Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Beyond Dualism And Monism: Bergson’S Slanted Being, Messay Kebede

Messay Kebede

There is an old but still unresolved debate pertaining to the question of Bergsonian monism or dualism. Scholars who think that Bergson is ultimately monist clash with those who claim that he has consistently maintained a dualist position. Others speak of contradiction and point out his failure to reconcile dualism with monism. What feeds on the debate is Bergson’s undeniable change of direction: while his first book is flagrantly dualist, his second book takes a sharp turn toward monism. Without denying the intricacy generated by the change of direction, this paper argues that the originality of his position is overlooked …

Nietzsche And Expressionism: The Neue Mensch In Kafka, Kaiser, And Strauss, Marion Stoll Adams

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Nietzsche's Übermensch and the Expressionist Neue Mensch are two difficult, cryptic, and contradictory ideas. This project compares the Neue Mensch to the Übermensch through the process of transformation, in hopes of better understanding both concepts. The following chapters are an analysis of Franz Kafka’s short story “Das Urteil”, Georg Kaiser’s play Von morgens bis mitternachts, and Richard Strauss’ opera Salome. Through a side-by-side reading of Expressionist literature and Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, we can see how the Expressionists expanded upon, and experimented with, the concept of the Übermensch.

Nietzsche And Emancipatory Politics: Queer Theory As Anti-Morality, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

Subjectivity, Passion, And Mystical Intuition: Nietzsche's Early Writing, Joseph Leivdal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

For Nietzsche, the subject is aesthetically creative, meaning that the subject is a dynamic process of self-transformation that involves not only the subject’s sense of self, but the meaning of their world. In my first chapter, I look at "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense" to show how Nietzsche deconstructs rationalist epistemology in order to show that knowledge and meaning are an aesthetic activity. In my second chapter, I look at "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" to argue that Nietzsche sees creativity as a passionate, sublime overflow, a rupture with the present that artistically …

Conceptions Of Nietzsche In Popular Film And Television, Jeffrey Willicut

Senior Theses

There are few faces or names in the field of philosophy more recognizable than Friedrich Nietzsche’s. His cartoonish, bushy mustache and stern, unwelcoming brow appear in posters on the walls of angsty teens, in the street art and murals of trendy and upcoming urban neighborhoods, and even in the punishingly glossy pages of every high school history textbook. More recognizable still are his ideas, which have found their way into the ears or eyes of just about everyone in the Western world, whether they know it or not. His concept of the Übermensch, or his notion that God is dead, …

Nietzsche And The Death Of God, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for making the striking claim that God is dead. He writes, "God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!" (GS 125).

What does this mean? Straightforwardly, it seems nonsensical. God is supposed to be eternal, and thus cannot die. Nietzsche’s claim, however, is that "God" is a fiction created by human beings. Thus, God "dies" when there is no good reason to believe that God exists.

This essay will help us understand this claim, his arguments for it, and its potential implications for contemporary religious and ethical thought.

Review Of Tsarnia Doyle, Nietzsche's Metaphysics Of The Will To Power: The Possibility Of Value, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

Tsarina Doyle's new book is required reading for those interested in Nietzsche's metaphysics, ethics, and metaethics. Doyle argues that for Nietzsche nihilism arises upon the recognition that our values are not objectively valid because they are not instantiated by a mind-independent world. Nietzsche responds to the threat of nihilism, according to Doyle, by developing will to power as a metaphysical view of reality. On this view, the world is constituted by mind-independent causal powers. For Doyle, Nietzsche believes values are metaphysically continuous with will to power because they are causal-dispositional properties of human drives. Will to power provides …

Nietzsche And James On The Value Of Constructing Objects, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this paper, I first suggest that Nietzsche and James, two otherwise very different thinkers, both endorse the controversial constructivist view that human representational practices bring all material objects into existence. I then explore their views concerning why and how constructivism can play a vital role in helping us find reality and our lives valuable.

