All posts filed under: Zen

Nietzsche and the Unconscious: Ethics, Desire, Politics

Sunday, September 30, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
comments 3
daybreak / desire / difference / ethics / freud / joy / Nietzsche / Politics / style / text / unconscious / Zen

Cy Twombly, Untitled [1970. Oil-based house paint and crayon on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: © 2004 Matthew Septimus] Granted that nothing is ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, that we can rise or sink to no other ‘reality’ than the reality of our drives – for thinking is only the relationship of these drives to one another: is it not permitted to make the experiment and […]

Nietzsche and Basho: Freedom, Morality and Awareness

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
by Joseph Weissman
comment 1
Basho / chaos / enlightenment / equilibrium / ethics / freedom / language / method / Nietzsche / unity / Zen

How very noble! One who finds awakening in the lightning-flash (Basho) It struck me lately that Nietzsche’s style is not entirely dissimilar to the strategy employed by the Zen koan. I’m thinking in particular of the haikus of Basho: short, aphoristic bursts of supersaturated feelings, pressurized information, aimed to awaken and reorient consciousness towards new directions. The author of the haiku plays a subtle game of exchanging masks. Each voice, whether of the dawn, the […]