The gay science by nietzsche
The Joyful Science / Idylls from Messina / Unpublished Fragments from the Period of The Joyful Science (Spring –Summer )
Written on the threshold of Thus Spoke Zarathustra during a high indicate of social, intellectual and psychic vibrancy, The Joyful Science (frequently translated as The Gay Science) is one of Nietzsche's thematically tighter books. Here he debuts and practices the art of amor fati, love of fate, to explore what is "species preserving" in relation to happiness (Book One); inspiration and the role of art as they keep us mentally fit for inhabiting a world dominated by science (Book Two); the challenges of living authentically and overcoming after the death of God (Book Three); and the crescendo of life affirmation in which Nietzsche revealed the doctrine of eternal recurrence and previewed the figure of Zarathustra (Book Four). Invigorated and motivated by Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Superb and Evil, Nietzsche in added a new preface, an appendix of poems, and Book Five, where he deepened the critique of science and displayed a more ge
EDITORIAL NOTE
"The Joyful Wisdom," written in , just before "Zarathustra," is rightly judged to be one of Nietzsche's best books. Here the essentially serious and masculine face of the poet-philosopher is seen to light up and suddenly break into a delightful smile. The warmth and kindness that beam from his features will astonish those hasty psychologists who have never divined that behind the destroyer is the creator, and behind the blasphemer the lover of life. In the retrospective valuation of his work which appears in "Ecce Homo" the author himself observes with truth that the fourth book, "Sanctus Januarius," deserves especial attention: "The whole book is a token from the Saint, and the introductory verses declare my gratitude for the most wonderful month of January that I own ever spent." Book fifth "We Fearless Ones," the Appendix "Songs of Prince Free-as-a-Bird," and the Preface, were added to the second edition in
The translation of Nietzsche's poetry has proved[Pg viii] to be a more emba
The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
The more mistrust, the more philosophy.
How to review Nietzsche? His writing is so wealthy, so overabundant, so overflowing, that screening his works is like trying to drink up a waterfall. I cannot even decide whether Nietzsche was a philosopher, or something else. Perhaps he can be finer described as an essayist, a poet, a sage, a neurotic, a raving madman, a prescient visionary? The title hardly matters, I suppose; although without some benchmark of comparison, I am left in the dark for a way to measure Nietzsche and his writings. The only way open I can see is to weigh Nietzsche against himself.
In the context of his full corpus, The Gay Science is easily one of Nietzsche’s strongest works. It dates from his middle period, after his shatter with Wagner and his renunciation of Schopenhauer, when he was still developing his most typical ideas. Indeed, in this book one finds Nietzsche’s first proclamation that “God is dead,” as well as the first mention of the Eternal Recurrence. Many of Nietz
The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
Nietzsche’s The Gay Science should be regarded as central to his oeuvre for a number of reasons. As Bernard Williams points out in his Introduction to this edition, two of Nietzsche’s most famous ideas, the Death of God and the Eternal Recurrence, are first introduced here. The Gay Science also contains work in moral psychology of the extreme sophistication. Nietzsche probes the origins of the attitudes which constitute our morality, achieving a gentler tap than in some of the later works, yet pressing hard on some profound questions: the significance of modern disbelief in God, the nature of morality, and the possibility of affirming life without denying its suffering but without succumbing to the quest for a ‘higher’ meaning.
The book straddles a six-year period when Nietzsche was at his most creative and penetrating. The complete book as we now have it was published in , the same year as On the Genealogy of Morality, which we now analyze probably more intensely than any of Nietzsche’s works. T