Founder and director of Wake Up Yoga, Corina wholeheartedly believes that the ancient practice of yoga perfectly complements our modern pursuit of vibrant health, personal fulfillment, harmonious relationships, and spiritual enrichment. Viewing asana practice as an entry-point to self-study, Corina weaves the tenets of yoga philosophy into her teaching, inspiring students to discover how this age-old practice remains relevant today in their own lives.

Creating community has always been my primary objective. I wanted to create a place where everyone feels accepted, embraced, and has a sense of belonging. I wanted to create a sanctuary in which people can take off their armor of defensiveness, learn to be kind to themselves, feel safe being kind to others, discover their true priorities, and dare to live their lives with authenticity, integrity, and tremendous joy. I wanted to create the space for people to attend to their greatest gifts: true health and vitality, on all levels of being.

Wake Up Yoga is incredibly warm and welcoming. Creating this magical space may be the very best thing I ever do with my life. Everyone is welcome. All of our teachers train at Wake Up Yoga, so there is a unifying subtext. Our teachers use intelligent sequencing, effective language, supportive props, and encouragement to make the practice accessible to everyone present. The classes often have a philosophical theme to create a context for the practice, and there is no sense of competition. And still each teacher has her/his own voice and passion for the practice, so the classes have their own unique flavor.

Yoga is not about accomplishing poses, but everything you learn about yourself along the way. We know that children learn life lessons through play; I believe adults can learn life lessons through yoga practice.

I am motivated by a pursuit of truth and a wish to impart curiosity about things we could so easily take for granted like having a body and being alive. I seek to inspire students to discover their boundless potential and live their lives on purpose.

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Wake Up Yoga

Once you have been notified of acceptance into your program, contact Registrations at 866.200.5203 to confirm your space in the training and reserve your accommodations.In order to register for a Kripalu professional training, with the exception of select 1000-Hour Yoga Teacher Trainings, you must first receive an acceptance decision from the Kripalu School of Yoga.

50 percent of the total program cost (tuition and housing/commuter fee) is due at the time of registration to reserve program space and housing. The remaining balance is due five days before program start date.

Refunds (less a $50 processing fee) will be given according to the following schedule: for cancellations two or more days prior to the start of the program, 100 percent of monies paid will be refunded. Less than two days prior to and up to completion of 25 percent of the program, 75 percent of the program cost will be refunded. Up to completion of 50 percent of the program, 50 percent of the program cost will be refunded. Up to completion of 75 percent of the program, 25 percent of the program cost will be refunded. No other refunds or credits are available. The standard cancellation policy applies to all other charges.

For programs offered in two 12-day sessions in which both parts are required for program completion, program cost refers to the total cost of both program parts. Refunds are based on full program length (24 days not 12 days), according to the terms of the cancellation policy above.

For other programs with multiple modules, program cost is determined based on one module at a time. Program start date refers to the start of each module.

Kripalus standard payment policy and refund and cancellation policy applies to the 1000-hour training programs, with the exception of Chakras, Granthis, and Nadis; Restorative Yoga Teacher Training; Yin Yoga Teacher Training; and Kripalu Yoga in the Schools Teacher Training.

Acceptable forms of payment are

Note If you prefer to pay your application fee by check, make checks payable to Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, and indicate the program and date you applied for on the check.

*If you are an international student traveling to Kripalu for a training and you are unable to obtain a visa to allow you entrance into the United States, we will refund in full all monies paid toward tuition and housing, including the $50 processing fee. Application fees are nonrefundable.

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Kripalu School of Yoga | Kripalu

There are many different ideas related to Yoga, where it comes from, what it is all about, and how to practice a range of techniques.

Generally, it is recognised as an ancient system of philosophies, principles and practices derived from the Vedic tradition of India and the Himalayas, more than 2500 years ago. It is a system that recognises the multi-dimensional nature of the human person, and primarily relates to the nature and workings of the mind, based on experiential practice and self-enquiry.

In Yoga, the body, breath and mind are seen as a union of these multi-dimensional aspects of each and every human being. The system and various techniques of Yoga cultivate the experience of that union, leading to greater integration of being, internal peacefulness, and clarity of the mind. It is a system that is designed to cultivate health and happiness, and a greater sense of self-awareness and higher consciousness.

