Nietzsche, Kundera, and Shit Essay -- Unbearable Lightness of Being Es

Friedrich Nietzsche saw himself surrounded by a world of gay constructs. piece had become a herd, clinging to these concepts like cattle grazing at a favorite patch of grass. Individual identity struggled to exist. The morality of the mediocre reigned supreme. Nietzsche lived in a dead world. Milan Kundera lives in the world today. His world is dead much(prenominal) like Nietzsches. Denial is the focal point of society. Society assimilates difference and denies what cannot be assimilated. In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera relies on the word kitsch to describe the get of denial. Kitsch is a absolute denial of shit (Kundera 248). Kitsch is an inescapable part of the human condition. Though Nietzsche was not aware of the word, much of his philosophy is a chemical reaction to the concept of kitsch. He wanted to revitalize passion, raw sensation, in hopes that he and others could transcend kitsch and relate authentically to one another to be masters. moreover as Nietzsche attacks kitsch he also understands its necessity. He does not seek to pulverize kitsch (like Kundera) he merely wishes to place kitsch in a new context, to edit it in perspective. M whatsoever years separate the worlds of Nietzsche and Kundera, but the fundamental questions of their empirical struggle seems to be the same can one oppose kitsch and succeed, or survive? Before delving into the possibility of opposing kitsch it is necessary to derive a clear working definition of kitsch. This definition relies heavily upon Kunderas vision of kitsch, and, therefore, any argument presented to demonstrate authentic opposition to kitsch pertains solely to the following definition. Kitsch claims to talk to some absolu... ...ore his readers is to accept shit as part of his philosophical answer. whole caboodle Cited Brown, Norman O. The Excremental Vision. Life Against Death. Wesleyan University Press, 1959. p.179-201. Rpt in Swift A Collection of Critical Essays. Ernes t Tuveson, Ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall Inc., 1964. p. 31-54. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. New York flush Books, 1956. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York Harper and Row Inc., 1984. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond respectable and Evil. Walter Kaufmann trans. New York Random House Inc., 1989. ---. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Rpt. in The take-away Nietzsche. Walter Kaufmann trans. New York Viking Press, 1956. ---. The Will to Power. Walter Kaufmann trans. and ed. New York Random House Inc., 1967.