Passion and Eternity in Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science

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".