Required textbooks:
- Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter
Kaufmann, Modern Library.
- Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann, Penguin.
- Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Vintage.
- Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press. (There are two editions of this translation;
either is fine.)
Disjunctively required textbooks (you have to get one or the other of these,
but not both):
- Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard, Vintage.
- Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard UP.
Optional textbook:
- Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Kaufmann and Hollingdale, Vintage.
You'll be required to bring physical copies of the
textbooks to class.
Most of these books have been in print for quite a while, and you can
save money by finding them used. Be careful, however, to stick with the
recommended translations: there are many translations of Nietzsche, and
not all of them are respectable.
Additional readings will be made available through the
Marriott Library reserve desk. (See Marriott's Course Reserve How to Guide for an intro to using the library
reserves.)
Remember, the secondary readings are assigned as targets for your
papers. Don't assume they've gotten Nietzsche right; look for the mistakes
they're making.
Reading Assignments:
- Aug. 22: Introduction. Optional prereading: Lanier
Anderson, "Nietzsche" (Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy).
If you read French (or even if you don't),
check out Maximilien Le Roy and Michel Onfray,
Nietzsche (book available at the Marriott Library
reserve desk).
Straight Readings of Nietzsche: The Eternal
Return. We'll discuss the following passages, and if
you're able to, please look them over in advance: GS 341,
BGE 56, Z III.2.2 ("On the Vision and the Riddle,"
beginning with "Stop, dwarf!"), Z III.13 ("The
Convalescent") and WP 1061-1066 (and here's a list of those abbreviations
for Nietzsche's works).
Optional followon
readings: Danto, "Eternal Recurrence" (online
reserve); Soll, "Reflections on Recurrence"
(online reserve); Zuboff, "Nietzsche and
Eternal Recurrence" (online reserve); Nehamas,
Nietzsche: Life as Literature, ch. 5
("This Life -- Your Eternal Life"; chapter on
online reserve); Kundera, The Unbearable
Lightness of Being (excerpt, online
reserve); Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on
Truth and Philosophy (book available from
Marriott), ch. 8 ("Eternal
Recurrence").
- Aug. 29: Straight Readings of Nietzsche: The
Genealogy. Reading: All of the
Genealogy of Morals; each hour of the class will be devoted
to one of the three essays. This is our first pass over
it, so you're reading quickly, for an overview. However,
slow down and pay close attention when you get to the following
key passages: GM I.13-14, II.2, 12-13. And please also
take a look at D 44 and 95.
Optional followon
reading: If you're starting to think about writing your
first paper, Ian Anthony, "Metaphysical Doubling contra ad
Hominem," is a model paper by a former student (on reserve
under the title "Model Paper"), that discusses GM I.13.
Robert Solomon, "Nietzsche ad Hominem" (online reserve), and "One Hundred
Years of Ressentiment" (available shortly) set up the
question of what 'genealogy' is; we'll keep coming
back to it over the course of the semester, and they're
useful foils for papers on the topic. Time permitting,
we'll discuss ideas from Lanier Anderson, "Nietzschean
Autonomy and the Meaning of the 'Sovereign Individual'",
and Ken Gemes, "We Remain of Necessity Strangers to
Ourselves" (online reserve). If you're looking for
targets for your papers, these essays are recommended.
Happy Labor Day -- take Beyond Good and Evil to
the beach!
Paper topics have been distributed -- make sure you have a copy.
- Sept. 5: Straight Readings of Nietzsche:
Metaethics and Metaphysics. Reading: BGE Part I,
plus BGE 39, 42-43, 203,
210-213, 268; GS 110-112, 121, 354. (But you may want
to read straight through, as much of BGE as you have time
for, so that you have a sense of the context.)
Hour-by-hour breakdown:
- Inventing Values. Please pay
close attention to BGE 42-43, 203,
210-213; review GM P.6.
Secondary reading: Nadeem Hussain, "Honest
Illusion" (online reserve).
Optional followon reading:
"The Role of Life in the Genealogy".
- Atomism and the Will. Please pay
close attention to BGE 18-19, 21. Secondary
reading: Katsafanas, "Nietzsche's Philosophical
Psychology" (online reserve).
- Atomism, Logic and the Self. Please pay
close attention to BGE 11-12, 14, 16-17, 20, 39,
268;
GS 110-112, 121, 354.
Secondary
reading: Anderson, "What Is a Nietzschean Self?"
Optional followon reading:
Brian Leiter, "Nietzsche's
Theory of the Will"; Maudemarie Clark and
David Dudrick, "Nietzsche on the Will: An
Analysis of BGE 19" (online reserve). (This
back-and-forth is a plausible paper target.)
More of Anderson's picture of the
Nietzschean self:
Anderson, "Nietzsche on Strength and Achieving
Individuality, "Nietzsche on Autonomy",
"Nietzschean Autonomy and the Meaning of the `Sovereign
Individual" (also paper targets).
- Sept. 12: Who Are the Philosophers of Future?
Paying Attention to the Elephant in the Room.
Reading:
BGE Parts VI-VIII, plus 197f, 200, 284 and secondary
readings as below.
Hour-by-hour breakdown:
- The Worst Monologue You've Ever Listened
To.
Please pay
close attention to BGE 197-198. Secondary literature:
Nehamas, "Who
Are 'The Philosophers of the Future'? A Reading
of Beyond Good and Evil" (online
reserve).
