Jung S Nietzsche

By considering the thought and personalities of two popular icons of twentieth century philosophical and psychological thought, Nietzsche and Jung demonstrates how analytical psychology can be enriched by investigating its philosophical roots.

This book explores C.G. Jung's complex relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche through the lens of the so-called 'visionary' literary tradition. The book connects Jung's experience of the posthumously published Liber Novus (The Red Book) with his own (mis)understanding of Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and formulates the hypothesis of Jung considering Zarathustra as Nietzsche's Liber Novus –– both works being regarded by Jung as 'visionary' experiences. After exploring some 'visionary' authors often compared by Jung to Nietzsche (Goethe, Hölderlin, Spitteler, F. T. Vischer), the book focuses upon Nietzsche and Jung exclusively. It analyses stylistic similarities, as well as explicit references to Nietzsche and Zarathustra in Liber Novus, drawing on Jung's annotations in his own copy of Zarathustra. The book then uses Liber Novus as a prism to contextualize and understand Jung's five-year seminar on Zarathustra: all the nuances of Jung's interpretation of Zarathustra can be fully explained, only when compared with Liber Novus and its symbology. One of the main topics of the book concerns the figure of 'Christ' and Nietzsche's and Jung's understandings of the 'death of God.'

Nietzsche's infamous work Thus Spake Zarathustra is filled with a strange sense of religiosity that seems to run counter to the philosopher's usual polemics against religious faith. For some scholars, this book marks little but a mental decline in the great philosopher; for C. G. Jung, Zarathustra was an invaluable demonstration of the unconscious at work, one that illuminated both Nietzsche's psychology and spirituality and that of the modern world in general. The original two-volume edition of Jung's lively seminar on Nietzsche's Zarathustra has been an important source for specialists in depth psychology. This new abridged paperback edition allows interested readers to participate with Jung as he probes the underlying meaning of Nietzsche's great work.

As a young man growing up near Basel, Jung was fascinated and disturbed by tales of Nietzsche's brilliance, eccentricity, and eventual decline into permanent psychosis. These volumes, the transcript of a previously unpublished private seminar, reveal the fruits of his initial curiosity: Nietzsche's works, which he read as a student at the University of Basel, had moved him profoundly and had a life-long influence on his thought. During the sessions the mature Jung spoke informally to members of his inner circle about a thinker whose works had not only overwhelmed him with the depth of their understanding of human nature but also provided the philosophical sources of many of his own psychological and metapsychological ideas. Above all, he demonstrated how the remarkable book Thus Spake Zarathustra illustrates both Nietzsche's genius and his neurotic and prepsychotic tendencies. Since there was at that time no thought of the seminar notes being published, Jung felt free to joke, to lash out at people and events that irritated or angered him, and to comment unreservedly on political, economic, and other public concerns of the time. This seminar and others, including the one recorded in Dream Analysis, were given in English in Zurich during the 1920s and 1930s.

The series presents outstanding monographic interpretations of Nietzsche's work as a whole or of specific themes and aspects. These works are written mostly from a philosophical, literary, communication science, sociological or historical perspective. The publications reflect the current state of research on Nietzsche's philosophy, on his sources, and on the influence of his writings. The volumes are peer-reviewed.

Through his clinical work and extensive engagement with major figures of the philosophical tradition, Jung developed an original and pluralistic psycho-ethical model based on the cooperation of consciousness with the unconscious mind. By drawing on direct quotations from Jung’s collected works, The Red Book, and his interviews and seminars – as well as from seminal texts by Kant, Nietzsche, Aristotle and Augustine – Giovanni Colacicchi provides a philosophically grounded analysis of the ethical relevance of Jung’s analytical psychology and of the concept of individuation which is at its core. The author argues that Jung transforms Kant’s consciousness of duty into the duty to be conscious while also endorsing Nietzsche’s project of an individual ethics beyond collective morality. Colacicchi shows that Jung is concerned, like Aristotle, with the human need to acquire a balance between reason and emotions; and that Jung puts forward, with his understanding of the shadow, a moral psychology of the Christian notion of evil. Jung’s psycho-ethical paradigm is thus capable of integrating ethical theories which are often read as mutually exclusive. Psychology as Ethics will be of interest to researchers in the history of ideas and the philosophy of the unconscious, as well as to therapists and counsellors who wish to place their psychodynamic work in its philosophical context. It will also be a key reference for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and seminars in Jungian and Post-Jungian studies, philosophy, psychoanalytic studies, psychology, religious studies and the social sciences.

Friedrich Nietzsche has emerged as one of the most important and influential modern philosophers. For several decades, the book series Monographien und Texte zur Nietzsche-Forschung (MTNF) has set the agenda in a rapidly growing and changing field of Nietzsche scholarship. The scope of the series is interdisciplinary and international in orientation reflects the entire spectrum of research on Nietzsche, from philosophy to literary studies and political theory. The series publishes monographs and edited volumes that undergo a strict peer-review process. The book series is led by an international team of editors, whose work represents the full range of current Nietzsche scholarship.