Fall 2011
Nietzsche's Impact on 20th Century Thought
G65.1842
(Crosslisted with G51.1842)
Professor:
Friedrich Ulfers
German Department
19 University Place
New York, NY 10003
Tel: (212) 998-8656
Fax: (212) 995-4823
E-mail: friedrich.ulfers@nyu.edu
Required Books
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (BT)
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (GS)
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (GM)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (BGE)
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power (WP)
Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying” (To be distributed)
Please obtain these texts in the Walter Kaufmann translation.
Suggested Secondary Literature:
To be distributed at the beginning of the semester.
Requirements: This course requires two papers. The first, a short one, will be due around the end of
October, the second, a lengthier one of between 15-20 pages, at the end of the term. Suggested topics
will be distributed well in advance of the due dates.
Lectures
Lecture 1
Introduction. Reading of “On Truth and Lying.” Discussion of the role of language in a
metaphysical worldview. Nietzsche’s differentiation between conceptual language and its
association with metaphysics, and metaphorical language.
Lecture 2
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).
Lecture 3
How tragedy and the tragic world of the Greeks were destroyed by Socratic rationalism
and the spirit of science. Read BT, secs. 11-15.
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Lecture 4
Nietzsche's hopes for reestablishing a "tragic" culture, in which “Socratic” science has a
secondary place. Read BT, secs. 15-25. Sections of The Gay Science will be assigned.
Lecture 5
Discussion of the “Ureine” in terms of an a-metaphysical origin. Is the “Ureine” a
“noumenon” in the classical sense?
Lecture 6
Discussion of Nietzsche’s notion of the world as an “aesthetic phenomenon.”
Lecture 7
Discussion of the “psychology of metaphysics.”
Lecture 8
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.
Lecture 9
Discussion of “Will to Power” cont’d.
Lecture 10
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.
Lecture 11 "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.
Lecture 12
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.
Lecture 13
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.
Lecture 14
Conclusions
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