Return to Saussure

AI art   Introduction: Regretting the Borrowed Concepts In 1886, more than a decade after the publication of The Birth of Tragedy , Friedrich Nietzsche returned to his early work with a sharply self-aware preface titled An Attempt at Self-Criticism . In §6 of this retrospective, he reflects: “I now regret the fact that at the time I did not yet have the courage (or the presumptuousness?) to allow myself in every respect a personal language ( eine eigne Sprache ) for such an individual point of view and such daring exploits — that I sought laboriously to express strange and new evaluations with formulas from Schopenhauer and Kant, something which basically went quite against the spirit of Kant and Schopenhauer, as well as against their tastes!”¹ This is not a mere admission of youthful hesitance or rhetorical failure. Nietzsche articulates a deeper insight: that inherited conceptual languages are not neutral instruments but structured systems with internal constraints. By atte...

Introduction In recent years, a wave of popular books, podcasts, and wellness platforms has turned to Greek philosophy for answers to modern challenges. Stoicism is repackaged as a kind of self-help minimalism; Aristotle is reinterpreted to address crises of meaning; Plato becomes a mentor in the art of mindful living. Central to this revival is a promise: that ancient wisdom can make us “happy.” But what if this promise is based on a misunderstanding? What if the happiness Greek thinkers pursued is not the same as the one we seek today? While eudaimonia is often translated as “happiness,” the resemblance is deceptive. The ancients did not view happiness as an emotional state, nor did they locate it in wealth, popularity, power, or personal fulfillment. On the contrary, Aristotle dismissed the life of pleasure as “fit for cattle.”¹ This article offers a cautionary note. It explores how the meanings of happiness have changed over time, and why interpreting ancient ethics through ...