School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemNietzsche's conceptions of philosophy : an essay in interpretation( 2007)No doubt one of the most tangible ways of making an introductory first approach to an individual philosopher's conception of philosophy is via his major themes. Can one argue with the suggestion that philosophy, however else one may think of it, has in its history almost invariably crystallised around a number of themes? I have two in mind - the themes of reason and truth. If it can be agreed that philosophy has, since its inception, made reason and truth the object of its discursive efforts, the locus of its institutionalised accounts, the vehicle for generating a sense of the questionable, wondrous and sublime, then perhaps we can use them to arrive at a first approximative understanding of the individual philosopher Nietzsche's conception of his enterprise. An answer to the question "What does Nietzsche provide us with in the w?y of thematic treatments of reason and truth?" suggests itself immediately. What he gives us are self-conscious, radical interpretations of the two, self-conscious interpretations in the sense that he is at pains to point out the interpretative moment of his dealings with reason and truth, in the sense, in other words, that he points to himself in giving his readers his accounts and is never far from allusions to his own partiality as someone giving an account; radical interpretations in the sense that his interpretations are intended to violently undercut other sorts of interpretations of reason and truth that he takes to be prevalent in the history of philosophy, both at the level of style and the not entirely separable level of content. To the extent that it is possible to talk about Nietzsche's overall picture of reason, we can say that he thinks of it, in dramatic contrast to the thinkers of the tradition, as a surface phenomenon of human life, often indeed as a vagrant surface phenomenon, almost, I should like to say, as a point of concealment for less than inspired men. Truth, to the extent that he can bring it into thematic focus, is for Nietzsche primarily a lived quality of human experience, the product of men's most active and vital experiences of life in the world, that which must be striven for and struggled with as well as that which stands in need of ongoing creation To the extent that he can bring it into focus truth might be said to be something along these lines for him. The caveat is crucial because there exists for Nietzsche, and that by virtue of his radicalism, the possibility that the topos "truth" can no longer be brought into thematic focus in a philosophically meaningful way. Nietzsche, at least some of the time, would prefer to speak of individual truths rather than truth as a whole, if by the latter we understand an account of the basic nature of reality, the underlying constitution of man or cosmos or man-in-relation-to-cosmos. A distinction emerges that will be of some significance as far as our division of the material to be considered as part of our investigation is concerned - the distinction between Nietzsche's sense of the philosophical past and his hopes for the philosophical future; his diagnosis, on the one hand, of the self-conception of individual past philosophers, distinct philosophical epochs and past philosophy as a whole and, on the other hand, his prognosis for the future of philosophy. On the diagnostic front we note a feature of Nietzsche's attempts to address the question "What did philosophy think of itself as achieving in the past?" This is Nietzsche's equal propensity to give highly particularised textual renditions of individual philosophers' self-images (- where the question of a philosophical self-image connects seamlessly with that of an intellectualised self-conception -) and to venture grand generalisations about the entire philosophical past. The impression this gives many readers can no doubt be disconcerting. The inalienability of the individual philosophical personality is affirmed almost at the same time as Nietzsche seeks to compress the history of philosophy into a unity underpinned by a core of motives and motivating self-delusions. On the prognostic front we note the prominence of the philosophical personality of Nietzsche himself in determining philosophy's future possibilities. What philosophy is for Nietzsche in this future-oriented sense seems to revolve around the question of what he himself can make it into. Considerations along these lines can turn in the direction of sheer megalomania and do so increasingly as Nietzsche approaches the end of his sane, philosophically conscious life. Yet even in the absence of the titanic urge to view himself as the crux of philosophical history, even when he isn't brandishing his philosophical hammer or shouting his Promethean defiance into the heady regions occupied by the Gods of the Philosophical Pantheon, Nietzsche nonetheless holds to the possibility of creating philosophy anew himself.' In order to bring into view other key thematic facets of the philosophical conception of a new Nietzschean type of philosopher, together with a sense of how the thematic concerns of such a philosopher emerge from the background of Nietzsche's thinking about past philosophy, we must venture some improvements to our list of philosophical themes. Before doing so, let us insist on the indissolubility of the diagnostic and prognostic aspects of Nietzsche's thinking about the nature of philosophy. Diagnostic and prognostic tendencies are inextricable. Nietzsche's