Nietzsche's philosophy revaluates nothing less than the very essence of what it means to suffer. That is, his philosophy imparts a clearer understanding of suffering. It is apparent that most people abhor suffering induced by tension because it is often viewed as a means to an end: a necessary evil. Much is already understood about the utility of adversity, but rarely is its meaning taken into consideration. My ambition is to explicate his argument that suffering is not only useful, but that it has considerable value by itself, regardless of its consequences. To further explicate Nietzsche's view, I will turn to authors such as Reginster, Hesse, Huxley, Frankl, and Kundera. The issue of suffering today is hardly given explicit consideration as a matter of meaning despite its wide range of implications. Indeed, there are several primary contemporary outlets to which many escape in the face of hardship and pain. I will contend that Christianity, social media, and drugs such as alcohol are anesthetic in nature, as they exercise the proclivity to negate the real world in favor of an illusory world devoid of suffering.

Published in Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 14.3 (2014) http://www.reconstruction.eserver.org/Issues/143/McKee.shtml

This paper aims, in a perspectivist attitude, to interrogate Nietzsche's concept of "eternal recurrence" and its denial in the novel of Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." As a starting point, Heidegger's challenge in "Being and Time" with the traditional philosophy which comprehends the eternity and time, as features of the ideal and phenomenal world will be prevailed to highlight how the interpretation of time as a moveable image of eternity is to be mistaken; to him, time apart from "Dasein"'s original temporality is nothing, it does not find its meaning in eternity, but in death. Further, his suggestion that this traditional perception of time to be a linear series of "now" points that can be measured according to the modification of present was merely a desire to overcome time and indeed mortality will be clarified. For such a claim, Heidegger's adherence to Kant's "Copernican Turn" will be examined. Turning back to Nietzsche's contest to this Western tradition in his book "Thus spoke Zarathustra" ignoring the linearity of time, and forwarding the circularity that stresses on an eternal repetition of occurrences which foreshadows the concept of life after death ad infinitum results in the very "existence" to be "the heaviest of burdens" is to be discussed. The challenge back by Milan Kundera in his "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" with his suggestion that human time is indeed linear, and human existed only once, therefore must be free of any burden will be compared to Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence" to clarify Kundera's concept of "lightness."

What would Nietzsche look like in a novel? Scholars generally agree that Lawrence's novel Women in Love is dominated by Nietzschean ideas, and most agree that the character of Birkin is based on Nietzsche and Lawrence. Most important in this essay is Nietzsche's view of the will to power. For most scholars, to be Nietzschean, a person must internalize Nietzsche's will to power philosophy and then interpret and engage the world through that philosophy--this is, as I show, Heidegger's approach to Nietzsche. I argue that this is incorrect, because Nietzsche states explicitly that the will to power is not an ontological reality but rather his own invention. According to my approach, to be Nietzschean, a person must reject Nietzsche and his will to power and construct one's own system of living. This is what the character of Birkin does with Nietzsche and his will to power, which he mentions directly. This paradox at the core of Nietzsche's writing exposes those authoritarian interpretations of Nietzsche as incoherent nonsense. Lawrence was a great reader of Nietzsche.