Nikos Kazantzakis and Zorba the Greek.

ILoveYourVibes

A greek philosopher. Born in a part of Greece still under the Ottoman Empire in 1883. He studied law in Athens. While there he wrote a Juris Doctor thesis was entitled '"Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right and the State".

He then went to the Sorbonne to study philosophy. He studied Henry Bergson during this time.

He was an admirer of Lenin.

He was a huge huge fan of Nietzsche. The idea of man's struggle to 'become' and it became intertwined in what his ideas of god became.

Bergson was a French Jewish philosophy who intertwined philosophy with intuition. But he had a method 'Intuitionism'.

Back to Kazantzakis. He wrote many literary books.

Perhaps two of the most famous might be 'THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST'..and one VERY dear to my heart 'ZORBA THE GREEK'.

And its Zorba the Greek into which Bergons 'intuitionism' comes MOST into play imo. Analysis is always an analysis ad infinitum and one can never reach the absolute.

intuition is a method that aims at getting back to and knowing the things themselves, in all their uniqueness and ineffable originality.

You don't really get it in the film. You have to read the book. It contrasts the acedemic narrator with Zorba. (Zorba was based on George Zorbas a coal miner Kazantzakis met).

Zorba is an elan vital. Its a concept from Bergson. A sheer creative force that causes things to evolve.

Zorba the Greek a philosophical novel written by a Greek Philosopher heavily influenced by Nietzsche and Bergson.

So so so worth reading. I need to read it again.

Black Swan

"Zorba taught me to love life and not fear death" (Nikos Kazantzakis, Prologue, Zorba the Greek, 1952).

ILoveYourVibes

Black Swan wrote: »

"Zorba taught me to love life and not fear death" (Nikos Kazantzakis, Prologue, Zorba the Greek, 1952).

The books has some great quotes.

“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition''