Jaryth Webber

Graduation Semester and Year

2019

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in History

Department

History

First Advisor

Kenyon Zimmer

Abstract

Modern European Culture and the Making of Beyond Good and Evil offers a historical picture of nineteenth-century European culture by means of examining one of its chief artifacts, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, in effect “seeing” European culture through Nietzsche’s “most dangerous book.” Beyond Good and Evil contained Nietzsche’s clearest attack on the foundations of what will be called “national imaginaries,” decisive historically for cultural changes, shooting questions about both the “nation” and those “clinging” to it. Likewise, the book also provided an analysis of the emergent “supranational” peoples of Europe that were in need of a transnational cultural community, Nietzsche having asked whether imagined national communities could be relieved by the fact that “Europe wants to become one.” This discussion suggests an approach to the question of what it would be for Europe to “become one” in Nietzsche’s sense, by way of the study of nineteenth-century European culture and one influential historical actor’s relationship with it.

Keywords

Nietzsche, History, European history, Cultural history, European culture, Social history, Intellectual history, Historical philosophy, Nietzsche studies

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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