Nietzsche's will-to-power ontology : an interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil

Abstract: Nietzsche's Will-to-Power Ontology: An Interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil § 36 By: Mark Minuk Will-to-power is the central component of Nietzsche's philosophy, and passage 36 of Beyond Good and Evil is essential to coming to an understanding of it. 1 argue for and defend the thesis that will-to-power constitutes Nietzsche's ontology, and offer a new understanding of what that means. Nietzsche's ontology can be talked about as though it were a traditional substance ontology (i.e., a world made up of forces; a duality of conflicting forces described as 'towards which' and 'away from which'). However, 1 argue that what defines this ontology is an understanding of valuation as ontologically fundamental—^the basis of interpretation, and from which a substance ontology emerges. In the second chapter, I explain Nietzsche's ontology, as reflected in this passage, through a discussion of Heidegger's two ontological categories in Being and Time (readiness-to-hand, and present-at-hand). In a nutshell, it means that the world of our desires and passions (the most basic of which is for power) is ontologically more fundamental than the material world, or any other interpretation, which is to say, the material world emerges out of a world of our desires and passions. In the first chapter, I address the problematic form of the passage reflected in the first sentence. The passage is in a hypothetical style makes no claim to positive knowledge or truth, and, superficially, looks like Schopenhaurian position for the metaphysics of the will, which Nietzsche rejects. 1 argue that the hypothetical form of the passage is a matter of style, namely, the style of a free-spirit for whom the question of truth is reframed as a question of values. In the third and final chapter, 1 address the charge that Nietzsche's interpretation is a conscious anthropomorphic projection. 1 suggest that the charge rests on a distinction (between nature and man) that Nietzsche rejects. I also address the problem of the causality of the will for Nietzsche, by suggesting that an alternative, perspectival form of causality is possible.

Affect, ontology, and pedagogy: An autoethnographic study on student-teacher relationships

In studying affect within the realm of student-teacher relationships my thesis project use the concept of “affect” as composed by Baruch Spinoza (1992, 2007). I focus specifically on how Deleuze (1988) interprets and implements the term within his own philosophy, as well as on Antonio Negri’s (2011, 1991) work on Spinoza including his and Michael Hardt’s (2000, 2004, 2009) more recent works. This thesis will explore Spinoza’s affect within the discourse of Affective Pedagogy and Critical Pedagogy while remaining committed to a Spinoizist ontology as outlined by Deleuze (1988). I used artefacts from my past experiences as a student and teacher to produce evocative writing pieces which act as affective continuances of my past experiences as a student, student-teacher, and teacher, and the relationships of affect that composed them. This project used these artefacts and the writings they produced as sites of intensity that are carried through from traces, to evocative thresholds, to concepts, and finally into analysis.

On affirmation and becoming : a Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche's critique of nihilism

The main thrust of this thesis is the re-exploration of Friedrich Nietzsche's "critique of nihilism" through the lenses of Gilles Deleuze. A Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche is motivated by a post-deconstrnctive style of interpretation, inasmuch as Deleuze goes beyond, or in between, henneneutics and deconstrnction. Deleuze's post-deconstrnctive reading of Nietzsche is, however, only secondary to the main aim of this thesis. The primary thrust of this study is the critique of a way of thinking characterized by Nietzsche as nihilistic. Therefore, it should be noted that this study is not about Deleuze's reading per se; rather, it is an appraisal of Nietzsche's "critique of nihilism" using Deleuze's experimental reading. We will accrue Nietzsche's critique and Deleuze's post-deconstrnctive reading in order to appraise Nietzsche's critique itself. Insofar as we have underscored Deleuze's purported experimentation of Nietzschean themes, this study is also an experiment in itself. Through this experimentation, we will find out whether it is possible to partly gloss Nietzsche's critique of nihilism through Deleuzian phraseology. Far from presenting a mere exposition of Nietzsche's text, we are, rather, re-reading, that is, re-evaluating Nietzsche's critique of nihilism through Deleuze's experimentation. This is our way of thinking with Nietzsche. Nihilism is the central problem upon which Nietzsche's philosophical musings are directed; he deems nihilism as a cultural experience and, as such, a phenomenon to be reckoned with. In our reconstruction of Nietzsche's critique of nihilism, we locate two related elements which constitute the structure of the prescription of a cure, Le., the ethics of affirmation and the ontology of becoming. Appraising Nietzsche's ethics and ontology amounts to clarifying what Deleuze thinks as the movement from the "dogmatic image of thought" to the "new image of thought." Through this new image of thought, Deleuze makes sense of a Nietzschean counterculture which is a perspective that resists traditional or representational metaphysics. Deleuze takes the reversal of Platonism or the transmutation of values to be the point of departure. We have to, according to Deleuze, abandon our old image of the world in order to free ourselves from the obscurantism of foundationalist or essentialist thinking. It is only through the transmutation of values that we can make sense of Nietzsche's ethics of affirmation and ontology of becoming. We have to think of Nietzsche's ethics as an "ethics" and not a moral philosophy, and we have to think of his ontology as 1/ ontology" and not as metaphysics. Through Deleuze, we are able to avoid reading Nietzsche as a moral philosopher and metaphysician. Rather, we are able to read Nietzsche as one espousing an ethical imperative through the thought of the eternal return and one advocating a theory of existence based on an immanent, as opposed to transcendent, image of the world.

