Text page
WRAP Thesis Hall 2000
Outside the Gate: A Study of Nietzsche's Project of Revaluation as Mediated via the Work of D. H. Lawrence
A Warwick dissertation on Nietzsche, Lawrence, nihilism, style, and revaluation across philosophy and literature.
Archive condition
The page uses the canonical extracted text as its reading layer while preserving the original file paths as the archival source of record.
Core idea
Hall treats Nietzschean revaluation as something that must pass through literary form rather than philosophical declaration alone. Lawrence becomes a mediator for thinking nihilism, culture, politics, and style together.
The dissertation dissolves the genre border between philosophy and literature and uses that breach to rethink nihilism, capitalism, technology, and style. Revaluation is staged as a transformation of tone and form as much as value.
This matters because it shows Warwick philosophy engaging literature as a serious site of conceptual invention. It is especially revealing for understanding how style and critique could become inseparable in the formation period.
How to read this text
Begin with the introduction and the sections on genre and nihilism, then read into the chapters where culture and style are tied to revaluation. That path makes the mediating role of Lawrence much clearer.
Keep an eye on how literary form is made to carry philosophical stakes. The dissertation is most legible when style is treated as method rather than decoration.
Representative extracts
Definition · paragraph 23
".. the time is coming when politics will have a different meaning." - Nietzsche.? As will already be clear, this thesis is intended as a contribution to political philosophy as much as it is to literary criticism, concerned as it is with the social aspects and significance of Nietzsche's project of revaluation and Lawrence's development and fictional illustration of it.
Definition · paragraph 76
Closing Remarks: From Among the Ruins to Beyond the Ruins; From a Politics of Style to a Politics of Evil. We have examined how modern European nihilism manifests itself in various forms and why it must be explored at numerous points, in a number of ways. The revaluation of all values longed for by Nietzsche and Lawrence is achievable, if at all, only once the above has been perfected.
Definition · paragraph 76
The revaluation of all values longed for by Nietzsche and Lawrence is achievable, if at all, only once the above has been perfected. But if the consummation of nihilism and the revaluation is essentially a cultural-philosophical concern, it cannot be divorced from a social, economic, and political context and thus the question of style is more than an abstract one to do with aesthetics or 'art for art's sake'.
Definition · paragraph 23
As will already be clear, this thesis is intended as a contribution to political philosophy as much as it is to literary criticism, concerned as it is with the social aspects and significance of Nietzsche's project of revaluation and Lawrence's development and fictional illustration of it. I believe that one cannot fully appreciate either writer's work without recognizing that each is concerned to effect a fundamental change in our way of thinking about ethics, politics, and society.
History · paragraph 2
By Stephen Alexander Hall. A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy and Literature. University of Warwick, Dept. of Philosophy.
Appears in sections
Warwick and Formation Primary section
How the CCRU emerged around Warwick, Sadie Plant, Nick Land, and an unstable collaborative scene.