Being and becoming in the ‘Tragic age’ of Greece: a critical reading of Nietzsche’s 1870s lectures on Heraclitus and Parmenides

Abstract

This thesis compares and contrasts Friedrich Nietzsche’s account of two significant Presocratic thinkers, Heraclitus and Parmenides, in his early period lectures on the period of philosophical history he calls pre-Platonic. For Nietzsche, the fragments of Heraclitus display a ‘tragic’ tendency aiming towards individual reconciliation with life through confrontation with the nature of reality in ‘becoming’. This confrontation takes place in full acknowledgement of the suffering inherent in becoming. Parmenides, known to modern audiences as one of the most celebrated Presocratic thinkers, is lambasted by Nietzsche as un-tragic, unable to form a real reconciliation with life and acknowledge the value of appearances due to the alienating consequences of the abstract concept of ‘being’.

The first chapter provides essential context for the study by providing an indepth account of who the Presocratics are and what sources for their thought Nietzsche used in preparing his lectures. The second chapter opens with a precis on Nietzsche’s early period writings, including the Birth of Tragedy and the unpublished book draft, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. It then goes on to offer a critical reading of Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy structured around a tripartite understanding of tragedy: pessimism, tragedy, and aesthetics. The third chapter dives into a critical reading of the lecture course. For Nietzsche, Anaximander sets the key question tackled by the rest of Presocratic philosophy: how can something that deserves to live, pass away? This question institutes a form of ontological dualism, and a tension between indefinite being and becoming. Nietzsche finds opposing solutions in the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus, he argues, solves the issue with a rejection of being in favour of becoming, and a valorisation of life and the aesthetic. Parmenides, on the other hand, rejects becoming in favour of being, and is criticised by Nietzsche as offering only an abstract understanding of the world that cannot reconcile with appearances. In the concluding chapter, these readings are explored in-depth with reference both to their philosophical merit and their philological im/possibility.