The winners will be honored on Friday, February 20, at 4 pm, in Maxwell Hall 122. Keeley will present her paper “Beyond Aphorisms: Nietzsche’s Turn to Gnomological Composition,” to be followed by comments from two members of the jury, Akin Adesokan and Carlos Colmenares Gil. A reception concludes the event. All are invited to attend.
Lauren Keeley: “Beyond Aphorisms: Nietzsche’s Turn to Gnomological Composition”
Friday, February 20, 4 pm, Maxwell Hall 122
Abstract: Many scholars have portrayed Friedrich Nietzsche’s preference for writing in aphorisms as a natural consequence of the themes in his philosophy. This paper instead claims that his inclination to aphoristic composition is more akin to, and more likely, an exercise in the ancient Greek gnōmē (“maxim”) than a mere stylistic choice. In this reading, Nietzsche’s aphorisms represent a striving for a language that is welded to a specific kind of (ancient) intelligence. I argue that with Daybreak (1881), The Gay Science (1882), and Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Nietzsche’s trademark style develops markedly out of his direct engagement with the Presocratic philosophers in The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (1872-1876) lectures. This encounter is framed by his attack on Socratic rationalism in The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and then adapted to his aesthetic ethics, yielding dynamic tensions between gnomology as understood in Greek intellectual history and Nietzsche’s cooption of it for his philosophical goals.
Lauren Keeley is a Ph.D. student in the English department with a focus in rhetoric. She works in the ancient Greek rhetorical tradition, specifically Presocratic and Sophistic thought. Her interest in continental philosophy flows from her study of Martin Heidegger’s significance to rhetorical theory. As a composition teacher, she is interested in how the canons of classical rhetorical education might guide GenAI integration into the college writing classroom.
The Theory Center is grateful to William Slaymaker for his generosity in funding this prize.
