Through Him All Things Fall: the Importance of the Spirit of Gravity in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

 Author's statement: this is an essay I wrote for my Philosophy of Literature class which was looking in depth at Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The Phenomenology of Death-Itself & The Fear of Death-Consciousness

    The fear of 'death-itself' arises out of the fear of void-experience; it's the fear of perceiving and being aware of the nothingness after dying. It's not that we fear that there will be nothing; rationality is lost with fear. Peter Watts puts it best when he writes in his book Blindsight, "'People aren't rational. You aren't rational. We're not thinking machines[...] we're feeling machines that happen to think.'" Many-a-philosopher argue that death is the 'same as before you were born (phenomenologically),' so why should one be afraid of death-itself?(^1) This misses the picture of how people understand death-itself, and what they actually fear: death-consciousness.

A Chilling Tattoo: Poem

 A chilling tattoo

morgan austin

Unsayable; "Inexpressible and Nameless"

On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions

    I'd recommend reading this chapter for yourself before continuing, as I could never explain this text as well as the the author himself. Regardless, I took a lot out of chapter 5, book 1 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions. The consequences, those which we might predict the chapter to entail, seem massively understated in the discussion of Nietzschean philosophy; consequences which hinge on our understanding and comprehension of it (or lack there of). Nietzsche begins by claiming that our virtues(meaning here 'passion,') are in common with nobody-- only upon our (desire-to-have-)sureness of our virtue[,] do we name our virtue, which thus situates our virtue in common with other virtues and the people who hold them. This, is the danger which I believe Nietzsche predicted all-too-well.

How Cities Talk: Poems

 How Cities Talk

A collection of poems written by Morgan Austin