determination to open up new philosophical possibilities follows from his perception of what he took to be the acute insufficiency of past philosophy's conception of itself. Or, to put it in a way which seems more appropriate to the unquiet spirit of Nietzsche's philosophy - Nietzsche believed that the fashioning of new philosophical self-images was dependent on a vast and hearty preliminary act of philosophical destruction, viz. of the false, hollow or hackneyed self-images of the philosophical past. Nietzsche's later thought and writing is full of the drama, the pathos, he takes to be attendant on this task of destruction. And the way he cane to conceive of his own project on the model of a process of radical destruction, a process to have its consummation in radical philosophical renewal, provides one of the main variables in the development of his own self-conception. The more radicalised the self-conception, the more obscure to him the depths of what he shares with, indeed owes to, the philosophical past. As well as being one of the main variabilities that shape Nietzsche's sense of himself as a philosopher, it strikes me as one of the main vicissitudes of Nietzsche interpretation. In its simplest form we can grasp the problem involved by surveying the thematic ground that Nietzsche shares with those philosophers whose treatment of individual themes he becomes more and more intent on subverting or annihilating.
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ItemNietzsche's philosophy of time( 2006)In this work I offer a new interpretation of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence. Most prior writers on the topic have attempted to understand the thought as a cosmological or metaphysical thesis, or as a moral imperative. My thesis is that the idea is but one facet of a broader public action by which Nietzsche hoped to introduce the reader in a bodily compelling way to the possibility of seeking out generally unrealised modes of being. In order to motivate my interpretation, and so as to elaborate on the specific modes of being Nietzsche urges, much of the present work is spent giving very close readings for certain of his early texts. I take the central text for understanding the significance of the idea of recurrence to Nietzsche's philosophical project more generally to be the surreal sequence, from the third part of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, entitled "Of the Vision and the Riddle". To make sense of this very obscure chapter I spend much of the thesis examining the texts preceding it that Nietzsche himself prepared for publication. Nietzsche, particularly in his Zarathustra but in his other works too, makes great use of imagistic tropes. It is my contention that, whilst Nietzsche is unsystematic in his use of terms, he is consistent in his use of images. Further, I hold that we can usefully fill out the images he employs by seeking their antecedents in the philosophical cannon. The readings I present here proceed in large part by comparing Nietzsche's texts with works by Plato, Schopenhauer and Descartes, because in these works I find images excitingly similar to those used by Nietzsche.
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ItemResistance in Nietzsche's shadow Modes of Self-transfiguration( 2005)The present study investigates the nature of two differing modes of self-transfiguration: volitional practices of self-overcoming and limit experiences, particularly in light of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought. The first mode of self-transfiguration concerns volitional practices of self-cultivation, which in Nietzsche's work may be cast within an ethos of perfectionism and self-excellence. These practices will be the primary focus of this study, and are interpreted in terms of an endeavour to actualize one's potential. As forms of individual resistance contra the normalizing forces of one's age, such practices serve to enhance one's autonomy, individuality, and to cultivate one's character and potential. I will be offering an exposition and critique of the nature of practices of self-cultivation, discussing the implication and role of agency, aesthetics, ideals, and corporeality. Self-transfiguration is partly a function of one's existing nature and constitution which provide particular limits and possibilities to self-enhancement. In this respect, self-discovery is an essential precursor to self-transfiguration insofar as one must examine one's own potential, as well as the kinds of motives inherent in aspirations towards self-overcoming. At the same time though, there are certainly limits to the powers of volition and self-knowledge, and to the control one can exercise over one's practices. The second mode of self-transfiguration under review is limit experiences, or what Nietzsche would call "Dionysian aesthetic experience." In stark contrast to volitional practices, these kinds of experiences involve self-dispossession and a suspension of one's powers of agency and self-consciousness. Yet there are important existential and affective benefits deriving from passages of "self-forgetting" which cannot be provided for by volitional practices. I will offer a thorough contrast between these two modes of self-transfiguration. Though I believe that volitional practices are of greater importance insofar as a great majority of the struggle in self-transformation involves critical examination of oneself, and of social norms and practices, these modes of self-transfiguration can and should supplement each other.
