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Living in the time of a pandemic, where illness has become a prominent concern, it might do well to consider Nietzsche’s thinking on sickness and health, which is far from a clear-cut delineation and calls for careful and circumspect analysis. I begin by distinguishing three types of sickness and health: physical, psychological, and cultural, where health in each type can initially be understood as flourishing unimpaired by sickness. Physical illness involves some infirmity of the body, such as cancer or viral infection. Psychological illness is some malady of the mind, such as depression. Cultural illness is the kind of thing emphasized by Nietzsche and involves a worldview that is symptomatic of life denial and nihilism when measured against natural life instincts, energies, and needs—for instance, the story Nietzsche tells about slave morality and its production of the ascetic ideal that has contaminated Western thought.

In this essay I take up Plato's critique of poetry, which has little to do with epistemology and representational imitation,but rather the powerful effects that poetic performances can have on audiences, enthralling them with vivid image-worlds and blocking the powers of critical reflection. By focusing on the perceived psychological dangers of poetry in performance and reception, I want to suggest that Plato's critique was caught up in the larger story of momentous shifts in the Greek world, turning on the rise of literacy and its far-reaching effects in modifying the original and persisting oral character of Greek culture. The story of Plato's Republic in certain ways suggests something essential for comprehending the development of philosophy in Greece (and in any culture,I would add):that philosophy,as we understand it,would not have been possible apart from the skills and mental transformations stemming from education in reading and writing; and that primary features of oral language and practice were a significant barrier to the development of philosophical rationality (and also a worthy competitor for cultural status and authority). Accordingly, I go on to argue that the critique of writing in the Phaedrus is neither a defense or orality per se, nor a dismissal of writing, but rather a defense of a literate soul over against orality and the indiscriminate exposure of written texts to unworthy readers.

Malgre l'absence d'une reflexion explicite sur le sport chez Nietzsche, l'A. decele dans son interet pour l'action, la performance, le conflit, l'incarnation et le spectacle, en general, et dans son interet pour le monde grec, fonde sur une culture agonistique et sur l'invention de l'athletisme, en particulier, les themes propres a une analyse nietzscheenne du sport: la volonte de puissance, la sublimation, l'incarnation, le spectacle et le jeu, qui s'inscrivent dans la perspective naturaliste du philosophe sur la culture et permettent d'expliquer la popularite du sport par sa sigification culturelle

In this book Lawrence Hatab provides an accessible and provocative exploration of one of the best-known and still most puzzling aspects of Nietzsche's thought: eternal recurrence, the claim that life endlessly repeats itself identically in every detail. Hatab argues that eternal recurrence can and should be read literally, in just the way Nietzsche described it in the texts. The book offers a readable treatment of most of the core topics in Nietzsche's philosophy, all discussed in the light of the consummating effect of eternal recurrence. Although Nietzsche called eternal recurrence his most fundamental idea, most interpreters have found it problematic or needful of redescription in other terms. For this reason Hatab's book is an important and challenging contribution to Nietzsche scholarship.

The third essay offers an answer to the question whence the ascetic ideal, the priests' ideal, derives its tremendous power even though it is the harmful ideal par excellence , a will to the end, an ideal of decadence. Answer: not, as people may believe, because God is at work behind the priests but faut de mieux [lacking something better] – because it was the only ideal so far, “For man would rather will nothingness than not will.” – Above all, a counterideal was lacking – until Zarathustra . ( EH III, GM) Before beginning the tour of this essay, it is necessary to establish something about the first section in relation to a remark in the book's Preface, Section 8. There Nietzsche calls the Third Essay an example of what he means by “the art of interpretation ( Auslegung ).” The essay, he says, “is a commentary ( Commentar ) on the aphorism that precedes it.” It had almost always been assumed that the aphorism in question is the epigraph drawn from Thus Spoke Zarathustra ( Z I, 7) that precedes Section 1: “Carefree, mocking, violent – this is how wisdom wants us : she is a woman, all she ever loves is a warrior.” In recent years, however, John Wilcox, Maudemarie Clark, and Christopher Janaway have shown conclusively that the aphorism in question is actually Section 1.