Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Basel, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (pp. [315]-340) and indexes.

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This thesis "The Cosmological Education by E. Fink" represents modified and extended text of the publication (2018), which was the result of the grant project GA UK. Through commented translations of the excerpts of Fink's books, parts of his diaries, unpublished notes from his written inheritance, stored in the University archive in Freiburg, this thesis aims to bring new perspective and to provoke discussion about his cosmological philosophy as a possible way of the future social self-development in the nihilistic era. The cosmological philosophy of education shows Fink, the best former student and assistant of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, in a quite surprising light - as a radical thinker of Nietzsche's philosophical and educational legacy. Fink knowingly departs from husserlian phenomenology, what is closer described here in the additional chapter dedicated to the problem of technique, science and work. The method of the research intuitively seeks and critically reflects Fink's own way of thinking about the problem of education, which is inseparable from his constant dialogue with the history of philosophy, necessity of the revaluation of the metaphysical bounds and consecutive understanding of a man as ens cosmologicum, what reflects also the structure of the thesis. KEYWORDS...

This thesis explores the role of Nihilism in Oscar Wilde's thought and writing, beginning with the depiction of Russian Political Nihilism in Wilde's first play; Vera, or the Nihilists and tracing the engagement with philosophical Nihilism in his fiction, drama and essays, up to and including De Profundis. It is argued that Russian Political Nihilism derives from the same sources and expresses the same concerns as the philosophical Nihilism discussed by Nietzsche in The Will to Power, and that Nietzsche and Wilde, working independently, came to a strikingly similar understanding of Nihilism. Philosophical Nihilism is defined in two ways; as the complete absence of values (Absolute Nihilism) and as a sense that, while absolute values may exist, they are unattainable, unknowable or inexpressible (Relative Nihilism). Wilde uses his writing to express Nihilism while simultaneously seeking aesthetic and ethical counterforces to it, eventually coming to see Art and the life of the Artist as the ultimate forms of resistance to Nihilism. Wilde's philosophical views are examined in the context of his time, and in the light of his exceptionally wide reading. He is compared and contrasted with Nietzsche, the philosopher who has done most to shape our view of what Nihilism means, in his ethical and aesthetic response to Nihilism. The conclusion also considers the reception of Wilde's expression of Nihilism and his employment of Art as the only superior counterforce in the first half of the twentieth century, with particular reference to the works of Gide and Proust. Their engagement with Nihilism is explored both in historical context and as a way of addressing a problem which has become uniquely pervasive and pressing in the modern era.

Thesis (DPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Stephen Goss composed Cinema Paradiso, a six-movement suite for solo guitar, as an homage to films and film directors. Goss cites nihilism as a theme in Dogville, the film that inspires the fourth movement, "Mandalay," but I assert that all the films and many musical devices throughout the piece can be read through the lens of nihilism. The first movement, "Paris, Texas," depicts the stark landscape of the opening scene of the 1984 Wim Wenders film of the same name. "Modern Times" chronicles Charlie Chaplin's slapstick-laden descent from the factory to the insane asylum in the opening sequence of his 1936 Modern Times. "Noir" is a tribute to the procedures of film noir: violent storylines that depict the harshness of life, dim lighting, and anti-hero characters, all accompanied by jazz. Lars von Trier's Dogville provides the movement "Mandalay" with its nihilistic meaning, but Goss writes that he invokes the musical style of Kurt Weill's opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Just as the book people of François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 had to pass on books orally, Goss has burned the score for his "451," forcing guitarists to learn it by watching a video and listening to a recording. Finally, the chaotic tarantella, "Tarantino" depicts Uma Thurman's heroin overdose scene in Quinten Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. By analyzing Fredrich Nietzsche's writings to form a broader definition of nihilism and applying that definition first to each film and then to corresponding musical elements in each movement, this paper argues that nihilism acts as a connecting theme throughout Cinema Paradiso.

Thesis (DPhil (Philosophy))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The purpose of this thesis twofold: first, to develop an account of modernity as a “loss of the world” which also entails the “death” of the human as a meaningful philosophical, political or moral category, and second, to explore the possibility of recovering a sense of the world in us and with it, a sense of what it means to be human. This argument is developed by way of a sustained engagement with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Hannah Arendt, whose analogous critiques of modernity centre on the problem of the connection between humanity and worldliness. My argument consists of three parts, each of which spans two chapters. Part one of the thesis sets out the most important aspects of Nietzsche’s and Arendt’s respective critiques of modernity. Chapter one focuses on modernity as a rupture of a philosophical, political and religious tradition within which existence in the world could be experienced as unquestionably meaningful. Following arguments developed by Nietzsche and Arendt, chapter two establishes that the loss of this tradition results in a general crisis of meaning, evaluation and authority that can be designated as “modern nihilism”. The second part of the thesis deals with what may be called the “anthropological grounds” of the critique of modernity developed in part one. To this end, chapter three focuses on Nietzsche’s portrayal of the human as “the as-yet undetermined animal” who is neither the manifestation of a subjective essence nor the product of his own hands, but who only exists in the unresolved tension between indeterminacy and determination. This is followed in chapter four by an inquiry into Arendt’s conception of “the human condition”, which in turn points to the conditionality of being human. What is clearly demonstrated in both cases is that, in so far as the predicament of modernity is incarnate in modern human beings themselves, any attempt at overcoming this predicament would somehow have to involve re-thinking or transcending our present-day humanity. The third part of the thesis examines the way in which the reconceptualisation of the human as advocated by Nietzsche and Arendt transforms our understanding of “world”. The more specific aim here is to demonstrate that both thinkers conceive of a reconciliation between self and world as a form of redemption. In chapter five I explore their respective attempts to resurrect the capacity for judgement in the aftermath of the death of God as the first step in this redemptive project, before turning to a more in-depth inquiry into the “soteriology” at work in Nietzsche’s and Arendt’s thinking in chapter six. This inquiry ultimately makes clear that there is a conflict between the Nietzschean conception of redemption as amor fati (love of fate) and Arendt’s notion of redemption as amor mundi (love of the world). I conclude the thesis by arguing that what is at stake here are two conflicting notions of reconciliation: a worldly – or political – notion of reconciliation (Arendt), and a much more radical, philosophical notion of reconciliation (Nietzsche), which ultimately does away with any boundary between self and world. However, my final conclusion is not that we face an inevitable choice between these two alternatives, but rather that the struggle between these two dispositions is necessary for an understanding of what it means to be human as well as for the world in which our humanity is formed.