Babette Babich

Beginning with Jürgen Habermas's 1968 reflection on Nietzsche's criticisms of knowledge and science, the essays in this volume engage Nietzsche's challenge to the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory as well as other social and political theories of modernity and postmodernity. Juxtaposing Habermas and Nietzsche for the sake of the "future" of critical theory, the essays in this collection draw variously on Marx and Weber as well as Horkheimer and Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, and others. The distinguished authors in this book argue that critical theory is best served by responding to challenges such as those associated with identity politics and globalization and including an authentic engagement with Nietzsche. This important volume features contributions by Babette E. Babich, Karin Bauer, Howard Caygill, Rebecca Comay, Fred Dallmayr, Josef Früchtl, Jürgen Habermas, Dominique Janicaud, Alexander Nehamas, David Owen, Max Pensky, Holger Schmid, Tracy B. Strong, James Swindal, and Bernhard Taureck.

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 article argues that the limited influence of Ludwik Fleck's ideas on philosophy of science is due not only to their indirect dissemination by way of Thomas Kuhn, but also to an incommensurability between the standard conceptual framework of history and philosophy of science and Fleck's own more integratedly historico-social and praxis-oriented approach to understanding the evolution of scientific discovery. What Kuhn named "paradigm" offers a periphrastic rendering or oblique translation of Fleck's Denkstil/Denkkollektiv , a derivation that may also account for the lability of the term "paradigm". This was due not to Kuhn's unwillingness to credit Fleck but rather to the cold war political circumstances surrounding the writing of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . Following a discussion of Fleck's anatomical allusions, I include a brief discussion of Aristotle (on menstruation and darkened mirrors) and conclude with a reference to the productivity of error in Mach and Nietzsche.

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.

It is well-known that as a term, Nietzsche’sÜbermenschderives from Lucian of Samosata’shyperanthropos. I argue that Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman acquires new resonances by reflecting on the context of that origination from Lucian’sKataplous– literally, “sailing into port” – referring to the soul’s journey (ferried by Charon, guided by Hermes) into the afterlife. TheKataplous he tyrannos, usually translatedDownward Journey or The Tyrant, is a Menippean satire 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. InThus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche points to a perspective beyond the here and now, including 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 trivial satisfactions.

Si Nietzsche, se référant à la philosophie morale de Kant, put invoquer ceux « qui promettent sans en avoir les moyens » et dérider le « menteur qui trahit sa parole dans le moment même où il l’a sur les lèvres », un examen de l’éthique de l’assistance de Heidegger souligne, de son côté, que nous nous trouvons toujours déjà dans l’assistance envers les autres, même si ce n’est que de manière négative ou défectueuse. En parcourant le chemin qui nous mène vers l’éthique de l’assistance chez Heidegger, nous aurons à discuter de la condition humaine chez Heidegger, de l’amitié, et aussi de lacets de soulier, de football, des anges, et du désire – et, pourquoi pas, du café.