PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2012-13 academic year
– precise seminar content may change from year to year.
Weeks 1 & 2
Hadot on Philosophy as a Way of Life
 Reading: Philosophy as a Way Of Life, esp. chapters 3, 8, 10, 11
Foucault on the Care of Self
 Reading: Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, in Ethics, pp. 303-19; or Foucault Reader, pp.
32-50.
 Foucault, ‘Preface to the History of Sexuality volume two’, ‘Technologies of the Self’, in
Ethics, pp. 199-207, pp. 223-253.
 Foucault, ‘Introduction’, chapters 1-3 of The Use of Pleasure (HS volume two), pp. 1-33.
 Foucault, ‘The Cultivation of the Self’, part two of The Care of the Self (HS volume three),
pp. 37-69.
 Foucault, Hermeneutics of the Subject, pp. Lectures 1-3, pp. 1-65.
 ‘On the Genealogy of Ethics: Overview of Work in Progress’, ‘The Ethics of the Concern for
the self as a Practice of Freedom’, in Ethics.
 Arnold I. Davidson, ‘Ethics as ascetics: Foucault, the History of Ethics, and Ancient
Thought’, in Gutting, Cambridge Companion to Foucault, pp. 123-149.
 P. Hadot, ‘Reflections on the Idea of the “Cultivation of the Self”’, in Philosophy as a Way of
Life, pp. 206-15.
Week 3
Schopenhauer on Suffering, Death, the Vanity of Existence, and the Consolations of Metaphysics.
 Reading: Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Dover
Press, 1966), volume one, book four; see also volume two, chapter s XVII, XLI, XLV, XLVI,
XLVII, XLVIII, XLIX.
 Schopenhauer, ‘Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life’, in Parerga and Paralipomena, trans.
Payne (Clarendon Press, 19 ), volume one, pp. 311-497.
 Julian Young, ‘Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Death, and Salvation’, European Journal of
Philosophy, 16: 2, 2008, pp. 311-24 (see Module Resources).
 Dale Jacquette, ‘Schopenhauer on the ethics of Suicide’, Continental Philosophy Review, 33,
2000, pp. 43-58 (see Module Resources).
 David E. Cartwright, ‘Schopenhauer on Suffering, Death, Guilt, and the Consolation of
Metaphysics’, in Eric von der Luft (ed.). Schopenhauer: New Essays in Honor of his 200th
Birthday (Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), pp. 51-66.
 Ken Gemes and Christopher Janaway, ‘Life-Denial versus Life-Affirmation: Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche on Pessimism and Asceticism’, in Bart Vandenabeele (ed.), A Companion to
Schopenhauer (Blackwell, 2012), pp. 280-300.
Week 4
The Early Nietzsche on Philosophy, History, and Schopenhauer as Educator






Reading: Nietzsche, Unfashionable Observations: On History & on Schopenhauer (Stanford
University Press).
Sean D. Kirkland, ‘Nietzsche and drawing near to the personalities of the pre-Platonic
Greeks’, Continental Philosophy Review, 44, 2011, pp. 417-37.
Charles Bambach, ‘History and Ontology: A Reading of Nietzsche’s Second Untimely
Meditation”’, Philosophy Today, 34, 1990, pp. 259-72 (see Module Resources).
Michael Bell, (2007), ‘Nietzsche as Educator and the Implosion of Bildung’, in M.
Bell, Open Secrets. Literature, Education, and Authority from J-J. Rousseau to J. M. Coetzee
(Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press), pp. 130-61.
Ken Gemes, ‘Postmodernism’s Use and Abuse of Nietzsche’, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. LXII: 2, 2001, pp. 337-60.
Vanessa Lemm, ‘Animality, Creativity, and Historicity: A Reading of
Friedrich Nietzsche’s Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben’,
Nietzsche-Studien, 36, 2007, pp. 169-201.
Week 5
Nietzsche on Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing
 Reading: Nietzsche, Human, all too Human, chapters 1 & 5 & aphorisms 35-38; HH 244,
291-2; The Wanderer and His Shadow 5-7, 192, 295, 322, 350; Dawn 72, 174; The Gay
Science 45, 338.
 Amy Mullin, ‘The Free Spirit’ (see Module Resources).
 Bernard Reginster (2003), ‘What is a Free Spirit? Nietzsche on Fanaticism’, Archiv f.
