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🦋 Phrasing the question
On the train home today, I was rolling over in my mind ideas for the structure of the essay I want to write about the individual's experience of history. It's something like this: I first assume that Eliade's notion is an accurate description of how ancient peoples constructed their cosmos -- this notion can be broadly (and less than fully coherently) summarized as that by forgetting history, a culture can construct a world around itself along mythological lines. Then I introduce the conflict in Nietzsche between remembering and learning history, and forgetting history, living authentically in the present -- this too is a sloppy paraphrase but bear with me* -- and present how this can be seen as a nostalgic longing for the primitive world-view described by Eliade, and finally how this can be seen as a turning away from the primitive world-view described by Eliade. Another section that I am not sure where it should go in the essay or even if it belongs in the same essay, would treat Eliade's idea as romantic nostalgia projected onto prehistoric civilizations, and examine whether Nietzsche was laboring under the same misconceptions.
*It may be that in my writing, frequency of adverbs is a good rule-of-thumb measure for how hurriedly I am writing.
posted evening of Tuesday, June 29th, 2004
➳ More posts about The Myth of Eternal Return
➳ More posts about Philosophy
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Untimely Meditations
➳ More posts about Friedrich Nietzsche
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