ABSTRACT The First Tragic Philosopher: Nietzsches Self-Portrait in Ecce Homo Caleb Patrick Simone Director: Dwight David

Allman, PhD

In his autobiography entitled Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, Friedrich Nietzsche sets out to explain who he is and how he understands his philosophy. Offering a commentary on his life and works, Nietzsche constructs a philosophical selfportrait in which he portrays himself as the first tragic philosopher. Through this poetic image, Nietzsche suggests a coherence to his philosophy that encompasses all of his philosophical periods. Using Ecce Homo as a kind of hermeneutic guide, this thesis undertakes to read Nietzsche as good old philologists read their Horace, in order to trace the development of his poetic self-portrait as the first tragic philosopher. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche indicates that the origins of his tragic philosophy lie in this first book, The Birth of Tragedy. This thesis illuminates Nietzsches self-understanding as the first tragic philosopher, therefore, by tracing its development from his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, to his mature philosophical period. While the tragic philosopher looks to be something like the opposite of the optimistic Socrates, or even the pessimistic Schopenhauer, since he is defined in contradistinction to both of these figures, I nevertheless argue that Nietzsches tragic philosopher is properly brought into view only

with the aid of these images. Nietzsche ultimately represents his tragic philosopher as a Socrates who practices music, on the one hand, and the pessimist of strength, on the other. Only through a careful explication of these images, by which Nietzsche explains and defines himself, does the portrait of the tragic philosopher come fully and properly into view.