Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a necropolitics, the social bond between the dead and living that holds societies together—a shared space or polis where the dead are maintained among the living. Moving from mortuary rituals to literary representations, from the problem of ancestrality to technologies of survival and intergenerational communication, Hans Ruin explores the epistemological, ethical, and ontological dimensions of what it means to be with the dead. His phenomenological approach to key sources in a range of fields gives us a new perspective on the human sciences as a whole.

The article addresses the role and meaning of prayer and the language of piety and praise in Nietzsche’s writings, notably in Zarathustra. Nietzsche can be read as an uncompromising critic of religion, but also as the initiator of a new form of faith, by some scholars even described as a “Dionysian piety”. The analysis takes its lead from how Zarathustra refers to his yes-saying as also saying ”amen”, exploring how Nietzsche explicitly incorporates the language of religious discourse in his writing. Examining passages where he explicitly questions the adoption of confessional language and prayer, it also criticizes as overly simplistic the view of his thinking as seeking a new piety. Through a discussion of the significance of prayer from a both a psychological and linguistic perspectives, it highlights the experience of “inspiration” as a key to the adoption of confessional language in Zarathustra. In an interpretation of the last part of this book it shows how its concluding scenes coalesce precisely around the role and possibility of prayer and piety, and how a crisis in the narrative is triggered by the inability of Zarathustra’s visitors to properly understand his message in this regard. A concluding interpretation of the section ”Vor Sonnen-Aufgang” in the third part of the book shows how it gathers the philosophical stakes involved in Nietzsche’s understanding of prayer and faith.

The article provides a new interpretation of the most widely cited essay on historical consciousness, Friedrich Nietzsche?s ?On the use and abuse of history for life? from 1874, reconnecting it to current debates in educational science and the role of the historian and educator in a post-colonial situation. It reminds us how historical consciousness is an always contested and critical space, where our existential commitment to justice is also tested. The interpretation moves beyond the standard understanding of Nietzsche as only favouring a life-affirming use of history. It displays how his argument opens the door toward understanding historical consciousness as a transcultural ethical space of an encounter between the dead and the living. It addresses the contemporary debate in education science concerning the relation and preference between a broader and more limited notion of historical consciousness, questioning the possibility of a conclusive theory of historical consciousness for practical-pedagogical purposes. It exemplifies its conclusions in regard to the legacies of the Holocaust and to Apartheid, as also pedagogical challenges.

Taking its point of departure in an enigmatic passage from the Analects, in which the interlocutor is likened by the master to a sacrificial vase, the essay explores how this teaching can be read as a indirect commentary on the proper way of inhabiting and communicating tradition. The relation to the ancestors and the proper way of handling the rites for the dead is shown to reveal a more basic hermeneutic argument in Confucian thinking, opening the text to its own future transformation.