Essays on Orientation Skills in Everyday and Professional Life

All professions require the people who work in them to know a lot, and to continue to learn. In the United States, lawyers learn the basics of the law in law school, or as a major in law, then pick up much of the practical aspects of the profession through actual practice after law school. At the same time, they must periodically engage in what we call “continuing education,” so that they keep alert to changes in the law.

Life turns out much the same for medical students, though their education is significantly more practical than that of law students. After studying biology and chemistry as undergraduates, they learn the basics of the human body, disease and injury at medical school, while accumulating clinical experience as well. …

It is an attractive idea to make an art out of one’s life, and to not just to manage it in its economic, moral, and religious conditions, but to shape it – at least in part – according to aesthetic criteria. The economic, moral, and religious conditions in modern, enlightened, and highly developed societies as we know them today have so far permitted doing so: The economic hardships have, despite all crises, become less difficult; public morals have pluralized in many countries and become more flexible; religions are rather oriented to spiritual experiences than dogmas. The lives of if not all people, then at least large parts of such privileged societies can enter into greater freedom, enjoy it and be self-sufficient in the free spaces guaranteed by politics based on the rule of law and with the resources generated in socially restrained markets. …

This is a concluding essay in: Nietzsche on the Art of Living: New Studies from the German-Speaking Nietzsche Research, edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, Reinhard G. Mueller, and Werner Stegmaier (Nashville: Orientations Press, 2023), which you can download for free here from website.

In the 21st century, we increasingly live in a Nietzschean world. What was once feared as ‘nihilism,’ the loss of all final certainties and absolutes, or ‘relativism,’ that everything relates to a standpoint, has become a lived reality for many people today. Especially younger generations have learned to affirm the living conditions of uncertainty and temporality by eclectically adopting ways of life, routines, and orientations in individual ways for only certain periods of time….

This is the final concluding essay in: Nietzsche on the Art of Living: New Studies from the German-Speaking Nietzsche Research, edited by Günter Gödde, Jörg Zirfas, Reinhard G. Mueller, and Werner Stegmaier (Nashville: Orientations Press, 2023), which you can download for free here from website.

Speech, different forms of vocalization, words, sentences, grammar, punctuation marks, non-linguistic signs and other elements of communication can be regarded as acts and means of orientation in the widest sense. Our communication mechanisms have been adjusted to our general need for orientation and evolved over time. Hence, a closer look at the ordinary language can reveal different ways or layers of human orientation. Etymology is the study of the origin and history of words, their meanings and uses. It seems easier to argue against the etymological method than in favor of it. Let us first consider possible arguments against the use of etymology in contemporary contexts. After that, we will explore ways to argue for the strong view of etymology.