“Organization and the Organic in the Philosophies of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer”

This thesis will investigate the theories of organization and the organic proposed by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. These questions have been taken up by very few scholars of Nietzsche, and even less scholars of Schopenhauer. The first chapter of this work examines the various attitudes that scholarship takes toward the terms ‘life’ and ‘organic’ in Nietzsche’s texts. We indicate the significance of the question of life in Nietzsche's thought, and analyze the causes for the proliferation of the indefinite connotations surrounding these terms amongst Nietzsche’s commentators. The first chapter catalogues the history of the terms ‘life’ and ‘organism’ in Nietzsche’s influences, writings, and interpreters.
Our second chapter dissects the Kantian and Schopenhauerian theories of the organic and of organization, with the majority of the chapter focusing on Schopenhauer. We argue that Schopenhauer’s critics have neglected two key elements of his philosophy: his doctrine of the Ideas, and his engagement with French naturalists such as Lamarck and Cuvier. Schopenhauer’s theory of the organic can only be understood once these two subjects have been connected.
The third chapter in this thesis works on describing the concept of organization in Nietzschean thought. To do this involves describing the untold story of the relation between Nietzsche’s theories of types and the will to power with the Schopenhauerian notions of Ideas and the will. In this chapter we attempt to reexamine the concept of the will to power by analyzing the quality of power itself. We claim that scholars have not given enough consideration to the interpretive and organizational functions of the will to power.
The last chapter in this thesis formulates and defines the organic being in Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is our contention that the indispensable element to unlocking Nietzsche’s concept of the organic is the theme of ‘the hidden’ in his thought. Our claim is that the initial gestures of life can be understood as a withdrawal, as the building of a boundary, as a hiding away. This is the culmination of the thesis; a theme which has been widely ignored by most scholars will end up at the heart of the Nietzschean project.