Abstract

The question of the potential for particularity in philosophical seeing is a central problem in Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche conceives of the history of philosophy as a collection of memories, personal testimonies, traces of types of individuals and minds, and tell-tales in general of exceedingly idiosyncratic ways of seeing and encountering the world. These idiosyncracies then become shared, forming sometimes distant communities of philosophical kinship and dialogue, the "we" of philosophy. This dissertation is a study of Nietzche's method of reading and questioning philosophical identity, and also an application of this method to Nietzsche's own thought, in his early essay The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. Nietzsche configures the living seed or core of philosophical seeing---the basis of the "who" of philosophical seeing---in terms of the thematic of force , drive , instinct and will . But the philosophical mind finds itself not simply as a body or tonality of passion, but rather philosophical identity is always found in the figural presentation of this key, to the degree that the flesh of philosophy---its originating forces, drives, instinct, and wills---is itself first of all something figured, what the young Nietzsche calls an image or symbol. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche is especially drawn toward the notion of a "Dionysian wisdom," an interest that would occupy him for most of his productive career. As per Nietzsche's own methodology, what is crucial to understanding or expressing Dionysian wisdom is that the proper figures of Dionysian flesh, the images and symbols in which it understands itself and through which it then propagates itself as a philosophical writing and discourse, be articulated clearly. This articulation begins with Nietzsche's early fascination with the notion of musical figuration---which Nietzsche interprets as primarily the appearance of open, non-closed figures. This type of figural mapping of flesh is also traceable in Nietzsche's later thought, where laughter appears as the further continuation of his reflection on the figural eros of the open, non-closed flesh