Gadamer's transformation of hermeneutics : from Dilthey to Heidegger

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to show how Gadamer's hermeneutics synthesizes the insights of both Heidegger and Dilthey in order to introduce a new hermeneutics. Gadamer's hermeneutics is based not only on the priority of ontology, as Heidegger insists, and neither is it only a product of life which can be objectively understood through study and rigorous method, as Dilthey suggests. For Gadamer, hermeneutics is the bringing together of ontology in terms of history. By this synthesis Gadamer not only places himself within the context of a Lebensphilosophie, but also shows that it is within language that Being can be disclosed according to a lived context. Throughout this paper the philosophies ofDilthey and Heidegger are explicated within a historical context as to bring out how, and why, Gadamer sees the need to surpass these philosophies. Through Gadamer's philosophy of play and the game, language, the dialogical model, application, and the fusion of horizons we can see how Gadamer's critique and questioning of these two philosophy leads to his new hermeneutics. Special attention is paid to the role in which these two contrasting philosophies were used to complement each other in the product of Gadamer' s philosophical hermeneutics as it is presented in his major work Truth andMethod. For Gadamer, the task of understanding is never complete. Therefore, his hermeneutics remains a dynamic structure with which we can always question the past and our traditions. This paper seeks to show his philosophical movements within these questions

This infinite, unanimous dissonance : a study in mathematical existentialism through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Alain Badiou

This thesis seeks to elucidate a motif common to the work both of Jean-Paul Sartre and Alain Badiou (with special attention being given to Being and Nothingness and Being and Event respectively): the thesis that the subject 's existence precedes and determines its essence. To this end, the author aims to explicate the structural invariances, common to both philosophies, that allow this thesis to take shape. Their explication requires the construction of an overarching conceptual framework within which it may be possible to embed both the phenomenological ontology elaborated in Being and Event and the mathematical ontology outlined in Being and Event. Within this framework, whose axial concept is that of multiplicity, the precedence of essence by existence becomes intelligible in terms of a priority of extensional over intensional determination. A series of familiar existentialist concepts are reconstructed on this basis, such as lack and value, and these are set to work in the task of fleshing out the more or less skeletal theory of the subject presented in Being and Event.

An investigation of the nature and role of historicality in the thought of Dilthey and Heidegger

