Shareable Link to My Published Philosophy Paper

Hey, everyone! I hope all is well. Here: I created a shareable link at Wiley’s Online Library to the comparative essay on Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna that I got published in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of Drexel University in Philadelphia. I hadn’t realized that WOL is one of the world’s largest academic publishers. It was a pleasant surprise, indeed. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jtsb.12372

First Published Article in an Academic Journal

2023 has gotten off to a great start! A philosophy research paper of mine on Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna was published online by the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. You can read the abstract here, though you’d have to pay to read the essay itself: http://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12372

Nietzsche by Lou Salomé (Book Review)

“Deep tension, stress, and illness, Nietzsche saw as preconditions for the activity of the mind. This should not be misconstrued as a ‘flight into illness’—as Nietzsche’s long, periodic bedridden spells and darkened chambers might suggest—but as a dangerous ‘experimental philosophy as I live it, even with the possibilities of the most thoroughgoing nihilism,’ for the sake of seeking knowledge.” – Siegfried Mandel  

“[T]he total significance of Nietzsche’s interpretation of the historical battle between master and slave mentalities is nothing less than a radically simplified illustration of what transpires in the superior individual and what must split him into a sacrificial god and a sacrificial animal.” – Lou Salomé 

 

I don’t know how it took 16 years of obsessing over Nietzsche and wishing I could read Lou Salomé’s thoughts on him to finally find out that she wrote an entire book on the man! And what a book it was! Damn, could she write! It was published in 1894, five years after Nietzsche’s collapse into madness and six years before his death. It gave me a whole new insight into his thoughts, philosophical transitions and the way he came to his psychological conclusions about human nature and philosophy. I read the Siegfried Mandel translation and his fabulous, in-depth introduction, contextualizing Nietzsche’s life and his relationship with his mother, sister, Paul Reé, the Wagners and of course Salomé herself.

 

What stands out for me the most in the book, and is at the core of it, is Salomé’s explanation of what Nietzsche meant by “What does not kill me makes me stronger” (or “…destroy me…”, as Mandel’s translation has it). I, like most, completely misunderstood it. First of all, he says “me” because he literally was referring to himself. It isn’t some absolutist claim that is meant to be applied to everyone. He was being as autobiographically pithy in a maxim as he possibly could be. Second of all, I always thought that, by “stronger,” he meant physically and emotionally stronger via overcoming (given overcoming is a cornerstone of Nietzschean thought), but that is completely wrong. What he meant by stronger was his strength (or sharpness) of mind, determination, intellectual thinking, life-affirmation and his assurance of immortalization through his ever-strengthening body of work. Salomé says that he took that maxim and “flagellated himself” with it, “not to the point of destruction or death but to a fever-pitch and a self-wounding he deemed necessary. This seeking of pain courses through the entire history of Nietzsche’s development and is its essential intellectual and spiritual source” (p. 14):

[H]is powerful nature was capable of self-healing and pulling things together, in the midst of pain and contradictions; healing was prompted by strivings for the ideals of knowledge. But after recovery was achieved, his nature inexorable again required suffering and battles, fever and wounds (p. 23).

 

Basically, he was constantly falling into sickly states. However, he did not allow them to be in vain. He’d use them to better understand himself and others in states of suffering, and in doing so, he’d be filled with the excitement brought on by new ideas, philosophical avenues and subterranean paths within his mind which he would have never discovered or ventured on otherwise. Salomé writes,

 

I recall something that Nietzsche told me which very appropriately expresses the joy that the seeker of knowledge takes in the vast breadth and depth of his nature; from it springs the desire to regard his life henceforth as “an experiment of the seeker of knowledge” (GS, 324). He said, “I resemble an old, weather-proof fortress which contains many hidden cellars and deeper hiding places; in my dark journeys, I have not yet crawled down into my subterranean chambers. Don’t they form the foundation for everything? Should I not climb up from my depths to all the surfaces of the earth? After every journey, should one not return to oneself?” (p. 22).

