William James

William James (January 11, 1842, New York - August 26, 1910, Chocorua, New Hampshire). William James was born in New York, son of Henry James, Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have, since the 1930s, made it a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
Contents

1 Early years
2 Professional career
3 Writings
4 Epistemology
5 Philosophy of Religion
6 Theory of Emotion
7 Philosophy of History
8 List of major works
9 External links

Early years
William James (like his younger brother, Henry James, widely regarded as one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century) received a remarkably eclectic trans-Atlantic education, thanks in large part to his fluency in both German and French. His early artistic bent led to an early apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but yielded in 1861 to scientific studies at Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School.
In his years early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical and mental difficulties, including problems with his eyes, back, stomach, and skin, as well as periods of depression in which he was tempted by the thought of suicide. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War, but the other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice) all suffered from periods of invalidism. James was, however, able to join Harvard's Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River in 1865.
The entire James family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts after William James decided to study medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in 1866; he obtained his degree in 1869 after several extended interruptions of his studies for illness, which led him to live for extended periods in Germany, in the search of cure. (It was at this time that he began to publish -- at first, reviews in literary periodicals like the North American Review.) What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching.
James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, for his true interests were not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave" (Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 228).
Professional career
James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University. He established one of the first -- he believed it to be the first -- laboratory of experimental psychology in the United States in Boylston Hall in 1875. (On the question of this claim to priority, see Gerald E. Myers, William James: His Life and Thought [Yale Univ. Press, 1986), p. 486].)
William James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in physiology in 1872, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, professor of psychology in 1889, professor of philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.
Writings
William James wrote voluminously throughout his life; a fairly complete bibliography of his writings by John McDermott is 47 pages long (John J. McDermott, The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, rev. ed. [Univ. of Chicago Press, 1977 ISBN 0226391884], pp. 812-58). (See below for a list of his major writings and additional collections)
He first gained widespread recognition with Principles of Psychology (1890), which criticized both the English associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms, of little explanatory value, and which sought to re-conceive of the human mind as inherently purposive and selective.
Epistemology
James defined truth as that which works in the way of belief. "True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse" but "all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere," he wrote.
In What Pragmatism Means, James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in breif, that "truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it. Truth is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of beleif, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons." Richard Rorty claims that James did not mean to give a theory of truth with this statement, and that we should not regard it as such; however, James does phrase it as the "central point" of the pragmatist doctrine of truth.
Pragmatism as a view of the meaning of truth is considered obsolete in contemporary philosophy, because the predominant trend of thinking in the years since James' death (1910) has been toward non-epistemic definitions of truth, i.e. definitions that don't make truth dependent upon the warrant of a belief.
A contemporary philosopher or logician will often be found explaining that the statement "the book is on the table" is true if and only if the book is on the table.
Pragmatism remains an important contribution, though, to discussions of the theory of knowledge, i.e. the question of when we can be said to know.
Philosophy of Religion
James also did important work in his study in the area philosophy of religion, providing a wide-ranging account of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and interpreting them according to his pragmatic leanings. Some of the important claims he makes in this regard:
• Religious genius should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions--since institutions are merely the remnant of genius.
• The intense, even pathological varieties of experience (religious or otherwise) should be sought by psychologists, because they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind--that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.
• In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain "over-beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives.
Quotes from The Varieties of Religious Experience
The entire text online http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JamVari.html
Theory of Emotion
James is one of the two namesakes of the James-Lange theory of emotion, which he formulated independently of Carl Lange in the 1880s. The theory holds that emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus. In James' oft-cited example; it is not that we see a bear, fear it, and run. We see a bear and run, consequently we fear the bear. Our mind's perception of the higher adrenaline level, heartbeat, etc., is the emotion.
This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for the philosophy of aesthetics. Here is a passage from his great work, "Principles of Psychology," that spells out those consequences.
"[W]e must immediately insist that aesthetic emotion, pure and simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, and combinations of colors and sounds, is an absolutely sensational experience, an optical or auricular feeling that is primary, and not due to the repercussion backwards of other sensations elsewhere consecutively aroused. To this simple primary and immediate pleasure in certain pure sensations and harmonious combinations of them, there may, it is true, be added secondary pleasures; and in the practical enjoyment of works of art by the masses of mankind these secondary pleasures play a great part. The more classic one's taste is, however, the less relatively important are the secondary pleasures felt to be, in comparison with those of the primary sensation as it comes in. Classicism and romanticism have their battles over this point. Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic. The classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage. To the romantic mind, on the contrary, the immediate beauty of these sensations seems dry and thin. I am of course not discussing which view is right, but only showing that the discrimination between the primary feeling of beauty, as a pure incoming sensible quality, and the secondary emotions which are grafted thereupon, is one that must be made."
Philosophy of History
One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in producing social change.
One faction sees individuals ("heroes" as Thomas Carlyle called them) as the motive power of history, and the broader society as the page on which they write their acts. The other sees society as moving according to holistic principles or laws, and sees individuals as its more-or-less willing pawns. In 1880, James waded into this controversy with "Great Men and Their Environment," an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly. He took Carlyle's side, but without Carlyle's one-sided emphasis on the political/military sphere, upon heroes as the founders or over-throwers of states and empires.
"Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness," James wrote. "Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us."
