ISSN 1393-614X Minerva - An Internet Journal of Philosophy 12 (2008): 37-77 ________ Kathleen O’Dwyer 37 Nietzsche’s Reflec tions on Love Kathleen O’Dwyer Abstract In light of his assertion of ‘perspectivism’, in relation to thought and understanding, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche resists conclusive analysis and interpretation. His work is commonly associated with ambiguous concepts such as self-creation, self-reliance and self-mastery, resulting in a concentration on individual, private and personal experience. This paper acknowledges Nietzsche’s focus on introspection, self-analysis and self- centredness. However, it is argued that this aspect of Nietzsche’s work does not preclude a consideration of the significance of relationship in human experience, but rather, that it is the essential prerequisite to mutuality, intimacy and optimum human flourishing, culminating in a love of self, of the other and of life, in Nietzschean terms, amor fati. What I have always needed most to cure and restore myself, however, was the belief that I was not the only one to be thus, to see thus – I needed the enchanting intuition of kinship and equality in the eye and in desire, repose in a trusted friendship; I needed a shared blindness, with no suspicion or question marks (Nietzsche, 1984: 4). The discipline of philosophy is rooted in its Latin translation, ‘love of wisdom’. The vagueness and ambiguity of this term allows for diverse concentrations in different areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, phenomenology, metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy, to name but a few. Yet the question inevitably arises: what is the wisdom which is loved, and what is its relation to lived experience as distinct from theoretical abstractions? In the words of Martha Nussbaum, this question asks: ‘what philosophy has to do with the world’ (Nussbaum, 1994: 3). The question poses others, such as, what is the function,
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8/7/2019 Nietzsche’s Reflections on Love by Kathleen O’Dwyer
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