Preformations

By Scott Simon

Preformations is a collection of philosophic essays concerning debates both ancient and contemporary. Epistemology and Phenomenology are two important topics of focus. Philosophers analyzed include Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Hans Jonas, Merleau-Ponty, and Michel Foucault. These engaging essays should prove enlightening to the critical reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 12, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469710167

Scott Simon

Scott Simon is an Emmy- and Peabody Award–winning writer and broadcaster. He is the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, which The Washington Post has called “the most literate, witty, moving, and just plain interesting news show on any dial.” He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador and Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His nonfiction books include Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime; Home and Away: Memoirs of a Fan; Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball; and Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, about the joys of adoption. He is also the author of several novels, including Sunnyside Plaza and the upcoming Wins, Losses, Saves.

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All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Scott Simon

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Contents

PART I

KNOWING THE KNOWN

PREFACE

THE NIETZSCHEAN UNKNOWN

DEFINING THING BY WAY

OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER

HANS JONAS AND THE

EVOLUTION OF THE ORGANIC

MIND

PART II

INTERSTICE: EPISTEMOLOGIES OF

POWER IN PLATO AND NIETZSCHE

PREFACE

PLATONIC EPISTEMOLOGY

NIETZSCHEAN EPISTEMOLOGY

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX OF APHORISMS:

SELECTIONS FROM BEYOND

GOOD AND EVIL⁴⁵ WITH COMMENTARY

PART III

SUBVERSIVE PARALLELS:

MERLEAU-PONTY, NIETZSCHE,

FOUCAULT

PREFACE

MERLEAU-PONTY’S MILIEU

ON "NIETZSCHE, GENEALOGY,

HISTORY"

FOUCAULT’S HETEROTOPIA

END NOTES

Many thanks to Catherine Utz for her helpful editing.

PART I

KNOWING THE KNOWN 

PREFACE 

One of the benefits of the study of philosophy is the opportunity to rethink previous forms of knowledge. In the essays that follow in Part I we will rethink Truth, Being, and Mind by way of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans Jonas respectively. Hence, our title, knowing the Known, serves to emphasize the vital thread of this work.

We begin with a critical analysis of an early essay by Nietzsche entitled Truth and Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense. Next we will focus on Martin Heidegger’s essay, What is Metaphysics? We leave Part I with a reading of, Life, Death, and the Body in the theory of Being, and, Is God a Mathematician? from Hans Jonas’ Phenomenon of Life.

Perhaps these three essays will encourage an exploration of our ever-shifting horizon.

THE NIETZSCHEAN UNKNOWN 

What is knowing? What do we know when we know? What is the value of this knowing that we know? These fundamental questions provide departure points for epistemological theorists in the Modern era, be they rationalist or empiricist. Nietzsche, succeeding the early moderns, engaged this line of inquiry in the late nineteenth century with some provocative and ambiguous results. The essay, Truth and Falsity in their Ultramoral Sense1, advances Nietzsche’s introductory exploration of epistemologi-cal thinking. We will focus a critical eye on this bold work, and perchance on insight itself, as we make our way through the labyrinths of the Nietzschean mind in our quest for knowledge of knowledge. We will begin with analysis of Nietzsche’s intuitive, perceptive essay.

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’—yet only a minute.

After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die."² This fable sets the stage for Nietzsche’s introduction on consciousness. The tone is one of bewilderment at the exorbitant value presumption man has placed in consciousness. consciousness seems to bring with it a self-satisfied side effect, a bloating of self-importance. Nietzsche muses that a mosquito, if endowed with