EXAM Oct 6

I'll provide a final study guide soon, including material from this week's assignments. Meanwhile, to begin preparing for the exam: review the texts relevant to the even-numbered, single-digit questions (2, 4, 6, 8)  pertaining to Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction and Hiking With Nietzsche posted on Aug.27 and Sep 1, 8, 10, 15, 17, 22, and 24. Same for the BONUS questions pertaining to When Nietzsche Wept. 

You'll earn a point for each correct answer, up to 25. There will be 25 objective format questions drawn from the required texts, and a few additional BONUS questions drawn from the recommended texts (this time probably just from When Nietzsche Wept). I'll give you all the answers, you just need to match the correct answers with the appropriate questions.

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UPDATE, Oct 2. Also take a look at the texts relating to these Thursday questions as well:

• Was the Kaag family trip really a failure? Should he have been searching for the Ubermensch, or for a better understanding of healthy human relatedness and “how to find contentment in himself and his own life”? 202-3
• “Philosophers stampeded by the herd” is funny, but is it also what typically happens in our culture? 211

And in the BONUS section, re: Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept:

• How was Mathilde both right AND wrong? 258
• Do you perceive aging, death, and fear of freedom as your enemies? 277
• What’s the difference between being resigned to your fate and loving it? 301

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UPDATE, Sep 30. Here are the questions/topics/texts most of the exam will be drawn from, I'll provide the rest on Friday. Wording on the exam will be altered when necessary to match the format. To prepare for Tuesday's exam, review the relevant texts AND remember WJ's advice: 

How to prepare for an exam: RELAX, says WJ

"If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, “I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.” Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently." William James, “Gospel of Relaxation"

What did FN mean in calling himself "dynamite"? 158 Is philosophy and/or humanity well served by philosophers who exalt power and sow chaos?

Guests were "chatting happily about FN's final days." 168. Does it bother you to imagine random future strangers making light of your own eventual demise? Why would anyone ever do that? Have you ever?

Was Adorno right about how we become human? 176 Is one really “nothing”?

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child," so if Cicero was right I find most of my 1st year students still arrested in their development: they're familiar with almost none of the historical highlights I mention before class each day. Why is this, do you think?

If perfectionism makes life with others difficult, does that not suggest its undesirability? 127-9 Is obsessive-compulsive behavior sometimes mistaken for perfectionism? Can you relate to Kaag's fasting compulsion? Is it pathological to seek self-mastery in ways that subvert health? Are you interested in the relation between food and thought? 130 Was Feuerbach right?

Do you experience an "internal dialogue between I and me"? 84 What do you think about Anendophasia?

How would you respond to a marriage proposal on a second date? 91 Is it possible to "find" oneself in another, as Nietzsche sought to find himself in Salome? 92 Was his approach to her "creepy"? 93

What in general would you say about any philosophy by which you "came to terms with life" but also became incapable of living with others? 41 Would you--unlike Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, evidently-- wish to seek other terms?

Is Kaag unfair to those of us who, like Kant, walk consistent daily neighborhood routes when he says this-- by contrast with distance hikers and mountaineers-- indicates "a constipated mind"? 45 Was Nietsche unfair to Kant when calling him a nihilist and idiot?

Is "the Last Man" wrong to value safety, comfort, and convenience? 51 Can you value those things and "beauty and risk"?

What does it mean for a final destination in life not to exist? 11 Given our mortal condition, how can aging also lack a final destination? 6

[Ex'sm ch5-6] Marcel's philosophy was a relentless struggle against what? (NOTE: This is one of the more salient points of agreement between existentialists and pragmatists.) Do you think "concreteness" is a philosophical virtue?

What was de Beauvoir's most famous phrase? How does her view go beyond Sartre's of human nature? What did they both try to humanize? How, generally, do you think about the distinction/relation between gender and sex? Is there no essential quality of femininity or masculinity that has not been socially contructed?

[Ex’sm ch3-4] What did Camus consider the intrinsic absurdity of the human condition? Why does he nonetheless consider Sisyphus happy?

What was Heidegger's criticism of existentialists and humanists? Should his philosophical reputation be "secure," given his Nazi association?

What was Marcel's view of "genuine hope"? Do you agree? Is his view anti-humanistic? Do you agree with Jaspers thatiTranscendence as "the absolute Other"?

