Summary
Philosopher read with Joseph Conrad in “Conrad and Nietzsche”, the seventh essay in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays: with Conrad an admiring student of Schopenhauer, critical of his retreat from life, and the apogee of a tradition Said calls the radical attitude toward language (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.89-95).
Details
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He saw the Will as inclining always to the acquisition of power, not as blind or simply a Will to live (PDF p.89).
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As early as 1873 he described truth in linguistic terms: “truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are” (quoted PDF p.91).
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His view descends from the new philology’s discovery that there is no first, or original, language and no first text: every utterance interprets a prior utterance, and human history is a battle of interpretations (PDF p.91).
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Language is at once excess and poverty — a paradox that stands very near the heart of his work and plays a considerable role in Conrad’s handling of narrative language and technique (PDF p.92).
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“One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.” (quoted PDF p.94)
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In Beyond Good and Evil he argued that distinctions such as good and evil or cause and effect are “conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication — not for explanation” (quoted PDF p.95).
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The shared belief with Conrad is not a common nihilism: the world is devoid of anything except spectacular value, and becoming is the only reality; the last item of The Will to Power is quoted: “This world is the will to power—and nothing besides!” (quoted PDF p.96).
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In The Gay Science, section 109, he cautioned against attributing “aesthetic anthropomorphisms” to the world (PDF p.97).
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His eternal recurrence is conceived as an aspect of the future, where Conrad’s recurrence turns on the past (PDF p.98).
Related pages
Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Joseph Conrad, Edward Said