List of major works
• The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (1890)
• Psychology (Briefer Course) (1892)
• The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
• Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (1897)
• Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899)
• The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902)
• Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
• A Pluralistic Universe (1909)
• The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to "Pragmatism" (1909)
• Some Problems of Philosophy (1911)
• Memories and Studies (1911)
• Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)
• Letters of William James, 2 vols. (1920)
• Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)
• Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (1935) [Contains some 500 letters by William James not to be found in the earlier edition of the Letters of William James]
• William James on Psychical Research (1960)
• The Correspondence of William James, 12 vols. (1992-2004)
________________________________________
Collections
• William James: Writings 1878-1899, Library of America, 1212 p., (1992) ISBN 0940450720
Psychology: Briefer Course (rev. and condensed Principles of Psychology), The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Talks to Teachers and Students, Essays (nine others)
• William James: Writings 1902-1910, Library of America, 1379 p., (1987) ISBN 0940450380
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, The Meaning of Truth, Some Problems of Philosophy, Essays

Note: In 1975, Harvard University Press began publication of a standard edition of The Works of William James.
See also:
William James - British naval commander (1720-1783)
External links
• Emory University: William James
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: William James
• Great Men and the Environment: William James
Full texts of James's works:
• Essays in Radical Empiricism
• The Will to Believe
Categories: 1842 births 1910 deaths 20th Century philosophers Psychologists Social philosophy U.S. philosophers

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Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a highly influential German philosopher, philologist, and psychologist.
Contents
1 His life
2 His works and ideas
2.1 The "Will to Power"
2.1.1 Similar ideas in others' thought
2.1.2 Criticism of the idea
2.2 Ethics
2.3 Religion
3 Politics
4 Themes and trends in Nietzsche's work
5 Nietzsche's style
6 Quotes
7 See also
8 List of works
9 References
10 Biography
11 External links

His life
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in the small town of Röcken bei Lützen, near Leipzig, Saxony. He was born on the 49th birthday of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia and was thus named after him. His father was a Lutheran pastor, who died of softening of the brain in 1849, when Nietzsche was four years old. In 1850 Nietzsche's mother moved the family to Naumburg, where he lived for the next eight years before heading off to school. Nietzsche was now the only male in the house, living with his mother, his grandmother, two paternal aunts, and his sister Elisabeth. He was very pious as a young child. A brilliant student, he became chair of classical philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of only 24. He had already met composer Richard Wagner in November of 1868. He wrote to a friend a month later, "that we will come to a total understanding of a genius who appeared to me as an unsolvable problem and at the understanding of whom I, for years, made several attempts: this genius is Richard Wagner."
At Basel, Nietzsche found little satisfaction in life among his philology colleagues and he established closer intellectual ties to the historian Jakob Burckhardt, whose lectures he attended, and the theologian Franz Overbeck . His inaugural lecture at Basel was Über die Persönlichkeit Homers . He made frequent visits to the Wagners at Tribschen . When the Franco-Prussian war erupted in 1870, Nietzsche left Basel and, being disqualified for other services due to his citizenship status, volunteered as a medical orderly on active duty. His time in the military was short, but he experienced much, witnessing the traumatic effects of battle and taking close care of wounded soldiers. He soon contracted diphtheria and dysentery and subsequently experienced a painful variety of health difficulties for the remainder of his life. Upon return to Basel, instead of waiting to heal, he pushed headlong into a more fervent schedule of study than ever before. In 1870 he gave Cosima Wagner the manuscript of The Genesis of the Tragic Idea as a birthday gift. In 1872, he published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. A biting critical reaction by the young and promising philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, as well as its innovative views of the ancient Greeks, dampened the book's reception among scholars.
In April of 1873, Wagner incited Nietzsche to take on David Friedrich Strauß , whose book Der alte und der neue Glaube Wagner found shallow and who sided with the composer and conductor Franz Lachner who had been dismissed on account of Wagner. In 1879, Nietzsche retired from his position at Basel due to his continued poor health. From 1880 until his collapse in January 1889, Nietzsche led a wandering existence as a stateless person, writing most of his major works during this period. His fame and influence came later, despite (or because of) the interference of his sister Elisabeth, who published selections from his notebooks as The Will to Power in 1901.
Nietzsche endured periods of illness during his adult life. In 1889, after the completion of Ecce Homo , his health rapidly declined until he collapsed. At that moment, he is said to have tearfully embraced a horse in Turin because it had been beaten by its owner. He was taken back to his room and spent several days in a state of ecstasy writing letters to various friends, signing them Dionysus. He gradually became less coherent and almost entirely uncommunicative. His friend Peter Gast observed that he retained the ability to improvise beautifully on the piano for some months after his breakdown, but this too eventually left him.
The initial symptoms of Nietzsche's breakdown, as evidenced in the letters he sent to his friends in the few days of lucidity remaining to him, bear many similarities to the ecstatic writings of religious mystics. These letters remain the best evidence we have of Nietzsche's own opinion on the nature of his breakdown. Nietzsche's letters describe his experience as a religious breakthrough and he rejoices, rather than laments. Most Nietzsche commentators find the issue of Nietzsche's breakdown and "insanity" irrelevant to his work as a philosopher, though some, including Georges Bataille, have disagreed.
Nietzsche spent the last ten years of his life insane and in the care of his sister Elisabeth. He was completely unaware of the growing success of his works. The cause of Nietzsche's condition has to be regarded as undetermined. Doctors later in his life said they were not so sure about the initial diagnosis of syphilis because he lacked the typical symptoms. While the story of syphilis indeed became generally accepted in the twentieth century, recent research in the Journal of Medical Biography shows that syphilis is not consistent with Nietzsche's symptoms and that the contention that he had the disease originated in anti-Nietzschean tracts. One of the best arguments against the syphilis theory is summarized by Claudia Crawford in the book To Nietzsche: Dionysus, I Love You! Ariadne. Another speculation is that he had a brain condition similar to his father's. His handwriting in all the letters that he had written around the period of the final breakdown showed no sign of deterioration, a typical symptom of syphilis.
