‘Joke, Cunning and Revenge’: Prelude in German Rhymes

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm; Williams, Bernard; Nauckhoff, Josefine; Del, Adrian

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511812088.006

Cited by 18 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…This finite course of time appears to be the main issue at stake [ 66 ]; a point that echoes Vladimir Jankélévitch’s analysis of death: on the basis of Victor Hugo’s work of fiction, The last day of a condemned man, he emphasised that a death sentence leads a person to enter “an unbearable and inhuman” time, where one’s time of death is known [ 67 ]. Nietzsche’s anthropological perspective - according to which it is better for human beings not to know their future - appears as strikingly relevant on this matter [ 68 ]. Along the same lines, Jean-Claude Ameisen states that we live in a state of constant forgetfulness of our previous metamorphoses, letting the memory of all the ones that occurred before sink into oblivion [ 69 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical and social implications of approaching death prediction in humans - when the biology of ageing meets existential issues

et al. 2020

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Background: The discovery of biomarkers of ageing has led to the development of predictors of impending natural death and has paved the way for personalised estimation of the risk of death in the general population. This study intends to identify the ethical resources available to approach the idea of a long-lasting dying process and consider the perspective of death prediction. The reflection on human mortality is necessary but not sufficient to face this issue. Knowledge about death anticipation in clinical contexts allows for a better understanding of it. Still, the very notion of prediction and its implications must be clarified. This study outlines in a prospective way issues that call for further investigation in the various fields concerned: ethical, psychological, medical and social. Methods: The study is based on an interdisciplinary approach, a combination of philosophy, clinical psychology, medicine, demography, biology and actuarial science. Results: The present study proposes an understanding of death prediction based on its distinction with the relationship to human mortality and death anticipation, and on the analogy with the implications of genetic testing performed in pre-symptomatic stages of a disease. It leads to the identification of a multi-layered issue, including the individual and personal relationship to death prediction, the potential medical uses of biomarkers of ageing, the social and economic implications of the latter, especially in regard to the way longevity risk is perceived. Conclusions: The present study work strives to propose a first sketch of what the implications of death prediction as such could be-from an individual, medical and social point of view. Both with anti-ageing medicine and the transhumanist quest for immortality, research on biomarkers of ageing brings back to the forefront crucial ethical matters: should we, as human beings, keep ignoring certain things, primarily the moment of our death, be it an estimation of it? If such knowledge was available, who should be informed about it and how such information should be given? Is it a knowledge that could be socially shared?

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical and social implications of approaching death prediction in humans - when the biology of ageing meets existential issues

et al. 2020

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“…One strand of normativistic conceptions of disease (and health) can be traced back to Nietzsche’s reflections in The gay science where he claims that: “the more we put aside the dogma of ‘the equality of men’, the more must the … the normal course of an illness be abandoned by our physicians. Only then would the time have come to reflect on the health and sickness of the soul, and to find the peculiar virtue of each man in the health of his soul: in one person’s case this health could, of course, look like the opposite of health in another person” [ 65 ]. Hence, the normativistic conception of disease is unsuitable to set limits to enhancement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits to human enhancement: nature, disease, therapy or betterment?

Hofmann

2017

BMC Med Ethics

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BackgroundNew technologies facilitate the enhancement of a wide range of human dispositions, capacities, or abilities. While it is argued that we need to set limits to human enhancement, it is unclear where we should find resources to set such limits.DiscussionTraditional routes for setting limits, such as referring to nature, the therapy-enhancement distinction, and the health-disease distinction, turn out to have some shortcomings. However, upon closer scrutiny the concept of enhancement is based on vague conceptions of what is to be enhanced. Explaining why it is better to become older, stronger, and more intelligent presupposes a clear conception of goodness, which is seldom provided. In particular, the qualitative better is frequently confused with the quantitative more. We may therefore not need “external” measures for setting its limits – they are available in the concept of enhancement itself.SummaryWhile there may be shortcomings in traditional sources of limit setting to human enhancement, such as nature, therapy, and disease, such approaches may not be necessary. The specification-of-betterment problem inherent in the conception of human enhancement itself provides means to restrict its unwarranted proliferation. We only need to demand clear, sustainable, obtainable goals for enhancement that are based on evidence, and not on lofty speculations, hypes, analogies, or weak associations. Human enhancements that specify what will become better, and provide adequate evidence, are good and should be pursued. Others should not be accepted.

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“…What kind of fiction is South-South dialogue? It is a fiction that has the power to open or create spaces in which we, like Nietzsche's (2001) madman, as a prelude to tending to each other's wounds, ask each other if we realise the gravity of our situation, and if we understand the catastrophe that has taken place.…”

Section: Weepingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As if he were in conversation with Marechera; as if he were trying to ward off the former's distress, or grappling with a similar ailment, here is Nietzsche (2001): Where are we moving to? Away from all suns?…”

Section: Weepingmentioning

confidence: 99%

South-South Dialogue: In Search of Humanity

Mukandi

2017

AJIE

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This paper is a meditation on the idea of South-South dialogue, beginning with the South-South Dialogues: Situated Perspectives in Decolonial Epistemologies symposium held at the University of Queensland in 2015. I interrogate the concept of South-South dialogue, apposing it to the Cartesian ‘I think’, and then question the plausibility of the concept. On the basis of a Gadamerian conception of understanding, I suggest that what passes for South-South dialogue is in fact more likely to be North-South or even North-North dialogue. This is buttressed by an examination of Valentin Mudimbe's Parables and Fables. I go on to suggest, however, that by staying within the realm of the concept, in what could be called a Cartesian paradigm, Mudimbe misses the important role that South-South dialogue can play. Drawing on the work of Sara Motta, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and the concept of hunhu, I claim that the promise of South-South dialogue is the creation of spaces in which humanity is fostered.

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‘Joke, Cunning and Revenge’: Prelude in German Rhymes

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Ethical and social implications of approaching death prediction in humans - when the biology of ageing meets existential issues

Ethical and social implications of approaching death prediction in humans - when the biology of ageing meets existential issues

Limits to human enhancement: nature, disease, therapy or betterment?

South-South Dialogue: In Search of Humanity

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