[Ex’sm ch1-2] What did Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both respect about Socrates? What view of truth did Kierkegaard think Socrates exemplified? Do you think Socrates would have endorsed Kierkegaard's account?

What have some misunderstood about Kierkegaard's "truth as subjectivity"?

Why, for the existentialists, is "my truth" not a self-contradictory oxymoron?

[Ex’sm pref] The supreme value and virtue of Existentialism are what? How do you define these terms? How do you attempt to realize them in your life?

What was Nietzsche's advice? Are "existential individuals" born, or made (achieved)? Do you think of your life as a potential succession of "stages," as Kierkegaard did? If so, how would you label/describe your present stage?

BONUS, When Nietzsche Wept

Was FN right that no one can show anyone else the way out of despair? And is it really plausible that "all serious thinkers contemplate suicide"? 208

What does FN mean by “applied philosophy”? 232 Has its time come? Do we “kill gods but sanctify their replacements”? 233 Should we?

“To love woman is to hate life!” 243 Is there any way to reconcile that statement with FN’s professed commitment to valuing THIS life, and no other?

A vote against the future?

Never mind JD or Elon on this issue…

“…When so many people hesitate to have [or adopt] children,” Sussman writes, “what is lost is not simply future taxpayers or consumers. We miss out on the rich relationships that bond us across generations, on the flood of love and tenderness that caring for children, or simply being around them, can unleash.” She adds that the “retreat from parenthood also encapsulates a dissatisfaction with our present so extreme it has become a vote against the future.”
…
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/28/inconceivable-the-impossibility-of-family-in-an-age-of-uncertainty-anna-louise-sussman-book-review

Questions OCT 1

Remember Friday's Lyceum OCT 2 - Lyceum, COE 164 Friday 5 PM followed by catered dinner/reception with author John Kaag

Presentations-

Aaliyah Henderson- Nietzsche and the birth of psychoanalysis. Brent-"Birth of Psychoanalysis" w/ William Barrett. Evan-"Becoming Who You Are"

Kaag 194-230

1. If life and experience are always in process of becoming, is painting (or are completed paintings) a false analogy? What might be a better one, for capturing life’s “ever not quite” quality?   
2. Have you read Steppenwolf? Did you know Hesse had been suicidal at age 15? 196. What do you think of the idea that some ineliminable part of us is untamable and wild?
3. Is posthumous birth just a philosopher’s rationale for unpopularity (or “untimeliness”)? Should such philosophers try harder to understand their own times, and be understood by their contemporaries? 198. Would this be a more promising avenue to “transcendence and love”? 200
4.  Was the Kaag family trip really a failure? Should he have been searching for the Ubermensch, or for a better understanding  of healthy human relatedness and “how to find contentment in himself and his own life”? 202-3
5. Have “agonistic impulses” become the rule in humans too? 205. How can that be reversed?
6. Do you expect to greet middle age with “dawning of regret” and unhappiness? 206 What can or will you do in pre-middle age to forestall that?
7. “…in dreams we understand absolutely, unequivocally.” 208. Is that your experience?
8. “Philosophers stampeded by the herd” is funny, but is it also what typically happens in our culture? 211
9. “Why not ask whether the source of your pain might be inside you?”  Did FN address this question to himself? Does Kaag? Have they “learned to laugh”? 213. What do you think of “amor fati”? 214
10. Any comment on Hesse’s and Kaag’s thoughts on words? 218
11. Do you agree that selfhood is not a “wisdom quest our hero’s journey”? 220
12. Do you “see the sacred in the prosaic”? 224. If you don’t, is pharmacology the right alternative?
13. “”…life, happily, outpaces philosophy.”  Agree?