A Philosophical Analysis Of Otherness In Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Max W. Fathauer

Honors Theses

Bertrand Russell infamously characterizes Nietzsche as a philosopher concerned solely with the flourishing individual. Several crucial passages of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, however, outline rich encounters Zarathustra has with the Other. In this paper, I argue that Russell’s characterization of Nietzsche is egregiously reductive. In order to demonstrate this, I offer an in-depth analysis of otherness in Thus Spoke Zarathustra by examining the many different kinds of relationships the individual can have with the Other. I then turn towards other works of Nietzsche to furnish the compelling, yet imprecise insight concerning otherness that Zarathustra gives us. Finally, I compare my …

Nietzsche’S Posthuman Imperative: On The Human, All Too Human Dream Of Transhumanism, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently: Nietzsche On Nihilism And Radical Openness, Kaitlyn N. Creasy

Philosophy ETDs

This dissertation seeks to offer a comprehensive account of the problem of nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche, both as a cognitive phenomenon involving a set of beliefs about one’s world (as “European nihilism”) and as a feeling-based phenomenon (as affective nihilism). After introducing these two varieties of nihilism, I look to potential resources in Nietzsche’s thought for overcoming them. First, I argue that the European nihilist can think truth, purpose, and value in new and life-affirming ways by coming to understand Nietzsche’s account of the drives — as wills to power with affective, and therefore evaluative, orientations — and by applying …

Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence As Untimeliness, Ana Cristina De Souza Pedroso

Theses and Dissertations

The idea of the eternal recurrence is central to Nietzsche’s later teachings. In this paper, I argue that the life-transformative effects Nietzsche is aiming at with the eternal recurrence parallel the life-transformative effects he has already construed with the notion of “untimeliness” in his earlier writings. My interpretive thesis is mainly supported by the following claim: in both modes one repeatedly experiences the time of her life as a whole. That is, one lives her life in such a way that there is nothing to look forward or nothing to look backwards outside of the present life simply because life, …

Nietzsche's Genealogy: An Historical Investigation Of The Contingency Of Moral Values, John A. Greene

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This work examines how values seem to be contingent on various factors which affect their growth and development. This study is based around the ethical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, On the Genealogy of Morals serves as the foundation for my thesis. This book contains three essays which purport to show how moral values originated as a result of certain human phenomena rather than, as many people take for granted, from moral “truths.” This contribution to ethics is important because it leaves many questions regarding the value of morality untouched. In the Genealogy, there are numerous themes of Nietzsche’s philosophy …

Health And Sickness: An Examination Of The Question Of The Affirmation Or Negation Of Life In The Face Of Suffering, Frank M. Scavelli

Student Publications

In this thesis, I examine a line of thought that stretches from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), who regarded his own work merely as an interpretation and continuation Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) philosophy, through Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who reacted to Schopenhauer’s negation of life with an affirmative philosophy, to Thomas Mann (1875-1955), who, operating from within this tradition, attempted a synthesis of it as well as a critical analysis of some of its aspects and their relation to seemingly-pathological fascistic sentiment he witnessed in the Germany of the 1920s and 30s. This line of thought deals with the essential question of Life. It …

From Winkelmann’S Apollo To Nietzsche’S Dionysus, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

At issue here is the Platonic notion of imitation likewise associated with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s reflection on the complex limits of painting and poetry, exemplar, archetype, ideal. Nietzsche himself echoes Schlegel’s own citation of Winckelmann in his comparison of Greek tragedy and sculpture, noting the ideal of beauty in balance, as tragic proportion. For August Wilhelm Schlegel, Aeschylus and Sophocles highlight the balance of tension between bodily dynamic poise and spiritual suffering in the case of the Laocoön group, where the boys to either side of the central figure draw the gaze back to the father: the very snakes themselves …

Nietzsches Lyrik. Archilochus, Musik, Metrik, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

The Tale Of Tomorrow, Ariel Rubin

CMC Senior Theses

I am analyzing Nietzsche's idea of independence found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and Genealogy of Morals. I am arguing that democracy can lead us to the ultimate form of independence, yet Nietzsche seems to disagree.