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ItemConcealing Nietzsche : a study of esoteric and exoteric rhetorical strategy( 2004)This thesis is concerned with the difference between the form and the content of Nietzsche's writing. The deliberate insistence on this difference by Nietzsche indicates an understanding that form and content communicate not just in different ways, but essentially communicate different things-which is to say, the essence of their communication is different. Otherwise put, Nietzsche did not always say, or rather write, what he meant. This is partly due to the way in which Nietzsche saw language, and partly due to the way he understood truth. The two, of course, are related. In this thesis, I therefore examine the problem of truth in Nietzsche's thought. The critical question for Nietzsche concerns the value of truth, or otherwise stated, the very possibility of truth. Is truth discovered, or is it created? My view is that according to Nietzsche, truth is created, but that this does not thereby commit us to some kind of relativistic pluralism. Part of the problem then, is how to determine what Nietzsche means. This problem is essentially a hermeneutic one, which is as it should be, according to a philologist and professional interpreter of texts. I therefore begin my own interpretation by examining another one, well-known in Nietzsche-scholarship, as one which resists the claim that we can determine what Nietzsche meant. On Derrida's account, there is no totality to Nietzsche's text, and therefore the text itself is opened up to an indeterminate number of possible meanings. My own view, contra Derrida, is that the form of Nietzsche's writing, that is to say, the context, style and imagery, amongst other things, reveals to us an otherwise concealed meaning-concealed for good reasons, for Nietzsche believes that not all truths are appropriate for everyone. This strategy of right speaking turns upon that element of Nietzsche's thinking called perspectivism. In addressing this issue, I draw a distinction between esoteric and exoteric perspectives for Nietzsche, arguing for a reappraisal of what may be said to constitute Nietzsche's hidden teaching-a teaching imparted not so much by the content of Nietzsche's writing, but by its form. Nietzsche conceals, but in so doing, he reveals his face to us.
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ItemThe ethics of self cultivation : Nietzsche's middle works( 2004)This thesis examines Nietzsche's middle works in order to challenge those views that dismiss Nietzschean self-cultivation as a symptom of unadulterated narcissism. It aims to develop a far more balanced and refined conception of his idea of self-cultivation by re-examining the much neglected free-spirit trilogy of Human, All Too Human, Daybreak and The Gay Science. Contra Nietzsche's critics, it argues that the kind of self-cultivation he proposes involves a Cynic/Stoic work on the self that enables the subject to bear separation and solitude without resentment. The thesis aims to show that Nietzsche develops an ethics of self-cultivation that draws on the model of Hellenistic and Roman Stoic philosophical therapeia. It suggests that he renovates this therapeutic tradition through his own critical, psychoanalytic insights into narcissism and its transformations. It reconstructs Nietzsche's ethics of self-cultivation in terms of his psychological analysis of the pathological symptoms of narcissism and its healthy or positive transformations. In charting Nietzsche's course from pathological narcissism to mature individualism this thesis reconstructs the philosophical and psychological basis of his critique of Rousseau and Schopenhauer's ethics of pitie/Mitleid, his use and analysis of comedy and humour in his critical, deflationary treatment of the malady of omnipotence, and his exploration of the idea of friendship as a positive counterpoint to damaged forms of intersubjectivity.