And so, by virtue of his new discoveries, he would begin intense contemplation of them, ceaselessly working through them in his writing, burning the candle at both ends, as he says in Ecce Homo (his autobiography), with his zeal and exuberance of life increasing and increasing as his inexorably ardent strength of will coursed through him and his mind soared heights he never could have imagined. And then, when the journey was over, out of sheer exhaustion, he would “return” to himself—and crash. He’d fall, bedridden, into severe migraines and fevers. He says in Ecce Homo that Human, All Too Human, which he says he wrote to help heal and overcome his sickly condition, was written between bouts of throwing up copious amounts of phlegm, which is the reason he had to write aphoristically, given he couldn’t write for very long periods of time, due to his horrible vomiting, migraines and eyesight. And then, in his newly sick feverish state (one bout almost killing him in 1879), new ideas would once again emerge, and it would all start all over again—a Nietzschean cycle.  

 

And so, two things stand out emphatically: the close connection between the life of the mind and the life of the soul—the dependence of his intellect upon the needs and excitations of his interior being. And then the unique feature, that this close relatedness must always yield anew to suffering; the light of knowledge requires the high glow of the soul, each time. . . . suffering is natural and necessary to Nietzsche’s existence (p. 14).

 

Nietzsche believed, so says Salomé, that “a constant enduring and wounding may yield the greatest possession and creativity” (p. 18). This, she explains, is the crux of his view of “heroism as an ideal.” It is the demanding of more and more of oneself—no matter what the toll. 

 

His illness necessitated taking himself as the material of his thought, as well as the submission of his self to a philosophical world-picture and the spinning out of it from his own inner being. If all this were otherwise, perhaps he would not have been able to accomplish things so individualistic and unique. And yet, one cannot help but look back with deep regret upon this turning point in Nietzsche’s fate and that uncanny compulsion toward self-isolation. One cannot escape the feeling that the greatness reserved for him passed him by (p. 56). 

As is well known of Nietzsche and is intrinsic to his life and impassioned philosophy, “Instead of seeking to yoke his drives, he gives them all possible free rein; the broader the fields they explore with all their senses, the more they serve the individual’s purpose—a drive for knowledge” (pp. 19-20). It is this striving that would lead him to one new phase in his philosophy after another, which is why we have an early Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy), a middle Nietzsche (the one of positivism found in the works he published between 1878 and 1882) and a late Nietzsche (post-1882), from Thus Spoke Zarathustra onwards (the Nietzsche who turns his back on positivism and relies more on emotions, passions, sensations and instincts). “Nietzsche’s uniqueness later was marked by his taking problems almost exclusively from the inner world and subordinating logic to the psychological” (p. 33), hence so much of his influence on Freud, whom Salomé worked with and also wrote a book about, and the title of Kaufmann’s classic 1950 book, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Salomé explains that:

 

For good reasons Nietzsche did not enter philosophy by way of abstract academic specializations; he pursued studies towards a deeper conception of the philosophic life and its innermost meaning. And if we wish to designate the goal intended by the peregrinations and battles of his insatiable spirit, we may not find a more appropriate phrase than his longing to discover “a new, and hitherto undiscovered possibility for the philosophical life” (HATH, 261) (p. 37).

 

And so, “Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge culminates in a kind of personal thrall in which the concepts of madness and truth are inextricably entwined” (p. 99). 

 

I hadn’t realized just how thoroughly Nietzsche had ripped himself away from positivism in his works after The Gay Science, despite me having read and studied them all thoroughly on my own and at an undergraduate and then graduate level. Salomé allowed me to see that the superiority of the overman isn’t merely knowledge-seeking to the ultimate extreme, no. It is even beyond that. It is the creating and expanding of the very parameters and possibilities of knowledge itself. That is what makes the labyrinth of Zarathustra, the knocking down and vanquishing of all the limiting walls of human reason, logic and rationality, dissolving them into a philosophical and mystical realm of infinite horizons unlike which the world has ever known, without the need to have to turn to a nonexistent god in order to do so, for Nietzsche remained thoroughly atheistic till the very end. He always remained searching towards the truth, using everything at his disposal to head fearlessly towards it, not blindly clinging to that which wasn’t there in the hope of having found it, as with theism.

