The Gay Science (1882) - Nietzsche
Related: gay - god is dead - Friedrich Nietzsche - science - 1882
The Gay Science (1882) - Nietzsche [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?" — Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann
The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882), the largest and most comprehensive of Nietzsche's middle-period books, continues the aphoristic style and contains more poetry than any other of his works. It has central themes of a joyful affirmation of life and of an immersion in a light-hearted scholarship that takes aesthetic pleasure out of life (the title refers to the Provençal phrase for the craft of poetry). As an example Nietzsche offers the doctrine of eternal recurrence, which ranks one's life as the sole consideration when evaluating how one should act; this Nietzsche compares to the Christian view of an afterlife which emphasises a later reward at the cost of one's immediate happiness. The Gay Science has however perhaps become best known for the statement "God is dead" which forms part of Nietzsche's naturalistic and aesthetic alternative to traditional religion. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#The_Gay_Science [Sept 2006]
Description
The Gay Science [German: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft ("la gaya scienza")], is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1882 and followed by a second edition, which was published after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, in 1887. This substantial expansion includes a fifth book and an appendix of songs. It was noted by Nietzsche to be "the most personal of all my books". It contains the most poetry ever published by him. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Science [Sept 2006]
The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (1882) - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (1882) - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Nietzsche called The Gay Science "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God -- to which a large part of the book is devoted -- and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.
Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.
Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years later, after Beyond Good and Evil. We encounter Zarathustra in these pages as well as many of Nietzsche's most interesting philosophical ideas and the largest collection of his own poetry that he himself ever published.
Walter Kaufmann's English versions of Nietzsche represent one of the major translation enterprises of our time. He is the first philosopher to have translated Nietzsche's major works, and never before has a single translator given us so much of Nietzsche. Book Description via amazon.com