Dead Letters to Nietzsche, or the Necromantic Art of Reading Philosophy

Contents

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pp. v-vi

Acknowledgments

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pp. vii-viii

Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have been published in the form of articles, and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance I received from the journal editors and anonymous readers who contributed to the improvement of this work, through their advice and commentary. The articles in question are: “‘Keeping It in the Family’: Sarah Kofman Reading ...

Introduction: The Quickened and the Dead

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pp. 1-10

More than most philosophers, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche commands a following of readers who attempt, each in his or her own manner, to perpetuate his legacy. Many of these thinkers have dedicated a great deal of their lives not only to reading and interpreting Nietzsche’s texts, but also attempting to actualize “the event” his writings only envisage: the ...

1. Ontology for Philologists: Nietzsche, Body, Subject

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pp. 11-34

Everything Nietzsche published, he intended to be read. This may seem a banal observation, yet commentators frequently deem as extraneous and impertinent Nietzsche’s more “stylish” prose: whereby he sets a scene for his philosophy, or instructs his reader in the art of reading his books—as in the passage quoted above. As a philosopher who also self-identified as a ...

2. Lacan, Desire, and the Originating Function of Loss

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pp. 35-60

If psychoanalysis can teach us anything, it is the formative effect upon the subject of the father’s death, the fantasy of which provides the conditions for the emergence of subjectivity. Freud’s various parables of parricide and incest (re)enact the experience of rupture that characterizes subjectivity: ...

3. “The Insiders”: Nietzsche’s Secret Teaching and the Invention of “the Philosopher of the Future”

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pp. 61-94

Like a child before the lacanian mirror, Nietzsche anticipates himself in his own writing, the various self-characterizations that he draws providing the Gestalt by means of which his subjectivity is organized. Thus, in writing an “autobiography,” Ecce Homo, Nietzsche makes a wager with himself ...

4. The Contagion of Affect in Nietzsche:Klein, Krell, Bataille

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pp. 95-123

We have seen already that the partition of Nietzsche’s writing into inside and outside—whereby a chosen few are apparently always already admitted to the text, which in turn keeps all others radically exterior—is complicated by psychoanalytic considerations of the formation of (readerly) subjectivity. This chapter will explore further this understanding ...

5. Family Romances and Textual Encounters: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche

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pp. 124-148

The hazard of family relations is well borne out by Sarah Kofman’s texts. From her book-length studies of Freud and Nietzsche, to her short discourses about her childhood and her dreams, Kofman’s writings are as personal as they are philosophical. Moreover, the personal interpenetrates the philosophical, and vice versa, because for her the two cannot properly be ...

6. The Vision, the Riddle, and the Vicious Circle: Pierre Klossowski’s Reading of Nietzsche’s Sick Body

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pp. 149-186

In closing with an analysis of Pierre Klossowski’s Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, we will have toured a full circle, returning to and summarizing questions of the subject’s relation to language, the philosopher’s body, and the pivotal role of interpretation in Nietzsche’s philosophy. But this chapter ...

Notes

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pp. 187-199

Bibliography

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pp. 200-205

Index

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pp. 207-211