Email: nietheid@gmail.com
YouTube: The Literature Channel
Twitter: @nietheid
Academia.edu: Timothy H. Wilson
I live in Ottawa, Canada, with my wife and two boys, aged 14 and 10. It is for them that I am driven continually to try to be the best person I can be. It is in this spirit that I passionately approach the Great Books: with a view to the leading of the soul to Beauty, Truth and the Good.
I am a part-time Professor of English Literature at the University of Ottawa, specializing in Renaissance Literature and Literary Theory. My recent research has focused on the “quarrel of philosophy and poetry” within the Western tradition, bearing fruit in a number of recent articles and papers on the manifestation of this quarrel in the political thinking of Plato, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche. I am also the Associate Vice-President of Research Programs at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Prior to joining SSHRC, I held a number of executive positions within the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Public Service Commission of Canada.
"What Get Wrong About Nietzsche's Nihilism"
A discussion of Nietzsche's interpretation of the history of nihilism; in VoegelinView (October 2023)The essay takes issue with popular interpretations of Nietzsche that he simply wanted us to embrace life as meaningless. For Nietzsche, nihilism is a historical crisis that needs to be overcome. The essay defines several aspects of nihilism: ethical, political, epistemological and historical (Nietzsche's innovation). Then, the essay outlines the history of nihilism as understood by Nietzsche and how it is completed and overcome through the affirmation of the eternal return. Finally, the essay quickly discusses the postmodernist, Straussian and Heideggerian responses to Nietzsche's description of the history of nihilism.
"Referential Bodies and Signs: Problems with the Nietzschean-Derridean Interpretation of Augustine"
An interpretation of Augustine's philosophy in relation to Nietzsche’s and Derrida's critiques of medieval thought generally; published in VoegelinView (December 2022)The essay attempts to refute the Nietzschean claim that Augustine, and medieval-Christian thought generally, is founded on a denial of the body, as well as the Derridean claim that Augustine is logocentric, eschewing any mediation of full presence. The essay explores the Augustinian conception of being as hierarchical, analogical, and referential. In this way, Augustine’s notions of existence involve an affirmation of the entirety of being, not a denial of it. This conception applies to the Augustinian notion of the nature of the sign as well. If we read Augustine on his own terms, we see the possibility of affirming beings as a whole and recognizing the beauty in all things.
"The Ancient Liberty of Milton's Epic Verse"
An interpretation of Milton's Paradise Lost in light of his relation to the poetic tradition as well as in relation to Milton's concepts of political liberty and freedom of the will in relation to the Divine. The Imaginative Conservative (March 2021)The essay is a discussion of Milton's Paradise Lost that takes as its point of departure the reflections on "The Verse" that Milton appended to the poem in the 1674 edition. While the epic invocation boldly states that Milton will describe things "unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime" (Book I.16), the preface on "The Verse" claims that Milton's poem is to be situated within a poetic tradition reaching back to Homer and Virgil. The rules of this poetic tradition provide a certain "ancient liberty", which Milton contrasts with "license" in Sonnet 12. The essay makes the point that part of what is original in Milton's epic is his search for first causes -- "say first what cause" (Book I.28) -- that transcends the search for causes in material bodies undertaken by philosophers as well as the search for divine causes undertaken in the "middle flight" of the pagan poets. Yet, Milton's poetic form and language also adhere to and expand upon the poetic tradition, in particular with his use of epic similes that consciously refer to the epic similes utilized by Dante, Virgil and Homer. The essay concludes by alluding to this pious reverence for the poetic tradition as one of the ways in which we can distinguish Miltonic poetics from the the pride of Satan. That is, although both Satan and Milton audaciously attempt things "unattempted", Satan's goal is self-assertion while Milton's goal is the revelation of God's Will as that which is "first" in the highest sense.
"Robinson Crusoe and Modernity"
An interpretation of the Daniel Defoe’s novel in relation to the first wave of modernity as articulated in the natural philosophy of Francis Bacon and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke; published in The Imaginative Conservative (June 2020)The essay is a discussion of Defoe’s novel as an oscillation between a search for a Divine providential meaning in the plights of existence and a more secular interpretation of phenomena. The essay shows how Crusoe as narrator tries to reflect back on his journey as a sort of spiritual self-discovery; however, his own actions and deepest passions (in the form of his naturalistic interpretation of events on the island as well as his excessive attachment to wealth) undermine this spiritual orientation. This oscillation between the explanatory frameworks offered by Christianity and secular modernity, I assert, make the novel still relevant and powerful for us today.
