File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 67


Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 16:06:52 -0700
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: Is Nietzsche obsolete?


At 12:49 PM 8/14/95 BST, nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu wrote:
>Oh yeah, one other thing regarding Marc Demerest's post:  "For me, obsolescence
>is a funciton of personal relevance -- what N (or Derrida, or...) teach me
>about living well"???????
>
>So the obsolescence of a thinker is tied to your own opinion of his relevence,
>eh?  You can't possibly mean this, can you?  If you do mean this, then I do
>have to ask:  who made you God?
>
>Nathan
>widder-AT-vax.lse.ac.uk
>
>
>	--- from list nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu ---
>
On Sun Aug 13 Mark Demarest wrote:

>And it seems to me that post-structuralists asserting the obsolescence
>of N is analogous to Lacanians asserting the obsolescence of Freud.

Then on the same day Jacob Blum replied:

>Who is Lacan?  I'll check the Encyclopedia of Phi. later or something, but
>I would appreciate a brief description.

On Mon Aug 14 Nathan Widder wrote:

>Forgive me for not knowing my Lacan all that well,
>though I think I know my Lacanianism a bit better, but
>considering that Lacan built his thinking on the claim that he
>was the only one in France who actually read Freud properly, this
>claim about Lacanianism proclaiming Freud obsolete seems to be a
>bit iffy.  Perhaps someone could tell me where this is said, and
>by whom.

I think the point is not so much "who" Lacan was, but that without
Freud there never would have been a Lacan, with the post-
structuralists being in somewhat of an analogous position relative to
Nietzsche (calling him "obsolete" would be like pulling the rug out
from under their own feet).  Also, Lacan was immeasurably _inferior_
to Freud (was no Jung, in other words), which I suppose is the real
swipe against post-structuralism here...

On Mon Aug 14 Nathan Widder wrote:

>Oh yeah, one other thing regarding Marc Demerest's post: "For me,
obsolescence
>is a funciton of personal relevance -- what N (or Derrida, or...) teach me
>about living well"???????

I suppose it must be personally relevant to someone in someway for it
to be relevant at all.  Even if it is merely a technical point, it
must at least tangentially effect or impact issues which at least
possess the possibility of personal relevance, that is, if philosophy
is to be philosophy at all, which is anything _but_ a pure science.
On the other hand, the controversy here, which is a real one, has been
central to the issue of "philosophy" itself at least since Heraclitus
and Parmenides, with Heraclitus pushing the more subjectivist notion
of a living way, or _ethos_, underlying our thinking, while Parmenides
took the first step toward redefining philosophy as epistemology
("That which is is; that which is not is not.").  Needless to say, all
philosophy is a mixture of theory and practice (not necessarily in
that order).  Nietzsche, as he made abundantly clear through no lack
of references, sides with Heraclitus here, although that does not mean
that the more "theoretical" aspects of philosophy do not interest him,
but only that its primary attraction may have been in addressing
problems which were experienced in a highly personal sense, rather
than merely as the development of a technical expertise which might be
put to bed once the dinner bell rings.

==============================================================================            Steven E. Callihan -- callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com

             "With a creative hand they reach for the future,
           and all that is and has been becomes a means for them,
                        an instrument, a hammer."

         --Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil," Section 211.
==============================================================================


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