Nietzsche: Scholar

Six dialogues into the contested heart of Nietzsche's thought

A course on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.

What you will learn

  • Distinguish the psychological reading (will to power as a doctrine of the soul and its drives — Clark, Leiter) from the cosmological reading (will to power as the inner nature of ALL reality — Schacht, Richardson, Heidegger).
  • Understand the *Nachlass* problem: the cosmology leans heavily on unpublished notebooks (and Elisabeth's compiled *The Will to Power*), while the one published cosmological passage, BGE 36, is offered conditionally.
  • Learn to weigh interpretations by what they COST and BUY, rather than hunting for a single 'true doctrine.'
  • Distinguish the existential reading (recurrence as the 'greatest weight,' a test of one's stance toward life — Clark, Soll) from the cosmological reading (a literal doctrine, with an attempted proof in the Nachlass).
  • Understand the structure and the holes of the alleged proof (finite energy + infinite time → recurrence), and why Nietzsche left it unpublished.
  • See why the test may bite MORE forcefully precisely if its literal truth is left uncertain.
  • State the self-refutation objection to perspectivism sharply: 'no facts, only interpretations' seems either a fact (self-refuting) or merely an interpretation (why believe it?).
  • Weigh the deflationary reading (Clark: the mature Nietzsche keeps modest, ordinary truth and attacks only the metaphysical 'true world') against the radical reading (even logic and the 'thing' are useful fictions).

Course outline

  1. Will to Power: Psychology or Cosmology? — The interpretive war: is the will to power a sharp moral psychology, or a metaphysics of all reality — and how much may we trust the notebooks?
  2. Eternal Recurrence: Cosmic Proof or Existential Test? — The divide: is the eternal recurrence a literal cosmological doctrine with a 'proof,' or an existential thought-experiment — and does it matter?
  3. Perspectivism and Self-Refutation — The classic worry: if there are no facts, only interpretations, is THAT a fact? Does Nietzsche have a theory of truth — or saw off his own branch?
  4. Freedom, Fatalism, and the Drives — Leiter's hard fatalism against the readings of self-creation — and what 'become what you are' can mean once free will is gone.
  5. Politics and Its Misappropriations — Aristocratic radicalism, the anti-national 'good European,' Kaufmann's rehabilitation, and the Nazi forgery — refusing both lazy readings.
  6. Is There a Positive Ethics? — The normativity problem: after the death of God and the critique of morality, can Nietzsche ground any values — or is he only a demolition?

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

Wille zur Macht, ewige Wiederkunft, Perspektivismus, causa sui, amor fati, Nachlass, Umwertung aller Werte

Part of the Simposeum course library.