 

One thing that greatly surprised me and gave me much pause is that it turns out Nietzsche’s eternal return (or recurrence) was not merely a philosophical construct and existential experiment for him. He believed it to be a fact of reality and was planning on taking a break from writing, to study the natural sciences for ten years at the University of Vienna or Paris, in order to then prove to the world using science that the eternal return is the actual state of things (in modern terms that would mean the Big Crunch causing the Big Bang, like a snake biting its tail). His illness didn’t permit him to do that, however, and, at any rate, when he realized he wouldn’t be able to prove the eternal return on empirical grounds (using physics experiments, like he was planning on doing), he accepted it on mystical ones founded on “an inner inspiration—his own personal inspiration” (pp. 131-133), despite the fact that, given all his suffering in life, the eternal return was something unspeakably terrifying to him:

 

Unforgettable for me are those hours in which he first confided to me his secret, whose inevitable fulfillment and validation he anticipated with shudders. Only with a quiet voice and with all signs of deepest horror did he speak about this secret. Life, in fact, produced such suffering in him that the certainty of an eternal return of life had to mean something horrifying to him. The quintessence of the teaching of eternal recurrence, later constructed by Nietzsche as a shining apotheosis to life, formed such a deep contrast to his own painful feelings about life that it gives us intimations of being an uncanny mask (p. 130).

 

And it is also in Zarathustra, the harbinger of the eternal return, where, Salomé explains, we find the evidence that Nietzsche saw his madness coming and walked directly towards it. That is his infamous “abyss,” where no one else may pass and where Zarathustra would forever be alone. “Quite early Nietzsche had brooded over the meaning of madness as a possible source of knowledge and its inner sense that may have led the ancients to discern a sign of divine election” (p. 145), that is, someone severe and worthy enough to be esteemed, followed and exalted. And so he affirmed his own madness, willing it within the realm of amor fati.  

The picture of madness stands at the end of Nietzsche’s philosophy, like a shrill and terrible illustration of theoretical knowledge and of the conclusions drawn from it for his philosophy of the future, because the point of departure is formed by dissolving everything intellectual and letting drive-like chaos dominate. Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge, however, goes beyond the decline of the knower and conceives a revelation by life, inoculated by madness . . .

Madness was to bear witness also to the power of life’s truth through whose brilliance the human spirit is blinded. For no power of reason leads into the depths of life in its fullness. It does not permit a climbing into its fullness step by step or thought by thought . . . (p. 150).

 

For us, the outsiders, we can see that from then on Nietzsche was shrouded in the total darkness of night; he stepped into the most individual life of his inner experience before which the ideas that had accompanied him had to come to a halt; a profound and shattering silence spreads over these matters. Not only can we no longer follow his spirit into the last transformation, which he achieves through self-sacrifice, but also we ought not follow it. For in this transformation Nietzsche found proof for his truth, which has become completely merged with all the secrets and seclusions of his inwardness. During his last loneliness, he has drawn away from us and has closed the gate behind him. At the gate’s entrance, however, these words radiate towards us: “‘What hitherto has been your ultimate danger has now become your ultimate refuge. You are on your way to greatness, and that must be of greatest courage to you because there is no path behind you! . . . Here no one may sneak after you! Your own foot has obliterated the path behind you, and above that path is written: Impossibility’” (“The Wanderer,” Z, III) (p. 151). 

