Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"

[alice wellintown]

“American Nietzsche” is a sober work of intellectual history, but as
Nietzsche insisted, all scholarship reflects the temperament of its
creator, and it’s clear that Ratner-Rosenhagen finds neither the
poststructuralist nor the conservative Nietzsche at all satisfying. At
the end of her consistently insightful book, she turns to Harold Bloom
and the philosopher Stanley Cavell, who emphasized Nietzsche’s
affinities with the man he himself regarded as “the most fertile
author” of his century — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Indeed, one can show
that Emerson anticipated many of Nietzsche’s most famous utterances.
There is a direct line from Emerson’s “oversoul” to the “overman.”
Several decades before Nietzsche wrote, “What does not kill me makes
me stronger,” Emerson wrote, “In general, every evil to which we do
not succumb, is a benefactor.” More profoundly, Emerson foreshadowed
Nietzsche’s concern with the ubiquity of flux and power, and the value
of overcoming the past. “Life only avails,” Emerson once wrote, “not
the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in
the moment of transitions from a past to a new state.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/books/review/american-nietzsche-by-jennifer-ratner-rosenhagen-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0



On 7/31/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Tragic Sense of Life? Like, when did life get a tragic sense? Did
> the Greeks have this sense? Did Shakespeare? Is it a product of
> reason, the enlightenment? Or Romance? Or is it Modern? When did we
> get this Heart of Darkness? Did we construct it with Modern Life? Do
> all peoples suffer from it now? Do the Indians know Tragesy as we in
> the West know Tragedy? And what is a tragic sense?
>
> So, a good book that I know was on P's reading list is _The Tragic
> Sense of Life_, and a couple-few others are discussed in this easy to
> read paper
>
> PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE,
> Richard L. Rubens, Ph.D.
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~rr322/Tragedy.html
>
>
> On 7/30/13, Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That's Kool and the gang. All I am saying is:  there is a nigh unto
>> bottomless resevoir of negative experience in the arts & sciences. I
>> would appreciate that balanced a tad, esp. in this tilted age. The
>> Inferno wasn't a challenge to Dante: Paradise, however, exceeded his
>> reach. I would prefer not to equate birth with a plummet into a sphere
>> of profane dread & agony. In the arts we have come to confuse realism
>> with suffering when it ain't the lion's share, experience-wise. Maybe
>> I'm naive...
>>
>> On 7/30/13, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I don't.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> On Jul 30, 2013, at 6:24 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm not sure how to read this group anymore.  Does anyone think Becket
>>>> was
>>>> serious?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
>>>> To: 'David Morris' <fqmorris at gmail.com>; 'Ian Livingston'
>>>> <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>>> Cc: 'Keith Davis' <kbob42 at gmail.com>; 'P-list' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>> Sent: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 6:05 am
>>>> Subject: RE: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>
>>>> Oh, it’s downhill well before that. Samuel Beckett in a 1970 interview:
>>>> “Even before the foetus can draw breath it is in a state of barrenness
>>>> and
>>>> of pain. I have a clear memory of my own foetal existence. It was an
>>>> existence where no voice, no possible movement could free me from the
>>>> agony and darkness I was subjected to.”
>>>>
>>>> And in _Murphy_, Neary curses the day he was born “and then, in a bold
>>>> flashback, the night he was conceived.”
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>>>> Behalf Of David Morris
>>>> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 11:51 AM
>>>> To: Ian Livingston
>>>> Cc: Keith Davis; P-list
>>>> Subject: Re: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>
>>>> Yes. That is a clear way of explaining the root experience and its
>>>> later
>>>> recognition/identification.
>>>>
>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>> Maybe the way to reconcile your perspectives, which both seem valid, is
>>>> to
>>>> remove the labels. Birth is the first appearance the emotional
>>>> sensation
>>>> that is later associated with fear, coupled with the sensation of
>>>> emotional resistance to that proto-fear that is later identified as
>>>> desire.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:39 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> Sure.  But birth is a stark initial lesson in separateness, even if the
>>>> "self" hasn't yet formed. And I think initial experiencing the
>>>> sensation
>>>> of fear and desire is TNH's focus, something that precedes a self.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Keith Davis wrote:
>>>> The only clarification might be that there is no consciousness of the
>>>> fear
>>>> and desire until we reach the point where we become aware of a"self" as
>>>> separate from other "selves", where we develop an "individual
>>>> consciousness".
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:13 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It starts with a description of each of us pre-birth in the "The Palace
>>>> of
>>>> the Child." Everything we needed was done for us there.  Food, air,
>>>> warmth, in a big water cushioned bed, with great sound insulation.
>>>>
>>>> Then we get pushed out into the loud cold world, having to cough out
>>>> liquid in order to take our own first breath.  Every aspect of this
>>>> birth
>>>> is traumatic, and TNH says it is called the "Original Fear."  At about
>>>> this same moment we realize we want to keep living.  TNH calls this
>>>> "Original Desire."
>>>>
>>>> I think this was all pre Freud.
>>>>
>>>> David Morris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> http://posthistoricpress.blogspot.com/
>>
>