His works and ideas
Nietzsche is famous for
• his rejection of what he calls "slave morality" (which he felt reflected the inverse of the "will to power" and a perversion of useful altruism);
• his attacks on Christianity (the most well known, if poorly understood, of which occurs in the phrase "God is dead", from a passage in The Gay Science titled "The Madman");
• his origination of the Übermensch concept (translated as "overman", sometimes as "superman", which finally means "over-man" or "through-man" or, in German, "Hindurch-Mensch");
• his embrace of a sort of a-rationalism; and another idea he called "the Will to Power" (Wille zur Macht). Nietzsche was strongly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of "the Will to live". It has been argued that Nietzsche was influenced by the radically nominalist work of young hegelian Max Stirner;
• his belief in and writings on the Eternal Return, and its relation to the Übermensch;
• his important early concept of "free spirit", which might be the starting point for the Übermensch concept.
The "Will to Power"
One of Nietzsche's central concepts is "the Will to Power" (Wille zur Macht), a process of expansion and venting of creative energy that he believed was the basic driving force of nature. He believed it to be the fundamental causal power in the world: the driving force of all natural phenomena and the dynamic to which all other causal powers can be reduced. That is, Nietzsche in part hoped Will to Power could be a "theory of everything," providing the ultimate foundations for explanations of everything from whole societies, to individual organisms, down to mere lumps of matter. In contrast to the "theories of everything" attempted in physics, Nietzsche's was teleological in nature.
Nietzsche perhaps developed the Will to Power concept furthest with regards to living organisms, and it is there where the concept is perhaps easiest to understand. There, the Will to Power is taken as an animal's most fundamental instinct or drive, even more fundamental than the will to self-preservation. The Will to Power is something like the desire to exert one's will in self-overcoming, although this "willing" may be unconscious. The philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto says that "aggression" is at least sometimes an approximate synonym. However, Nietzsche's ideas of aggression are almost always meant as aggression toward oneself, as the energy a person motivates toward self-mastery. In any case, since the Will to Power is fundamental, any other drives are to be reduced to it; the "will to survive" (i.e. the survival instinct) that biologists (at least in Nietzsche's day) thought to be fundamental, for example, was in this light a manifestation of the Will to Power.
Not just instincts but also higher level behaviors (even in humans) were to be reduced to the Will to Power. This includes both such apparently harmful acts as physical violence, lying, and domination, on one hand, and such apparently non-harmful acts as gift-giving, love, and praise on the other. In Beyond Good and Evil, he claims that philosophers' "will to truth" (i.e., their apparent desire to dispassionately seek objective truth) is actually nothing more than a manifestation of their Will to Power; if it is not, the will to truth is nothing more than nihilism.
As indicated above, the Will to Power is meant to explain more than just the behavior of an individual person or animal. The Will to Power can also be the explanation for why water flows as it does, why plants grow, and why social classes behave as they do.
Similar ideas in others' thought
With respect to the Will to Power, Nietzsche was influenced early on by Arthur Schopenhauer and his concept of the "Will to Live", but he explicitly denied the identity of the two ideas and eventually renounced Schopenhauer's influence in The Birth of Tragedy, where he stated his view that Schopenhauer's ideas were pessimistic and will-negating. Other ideas that parallel Nietzsche's are those of pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy, Taoism, which holds that to follow one's own natural will will bring about a happier existence, and Hegel's theory of history.
Some have also seen a parallel of Nietzcheanism in the writing of Max Stirner, the philosophical egoist who was part of the Young Hegelian school.
Criticism of the idea
Although the idea may seem harsh to some, Nietzsche saw the Will to Power -- or, as he famously put it, the ability to "say yes! to life" -- as life-affirming. Creatures affirm the instinct in exerting their energy, in venting their strength. The suffering borne of conflict between competing wills and the efforts to overcome one's environment are not evil, but a part of existence to be embraced. It signifies the healthy expression of the natural order, whereas failing to act in one's self-interest is seen as a type of illness. Enduring satisfaction and pleasure result from living creatively, overcoming oneself, and successfully exerting the Will to Power.
Ethics
Nietzsche's work addresses ethics from several perspectives; in today's terms, we might say his remarks pertain to meta-ethics, normative ethics, and descriptive ethics.
As far as meta-ethics is concerned, Nietzsche can perhaps most usefully be classified as a moral skeptic; that is, he claims that all ethical statements are false, because any kind of correspondence between ethical statements and "moral facts" is illusory. (This is part of a more general claim that all facts are false, roughly because none of them more than "appear" to correspond to reality). Instead, ethical statements (like all statements) are mere "interpretations".
Sometimes, Nietzsche may seem to have very definite opinions on what is moral or immoral. Note, however, that Nietzsche's moral opinions may be explained without attributing to him the claim that they are true. For Nietzsche, after all, we needn't disregard a statement merely because it is false. On the contrary, he often claims that falsehood is essential for "life".
In the juncture between normative ethics and descriptive ethics, Nietzsche distinguishes between "master morality" and "slave morality". Although he recognizes that not everyone holds either scheme in a pure fashion, he presents them in contrast to one another. Some of the contrasts in master vs. slave morality:
• "good" and "bad" interpretations vs. "good" and "evil" interpretations
• "aristocratic" vs. "part of the 'herd'"
• determines values independently of predetermined foundations (nature) vs. determines values on predetermined, unquestioned foundations (Christianity).