 

And so Nietzsche’s final phase was complete isolation and separation from the herd through madness, lost yet found inside his own mind, just as he predicted in his Zarathustra. And with that, he answered the very question he asked Salomé about his very mode of overcoming one realm of philosophy in order to embrace and explore new truths: 

 

Speaking to Nietzsche about the changes that already lay behind him, I elicited from him remarks he made half in jest. “Yes, things take their course and continue to develop, but where to? When everything has taken its course—where does one run to then? When all possible combinations have been exhausted, what follows then? How would one then not arrive again in belief? Perhaps in a Catholic belief?” And from the backward hiding place of these assertions emerged the added, serious words: “In any case, the circle could be more plausible than a standing still” (p. 32).

Essays and Aphorisms - Arthur Schopenhauer

"No rose without a thorn. But many a thorn without a rose." - Schopenhauer, "On Various Subjects," II, B

I finally read the Essays and Aphorisms of Schopenhauer published by Penguin, and I was blown away by it! He'd been on my reading list for ages, and I never thought I’d enjoy him this much! I clearly see how much he influenced my favourite philosopher of all, Nietzsche (who used to be his disciple until he became his greatest critic), in both style and thought - both incredible writers and thinkers, filled with passion and wit. I also didn’t expect to agree with him on so many things. In many ways, he, like Nietzsche, was ahead of his time. Geniuses, pure and simple, and, like many a genius, neither one was truly appreciated until after leaving this world, though Scho did have some disciples in old age. 

There’s nothing I love more than a deep thinker who expresses his thoughts with both eloquence and humour, and Scho certainly gives both at full throttle. I love his prosaic and aphoristic style, saying so much in so little space while, most importantly, being crystal clear about what he’s saying, unlike Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which is incoherent and filled with run-on sentences. I found no wisdom in Hegel, whom I did a directed reading on in the final year of my undergraduate degree, along with Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, which I found almost as awful, but I find tons of wisdom in Schopenhauer! I in particularly loved his critique and mockery of religion (namely Christianity and the church’s bloody history), his work on human psychology and the unconscious half a century before Freud, his annoyance with the mob and their lack of thoughtfulness and subtlety, his analyses of different mythologies and his criticisms of the writers of his day, in particularly the sensationalism spread by journalists, which he saw through as clear as day. R. J. Hollingdale's Introduction was fantastic as well! One of my favourite things in the book came early on - the best rebuttal I'm yet to see to Leibniz's apologetical defense (against the problem of evil) that this is the best of all possible worlds:

"[T]hat a god like Jehovah should create this world of want and misery animi causa [capriciously] and de gaiete de coeur [with a light heart] and then go so far as to applaud himself for it, saying it is all very good: that is quite unacceptable.

Even if Leibniz's demonstration that this is the best of all possible worlds were correct, it would still not be a vindication of divine providence. For the Creator created not only the world, he also created possibility itself: therefore he should have created the possibility of a better world than this one." - Page 48

YESSSSSSSSSSS!!! SO MUCH YES!!! Bravo, Scho . . . BRAVO!

The Birth and Death of Meaning by Ernest Becker

“We might say that the problem of authentic growth in a person’s life is to get rid of neurotic despair so as to come face to face with real despair, and then make a creative solution of his existence in greater freedom and full knowledge. This is the conclusion of Kierkegaard’s teaching now supported by the full weight of a mature scientific psychology.” - Becker, p. 206

Becker was one hell of a writer and thinker, one of the greatest (of both, actually), and arguably the profoundest and most important philosopher of the 20th century. He covers so much in this 199-page book (plus detailed endnotes) that I dare not try to summarize it in a review. But it’s the third book of his that I read (the other two being The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil), and he’s blown my mind once again, digging so penetratingly deep into the human psyche and unconscious, using psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and sometimes even film, to get a point across. From primate state, to tribal state and creature of symbols that accursedly has self-consciousness and realizes its own mortality, to modern-day hero-seeking man lost in the concrete wilderness of modern civilization, fragmented within himself and disconnected from his true, authentic self while not realizing it and that it is his lifelong neurosis along with the baggage of his childhood upbringing, hopelessly trying to justify his absurdly short time in a seemingly meaningless universe with no inherent purpose offered or any rationally objective cosmic roadmap to follow from cradle to grave, Becker takes you through the journey of human evolution from the prehistory of humanity to the modern-day, forlorn individual destined to die and know it. He states that “we can flatly and empirically say that everyone is neurotic, some more than others” (p. 151). Becker lays out all the ways society, culture, politics, business, materialism, religion and even dialogue between people try to give us the illusion of strength, hope, security and significance in order to appease our unconscious by assuring it that we’re more than just finite beings destined for permanent cessation. “Generally,” he says on page 33, “the more anxious and insecure we are, the more we invest in these symbolic extensions of ourselves.” This is why after I read The Denial of Death a little over 12 years ago, I never bothered to do a book review of it at all, despite how much I loved it, as he covered way too much in it, and my intimidation was justified. 

