Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 09:26:29 -0600 (CST)
From: Erik D Lindberg <edl-AT-csd.uwm.edu>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche as Existentialist (was masks)


On Fri, 3 Nov 1995, Steven E. Callihan wrote:
> 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.

Right!  As Rorty puts it, aping Nietzsche, "Satre would rather have a 
metaphysics of nothingness than no metaphysics at all."

Erik

Erik D. Lindberg
Dept. of English and Comparative Lit.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI  53211
email: edl-AT-csd.uwm.edu



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