These ideas were elaborated in his book On the Genealogy of Morals in which he also introduced the key concept of ressentiment as the basis for the slave morality.
"The revolt of the slave in morals begins in the very principle of ressentiment becoming creative and giving birth to values — a ressentiment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of action are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says 'no' from the very outset to what is 'outside itself,' 'different from itself,' and 'not itself'; and this 'no' is its creative deed." (On the Genealogy of Morals)
Nietzsche's assessment of both the antiquity and resultant impediments presented by the ethical and moralistic teachings of the world's monotheistic religions eventually led him to his own epiphany about the nature of God and morality, resulting in his work Also sprach Zarathustra.
Nietzsche is also well-known for the statement "God is dead". While in popular belief it is Nietzsche himself who blatantly made this declaration, it was actually placed into the mouth of a character, a "madman," in The Gay Science. It was also later proclaimed by Nietzsche's Zarathustra. This largely misunderstood statement does not proclaim a physical death, but a natural end to the belief in God being the foundation of the western mind. It is also widely misunderstood as a kind of gloating declaration, when it is actually described as a tragic lament by the character Zarathustra.
"God is Dead" is more of an observation than a declaration, and it is noteworthy that Nietzsche never felt the need to advance any arguments for atheism, but merely observed that, for all practical purposes, his contemporaries lived "as if" God were dead. Nietzsche believed this "death" would eventually undermine the foundations of morality and lead to moral relativism and nihilism. To avoid this, he believed in re-evaluating the foundations of morality and placing them not on a pre-determined, but a natural foundation.
Religion
According to Dr. Norman Ravitch, professor of history at U.C. Riverside, "What Spengler, Toynbee, and Nietzsche can teach us is how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, despite superficial differences, were all forged and/or altered by a religious revolution in ancient Iran associated with the name Zoroaster or Zarathustra. The central notions of dualism between Good and Evil, Salvation through an Expected Messiah, and the Final Battle between St Michael and Satan animate these world religions and their devotees. Pragmatism, reason, and common sense have little place in these primitive Semitic world views. All conflict is interpreted as part of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil and there is no room for compromise or tolerance."
In his important work The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche attacked German scholarly Christianity for what he called its "transvaluation" of healthy instinctive values. He went beyond agnostic and atheistic thinkers of the Enlightenment, who felt that Christianity was simply untrue to claiming it may have been deliberately propagated as an inherently bad and subversive religion (or in late 20th century parlance: a "psychological warfare weapon" or "memetic virus") within the Roman Empire by the Apostle Paul as a form of covert revenge for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple during the Jewish War. However, in The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche has a remarkably high view of Jesus, claiming the scholars of the day fail to pay any attention to the man, Jesus, and only look to their construction, Christ. Nietzsche said that "there was only one true Christian, and he died on the cross." According to the American writer H.L. Mencken, Nietzsche felt that the religion of the ancient Greeks of the heroic and classical era was superior to Christianity because it portrayed strong, heroic, and smart men as role models and did not try to demonize healthy natural desires, such as creativity and writing poetry. According to at least one authority, the Slovenian scholar Anton Strle, Nietzsche lost his faith in the time he was reading the book Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus), written by the German theologian David Strauss.
Politics
Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche heavily edited Nietzsche's work in order to promote him as a proto-Nazi thinker (she was herself an ardent German nationalist and pro-Nazi); this bastardization was largely to blame for Nietzsche being associated in the 1930s with the Nazis, who primarily took Elisabeth's deliberately misconstrued versions of his works as one of their main sources.
It is worth noting that Nietzsche's thought largely stands opposed to Nazism. In particular, Nietzsche despised anti-Semitism (which partially led to his falling out with composer Richard Wagner) and nationalism. He took a dim view of German culture as it was in his time, and derided both the state and populism. He was also far from being a racist, believing that the "vigor" of any population could only be increased by mixing with others. In Twilight of the Idols , Nietzsche says, "...the concept of 'pure blood' is the opposite of a harmless concept."
As for the idea of the "blond beast," Walter Kaufmann has this to say: "The 'blond beast' is not a racial concept and does not refer to the 'Nordic race' of which the Nazis later made so much. Nietzsche specifically refers to Arabs and Japanese, Romans and Greeks, no less than ancient Teutonic tribes when he first introduces the term...and the 'blondness' obviously refers to the beast, the lion, rather than the kind of man."
While some of his writings on "the Jewish question" were critical of the Jewish population in Europe, he also praised the strength of the Jewish people, and this criticism was equally, if not more strongly, applied to the English, the Germans, and the rest of Europe. He also valorised strong leadership, and it was this last tendency that the Nazis took up.
While his use by the Nazis was inaccurate, it should not be supposed that he was strongly liberal either. One of the things that he seems to have detested the most about Christianity was its emphasis on pity and how this leads to the elevation of the weak-minded. Nietzsche believed that it was wrong to deprive people of their pain, because it was this very pain that stirred them to improve themselves, to grow and become stronger. It should be noted that he did not disbelieve in helping people; he simply believed much Christian pity robbed people of necessary painful life experiences, and robbing a person of his necessary pain, for Nietzsche, was wrong. He believed that "that which does not kill us, makes us stronger".
