Nietzsche

The churchyard echoes of Roecken: from Jerusalem to Athens; Arthur Schopenhauer and the proble m of evil. The worship of wildlife: the feral Dionysus and the beautiful Apollo; European culture in decline; Greek tragedy as a transcendence-festival; the rebirth of tragedy in Nietzsche's Germany; truth, from the perspective of life. God's death: spiritual crisis and the healthful Greeks long-lost; nihilism and the "death of God"; Nietzsche as physician for modern Europe; the diagnosis - theism is a spiritual debilitation; breaking the news - communicating to a senseless patient; Nietzsche's rejuvenating injections. Dissolving the shadows of God: the truth as a terrifying Medusa; the nature of life - beyond good and evil; the tougher facts of life - the will to power; the religion of life - the eternal recurrence; the ideal of life - being in superhuman health. Nietzsche's seduction of truth; ravaging knowledge; amending reality's split; the truth as a painted rice-cake; embracing life vs. embracing existence: life-affirmation and the world's imperfection; exist ence-affirmation and the world's perfection; the aesthetic justification for life and existence. The contemporary shadows of Nietzsche: Nietzsche and Nazism; Nietzsche and 20th-Century French philosophy.