Yoga cultivates health and wellbeing (physical, emotional, mental and social) through the regular practice of a range of many different techniques, including postures and movement, breath awareness and breathing exercises, relaxation and concentration, self-inquiry and meditation.

Yoga is an approach to life that values appropriate effort, based on balance and harmony, within each person and with each other.

Quality research is important for any field of well-being, health-care and personal development. It could be argued that the practice of yoga has undergone hundreds of years of research through the trialling of the ancient practitioners, who in turn observed the effects upon their students.

However in our contemporary context, we expect that protocols, interventions and other activities that form part of our well-being or health-care plan can stand the test of our contemporary research methods.

In recent years there have been a growing number of well designed studies into the health benefits of yoga. These show that the practice of yoga is safe, useful and very cost effective for a wide range of conditions and life-stages

Yoga Australia continues to keep informed of the latest research and has compiled a representative list of some of the areas of research undertaken in the past few years.

Find Out More

Yoga classes vary, depending on the particular style or tradition of the teacher or school. Participants may often practice on yoga/exercise mats.

A common yoga class typically includes:

Meditation is usually an integral part of yoga and many yoga teachers may offer classesdedicated to the practice ofmeditation. Participants usually practise either on cushions on the floor, or seated on chairs.A dedicated meditation class typically includes:

Classes generally span 1 1 hours.

Cost per classes typically varies from $10 $25 depending on time, location and the teachers experience.

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What is Yoga? Yoga Australia

We build community and empower our students to take what they absorb in yoga and meditation into their daily lives. With our pay-as-you-can commitment, we open the studio to ALL.

Our teachers are light-hearted, non-judgemental and compassionate. It doesnt matter the brand of your yoga pants, how long youve been practicing, or if you can touch your toes. We strive to serve all people, including those with visible and invisible disabilities.We believe if yoga is accessible to every body, a return to our true nature of peace and joy through yoga should be affordable for everyone.

From our humble beginnings in a shared room with a crowdfunding campaign, our commitment to creating a safe place for spiritual growth enables us to hold space for you to work through whatever brings you to your mat. Whether you want to increase mobility or strength, establish discipline, release stress, build confidence, or start a meditation practice, there is a class on our schedule for you.

Many of our classes are accessible to brand-new-to-yoga students. Those with any sort of mobility restrictions (or self-described as "terribly inflexible")will enjoy Sadhana level 1,Restorative or Blissful Yoga to start. For the mild-to-moderately active person looking to begin yoga, we recommend any of our classes EXCEPT the Strong Flow classes, which are a bit more upbeat and, as a novice, can be overwhelming to keep up with the poses and the pace.

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Breathing Space Yoga + Meditation

There is now a wealth of physiological and psychological data on the mechanics of consciousness, such as our sensory selection system and linear experience of time. Scientists know how these mechanics evolved for survival and how they limit and distort our perception, contributing to the seemingly intractable problems in the modern world: misdirection of effort in medicine and education; ecological shortsightedness; propensity to brainwashing; the constant failure to understand people from different parts of the world.

In our highly secularized world, we are prone to identify these mechanics as the sum total of our human nature. But we know they are not. Modern research also points to more advanced capacities in our nature capacities often associated with the brains right hemisphere such as context formation, intuition, or whole-patterned thought. Though latent or less developed, these capacities are in evidence at the very heart of human creativity. They are reflected in our art, literature, music, scientific inspiration even in the gravity-defying moves of a skilled basketball player.

Recognizing the pitfalls in our automatic default mindset and the need to train more advanced capacities are not new themes in human history. We find them in myths and stories that recur in all times and cultures, in the core insights of the worlds great religions, in the writings of great thinkers such as Plato and Al Ghazzali.

The gift of modern science has been an expanded framework for taking charge of our own evolution for creative, focused application of new and traditional insights to education, health care, communication, resource planning, and international relations. What we do with this gift may well be the key to our continued survival.

ISHKs current project, God 4.0, provides widespread access to the information we need to advance human potential. It is our hope that the development of these ideas will help us secure a future where humanity can unite around a common higher perspective.

