Die Götzen-Dämmerung By Friedrich Nietzsche

Die Götzen-Dämmerung(Twilight of the Idols)- By Friedrich Nietzsche

               ...All the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral.

Die Götzen-Dämmerung is a mosaic of vehemently asserted opinions by Nietzsche. The themes of these assertions vary from futility of reason and necessity of instinct to decline of German culture in times of the author. In this work, Nietzsche has enumerated advice and desiderata for psychologists, universities, philosophers, physiologists and other professions or people.

One of the outright observations I had from this work is that Nietzsche presents his opinions as facts, unsupported by evidence or partially supported by anecdotes (which amounts to very little). However, this kind of opining is necessary if he does not want to contradict himself when he says that reason corrupts and instinct is what can make a man happy and strong. Further, even if he contradicts himself logically, it wouldn't matter because he asserts that reason corrupts. Thus, since his maxim is without reason, and he makes no attempt to prove otherwise, the contradictions in his thoughts cannot be freely pointed out without contradicting oneself.

Some of his thoughts are violent, almost as if he were in “frenzy” while writing these- this too, as he has exposited beautifully in this work, is what an artist must do- be in frenzy while creating. In this, Nietzsche is an artist. His words are offensive, lacking reason, pedantic, sometimes even dark- but they are bizarrely artful.

This work will be enjoyed only by those who want to read it for its “frenzy” and maybe for some of Nietzsche’s ideas, though I am not sure of the latter.

The Stranger(L'Étranger)- Albert Camus

The Stranger- Albert Camus

…I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe

The stranger is the story of a man who perceives the world matter-of-factly, without either trying to interpret or being able to interpret the moral, “natural” or the ‘usual’ patterns of the world.

The work is a first person narrative by the protagonist, written with very little acknowledgement of what things mean. Even though protagonist’s mother has just died, he is unable to reinterpret his present actions in the light of his past- that he ever loved his mother, or that he did right or wrong by putting her in a home. He goes to her funeral calmly, does not want to see her face presumably because she is dead and has no meaning in the present context of the protagonist.

The brilliance of this work lies in the form of the work rather than the content itself. The protagonist seems to be passive of the things happening to him throughout the story. Rather than feeling guilty about what he has done, he looks for things that are ‘interesting’ and is bored or frustrated by things that are not- like a man estranged from his own life. The world tries to portray him as a man who has no morals- a man who was not perturbed even by his mother’s death. Even though he finds the accusations incredible, he sees himself as ‘too lazy’ to do anything because for him, it doesn't matter if x happens or y if they both lead to z, since z (death in the story) is always the final result. The character of Meursault comes to life through Camus’s pen, and though Meursault’s status quo bias might seem incredible at first, the reader is forced to empathize with him by the end. The reader is forced to acknowledge the ‘as-is-ness’ of life and the certitude of death…In Meursault’s world- the reader is forced to see that everyone is privileged to die; and everything that happens in this setting of death is meaningless- His god, Someone’s death or Meursault’s actions.

A highly recommended read!