translation:
Cirulus Vitiosus

written by Pierre Klossowski
translated by Joseph D. Kuzma

Endnotes

1. The phrase circulus vitiosus deus appears in aphorism 56 of Beyond Good and Evil.


2. In translating the following passages from the Nachlass I have attempted to reconcile, wherever
   possible, Nietzsche’s original text with the French version quoted by Klossowski. In the process, a
   recent English translation by Kate Sturge, which appears in Writings from the Late Notebooks
   (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), has also been consulted.
   
   
3. Literally, “growing-out-of.”
   
   
4. The noun délire (meaning frenzy or delirium) and its adjectival form délirant/e are used by
   Klossowski as terms intended to be juxtaposed—though by no means in a straight-forwardly dialectical manner—with the notion of gregarious, or everyday, reality. The word delusion seems to carry this particular connotation most effectively, as long as it is understood to operate within the economy of what Klossowski elsewhere refers to as the fantasm.
   
   
5. In Hinduism, Manu is the primordial king of the earth. On May 31, 1888—in a letter to Peter Gast—
   Nietzsche writes: “I found Manu’s book of laws in a French translation done in India under strict
   supervision from the most eminent priests and scholars there. This absolutely Aryan work, a priestly codex of morality based on the Vedas, on the idea of caste and very ancient tradition—not pessimistic, albeit very sacerdotal—supplements my views on religion in the most remarkable way. I confess to having the impression that everything else that we have by way of moral lawgiving seems to me an imitation and even a caricature of it…”