David Wittenberg

This dissertation is a study of revision in philosophy, both as a type of interpretive practice and as a structuring condition of Western philosophical texts. Martin Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche serve as my primary example of a philosophical revision. I also use Heidegger's thought to develop a theoretical model of revisionist interpretation within the history of Western philosophy. I supplement specific points of my theory of revision with analysis of Harold Bloom's work on poetic revision and Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays on history and self-reliance. ;In Chapters one and three I address specific revisions within Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche: the first chapter is on Heidegger's re-interpretation of the relation of art and truth in Nietzsche's later writing, and the third on Heidegger's understanding of "eternal recurrence" and its relation to "life". In each of these chapters I attempt to exhibit the logical and rhetorical gestures that Heidegger's text effects in order to refigure the difference between itself and Nietzsche's text as a self-difference already implicit within Nietzsche's own thinking. Between these two interpretive chapters, in chapter two, I analyze how Heidegger contextualizes his readings within a larger critique of "Western metaphysics," and how his understanding of the history of metaphysics can contribute to a more general theoretical model of revision as a structure of philosophical thinking. ;Any revisionist reading seeks an audience, not only for its particular interpretation, but for its construction of the "proper" context and intention of the text it reads. Since Heidegger tends to efface his own practice of constructing Nietzsche's "proper" text for an audience, his reading is of limited usefulness for an account of revision's influence upon other readers. Therefore, in chapter four I turn to Harold Bloom and Ralph Waldo Emerson, each of whom foregrounds the tendency of interpretations to impose upon future readers as well as upon the past texts they alter. Revision in philosophy is not only an ex post facto alteration of past history, but a proleptic alteration of future histories as well--precisely the future histories of the text that has been revised

This collection emphasizes a cross-disciplinary approach to the problem of scale, with essays ranging in subject matter from literature to film, architecture, the plastic arts, philosophy, and scientific and political writing. Its contributors consider a variety of issues provoked by the sudden and pressing shifts in scale brought on by globalization and the era of the Anthropocene, including: the difficulties of defining the concept of scale; the challenges that shifts in scale pose to knowledge formation; the role of scale in mediating individual subjectivity and agency; the barriers to understanding objects existing in scalar realms different from our own; the role of scale in mediating the relationship between humans and the environment; and the nature of power, authority, and democracy at different social scales.

Philosophers have almost always relegated the topic of revision to the sidelines of their discipline, if they have thought about it at all. This book contends that acts of revision are central and indispensable to the project of philosophizing and that philosophy should be construed essentially as a practice of rereading and rewriting. The book focuses chiefly on Heidegger's highly influential interpretation of Nietzsche, conducted in lectures during the 1930s and 1940s and published in 1961. The author closely analyzes the rhetorical means by which Heidegger repositions Nietzsche's thinking within a broad history of metaphysics, even as Heidegger positions his own reinterpretation as that history's more 'proper' reading. In addition to being the first book-length published study of Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche, the book also examines the work of Hans-Robert Jauss, Harold Bloom, and other critics of revision.

Introduction: Time travel and the mechanics of narrative -- Macrological fictions: evolutionary utopia and time travel (1887-1905) -- Historical interval I: the first time travel story -- Relativity, psychology, paradox: Wertenbaker to Heinlein (1923-1941) -- Historical interval II: three phases of time travel--the time machine -- The big time: multiple worlds, narrative viewpoint, and superspace -- Paradox and paratext: picturing narrative theory -- Theoretical interval: the primacy of the visual in time travel narrative -- Viewpoint-over-histories: narrative conservation in Star Trek -- Oedipus multiplex, or, the subject as a time travel film: Back to the future -- Conclusion: The last time travel story.