Thesis (doctoral)--Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-281) and indexes.

Thesis (doctoral)--Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, Greifswald, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-281) and indexes.

Many of the writings of Leo Strauss were dedicated to combating the "crisis of modernity". This crisis was for him the advent and acceptance of nihilism--a state of being wherein any principle one dare dream is allowed and judgment must be withheld. He claimed that the promotion of nihilism at the hands of modern social scientists would lead to the downfall of civilization. Yet, this work seeks to show that all of these claims are made by Strauss in an attempt to hide the "truth" of nihilism from the masses and that Strauss, in fact, is a nihilist thinker. The introductory chapter of this work introduces the problem of nihilism as outlined by Strauss. It also briefly explains the positions of two other nihilist thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault, in order to establish the thought which Strauss seems to be arguing against in his works. It then explains the writing style of Strauss as being esoteric. The following chapter will deal with the Strauss' argument for the causes of nihilism. Chapter three will be dedicated to the two solutions that Strauss presents for combating nihilism. The exoteric solution calls for a return to the teachings of the classics, specifically the three types of teaching that he recognizes--Socratic-Platonic, Aristotelian, and Thomistic. The esoteric solution, however, is to use the Platonic conception of the "noble lie" in order to hide the "truth" of nihilism. Chapters four and five will compare Strauss' nihilism to that of Nietzsche and Foucault, respectively. Each chapter will expand on the discussion already presented in the first chapter to further elucidate each thinker's version of nihilism. Finally, I will outline the conception of these three thinkers as a continuum for nihilist thought. I will also discuss how the only definitive difference between the three thinkers is their outlook on the human condition. For example, Strauss and his hidden nihilism is a direct result of his pessimistic view of the masses; whereas Nietzsche's Übermensch nihilism is brought about by his outlook on the prospect for development beyond humanity and Foucault's pure nihilism is drawn out from his notion of power/knowledge. In this way, this work will not only show Strauss as a closet nihilist but also show his integral role in understanding the full range of nihilist thought.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Louis A. Ruprecht, committee chair; Timothy A. Renick, James Winchester, committee members. Electronic text (60 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed November 3, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-60).

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Bonn, 1968.

Diss.--Basel. / Vita. "Literaturangabe": p. [81].

