Το πάθος για την αλήθεια

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Φρειδερίκος Νίτσε, Βαγγέλης Δουβαλέρης (Foreword/Translator)

Να κ' η περίπτωση του Ηράκλειτου, που αποτραβήχτηκε στις ελεύθερες εκτάσεις και στα περιστύλια του τεράστιου ναού της Αρτέμιδος: τούτη η "έρημος" ήταν, οπωσδήποτε, πιο άξια - τ' ομολογώ! Γιατί να μην υπάρχουν και για μας τέτοιοι ναοί; (...Χμ, Ίσως και να υπάρχουν. Να, μου έρχεται τώρα δα στο νου τ' ωραιότερο δωμάτιο εργασίας που είχα ποτέ, στην Piazza di San Marco, άνοιξη, δέκα με δώδεκα το πρωί...) Ωστόσο, κι ο Ηράκλειτος απέφευγε αυτό που κ' εμείς αποφεύγουμε σήμερα: το θόρυβο και τη φλυαρία των Εφεσίων, τη δημοκρατία τους, τις πολιτικές αθλιότητές τους, τα νεώτερα κατορθώματα της "αυτοκρατορίας" (της περσικής - με εννοείτε...), όλη τη βρομερή πραμάτεια του "σήμερα",.. γιατί εμείς οι φιλόσοφοι χρειαζόμαστε πάνω απ' όλα μια συγκεκριμένη ησυχία: χρειαζόμαστε ανάπαυση απ' το "σήμερα".

Genres: Philosophy, Literature

96 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Evripidis Gousiaris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ακόμα δεν έχω ασχοληθεί με τα Μεγάλα του έργα, αλλά από τα Μικρά τείνει να γίνει ένας από τους Αγαπημένους...

[Λευτέρης Πετρής · Rating 5 out of 5]

"ΑΡΑΓΕ Η ΔΟξΑ εἶν᾽ ἁπλῶς ἡ νοστιμώτερη τροϕὴ τῆς ϕιλαυτίας μας; ῎Οχι μόνο· εἶναι πόθος ἄρρηκτα δεμένος μὲ τοὺς πιὸ σπάνιους ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὶς πιὸ σπάνιες στιγμές τους. ᾽Εκεῖνες τὶς στιγμὲς ϕωτίζονται ἄξαϕνα ὅλα· ἁπλώνει ἀγέρωχα τὸ χέρι του κανείς, σὰ νὰ πρόσταζε τὴ δημιουργία ἑνὸς Κόσμου· ϕῶς ἀναδύεται ἀπὸ μέσα του καὶ πλημυρεῖ τὰ πάντα. Τὸν διαθέει τότε ἡ εὐτυχὴς βεβαιότητα ὅτι αὐτὸ ποὺ τὸν ὕψωσε ὣς τὰ οὐράνια καὶ τὸν μάγεψε –ἡ μιὰ ὑψηλὴ τούτη αἴσθηση– δὲν πρέπει νὰ χαθεῖ. Καὶ τώρα καταλαβαίνει πόσο ἀναγκαῖες εἶναι τέτοιες σπάνιες ἐκλάμψεις γιὰ τοὺς μεταγενέστερους, κ᾽ ἔτσι ξυπνᾶ ἐντός του ὁ ὅποιος πόθος δόξας. ᾽Εϕεξῆς καὶ στὸν αἰῶνα τὸν ἅπαντα ἡ ᾽Ανθρωπότητα ὅλη τὸν χρειάζεται."

Φρ. Νιτσε, «Το πάθος για την αλήθεια», εκδ. Gutenberg, 2015
(Πρόλογος-μετφρ.- σχόλια: Βαγγέλης Δουβαλέρης / Φιλολογική επιμέλεια- σχόλια: Ήρκος Ρ. Αποστολίδης)

[Ward Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am being inspired by "Hiking with Nietzsche" by John Kaag. So I searched my library for all works by or related to Nietzsche. I have the most popular ones but in an effort to read his entire collection, I searched by a bibliography. I found this essay listed as one of his first works. So I googled it, captured it, formatted it, and send it to my kindle for reading. Even in the early work, one can see the deep thinker emerging.

The next listing is Thoughts on the Future of Our Educational Institutions. Look for that here soon.

