Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Henry V' and 'Human, All Too Human'

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3 ideas

23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 1. Existentialism
We could live more naturally, relishing the spectacle, and not thinking we are special [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: I can imagine a life much more simple...than the present one. ...One would live among men and with oneself as in nature, without praise, reproach, overzealousness, delighting in things as in a spectacle. One would no longer feel one was more than nature.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 034)
     A reaction: [compressed] Safranski says this passage is a big turning point for Nietzsche, replacing his earlier idea that art could be salvation. Eternal Recurrence puts a seal on this new view. Nietzsche adds that this life needs to be 'cheerful'.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 4. Boredom
People do not experience boredom if they have never learned to work properly [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Many people, especially women, do not experience boredom, because they have never learned to work properly.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 391)
     A reaction: It certainly seems right that boredom is a response to expectations and past habits. Life in a medieval village looks like boredom verging on torture for your busy modern urban sophisticate, but I daresay it was quite absorbing.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 5. Existence-Essence
Over huge periods of time human character would change endlessly [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: If a man eighty thousand years old were conceivable, his character would in fact be absolutely variable. …The brevity of human life misleads us…
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 041)
     A reaction: This would be one of my many exhibits for claiming Nietzsche as an existentialist. I think he is largely right, and we do detect slow shifts in our characters over long periods of time. They may be as much a response to culture as a personal matter.