Tag: Friedrich Nietzsche
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Friedrich Nietzsche—much afflicted philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch. 1906. Thielska Gallerie, Sweden. Via Wikimedia. Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the most important philosophers of the nineteenth century. Though often misinterpreted, his influence has been enormous. Like his compatriot Schopenhauer, he questioned the comfortable beliefs of the conservative bourgeoisie of his time. His writings have fascinated generations of readers,…
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Is history good for you? Pros and cons
Pro “ . . . a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana “A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.” – Sioux proverb “[History is] a pact between the dead,…
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Medicinal leeches in art and literature
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States For more than two thousand years, the extraordinary blood-sucking abilities of the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) provided physicians with an unusual if not bizarre alternative to venesection, cupping, and scarification for blood-letting their patients (Figure 1). This therapeutic use of leeches was described in the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Nicander…
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The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part III
Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States A cure for loneliness In the video “What is Literature For?” produced by The School of Life, author Alain de Botton claims that books are a cure for loneliness. Since we cannot always say what we are really thinking in civilized conversations, literature often describes who we genuinely are more…
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“Something monomanical”: obsession and the unity of effect
Jack Rosser Herefordshire, England, United Kingdom A portrait of Poe in 1848, not long prior to his passing in 1849. The concept of monomania first gathered popularity in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the term “referred to a type of mental disorder in which a person would have fixed, and often…