Wept conclusion

1. “I should halve become an ‘I’ before I became a ‘we.’”  257. Is that generally true? Or even possible?
2. How was Mathilde both right AND wrong? 258
3. “…one always dies alone.” 261. But some much more alone than others. This makes a big difference, doesn’t it?\\
4. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”  How do you imagine your own personal philosophy and attitude towards existence would be different, were it not for the presence of the friends in your life?
5. “Cosmic perspective” again: have you “seized your life,” with or without it? 262
6. A parallel to Kaag’s ambivalence about parenting: “[The children] were a mistake…”. 262. Should any parent ever commit such a thought to writing?
7. “I’m incidental, interchangeable. I’m not necessary…” 265. Should you evaluate your personal worth from a covert external perpective, as Josef does when spying on Bertha and her new physician? Is the fact of our contingency cause for despair, or deep gratitude for the lives we in fact possess?
8. Eva does not remember the conversation Josef felt so guilty about, when he thought she was offering herself. 268. And Lou did not remember kissing FN. How typical is it, do you think, for humans to overestimate others’ regard for us? Do we generally think too highly of ourselves, and overinflate our prominence in others’ imaginations?
9. “This life is your eternal life.” 269. Do you think of it that way? 
10. What would you do with your time tomorrow, if you had none of your present relationships and obligations? Would it be a good day? 270
11. Josef thinks himself “too old to start over” at 40. 271. Will you feel the same, at that age?
12. “…we must live as though we were free.” 274. Is that enough? Or must we possess a firm conviction that we are free?
13. Do you perceive aging, death, and fear of freedom as your enemies? 277
14. Is it a major flaw in FN’s analysis not to have emphasized BEING ABLE to give up a marriage as the main condition of its survival? 280
15. Do you view work, community, and family as legitimate sources of meaning? 281
16. Is FN’s “courage in facing aloneness without the herd… proof of [his] greatness”? 295
17. Does isolation evaporate when shared? 300
18. What’s the difference between being resigned to your fate and loving it? 301
19. Considering Lipiner’s letter in the Afterword, how plausible do you find Yalom’s novel?

The Id, the Ego and the Superintelligence

When Thales of Miletus, arguably the first philosopher, was mocked for his poverty and the uselessness of his trade, he read the skies, foresaw a bumper olive harvest, quietly hired every olive press nearby and made a killing. He thereby proved, Aristotle tells us, that philosophers could easily be rich if they wished, but that this is not what they care about. It has taken some two and a half thousand years, but the market appears finally to have come around to Thales’ point of view.

Panic around A.I. often focuses on whether machines will replace (or simply kill) us. But what the machines are often good at is a distinct set of tasks: Retrieval, near-instant summary and the frictionless, stunning recombination of everything that has already been said. What they are not good at is what philosophy has been training humans to do for thousands of years: judgment. And so the A.I. companies have started hiring philosophers. They don’t just consult them or wheel them out for an amusing after-dinner talk on the trolley problem; they actually hire them with salaries and, presumably, dental plans. A.I. companies need philosophers because actually thinking requires forgetting — and knowing when to forget. They need philosophers because of what their machines cannot do.

Judgment is not calculation. It is the capacity to weigh, to discriminate, to sense that one answer is true and another merely correct. It is taste, discernment and the knack of thinking sideways. It is refined only through experience — through error, embarrassment, boredom, grief and the occasional hangover. Meaning is derived from the fact that we are mortal: Things matter to us because we are going to die, and we know it. There can be no meaning in immortality. To borrow from my friend Christian Madsbjerg, I would like to propose a better Turing test than Turing’s: Can a machine experience social anxiety? Can it lie awake at 4 in the morning replaying the stupid thing it said at dinner? Call me when a chatbot does that. To be intelligent in the human sense, the machine would need to give a damn.

Enter the A.I. companies’ philosophers. Anthropic keeps a small squad on the payroll, among them Amanda Askell, whose doctoral thesis was on infinite ethics — the question of how to act well in a universe of infinite value — and whose job is to shape the character of the company’s machine. Google DeepMind has appointed the Cambridge philosopher Henry Shevlin to the newly minted post of “Philosopher,” a job title I have been trying and failing to secure for some 40 years. The OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman says his company consulted “hundreds of moral philosophers” in drawing up the principles behind ChatGPT. (That’s roughly the turnout of a middling philosophy conference.)

…this is where the difference between us and the machines cuts deepest. A.I. is a memory machine, the most magnificent ever devised. It forgets nothing. The human being, by contrast, is a forgetful animal. To make this happily oblivious creature remember — to make it capable of promises, debts and morality — required millenniums of discipline and frankly appalling cruelty. “If something is to stay in the memory, it must be burned in,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. Conscience, on this view, is mnemonics with a whip.

Yet Nietzsche also prized what he called active forgetting, and considered it a form of strength, even of health. Forgetting is not a leaky bucket but a doorkeeper, closing the gates of consciousness so that something new can happen, so that experience can be digested rather than endlessly force-fed back to us. We forget, and we move on...

