Aesthetic Transformations: Taking Nietzsche at His Word / Edition 1

by Thomas Jovanovski

Overview

In this provocative work, Thomas Jovanovski presents a contrasting interpretation to the postmodernist and feminist reading of Nietzsche. As Jovanovski maintains, Nietzsche’s written thought is above all a sustained endeavor aimed at negating and superseding the (primarily) Socratic principles of Western ontology with a new table of aesthetic ethics – ethics that originate from the Dionysian insight of Aeschylean tragedy. Just as the Platonic Socrates perceived a pressing need for, and succeeded in establishing, a new world-historical ethic and aesthetic direction grounded in reason, science, and optimism, so does Nietzsche regard the rebirth of an old tragic mythos as the vehicle toward a cultural, political, and religious metamorphosis of the West. However, Jovanovski contends that Nietzsche does not advocate such a radical social turning as an end in itself, but as only the most consequential prerequisite to realizing the culminating object of his «historical philosophizing» – the phenomenal appearance of the Übermensch.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820420028
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	10/04/2007
Series:	American University Studies Series: Series 5: Philosophy , #204
Pages:	155
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)

About the Author

The Author: Thomas Jovanovski is an instructor of philosophy at Baldwin-Wallace Community College in Berea, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.