Nietzsche's Amor Fati vs. Camus' hazard/nilhilsm
Yeah, I don't really know which one to subscribe too either.
I decided to add Alex Colville's To Prince Edward Island onto my growing list of works that I am writting about. Not knowing much about him, I picked up a book at NGC's library and started reading. In the introduction to a book about him, he stated that he liked Nietzsche's idea of Amor Fati (the love of fate) and then said that someone pointed out to him that he probably had more reason to love fate than most.
Upon reading more about him, things have turned out pretty well for Alex Colville. It doesn't seem like he was faced with much adversary for becoming an artist, he has a family, he has success. So his life experiences have led him to appreciate a certain philosopher's world view over another. Could someone who has been dealt a harder hand at life be able to appreciate Nietzsche's ideas as much as Colville seems too? My guess is, probably not.
I don't muse much about philosophy, as I hate to discuss topics of which I don't know enough about. Yet, since reading Colville's introduction I've thought about how people I know think about life, and what led them to think of it that way. It seems, in general, that our personal experiences dominate how we view the world. Yes, there is the question of religion, society and family. But aren't those all included in our "personal experiences"?
I haven't commited myself to liking one idea more than an other, as my life doesn't align well with any. When I start thinking life is nothing but random choas, I am meet with a series of undeniably fateful events. And vice-versa.
I have no conclusions.
posted by Mlle C @ 10:59 AM
11 Comments:
Well, Nietzsche was half-blind and in constant pain for most of his life. He ended up going insane. He also no doubt felt the inadequacies that all men of his disposition feel. Also, he looked upon the death of God both with a sense of excitement but also one of foreboading - as if we were staring into the abyss. So it's wrong to imply, as I think you're doing, that Nietzsche is best appreciated by optimists or carefree people.
The rest of your post about how in general our personal experiences dominate our worldview seems to ignore the fact that philosophy is designed to transcend our own paricular and individual situations or, if one believes that that is impossible, acknowledge, as for example Montaigne did (and Nietzsche implied), that real truth comes from looking within, not without.
I don't know anything about philosophers etc... I was about to delete this post but decided against it, as I believe there is no shame to show where we should improve (and in my case, that is the knowledge and understanding of philosophical theory and philosophers in general).
Granted what I need to learn is vast in many subjects...
Since we're talking about ignorance, I had to google the word "Amor Fati." My translation of Nietzsche, errr, translates it.
Frankly, having read a great deal of philosophy, I've concluded that my initial impression was correct: most of it is rather boring and useless.
That's why I love Montaigne, who wrote personal essays qua philosophy. He taught me not to look for truths from without. Instead, find out what you are, what you believe, and then "will" them (as Nietzsche would say) into truths.
In many ways, philosophy both pre- and post-Nietzsche is about the consequences of that fact, rather than cogent rebuttals of its verity.
Seems to me prescriptive and generalizing statements such as "philosophy is designed to transcend our own paricular and individual situations or, if one believes that that is impossible, acknowledge, as for example Montaigne did (and Nietzsche implied), that real truth comes from looking within, not without.
"... seem a little shallow. If the pursuits of the vast number of authors that fall into the (and in most cases long posthumously ) subject matter of 'philosophy' can be rendered into a little prescriptive such as 'philosophy' should do X thing... then philosophy certainly would be a dull pursuit and stamp-collecting or something involving counting birds might be a good replacement. Consider just a few so-called philosophers attempts to define this word and the problem of 'prescription' becomes clear - you might go for the grammatical tack of Grk phileo (to love) + sophos (wisdom) and identify the pursuit as somehow loving (not eros but philos) some thing called 'wisdom'... but then you'd have to figure out what the hell you meant by 'wisdom' in the first place.. and probably fall into the problem of relative prescriptionism (one man's good being another's evil - in the simple Kantian space - if you will)... or perhaps you could go for the probablistic Horkheimerian definition of philosophy being the 'pursuit of finding better and better linguistic approximations for truth'... then again, you could follow along with the post-modern's some of whom would prefer to be called psychologists (doubtless) and forget the grandiose old-fashioned notion of writing books with chapters such as 'On Virture', 'On Perception' and instead go for witty aphorisms that poke at a multi-dimensional mental space in which this notion 'philosophy' occupies some imposed category which, really, contains so much of the subject and pays no respect to the Real (the Lacanian Real) that we're better off sitting on barstools, trading anti-semitic, anti-Irish...whatever gags..... if you were fecked off with that you could perhaps delve into Wittgenstein and get a simple pointwise introduction to the logical works of say... Russell or Whitehead (and get a handy model of the theory that pre-empted Alan Turing... probably the most important computer scientist that ever lived - lived, that is, until caught shagging a 'boyfriend' in a Britain when that sort of thing 'could get you clapped in irons')... I could go on... but getting bored with even the range of texts that have been artificially subsumed under this false-title philosophy, even they, should surely be more interesting than might be assumed
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