Simon Critchley

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/opinion/ai-philosophy-thinking-judgment.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Will artificial intelligence really kill us all?

More guarded AI optimism, from David Pogue- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-artificial-intelligence-really-kill-us-all/

Existential Parenthood

It looks like even the most staunch of holdouts found their way to a parental relationship eventually.

• Jean-Paul Sartre: No biological children; legally adopted his student and literary heir Arlette Elkaïm in 1965.
• Simone de Beauvoir: No biological children; legally adopted her former student Sylvie Le Bon in 1980.
• Søren Kierkegaard: No children; famously broke off his engagement to Regine Olsen and never married.
• Albert Camus: Two biological children; twins Catherine and Jean, born in 1945.
• Martin Heidegger: Two sons raised with Elfride, Jörg and Hermann (Hermann was biologically fathered by another man, which Heidegger knew and accepted).
• Gabriel Marcel: One legally adopted son, Jean-Marie.
• Karl Jaspers: No children with his wife Gertrud.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty: One biological daughter, Marianne, born in 1941.
• Edmund Husserl: Three biological children with Malvine: Elisabeth, Gerhart, and Wolfgang (who was killed at Verdun in 1916).
• Friedrich Nietzsche: No children; remained unmarried throughout his life.

Total: TEN philosophers, eleven children including three legal adoptions.

Questions SEP 29

Presentations-

Bella Ambriz-Kaag. Natalie Moreno-Wept. Nicholas-The Abysmal Hotel and The Horse. Vanshika-

Kaag 156-193

1. Is it generally true, do you think, that "men [and women] of knowledge... have never sought ourselves"? What do you think FN meant? Why should Faust desire a form of knowledge that is more than "just human"? 161
2. What did FN mean in calling himself "dynamite"? 158 Is philosophy and/or humanity well served by philosophers who exalt power and sow chaos?
3. Any comment on Hamlet's Yorick soliloquy? 159 What do you think/feel when contemplating a human skull?
4. Why would FN have found his old boarding house "revolting"?  Have you ever been disappointed, on visiting the former haunts of a famous deceased person? 
5. "...women philosophers have typically been better about actually6 playing with the kids." 164. Any comment?  (For the record: I played with my kids a lot!).  And: "Fatherhood has traditionally been about limiting a child's sense of possibility." 166. I know that wasn't the case for me, or for my kids. Was it for you?
6. Guests were "chatting happily about FN's final days." 168. Does it bother you to imagine random future strangers making light of your own eventual demise? Why would anyone ever do that? Have you ever?
7. What do you think of FN's "wish"? 173
8. Was Adorno right about how we become human? 176  Is one really “nothing”?
9. Is there  a way to gain the benefit of “altitude” without suffering thee “pathos of distance”? 177
10. Is the line between madness and profundity really so fine? 179. If so, would it be prudent to live  un-reflectively?
11. Is the case of Empedocles a cautionary tale for philosophers, especially those who propose a stark and instructive dialectic between seeming opposites like “love and strife”?  182  Had he really “transcended the long suffering of life” by ending it violently? 188
12. Do you think Nietzsche really was “aware of his exaggeration” in ECCE HOMO? 185  Was it a work of genius or madness? Or both?
13. “Bartleby doesn’t need to give a reason. This is a story about volition.”  191.  Comment?  Does volition really exempt reason?
14. Do most parents really try to instill a strong sense of free will in their kids? 192. Is there a way to do that without relinquishing appropriate parental authority?

