Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 11:32:55 -0500 (EST) From: V200KG6U-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Subject: Re: superWOman was here Babette, You have slightly altered the terms of Nietzsche's injunction by saying 'become the one you are', or rather your gloss suggests a diferent interpretation of the phrase 'how one becomes *what* one is'. All well and fine. Nietzsche will say 'make of yor life a work of art', and urge that we live life as an experiement as he himself has done. And both of these remarks refer to something beyond playing mere dress-up. In the formula 'I am what I do' I hear a variety of possible implications, existential, as well as Platonic (existential in the Sartrean sense, that is). And in the case of the former I hear an attribution of responsibility, a kind of ethico-moral guideline that would, when applied, make the individual solely responsible for their actions regardless of contexts and/or circumstances. It is the individualist basis, along with the disregard for the conditions, contexts, and philosophical and ideological surroundings within which the individual is 'made' which sounds so un-Nietzschean in the formula 'you are what you do'. Given the context of this present discussion the formula 'you are what you do' has a certain force that I, in fact, agree with. However, Nietzsche's words concerning the aesthetics of life, and the questioning disposition implied by living life as if it were an experiment, seems to me to undercut any given--phenomenological or otherwise--facticity, be it of an ego, or even a life-world. An aesthetic foundation? What exactly would that *look* like? The short answer is life--but here we need to look closely at the second essay of the Genealogy (and I do not have my copy with me) where Nietzsche writes of the thoroughly un-democratic, non-egalitarian flux and flow of force that underwrites life otherwise conceived within political and ethico-moral discourses, al ultimately debased and profane. [the computer room here at the University is about to be used for a class, and so I must go. I will write more on this later today from home where I can also consult my texts. I hope, though, that this is at least enoug to begin to clarify . . .] All the Best, Chris Devenney Dept. of Comp. Lit. SUNY -AT- Buffalo "The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but only just above the ground. It seems intended more to cause stumbling than to be walked along." --Kafka, "Octavehefte" --- from list nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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