Geschichte d. Philosophie, 85, 2003, pp. 51-85.
Epicurus and the Art of Living
 Reading: Epicurus, ‘The extant letters’ (to Herodotus, Pythocles, Menoeceus) & ‘Ancient
collections of maxims’, in The Epicurus Reader, ed. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Hackett
1994), pp. 5-32, pp. 32-41.
 James I. Porter, ‘Epicurean Attachments: Life, Pleasure, Beauty, Friendship, and Piety’,
Cronache Ercolanesi, 33, 2003, pp. 205-227 (see Module Resources).
 See also: Martha Nussbaum, ‘Epicurean Surgery: Argument and Empty Desire’, in The
Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton UP, 1994), pp. 10240.
WEEK 6: READING WEEK
Week 7
Nietzsche, Freedom, and the Drives
 Reading: Nietzsche, Dawn (Stanford UP, 2011), book two esp. plus GS 290, 335.
 Ken Gemes and Simon May, Nietzsche on Freedom and Autonomy (Oxford UP, 2009), esp.
the essay by John Richardson.
Week 8
The Philosophy of the Morning: Nietzsche’s Dawn.
 Reading: Nietzsche, Dawn (Stanford UP, 2011), esp. book five; The Gay Science, 125, 344
and book five.
 KAP, ‘Nietzsche, the Sublime, and the Sublimities of Philosophy’ (see Module Resources).
 Battersby. Christine (2007), The Sublime, Terror, and Human Difference (London & New
York, Routledge), chapter 9, pp. 177-90.
 Large, Duncan (1995), “Nietzsche and the Figure of Columbus”, Nietzsche-Studien, 24, pp.
162-83.
 Moninari, Mazzino (2003), “Nietzsche’s Philosophy as the ‘Passion for Knowledge’”, in
Montinari, Reading Nietzsche, trans. Greg Whitlock (Urbana & Chicago, University of
Illinois Press).
 Vattimo, Gianni (2006), ‘Daybreak’, in Vattimo, Dialogue with Nietzsche (New York,
Columbia University Press), pp. 157-67.
 R. B. Pippin on The Death of God (see Module Resources).
Week 9
The Gay Science I: the gay science and the dying Socrates
 Reading: Nietzsche, The Gay Science books 1-3; GS 340
 R. Schacht and R. B. Pippin on the gay science (see Module Resources).
 Michael Ure, ‘Nietzsche’s Schadenfreude’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies (forthcoming) (see
Module Resources).
 Alexander Nehamas, (1998), ‘’A Reason for Socrates’ Face: Nietzsche on “the problem of
Socrates”’, in Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault
(University of California Press), pp. 128-56.
 Alexander Nehamas, ‘A Fate for Socrates’ Reason: Foucault on the Care of the Self’, in
Nehamas, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (University of
California Press, 2000), pp. 157-188.
 Foucault, ‘Socrates’s last words’, Lecture 15 February 1984 (second hour), in The Courage of
Truth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 95-117.
 Hadot, ‘The Figure of Socrates’, in Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, pp. 147-79.
 See also Loeb below.
Week 10
The Gay Science II: Amor Fati and Eternal Recurrence
 Reading: GS book four; Notes from 1881 (see Module Resources).
 Paul Loeb, The Moment of Tragic Death in Nietzsche’s Dionysian Doctrine of Eternal
Recurrence: An Exegesis of aphorism 341 in The Gay Science’, International Studies
in Philosophy, XXX: 3, pp. 131-43 (see Module Resources).
 Pierre Hadot, ‘The Discipline of Desire, or Amor Fati’, in Hadot, The Inner Citadel, trans. M.
Chase (Harvard UP, 2001), pp. 128-83.
 Garry M. Brodsky, ‘Nietzsche’s notion of amor fati’, Continental Philosophy Review, 31,
1998, pp. 35-57 (see Module Resources).



Beatrice Han-Pile, ‘Nietzsche and Amor Fati’, European Journal of Philosophy, 19: 2, 2009,
pp. 224-261 (see Module Resources).
Michael Ure, ‘Nietzsche’s Free Spirit Trilogy and Stoic Therapy’, Journal of Nietzsche
Studies, 38, 2009, pp. 60-85.
Eric Oger, ‘The eternal return as crucial test’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 14, 1997, pp. 1-19
(see Module Resources).