The German expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), a great admirer of the philosopher, psychologist, poet, anti-Christ and art theoretician Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), quoted and commented on the works of the latter from 1926 until his death. Benn’s references to Nietzsche range from the mere mention of the name in some works to entire poems (c.f. “Sils Maria”), essays, and lectures on Nietzsche (c.f. “Nietzsche – nach fünfzig Jahren”). Benn made no secret of his hero-worship for Nietzsche and considered himself the latter’s heir as far as his theory of art was concerned. Three key ideas on art, which Benn took over from Nietzsche and quoted, elaborated, and commented upon are: the idea that the world and existence are justifiable only as esthetic phenomena, the idea of art as the “Olymp des Scheins”, and the idea of art as the actual task of man, as his metaphysical activity. In my thesis I have attempted to show that in spite of Benn’s great admiration of Nietzsche as art theoretician, in spite of the fact that Benn used Nietzsche’s art vocabulary and took over quotations from his works almost verbatim, in spite of the fact that both Benn and Nietzsche saw in art the salvation for man in the midst of the European nihilism, Benn misunderstood Nietzsche’s basic message. I have explained that Benn and Nietzsche looked upon nihilism from two divergent points of view. Nietzsche concerned himself with giving the old “absolute” values, which were in their death-throes, the coup de grace and tried to establish in his Übermensch” ideal, an ideal which man is not meant to ever attain, but must continuously strive for, a new set of values, a new “metaphysics”, one not of the supernatural world, but of the natural world, different from the metaphysics of the Christian-Platonic tradition in that it looked upon man as a unity, a polarity of the material and the non-material and sought to bring them in harmony not through the violence of the extermination of the passions and the drives, but rather through their sublimation. For Nietzsche, nihilism was a brief temporary stage in the history of ideas, the natural and necessary conclusion of the old absolute values, an end the seed of which the old values had borne in themselves from their very inception, since they were based upon a denial of and violence against nature. Nietzsche’s attitude was a dynamic, revolutionary and creative one, and he saw at the center of his new valuation, as an enticement to life, as that which leads man to an affirmation of the totality of life – its pain and sorrow as well as its joys. For Benn, on the other hand, who saw in Nietzsche not a positor of new values, but a destroyer of the old ones, a materialist and a disciple of Darwin, nihilism was insurmountable and here to stay. His attitude was a heroic nihilism – one of resignation, a static, quietistic attitude. As a result of man’s progressive cerebration and his subsequent loss of a genuine relationship to nature, the material and the non-material aspects of man, life and intellect were considered by Benn to constitute an irreconcilable antimony. As a result he also considered art and life as two separate spheres and saw art as an escape, as the artist’s search for his identity. From this point of view Benn developed his theory of absolute art, of art for the sake of art, of art as form. I have attempted to show that Benn’s misunderstanding of Nietzsche on the subject of art – not notwithstanding the similarity or the vocabulary employed by the two authors – stems from his misunderstanding of Nietzsche as a philosopher, from the fact that Benn overlooked certain aspects of the writings of Nietzsche in favor of other aspects. By Benn’s own admission, his favorite book on Nietzsche was Ernst Bertram’s “Nietzsche: Attempt at a Mythology” (1918). I have examined this book, under whose spell Benn had fallen, and have found that Bertram, a member of the George-Kreis, the members of which used the Nietzsche of the Nietzsche “Legend” to their own ends, made no claim to either historical or philosophical accuracy, indeed that he overlooked Nietzsche’s philosophy completely, that his goal was to perpetuate the Nietzsche “cult” of the Kreis. For Bertram Nietzsche was not a philosopher, but a mystic and a saint. It is well-known that Nietzsche’s vocabulary lends itself especially well to misinterpretations of all sorts, intentional as well as unintentional. One need only think of what the Nazis were able to do with the“blond beast”and the “superman”, words taken out of context and used as slogans to fit a given ideology. The first scientific work which dealt seriously with Nietzsche as a philosopher was that by Jaspers in 1936, in which a brief half-page is devoted to art. The other scientific works on Nietzsche as a philosopher have appeared only much more recently.

Esta dissertação de mestrado visa a investigar o estatuto que O nascimento da tragédia assume na obra de Nietzsche a partir das análises que o próprio filósofo faz do livro no período tardio de seu pensamento. Examinando a maneira pela qual suas teses sobre o surgimento da tragédia na antiguidade grega se filiam à metafísica da vontade de Schopenhauer, procuramos compreender as interpretações posteriores de Nietzsche, quando ele já havia rompido com seu mestre de outrora e já o tomara como alvo de suas críticas. Nesse contexto, Nietzsche pretende retornar às suas teses sobre a tragédia grega a fim de imiscuí-las na face afirmativa de seu último e mais ambicioso projeto: a transvaloração de todos os valores. Avaliando esse procedimento nietzschiano de retomar seu primeiro livro a partir de várias leituras, investigamos as razões pelas quais essas interpretações revelam ambigüidades. Num primeiro momento, procuramos demonstrar que, tendo entrelaçado suas intuições próprias à filosofia pessimista de Schopenhauer, as avaliações de O Nascimento da tragédia devem passar pelo crivo da autocrítica. Dado esse passo, pesquisamos como Nietzsche doravante trata do livro, fazendo emergir dele a face positiva, ou seja, transpondo o dionisíaco em pathos filosófico, de modo a justificar a sua afirmação de que O nascimento da tragédia foi a sua primeira transvaloração de todos os valores. / This dissertation for the Masters Degree intents to investigate the statute that the book The Birth of Tragedy assumes in the work of Nietzsche, from the analysis that the philosopher himself made on this book in the late period of his thinking. Trough an investigation of the way his ideas about the beginning of the tragedy in the Greek Antiquity connects with the Metaphysics of Will of Schopenhauer, we intent to understand Nietszche´s late interpretations, made when he had already severed his connections with his former master, making him the target oh his criticism. In this context, Nietzsche wanted to renew his ideas about the Greek tragedy, hoping to insert them in the affirmative face of his last and most ambitious project: the transvaluation of all values. We avaliated this nietzschean proceeding, i.e., to retake his first work from differents readings, and investigate the reasons these interpretations reveals ambiguities. In a first instance, we try to demonstrate that, after mingling his owns intuitions with the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, the avaliations of The Birth of Tragedy must pass by the grind of the auto-criticism. After that, we research how Nietzsche, from this moment on, justify his book, make appear its positive face, ie, translate the dionisiac in a philosophical pathos, in a way that it makes possible to him to justify his affirmation that The Birth of Tragedy was his first transvaluation of all values.

