As the apocalypse closes in again on humanity in Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, Joshua, who has been ‘chosen’ to ‘escape’ into space, leaving this world behind, wonders about the cyclical nature of human history: The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become withContinue reading “Mankind as Deluded Sisyphus”
Tag Archives: eternal recurrence
Iraq and the Pottery Barn Rule: Don’t Break It Any More Please
As turban-wearing hordes ride down on their stallions from the hills, their sharpened scimitars gleaming in the bright Mesopotamian sunshine, threatening to add to the steadily growing mound of heads separated from their now-twitching bodies, should the United States saddle up, lock and load, and ride out to meet them? Should it crush its enemies, see them drivenContinue reading “Iraq and the Pottery Barn Rule: Don’t Break It Any More Please”
Psychologizing, Immortalizing, and Unamuno Contra Nietzsche
As promised yesterday, here is Miguel de Unamuno on Nietzsche. In my first post on Unamuno, I had written that ‘there are streaks of ‘conventional’ conservatism visible in his fulminations against Nietzsche.’ The following is one such outburst. It occurs in the chapter that sets up Unamuno’s central thesis in The Tragic Sense of Life: ‘TheContinue reading “Psychologizing, Immortalizing, and Unamuno Contra Nietzsche”
The Eternal Recurrence and Rejecting Do-Overs
A little discussion on Facebook about Nietzsche’s remark that his greatest objection to the doctrine of eternal recurrence was that he would have to repeatedly confront his mother and sister’s existence serves to remind me of a tiny thought experiment I’ve often conducted: wondering about ‘doing over’ something in my life, of getting a chanceContinue reading “The Eternal Recurrence and Rejecting Do-Overs”
Samir Chopra 