Nietzsche's Spiritual Exercises, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Nietzsche’s third Untimely Meditation, composed in 1874, Schopenhauer as Educator, reflects upon and describes a “spiritual exercise” not unlike the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, detailing tactics and including practical advice. Thus Nietzsche’s “spiritual exercises” correspond to the traditional practice of self-cultivation, self-education, characteristic of the Stoic philosophers but also influential for the Hellenistic neo-Platonic tradition, the church fathers, and St. Augustine, author of De Magistro and the Confessions. Beyond antiquity, spiritual exercises refer to a theological practice of selfcultivation and self-discipline.

Six Ways Of Looking At Anomalisa, David L. Smith

Journal of Religion & Film

Anomalisa is a parable about the nature of human fulfilment that explores the tension between other-worldly desire (the conviction that real life must be “elsewhere”) and the kind of fulfilment that comes from a more transparent relationship to things as they are. The film explores this religious theme not only through its story, but through the way the story comments on its own embodiment as a puppet show—a work of stop-motion animation. In this paper, I try to tease out the film’s complex reflections on the real and the artificial (in particular, on the ways that a desire for “the …

Nietzsche And Problem Of Nihilism, Zahra Meyboti

Theses and Dissertations

It is generally accepted that life-affirmation is central to Nietzsche’s philosophy.

Nietzsche’s aim is to affirm life despite all miseries for human beings conscious of the

horror and terror of existence and avoid nihilism. He is concerned with life affirmation

almost in all of his works, In my thesis I will consider how he involved with avoiding

nihilism to affirm life according to his two books, The Birth of Tragedy and Genealogy of

Morals.

Nietzsche's Signpost For Feminism, Sara N. Pope

Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on the apparent misogyny and anti-feminism found in Part VII of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (BGE). Following an interpretation put forward by Maudemarie Clark, I argue that Nietzsche’s claims and observations about women are purposely reflective of the dubious metaphysical assumptions of dualism and essentialism maintained with respect to biological sex. Given this, we can see Nietzsche’s text as highlighting the effects of “cultural breeding” in the form of gender. Thus, this paper aims to rehabilitate Nietzsche’s characterizations of women and “woman’s emancipation” as an important signification of the culturally bred, latent discrimination of the sexes, …

Nietzsche's Autonomy, Responsibility, And Will Unification, Waylon Jennings Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The modern analytic’s conception of morality usually grounds the agent’s mo-rality in some conception of responsibility and autonomy. Friedrich Nietzsche agrees that morality should be grounded in responsibility and autonomy, however his con-ceptions of responsibility and autonomy are quite different from the modern analytic literature. In this paper, I present Nietzsche’s account of autonomy and responsibility. In part one, I describe Nietzsche’s beliefs about human nature and how the human psyche became disparate. The sovereign individual is also introduced as the Nie-tzschean ideal capable of autonomy and responsibility. The second part of the paper refines Nietzshce’s ideas concerning both the …

Harken Not To Wild Beasts: Between Rage And Eloquence In Saruman And Thrasymachus, Dennis Wilson Wise

Journal of Tolkien Research

One of the giant gaps in Tolkien scholarship has been to miss how deeply Saruman answers the age-old antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy. Like John Milton, Tolkien cannot bring himself to trust rhetoric. It threatens the unitary truth of a divinely-revealed moral order and, ironically, Tolkien applies great rhetorical skill to convince his reader of rhetoric’s illusionary nature. In this matter Tolkien has been largely successful, since few readers (if any) question the de-privileging of Saruman’s perspective. In the process, though, I suggest that Tolkien has developed in his master rhetorician a new relationship between rhetoric (eloquence) and rage ( …

