Quote:

arab-the zarathusthra stuff seemed to slow down the deterioration but i'm not a neitzche guy and only kinda into schopenhauer--can you work something from ludwig? he's my all-time guy, but i'm kinda on a jerry fodor/ned block/danny dennet kick recently.




I'm not that up on Schopenhauer. I had my brain fried: at the age of 13, the first philosopher I ever read was Nietzsche. I remember being despondent that there was nothing I could believe in, nothing had meaning except the continued triumph of the victor over the enemy. Then, about a year later, I took acid for the first time and found deep metaphysical meaning in the character Ataru Moroboshi from Japanese manga Lum Urusei Yatsura.

So what I know of Schopenhauer is based on seeing him through a filter of Nietzsche: as the guy who hesitated before taking the final plunge into existentialism, before Sartre fucked it up with his Stalin-worship.

To be honest, I've always had problems with Eternal Recurrence. It seems a bit deus ex machina: like, he's figured out this Epicurean glee that there's nothing to live for, but posits this system of recurrences to add some kind of ethereal spirituality to his system. Of course it's much more complex than that, but every time I go back to read it I find it banal and simplistic.

I've always like Nietzsche as more of a social commentator, though he always held that at arms length, as something almost dirty but somehow necessary like getting a boil lanced. But his commentaries are gold, such as his explanation that the true Christian doctrine, per its own belief system, would create a terribly unjust and cruel society which dispenses maximum suffering (which is what, after all, Christianity judges to be the best part of life: misery). Unfortunately, I can see why he felt that was beneath him: the only people who see significance in it are angry anti-Christian types who still have a grudge that their fathers didn't hug them enough.
_________________________