Nietzsche

Catalog description

This course explores major texts by Friedrich Nietzsche, focusing on The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and The Genealogy of Morals. Our study is oriented by the idea that Nietzsche is a significant political theorist whose ideas remain generative for reflecting on the impasses, conflicts, temptations, and lines of flight we witness in philosophy, culture, and politics ever since he wrote. Our specific analytic concern is two-sided: to identify the central themes that organize his thinking and animate its changes over time; to consider the relationship between the "arguments" attributed to these texts, and their form, style, or rhetoric, which seem to undo, not secure, any and every argument. These concerns will help us to reflect on Nietzsche's interpretation of nihilism and its bearing on current debates about truth and relativism, resentment and hollowed-out norms, and the meaning of democratic politics.