Friedrich Ulfers - Seminars / Workshops / Lectures
NIETZSCHE AND 20th CENTURY THOUGHT: Critique of the Subject (3 credits)
Friedrich Ulfers, Ph.D.
Description: This course examines how aesthetics, epistemology, communication and ethics have been radically changed by Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of the unity of the subject, the representational logic of language, and the metaphysics of truth. We will examine the concept of chiasmic unity and the possibility of double truths/non-truths.
Objectives: Students shall leave this course with a basic understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche's necessary for a post-graduate research project. This course is an essential piece of any students curriculum as it deals with one of the most influential philosophers of recent times. We will engage in new ways of reading and seeing Nietzsche pushing our thoughts to new extremes.
Course Schedule
Module One
Discussion of the role of language in a metaphysical worldview. Nietzsche’s differentiation between conceptual language and its association with metaphysics, and metaphorical language. Nietzsche on the "tragic" world of the Greeks. The distinction between "Apollinian" and "Dionysian" and their "chiasmic unity" in tragedy. Read BT, Pref., Secs. 1-10. Discussion of the notion of the "Ureine" (primordial unity) in the context of "chiasmic unity" or "undecidability" (Derrida).
Module Two
How tragedy and the tragic world of the Greeks were destroyed by Socratic rationalism and the spirit of science. Read BT, secs. 11-15. Nietzsche's hopes for reestablishing a "tragic" culture, in which science has a secondary place. Read BT, secs. 15-25.
Module Three
Discussion of the "Ureine" in terms of an a-metaphysical origin. Is the "Ureine" a "noumenon" in the classical sense? Discussion of Nietzsche’s notion of the world as an "aesthetic phenomenon."
Module Four
Discussion of the "psychology of metaphysics." Discussion of Nietzsche’s notion of "Will to Power." Differentiation between "Will to Power" as the human "will to make equal" and "Will to Power" as a cosmological/ ontological principle.
Module Five
Discussion of "Will to Power" cont’d. Nietzsche's idea that "God is dead" and his view that neither objective values nor faith in them exists any longer. Read GS, secs. 108-125. Nietzsche's repudiation of the metaphysics that underlies the view of BT. The primacy of "appearances." Introduction to the eternal recurrence. Read GS, secs. 54, 57, 58, 340-342.
Module Six
"Perspectivism," the view that all views are nothing but interpretations. Does this view refute itself? Can we make any sense of it? Read BGE, Part II. If all views are, in fact, only interpretations, what is there for philosophers, who try to describe what the world is really like, to do? What does Nietzsche propose to do with himself? Whom, in particular, does he have in mind when he talks of "the philosophers of the future"? Read BGE Part VI. The distinction between "master" and "slave," one of the more obscure and apparently dangerous ideas in Nietzsche. The relationship between religion and morality, and Nietzsche's "immoralism." Read BGE, Part IX; GM Essay I. Can there be morality without objective values? Read "Morality and Anti-Nature," in Twilight of the Idols (to be distributed). The development of the sense of guilt, and Nietzsche's view on how various phenomena that do not belong to morality become "moralized," and, once again, the relationship between morality and religion. Read GM, Essay II. The conflict between science and religion. To the common view that the latter is responsible for the weakening of the former, Nietzsche replies that, far from being opposed to it, science is "the latest and noblest form" of religion and asceticism. What can he mean? And what does he mean when he attacks, and wants to do away with, the faith in truth? Read GM, Essay III, secs. 23 - 28; GS, Book V.
Required Readings:
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Beyond Good and Evil: Preliminaries to a Philosophy of the Future. Translator Walter Kaufmann. Vintage Books. December 1989, 256 pages, Paperback, ISBN: 0679724656. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Nietzsche, Friedrich and Michael Tanner (Editor) and Shaun Whiteside (Translator). The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music. Penguin Classics. January 1, 1994. Paperback, 160 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0140433392. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Nietzsche, Friedrich and Bernard Williams (Editor) and Josefine Nauckhoff (Translator) and Adrian Del Caro (Translator). The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press. November 2001. Paperback, 308 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0521636450. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor and Translator). On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Vintage. December 17, 1989. Paperback, 384 pages, Language English, ISBN: 0679724621. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Nietzsche, Friedrich and Walter Kaufmann (Editor and Translator) and R.J. Hollingdale (Translator). The Will to Power. Vintage. August 12, 1968. Paperback, 608 pages, Language English, ISBN: 394704371. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense. 1863.
Jacques Derrida, Stefano Agosti and Barbara Harlow (Translator). Spurs: Nietzsche's Style: Eperons Les Styles De Nietzsche. University of Chicago Press. February 1981, Paperback, ISBN: 0226143333. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.