Wept Ch18-20

1. "Virtually no one escapes the pain of love." 207. Is that really true? Or is it a myth foisted by the pop music industry, among others? Isn't the joy and reward of love at least as common?
2. Was FN right that no one can show anyone else the way out of despair? And is it really plausible that "all serious thinkers contemplate suicide"? 208
3. Do you ever deliberately assume the "cosmic perspective"? 209. Does it help?
4. "Teaching philosophy and using it in life are very different undertakings."  Comment?  [My comment: they're really not at all different for me, I think.]
5. Any comment on Paul Ree's and FN's different attitudes towards godlessness? 210
6. Do you have any experience of obsession comparable to Josef's with Bertha? If you knew you'd waste hundreds of days on a pointless obsession, would that cure you of it? 213
7. Is "anger discharge" therapeutic? 215
8. What does it mean to say that "time cannot be broken"? 223  Does the phrase "all in good time" suggest otherwise? Couldn't we all do a better job of time-management? Should we stop commodifying it ("time is $") and treat it instead as one of our most precious assets?
9. “More in love with desire than with the desired.” 228. Comment?  Do YOU “manufacture your own icon” etc.? If so, does that make you religious… even if you renounce conventional faith? 
10. Have philosophy departments trained “angst doctors”? 230. Should they?
11. “Living safely is dangerous.”  Comment?
12. What does FN mean by “applied philosophy”? 232  Has its time come?  Do we “kill gods but sanctify their replacements”? 233  Should we?
13. Do you “think best while walking”? 235  Do you think best alone, or in conversation?
14. Do you find it helpful to think of life as “a spark between two identical voids”? 238. Are they really identical?
15. Is it possible or desirable to believe and act consistently on the premise that “only this instant is real”? 240
16. Do you find cemeteries clarifying and perspective-giving? 241
17. “To love woman is to hate life!” 243  Is there any way to reconcile that statement with FN’s professed commitment to valuing THIS life, and no other?
18. Do you think most philosophy springs from “the drive to escape death’s oblivion”? 246. What else might it spring from?
19. How will you know when you’ve “consummated your life”? 248f.  Is eternal recurrence life-changing, to you?
20. “The best teacher is one who learns from his student.”  Comment?

Jensen Huang vs. the A.I. Doomers

…Huang is not just influential in terms of controlling one of the central resources for training new A.I. models and using them to answer questions and create intelligence in the world. He has also become very influential in the Trump administration. And Huang has a very different perspective than some of the other lab leads: He’s worried about safety but sees it as a very solvable engineering problem. He is worried about the direction things are going in but does not want to see new regulation to change it...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jensen-huang.html?context=audio&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Questions SEP 24

Presentations- 

Erick Martinez-master and slave moralities. cooper-Decadence and Disgust. Anon-__

Kaag 120-155 

1. Spending time as a teenager under a rock: this seems an apt metaphor for the delusions of youth,. Do you think Kaag intends this? What might he expect to learn, by retracing the steps of his own teenage years? 121
2. "To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child," so if Cicero was right I find most of my 1st year students still arrested in their development: they're familiar with almost none of the historical highlights I mention before class each day. Why is this, do you think?
3. If "the 'good' for the master is the power to advance, to assert oneself" etc., aren't his students right: Augustus and his ilk are jerks? Are they jerks because of their strength, or their cruelty? Is it the "docility" of the herd that condemns them, or the decency? 123-5  Is it not obvious that those who define good in narrowly self-serving terms have failed to grasp the concept? Did Romans venerate "an emaciated Jew hung unceremoniously on a cross," or what he preached about kindness, love, mutual solicitude, et al?
4. If perfectionism makes life with others difficult, does that not suggest its undesirability? 127-9  Is obsessive-compulsive behavior sometimes mistaken for perfectionism? Can you relate to Kaag's fasting compulsion? Is it pathological to seek self-mastery in ways that subvert health? Are you interested in the relation between food and thought? 130  Was Feuerbach right?
5. "I wanted only to walk. I was beyond unhealthy..."  And yet, walking is generally touted as a positive addiction. Do you agree?
6. Six months before his daughter was born, Kaag started taking anti-depressants. 131  Six months before my first daughter was born, I was elated. High on life, as it were. Any comment?
7. Schopenhauer thought we were suffering creatures "at base"... 132   But aren't we experiencing creatures at base, alternately suffering, soaring, and everything in-between? Isn't it excessive pessimism to emphasize suffering?
8. "The average person takes ten thousand steps a day..." 132-4  That's extremely inflated, isn't it, especially for college students who own electric scooters? And for philosophers these days, who mostly no longer subscribe to the Peripatetic school? But isn't it true that walking is "one of the most sustaining and refreshing" activities?
9. Is going home, and feeling at home in the world, the ultimate form of salvation-at least for a secular naturalist? 138
10. Is ours a decadent age? If so, how much is that due to our being a consumer culture?

RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch14-17

1. Do you share any of Breuer's complaints? 155-6, passim. Is there a better name for "despair therapy"? 157
2. "Melancholics starve themselves or may commit suicide." So much for Kaag's "ascetic ideal," no? Do you agree that that's often a euphemism for a form of self-destructive mental illness?
3. Any comment on "hysteria" as a tool, historically, for repressing women? 158, 161, 165
4. "For one can never really be helped by another..." 160  That's false, isn't it?
5. Are you ever invaded by "alien thoughts"? Do you make them occur? 167, 169
6. Is Nietzsche a great philosopher except when he discusses human beings? 168
7. Are your dreams "a glorious mystery"? 173  Do you analyze them? 
8. Are all relationships a "struggle for power"? 175
9. "Those who wish to pursue the truth must forsake peace of mind..." 178  Any comment?
10. Are all the great philosophers "gloomy"? 179  
11. Are you already forty (in spirit)? 185  Do you entertain visions of "infinite promise"? Do you choose your own goals? 187
12. "...thank God, God is dead..."  190 Any comment?
13. What do you think of academics who "write solely for the academic community"? 196

“Misaligned recursive self-improvement”

Ezra Klein: We’re Not Losing Control of A.I. We’re Giving It Away.

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000011157772/were-not-losing-control-of-ai-were-giving-it-away.html?smid=url-share&smid=nytcore-ios-share

But on the other hand, Jaron Lanier: https://youtu.be/XMNpjb3LPlY?is=8NEYeQiM5gxeFs1J

The main takeaway: nothing is inevitable. Yet. We can still recapture that 90s Star Trek optimism about the future…

Questions SEP 22

Presentations-
Connor Sundling-__ .  Jacquez Caldwell-herd mentality

Post your comments by Monday mid-day if possible.

Kaag 83-119

1. Should we trust unmarried people to offer an accurate characterization of marriage? (epigraph)  Are good marriages founded in friendship? 89
2. Do you experience an "internal dialogue between I and me"? 84  What do you think about Anendophasia?
3. Do you fear the loss of solitude in parenting? (I actually acquired a greater capacity for solitude, after our first daughter was born.) 85 Do you think Kaag and his friend Clancy are wrong about parenting being "like breaking rocks"? 117
4. Is walking the best way to see things? (Annie Dillard thought so.)
5. Is attention to an author's biography always or usually a fallacy? 86
6. Are you an altruist? Do you know any altruists? 87 Is it possible to be self-interested AND still sometimes--or often--behave selflessly?
7. Any comment on Nietzsche's misogyny? 89, 116
8. How would you respond to a marriage proposal on a second date? 91   Is it possible to "find" oneself in another, as Nietzsche sought to find himself in Salome? 92  Was his approach to her "creepy"? 93
9. Is it true that one member of every trio is "superfluous" and thus sabotages deep conversation? 94
10. Is a philosopher both beast and God, or intermediate between them? 97  Aren't we all somewhere on that spectrum?  Was Nietzsche's "lunacy" an inevitable result of his philosophy?
11. Was Zarathustra's confusion about wanting followers who were free spirits (and thus NOT followers) also Nietzsche's? 99  Should any philosopher ever want followers?  Can a "small group of free spirits" really coexist in tight cohesion? 100
12. Does the "sacred Yes" of childhood (101) resonate with Hannah Arendt's discussion of renewal? (See The Crisis in Education)
13. What does it mean to you to "die at the right time"? 104
14. Why shouldn't you believe any idea "not born in the open air" etc.?
15. Is Carol right about Kant, and about Nietzsche? 109, 113
16. Would you ever want your adult child to read that you never wanted kids? 117

#RECOMMENDED: Wept Ch9-13

1. "I have too few friends to risk losing them." 105 Does Nietzsche seem likely ever to have said or thought this?
2. Any comment on Nietzsche's anti-altruism ("no one has ever done anything wholly for others")? 107  (See #6 above)
3. Is Breuer right that Nietzsche assumes his own attitudes are universal, etc.? 111. Are we all prone to that delusion, to some extent?
4. Do you think physicians are generally as motivated by money as Max seems to be? 116. Is it plausible to think that someone like Josef would be willing to learn from a patient like Nietzsche? 118 Does his proposition cross ethical doctor-patient boundaries? 138 Is that why Freud is incredulous? 149
5. Why do you think Nietzsche wanted to claim noble Polish heritage? 124
6. Why doesn't N like for anyone to offer to help him? 125. Is this related to his egoism?  But what do you make of his pleas for help when he's sick and incapacitated? 128
7. Was N's behavior foolish, or malignantly self-destructive? 133
8. Does N really know "how to tolerate a life of despair"? 139. Is he an "expert on survival"? 144