Abstract

The dissertation which follows focuses on the implications of the claims which Nietzsche makes regarding the relationship of unconditional honest atheism and ascetic ideals in the two aphorisms with which he concludes On the Genealogy of Morals. While it is on the basis of unconditional honest atheism that Nietzsche articulates his polemic against the ascetic ideals of Judaism and Christianity, he nevertheless acknowledges that his critique adheres to the unconditional will to truth which has its origin in them. Unconditional honest atheism is, he maintains, not the antithesis but, rather, the kernel of ascetic ideals. Yet, while he holds that truth has become conscious of itself as a problem in unconditional honest atheism, he concludes the Genealogy by saying that all willing which has followed form ascetic ideals has, so far, been nihilism. Nietzsche, however, is unable to explain how the conscious truth of atheism has emerged from the nihilism of theism. The question which is central to this dissertation, therefore, is how, or whether, the will to critique can escape its origin. In order to provide a larger context for examining the implications of this question, the dissertation first takes up the ways in which issues arising form the concept of origin found in the biblical stories of creation and fall are formulated in the work of Augustine, Derrida, and Hegel. Derrida's notion of the supplement, through which he deconstructs the very notion of origin, is examined, in the dissertation, in light of the hermeneutical structure which Augustine elicits from the concept of divine creation. The dissertation also takes up the concept of origin presupposed by the story of the fall, insofar as that story is central both to Derrida's deconstruction of the totalization of meaning and to Hegel's concepts of history and knowledge. After the preliminary investigation of the relation of origin and critique in Augustine, Derrida, and Hegel, the dissertation turns to a detailed analysis of On the Genealogy of Morals in light of Nietzsche's call for a revaluation of all values. Central to this revaluation is the critique of what Nietzsche describes as antithetical valuations. Yet, while that critique is consistent with the ontology which emerges from the biblical stories of creation and fall, his account of what constitutes biblical values nevertheless constantly falls into contradiction insofar as he claims that Judaism and Christianity depend on prior origins. Through a systematic reading of On the Genealogy of Morals, the dissertation which follows argues that Nietzsche is able to launch his polemic against the nihilism resulting from antithetical valuations only on the basis of the origin of critique which is, from the beginning, the critique of origins