Memory mixed with desire : a preliminary study of philosophy and literature in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Milan Kundera

Memory Mixed with Desire: A preliminary study of Philosophy and Literature in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Milan Kundera Robert Spinelli Brock University, Department of Philosophy This thesis studies intertextuality in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Milan Kundera through the primary themes of memory and forgetting. The thesis starts with two introductory chapters that delineate memory according to Nietzsche and Kundera respectively. From here, I move into a discussion of Nietzsche's Ubermensch as an example of the type of forgetting that Nietzsche sees as a cure for the overabundance of memory that has led to Christian morality. Next, I explore the Kunderan concept of kitsch as the polar opposite of what Nietzsche has sought in his philosophy, finishing the chapter by tying the two thinkers together in a Kunderan critique of Nietzsche. The thesis ends with a chapter devoted to the Eternal Return beginning with an exegesis of Nietzsche's idea and ending with a similar exegesis of Kundera's treatment of this thought. What I suggest in this chapter is that the Eternal Return might itself be a form of kitsch even in its attempt to revalue existence.

Augusto Matraga: um hérói além do bem e do mal - uma perpectiva trágico-ntológica

The present dissertation analyses the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the short story written by João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), A hora e vez de Augusto Matraga (1946) seeking to point out the possibility of the philosophic application of some Nietzschean ideas to enlarge the aesthetic value of the short story. It has been especially aimed at applying the concept of the noble superior being described by Nietzsche, the ubermensch, to the hero s ontological nature, Augusto Matraga. Nietzsche s postulates of the will to power, the elements suggested of the trial between Dionysus and Apollo and the ascetic ideal, will be especially relevant to this work, which intends to establish until what point the hero can be conceived as a good ascetic person, in so far as his noble ontological nature trespass the Christian morality, bringing him closer to the man who, according to Nietzsche, is beyond good and evil. Some Heideggerian concepts will also be relevant in order to reinforce the idea that the judgment created about Matraga is just an appearance that does not contemplate his essential Being, contributing to veil his real tragic-ontological valour, what implies that the aesthetic power of the short has been under valued