Passion and Eternity in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science

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This thesis analyses Friedrich Nietzsche's (1844-1900) development of an art of living

indebted to classical and Hellenistic philosophies in The Gay Science. Nietzsche's debt

to the ancients revolves around their shared conception of philosophy as an "art of

healing the soul".1 The philosopher as therapist or physician is one who cares for the

soul in the same way the medical doctor cares for the body. While the theme of the

philosophical physician is a constant presence in Nietzsche's oeuvre, his most direct

engagement with ancient therapies occurs throughout the 'free-spirit trilogy', which

culminates in 1882's The Gay Science.2 The ancient therapeutic tradition grants

Nietzsche a standpoint from which he can await a "philosophical physician in the

exceptional sense of that word".3 Compared with his and our contemporaries, this

orientation radically alters what is at stake in the practice of philosophy, in Nietzsche's

words, not "'truth' but something else-let us say, health, future, growth, power, life".