PHIL 393
Nietzsche and His Legacy Spring 2015
Division II Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

The late 20th Century philosopher Richard Rorty characterized the present age as “post-Nietzschean.” Indeed Nietzsche’s influence has been pervasive. German philosopher Martin Heidegger thought he represented the culminating point of Western metaphysics; French Nietzscheans such as Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze as well as French feminist Luce Irigaray appropriate Nietzschean themes and concepts in their critical engagements with the Western philosophical tradition; and Anglo-American moral philosophers such as Bernard Williams, Alisdair MacIntyre, and Phillippa Foot (as well as Rorty) respond to and engage his critique of modern morality. In this tutorial we address some (certainly only some) of the current debates in critical and ethical theory that have been fueled by Nietzsche’s work. Key ideas and concepts such as the death of god, the use and abuse of history, the eternal recurrence, will to power, and master and slave morality will be addressed. Nietzsche texts may include selections from: Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science,Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, and Ecce Homo. I may also pair some Nietzsche texts with readings from representatives of both the Anglo-American and European critical reception of his work (Bataille, Heidegger, Habermas, Foucault, Irigaray, Deleuze, Derrida Williams, Rorty, Reginster, Hussain, and so forth). While students will not regularly be required to read the latter, any who want to pursue this legacy will be supported in doing so.)