Scan barcode
casparb's review against another edition
this has the reputation of being the best critical work on Nietzsche ever written and yeah, valid. Klossowski deserves all the recognition he received from this which was crucial to people like Foucault and Deleuze (to whom he cheekily dedicates this to I think PK does a better job than GD on this) but he also deserves attention in his own right as a person and - artist? An absolutely wild life he somehow only died in 2001! Born 1905!! What a life! Fascinated by this guy anyway
This book covers bases & beautifully we get a semi-biographical reading PK looks at the epiphany at Sils-Maria & the basically constant pain that was life for FN as a hyperchronic migraine sufferer on top of everything else (and! Brilliantly PK takes on this and says how the hell does this square with saying Yes to life). We even get a chapter on the dreams of teenage Nietzsche if that's something that doesn't sound utterly disturbing. Lots of space for the man himself to breathe plenty personal correspondences and a fairly ideosyncratic interpretation of N's very last correspondences with Strindberg before total collapse.
Ok! Foucault called this one of the greatest works of philosophy he'd read and that makes sense for MF. Perhaps there's a difficulty in sequestering Nietzsche into philosophy at all as when we have a critical study of him it's rather a different beast to many others. See Derrida's book (yes, book) on the note found among N's papers: 'I have forgotten my umbrella'. On topic, Vicious Circle kind of achieves all it is lauded as it's a beautiful act of reconciliation which is sadly necessary when the work is cut short. Klossowski rides with Nietzsche in dismissing the institution of psychoanalysis but I note he's not strictly averse to Freudian techniques and the figuration of the Circle & Doctrine of the Eternal Return as simulacra? Yes
This book covers bases & beautifully we get a semi-biographical reading PK looks at the epiphany at Sils-Maria & the basically constant pain that was life for FN as a hyperchronic migraine sufferer on top of everything else (and! Brilliantly PK takes on this and says how the hell does this square with saying Yes to life). We even get a chapter on the dreams of teenage Nietzsche if that's something that doesn't sound utterly disturbing. Lots of space for the man himself to breathe plenty personal correspondences and a fairly ideosyncratic interpretation of N's very last correspondences with Strindberg before total collapse.
Ok! Foucault called this one of the greatest works of philosophy he'd read and that makes sense for MF. Perhaps there's a difficulty in sequestering Nietzsche into philosophy at all as when we have a critical study of him it's rather a different beast to many others. See Derrida's book (yes, book) on the note found among N's papers: 'I have forgotten my umbrella'. On topic, Vicious Circle kind of achieves all it is lauded as it's a beautiful act of reconciliation which is sadly necessary when the work is cut short. Klossowski rides with Nietzsche in dismissing the institution of psychoanalysis but I note he's not strictly averse to Freudian techniques and the figuration of the Circle & Doctrine of the Eternal Return as simulacra? Yes
noahregained's review against another edition
5.0
In my couple readings on postmodernism I found the funny suggestion that the postmodern was not just an inflamed value judgment, but a rather specifically French value judgment. Scratch that-- a rather specifically Nietzschean, French value judgment.
I can understand that perfectly now.
This is a perfect entry to philosophy beyond capitalism, beyond gregarity, and beyond the subject. This is the introductory speech which should precede the jibbering of any of the Parisians of '68. Those are the obvious situations of this book. But, casting a slightly larger arc through the air, I should rather say that the "vicious circle," everywhere in this writing, is the possibility of any ends at all. ('This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere.')
I can understand that perfectly now.
This is a perfect entry to philosophy beyond capitalism, beyond gregarity, and beyond the subject. This is the introductory speech which should precede the jibbering of any of the Parisians of '68. Those are the obvious situations of this book. But, casting a slightly larger arc through the air, I should rather say that the "vicious circle," everywhere in this writing, is the possibility of any ends at all. ('This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere.')
More...