Further reading on conscious evolution:By Robert Ornstein:The Psychology of Consciousness,The Evolution of Consciousness,The Right Mind,New World New Mind (with Paul Ehrlich)

The Sufis by Idries ShahThinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind by Robin Dunbar & Clive GambleSocial: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman

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Conscious Evolution - ISHK

"But not to perish from internal distress and doubt when one inflicts great suffering and hears the cry of suffering : that is great, that belongs to greatness." The Gay Science, Fourth Book, 325

How can suffering being great be justified?

-below are rebuttals to immediately clear posits-

-Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich strker." =That still leaves me with questions: I would say painful experiences make you more weary and occupy time, not that they make you stronger.

-Problems direct humanity toward betterment. =We all have pain and have recorded it for at least 4,000 years, and the elimination of anxiety regarding the sustinance of life has not occurred. (food/Healthcare in developed countries)

I have posted this on stackexchange and have been lacking an answer (admittedly this is its revised form, through feedback from said site). This is my first post on Reddit, though I am not unfamiliar with the beast, but I hope the more open format of this site can give me at least some additional perspectives for consideration.

This topic concerns me greatly, it has occupied all of my free time for 4 days now. This is a plea.

==Addendum, respondents please read==

It seems as the Nietzschean view is that suffering is something to be worked through, not appreciated in and of itself (outside of reflection on this given opportunity).

Is there another way to view the swath of humanity that is not transcending their suffering other than in disappointment and disgust?

Read this article:
Why does Nietzsche think suffering is great? : Nietzsche

We live in an evolving universe, in an orgasmic nuclear dance of consciousness. Everything is changing, evolving, transforming. Wise men and women throughout history have tried to define the nature of the reality in which they found themselves. Myriad models have existed- most have fallen into the historical garbage heap, others cling by threads. We, these generations, are creating a new model. Is it all figured out and defined? No. Do we know some of the elements of what this future model might look like? Yes.

The primary intention of the Conscious Life Expo Conference and Exposition is to participate in the conscious co-creation of a new world, a world based on new paradigms in science, in spirituality, in longevity, in local and global community, in relationship, in health and well-being.

And while we co-create this new wholistic model through our authentic self expression, we also participate in a powerful and passionate celebration of life and love. The Expo is a three-day gathering of the tribes, a three-day celebration of evolution and consciousness and a three-day brainstorming session on who we are, where we are and where we are going.

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Conscious Life Expo

A new generation of transhumanists is emerging. You can feel it in handshakes at transhumanist meet-ups. You can see it when checking in to transhumanist groups in social media. You can read it in the hundreds of transhumanist-themed blogs. This is not the same bunch of older, mostly male academics that have slowly moved the movement forward during the last few decades. This is a dynamic group of younger people from varying backgrounds: Asians, Blacks, Middle Easterners, Caucasians, and Latinos. Many are females, some are LGBT, and others have disabilities. Many are atheist, while others are spiritual or even formally religious. Their politics run the gamut, from liberals to conservatives to anarchists. Their professions vary widely, from artists to physical laborers to programmers. Whatever their background, preferences, or professions, they have recently tripled the population of transhumanists in just the last 12 months.

"Three years ago, we had only around 400 members, but today we have over 10,000 members," says Amanda Stoel, co-founder and chief administrator of Facebook group Singularity Network, one of the largest of hundreds of transhumanist-themed groups on the web.

Transhumanism is becoming so popular that even the comic strip Dilbert, which appears online and in 2000 newspapers, recently made jokes about it.

Despite its growing popularity, many people around the world still don't know what "transhuman" means. Transhuman literally means beyond human. Transhumanists consist of life extensionists, techno-optimists, Singularitarians, biohackers, roboticists, AI proponents, and futurists who embrace radical science and technology to improve the human condition. The most important aim for many transhumanists is to overcome human mortality, a goal some believe is achievable by 2045.

Transhumanism has been around for nearly 30 years and was first heavily influenced by science fiction. Today, transhumanism is increasingly being influenced by actual science and technological innovation, much of it being created by people under the age of 40. It's also become a very international movement, with many formal groups in dozens of countries.

Despite the movement's growth, its potential is being challenged by some older transhumanists who snub the younger generation and their ideas. These old-school futurists dismiss activist philosophies and radicalism, and even prefer some younger writers and speakers not have their voices heard. Additionally, transhumanism's Wikipedia page -- the most viewed online document of the movement -- is protected by a vigilant posse, deleting additions or changes that don't support a bland academic view of transhumanism.

