Marco Brusotti

What belongs to a language game is a whole culture.

Abstract: Wittgenstein remarks that “What belongs to a language game is a whole culture”, and that describing the language games in which the “words we call expressions of aesthetic judgement” are used implies describing “the culture of a period” (LA 1966: 8). Without aiming at a full reconstruction, the paper addresses the gradual emergence of the close conceptual connection between “language game” and “culture” in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts. The apparently obvious idea that “language game” and “form of life” (or “culture”) belong together or even coincide was originally missing. The paper picks out few episodes from Wittgenstein’s philosophical development. The first chapter shows that the topic of cultural diversity emerges in Wittgenstein’s reception of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, but still plays only a limited role in his first criticism of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. The second chapter discusses the emergence of the term “language game” and establishes that Wittgenstein’s first language games do not yet imply something like an “anthropological view”. Real and imaginary “peoples” and “tribes” make their first appearance in remarks that ascribe a “primitive” arithmetic to them (chapter 3). Finally, with an eye to the possible influence of Sraffa and Malinowski, the fourth section shows how the Brown Book conceives translation as holistic cultural comparison.

In memoriam Richard Frank Krummel (4. 8. 1925–30. 12. 2017)

Der Vorstand der Nietzsche-Gesellschaft e. V. sowie der Stiftungsrat und das Direktorium der Friedrich-Nietzsche-Stiftung trauern um den amerikanischen Germanisten und international anerkannten Nietzsche-For scher Richard Frank Krummel. Er starb am 30. 12. 2017 im Alter von 92 Jahren im Kreise seiner Familie in Edina, Minnesota. Richard Frank Krum mel wurde am 4. 8. 1925 in Buffalo (New York) geboren. Bereits im Jahre 1941 kaufte er sich einen Band der Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik von Friedrich Nietzsche in der beliebten Ausgabe der Modern Library. Zunächst hatte er nach eige nem Bekunden nicht die geringste Vorstellung davon, worum es Nietzsche ging. Erst als er Also sprach Zarathustra in der Übersetzung von Thomas Common las, ließ er sich von der sprachlichen Kraft Nietzsches begeistern. – Seinen Militärdienst versah er erst nach Beendigung des 2. Weltkrieges bei der US-Army in Berlin. Später arbeitete er dort auch als Zivilbeschäftigter. Er erteilte leseund schreibunkundigen Soldaten Englisch-Unterricht. Im Berliner Antiquariatsauktionshaus Gerd Rosen, in welchem seine spätere Frau Evelyn arbeitete, fand er zahlreiche Nietzsche-Editionen und umfangreiche Nietzsche-Sekundärliteratur, die in der Nachkriegszeit wenig nachgefragt waren. Im Gegenteil: Viele Deutsche schienen sich ihrer Nietzsche-Bestände entledigen zu wollen. Nachdem er 1958 gemeinsam mit seiner Frau die Leitung des Antiquariats übernommen hatte, fand er gute Gelegenheiten, weitere Nietzscheana anzukaufen, seine Sammlung aufzubauen und zu profilieren. Die Nietzsche-Rezeption wurde somit sein wesentlicher Forschungsschwerpunkt. Nach der Rückkehr in die USA lehrte er ab 1966 als Professor für Germanistik an der Bemidji State University in Minnesota. Im Jahre 1971 wurde er an der Universität von Kentucky in Louisville mit der Arbeit Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist promoviert. Die Dissertation stellt eine kommentierte Bibliographie eines Großteils seiner Sammlung dar. Sie erschien 1974 im Verlag Walter de Gruyter unter demselben Titel und umfasste zunächst das Nietzsche-Schrifttum von 1867 bis zu Nietzsches Tod im Jahre 1900. – Seit 1975 war Krummel Schriftleiter der akademischen Zeitschrift Germanic Notes (seit 1992 Germanic Notes and Reviews). In der Rubrik Neueres Nietzsche-Schrifttum besprach er zeitgenössische Nietzsche-Literatur für das deutschamerikanische Publikum. Diese Arbeit gewährte ihm auch aus amerikanischem

„Das Neue und Immergleiche“. Benjamin, Nietzsche und die ewige Wiederkehr

Abstract After discovering the short cosmological treatise L’éternité par les astres at the end of 1937, Benjamin ‘constellates’ the author, Louis-Auguste Blanqui, with Baudelaire and Nietzsche under the sign of eternal recurrence. From then on, eternal recurrence is given a central place in Benjamin’s analysis of modernity. Under many aspects his thoughts are rooted in the dramatic years in which they were developed: a conception of myth problematic in itself is misapplied to Nietzsche, the analogy with Blanqui’s cosmology leads to misunderstandings, and Benjamin does not grasp the connection between a task relevant for himself, the redemption of the past, and Zarathustra’s thought of eternal recurrence. Nevertheless, this constellation charged with tension is theoretically productive. Benjamin interprets the two faces of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence in the context of his own theory of the structural change of experience in modernity. On the one hand, eternal recurrence is linked in multiple ways to the new forms of technical reproduction and compulsory repetition arising in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it is assigned the task of compensating for an irretrievable loss. Is this compensation thoroughly illusory? Or does it contain a ‘motive of salvation’? Guided by these questions, the paper investigates the ‘polyphony’ of Benjamin’s remarks on Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence and their heuristic potential.