Nietzsche referred to the common people as "the rabble" and liberalism as "reduction to the herd animal". While he had a dislike of the state in general, he spoke negatively of anarchists and made it clear that only certain individuals should break away from it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
It is, however, hard to classify Nietzsche's politics, as he avoided the topic and did not see it as his main concern. He seems to have very little interest in the economy. There are also some liberal strands to his beliefs, such as his distrust of strong punishment for criminals and even a criticism of the death penalty can be found in his early work. Since World War II, Nietzsche's influence has generally been clustered on the political left, particularly in France by way of Post-Modern thought. However, in the United States, Nietzsche appears to have exercised some influence upon certain conservative academics (see, for example, Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom).
Themes and trends in Nietzsche's work
Nietzsche is important as a precursor of 20th century-existentialism, an inspiration for post-structuralism and an influence on postmodernism. However, dry academic summaries of his thought cannot capture the liveliness of his writing. In many respects his writings today appear "romantic" relative to modern sociobiological and medical anthropological theory in the same sense that the Wright Brothers' flying machines appear quaint relative to modern high performance jets.
Nietzsche's works helped to reinforce not only agnostic trends that followed Enlightenment thinkers, and the biological worldview gaining currency from the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (which also later found expression in the "medical" and "instinctive" interpretations of human behavior by Sigmund Freud), but also the "romantic nationalist" political movements in the late 19th century when various peoples of Europe began to celebrate archeological finds and literature related to pagan ancestors, such as the uncovered Viking burial mounds in Scandinavia, Wagnerian interpretations of Norse mythology stemming from the Eddas of Iceland, Italian nationalist celebrations of the glories of a unified, pre-Christian Roman peninsula, French examination of Celtic Gaul of the pre-Roman era, and Irish nationalist interest in revitalizing Gaelic.
Some people have suggested that Fyodor Dostoevsky may have specifically created the plot of his Crime and Punishment as a Christian rebuttal to Nietzsche, though this cannot be correct as Dostoevsky finished Crime and Punishment well before Nietzsche published any of his works. Rather, Nietzsche seems to have admired Dostoevsky and read several of his works in French translation. In an 1887 letter Nietzsche says that he read Notes from Underground (translated 1886) first, and two years later makes reference to a stage production of Crime and Punishment, which he calls Dostoevsky's "main novel".
Nietzsche's style
Nietzsche is unique among philosophers in his prose style, particularly in the Zarathustra. Perhaps not surprisingly for a pastor's son, he frequently employs an idiom modelled on Luther's bible. Equally important are punning and paradox in his rhetoric. All this means is that nuances and shades of meaning are all too easily lost in translation into English. A case in point is the thorny issue of the translation of Übermensch and its association with the heroic character Superman as well as the Nazi party and philosophy.
Quotes
• "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
• "Through life's school of war: that which does not kill you only serves to make you stronger."
• "A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play."
• "But to say it once more: there are higher problems than all problems of pleasure, pain, and pity; and every philosophy that stops with them is a naïveté."
• "The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth--- the compulsion to large-scale politics."
• "The perfect woman is a higher type of human than the perfect man, and also something much more rare."
• "Women's intellect is manifested as perfect control, presence of mind, and utilization of all advantages."
• "I enquire now as to the genesis of a philologist and assert the following: 1. A young man cannot possibly know what Greeks and Romans are. 2. He does not know whether he is suited for finding out about them."
• "Public apathy ... private laziness."
• "Thou goest to women? Do not forget thy whip!" - Thus Spake Zarathustra
• "I love the magnificent exuberance of a young beast of prey that plays gracefully and, as it plays, dismembers."
• "There are no facts, only interpretations."
• "In the end, one experiences only oneself."
See also
• God is dead
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Max Stirner
• Søren Kierkegaard
• Richard Wagner
• Walter Kaufmann
• Herman Hesse
• Martin Heidegger
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Philipp Mainländer
• Zoroaster (Zarathushtra)
• Aleister Crowley
• Thelema
List of works
• Aus meinem Leben, 1858
• Über Musik, 1858
• Napoleon III als Praesident, 1862
• Fatum und Geschichte, 1862
• Willensfreiheit und Fatum, 1862
• Kann der Neidische je wahrhaft glücklich sein ?, 1863
• Über Stimmungen, 1864
• Mein Leben, 1864
• Homer und die klassische Philologie, 1868
• Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten
• Fünf Vorreden zu fünf ungeschriebenen Büchern, 1872 :
o I Über das Pathos der Wahrheit [1]
o II Gedanken über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten
o III Der griechische Staat [2]
o IV Das Verhältnis der Schopenhauerischen Philosophie zu einer deutschen Cultur [3]
o V Homer's Wettkampf
• Die Geburt der Tragödie, 1872 (The Birth of Tragedy)
• Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinn
• Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen
• Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, 1876 (Untimely Meditations)
• Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878 (Human, All Too Human)
• Morgenröte, 1881 (Daybreak, or The Dawn)
• Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882 (The Gay Science)
• Also sprach Zarathustra, 1885 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
• Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 1886 (Beyond Good and Evil)
• Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887 (On the Genealogy of Morals)
• Der Fall Wagner, 1888 (The Case of Wagner)
• Götzen-Dämmerung, 1888 (The Twilight of the Idols)
• Der Antichrist, 1888 (The Antichrist)
• Ecce Homo , 1888 (Behold the Man, an attempt at autobiography; the title refers to Pontius Pilate's statement upon meeting Jesus of Nazareth)
• Nietzsche contra Wagner, 1888 (Nietzsche vs. Wagner)
• Der Wille zur Macht , 1901 (The Will to Power, a highly selective collection of notes from various notebooks, not intended for publication by Nietzsche himself, but released by his sister)
References
• Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974
• Wicks, Robert. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/ .
• Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985. ISBN 0674624351
Biography
• Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche: A Critical Life., Oxford University Press, New York, 1980, ISBN 019520204X
• Janz, Curt Paul. Friedrich Nietzsche. Biographie., Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, München, 1993, ISBN 3423043830
External links
Friedrich Nietzsche
Full texts of Nietzsche's works:
• Beyond Good and Evil from Project Gutenberg.
• Beyond Good and Evil from Johnstonia.
• Beyond good and evil from Marxists.org.
• Thus Spake Zarathustra from Project Gutenberg
• Thus Spake Zarathustra from Bibliomania
• Thoughts Out of Season Part 1 from Project Gutenberg
• The Antichrist
• The Antichrist from The Nietzsche Channel
Other links:
• The Nietzsche Channel
• POX: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis
• HyperNietzsche.org
• Biography, works and quotes of Friedrich Nietzsche
• Nietzsche Biography and Philosophy
• Max Stirner, a durable dissident, How Marx and Nietzsche suppressed their colleague Max Stirner and why he has intellectually survived them
• Friedrich Nietzche - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Categories: 1844 births, 1900 deaths, 19th Century philosophers, German philosophers.

Nguồn : http://www.fact-archive.com

Chúa Nhật XXXI Thường Niên C : NHỜ CHÚA ĐẾN

Xưa lẫn nay, nhiều nơi trên thế giới, hạng người bán thân nuôi miệng thường được gắn liền với hạng người dắt mối, bảo kê được gọi là ma cô. Trong khi nhóm trước kiếm tiền bằng thân xác mình thì nhóm sau lại kiếm tiền trên thân xác kẻ khác. Đọc Tin mừng chúng ta thấy nhóm người thu thuế thường được gắn liền với phường bán thân nuôi miệng. Dưới cái nhìn này thì người thu thuế chẳng khác gì phường ma cô mà còn tệ hại hơn nhiều vì họ kiếm tiền trên xương máu của nhiều người, đó là không chỉ thu thuế để phục vụ cho đế quốc cai trị mà còn thường thu quá mức ấn định để làm giàu cho mình .
Thánh sử Luca là một lương y thì có lẽ nhiều người biết. Nhưng trong số các con bệnh của ngài ngày xưa phải chằng có nhiều người thu thuế, thì ít ai dám khẳng định. Thế mà dường như thánh sử có vẻ đề cao tình thương của Thiên Chúa trên nhóm người này. Vừa mới tường thuật câu chuyện dụ ngôn hai người lên đền thờ cầu nguyện để cảnh tỉnh thói tự cao tự đại của người biệt phái và ngược lại khen ngợi sự khiêm nhu chân thành của người thu thuế xong thì lát sau đó ngài tường thuật hành vi hoán cải rất “anh hùng” của ông Giakêu, một thủ lãnh các người thu thuế.
Thử hỏi vì sao hay nhờ đâu mà ông Giakêu có sự đổi thay xem ra ngoạn mục như vậy? Chắc hẳn việc đổi thay của Giakêu không phải là hành vi bột phát cách ngẫu hứng. Tin Mừng tường thuật rằng: “Ông Giakêu đã tìm cách để xem cho biết Đức Giêsu là ai”. Đây là một khao khát có thể nói là cháy bỏng mang tính bức thiết đối với ông đến nỗi ông đã không e ngại về cái thân thế, vai vế như là ngược với tầm vóc của mình để rồi leo lên một cây sung. Chọn được một cây sung nằm trên con đường Chúa Giêsu sẽ đi qua thì quả là đã có sự tính toán. Như thế chúng ta có thể luận suy rằng những lời giảng dạy và việc làm của Chúa Giêsu đã đánh thức lương tri của ông Giakêu khiến ông phải không ngừng suy xét về thái độ sống cũng như những việc làm của ông. Tâm hồn ông Giakêu được ví như mảnh đất đã được cày xới đang chờ hạt giống gieo xuống.
“Khi Đức Giêsu tới chỗ ấy, thì Người nhìn lên và nói với ông: “Này ông Giakêu, xuống mau đi, vì hôm nay tôi phải ở lại nhà ông” (Lc 19,5). Với một thân hình thấp bé và thế nào cũng mập mạp vì là người giàu có, lại ở trên cây cao thì thế nào ông Giakêu cũng tìm cách ẩn mình dưới những tàng lá cây sung. Thế mà Chúa Giêsu vẫn thấy ông và Người lại gọi đích danh của ông. Nếu Giakêu là một thiếu nhi thì chắc sẽ giật mình té xuống đất không chừng vì cảnh tình như bị bắt quả tang tại trận cách bất ngờ.
Lạy Chúa, Ngài dò xét con và Ngài biết rõ, biết cả khi con đứng con ngồi. Con nghĩ tưởng gì, Ngài thấu suốt từ xa, đi lại hay nghỉ ngơi, Chúa đều xem xét, mọi nẻo đường con đi, Ngài quen thuộc cả…(Tv 139). Có thể ông Giakêu không thuộc, nhưng ông đang cảm nghiệm cách sâu xa lời Thánh Vịnh trên đây. Dù có trốn biệt ở đáy âm ty hay bay lên chốn cao xanh cũng không thể “khuất được thánh nhan”. Thánh giáo phụ Âugustinô cũng có cảm nghiệm này: “Chúa biết con hơn cả con biết con”.