"Nietzsche’s Gift: On the First Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
An interpretation of the First Part of Zarathustra in relation to Nietzsche’s reversal of Platonism, namely in relation to a reversal of Platonic, esoteric communication; published in VoegelinView (January 2020)Friedrich Nietzsche referred to his own philosophy as an inversion of Platonism. It has yet to be clearly established, however, what exactly this meant for Nietzsche. This paper examines the First Part of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in light of Nietzsche’s relation to Plato. The paper asserts that one key for understanding Nietzsche’s inversion of Platonism is coming to grips with the reversal of Plato’s art of philosophic communication that takes place in the First Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This reversal of Platonic communication is undertaken by means of the thematic of the “Gift”. That is, Platonic communication is likened to a gift-giving that responds to the needs of its recipients. Platonic, or “esoteric”, philosophic communication adapts its message to the needs of the listener – veiling its message in order to protect listeners from harmful philosophic truths. Zarathustra, on the other hand, learns a new form of communication in the First Part, one that is driven by the imperatives of the speaker or giver, not the listener or recipient: “How can I give each his own? Let this be sufficient for me: I give each my own."
"Nietzsche’s Early Political Thinking II: ‘The Greek State’"
A close reading of Nietzsche’s early essay “The Greek State” revealing its linkages to the thought of Plato; published in Minerva 17 (2013): 171 – 216This paper attempts to uncover the political aspects of Nietzsche’s early thinking through an extended discussion of his essay “The Greek State.” The paper builds on a similar discussion of another essay from the same period, “Homer on Competition,” in arguing that Nietzsche’s thinking is based on a confrontation with the work of Plato. It is argued that the key to understanding “The Greek State” is seeing it, in its entirety, as an enigmatic interpretation and re-writing of Plato’s Republic. Nietzsche interprets the Republic as Plato’s accomplishment of the task of the genuine philosopher: the legislation of values and the molding of human character.
"Nietzsche’s Early Political Thinking: ‘Homer on Competition’"
A close reading of “Homer on Competition” revealing Nietzsche’s esoteric doctrine of the relation between phusis and nomos; published in Minerva 9 (2005): 177-235The paper is a close reading of Nietzsche's early essay, "Homer on Competition". It explores the understanding of nature as strife presented in that essay, how this strife channels itself into cultural or state forms, and how these forms cultivate the creative individual or genius. The article concludes by asserting that Nietzsche's central point in "Homer on Competition" concerns the contest across the ages that is fought by these geniuses. For Nietzsche, therefore, competition has a political significance — the forging of the unity and identity of a particular community — and a trans-political significance — the forging of a "republic of geniuses" on the part of artists and philosophers across the expanse of the tradition.
"The Aesthetics of the Good Physician"
On the trope of the philosopher-ruler in Plato, More and Spenser; published in English Studies in Canada 28 (2002): 7-30In Self-Consuming Artifacts, Stanley Fish outlines what he calls “The Aesthetics of the Good Physician.” Within the Western tradition, according to Fish, the dialectician as physician leads the auditor to a place where he or she can abandon the realm of rhetoric and images. The texts of Plato, More, and Spenser, however, present another possibility for the relation between dialectic and rhetoric: a relation which confirms the necessity of each element within the unity of the whole.
"Spenser’s Pharmacy: Nature and Art in The Faerie Queene I.iv-v"
A Derridean deconstruction of Spenser’s epic focusing on Book I (1998)"Hamlet and Modern Metaphysics"
An interpretation of the play in relation to the modern revolution in philosophy undertaken by Bacon and Descartes (1998)This paper discusses the ways in which Shakespeare's Hamlet instantiates the modern metaphysics of the subject, as most fully articulated in the philosophy of Rene Descartes. In addition, the paper connects this modern, subject-centered way of thinking with the revolution in modern natural philosophy undertaken by Francis Bacon. Hamlet sets up his own Baconian scientific experiment in the form of "The Mouse Trap".
The Question of Representation in Elizabethan Literature
My PhD thesis, a Heideggerian reading of Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare (1998)My PhD dissertation: a Heideggerian reading of Sidney's Defence of Poesy, Spenser's The Faerie Queene and Shakespeare's Hamlet with the goal of demonstrating that these Elizabethan authors present a non-representational, non-metaphysical possibility for how the poetic art work can be experienced.
"Auden: Toward A Minor Literature"
A Deleuzean reading of Auden; published in Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 24.2 (1997): 247-62"Foucault, Genealogy, History"
A Heideggerian deconstruction of Foucault; published in Philosophy Today 39.2 (1995): 157-170This paper assesses the genealogical method of Michel Foucault, comparing it to Friedrich Nietzsche's genealogical method. It is found that the two authors share parallel metaphysical points of departure in their respective concepts of "power/knowledge" and "will to power".
“Questions of Being: An Exploration of Enduring Dreams”
A Heideggerian reading of Moss; with Lorrie Graham, published in Echoing Silence: Essays on Arctic Narrative. Ed. John Moss. Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press, 1997. 137-43“Structure, Time, and Limits in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”
A Derridean deconstruction of Gérard Genette; published in Postscript 3.2 (1996): 101-110