Inevitably, this Wikipedia page misses the vibrancy and happenings of the burgeoning movement. The real status and information of transhumanism and its philosophies can be found in public transhumanist gatherings and festivities, in popular student groups like the Stanford University Transhumanist Association, and in social media where tens of thousands of scientists and technologists hang out and discuss the transhuman future.

Jet-setting personality Maria Konovalenko, a 29-year-old Russian molecular biophysicist whose public demonstrations supporting radical life extension have made international news, is a prime example.

"We must do more for transhumanism and life extension," says Konovalenko, who serves as vice president of Moscow-based Science for Life Extension Foundation. "This is our lives and our futures we're talking about. To sit back and and just watch the 21st Century roll by will not accomplish our goals. We must take our message to the people in the streets and strive to make real change."

Transhumanist celebrities like Konovalenko are changing the way the movement gets its message across to the public. Gauging by the rapidly increasing number of transhumanists, it's working.

A primary goal of many transhumanists is to convince the public that embracing radical technology and science is in the species' best interest. In a mostly religious world where much of society still believes in heavenly afterlives, some people are skeptical about whether significantly extending human lifespans is philosophically and morally correct. Transhumanists believe the more people that support transhumanism, the more private and government resources will end up in the hands of organizations and companies that aim to improve human lives and bring mortality to an end.

The rest is here:
A New Generation of Transhumanists Is Emerging | HuffPost

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Life Coach Spotter

This book offers a valuable and provocative contribution to the growing literature on Nietzsche's political philosophy. It invites us to understand Nietzsche's politics as consisting mainly in a kind of political program calling for a radical transformation of our earthly habitation. On Shapiro's reading, this program principally requires reconceiving our relation to temporality, and, in particular, to the future, by cultivating a kind of openness that can make us receptive to those rare opportunities for radical change Nietzsche called "great events". Nietzsche's politics of futurity, however, requires displacing the way of thinking prevalent in the petty politics of nation-states. In each chapter, Shapiro investigates different aspects of Nietzsche's critiques of this way of thinking, trying to articulate, at the same time, its positive alternative.

In the introductory chapter, Shapiro argues that "earth" is a political concept that Nietzsche meant to counterpose to the Hegelian notion of "world", which has politico-theological affiliations with pernicious notions of unity and eternity, and is implicated with a teleological metanarrative of the end of history that overly extols the nation-state as the medium for the world-spirit's self-realization (pp.4, 7, 11-13, 16). According to Shapiro, Nietzsche sought to combat these entrenched political notions by initiating a great politics of the earth that, in contrast to the homogenizing world of nation-states, entreats us to see our planet as a place of radical plurality and of mobile multitudes that can dedicate themselves to giving a new direction to the earth (p.5, 18). Shapiro is aware that the dichotomy of "earth" vs. "world" may be suspect, insofar as the contrast is not one Nietzsche appears to have made explicit in his texts. Still, he argues (in my view credibly) that the distinction illuminates important themes in Nietzsche's work and that, in a way, it is implicit from the beginning in all of Nietzsche's philosophizing.

Chapter 2 picks up the anti-metanarrative theme by focusing on early Nietzsche's invective against end of history thinking. Shapiro emphasizes the way in which, for Nietzsche, this kind of thinking is implicated with a racist ideology of national unity that devalues the exceptional human being in favor of the uniform, homogeneous masses of the nation-state (pp.29, 32). This association is partly explained by the fact that state thinking displays a tendency to draw borders and posits an exclusionary dichotomy, in which the reasonably regulated life of those living within the state is to be contrasted with the chaotic barbarism encountered outside (pp.50-51). To sustain this kind of ideology, the state exploits the journalistic conception of events understood as "news", i.e. as something that must be perpetually expected and feared, which, among other things, facilitates the manufacturing of permanent "states of exception" through which the hold on power of the money-makers and military despots that control the state is strengthened, with the excuse that it is the only way to handle the constant siege that the state is under (pp.46-47, 67-68). According to Shapiro, Nietzsche in his early writings, aiming to disrupt this network of statist ideas, tried to articulate a conception of "great events" as unpredictable and transformative occurrences that instead of foreclosing the future can throw it open. But his attempt failed because he was still caught up with problematic notions of national unity and even with Hegelian modes of thinking (pp.36-37, 56-57).

