Nietzsche: Scholar

Six dialogues into the contested heart of Nietzsche's thought

A course on the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche.

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?

Part of the Symposium course library.