Re: Nietzsche and the Philosophes


Subject: Re: Nietzsche and the Philosophes
From: Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2000 - 19:36:19 GMT


All indications to the contrary, there actually MUST be some sort of
progress if young Joshua can cough up a couple of sentences like:

I think that Kierkegaard is one of the most
>readable authors/philosophers I've ever seen. It helps a philosopher
>greatly to be able to actually articulate his thoughts, and K. is the
>master.
>
>

Now it's been an awfully long time since I've cracked the covers of anything
written by Kiekegaard. I believe, in fact, it was probably either "Fear and
Trembling" or "The Sickness Unto Death".... I remember lingering for maybe
twenty minutes over the first sentence, which went something like, "The self
is a self not in or of itself but in its relationship with selfness--which
can be defined as the connection between a self and itself...." (Nobody had
bothered to tell me at the time that the entire book was intended as some
sort of spoof of philosophical language.)

Anyway, back to my contention that there's been certifiable progress in the
world--either in the area of general intelligence (because if Joshua finds
that sort of stuff "readable", he's got a lot more grey matter than I did at
his age....) or improved translation (and I understand that Danish can be
dark and difficult, but is it really necessary to go through Japanese and
Sanskrit en route to the Queen's English?).

Nietzsche is another story!

Cheers,

Paul

OSR--There's been so much talk of "names" recently, I was wondering whether
anybody in the room has actually met anybody called HOLDEN....

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