Happy Hanukkah!

A Hanukkah gift from me, Freud, Benjamin, Arendt, Levinas, and Buber to you.

And if you want to give a gift back to me, you can do so here:

Happy Birthday Nietzsche!

I couldn't think of what to get Nietzsche for his birthday today, so I thought I'd let him hammer away at Freud's ego instead...

As for how Nietzsche may have actually celebrated his birthday, I believe this excerpt from a letter of his from October 24th, 1864 to his mother and sister may give us a hint:

I received the box and am greatly pleased over it, especially the nice linen things and the beautiful music literature. Yesterday we enjoyed a most jolly afternoon. I danced fabulously.

In a letter to Georg Brandes on April 10, 1888, Nietzsche provides us with an idea of how he viewed his life, from the day he was born on:

Vita. I was born the 15th of October 1844, on the battlefield of Lützen. The first name I heard was that of Gustav Adolf. My ancestors were Polish noblemen (Niëzky). It seems the type is well preserved despite three German 'mothers.' In foreign countries I usually am considered a Pole; even this winter the roster of foreign visitors in Nice entered me comme Polonais. They tell me that my head may be found in the paintings of Matejko's. My grandmother belonged to the Schiller-Goethe circle in Weimar. Her brother became the successor of Herder in the office of Commissary-general of Weimar. I had the good fortune of having been a pupil at the venerable Schulpforta from where so many have gone forth who are of account in German literature (such as Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel, Ranke and so on and so forth). [...] I was forced to give up my German citizenship since, as commissioned officer (mounted artillery) I would have been called up too often and disturbed in my academic activities. Nevertheless, I am familiar with two weapons, sabre and cannon, and, perhaps, even with a third one... Then, too, I am according to my instincts a brave animal, yes, a military one. The long resistance has somewhat exasperated my pride.—Am I a philosopher?—But what of it!...

Happy Birthday Freud!

Freud loved creating "portraits" of people, so why not return the favor?

If Freud's letters to his friends are to be taken at face value—which, of course, was something Freud would never have done—then he was clearly not a big fan of either birthdays or growing older...

To Thomas Mann, for Mann's 60th birthday: 

I could wish you a very long and happy life, as is the custom on such occasions. But I shall refrain from doing so; the bestowal of wishes is trivial and seems to me a regression into the era when mankind believed in the magic omnipotence of thought. My most personal experience, moreover, tends to make me consider it a good thing when merciful fate puts a timely end to our span of life.

To Stefan Zweig, on Freud's 80th birthday:

...although I have been exceptionally happy in my home, with my wife and children in particular with one daughter who to a rare extent satisfies all the expectations of a father, I nevertheless cannot reconcile myself to the wretchedness and helplessness of old age, and look forward with a kind of longing to the transition into nonexistence. 

To Lou Andreas-Salomé, on Freud's 80th birthday:

What an amount of good nature and humor it takes to endure the gruesome business of growing old! The garden outside and the flowers in the room are beautiful, but the spring is a Fopperei [trans: mockery], as we say in Vienna.

To Albrecht Schaeffer, on September 19 (my birthday), three days before he died on September 22, 1939:

I am more than eighty-three years old, thus actually overdue, and there is really nothing left for me but to follow your poem's advice: Wait, wait.