The heat of the sun and the cooling philosophy of Nietzsche and Epicurus

Yesterday, once again, I visited the elderly member of the congregation whom I have mentioned before who is in a care home over towards Oakington following a serious stroke. As I have done before following previous visits I decided to came home via Histon Woods. It was yet another hot day in this extended heatwave and so I decided to stop for my lunch and a flask of tea in the shade of the trees in the wood and take the time to read a few pages of what seems to me to be a splendid and helpful new book by Keith Ansell-Pearson called Nietzsche’s Search for Philosophy: On the Middle Writings (Bloomsbury, 2018).

I'm reading Ansell-Pearson's book right now because for various reasons I've been revisiting my own philosophical/minsiterial teaching project which centres in part on Neitzsche's middle period free spirit writings.  I confess to finding Ansell-Pearson's take on things very congenial indeed.

(Here's a link to an excellent interview with Ansell-Pearson about the book).

Given that one of major themes of the book is to show how in these books (Human, all too human, Dawn and The Gay Science) offer the reader a definite (Epicurean inspired) project that centres on cooling down a human mind prone to neurosis it seemed the perfect book to be reading in such hot weather.

As always, I had my camera with me and took a few photos of the, by now, very parched landscape, one very different from that in winter (see HERE) and in spring (see HERE). While I was lingering in the shade I was overflown by three Spitfires, presumably all from Duxford. As always, the sound of their liquid-cooled, V-12, 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engines was deeply and contractually evocative.

All taken with a Fuji X100F

Just click on a photo to enlarge