Amazed, on revisit, to realize that Nietzsche's most Bartletted single phrase is always taken, in the most literal sense, out of context. In my edition of Twilight of the Idols, item 8 of "Maxims and Arrows" reads, in full:
"From the military school of life. -- What does not kill me makes me stronger."
As such, the famed phrase makes the mortal leap from universal assertion to conditional -- presenting itself as a description true only in a given circumstance, or perhaps even a hypothesis intended to set the horizons of a particular and limited conception. What of the other schools, the School for Scandal, the New School, Schooly-D, School's Out Forever?
Posted by jane at August 23, 2004 08:50 AM | TrackBackAnd that quote should also only be understood alongside The Gay Science, section 23.
Posted by: Caefu at August 23, 2004 10:22 AMUs Apollinians'll kick your Dionysian asses every time.
Scuse me while I go put a hairshirt and studded diaper on this baby.
Posted by: ange at August 23, 2004 10:23 AMAt one point, weren't both sun and wine necessary to make beautiful tragedies? Why did Burning Man just pop in my head? Yikes...
Posted by: mary at August 23, 2004 04:16 PMAlways fond of Apallo, cept when he got to obsessing bout goin to da moon.
In the end A&D are equally roily. Go out in the daylight and tell me you understand a thing.
Light sheds light on naught!
Posted by: Caefu at August 25, 2004 07:04 AMinteresting passage from the gay science, but the calim "should only be understood along side" seems a little strong considering the gay science and twilight of the idols were written at least 7 years apart
Posted by: louis-georges at August 26, 2004 11:58 AMBut what he said in the GS, particularly in that section, was presuppositional to most of what he wrote for the rest of his life. His notion of superstition vs. monotheism marked a beginning transition from subjective whole toward polyvalence and mutual interpenetrability. At that point the killing could not be done as easily, since it involved the killing of a field, rather than monad, and it was only the self idea of monad, that was easier to kill off, yielding tofield, hence the stronger of the two (or more).
Posted by: Caefu at August 27, 2004 06:36 AMCaefu’s showing some deep chops here, and this I can only respond vaguely since I am recuperating from major surgery in the woods far from my books. Nonetheless, I think one could counter that the argument cast in terms of field v. monad entails mainly the presumption of being as s differential field of forces and I would have thought that presumption could be read as far back as 18723/’s Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn. That seems consistant with Deleuze and Derrida’s reading, but I am probably missing something in the haze of synthetic morphine.
Aren’t you glad they invented bloggs?
Posted by: louis-georges at August 28, 2004 01:06 PMBut in the GS the differential forces become differential choices, as a hypothetical historical perspective (tho N was somewhat opposed to historicism, to my understanding). The splattering of the monothearch into numerous magical forces is the beginning of conscious strategic processes. It's also the beginning of craft. But I realize I'm reaching, and you may know better than I.
Best recovery.