Introduction The question of the meaning, methods and philosophical manifestations of history is currently rife with contention. The problem that I will address in an exposition of the thought of Wilhelm Dilthey and Martin Heidegger, centers around the intersubjectivity of an historical world. Specifically, there are two interconnected issues. First, since all knowledge occurs to a person from within his or her historical age how can any person in any age make truth claims? In order to answer this concern we must understand the essence and role of history. Yet how can we come to an individual understanding ofwhat history is when the meanings that we use are themselves historically enveloped? But can we, we who are well aware of the knowledge that archaeology has dredged up from old texts or even from 'living' monuments of past ages, really neglect to notice these artifacts that exist within and enrich our world? Charges of wilful blindness would arise if any attempt were made to suggest that certain things of our world did not come down to us from the past. Thus it appears more important 2 to determine what this 'past' is and therefore how history operates than to simply derail the possibility for historical understanding. Wilhelm Dilthey, the great German historicist from the 19th century, did not question the existence of historical artifacts as from the past, but in treating knowledge as one such artifact placed the onus on knowledge to show itself as true, or meaningful, in light ofthe fact that other historical periods relied on different facts and generated different truths or meanings. The problem for him was not just determining what the role of history is, but moreover to discover how knowledge could make any claim as true knowledge. As he stated, there is a problem of "historical anarchy"!' Martin Heidegger picked up these two strands of Dilthey's thought and wanted to answer the problem of truth and meaning in order to solve the problem of historicism. This problem underscored, perhaps for the first time, that societal presuppositions about the past and present oftheir era are not immutable. Penetrating to the core of the raison d'etre of the age was an historical reflection about the past which was now conceived as separated both temporally and attitudinally from the present. But further than this, Heidegger's focus on asking the question of the meaning of Being meant that history must be ontologically explicated not merely ontically treated. Heidegger hopes to remove barriers to a genuine ontology by II 1 3 including history into an assessment ofprevious philosophical systems. He does this in order that the question of Being be more fully explicated, which necessarily for him includes the question of the Being of history. One approach to the question ofwhat history is, given the information that we get from historical knowledge, is whether such knowledge can be formalized into a science. Additionally, we can approach the question of what the essence and role of history is by revealing its underlying characteristics, that is, by focussing on historicality. Thus we will begin with an expository look at Dilthey's conception of history and historicality. We will then explore these issues first in Heidegger's Being and Time, then in the third chapter his middle and later works. Finally, we shall examine how Heidegger's conception may reflect a development in the conception of historicality over Dilthey's historicism, and what such a conception means for a contemporary historical understanding. The problem of existing in a common world which is perceived only individually has been philosophically addressed in many forms. Escaping a pure subjectivist interpretation of 'reality' has occupied Western thinkers not only in order to discover metaphysical truths, but also to provide a foundation for politics and ethics. Many thinkers accept a solipsistic view as inevitable and reject attempts at justifying truth in an intersubjective world. The problem ofhistoricality raises similar problems. We 4 -. - - - - exist in a common historical age, presumably, yet are only aware ofthe historicity of the age through our own individual thoughts. Thus the question arises, do we actually exist within a common history or do we merely individually interpret this as communal? What is the reality of history, individual or communal? Dilthey answers this question by asserting a 'reality' to the historical age thus overcoming solipsism by encasing individual human experience within the historical horizon of the age. This however does nothing to address the epistemological concern over the discoverablity of truth. Heidegger, on the other hand, rejects a metaphysical construel of history and seeks to ground history first within the ontology ofDasein, and second, within the so called "sending" of Being. Thus there can be no solipsism for Heidegger because Dasein's Being is necessarily "cohistorical", Being-with-Others, and furthermore, this historical-Being-in-the-worldwith- Others is the horizon of Being over which truth can appear. Heidegger's solution to the problem of solipsism appears to satisfy that the world is not just a subjective idealist creation and also that one need not appeal to any universal measures of truth or presumed eternal verities. Thus in elucidating Heidegger's notion of history I will also confront the issues ofDasein's Being-alongside-things as well as the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world so that Dasein's historicality is explicated vis-a-vis the "sending of Being" (die Schicken des S eins).

