never ending static existence.

So, maybe out of this static BLOB of existence, came forth vibration, the word, the pattern of life....and creation in all its forms and all its art.
Thought is just a part of the music of creation.

This is the world of creation....not the world of illusion....illusion is just one way of putting it.

And in my kingdom, there are many mansions. (= dimensions?)

Amen.

So let all the philosophers enjoy their debates, to spin and create infinite patterns from infinite minds; while the dance of life continues for all eternity.

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ListensToTrees
Knowflake

Posts: 3918
From: Infinity
Registered: Jul 2005

posted April 10, 2008 08:13 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for ListensToTrees     Edit/Delete Message
Sorry, I was just rambling there...sorry to change the subject a little.

That was a superb essay, HSC. In truth, your writing never ceases to amaze me, but I don't always like to admit it.
I know you would just sail through Uni at any level in Philosophy (or other subjects) with your mind and your talent.

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Heart--Shaped Cross
Knowflake

Posts: 7201
From: 11/6/78 11:38am Boston, MA
Registered: Aug 2004

posted April 11, 2008 11:51 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Heart--Shaped Cross     Edit/Delete Message
No problem, LTT, I love it when people spiral freely.

But I can't take credit for the essay, as it was written by Karl Jaspers.


Love to you,
HSC

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