Chapter 3 begins with a look at "states of exception" which, on Shapiro's analysis, Nietzsche saw as symptoms of the fragility of the modern state (pp.65-66). The nation-state requires the use of devices to suspend the rule of law in part because the increased mobility of populations and the growing cultural intermingling of Europeans are eroding the authority of the state and threatening to abolish it altogether. Much of the chapter, however, is devoted to a very hard to follow discussion of techniques of measurement and control of people, processes of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization that organize the way we think of our relation to space and earth, the relation between music and geography, and so on. As happens in other places, this discussion, while insightful, is a bit disorganized, with abrupt changes in focus and the development of lines of thought whose connection to an overarching thesis is not always discernible. Still, perhaps the connecting thread is to be found in Shapiro's attempt to articulate what he takes to be Nietzsche's way of exploring other alternatives for inhabiting the earth and overcoming the pernicious essentialism of the nation-state that stifles the spirit of a people. Shapiro argues that Nietzsche saw populations, not as masses to be molded into systematic and homogeneous forms, but as multitudes full of productive possibilities precisely because they constitute experiments in inhabiting the earth, ones that require mobility in the form of nomadic wanderings, migrations, and also climatic and environmental changes in order to be fecund (pp.91, 93). Out of these multitudes are born the hybrid humans that anticipate the European of the future by trying out different cultural combinations and syntheses (p.97).

Chapter 4 returns to the theme of great events, this time highlighting their nature as kairos or moments of opportunity to be seized at the right juncture. Shapiro argues that a key aspect of nobility, as Nietzsche understood it, consists in "a mode of living one's temporality involving alert vigilance, freedom from the crowd's enthusiasms of the moment, and from the deadly deformation of lived time through economies of debt that mortgage the future" (p.102). In order to seize the opportune moment, the noble type must think beyond peoples and fatherlands, thus implicating him with the desire to see Europe become one by experimenting with new cosmopolitan forms of diversity and multiplicity that extend beyond borderlines (pp.109-110, 116). Similarly, cultivating this type of nobility will require escaping the logic of mortgage time that governs nation-states, where personal and political time are subjected to a regime of debt and credit that forces us to experience life in the temporal mode of chronos, i.e. as a series of stretches of time measured in terms of conditions of repayments of debts and of penalties for defaulting that all militate against our ability to seize the kairos (p.130-131).

In chapter 5, Shapiro investigates the place of the garden metaphor in Nietzsche's politics. It includes a fascinating discussion of the historic role that the concept of the garden has played in the formation of modern aesthetics (pp.140-151). Shapiro has a very general statement regarding the garden as a space to promote a hedonistic happiness in which "the dominant themes are the shaping and tending of the natural, with a view to producing a rewarding result as well as the enjoyment of an earthly site" (pp.150-151). However, he fails to connect his rich analysis more forcefully with Nietzsche's use of the metaphor. This missed opportunity is unfortunate, for Shapiro touches on themes that are very much at play in Nietzsche's philosophy. For instance, Shapiro notes that the Italian and French styles of gardening that Nietzsche admired were designed to highlight the sovereignty of the human will over nature, its ability to master and civilize natural forces in order to subordinate them to some grand rational plan. And while, in fairness, it should be said that Shapiro does claim that the Nietzschean garden metaphor stresses the power of shaping, framing, and making (p.156), and that it even incorporates the idea of the garden as the work of reason on behalf of reason (p.162), the overall tendency of Shapiro's account is to foreclose the possible connection that these notions might have, in Nietzsche philosophy, to more grandiose conceptions of the human will and its capacity to plan the future with world-conquering and eternalizing ambitions. Such connections would, of course, run counter to the general picture of Nietzsche's politics Shapiro is determined to draw, in which supposedly the future of the earth cannot be planned (pp.98-99). Yet, it seems to me that such themes are very much part of Nietzsche's philosophy, as seen, for instance, in the important section GS 291 that Shapiro himself brings to our attention. For Nietzsche, the garden is not just the product of an experimental reason, as Shapiro would have it (p.161), but also of an eternalizing, totalizing, perhaps -- forgive the contrived formula -- even of a metanarrativizing reason. The Genoa builders of GS 291, after all, "built and adorned to last for centuries and not for the fleeting hour" and they "perpetrated acts of violence and conquest" with their designs, that had the grand ambition of laying hands to the whole world around them in order to "make it [their] possession by incorporating it into [their] plan". Here is one of the places where the real weak spot of Shapiro's otherwise insightful analysis is exposed most clearly, a point to which I will return shortly.