The nature of avidyÄ in Buddhism and VedÄ nta

This thesis deals with the nature of ignorance as it was interpreted in the Upani~adic tradition, specifically in Advaita Vedanta, and in early and Mahayana Buddhism , e specially in the Madhyamika school of Buddhism. The approach i s a historical and comparative one. It examines the early thoughts of both the upanis.a ds and Buddhism abou t avidya (ignorance), shows how the notion was treated by the more speculative and philosphically oriented schools which base d themselves on the e arly works, and sees how their views differ. The thesis will show that the Vedinta tended to treat avidya as a topic for metaphysical s peculation as t he s chool developed, drifting from its initial e xistential concerns, while the Madhyamika remained in contact with the e xistential concerns evident in the first discourses of the Buddha. The word "notion" has been chosen for use in referring t o avidya, even though it may have non-intellectual and emotional connotations, to avoid more popular a lternatives such as "concept" or "idea". In neither the Upani,ads, Advaita Vedanta, or Buddhism is ignorance merely a concept or an idea. Only in a secondary sense, in texts and speech , does it become one. Avidya has more to do with the lived situation in which man finds himself, with the subjectobject separation in which he f eels he exists, than with i i i intel lect ual constr ucts . Western thought has begun to r ealize the same with concerns such as being in modern ontology, and has chosen to speak about i t i n terms of the question of being . Avidya, however, i s not a 'question' . If q ue stions we r e to be put regarding the nature of a vidya , they would be more of t he sort "What is not avidya?", though e ven here l anguage bestows a status t o i t which avidya does not have. In considering a work of the Eastern tradition, we f ace t he danger of imposing Western concepts on it. Granted t hat avidya is customari ly r endered i n English as ignorance, the ways i n which the East and West view i gno rance di f f er. Pedagogically , the European cultures, grounded in the ancient Greek culture, view ignorance as a l ack or an emptiness. A child is i gnorant o f certain t hings and the purpose o f f ormal education , in f act if not in theory, is to fill him with enough knowledge so that he can cope wit h t he complexities and the e xpectations of s ociety. On another level, we feel t hat study and research will l ead t o the discovery o f solutions, which we now lack , for problems now defying solut i on . The East, on the o t her hand, sees avidya in a d i fferent light.Ignorance isn't a lack, but a presence. Religious and philosophical l iterature directs its efforts not towards acquiring something new, but at removing t.he ideas and opinions that individuals have formed about themselves and the world. When that is fully accomplished, say the sages , t hen Wisdom, which has been obscured by those opinions, will present itself. Nothing new has to be learned, t hough we do have t o 'learn' that much. The growing interest in t he West with Eastern religions and philosophies may, in time, influence our theoretical and practical approaches to education and learning, not only in the established educati onal institutions, but in religious , p sychological, and spiritual activities as well. However, the requirements o f this thesis do no t permit a formulation of revolutionary method or a call to action. It focuses instead on the textual arguments which attempt to convince readers that t he world in which they take themselves to exist is not, in essence, real, on the ways i n which the l imitations of language are disclosed, and on the provisional and limited schemes that are built up to help students see through their ignorance. The metaphysic s are provisional because they act only as spurs and guides. Both the Upanisadic and Buddhist traditions that will be dealt with here stress that language constantly fails to encompass the Real. So even terms s uch as 'the Real', 'Absolute', etc., serve only to lead to a transcendent experience . The sections dealing with the Upanisads and Advaita Vedanta show some of the historical evolution of the notion of avidya, how it was dealt with as maya , and the q uestions that arose as t o its locus. With Gau?apada we see the beginnings of a more abstract treatment of the topic, and , the influence of Buddhism. Though Sankhara' S interest was primarily directed towards constructing a philosophy to help others attain mok~a ( l iberation), he too introduced t echnica l t e rminology not found in the works of his predecessors. His work is impressive , but areas of it are incomplete. Numbers of his followers tried to complete the systematic presentation of his insi ghts . Their work focuses on expl anat i ons of adhyasa (superimposition ) , t he locus and object of ignorance , and the means by which Brahman takes itself to be the jiva and the world. The section on early Buddhism examines avidya in the context o f the four truths, together with dubkha (suffering), the r ole it p l ays in t he chain of dependent c ausation , a nd t he p r oblems that arise with t he doctrine of anatman. With t he doct rines of e arly Buddhism as a base, the Madhyamika elaborated questions that the Buddha had said t e nded not t o edi f ication. One of these had to do with own - being or svabhava. Thi s serves a s a centr e around which a discussion o f i gnorance unfolds, both i ndividual and coll ective ignorance. There follows a treatment of the cessation of ignorance as it is discussed within this school . The final secti on tries to present t he similarities and differences i n the natures o f ignorance i n t he two traditions and discusses the factors responsible for t hem . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Sinha for the time spent II and suggestions made on the section dealing with Sankara and the Advait.a Vedanta oommentators, and Dr. Sprung, who supervised, direoted, corrected and encouraged the thesis as a whole, but especially the section on Madhyamika, and the final comparison.