Ethnologische Betrachtungsweisen: Wittgenstein, Frazer, Sraffa

Abstract The late Wittgenstein is reported as saying that he owes his ‘anthropological approach’ to Piero Sraffa. In February 1932, however, Wittgenstein reproaches the Italian economist with misunderstandings similar to those he had criticized in the work of the Scottish anthropologist James Frazer six months before. According to a well-known anecdote, a gesture of Sraffa’s had a momentous influence onWittgenstein’s philosophical development.The ‘grammar of gestures’ elaborated by him in the early 1930s is an attempt to answer questions such as those raised by his friend’s Neapolitan gesture. There is a substantial difference between what the late Wittgenstein calls his ‘ethnological way of looking’ and the stance he had adopted in his early criticism of Frazer’s Golden Bough in June/July 1931. In February 1932,Wittgenstein replied to Sraffa’s objections with arguments similar to those he had already raised against Frazer’s very different method. Sraffa pushed Wittgenstein to adopt natural history and to transform his philosophy into an empirical approach. However, in the early 1930s Wittgenstein refused to do either. In order to learn how to look at philosophical problems with an ‘anthropological’ eye from Sraffa, he will need to learn, against Sraffa, not to reduce philosophy to anthropology (natural history). Years later,Wittgenstein still insists on the contrast he had marked between himself and Sraffa: Using imaginary scenarios he intends to show how a superficial analogy can mislead us to mistaking institutions, having an entirelydifferent nature, for economic systems - resulting in them seeming ‘irrational’, ‘unlogical’.

Reagieren, schwer reagieren, nicht reagieren

Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals seeks to introduce a new “fundamental concept” into “physiology and the study of life”: “that of genuine activity.” Thus, we might assume that Nietzsche’s final texts would take up this “fundamental concept” and continue to develop it. However, this expectation is not fulfilled: The entire semantic field of “action” – “activity” – “active” – “to act” never appears again. Readings of Nietzsche that posit a central function for the pair of concepts “active” and “reactive” (e.g., that of Deleuze) thus attribute to the late work a conceptual framework that actually only plays a defining role in a single text, On the Genealogy of Morals. Why did Nietzsche no longer contrast “active” and “reactive” in 1888? Beginning with the Twilight of the Idols, a new dichotomy replaces that between “active” and “reactive”: He now juxtaposes “to react (directly, unreservedly)” and “to not react / to react mildly / slowly / late.” From the Dionysian to “Russian fatalism,” every conceivable phenomenon is now interpreted as a form of compulsive, delayed, or absent reaction. In 1888, Nietzsche’s more intense study of recent scientific literature – including the writings of Charles Féré – may have dissuaded him from pursuing a critique of contemporary physiology under the sign of “activity.” Even if he continued to view physiologists with skepticism, the critique in the Twilight of the Idols is more limited in scope: Nietzsche is no longer striving for a kind of scientific revolution in the name of activity.

Naturalismus? Perfektionismus? Nietzsche, die Genealogie und die Wissenschaften

[Con Helmut Heit (TU Berlin):] „Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes. Einleitung”. In Nietzscheforschung. Jahrbuch der Nietzsche-Gesellschaft 20 (2013), pp. 231-234. Si tratta dell’introduzione alla sezione III della rivista („Nietzsches Philosophie des Geistes. 20. Nietzsche Werkstatt Schulpforta, 11.-14. September 2012. Wiss. Leitung: Marco Brusotti und Helmut Heit”, pp. 231-392.] [ISBN: 978-3-05-005742-2] DOI: 10.1524/nifo.2013.20.1.231. URL: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/nifo.2013.20.issue1/nifo.2013.20.1.231/nifo.2013.20.1.231.xml?format=INT

TRANSFORMATIONEN DER WIEDERKEHR. FELIX HAUSDORFF (ALIAS PAUL MONGRÉ) ZWISCHEN KANT UND NIETZSCHE

Felix Hausdorff, Philosophisches Werk: „Sant’ Ilario. Gedanken aus der Landschaft Zarathustras“, „Das Chaos in kosmischer Auslese“, Essays zu Nietzsche, in: Felix Hausdorff, Gesammelte Werke, einschließlich der unter dem Pseudonym Paul Mongré erschienenen philosophischen und literarischen Schriften und ausgewählter Texte aus dem Nachlaß, hg. v. Egbert Brieskorn, Friedrich Hirzebruch, Walter Purkert, Reinhold Remmert und Erhard Scholz, Bd. VII, hg. v. Werner Stegmaier, Heidelberg (Springer) 2004, XX + 920 Seiten, ISBN 3-540-20836-4.