Date of Award
Summer 2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
College
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
First Advisor
Sean Kirkland
Abstract
This dissertation proposes an examination of the concept of the soul (Seele) as it appears in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, in conversation with the concept of the soul in Aristotle. I propose bringing these two historically and theoretically disparate thinkers into dialogue insofar as they each represent a pivotal moment in the history of Western subjectivity, drawing on Martin Heidegger’s positioning of Aristotle and Nietzsche as the inaugural and final thinkers of Western metaphysics, respectively. Yet, following recent Continental interpretations of both thinkers, I read both Aristotle and Nietzsche as proto-phenomenologists concerned with the problem of how to thematize the relationship between the human being and its world and the relationship between experience and the expression or communication of that experience. To do this, I first examine Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and the Will to Power fragments, in which he characterizes his project as a psychology, drawing a parallel between Nietzsche’s explicit, positive discussions of the soul and the will to power as life and interpretation. Drawing on the etymological connection of psychology as a study of psuchē (soul), and the precedent of previous studies treating Nietzsche’s soul in conversation with Plato, I turn to Aristotle’s works on definition and the soul to frame my reading of the soul between Aristotle and Nietzsche as multiplicitous, attuned, and plastic. After this initial framing, I turn to several of Nietzsche’s published and unpublished works from the 1860’s to 1870’s in order to argue that the notion of subjectivity under development in these works can be understood as already bearing these characteristics. The dissertation ends with an opening toward the possibility of metaphorical expression, and, more generally, literary and artistic expression, as a means of writing the soul.
Copyright
Copyright © 2026 Laura G. Campos
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Campos, Laura G., "Nietzsche’s Greek Soul: Traces of Aristotle’s Psuchē in the Early Nietzsche" (2026). Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University. 142.
https://via.library.depaul.edu/theses-dissertations/142