Chúa biết mỗi người chúng ta. Chúa biết chúng ta chỉ là tro bụi. Thế mà Chúa biết không phải để loại bỏ nhưng để gắn bó. “Hôm nay, tôi phải lưu lại nhà ông”. Một lời ngỏ với đôi bàn tay tin tưởng chìa ra và cả với một tấm lòng khoan dung nhân hậu. Tình yêu của Thiên Chúa vượt quá tầm luận lý của con người. Cụ thể, nhiều người lúc bấy giờ đã xầm xì bàn tán lẫn thắc mắc: “Nhà người tội lỗi mà ông ấy cũng vào trọ!”
Có phải chúng ta xứng đáng, rồi Chúa mới ngự vào hay nhờ Chúa ngự vào thì chúng ta mới nên xứng đáng? Câu hỏi quả không khó để trả lời. Cả tầng trời cao xanh này hay bất cứ chốn cung điện nguy nga sơn son thếp vàng nào cũng chẳng thể xứng đáng làm nơi Thiên Chúa ngự. “Lạy Chúa con chẳng đáng Chúa ngự vào nhà con…” Mẹ giáo hội đã lấy lại lời của viên đại đội trưởng Rôma ngày nào để cho đoàn tín hữu thân thưa trước khi hiệp Lễ hầu nhắc nhớ mọi người sự thật này: Không một ai trên trần gian này xứng đáng để Thiên Chúa ngự vào. Nhưng trái lại, ở đâu có Thiên Chúa ngự đến thì ở đó sẽ trở nên xứng đáng. Giakêu đã nên xứng đáng là nhờ Chúa Kitô đoái thương ngự đến.
Sự thật này đã được minh chứng bằng quyết định vừa anh hùng vừa quảng đại của Giakêu: “Thưa Ngài, đây nửa phần tài sản của tôi, tôi cho người nghèo; và nếu tôi đã chiếm đoạt của ai cái gì, tôi xin đền gấp bốn”(Lc 19,8). Quả thật không phải vì cảnh vật lung linh rực rỡ mà mặt trời mọc lên, nhưng nhờ mặt trời mọc lên nên cảnh vật mới trở nên rực rỡ lung linh. Một sự đổi thay thật ngoạn mục. Trong tình yêu và quyền năng của Thiên Chúa thì không có sự gì là không thể. “Hôm nay, ơn cứu độ đã đến cho nhà này, bởi người này cũng là con cháu tổ phụ Abraham”. Abraham là tổ phụ, là cha của các kẻ tin. Lòng tin của Giakêu đã cứu chữa ông. Lòng tin của ông vào tình yêu của Giêsu đã khiến ông được chữa lành và nên mạnh mẽ trong đức công bình lẫn trong tình bác ái.
Những sự tốt đẹp diệu kỳ xảy ra là nhờ Chúa đến. Chúa đã đến với con người, với từng người, nhưng Người vẫn đứng ngoài cửa và gõ. Ai nghe tiếng Người và mở cửa thì Người sẽ vào nhà người ấy và dùng bữa với họ (x.Kh 3,20). Vấn đề đặt ra là chúng ta có mở cánh cửa tâm hồn với khát mong thay đổi như Giakêu chăng? Dĩ nhiên khát mong thay đổi ấy cần được đót nóng bằng niềm tin vào tình yêu và quyền năng của Đấng “đến để tìm và cứu những gì đã mất” (Lc 19,10).
Xin cùng nhau trả lời những câu hỏi sau:
1. Bạn, tôi, chúng ta có tin Chúa yêu thương chúng ta hết lòng không?
2. Bạn, tôi, chúng ta có tin Chúa có thể làm mọi sự tốt lành cho chúng ta không?
3. Bạn, tôi, chúng ta có thực lòng muốn thay đổi, muốn nên tốt hơn, nên thánh thiện hơn không?

Lm Giuse Nguyễn Văn Nghĩa – Thuận Hiếu – Ban Mê Thuột

Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas (born June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. His work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalist industrial society and of democracy and the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary (especially German) politics.
Habermas has integrated into a comprehensive framework of social theory and philosophy the German philosophical thought of Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Dilthey, Husserl, and Gadamer, the Marxian tradition - both the theory of Marx himself as well as the critical neo-Marxian theory of the Frankfurt School, i.e. Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse -, the sociological theories of Weber, Durkheim, and Mead, the linguistic philosophy and speech act theories of Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle, the American pragmatist tradition of Peirce and Dewey, and the sociological systems theory of Parsons.
Habermas considers his own major achievement the development of the concept and theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality, which distinguishes itself from the rationalist tradition by locating rationality in structures of interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in the structure of either the cosmos or the knowing subject. He carries forward the tradition of Kant and the Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realization of the human potential for reason.
Habermas burst onto the German intellectual scene in the 1950s with an influential critique of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. He studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno at the Institute for Social Research at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, but because of a rift over him between the two, he took his Habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg under Wolfgang Abendroth . Very unusual in the German academic scene at that time, he was called to an extraordinary professorship of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (at the instigation of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwitsch ), which he held until moving back to Frankfurt to a full Chair.
He accepted the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg (near Munich) in 1971, and worked there until 1983, two years after the publication of his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas then returned to his chair at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institute for Social Research. Since retiring from Frankfurt in 1993, Habermas has continued to publish extensively.
