Nietzsche's Reading of Cervantes' "Cruel" Humor in Don Quijote

Nietzsche e a Genealogia da Verdade, 2021

A noção de verdade é certamente uma das mais importantes na história da filosofia, tanto quanto para nossa vida cotidiana, mas ao mesmo tempo uma das noções menos problematizadas. O objetivo deste livro é justamente o de colocar em questão a própria verdade, seja na filosofia ou no seu uso ordinário, perseguindo a questão: por que queremos a verdade? Nesse sentido, apresentamos as discussões do filósofo alemão Friedrich Nietzsche em torno da ideia de verdade, especialmente do seu procedimento genealógico, como um método histórico-filosófico que permite observamos a delicada articulação entre verdade e vida. Assim, assumimos uma postura histórico-naturalista do conhecimento na tentativa de mostrar que a verdade, tal como a concebemos nos dias de hoje, é um tipo de "erro" que se tornou tão importante para nossa espécie que não conseguimos mais viver sem ele.

2021

Luis Gómez Canseco - Review - Modern Language Review, 116, 3, 2021, pp. 512-514.

I.

2020

Jorge Braga Riera - Review - Bulletin of Spanish Studies Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America, 97, 6, 2020, pp. 1064-1065.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the philosophical significance of laughter and comedy in Nietzsche's works. Although a few scholars have noted this dimension of Nietzsche's project, these themes have yet to make their way into mainstream Nietzsche scholarship. Moreover, references to Nietzsche in current philosophical work on laughter, humor, and comedy are rare. By bringing attention to the important role that laughter and comedy play in Nietzsche's later works, I implicitly advance the case that Nietzsche scholars should pay more attention to laughter and comedy and that Nietzsche should be discussed more frequently in contemporary work on the philosophy of laughter, humor, and comedy. The structure of the paper is straightforward. In the first section, I provide evidence attesting to the significance of laughter in Nietzsche's works and then explore its philosophical significance. In the second section, I do the same with comedy by drawing parallels between Nietzsche's later philosophy and the Dionysian comedies of Aristophanes. In so doing, I show how laughter and comedy are central to Nietzsche's life-affirming ethics and his project of self-creation, but I also note that Nietzsche's understanding of laughter and comedy may challenge some of our most fundamental ethical intuitions.

This paper approaches the twisted philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche considering the interpretation of Peter Sloterdijk, who asserts in his Critique of Cynical Reason that the philosopher from Basel is in fact a Neo-„Cynical” thinker. For instance, the „Eternal Recurrence of the Same” is one of Nietzsche’s most subversive thoughts that reflects a description of a resurgence of „kynical” motives. Though often overlooked, we must say that Nietzsche himself occasionally practiced Cynicism as a strategy of survival. We know that he lived modestly and had no fixed abode, wandering from city to city with all his notes and just a few books. Because Nietzsche rejected not only the Academic style, but the citizenship in any one country just as much as Diogenes had protested against Plato’s philosophy and had declared himself a „citizen of the world”, we can affirm that he was a true cosmopolitan, namely a modern Cynical philosopher. That is why, before his mental breakdown, he ostentatiously stylized his fight against Western metaphysics, Christianity and Christian morality into Cynicism. Thus, I emphasize that „the transvaluation of all values” is an unfinished project about the virtues of Neo-cynical wisdom. Besides, his basic concepts – „the Overman”, „the Eternal Recurrence of the Same”, „the Will to Power” – are nothing more than metaphors for „the love of fate” or for the acceptance of the idea of Becoming.

This paper sets out to unearth the underlying reasons behind the spectacular success that the seventeenth-century Spanish novelist, Cervantes, achieved in his humoristic work, Don Quixote which has been translated into many languages, including English. In this respect, I work to demonstate the centrality of what the anthropologist Réné Girard called in his book Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961) ‘mimetic desire’ in sustaining the lightness of the novel’s humor. A desire that is built on imitating others does, actually, define Don Quixote, the protagonist of the novel. Yet, what is special with him is that this desire leads him to generate a whole imagined narrative about knight errantry and, more importatly, to live it out in a time in which medieval chivalric codes of behaviour become outmoded and just part of the fictional world. So, Don Quixote’s plight becomes comic, for he places what he read about the knight Amadis of Gaul and other stories of chivalry as models he irresistably strives to cult and copy from. Certainly, the sharp chasm separating reality from fiction is enough to set the protagonist in a state of confusion whereby he is made to appear to other characters and even to the reader as veritably mad. Meanwhile, our laughable protagonist keeps clinging to such a desire that helps him considerably overcome the heavy hazardous adventures he comes across in his ludicrous and, at the same time, absurd journey of what we may call ‘search for knighthood.’ It is precisely the waxing and waning of this mimetic desire, galvanizing his courage, that this paper seeks to chart and examine anthropologically. Keywords : anthroplogy, mimetic desire, humor, knight-errantry, mediation, parody, rivalry

Wissenschaft, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche, 1994

Dissident Voice, 2015

The year 2015 marks the 400 th anniversary of the publication of the first comical novel in the Western world, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote de la Mancha. The first part of the irreverent work, published in Madrid in 1605, introduced the world to the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and its definitive sequel of 1615 furthered their misbegotten quest to reactivate knight errantry while doubling down on the pranks and misfortunes they suffered at the hands of fellow Spaniards eager for a laugh. It was doubtless the humorous quality of these pranks and misfortunes that was partly responsible for both volumes' distinction as early modern bestsellers and, at the same, that which induced Vladimir Nabokov centuries later to characterize Don Quixote as a story of "hideous cruelty." These opposing reactions underscore a rift that has often divided Cervantes scholars between two major approaches to the novel: on the one hand, the 'hard' view that the work should be interpreted in line with its primary historical purpose of lighthearted entertainment and laughter; and, on the other, the 'soft' or Romantic school of thought, which held that Don Quixote offers a host of more serious insights to the reader, from the tragic to the political, cultural, and even ethical.