New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label Friedrich Nietzsche. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friedrich Nietzsche. Show all posts
As a lapsed philosophy major, I highly recommend these three documentaries in a 1999 BBC series entitled Human, All Too Human. An essay at Open Culture provides invaluable context to accompany your viewing.
Certainly three of the most radical thinkers of the last 150 years, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre were also three of the most controversial, and at times politically toxic, for their perceived links to totalitarian regimes. In Nietzsche’s case, the connection to Nazism was wholly spurious, concocted after his death by his anti-Semitic sister. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s philosophy is far from sympathetic to equality, his politics, such as they are, highly undemocratic. The case of Heidegger is much more disturbing—a member of the Nazi party, the author of Being and Time notoriously held fascist views, made all the more clear by the recent publication of his infamous “black notebooks.” And Sartre, author of Being and Nothingness, has long been accused of supporting Stalinism — a charge that may be oversimplified, but is not without some merit.
Welcome to another installment of SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS, a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.
But why all these newfangled words?
Why not the old, familiar, comforting words, like the ones you're sure to hear when asking the city's corporate attorney why the answers to my FOIA/public records request for Bicentennial commission finances, due to be handed over on July 8, still haven't arrived on October 19?
October 19 update: Make that 15 weeks since the FOIA record request's due date and 553 days since I asked Bullet Bob Caesar to tell us how many coffee table books were left unsold, and how much the city's 200-year "summer of love" fest actually cost us.
No, it's because a healthy vocabulary isn't about intimidation through erudition. Rather, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.
Even these very same iniquitous, paving-bond-slush-engorged municipal corporate attorneys who customarily are handsomely remunerated to suppress information can benefit from this enlightening expansion of personal horizons, and really, as we contemplate what they knew and when they knew it, all we have left is plenty of time -- and the opportunity to learn something, if we're so inclined.
Amor fati (lit. "love of fate") is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary, in that they are among the facts of one's life and existence, so they are always necessarily there whether one likes them or not.
Moreover, amor fati is characterized by an acceptance of the events or situations that occur in one's life.
This acceptance does not necessarily preclude an attempt at change or improvement, but rather, it can be seen to be along the lines of what (Friedrich) Nietzsche means by the concept of "eternal recurrence": a sense of contentment with one's life and an acceptance of it, such that one could live exactly the same life, in all its minute details, over and over for all eternity.
Here is handy help for the pronunciation:
And in a sentence, made famous by Nietzsche: “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.”
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