For all the progress updates in one place:
Progress Update: August 2025
Here are the books I read/listened to for my research during August 2025, and my notes on the progress.
I Am Dynamite! (Nietzsche’s Biography)
Untimely Meditations (Nietzsche, sections)
The Gay Science (Nietzsche)
The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche)
On The Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche)
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche)
The Portable Nietzsche (Nietzsche, sections)
Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Nietzsche, sections)
The Will to Power (Nietzsche)
Human, All Too Human (Nietzsche, sections)
The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Sections)
Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Sections)
Nietzsche and Philosophy (Deleuze, sections)
A Nietzsche Reader (Sections)
Essays and Aphorisms (Schopenhauer, sections)
A Short History of Philosophy (Sections)
The Essays (Montaigne, sections)
The Black Sun
I and Thou (Buber)
White Nights (Dostoyevsky)
The Meaning of Life (LIFE editorial)
How Buddhism Began (Sections)
Sabiduria de Japon
On Character
Holy Sh!t, We Are Alive
The Pathless Path
The Hedonist Manifesto
The Power of Meaning
Notes:
• I came back with a vengeance. After several months of slow progress, August was my redemption month. Some days, my eyes hurt from reading, and I hear voices as I fall asleep from listening to audiobooks all day.
Two reasons for this refocus: First, I don’t feel good back in Canada, so I decided to spend all my time making progress on my book; that way, I can slow down once I’m back in Italy or Japan in the coming months.
Second, after two years of reading like it was a full-time job, I only have 30 books left to complete the bulk of the research. So, with the frustration of wanting this over with and the motivation of seeing the finish line, I went full obsession mode. I’ve gone into that mode several times in my life, and as much as I know it is poison for my mental health, I like it. It’s one of the moments where the world around me fades and I feel most in my own company.
I should be done with this research phase by the end of the year. After that, I’ll move into compiling all my notes, underlinings, and bookmarks. That phase should take about 6 months.
• For August’s reading, I continued the Nietzsche binge I started last month in Sils Maria. I really liked his biography, “I am Dynamite!” It’s a well-harmonized account of Nietzsche’s life and philosophy. The author did a great job showing the interplay between the man and his thinking, much in line with Nietzsche’s own belief that all philosophy is a biographical projection of the philosopher.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, we find in Nietzsche a sensitive man who viewed life as a work of art. His philosophy is one of affirmation of life, not nihilism. He aspired to love all of life, including its suffering, of which he got more than a fair share.
• On the not-so-good side, I tried reading Difference & Repetition by Deleuze, but I dropped it after a few pages. I have no patience left for obscure philosophy and authors who don’t edit their work and use convoluted language and system-building to appear profound, especially when their work is a dissertation or a bid for a philosophy chair. Usually, there is little substance, and it could be explained in such basic terms that they should be ashamed for using so many words to explain simple ideas (think Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, and in this case, Deleuze). Fuck all of them; they are a significant reason why philosophy moved from the practical search for ‘how to live’ to a self-aggrandizing academic exercise that scares most people away.