Pharmaceutics I

Abstract

This is the first in a cycle of three chapters providing readings of Kofman’s work Nietzsche and the Philosophical Stage (1979). It opens the cycle by providing a framework for Kofman’s unusual, ventriloquizing way of writing on, through, and as Nietzsche, and provides some orientation concerning this figure’s influential reading of Greek tragedy. The chapter sets out how the interplay of tragic drama and philosophical motifs is examined by modern receptions of ancient thought. It introduces the notion of ‘pharmaceutics’ (also with discussion of Derrida), which Kofman uses to think through and criticize the way philosophy has often appropriated the tragic, thus clearing a way for an alternative approach to suffering and, ultimately, life.