Escape from Freedom - a Book Review

“[E]ven being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone. Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.” - page 18

Escape from Freedom was the third book of Erich Fromm’s that I read. It had been on my reading list ever since I took a fabulous psychology course when I was an undergrad called Personality. I highly recommend this seminal masterpiece! It’s Social Psychology and an exposition on why it is that the majority of people do not want to embrace their freedom but in fact run away and hide from it, due to how terrifying it really is on the human psyche in a vast, uncaring universe and world filled with hoards of people who contribute to our feelings of smallness.

One of the things it deals with is the rise of capitalism and how it turned humans into anxiety-ridden, self-doubting, insignificant cogs and addresses capitalism's negative effects and parallels with politics. Fromm explains in which ways capitalism and the Reformation made people freer while also "enslaving" them for their own purposes in different ways than Europeans were "enslaved" in the Middle Ages and how and why people unconsciously run away and escape from the freedom both systems offer. The systems then feed on that for a vicious cycle where man now feels more insignificant and powerless than ever.

Fromm also deals with sadomasochistic relationships and why such symbiotic relationships exist as an unconscious way of overcoming feelings of individual powerlessness, self-doubt and insignificance by losing oneself in another person, either as a way of expending flimsy feelings of seemingly self-enhancing power (a facade of power that belies weakness) that is in actuality merely inflicting abuse on a helpless, subservient subject or by relinquishing all sense of self and individuality as an object of masochism and helplessness, giving all power to the sadist in the process.

This leads him into a discussion on the authoritarian personality that gave rise to Nazi Germany. He also goes into great detail about the political and social circumstances in Germany post-World War I and how they affected the different economic classes that led to Nazism and why those classes reacted in the ways they did as a defence mechanism. The ways in which the masses can be manipulated are fascinating, and it is extremely imperative that they be understood.

I especially enjoyed the section on hypnosis and dream analysis and how so many of our thoughts and feelings come from without rather than from within. He expounds on the ways we try to rationalize those thoughts and feelings as being our own, just like in hypnosis; only media and societal hypnosis is what fools/hypnotizes the masses on a grand scale as we internalize both media and society without even realizing it.

He also elaborates on where he is in agreement with Freud, and where he believes Freud went wrong. Fromm covers so much in this book, and anyone who’s interested in psychology, sociology and/or philosophy should definitely give it a read. It is absolutely profound and was groundbreaking for its time and will always be relevant within the study of human nature and the dangerous path the human race tends to tread on. And the solution that he posits for the problem is a very Nietzschean one, which I love: the individual living creatively and spontaneously for the full realization and cultivation of the self and the true, positive freedom that is realized and experienced along with it. 

“The problem we are confronted with today is that of the organization of social and economic forces, so that man - as a member of organized society - may become the master of these forces and cease to be their slave.” - page 269

Rating: five stars!

Staring at the Sun - a Book Review

“[D]espite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind. Perhaps, as Plato says, we cannot lie to the deepest part of ourselves.” - Pages 5-6

I haven’t written a book review in a long time, but after reading this existential, psychological masterpiece, I feel I must. 