Jürgen Habermas's main aim has been to construct a social theory that advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework. The framework rests on the argument that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose" or "goal") -- the goal of mutual understanding, and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding. Habermas built the framework out of the speech-act philosophy of Austin and Searle, the theories of moral development of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, and the discourse ethics of his Heidelberg colleague Karl-Otto Apel .
Within sociology, Habermas's major contribution is the development of a comprehensive theory of societal evolution and modernization focusing on the difference between communicative rationality and rationalization on the one hand and strategic/instrumental rationality and rationalization on the other. This includes a critique from a communicative standpoint of the differentiation-based theory of social systems developed by Niklas Luhmann, a student of Parsons.
His defence of modern society and civil society has been a source of inspiration to others, and is considered a major philosophical alternative to the varieties of poststructuralism. He has also offered an influential analysis of late capitalism.
Habermas sees the rationalization, humanization, and democratization of society in terms of the institutionalization of the potential for rationality that is inherent in the communicative competence that is unique to the human species. Habermas believes communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution, but in contemporary society it is suppressed or weakened by the way in which major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organizations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality, so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld .
Habermas is famous as a teacher and mentor. Among his most prominent students have been the political sociologist Claus Offe (professor at Humboldt University of Berlin), the sociological theorist Hans Joas(professor at the Free University of Berlin and at the University of Chicago), the theorist of societal evolution Klaus Eder , the social philosopher Axel Honneth (the current director of the Institute for Social Research), and the American philosopher Thomas McCarthy .
Habermas is famous as a public intellectual as well as a scholar; most notably, in the 1980s he used the popular press to attack historians (i.e., Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber) who had tried to demarcate Nazi rule and the Holocaust from the mainstream of German history, explain Nazism as a reaction to Bolshevism, and partially rehabilitate the German armed forces. (The so-called "Historikerstreit," or "Historians' Quarrel" was not at all one-sided, because Habermas was himself attacked by eminent scholars like Joachim Fest.) More recently, Habermas has been outspoken in his opposition to the Coalition invasion of Iraq. He is perhaps most famous outside of Germany for his conceptualization of the public sphere.
Habermas visited the China in April 2001 and received a big welcome. He gave numerous speeches under titles such as "Nation-states under the Pressure of Globalisation." Habermas was also the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in the Arts and Philosophy section. He traveled to San Diego and on March 5, 2005, as part of the University of San Diego's Kyoto Symposium, gave a speech entitled The Public Role of Religion in Secular Context, regarding the evolution of separation of Church and State from neutrality to intense secularism.
Major works
• The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
• On the Logic of the Social Sciences
• Knowledge and Human Interests
• Theory and Practice
• Towards a Rational Society
• Legitimation Crisis
• Communication and the Evolution of Society
• The Theory of Communicative Action Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns
• Philosophical-Political Profiles
• The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
• The New Conservatism
• Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action
• Postmetaphysical Thinking
• Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
• On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction
• The Inclusion of the Other
• The Postnational Constellation
The best interpretation in English of Habermas's work, especially his earlier work is still Thomas McCarthy 's The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (MIT Press, 1978), which was written just as Habermas was developing his full-fledged communication theory. An especially clear account of Habermas's key views in philosophy, is provided by Raymond Geuss ' The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1981). For a very short, good, more recent introduction focusing on Habermas's communication theory of society, see Jane Braaten's Habermas's Critical Theory of Society (State University of New York Press, 1991.)
See also
• Zoran Djindjic
External links
• "Jürgen Habermas" in the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
• A contribution to the critique of Jürgen Habermas
• Jurgen Habermas, On Society and Politics
Categories: 1929 births, 20th Century philosophers, Contemporary philosophers, Continental philosophers, German philosophers, Marxist theory, Social philosophy.

Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot (September 27, 1907-February 20, 2003) was a French philosopher, literary theorist and writer of fiction. His influence on later post-structuralist theorists such as Jacques Derrida is difficult to overestimate. It would be wrong to speak of Blanchot's work in terms of a coherent, all-encompassing 'theory', since it is a work founded on paradox and impossibility. If there is a thread running through all his writing, it is the constant engagement with the 'question of literature', a simultaneous enactment and interrogation of the profoundly strange experience of writing. For Blanchot, 'literature begins at the moment when literature becomes a question' (Literature and the Right to Death).
Blanchot draws on the work of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé in formulating his conception of literary language as anti-realist and distinct from everyday experience. Literary language, as double negation, demands that we experience the absence masked by the word as absence; it exposes us to the exteriority of language, an experience akin to the impossibility of death. Blanchot engages with Heidegger on the question of the philosopher's death, showing how literature and death are both experienced as anonymous passivity.
Blanchot's work was also strongly influenced by his friends Georges Bataille and Emmanuel Levinas. Blanchot's later work in particular is influenced by Levinasian ethics and the question of responsibility to the Other.
His best-known fictional work is Thomas the Obscure, an unsettlingly abstract novel about the experience of reading.
Blanchot died on February 20, 2003 in Yvelines.

Principal works
• Thomas l'Obscur, 1941 (Thomas the Obscure: fiction)
• L'Arrêt de mort, 1948 (Death Sentence: fiction)
• La Part du feu, 1949 (The Work of Fire)
• L'Espace littéraire, 1955 (The Space of Literature)
• L'Entretien infini, 1969 (The Infinite Conversation)
• Le Pas au-delà, 1973 (The Step Not Beyond)

External links
• http://www.mauriceblanchot.net/
Categories: 1907 births, 2003 deaths, 20th Century philosophers, Continental philosophers, French philosophers, Poststructuralism