Babette Babich

In what follows I raise the question of Ariadne and Dionysus for Nietzsche, including the relative size of Ariadne’s ears, as Dionysus observes at the close of “Ariadne’s Lament” [Klage der Ariadne]. Nietzsche’s references to ears invoke not only Nietzsche’s “selective” concern with having the right ears but also the question of myth and genealogical context. Reading through myth is key not only in terms of the textual, lyric tradition but also painting and sculpture, including sarcophagi in antiquity. It makes all the difference to ask, as Karl Kerényi cites Nietzsche as asking: Wer weiß …was Ariadne ist? And not less: who was she to Dionysus? To this extent, Nietzsche’s concern with ears, small and long, is less incidental or furry fetish than hermeneutic attunement.

Beginning with Jacob Taubes and Günther Anders on eschatology, apocalypse and political theology, including Saint Paul and Frankfurt School critical theory along with bombs and power plants (energy/climate), this essay parallels a re-reading of Tracy B. Strong’s political reading of Nietzsche on Jesus (and love) with Taubes, Anders and Carl Schmitt on politics (and technology). Highlighted throughout is the politically charged (and inherently esoteric) context of Gnosticism for philosophy and theory for Taubes but also for Anders.

Gunter Anders' Philosophy of Technology is the first comprehensive exploration of the ground-breaking work of German thinker Gunter Anders. Anders' philosophy has become increasingly prescient in our digitised, technological age as his work predicts the prevalence of social media, ubiquitous surveillance and the turn to big data. Anders' ouevre also explored the technologies of nuclear power and the biotech concerns for the human and transhuman condition which have become so central to current theory. Babette Babich argues that Anders offers important resources on streaming digital media through his writings on radio, television and film and is, unusually, both a comprehensive and profound thinker. Anders' relationship with key philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin and his thinking on Goethe, Nietzsche and Rilke is also explored with a focus on the deep impact he made on his peers. It reflects specifically on the intersection of Anders' thought Heidegger and the Frankfurt school and how influential a figure he was on the landscape of 20th century philosophy. A compelling rehabilitation of a thinker with profound contemporary relevance.

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’s Übermensch derives from Lucian of Samosata’s hyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’s Kataplous – literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey, ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes, into the afterlife. The Kataplous he tyrannos, usually translated Downward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire telling the tale of the “overman” who is imagined to be superior to others of “lesser” station in this-worldly life and the same tyrant after his (comically unwilling) transport into the underworld. As a reflection on the life and the death of Zarathustra, this essay also explores the politics of kingship for Empedocles as reformer in terms of Hölderlin’s Death of Empedocles and Nietzsche’s unpublished drafts on the same topic. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche points to a perspective beyond the here and now, beyond the “values” of our all-too-worldly and all-too-human concerns, no matter whether in terms of perceived political/economic advantage, or indeed in the pursuit of more quotidian satisfactions.

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialismas Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well asboth free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilismin the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary nihilism includes the virtual loci of technological desire (literally willing nothing) as well as the perpetual and consequently pointless threat of nuclear annihilation and the routine or ordinary annihilation of plant and animal life as of inorganic nature.

This essay explores Nietzsche’s visit to Orta, including his visit with Lou von Salomé to Sacro Monte. Yet there are two Sacri Monti, one at Orta and one, some distance away, at Varallo. Lou reports that Nietzsche described this visit as the «most charming dream» [entzückendsten Traum] of his life and scholars have concluded that this dream refers to Nietzsche’s erotic moment – just a kiss – with Lou. This essay argues for a hermeneutico-phenomenological consideration of the locus itself: featuring nearly a dozen (doubled that number at Varallo) architecturally unique oratories and hundreds of brilliantly painted, nearly life-size statues set in landscape designed to recreate the particular atmosphere of the Mediterranean world, both Jerusalem and Athens, transposed to the north of Italy. This “weather” would have captivated the Nietzsche who worked on the intersection between what texts tell us about antiquity and the world, the “barest hem of which”, as he once put it, we cannot begin to touch.

This essay explores Nietzsche’s visit to Orta, including his visit with Lou von Salomé to Sacro Monte. Yet there are two Sacri Monti, one at Orta and one, some distance away, at Varallo. Lou reports that Nietzsche described this visit as the «most charming dream» [entzückendsten Traum] of his life and scholars have concluded that this dream refers to Nietzsche’s erotic moment – just a kiss – with Lou. This essay argues for a hermeneutico-phenomenological consideration of the locus itself: featuring nearly a dozen (doubled that number at Varallo) architecturally unique oratories and hundreds of brilliantly painted, nearly life-size statues set in landscape designed to recreate the particular atmosphere of the Mediterranean world, both Jerusalem and Athens, transposed to the north of Italy. This “weather” would have captivated the Nietzsche who worked on the intersection between what texts tell us about antiquity and the world, the “barest hem of which”, as he once put it, we cannot begin to touch.

Utopia is nominally a ‘nowhere’ that is also, as Thomas More tells us, a ‘good’ place. Although there are competing cognate notions, the Greek description looms large in most accounts of utopia. The details of this ideal are so specified that utopic literature consists in a catalogue (and critique) of specifications. This essay draws attention to the fragrance attributed to Lucian’s ‘Isles of the Blest’ together with Ivan Illich’s attention to ‘atmosphere’ and to the aura and the nose along with Nietzsche’s emphasis on the sense of smell. Utopic suspicion is discussed as parallels are drawn with pragmatic critiques of utopia as inherently totalitarian along with the ‘good life’ in political theory and the programmatic default of techno-utopic fantasy. In the historical context of ‘conspiracy’ and the politics of living and breathing together in community, I conclude with Illich on pax and breath.

What is the nineteenth century? If some historians of the "long" nineteenth century date its beginning back to 1750, does it end in 1900 or, as is said, in 1914 or, as one German historian reflects on the ongoing influence of the so-called "historical century," is it still ongoing? In continental philosophy, the nineteenth century seems to have a certain durability, to take the case of Slavoj Žižek and other Hegelians like Robert Pippin. Is Nietzsche representative of his own times? Or is he, as he himself says, "posthumous"? Robert C. Holub's book introduces Nietzsche as "The Timely Meditator", the better to contradict what Holub describes as Nietzsche's "conscious effort to present himself as an 'untimely'...