I’ve always been tormented by the fact that I’m going to die one day. It began suddenly when I was eight years old. However, given I was raised Catholic, it was the terror of burning in hell for all eternity that consumed me. Thankfully, though, I started doubting the existence of God when I was 17. After some time, the doubt finally erupted in full fruition when I was 24, permitting me to completely come to my senses and stop believing in any of that eschatological nonsense. I became an atheist without any belief in the afterlife whatsoever (though I'd like to be wrong about that and am open to the possibility of one). 

My death terror then became about ceasing to exist completely and the universe going on and on forever and ever without me after I’m gone, blotting me out as if I never existed at all. It’s that thorough, unrelenting feeling of insignificance coupled with never being able to be aware of anything again that now gets me, and it’s only gotten worse with age (I’m turning 40 in July) due to the inexorable speed of time and my worldly-centred, fiery love of life. Leaving this world, and my mind ceasing for all eternity, absolutely terrifies me! The whole thing seems like a sick, twisted, impossible joke!

“The frightening thought of inevitable death, Epicurus insisted, interferes with our enjoyment of life and leaves no pleasure undisturbed. Because no activity can satisfy our craving for eternal life, all activities are intrinsically unrewarding. He wrote that many individuals develop a hatred for life - even, ironically, to the point of suicide; others engage in frenetic and aimless activity that has no point other than the avoidance of the pain inherent in the human condition.” - pg. 78

Something that’s always fascinated me is how people deal with their own mortality, which is why one of my favourite books of all time is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. It’s so deep, razor sharp, eloquent and penetrating. So when I heard of Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Dr. Irvin D. Yalom, author of Existential Psychotherapy and When Nietzsche Wept, I simply had to get it, in the hope that it would help appease all this dreadful fear and anxiety within me while I delved deeper into a topic that I find absolutely enthralling. 

Well, I finished it on the train ride home yesterday, and it was a truly brilliant, unabashed look at death head-on. Dr. Yalom uses many of his case studies from personal sessions and successes with patients suffering from death terror and death anxiety. Sometimes he had to reveal to his patients, as it was revealed to him in doing so, that death anxiety was at the heart of what was the matter with them, the dilemma at their emotional and psychological core. Often their struggle with death was really just their struggle with regret and the fear of dying without fulfilling their lives. He also talks about close friends and mentors he’s had, and how they’d helped and learned from each other before they inevitably passed on. And his dream analyses of his patients are absolutely amazing, almost as if executed with acute precision. 

One thing I really enjoyed and was delighted to see was that he talks a lot about Epicurus and Nietzsche in it, two philosophers I love greatly, especially Nietzsche. He uses their existential thoughts on mortality, living, and nothingness post-death in his therapy sessions with his patients who are having death anxiety, experiencing a life crisis or are at a crossroads. He even reads Nietzsche’s eternal return passage with the demon and the spider to his patients who might gain value from it, and often do, which then accelerates the work of the sessions.

One Nietzschean theme is the annihilation of the dread of death through the complete consummation of one’s life through self-cultivation and living life to the fullest. I love that, as it naturally rings so true for me.

As for it helping me - though he offers several ways of thinking and being to help allay death terror (none of them involving an afterlife) - it was the reading through of the book itself that gave me a heightened sense of peace with my own finiteness, which I really started to feel on page 210 or 211 (it’s 277 pages in total up till the end of the Afterword). But such a powerful book as this - at times humorous, by the way - can only affect everyone differently.

“Let’s not conclude that death is too painful to bear, that the thought will destroy us, that transiency must be denied lest the truth render life meaningless. Such denial always exacts a price - narrowing our inner life, blurring our vision, blunting our rationality. Ultimately self-deception catches up with us. 

“...raw death terror can be scaled down to everyday manageable anxiety. Staring into the face of death, with guidance, not only quells terror but renders life more poignant, more precious, more vital.” - pg. 276

I agree. And, quaintly, as I walked home in the new area that I live in here in Tokyo, I came across statues that I started taking photos of and which led me to a cemetery that I then proceeded to walk through, through the nature that was intertwined with it. And though my senses were heightened, I felt at peace. 

Rating: five stars!