[Matty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je retiens quelques passages :

Les personnes qui connaissent la gloire pensent que c’était leur destin
« Dans le besoin éternel qu'ont toutes les générations futures de ces illuminations les plus rares, une telle personne reconnaît la nécessité de sa propre renommée. Désormais, l'humanité a besoin de lui. Et puisque ce moment d'illumination est l'incarnation de sa profonde, il se croit immortel en tant qu'homme de ce moment, tandis qu'il rejette tous les autres moments de sa vie comme des scories, de la pourriture, de la vanité, de la brutalité ou des pléonasmes, et les abandonne à la mortalité. »

L’idée de la culture ou d’un sens de l’histoire est une illusion
« L'idée fondamentale de la culture est que les grands moments forment une chaîne, comme une chaîne de montagnes qui unit l'humanité à travers les siècles, que les plus grands moments d'une époque passée sont encore grands pour moi, et que la foi prémonitoire de ceux qui désirent la célébrité se réalisera. »

L’amour propre et l’amour de la vérité amènent à la gloire et non le fait de la désirer
« La gloire, c'est l'affaire des ménestrels, des poètes et de ceux qu'on appelait avant lui les "sages". Qu'ils engloutissent ce morceau le plus savoureux de leur amour-propre ; le plat est trop commun pour Héraclite. Sa renommée importe aux hommes, pas à lui. Son amour-propre est l'amour de la vérité, et c'est cette vérité qui lui dit que l'immortalité de l'humanité a besoin de lui, et non qu'elle a besoin de l'immortalité de l'homme appelé Héraclite. »

Fable de la connaissance
"Il était une fois, dans un coin perdu de cet univers dispersé en d'innombrables systèmes solaires scintillants, une étoile sur laquelle des bêtes intelligentes ont inventé le savoir. Ce fut la minute la plus arrogante et la plus malhonnête de l'histoire du monde, mais ce ne fut qu'une minute. Après que la nature eut repris son souffle, l'étoile se refroidit et se solidifia, et les bêtes intelligentes durent mourir. Le moment était venu aussi, car bien qu'elles se soient vantées de tout ce qu'elles avaient compris, elles ont fini par découvrir, à leur grand désarroi, qu'elles avaient tout compris de travers. Elles moururent, et en mourant, elles maudirent la vérité. Telle était la nature de ces bêtes désespérées qui avaient inventé le savoir".
Tel serait le sort de l'homme s'il n'était qu'un animal savant. La vérité le conduirait au désespoir et à la destruction : la vérité qu'il est éternellement condamné au mensonge. Mais tout ce qui convient à l'homme, c'est la croyance en une vérité accessible, en une illusion qui s'approche de l'homme et lui inspire confiance. […] La nature ne lui cache-t-elle pas la plupart des choses, même les plus proches - son propre corps, par exemple, dont il n'a qu'une "conscience" trompeuse ? Il est enfermé dans cette conscience et la nature a jeté la clé. Oh, la curiosité fatale du philosophe, qui aspire, ne serait-ce qu'une fois, à jeter un coup d'œil par une fissure dans la chambre de la conscience. Peut-être soupçonnera-t-il alors à quel point l'homme, dans l'indifférence de son ignorance, est soutenu par ce qui est avide, insatiable, dégoûtant, impitoyable et meurtrier - comme s'il était suspendu en rêve sur le dos d'un tigre »

[Saul Walt · Rating 2 out of 5]

The mesmerism of manic feelings and grand thoughts, as the stand in for graspable Truth and Order baked in to the world as such. It's not much of an answer. Though, true, when we are at last alone with ourselves in the world, with no gods to judge us, then what is left but self-indulgeance and child-like wonder at all the colors of the world. For me, there is too much pain and ugliness in the world to invariably say yes to life. Perhaps Nietzscheanism works for people who can fall in love purely with feeling and aesthetics, but then what of Pessoa and his sadness, for he too was a person of immense depth and breath of feeling and thinking?

For one who denies Truth, Nietzsche sure has a lot to say about how the world is, how people think, and what is good. It just highlights again the logocentrist predicament, the fact that you cannot get away from the game of giving and asking for reasons. Yes all is not reason, and feeling is not nothing, but surely self-righteous subjectivism is not the proper response to the knowledge of death and the fall of all great gods and spirits. It matters that nothing matters, if only because it hurts to go on, to think and to feel in world that could care less whether you are a saint, a monster, or a stoned curgmudgeon. What is the use of living beautifully and ascending to great heights when you are already dead, when all is already erased by the truth of extinction? Is it not pure self-pitying vanity to roll that boulder up and up again endlessly, just to prove to yourself that you can endure it and are strong thereby?

Perhaps the Nietzschean solution requires a mood disorder or some biological condition, like the woman in Richard Power's novel "Generosity" who is incapable of being properly depressed. As for the rest of us, who suffocate with our heads in the sand, the truth may hurt, but at least it does not burn like a lie or the horror of witnessing your own ugliness once more when you descend from your lofty heights.