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Shakespeare is thought to be a monumental playwright and poet whose verbal genius largely makes up for a few troubling passages, or for a few « problematic plays » (as they are still conveniently called) which give a bit of tang or perhaps only very little undermine a fundamentally orthodox political, religious and philosophical message. This paper does not claim to deny this. Rather, it lays emphasis on Shakespeare’s dark – yet undeniable – side. Claiming that Macbeth is evil but somehow admirable is not enough. One may perhaps put forward the idea that Macbeth is desperately wading, though unsuccessfully, towards some kind of Nietzschean realm beyond Good and Evil. One may perhaps, however briefly, suggest that with this character Shakespeare broaches the ontological question, that he senses a univocal and undifferentiated dimension of Being, but from a negative point of view.
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This text tries to underline the major meanings of the salvation and evil beginning from Nae Ionescu’s philosophy, especially his course on Faust – the matter of salvation in Faust of Goethe –, the Romanian philosopher being one of the most important figure of the intellectual elites during the Romanian interwar space, an outstanding personality that created the generation of Mircea Eliade, Vulcanescu, Cioran, Noica et alii. The matter of salvation has two essential meanings : a transcendental meaning and a spiritual meaning, inside the human being. Nae Ionescu lays stress on dual conception of Goethe : the evil as the necessity of being is not present at Goethe; there is the presence of evil as the absence of good – privatio boni (the Augustinian doctrine). The duality of Goethe’s feature is the reflection of two sorts of solutions : first of all, the knowledge and second of all, the living. In fact, this is sign of knowledge during the Renaissance as an identity between science and magic. In opposition to Wagner as the type of the non‑tortured scientist, Faust is the metaphysician overwhelmed with sorge (care). Oscillating between salvation – as the possibility of regaining the Absolute – and evil, Faust finishes by obtaining his "Das ewig Weibliche"
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This study aims to analyze the incapacity of language to define and express being. Bitterness is a fundamental state of being, both a sentiment and an attitude, a way to look at and to think of the world. We are trying to emphasize the way Cioran constructs a language of death in order to lay his being in it.
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The article studies the work of Jean Améry, as reliable evidence upon the various appearances of the evil, which crossed the XXth century: from the physical violence of the man on the man, to the so‑called « natural evil », until the paradoxical form of liberation represented by the suicide.
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The representation of the evil admits at least three models : medical and pathogenic, mechanistic and logical or geological and civilizational. If we leave aside the metaphysical and theological views postulating a nature or the final meaning of evil, the evil is what to avoid or to fight for a pratical reason, a view that we can find a model for in Greek Metis.
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This article focuses on the answer of Musil to the question : can we really do without good and evil? Even if Musil has been strongly influenced by his reading of Nietzsche, he developed his own point of view about the nature and the value of the distinction between good and evil. Good and evil are not “absolute constants” but “functional values”, and this distinction must be valued by herself : there are a bad evil, a bad way to be good, a good way to be bad, and perhaps a good way to be good. As a result it seems that we can not do without good and evil, even if they can not be taken as ultimate moral concepts.
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Fritz Mauthner’s critics of language (Sprachkritik) concludes that human language is a useful instrument of social communication and transaction, but a deficient medium for knowledge and for every form of expression of subjectivity. Mauthner’s analysis of the contemporary language crisis (Sprachkrise) has much in common with Maurice Maeterlinck. Jorge Luis Borges was in his ironical way one of the most perspicacious interprets of Mauthner’s linguistic skepticism.
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« A pear for the thirst » is a french expression that means « ressources for the future ». It’s a battle of a poet against evil, the big evil, fanatism and obscurantism.
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Whatever conceptions we develop in the western world about the origin and the nature of evil, it is impossible to avoid referring to the biblical text, Genesis 3. The many different interpretations that are made of this text invoke it less in order to read what it says, than in order to transform it into an illustration or a theological legitimation that post‑dates its creation. I will demonstrate how the concept of original sin develops in Christianity and conflicts with the Gnostic, the Christian and the Jew; however it is also necessary to return to the text, to interpret it from a position that is first of all philosophical and upon the basis of a hermeneutic that responds to its unique qualities before inscribing it into this or that dogmatic interpretation. The reflections of Ricoeur and Nabert upon sin and evil are tested out on Genesis 3 on the basis of a concept of the processes of symbolisation developed by Kant and, in our time, by Blumenberg.
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Our reflections attempt to capture the spasmodic confrontation between philosopher and idea, and to convey the intricate mechanisms involved in circumscribing and mapping out one’s own spirit.
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The introduction to issue 8 of Alkemie points to Camus and Cioran.
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Touched by the very first experience of a personal evil, we try to figure out why the world must be torn apart by any opposites. This kind of awakening makes us suddenly conscious of the binary nature of the world we live in, and finally of the binary nature of our minds. In order to transcend this impossible situation, our psyche will be ready to behold the opposites, thus to expand beyond the limits of the current world.
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