Abstract:
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.
