Nietzsche: Adept

Six dialogues deeper into the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche

A course on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.

What you will learn

  • Distinguish the *Apollonian* (form, image, dream, the principle of individuation) from the *Dionysian* (intoxication, music, the dissolution of the self into primal unity).
  • Grasp the tragic insight — existence is terrible, and the Greeks neither fled it nor explained it away but redeemed it as an *aesthetic* phenomenon.
  • See why this earliest book (1872) already holds the whole later philosophy in embryo: the Dionysian Yes to life, suffering included, is the seed of *amor fati*.
  • Understand perspectivism: all knowing is from a perspective, shaped by drives and needs; the dream of a 'view from nowhere,' the pure disinterested eye, is incoherent.
  • Grasp the reversal of objectivity — more perspectives, more affects allowed to speak, means MORE objectivity, not less (GM III.12).
  • Confront the will to truth itself as a value that can be questioned — and feel the vertigo of whether perspectivism saws off the branch it sits on.
  • Grasp the dissolution of the unified subject: the 'I' is a grammatical habit, not an observed atom — 'a thought comes when it wishes, not when I wish' (BGE 17).
  • See the self as a *society* of competing drives and affects, with 'will' being the feeling of the drive that has, for the moment, commanded.

Course outline

  1. The Birth of Tragedy: Apollo and Dionysus — Art before philosophy — how the Greeks faced the terror of existence, and the two drives whose union gave birth to tragedy.
  2. Perspectivism — There are no facts, only interpretations — knowledge as a perspective, and the danger hidden inside the will to truth.
  3. The Self as a Multiplicity — There is no 'I' behind your thoughts — the self as a society of drives, and what becomes of freedom and responsibility.
  4. Genealogy as Affective Method — Why my books are written to move you — suspicion, disgust, and laughter as instruments of knowledge.
  5. The Order of Rank — The pathos of distance, the higher type, and the critique of pity — my most dangerous and most misread theme, handled with care.
  6. The Free Spirit and the Great Health — Convalescence, the experimental life, and giving style to one's character — what it feels like to live well after the death of God.

Works read in this course

  • The Birth of Tragedy — Nietzsche's 1872 first book: Greek tragedy as the fusion of the Apollonian (form, dream, individuation) and the Dionysian (intoxication, dissolution), and art as the deepest justification of life.
  • Daybreak — An 1881 book of aphorisms subtitled 'Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality' — a patient undermining of the authority of moral feeling.
  • The Gay Science — Nietzsche's 1882 aphoristic book where the madman announces the death of God (section 125) and the eternal recurrence first appears (section 341) — a 'joyful' science of affirmation.
  • Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Nietzsche's 1883-85 prophetic, parable-driven masterwork in a quasi-biblical voice: Zarathustra teaches the Ubermensch, the death of God, and the eternal recurrence.
  • Beyond Good and Evil — An 1886 frontal assault on the dogmatism of philosophers and on 'slave morality' — the will to power, the critique of free will, and a 'philosophy of the future'.
  • On the Genealogy of Morals — Nietzsche's 1887 three-essay study of where moral concepts came from: good/bad versus good/evil (the slave revolt and ressentiment), bad conscience and guilt, and the ascetic ideal.
  • Twilight of the Idols — An 1888 swift, polemical summing-up — 'how to philosophize with a hammer' — sounding out idols like Socratic reason, morality, and the free will.
  • The Antichrist — An 1888 ferocious attack on Christianity as a religion of ressentiment that inverts noble values and wages war on life and strength.
  • Ecce Homo — Nietzsche's 1888 intellectual autobiography — chapters titled 'Why I Am So Wise', 'Why I Write Such Good Books' — a self-revaluation written on the edge of his collapse.
  • Human, All Too Human — An 1878 aphoristic turn to a sceptical, 'free spirit' naturalism, breaking with Wagner and Schopenhauer and dissecting morality and metaphysics as human, historical products.
  • The Will to Power — NOT a book Nietzsche published: a posthumous compilation of his notebooks assembled by his sister Elisabeth and her editors. The phrase names his central concept, but the 'book' is an editorial construction to treat with care.

Terms introduced

Apollinisch, Dionysisch, Perspektivismus, Wille zur Macht, Mitleid, Pathos der Distanz, amor fati, die grosse Gesundheit

Part of the Simposeum course library.