Buddhism and the earth : environmental thought in early Buddhist philosophy

Introduction Fundamental to the philosophy of Buddhism, is the insight that there is "unsatisfactohness" (dukkha) in the world and that it can be eliminated through the practice of the Noble Eight Fold Path. Buddhism also maintains that the world as we experience and entities that exist are bereft of any substantiality. Instead existence is manifest through dependent origination. All things are conditional; nothing is permanent. However, inherent in this dependent existence is the interconnectedness of all beings and their subjection to the cosmic law of karma. Part of cultivating the Eight Fold path includes a deep compassion for all other living things, 'trapped' within this cycle of dependent origination. This compassion or empathy (karuna) is crucial to the Buddhist path to enlightenment. It is this emphasis on karuna that shows itself in Mahayana Buddhism with respect to the theory of the boddhisatva (or Buddha-to-be) since the boddhisatva willingly postpones his/her own enlightenment to help others on the same path. One of the ramifications of the theory of dependent origination is that there is no anthropocentric bias placed on humans over the natural world. Paradoxically the doctrine of non-self becomes an ontology within Buddhism, culminating in the Mayahana realization that a common boundary exists between samsara and nirvana. Essential to this ontology is the life of dharma or a moral life. Ethics is not separated from ontology. As my thesis will show, this basic outlook of Buddhism has implications toward our understanding of the Buddhist world-view with respect to the current human predicament concerning the environment. While humans are the only ones who can 4 attain "Buddhahood", it is because of our ability to understand what it means to follow the Eight fold path and act accordingly. Because of the interconnectedness of all entities {dharmas), there is an ontological necessity to eliminate suffering and 'save the earth' because if we allow the earth to suffer, we ALL suffer. This can be understood as an ethical outlook which can be applied to our interaction with and treatment of the natural environment or environment in the broadest sense, not just trees plants rocks etc. It is an approach to samsara and all within it. It has been argued that there is no ontology in Buddhism due to its doctrine of "non-self". However, it is a goal of this thesis to argue that there does exist an original ontology in Buddhism; that according to it, the nature of Being is essentially neither "Being nor non-being nor not non-being" as illustrated by Nagarjuna. Within this ontology is engrained an ethic or 'right path' (samma marga) that is fundamental to our being and this includes a compassionate relationship to our environment. In this dissertation I endeavour to trace the implications that the Buddhist worldview has for the environmental issues that assail us in our age of technology. I will explore questions such as: can the Buddhist way of thinking help us comprehend and possibly resolve the environmental problems of our day and age? Are there any current environmental theories which are comparable to or share common ground with the classical Buddhist doctrines? I will elucidate some fundamental doctrines of early Buddhism from an environmental perspective as well as identify some comparable modern environmental theories such as deep ecology and general systems theory, that seem to share in the wisdom of classical Buddhism and have much to gain from a deeper appreciation of Buddhism.

Ontological constructivism : Negri and the philosophical foundations of a future communism

As we find in Empire and Multitude, Antonio Negri's political project IS a thoroughly Marxist analysis and critique of global or late capitalism. By modifying and updating Marx's conceptual tools, he is able to provide a clear account of capitalism's processes, its expanding reach, and the revolutionary potential that functions as its motor. By turning to Negri's philosophical works, however, we find that this political analysis is founded on a series of concepts and theoretical positions. This paper attempts to clarify this theoretical foundation, highlighting in particular what I term "ontological constructivism" - Negri's radical reworking of traditional ontology. Opposing the long history of transcendence in epistemology and metaphysics (one that stretches from Plato to Kant), this reworked ontological perspective positions individuals - not god or some other transcendent source - as the primary agents responsible for molding the ontological landscape. Combined with his understanding of kairos (subjective, immeasurable time), ontological constructivism lays the groundwork for opposing transcendence and rethinking contemporary politics.