In the last chapter, Shapiro turns to Nietzsche's philosophy of the Antichrist by examining the infamous book that bears that name in its title. For Shapiro, one of the principal lessons of The Antichrist is that Christianity is Paul's political invention, through which the early Christian interpretation of the Jesus event was subverted in order to accommodate the fact that the apocalyptic expectations of the faith had been disappointed (pp.175, 186-187). A religion that started out as rigorously unworldly had to learn to adapt itself to a world that stubbornly continued to persist. This political adjustment involved, above all, developing a new theory of time in which history became plotted as a story of deferred redemption through the intervention of Church and State, whose worldly powers ward off the imminent coming of the Antichrist (pp.195-196). Since, according to Shapiro, the metanarrative of world-history is one of the chief elements of statist ideology, he argues that Christianity is the inventor of world-history and that The Antichrist is integral to Nietzsche's attempt to overcome this way of reckoning time that belittles humanity and the earth (pp.180-181). How the reformed Christian story of deferred redemption through the state transmutes itself into a story of fulfilled redemption in the state is something that Shapiro does not fully explain. On his account, Christianity lends ideological support to imperial authority partly by fomenting the belief that the state is the restraining force that can keep the Antichrist from appearing and history and the world from ending (p.186). Yet, part of statist ideology is also to suppose that the state will bring about the end of history, and these two functions, as restrainer and enabler of the end of time, do not seem compatible at first glance. Perhaps the answer to this apparent contradiction is obvious to Shapiro, but, in general, these kinds of unresolved tensions abound in his analysis.

Overall, Nietzsche's Earth is very interesting and provocative; it strives with no small measure of success to provide a coherent picture of Nietzsche's philosophy. Shapiro does a good job of showing the relevance of Nietzsche's thought to contemporary social and political issues like the war on terror, globalization, the environmental crisis, and so on. He is to be commended especially also for his ability to engage fearlessly with Nietzsche's metaphors, which are an essential part of his thinking, and yet are often neglected by many Anglophone commentators, particularly those working within the analytic tradition. To them, this book may serve as a lesson and an example of the kinds of rewards that could await those who dare to follow the thread that leads into Nietzsche's symbolic universe. In this regard, I think that Shapiro has benefitted well from the continental tradition he draws from, which has fewer qualms about engaging in metaphoric analysis.

But the root of Shapiro's strength may also be the source of his weakness. For one thing, readers who are not conversant with the philosophical perspectives of writers like Deleuze, Guattari, and Agamben will have a hard time following the discussions where these figures are recruited in order to explain important themes in Nietzsche's philosophy. Shapiro often forgets to take the time to help readers clearly understand the conceptual resources he deploys, leaving us to fend for ourselves and to resolve the apparent tensions introduced by the use of these resources. How is it that statist ideology, whose tendency supposedly inclines towards an entrenched mentality of drawing borders, is not, as one would have perhaps naturally expected, associated with the thought-process of "territorialization" by means of which "we humans (and all living things) . . . [stake] out a space, a place . . . we mark the borders of our situation" (p.85), but is instead linked to "deterritorializing" forms of thinking in which spaces are being absorbed in a kind of expansionist mindset that, disrespecting all borders, attempts to "[configure] itself as a mobile political structure, not absolutely tied to a fixed place" (p.86)? How is it that the network of statist ideas that includes the notion of the "end of history" according to which no more new events are to be expected because time has ceased, nonetheless, also includes the journalistic conception of events as "news" that must constantly be manufactured because the state cannot tolerate empty time?

