The gay science book 1 summary
The Gay Science
The Male lover Science is a book of poems and collection of 383 aphorisms in five sections that interrogates the origins of the history of knowledge. It celebrates philosophy as a medicine capable of renewing the intellect, and perceives of philosophy as inspiration for individual freedom, and thereby capable of renewing culture. First published in 1882, Nietzsche added a “Book Fifth” to The Gay Science five years later.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche declares God is dead. By doing so, Nietzsche hopes to shake European thinking from the cloak of religion he proposes arrests intellectual development and weighs the individual mind down with received knowledge that in part incorrectly describes man as flawed while presenting false virtues that only deepen human suffering.
Nietzsche adopts the provincial, plainspoken voice of a medieval poet in The Gay Science. After opening the guide with a prelude in verse that alludes tothe artful, playful, brief episodes to come, Nietzsche proposes that human knowledge still suffers from the millennium-old herd instinct of preserving the species. This need for survival gave go up to the human invention of gods, as evidenced by
The Gay Science is one of Nietzsche’s most lovely and important books. He describes it as “the most personal of all his books”. When inquired on why he chose this title to his book, he wrote in a letter:
“As for the title ‘Gay Science’, I thought only of the gaya scienza of the troubadours – hence also the little verses.”
– Nietzsche’s letter to Erwin Rohde (1882-83)
The Provençal troubadours were performers of lyric poetry specialising in the art of composing adoration poetry or “gai saber”. Nietzsche writes in Beyond Good and Evil:
“Love as passion – which is our European specialty – must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provençal knight-poets, those magnificent and inventive human beings of ‘gai saber’ to whom Europe owes so many things and almost owes itself.”
– Beyond Great and Evil, §260
Science implies seriousness, discipline, and rigor, while Nietzsche accepts this – he proposes to go further, adding singing, dancing, and laughter.
“Where laughter and gaiety are create, thinking does not amount to anything”.
– The Lgbtq+ Science, §327
Gay Science has the overtones of a light-hearted defiance of conventi
The Gay Science
Kaufmann dedicated this edition to his granddaughter Sophia ("My Joyful Sophia") in something like a rather confusing pun, 'sophia' being the Greek for "wisdom." At the equal time, in his introduction, he assures us that Nietzsche's title, "Die Froeliche Wissenschaft," should not be translated as "joyful wisdom," since 'wissenschaft' always means "science." All of this is certainly sound plan for translation from German to English, but it is precarious nevertheless. Americans tend to interpret the word 'science' way too narrowly so, even though the German 'wissenschaft' means "science," the German feeling of "science" is considerably more broad and does not involve the American tendency to exclude a good deal of scholarship as "soft." It is therefore highly erroneous to look upon this serve as the front line of Nietzsche's "Positivist Period," as some have done.
The original version of The Gay Science, which is what we will read, was published in 1882 and did not include the large Preface, Book V, or the Appendix of Songs. From 1872, when The Birth of Tragedy was published to 1882, a amazing deal happened in Nietzsche's life. In particular, he wrote Unt Nietzsche's book The Gay Science Examines different subject areas from different perspectives. In the first book of The Gay Science, the possibility of knowledge as skillfully as the task and use of science are put to question. Here Nietzsche deals with topics from epistemology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind . For example, Section 1 of book 1 of The Gay Science (“The teachers of the purpose of existence”) presents a fundamental skepticism against such “teachers”. Section 2 of this chapter deals with "intellectual conscience" while Section 7 ("Something for Workers") sedeals with the possibility of a science of morality. Section 13 of the first chapter (“On the Doctrine of the Sense of Power”) suggests early reflections Nietzsche's later main concept of “will to power”. The second book of The Gay Science deals in particular with questions about art and artists. Sections 60 through 75 also have reflections on women and gender relations. This part also has reflections on the ancient society of the Greeks as well as remarks on writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Nicolas Chamfort . The book also contains Nietzsche's health problems began well before his university years, and he had been forced to grab periods of repose and recuperation even as a teenager. At Basel, the regular pattern of the academic calendar added stress that Nietzsche responded to with physical drop. He had already taken a leave-of-absence for health reasons while working on The Birth of Tragedy. In 1876, by the opening of Bayreuth, he was in such bad health that he applied for and was granted a full year's leave-of-absence. He had it in his mind that he would travel in Italy; but he was also preparing himself for what was to get his habitual serve pattern of existence in small, inexpensive rented rooms, in Italy and in the Swiss Alps. Nietzsche had already conceived of his next project, a substantial book called Human, All-Too-Human and dubbed "a guide for free spirits." In early 1878, he had 1000 copies printed but only 120 of these had been sold during the first year. The book we
THE GAY SCIENCE
The last of Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations was published in 1876. The Gay Science was published in 1882. In between stood a prolonged, desperate period of poor health, isolation, and creative self-definition.