Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2013 Humanlife and the Advent of Philosophy: A Theory of Philosophical Autobiography David Frank Hoinski Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hoinski, D. (2013). Humanlife and the Advent of Philosophy: A Theory of Philosophical Autobiography (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/657 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HUMANLIFE AND THE ADVENT OF PHILOSOPHY: A THEORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By David Frank Hoinski December 2013 Copyright by David Frank Hoinski 2013 HUMANLIFE AND THE ADVENT OF PHILOSOPHY: A THEORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY By David Frank Hoinski Approved November 15, 2013 ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Ronald Polansky Dr. Patrick Lee Miller Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Dr. George Yancy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dr. Ronald Polansky Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate Chair, Philosophy School of Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT HUMANLIFE AND THE ADVENT OF PHILOSOPHY: A THEORY OF PHILOSOPHICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY By David Frank Hoinski December 2013 Dissertation supervised by Dr. Ronald Polansky This dissertation presents a theory of philosophical autobiography. It includes studies of the autobiographical writings of Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Vico, and Nietzsche. I argue that philosophers write autobiographies in order to present and give an account of philosophical first principles. I also argue that Plato invented philosophical autobiography. iv DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Wilhelm S. Wurzer and Eleanor Holveck, two philosophers who taught me to think differently. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Philosophy Department at Duquesne University generously gave me a grant to do research for this dissertation during the 2010-2011 academic year. I am very grateful for the opportunity I have had to study with the excellent graduate students and philosophy professors at Duquesne. Among graduate students, I especially want to thank Adam Roos, Joe Cimakasky, and Jim Bahoh for their friendship and encouragement. I also want to thank the members of the Duquesne Greek group, past and present. Among professors, I especially want to thank Thérèse Bonin, Tom Rockmore, and Dan Selcer for their advice, and for answering so many of my questions over the years. I also want to thank Jennifer Bates and Jay Lampert for their encouragement and for allowing me to sit in on their seminars. I am also very grateful to James Swindal for his unswerving support and friendship over the years. I want to give special thanks to my colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, including Raja Rosenhagen, Preston Stovall, Topher Kurfess, and the members of the Deutsches Frühstück, past and present. I am also very grateful to Robert Brandom for allowing me to attend his seminars. Many scholars were kind enough to correspond with me about topics in the present dissertation. I especially want to thank Julian Baggini, Donald Phillip Verene, and, above all, James O’Donnell, who answered so many of my questions about Augustine. I want to give special thanks to John Harvey, whose friendship and erudition I value so much. He has been my teacher and companion in so many studies, and I have benefitted immensely from our conversations ranging across every topic and field. vi I want to thank John Fritz and Clayton Bohnet, other selves, for their constant and incomparable friendship over the years. I have been very lucky to have Patrick Miller and George Yancy as readers of my dissertation. They have stimulated my thought and helped me to write a much better work than I would have done without their advice and encouragement. I am and will have been eternally thankful for the good fortune I have to study with my director, Ron Polansky. Meeting Dr. Polansky has been by far one of the happiest accidents of my life. He has given me an image of what a philosopher can be. I am most grateful to my parents and parents-in-law, and to my whole family, for their continued love and support. Above all, I want to thank my wife Heather for her strength, good sense, humor, and love. Probably I could never have done this without her, and certainly I wouldn’t have wanted to. Finally, I want to thank our daughter Iris for not crying too much and for being such a good baby in general. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract.............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication............................................................................................................................v Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................. vi Chapter 1, Introduction: A Theory of Philosophical Autobiography ..................................1 Chapter 2, The Platonic Paradigm of Philosophical Autobiography.................................38 Chapter 3, Augustine's Confessions...................................................................................98 Chapter 4, New Sciences in Early Modern Philosophical Autobiography......................150 Chapter 5, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nietzsche ........................................................233 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................288 viii Humanlife and the Advent of Philosophy: A Theory of Philosophical Autobiography τῶν ἀρχῶν δ’ αἳ µὲν ἐπαγωγῇ θεωροῦνται, αἳ δ’ αἰσθήσει, αἳ δ’ ἐθισµῷ τινί, καὶ ἄλλαι δ’ ἄλλως. µετιέναι δὲ πειρατέον ἑκάστας ᾗ πεφύκασιν, καὶ σπουδαστέον ὅπως διορισθῶσι καλῶς· µεγάλην γὰρ ἔχουσι ῥοπὴν πρὸς τὰ ἑπόµενα. δοκεῖ γὰρ πλεῖον ἢ ἥµισυ τοῦ παντὸς εἶναι ἡ ἀρχή, καὶ πολλὰ συµφανῆ γίνεσθαι δι’ αὐτῆς τῶν ζητουµένων.—Aristotle Of starting points (or principles), some are grasped by induction, some by perception, some by a sort of habituation and others in other ways: one must try to get hold of each sort in the appropriate way, and take care that they are well marked out, since they have great importance in relation to what comes later. For the starting point of something seems to be more than half of the whole, and through it many of the things being looked for become evident. In my beginning is my end.—T. S. Eliot Chapter 1 Introduction: A Theory of Philosophical Autobiography In this subject as in others the best method of investigation is to study things in the process of development from the beginning (Εἰ δή τις ἐξ ἀρχῆς τὰ πράγµατα φυόµενα βλέψειεν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις καὶ ἐν τούτοις κάλλιστ’ ἂν οὕτω θεωρήσειεν).—Aristotle, Politics, 1252a24-26.1 1. Intimacy, aversion, ambivalence.— There is a forgotten intimacy between philosophy and autobiography. Yet today among philosophers we are witnessing a burgeoning awareness of the importance of the relations between these two phenomena, and from this awareness, the emergence of a new area of studies concerning the autobiographical dimension of philosophical practice and life. What makes this development so intriguing and exciting is that it offers us a way to think anew about philosophy itself, about what it is, what it can do, and what it is supposed to be, especially in light of the concepts of self, life, and writing that are central to autobiography. The present work aims to foster this incipient philosophical awareness of the intimacy between autobiography and philosophy by providing a theory of philosophical autobiography rooted in the study of some of the most significant and influential philosophical autobiographies in the history of 1 Rackham translation in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle’s Politics (Harvard, 1944). 1 philosophy, including those of Augustine, Descartes, Vico, Rousseau, Mill, Nietzsche, and (perhaps surprisingly) Plato.2 A clear and coherent theory of philosophical autobiography that aims at a kind of comprehensiveness is greatly to be desired under present circumstances, where an increasingly vital interest in the topic struggles to put itself into words, seeks to give itself theoretical shape and articulation. In trying to understand the philosophical significance of the phenomenon, a theory of philosophical autobiography is useful because it gives us a companion to think with and against. The theory I develop emphasizes the connection between philosophical autobiography and philosophical principles, while it also illustrates some of the ways that philosophers have employed autobiography in order to flesh out a conception of philosophy not as simply an academic specialization or profession, but as a βίος or way of humanlife.3 The intimacy between philosophy and autobiography is not, however, unproblematic. Stanley Cavell (1994, p.