Anarchy And Anti-Intellectualism: Reason, Foundationalism, And The Anarchist Tradition, Joaquin A. Pedroso

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Some contemporary anarchist scholarship has rejected the Enlightenment-inspired reliance on reason that was supposedly central to classical anarchist thought and expanded the anarchist critique to address issues ignored by their classical predecessors. In making reason the object of critique, some contemporary anarchists expanded the anarchist framework to include critiques of domination residing outside the traditional power centers of the state, the capitalist firm, and the church thereby shedding light on the authoritarian tendencies inherent in the intellect itself.

Though contemporary anarchist scholarship has sought to apply this anti-authoritarian ethos to the realms of epistemology and ontology (by employing Michel Foucault’s …

Anthropocentrism And The Long-Term: Nietzsche As An Environmental Thinker, Andrew Nolan Hatley

Doctoral Dissertations

Nietzsche has been advanced as an authoritative support for nearly every political aim since his death in 1900. Recent work has focused on his potential to contribute to environmental ethics. I defend the view that Nietzsche can contribute to both environmental ethics and aesthetics, and moreover, that his philosophy cannot be fully understood without the conceptual resources of environmental philosophy. Nietzsche’s critique of morality and positive ethical views cannot be understood independent of conceptual distinctions of anthropocentrism and topics such as future generations and biocentric discussions of axiology. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature emerges from his rejection of both metaphysical and …

Life At The Meridian: The Subjectivity Of Ethics In The Works Of Albert Camus And Friedrich Nietzsche, Clancy E. Robledo

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

This paper endeavors to respond to the questions: can ethics can be unbound from its traditional rootedness in religious systems? If so, what contributions did Nietzsche make to liberate value from the shackles of Western morality? To what degree is Camus one of the “new philosophers” Nietzsche calls for in On the Genealogy of Morals?

In an attempt to demonstrate that ethics can and do exist vividly in the realm of the non-religious, this paper will begin by illustrating the metaphysical door Nietzsche opens through his use of aphorisms in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and his investigation of the history …

Announcings, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The Annunciation is often thematized in the critical literature and foremost among these thematizations, recently to be sure, are feminist readings, which matter for this essay although this essay can only refer to these in passing.

The focal concern is personal correspondence and intimate address or intrigue. This essay thus offers a hermeneutic reading less of the presumptive purity of our perception of this painting, as indeed of its reception, involving a distinction to be noted between male and female subjects than it reviews a recollection of the divine inclination to beauty in both pagan, Greek, and Judaeo- Christian traditions. …

Amor Fati In Jaco Van Dormael's Film, Mr. Nobody, Rebecca L. Smith

Senior Theses and Projects

The argument in this thesis is how the philosophies of the German Frederich Nietzsche are portrayed throughout the Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael’s film Mr. Nobody (2009). Mr. Nobody is a film about every imaginable way one man’s life could unfold from every major and minor decision he makes. Nietzsche’s philosophy of Amor Fati, or love of fate, is portrayed by the film’s main character, Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto). Within the different quantum branches of Nemo’s life he portrays both the man of reason and the man of intuition; a topic central to Nietzsche’s philosophy. In the various timelines in …

Nietzsche On Language And Our Pursuit Of Truth, Le Quyen Pham

The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities

No abstract provided.

A Tightrope Over An Abyss: Humanity And The Lords Of Life, Timothy Francis Urban

The Graduate Review

The American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson is a precursor to the thought of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's writings have often admitted to the profound influence Emerson had on the latter's own philosophy. Both thinkers shared common ground in viewing philosophy and language as an active process, always in a state of becoming, where the subject is the sole creator of meaning. This paper argues that Emerson and Nietzsche recognized the liberating quality of language in the creation of one's subjectivity. Emerson and Nietzsche dismissed notions of objective knowledge by looking at how language is arbitrary, and, as such, …