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Friedrich Nietzsche, the Presocratic Greeks, and Taoist Thought An Untimely Co-Arising: Friedrich Nietzsche, the Presocratic Greeks, and Taoist Thought The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Theodore, Deborah. 2017. An Untimely Co-Arising: Friedrich Nietzsche, the Presocratic Greeks, and Taoist Thought. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33826130 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA An Untimely Co-Arising: Friedrich Nietzsche, the Presocratic Greeks, and Taoist Thought Deborah Theodore A Thesis in the Field of Foreign Literature, Language, and Culture for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University May 2017 Copyright 2017 Deborah Theodore Abstract For most of the century following his death in 1900, the three things most people knew about Friedrich Nietzsche were false: that he “killed God”; that his work was a blueprint for Nazi ideology; and that he died a madman of peretic syphilis. These distortions originated with the ignorant, were embraced by the vindictive, and then persistently reiterated by the misled, including some of Nietzsche’s most prestigious admirers. At the heart of everything Nietzsche has written is a profound awareness of the inseparability of all apparent contradictions and the rejection of dualistic split thinking, whether it is the Platonic ideal, Kant’s subject/object dichotomy, or any other of the absolutes put forward by philosophers since the beginning of Western philosophy in Presocratic Greece. When Nietzsche writes that he prefers to be misunderstood, it is because he understands the fluidity of language and meaning, the multiplicity of perspectives, and the inescapable subjectivity of human thought. This thesis views the often enigmatic nature of Nietzsche’s words and ideas through the twin lenses of Taoist philosophical thought and the systems of the Presocratic physikoi. I do not claim that Nietzsche thought himself a Taoist. My methodology, described in some detail in Chapter I, is a blend of scholarly research and creative intuition, a formula that enables me to understand my subjects on their terms. One way to explain the congruency of ideas between Nietzsche, the Presocratic Greeks, and Eastern philosophy is to ask whether there was a migration of ideas from China to ancient Greece and from there into the mind of Nietzsche. But another way of viewing such a congruency is to ask whether these are ideas that arise naturally when, in any time and in any space, we look beyond the limitations of dualistic thinking: hence the “untimely co- arising” in the title of this work. These are times when we are uncertain about nearly everything, when we are as quick to condemn a “lie” as we are reluctant to accept the “truth.” “Why not untruth instead?” Nietzsche asks in Beyond Good and Evil. When we begin with uncertainty, we are in reality. Dedication Virtus junxit mors non separabit This thesis is dedicated to my first teachers: Mary X. Theodore and Peter J. Theodore, who taught by example. v Acknowledgments I owe grateful thanks to my teacher and thesis director John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Chair of the Comparative Literature Department at Harvard University, who set me on this path and then helped me to complete the journey. Also to my other professors whose instruction and guidance sparked and facilitated the shaping of my thesis: Theo Theoharis, Associate Scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University; Marcus Wilczek, Associate Professor of German in the Department of International and Literary and Cultural Studies at Tufts University; and Abe Ryuichi, Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. For their dedicated assistance, I owe my deep appreciation to the librarians, staff, and student workers at the Harvard University Libraries, as well as Christine Narsjo in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature. Finally, many thanks to Sarah Powell and Chuck Houston my academic advisors, and Dr. Stephen Shoemaker my research advisor at the Harvard Extension School. Special thanks to my family, Steffen F. Pierce and Sofia Theodore-Pierce for their endless encouragement and love and for the inspiration of their steadfast dedication to their own work. And to Walter S. Pierce whose foresight and generosity have made my work possible. vi Table of Contents Dedication .......................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ vi I. Methodology .................................................................................................................... 1 Truth to Poets .......................................................................................................... 1 Quellenforschung .................................................................................................... 4 Fruitful Learning ..................................................................................................... 9 Intuition & Intellect ............................................................................................... 13 II. What is Tao?................................................................................................................. 17 Cultural & Historical Context ............................................................................... 17 What is Tao? .......................................................................................................... 20 Wu wei ...................................................................................................... 22 Inherency................................................................................................... 23 Qi .............................................................................................................. 26 Chaos & Creative Void ............................................................................ 28 III. The Presocratics ......................................................................................................... 34 Thales of Miletus (625-546 BCE) ........................................................................ 37 Anaximander of Miletus (610-547 BCE) ............................................................ 38 Heraclitus of Ephesus (584-484 BCE) ................................................................. 41 Parmenides of Elea (515-450 BCE) .................................................................... 47 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 BCE) ....................................................... 54 Random Free Choice ............................................................................................. 61 vii Free Will & Fate ....................................................................................................63 IV. Shared Perspectives .................................................................................................... 66 Part One – Nietzsche and Schopenhauer .............................................................. 66 Untimely Meditations ................................................................................ 69 Schopenhauer & Buddhism ..................................................................... 72 Buddhism & Nihilism ............................................................................... 75 Part Two – The Liberated Nietzsche ................................................................... 78 The Birth of Tragedy ................................................................................. 79 Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits ................................... 84 Part Three – Beyond Good and Evil (1886) ......................................................... 86 Nietzsche’s Philosopher of the Future: Physikoi ..................................... 90 V. Speech & Silence ......................................................................................................... 96 Speech: Language & Truth .................................................................................. 97 Silence: The Soul Wearies ................................................................................. 103 Appendix I – from Chapter II “What is Tao?” .................................................….……. 106 Appendix II – from Chapter III “The Presocratics”........................................................ 108 Appendix III – from Chapter IV “Shared Perspectives” ................................................ 112 Glossary of Greek & Chinese Terms ............................................................................. 114 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 115 viii 1 Chapter I Methodology Gather what you can from coincidence. ~ Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row” Truth to Poets David Potter, writing on the subject of narrative validity and historiography in the Classics, cites Pliny the Younger recounting a story heard at a dinner party, I trust the person who told it, although what is truth to poets? Still, the person who
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