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Ideas for 'works', 'Free Will as Involving Determinism' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82'

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4 ideas

23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 1. Existentialism
The goal is to settle human beings, like other animals, but humans are still changeable [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Obviously the goal is to make human beings as steady and firm as most animal species; they have adapted to the conditions of the earth etc. and do not change essentially. The human being is still changeable - is still becoming.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[044])
     A reaction: I favour an Aristotelian view, based on the flourishing of human nature, but this thought obviously challenges such a view. Great changes to a culture can make some difference to the apparent nature of people.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 2. Nihilism
My eternal recurrence is opposed to feeling fragmented and imperfect [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: I held up eternal recurrence against the numbing feeling of general disintegration and imperfection.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 24[28])
     A reaction: I've heard people say that they think Nietzsche was a nihilist. This is nonsense. His whole career was an opposition to nihilism. His excitement over the idea of recurrence is that he sees a real answer to nihilism. You have to value a recurring life.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 8. Eternal Recurrence
See our present lives as eternal! Religions see it as fleeting, and aim at some different life [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Let us press the image of eternity on our life! This thought contains more than all religions that despise this life as fleeting and taught us to look toward an unspecified different life.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 11[159])
     A reaction: This is the best statement of the idea of eternal recurrence I have so far found. His ideal is to design a life for ourselves which we would be happy to see endlessly repeated. A lot of thought would have to go into that!
The eternal return of wastefulness is a terrible thought [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The most terrible thought of an eternal return of wastefulness.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1881-82 [1882], 20[02])
     A reaction: This illuminates quite well his notion of eternal recurrence. Not only what you would do in an eternally recurring life, but what you would avoid.