Subjectivity, Passion, and Mystical Intuition: Nietzsche's Early Writing

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 reconfigures meaning. In my last chapter, I turn to Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, comparing key passages to Nietzsche’s analysis of Greek tragic drama in The Birth of Tragedy in order to outline the structure of the “mystical intuition” at the core of Greek thought in the tragic age.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theory and Criticism

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Leivdal, Joseph

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Stocking, Charles
• Boulter, Jonathan

• Nietzsche
• subjectivity
• knowledge
• language
• art
• culture

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/31224

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/31224