We have a complicated language
with thousands of integrate words
~
but most often
a sign
a movement or gaze
a certain tone from the one you love
say at once
all that those words
can’t
- DEBAUCHERY.—Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery*.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human all too human, Miscellaneous Maxims And Opinions. Translated By Paul V. Cohn, B.A. New York The MacMillan Company 1913, Free license from Gutenberg.org
*The German word ausschweifung is normally translated as debauchery, in this translation from 1913 they did that to but in the more modern translations they use the word excess. There is a slight difference but they both work, I think.
I wrote earlier that I don’t put Nietzsche above other philosophers or thinkers but that I use him as the symbol for critical thinking. One of the reasons that I like reading Nietzsche has to do with the particular circumstances he was in when he wrote his books. In the period that he was writing most of his books, in the 1880s, he was also sick most of the time with constant headaches and he also had bad eyesight. Because of this he walked a lot to think and when he was back in his room he noted down his thought in short bursts. These notes where used to compile his books, even nefarious after his death.
Reading philosophy is not always easy and there are philosophers who write whole books to bring across a few ideas. You have to be capable to read and understand these books and have the patience to dig through the sometimes sluggish languish. Nietzsche has never written a book where he builds up a whole system from a to z, he often has a theme per chapter filled with sometimes hundreds of aphorisms from one sentence up to a few pages. I have a short attention span so these short aphorisms fit me well but they often contain a lot of food for thought and the grey mass in our skull works like a muscle that you can feed and train to make it stronger and last longer. They say that eating small portions several times a day is better then eating one big meal a day.
Nochrisis 