Jason Wirth

Jørgen Bukdhal’s study is a quietly moving and deceptively simple corrective to Kierkegaard’s reception. First published in Danish in 1961, it dispels the image of a lonely, angst-ridden individual, hopelessly mired in interiority and oblivious to concrete social ills. By deftly and eruditely elucidating the problematics of his time and by following the full expanse of his philosophical career, Bukdahl’s Kierkegaard comes closer to someone like Levinas. For “what matters is to exist for the sake of every person, unconditionally everyone”.

This essay is devoted to an examination of the relationship between truth and laughter in the works of Nietzsche. My central text shall be the much malignedbook four of Zarathustra, with special attention paid to the braying of the ass. Laughter has been traditionally considered irrelevent to serious philosophical content and, at best, a stylistic quirk. I argue that this stems from a basic predjudice that is constitutive of a large part of the Western tradition, namely, the confusion of working hard (a sine qua non for philosophy) with taking oneself seriously. I then analyze laughter in Nietzsche’s works as the voice of truth itself. Laughter is the affirmation of a register of truth as the other beginning that has been lost in every thing that begins. Such an analysis involves a discussion of the nature of both truth and laughter. In so doing, I also distinguish Nietzschean laughter from three representative and seminal accounts of laughter provided by Hobbes, Bergson, and Kant.

The essay seeks to bring William James into dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche around the issue of the nature of sickness, and its overcoming or convalescence. It is, at first glance, folly to reconcile religious rebirth with the convalescence that led Nietzsche to the “great health.” To try and see beyond this folly, we will consider carefully the site in which health emerges for both thinkers. This discussion is further motivated by an interest in the prospects for religion after the death of God

This essay seeks to explicate the ethical dimension of Schelling’s project. Schelling complicates the theory/praxis distinction by arguing that these two modalities are different sides of the same movement in thinking. I attempt to establish this by first examining Schelling’s early essay, Neue Deduktion des Naturrechts, and then by turning to his celebrated Freedom essay. Although I chiefl y examine an early work and then a work from his middle period, I contend that the ethical dimension governs all of Schelling’s thinking. I examine closely Schelling’s description of Mitwissenschaft (the conscience). I further develop my argument by contrasting Nietzsche’s understanding of this notion with Heidegger’s treatment of it in Being and Time. I then turn to Hannah Arendt and her discussion of “radical evil” and the “conscience” in order to deepen our appreciation of Schelling’s watershed contribution.

This essay seeks to explicate the ethical dimension of Schelling’s project. Schelling complicates the theory/praxis distinction by arguing that these two modalities are different sides of the same movement in thinking. I attempt to establish this by first examining Schelling’s early essay, Neue Deduktion des Naturrechts, and then by turning to his celebrated Freedom essay. Although I chiefl y examine an early work and then a work from his middle period, I contend that the ethical dimension governs all of Schelling’s thinking. I examine closely Schelling’s description of Mitwissenschaft (the conscience). I further develop my argument by contrasting Nietzsche’s understanding of this notion with Heidegger’s treatment of it in Being and Time. I then turn to Hannah Arendt and her discussion of “radical evil” and the “conscience” in order to deepen our appreciation of Schelling’s watershed contribution.

This paper addresses the question of the earth. I center this effort on a reading of the figure of animality in the writings of Nietzsche and Bataille. I begin by accepting one of the decisive questions (die Entscheidungen) that Heidegger poses in the Beiträge zur Philosophie: "Whether nature is degraded to the exploitative place of calculation and furnishing and to an opportunity to 'have an experience' or whether nature as the self-closing Earth bears the opening of a world without image." In an attempt to think the Earth, I argue that the human as a natural kind emerges in denial or flight from animality. Animality renders natural kinds porous. It does not congeal into a categorically delimitable operation, but rather interrupts and multiplies such operations. Moreover, they multiply them with what Nietzsche called "transvaluative" force. Animality contests the closure of a discourse on kinds of animals.