File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Nov3.95, message 21


Date: Fri, 03 Nov 1995 15:28:51 -0600 (CST)
From: Christopher Coleman <COLEMAN-AT-library.vanderbilt.edu>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche as Existentialist (was masks)



> 
> Some of this simply has to do with the question of groundedness, whether,
> for instance, as in Sartrean existentialism, the "human" is a blank slate
> upon which we may scribble what we may (whoever may get their hands on the
> chalk, that is). Actually, one need not look too far to see much of the
> Post-Modern position as a permutation of this earlier existentialist
> assertion, minus the ethical imperative (at least the ethical imperative is
> denied on the surface, although I suspect still enforced beneath the
> surface, in less honest forms, in other words).  Nietzsche's notion of
> _Grundtext_ in my mind, along with many other points in his thinking, would
> undercut the idea of the human as simply a blank slate.
> 
I'm away from my books right now, so excuse the vagueness
of my references here.  This discussion brings to mind 
what Nietzsche calls (somewhere) "the castration of the intellect,"
the idea that we can freely create ourselves without any 
consideration of instincts, drives, the body, etc.
I have read this idea as a critique of Rorty's pragmatism, which
is also based in a kind of free self-creation.  ("Let's create 
ourself and our society so as to get rid of cruelty, oppression, and 
abuse.")
But I think that we need to be careful.  Just because N. denies the 
blank slate does not really mean that there is a "true self."  It
only means that our Self is determined by a multiplicity of forces,
none of which are determining in the "final instance."

Coleman

 


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