Franks, Sartre, Nietzsche...

topic posted Sat, June 21, 2008 - 11:02 AM by 


What's the difference?
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  • Re: Franks, Sartre, Nietzsche...

    Thu, July 3, 2008 - 11:37 PM
    I've never heard of Franks. Sartre was more tangled up in politics than Nietzsche. sartre was all tangled up in contemporary French Communism and socialism whereas Nietzsche just didn't give a damn and said what he liked. Nietzsche was really involved with the analysis of Christianity as a slave morality.

    Nietzsche was also more stylistic than Sartre and given aphorisms whereas Sartre is more technical and not at all fond of new starting paragraphs. A lot of Sartre's ideas are expounded in his novels, whereas Nietzsche's aren't - though Thus Spoke Zarathustra has the aspect of a story it's utterly fantastic. One of themes in Nausea is a confrontation with Humanism I think. The Reprieve is a novel based around the idea of "the Look" as expounded in Being & Nothingness, in the chapter The Existence of Others.

    Both men had experienced war, but they were different wars/ sartre really confronted WWII and the tragedy of it, whereas Nietzsche seemed to revel in the destructive nature of war as an expression the will to power.

    There are many differences between these two, these are some of them IMHO
    • Re: Franks, Sartre, Nietzsche...

      Fri, July 4, 2008 - 12:11 AM
      If you mean Victor Frankl, well, he was the optimistic existentialist. Though I think Nietzsche was actually an idealist. Frankl did not believe that circumstances caused malaise. That hopelessness is a choice. Although he was an existentialist he also believed in god, but argued that man is in control of his attitude and attitude can be a predictor of who thrives and survives. He wrote the classic Man's Search for Meaning, about his experiences in concentration camps. There are few books I recommend to everyone, but this is one of them. This is the kind of existentialist I am.

      Nietzsche (as I read him) seems to have high expectations for mankind and seemed disappointed by the fact that we do not seem towant to reach that high. I sensed a sadness about that rather than the cynicism usually attributed to him.

      I haven't a handle on Sartre, but when I read him, he reminds me of many artists I knew in the 70's. He seems to have ideals, but doesn't live them,so one wonders if they are presented in theory or did he expect people to adhere to them? Or do they change?

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