Thu, Nov 28, 2024 16:17

In an article at The MIT Press Reader, Prof. Robert Hassan argues that Friedrich Nietzsche’s use of the Malling-Hansen writing ball may have influenced his philosophical work, boosting his productivity and altering his writing style and analytical depth.

Typing transformed Nietzsche’s consciousness — it affected how he thought about and expressed the world as he understood it. The literary scholar Walter Ong has said that writing as a technology was not simply an exterior aid but an “interior transformation of consciousness” […] The typewriter, with its capacities and its limits, its opportunities, and its curtailments, restructured his consciousness and therefore reorganized his philosophical and creative expression.