The Essence of Feeling a Sense of Community: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry With Middle School Students and Teachers

In contemporary times, there is a compelling need to understand the nature of positive community relationships that value diverse others. This dissertation is a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry into the essence of what it means to feel a sense of community. Specifically, I explored this phenomenon from the perspective of middle school teachers and students through the following questions: What meanings do students and teachers ascribe to feeling, experiencing, and developing a sense of community in their classes? To what extent do students’ and teachers’ ideas about feeling a sense of community include the acceptance of individual differences? Together these questions contributed to the overarching question, what is the essence of feeling a sense of community? As the data pool for the research, I used 192 essays and 218 posters from students who had been asked to write or draw about their visions of a positive classroom community where they felt a sense of community. I conducted 9 teacher interviews on the topic as well. My findings revealed one overarching ontology, Being-in-Relation, which outlined a full integration between individuality and community as a “way of being.” I also found five attributes that are present when individuals feel a sense of community: Supporting Others, Dialogue, An Ethic of Respect and Care, Safety, and Healthy Conflict. Contributions from this research include extensions to the literature about community; clarity for those who wish to establish a strong foundation of community relationships within formal and non-formal educational programs; insight that may assist educators, leaders, and policy makers within formal educational systems; and an opportunity to consider the extent to which the findings may point toward broader implications.

Generating Relation Algebras for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning

Basic relationships between certain regions of space are formulated in natural language in everyday situations. For example, a customer specifies the outline of his future home to the architect by indicating which rooms should be close to each other. Qualitative spatial reasoning as an area of artificial intelligence tries to develop a theory of space based on similar notions. In formal ontology and in ontological computer science, mereotopology is a first-order theory, embodying mereological and topological concepts, of the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries between parts. We shall introduce abstract relation algebras and present their structural properties as well as their connection to algebras of binary relations. This will be followed by details of the expressiveness of algebras of relations for region based models. Mereotopology has been the main basis for most region based theories of space. Since its earliest inception many theories have been proposed for mereotopology in artificial intelligence among which Region Connection Calculus is most prominent. The expressiveness of the region connection calculus in relational logic is far greater than its original eight base relations might suggest. In the thesis we formulate ways to automatically generate representable relation algebras using spatial data based on region connection calculus. The generation of new algebras is a two pronged approach involving splitting of existing relations to form new algebras and refinement of such newly generated algebras. We present an implementation of a system for automating aforementioned steps and provide an effective and convenient interface to define new spatial relations and generate representable relational algebras.

Indigenous Language Reclamation: The Learners Perspective

ABSTRACT This study explored the link between learning an Indigenous language and the meanings second language learners attach to their language recovery experiences. The study delves into the factors that motivate, enhance and serve as barriers to individual language revitalization efforts. With the goal of reasserting an Indigenous world view, the traditional teachings of the Ojibwe medicine wheel were combined with the lessons of the seven Grandfathers to provide a methodological basis for conducting ethical research with and for the benefit of First Nations people. Within the context of our relationships with self, community, spirit and environment, the pairing of Indigenous theory with the practical community experiences of Indigenous second language learners, demonstrates how Indigenous systems of thought and ontology lend themselves well to the critical understanding necessary to enhance the recovery our own endangered languages. These research findings indicate that there is a definite link between ancestral language reclamation and increased levels of self-esteem, a sense of grounded cultural identity and resilience, an overall sense of healing and the social responsibility that comes with receiving the gift of language. The barriers associated with learning an ancestral language intersect on multiple and often simultaneous levels making it difficult for the language learners to discover their origin.This research found that it was important for language learners to identify that they often carry a collective sense of shame associated with an internalized attachment to the modality of Indigeneity. Once the origin of this shame was acknowledged – as resulting from settler/assimilation logics, it was often possible for people to move forward in their language recovery journeys, while at the same time considering more broadly the structural barriers that make individual learning so difficult.