Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality: A Revaluation Based in the Dionysian World-View / Edition 1

by Peter Durno Murray

Overview

This book argues that Nietzsche bases his affirmative morality on the model of individual responsiveness to otherness which he takes from the mythology of Dionysus. The subject is not free to choose to avoid such responding to the demands of the other. Nietzsche finds that the basic mode of responding is pleasure. This feeling, as a basis for morality, underlies the morality which is true to the earth and the major concepts of “will to power”, “eternal return”, and “amor fati”. The priority of otherness makes all thought ethical and not only aesthetic. The basis of all meanings combines the fundamental impulse of responding outwards with an immediate complement in the individual interpretation-world. This is specifically ethical because the recognition of our own historical specificity arises as a result of the refusal of others to become mere differences within our notion of the Same, and through their demand that we “become who we are” in the recognition of their separate existence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110166019
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	08/04/1999
Series:	Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung , #42
Edition description:	Reprint 2015
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

	Foreword	VII
	Acknowledgments	XI
	Abbreviations	XV
Part 1	The Dionysian World-View
I.	Nietzsche's Dionysus
1.	The Double Nature of Dionysus: Ethical Questions and Art	3
2.	The Third Dionysus	9
3.	The Redemption of Life	28
4.	Delphi: the Separation of Self and Other	33
5.	Socrates' Daemon	42
6.	The Possibility of Tragedy: Hybris	47
II.	Contradiction, Duplicity and Opposition
1.	The Aesthetic Game: Creation and Destruction	58
2.	Contradiction	65
3.	The Origin of Opposition in Duplicity	82
4.	The Perspective of Universality	93
III.	The Language of Redemption
1.	Myth and the Genius of Poetry	98
2.	From Images to Words	105
3.	Rhetorical Language: Metaphor	121
4.	"Dionysus" as a Metonymy	131
Part 2	Affirmative Morality
IV.	The Basis in Pleasure
1.	Pleasure and Displeasure	141
2.	The Aesthetical-Ethical Method	149
3.	Beyond Domination and the Lust for Power	155
4.	Being with Others: Pity and Empathy	159
V.	A Sense of the Earth
1.	Becoming True to the Earth	169
2.	The Affective Basis of Sense	178
3.	Will to Power and the Dionysian	192
4.	Will to Power: the Human-Earth	199
VI.	Recurrence and Return
1.	The Great Year	210
2.	From Recurrence to Return	222
3.	The Lenzer Heide Notes	228
4.	Eternal Return and the Overcoming of Pity	236
VII.	Affirmation: The Love of Fate
1.	The Ethos of Affirmation	251
2.	The Spiritualisation of Lust	254
3.	A Joyful and Trusting Fatalism	267
4.	Amor Fati and Affirmation	278
	Conclusion: A Beautiful in Vain?	288
	Bibliography	293
	Name Index	313
	Subject Index	316

Editorial Reviews

"Peter D. Murray's book is the best treatment of Nietzschean affirmation since Deleuze."
Tyler Roberts in: New Nietzsche Studies 1-2/2002

From the Publisher

Explores the development of an affirmative ethics or morality in Nietzsche's work, and attempts to demonstrate that this process is that of an increasingly complicated articulation of the encounter with otherness. Pays particular attention to the fundamental premise of Nietzsche's : that a Dionysian ground of pleasure underlies all meaning-creation. Analyzes how Nietzsche adapted the imagery of Greek Dionysianism to describe a contradictory world of joy and suffering in which joy is fundamental. This contradictory relationship is found to be present in Greek thinkers who propound the metaphysics of the Mysteries. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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