As I mentioned, it may be that the solution to these and other tensions is not so difficult, but Shapiro does not even seem to notice their presence in his account. Indeed, as I read this book, I often found myself feeling as if I had stepped into the middle of a veritable lighting storm of very suggestive insights, but absent the metal rod and the lens that could harness these flashes and concentrate them into a tightly focused beam. As a result, I cannot help but feel that, while generally coherent and capturing much that I believe to be really part of Nietzsche's philosophy, the Nietzschean tapestry that Shapiro has woven threatens to fall apart at the seams. It also provides a skewed and partial picture that omits important themes that, in many ways, are more central to Nietzsche's philosophical outlook and, thus, presumably integral to whatever political project he may have espoused. I have no doubt that, as Shapiro insists, Nietzsche's politics of futurity does entreat us to keep to some extent the future open, to cultivate nomadic lives and ways of thinking that are free from the stifling effects of nationalistic ideology, to resist the pernicious influence of the multitude's passing enthusiasms and the theatrical sensationalism of the modern press, so that we can seize the kairos; and so on.

But where, in this vision, is the Nietzsche who showed admiration for the laws of Manu, "whose goal was to 'eternalize' the supreme condition for a thriving life" (A 58)? Or the Nietzsche who laments the Christian destruction of the Roman Empire because "this most remarkable artwork in the great style was a beginning, its design was calculated to prove itself over the millennia -- , nothing like it has been built to this day, nobody has even dreamed of building on this scale, sub specie aeterni [from the standpoint of eternity]!" (A 60). Where, indeed, is the Nietzsche who, as Shapiro has it, may criticize the logic of mortgage time, but also has no problem incorporating that very logic into his own -- dare I say -- teleological metanarrative of redemption in The Genealogy, by appearing to suggest that the human being with the right to make promises, the sovereign individual who is the master of a free will, might be, in turn, the great promise that nature makes to us as repayment, perhaps, for the guilt it has incurred in using us for its bloody and cruel experiment of cultivating that great tree of humanity that we are to find in the recovered garden-earth Shapiro speaks of (GM II.2-3, 16)? A great promise and a debt, by the way, that in an interesting reversal of the Christian story might require our assistance to be repaid (for instance, by our learning to incorporate the thought of Eternal Recurrence into our lives); for nature is blind, and the god of nature, Dionysus, might be incapable of securing on his own the conditions that will ensure that we are able to enjoy -- as does the convalescent Zarathustra in his post-redemption speech -- the pleasant smell of the rosy apple of our volitional powers instead of the repulsive, sinful scent of a rotting free will that has spoiled on the tree (BGE 203, 211; Z III 'The Convalescent', 2).

It is not altogether surprising that Shapiro has a blind spot for these themes, for they tend to clash with those favored by the type of philosophic tradition in which he feels at home, and for which this kind of eternalizing metanarrative is part of the problem. Nietzsche often speaks positively of tradition. Its tyrannical hold can serve to educate the spirit in self-discipline and prepare it for freedom (BGE 44, 188). The will to tradition is also, for him, part of the engine that drives those powers, like the Roman Empire, "that can wait, that can still make promises", for this will belongs to "the sort of instincts that give rise to institutions, that give rise to a future" (TI 'Skirmishes', 39). But in his characteristic nuanced way, Nietzsche also warns us against becoming so comfortable within our traditions that we simply let our thoughts grow peacefully, all too peacefully from them (UM III.8). One of the things he admired in our modern culture was precisely its ability to contradict and to be hostile towards what is traditional; the ability to take sides against all that is familiar and wants to become firm in us (GS 296, 297).

None of us can completely escape the influence of our preferred traditions. But remembering to remain vigilant of the ways in which they might skew our outlooks might perhaps be one of the most important lessons I am bringing back home with me from my fortunate encounter with Shapiro's thought-provoking work.

REFERENCES

Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1997 [1873-6]), Untimely Meditations (UM), D. Breazeale (ed.) and R.J. Hollingdale (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

-- (2001 [1882 and 1887 (Book V added)]), The Gay Science: with a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs (GS), B. Williams (ed.), and J. Nauckhoff and A. Del Caro (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

-- (2002 [1886]), Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), R.P. Horstmann and J. Norman (eds.), and J. Norman (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

-- (2005 [1888]), The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings (A, EH, and TI, respectively), A. Ridley and J. Norman (eds.), and J. Norman (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

-- (2006 [1887]), On the Genealogy of Morality (GM), K. Ansell-Pearson (ed.) and C. Diethe (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

-- (2006 [1883-5]), Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Z), R. Pippin (ed.) and A. Del Caro (trans.). Cambridge University Press.

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