"Strauss ends his essay with a line from the Aeneid justifying imperium: “to spare the vanquished and crush the arrogant.” One might wonder about self-construction as a species, where mercy is extended by those aspiring to rule in what is hopefully a moment of self-recognition."

Briefly Noted: Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism”

"Wittgenstein was not the first to compare the philosopher to one, nor the most famous. That award goes to Socrates, who claimed that the role of the philosopher was to act as a gadfly to the state. This is a very different metaphor. Leaving the world as it is isn’t what gadflies do. They bite."

Wittgenstein and Philosophy - NYTimes.com

"People mock theorists as utterly impractical: in doing this, they advance one theory and see only one side of life."

Tom Wayman, “Did I Miss Anything?”

"Nihilism has both a metaphysical and a moral meaning. Metaphysically, it means that nothing is, i.e., not that there is absolutely nothing, which would be absurd, but that there is no unchanging ground, no eternal God or Being such as the Western tradition since Plato has imagined to underlie the flux of experience."

Michael Gillespie, quoted in Materialism and Nihilism’s Consequential Union: Notes on Kay Ryan’s “Nothing Ventured”

"Death is terrible, terrifying, but we cannot live as human beings if this terror grips us to the point of corroding our core."

Leo Strauss, “Memorial Remarks for Jason Aronson”

"Heidegger doesn’t mean that it is sometimes edifying to put human needs and interests in perspective before affirming what is otherwise their obvious seriousness. He means that human needs and interests aren’t serious."

The Passing of the World > David Wemyss

This short essay on Heidegger is very good: it locates his historicism - roughly, the idea that you don’t understand a time other than your own - in a kind of moral reasoning. When debating what to do with the environment, for example, the Heideggerian insight might be that the debate is already lost. We do not see the forest or the trees as someone before industrialization might. We already see them explicitly as objects for our use or our preservation. A whole world of “what Nature means” is closed to us.

More on Heidegger: a thought on travel, on ancient vs. modern science

"What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become “timeless."

Nietzsche, “The Case of Wagner”

I’m going to try to get notes up on “Beyond Good and Evil” up soon. I spent a lot of time yesterday - yes, that was Christmas - resuming work on that book. I find it nearly impossible. I think those of you on tumblr reading it, and I know there are several, should have some moral support in this endeavor. Reading can be really difficult, despite what certain parents and teachers and students say.

Reading is social - whether one likes it or not.

toniiu:

Not to wish to see too soon.— As long as one lives through an experience, one must surrender to the experience and shut one’s eyes instead of becoming an observer immediately. For that would disturb the good digestion of the experience: instead of wisdom, one would acquire indigestion.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims

http://toniiu.tumblr.com is reading Nietzsche at the moment!

More on Nietzsche - a cryptic comment on a cryptic aphorism: “Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”

"Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up."

Nietzsche

"I quite like my granddaughter’s recent remark: why did that stupid Robinson forget his mobile phone?"

MIchel Serres