Into The Void

Janus Head ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-189
Author(s):  
Clay Lewis ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Eternal Return ◽  
Will To Power ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Complete Failure ◽  
Impossible Task ◽  
Poetic Vision

This paper looks at authoritarianism as an expression of nihilism. In spite of his rigorous critique of Platonism, I suggest that Nietzsche shares with Plato an authoritarian vision that is rooted in the cyclical experience of time. The temporality of the eternal return unveils a vista of cosmic nihilism that cannot possibly be endured. In the absence of metaphysical foundations, the vital will to power is assigned an impossible task – to create meaning from nothing. I suggest that when confronted with the horror of the ungrounded void, the self-overcoming of nihilism reverts to self-annihilation. The declaration that God is dead becomes the belief that death is God. I trace Nietzsche’s cosmic nihilism back to Plato’s myths and the poetic vision of Sophocles and Aeschylus. I argue that Nietzsche’s overcoming of nihilism is itself nihilistic. However, this does not mean that Nietzsche’s project is as a complete failure. On the contrary, I suggest that Nietzsche’s deepest insight is that the good life does not consist of the pursuit of truth, but the alleviation of suffering.

Part I

Good Lives ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 3-124
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Knowledge

Part I investigates a wide range of autobiographies, alongside work on the history and literary criticism of autobiography, on narrative, and on the philosophies of the self and of the good life. It works from the point of view of the autobiographer, and considers what she does, what she aims at, and how she achieves her effects, to answer three questions: what is an autobiography? How can we learn about ourselves from reading one? About what subjects does autobiography teach? This part of the book develops, first, an account of autobiography as paradigmatically a narrative artefact in a genre defined by its form: particular diachronic compositional self-reflection. Second, an account of narrative as paradigmatically a generic telling of a connected temporal sequence of particular actions taken by, and particular events which happen to, agents. It defends rationalism about autobiography: autobiography is in itself a distinctive and valuable form of ethical reasoning, and not merely involved in reasoning of other, more familiar kinds. It distinguishes two purposes of autobiography, self-investigation and self-presentation. It identifies five kinds of self-knowledge at which autobiographical self-investigation typically aims—explanation, justification, self-enjoyment, selfhood, and good life—and argues that meaning is not a distinct sixth kind. It then focusses on the book’s two main concerns, selfhood and good life: it sets out the wide range of existing accounts, taxonomies, and tasks for each, and gives an initial characterisation of the self-realization account of the self and its good which is defended in Part II.

What’s good about the good life? Action theory, virtue ethics and modern morality

2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372094837
Author(s):  
Frédéric Vandenberghe
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Right

The article explores the scope and the limits of virtue ethics from the perspective of critical theory (Habermas) and critical realism (Bhaskar). Based on new research in moral sociology and anthropology, it ponders how the self-realization of each can be combined with the self-determination of all. The article adopts an action-theoretical perspective on morality and defends the priority of the right over the good. It suggests that in plural and polarized societies, there no longer exists a consensus on any version of the good life. It therefore limits the scope of virtue ethics to personal life and pleads for a minima moralia at the social and political level.

Review of The Self on the Shelf: Recovery Books and the Good Life.

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 811-811
Author(s):  
Terri Gullickson
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life

scholarly journals Philo of Alexandria: A model for early Christian ‘spiritual readings’ of the Scriptures

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Decock
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Spiritual Exercise ◽  
Happy Life ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Human Effort ◽  
Spiritual Reading

Philo of Alexandria represents a Hellenistic tradition of reading the Scriptures in which reading is seen as a spiritual exercise together with other spiritual exercises, like attention, thorough investigation of the issues, self-mastery, detachment, etcetera (see Her. 253; Leg. 3:18), which has as aim the transformation and growth of the person towards the good and happy life. Interaction with the spiritual wealth of the Greek philosophical traditions was seen as a fruitful asset and challenge. This article highlights some of the key themes of Philo’s philosophical or spiritual reading of the Scriptures: the priority of God and of the health of the soul, the importance of human progress, the recognition of one’s nothingness in order to know God, the necessity to choose, human effort and divine achievement, as well as harmony with God, nature and the self as the aims of the good life. Christian spiritual writers, like Origen, found in Philo’s approach to the Scriptures and in his reflections on the spiritual journey a very inspiring model.

Oakeshott's Politics for Gentlemen

2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Wulf
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Self ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Michael Oakeshott's concerns about political developments in twentieth-century Europe seem to shape his philosophical writings. Yet Oakeshott persistently portrays himself as a philosopher who has little practical interest in politics. This essay argues that Oakeshott's genteel conception of the good life leads him to develop a political doctrine for practical reasons while disclaiming any practical motives. His diagnosis of collectivist politics in the 1930s reluctantly solicits a philosophical defense of a pluralist political order that is hospitable to his ethical ideal. His writings concerning the self, society, and state develop such a defense. Yet for Oakeshott, political engagement is incompatible with gentility because it conflates worldliness with spirituality. Oakeshott, therefore, disavows the practical aspirations that shape his work.

Part II

Good Lives ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 125-224
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Interesting Part ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Good For ◽  
Self Discovery

Part II works from the point of view of the reader of autobiography, and asks: what should we learn from autobiography? It argues for a lesson about selfhood and the good life, and specifically about the roles of narrative and of self-realization in those targets of human self-knowledge. This investigation addresses four questions: given that autobiographies are narratives, should we learn something from them about the importance of narrative in human life? Could our narration of our lives explain how their parts relate to them as wholes? Could it retrospectively unify them and thereby make them good for us? Could it create self-knowledge by interpretatively making the self? In each case it answers: no. The lesson we should learn here is instead about the centrality of self-realization to selfhood and the good life. To make that case, this part argues for pluralist realism about self-knowledge: autobiographies of self-discovery, martial life, and solitude show that the ‘self’ which is created and known by self-interpretation is, at best, one part of what we can know about ourselves, and not the most interesting part. These modes of self-discovery reveal a self that is unchosen, initially opaque to itself, and seedlike, which could not be a self-interpretation, and whose good is its realization.

Good Lives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Good Lives

Reasoning with autobiography is a way to self-knowledge. We can learn about ourselves, as human beings and as individuals, by reading, thinking through, and arguing about this distinctive kind of text. Reasoning with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son is a way of learning about the nature of the good life and the roles that pleasure and self-expression can play in it. Reasoning with Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs is a way of learning about transformative experience, self-alienation, and therefore the nature of the self. Good Lives develops and defends this claim, by answering a series of questions. What is an autobiography? How can we learn about ourselves from reading one? On what subjects does autobiography teach? What should we learn about them? In particular, given that autobiographies are narratives, should we learn something about the importance of narrative in human life? Could our storytelling about our own lives make sense of them as wholes, unify them over time, or make them good for us? Could storytelling make the self? The overall aim of the book is a critique of narrative and a defence of a self-realization account of the self and its good. As it pursues that, the book investigates the wide range of extant accounts of the self and of the good life, and defends pluralist realism about self-knowledge by reading and reasoning with autobiographies of self-discovery, martial life, and solitude. It concludes: autobiography can be reasoning in pursuit of self-knowledge; each of us is an unchosen, initially opaque, seedlike self; our good is the development and expression of our latent capacities, which is our individual self-realization; self-narration plays much less role in our lives than some thinkers have supposed, and the development and expression of potential much more.

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