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Nietzsche and a Serious Man CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2014 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 2014 Vol XI No 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL ISBN 978-3-631-65486-6 www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2014_265846_VOL_11_No1_GR_A5Br.indd.indd 1 14.05.14 17:43 CULTURA CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE CULTURA AND AXIOLOGY Founded in 2004, Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of 2014 Culture and Axiology is a semiannual peer-reviewed journal devo- 1 2014 Vol XI No 1 ted to philosophy of culture and the study of value. It aims to pro- mote the exploration of different values and cultural phenomena in regional and international contexts. The editorial board encourages the submission of manuscripts based on original research that are judged to make a novel and important contribution to understan- ding the values and cultural phenomena in the contempo rary world. CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY CULTURE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL www.peterlang.com CULTURA 2014_265846_VOL_11_No1_GR_A5Br.indd.indd 1 14.05.14 17:43 CULTURA INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE AND AXIOLOGY Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology E-ISSN (Online): 2065-5002 ISSN (Print): 1584-1057 Advisory Board Prof. Dr. David Altman, Instituto de Ciencia Política, Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Emeritus Dr. Horst Baier, University of Konstanz, Germany Prof. Dr. David Cornberg, University Ming Chuan, Taiwan Prof. Dr. Paul Cruysberghs, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Prof. Dr. Nic Gianan, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines Prof. Dr. Marco Ivaldo, Department of Philosophy “A. Aliotta”, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy Prof. Dr. Michael Jennings, Princeton University, USA Prof. Dr. Maximiliano E. Korstanje, University of Palermo, Argentina Prof. Dr. Richard L. Lanigan, Southern Illinois University, USA Prof. Dr. Christian Lazzeri, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France Prof. Dr. Massimo Leone, University of Torino, Italy Prof. Dr. Asunción López-Varela Azcárate, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain Prof. Dr. Christian Möckel, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany Prof. Dr. Devendra Nath Tiwari, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India Prof. Dr. José María Paz Gago, University of Coruña, Spain Prof. Dr. Mario Perniola, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy Prof. Dr. Traian D. Stănciulescu, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Iassy, Romania Prof. Dr. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Purdue University & Ghent University Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Co-Editors: Prof. dr. Nicolae Râmbu Prof. dr. Aldo Marroni Faculty of Philosophy and Social- Dipartimento di Lettere, Arti e Scienze Sociali Political Sciences Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Via dei Vestini, 31, 66100 Chieti Scalo, Italy B-dul Carol I, nr. 11, 700506 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] PD Dr. Till Kinzel Executive Editor: Englisches Seminar Dr. Simona Mitroiu Technische Universität Braunschweig, Human Sciences Research Department Bienroder Weg 80, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University 38106 Braunschweig, Germany Lascar Catargi, nr. 54, 700107 Iasi, Romania [email protected] [email protected] Editorial Assistant: Dr. Marius Sidoriuc Designer: Aritia Poenaru Cultura International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Vol. 11, No. 1 (2014) Editor-in-Chief Nicolae Râmbu Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Umschlagabbildung: © Aritia Poenaru ISSN 2065-5002 ISBN 978-3-631-65486-6 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-04760-8 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-04760-8 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2014 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com CONTENTS Kyung Han You & Jiha Kim 7 Marcuse’s Legacy and Foucault’s Challenge: A Critical Inquiry into the Relationship between Comedic Pleasure and the Popular Media Pedro Blas González 23 The Economics of Being: The Struggle for Existence in Prehistory Luka Zevnik 41 The Discussion about the Universality of Happiness and the Promise of Neuroscience Peter Mathews 63 The Morality Meme: Nietzsche and A Serious Man Patrizia Torricelli 83 The Cognitive Basis of Value in Grammatical Form: A Case Study of the Italian Verbs vedere volere and avere Cyril-Mary P. Olatunji 99 A Philosophical Comparison of John 1:1-18 and the Yoruba Concept of ÒrÒ Mahdi Dahmardeh, Hossein Timcheh Memar & Abbas Timcheh 113 Memar On Ethics and Culture: A Matter of Variation or Deviation? A study on Top Notch Series Adrian Nita 127 Leibniz on Spontaneity as a Basic Value Benaouda Bensaid & Fadila Grine 141 Old Age and Elderly Care: An Islamic Perspective Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff 165 Psychological Stage Development and Societal Evolution. A Completely New Foundation to the Interrelationship between Psychology and Sociology Dragos Bigu 193 The Place of Values in Scientific Knowledge 10.5840/cultura20141114 Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology 11(1)/2014: 63–81 The Morality Meme: Nietzsche and A Serious Man Peter Mathews Department of English Language and Literature, Hanyang University 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 133-791, South Korea [email protected] Abstract. Pairing together the Coen brothers film A Serious Man (2009) with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, this paper looks at questions about morality, illusion, and the influence of Jewish thought on contemporary ethics. Beginning with a reading of Nietzsche that locates his discussion of the Jews within its proper historical context, it traces the beginnings of the “morality meme,” the notion of a universal moral reward that, Nietzsche argues, arises during the Deuteronomist period of Jewish history. The second part of the paper looks at how A Serious Man also engages in an interrogation of this moralistic overcoding of the universe, with a particular emphasis on how these questions upset Larry Gopnik’s views of both science and religion. The essay then concludes with a look at the poisonous effects of the “morality meme,” showing in particular how it has influenced the psychology of anti-Semitism. Rather than a rejection of Jewishness, the paper concludes that in A Serious Man the Coen brothers engage in a careful but loving criticism of their own culture that requires them to distance themselves from the problematic effects of its religious morality. Keywords: Nietzsche, Coen Brothers, A Serious Man, Morality, Jewishness. This essay sets out to interpret the Coen brothers film A Serious Man (2009) through the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche on the premise that their works converge in the shared task of engaging, through the prism of Jewish identity, in a poignant interrogation of the destructive illusions that so often plague humanity. In earlier films like Miller’s Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991), Joel and Ethan Coen have tended to treat the topic of Jewishness from the perspective of its rejection by American society, with the Jews in these films clear outsiders to the society in which they operate. A Serious Man, by contrast, has a different feel to it because, even though anti-Semitism does occasionally rear its ugly head in the course of the story, the film’s protagonist, Larry Gopnik, lives in a cultural context that consists predominantly of other Jews. Given how closely the film’s setting resembles the Coens’ own upbringing, A Serious Man can be read as an incisive interrogation by the brothers of their own Jewish background, an unflinching critique that seeks to address some difficult truths at the same time as maintaining an 63 Peter Mathews / The Morality Meme: Nietzsche and A Serious Man obvious pride in their own cultural origins. The film is not a renunciation by the Coens of their Jewishness, but rather an attempt to find a point of reconciliation with it that does not sacrifice the intellectual honesty of their secular outlook. Nietzsche’s relationship to Jewish culture has a different but equally complicated history. The taint of anti-Semitism unfairly attached to his name by the Nazis has slowly abated over the past century, thanks to the work begun by Georges Bataille in “Nietzsche and the Fascists” (1936) and consolidated by his translator and biographer Walter Kaufmann in Nietzsche:
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