Esta dissertação de mestrado visa a investigar o estatuto que O nascimento da tragédia assume na obra de Nietzsche a partir das análises que o próprio filósofo faz do livro no período tardio de seu pensamento. Examinando a maneira pela qual suas teses sobre o surgimento da tragédia na antiguidade grega se filiam à metafísica da vontade de Schopenhauer, procuramos compreender as interpretações posteriores de Nietzsche, quando ele já havia rompido com seu mestre de outrora e já o tomara como alvo de suas críticas. Nesse contexto, Nietzsche pretende retornar às suas teses sobre a tragédia grega a fim de imiscuí-las na face afirmativa de seu último e mais ambicioso projeto: a transvaloração de todos os valores. Avaliando esse procedimento nietzschiano de retomar seu primeiro livro a partir de várias leituras, investigamos as razões pelas quais essas interpretações revelam ambigüidades. Num primeiro momento, procuramos demonstrar que, tendo entrelaçado suas intuições próprias à filosofia pessimista de Schopenhauer, as avaliações de O Nascimento da tragédia devem passar pelo crivo da autocrítica. Dado esse passo, pesquisamos como Nietzsche doravante trata do livro, fazendo emergir dele a face positiva, ou seja, transpondo o dionisíaco em pathos filosófico, de modo a justificar a sua afirmação de que O nascimento da tragédia foi a sua primeira transvaloração de todos os valores. / This dissertation for the Masters Degree intents to investigate the statute that the book The Birth of Tragedy assumes in the work of Nietzsche, from the analysis that the philosopher himself made on this book in the late period of his thinking. Trough an investigation of the way his ideas about the beginning of the tragedy in the Greek Antiquity connects with the Metaphysics of Will of Schopenhauer, we intent to understand Nietszche´s late interpretations, made when he had already severed his connections with his former master, making him the target oh his criticism. In this context, Nietzsche wanted to renew his ideas about the Greek tragedy, hoping to insert them in the affirmative face of his last and most ambitious project: the transvaluation of all values. We avaliated this nietzschean proceeding, i.e., to retake his first work from differents readings, and investigate the reasons these interpretations reveals ambiguities. In a first instance, we try to demonstrate that, after mingling his owns intuitions with the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, the avaliations of The Birth of Tragedy must pass by the grind of the auto-criticism. After that, we research how Nietzsche, from this moment on, justify his book, make appear its positive face, ie, translate the dionisiac in a philosophical pathos, in a way that it makes possible to him to justify his affirmation that The Birth of Tragedy was his first transvaluation of all values.

[pt] A dissertação tem o intuito de percorrer algumas trilhas deixadas por Nietzsche em seus escritos filosóficos. Para tanto, iniciamos o trabalho investigando como o filósofo estudou as manifestações da vontade na Grécia antiga, relacionando, posteriormente, esta vontade com a razão socrática. Este é um gancho para iniciar o debate sobre a questão da razão e da vontade na filosofia do autor. Proposta que ocupa todo o restante do primeiro capítulo, culminando com o estudo sobre o livrearbítrio e a moral de senhor e de escravo. O segundo capítulo busca propriamente os desdobramentos políticos da filosofia apresentada na primeira parte. Analisando a gênese das regras sociais e também o Estado moderno. Culminando com o ensinamento de Zaratustra sobre o eterno retorno. / [en] The dissertation intent to pass through some trills leaved by Nietzsche in his philosophical writings. For that, we started the work by investigating how the philosopher has study the manifestations of the will in the old Greece, doing the relation between this will and the Socratic reason. This is a hook to initiate the debate about the question of the reason and the will in the philosophy of the author. Propose witch occupy all the rest of the first chapter, finishing with the study about the free will and the master and slave morality. The second chapter ride the political consequences of the philosophy presented in the first part. Analyzing the geneses of the social rules and, also, the modern state, culminating with the Zaratustra s teaching about the eternal return.