Optional reading:
Nehamas,
"The Postulated Author" (online reserve).
- Drive-Bys! Reading:
Review BGE VI;
please pay
close attention to
223-224, 231-239, 240-251, plus
Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche's
Misogyny" (online reserve), GS 348.
Optional reading (model paper): Louise
Pedersen, "Nietzsche's Misogyny: A
Methodological Illustration of Value
Creation" (online reserve).
- Drive Recruitment.
Reading: Nathan
Porter, "Philology of the Self" (ch. 3 [= pp. 37-56] of Life
with No Strings Attached, online reserve).
Optional reading: A student asked why the
guidelines for our papers include a list of
forbidden words. For the answer, see
Heather Douglas, "The
Irreducible Complexity of Objectivity" (on reserve
shortly).
- Sept. 19: Reading
Zarathustra Straight.
Reading:
Z Preface, Parts I and II, GS 360 and secondary
readings as below.
Hour-by-hour breakdown:
- Value Creation: A Call to Arms.
Please pay
close attention to Z I.1, I.3, I.12, I.15, I.17 (the table of
contents at Portable Nietzsche pp. 112-114 will save
you counting off the sections).
Optional reading, for your
amusement: Sharon
Wahl, "I Also Dated Zarathustra" (on reserve
in the Philosophy Department); Anthony
Cross, "Frenemies: Nietzsche on the Nature and
Value of Friendship" (available shortly).
- How to Redeem a Coke Can. Reading:
Please pay
close attention to Z II.12, II.15, II.18,
II.20. Anderson, "Nietzsche on Redemption and
Transfiguration" (online reserve).
Optional reading: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The
Over-Soul" (online reserve); Joshua
Landy, "Mallarme: Irony and Enchantment"
(available shortly).
- Was Nietzsche a Virtue Ethicist? Reading:
Christine Swanton, "Outline of a Nietzschean
Virtue Ethics" (online reserve).
Optional reading:
Robert Solomon, "Nietzsche's Virtues" (online reserve);
Robert Welshon, "Nietzsche’s Peculiar Virtues
and the Health of the Soul" (online reserve).
Model paper: Andrew Hayes, "Welshon's Pervasive
Virtues and Nietzsche's Brief Habits" (on
reserve in the Philosophy Department, and
available shortly on online reserve).
- Sept. 26: Zarathustra
in Context.
Reading:
Z Parts III and IV, and secondary
readings as below.
Hour-by-hour breakdown:
- Why Is Zarathustra So Hard to Read?
Please pay
close attention to Z III.2, III.11, III.12.1-4, 8-12,
25-26, III.13; Bernard Reginster, from
"Introduction" to The Affirmation of Life,
from bottom of p. 4, "...this book has little to
say..." to bottom of p. 5, "...the substance of
Nietzsche's philosophy" (online reserve; click
through to the book).
Optional reading: Alasdair MacIntyre,
"Nietzsche's Titanism" (online reserve).
- Everything You Always Wanted to Know About
the Higher Criticism (But Were Afraid to Ask).
Optional reading:
Hanina Ben-Menachem,
"Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra
and the Quran".
Optional followon reading for the
severely ambitious: Julius Wellhausen,
Prolegomena to the History of Israel.
- Revisiting Genealogy. Reading:
Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche's Immoralism and
the Concept of Morality" (on reserve in the
Philosophy Department).
Optional reading: David Strauss,
Life of Jesus (excerpt, available shortly).
- Oct. 3: Truth in Perspective.
- Supposing Truth is a Woman... What Then?
(Then Nietzsche Must Have Been Reading
Emerson).
Reading: BGE Preface; GS, Preface to
the Second Edition; secs. 11, 54, 57-59, 92, 107, 152, 261,
299, 374. Nietzsche, "Truth and Lies in a
Nonmoral Sense" (online reserve); review GS 110-112, 121,
354, Z III.12.8 (in "On Old and
New Tablets"), Z II.12 ("On Self-Overcoming," first
two paras. in Kaufmann's translation).
Optional reading: Gemes, "Nietzsche's
Critique of Truth". Followon
reading: Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and
Philosophy, chs. 3-4.
- The Priest's Perspective.
Reading: BGE Book III.
Optional reading: Lanier Anderson, "Truth
and Objectivity in Perspectivism".
- The (Self-Proclaimed) Noble Perspective. Reading: BGE IX.
Optional reading: Anderson, "On the Nobility
of Nietzsche's Priests" (online reserve).
Have a great Fall Break -- read
either Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as
Literature or Foucault, Madness
and Civilization in Cancun!
-
Oct. 17: Genealogy vs. Literary Interpretation.
- A Genealogical Critique of Nietzsche's
Genealogies. Reading: Foucault,
Madness and Civilization (for those
of you who've chosen this option).
Optional reading: Foucault, "Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History" (online reserve).
-
Oct. 24: Genealogy, Authorship, Interpretation. (We'll be changing the past a little here.)
-
Oct. 31: What Is a "moraliste français"?
Reading: The Gay Science (all of it, but
by now you should be pretty far along).
-
Nov. 7: Nietzschean Metaethics!
Reading: Twilight of the Idols.
- Who Was
Nietzsche's Convalescent?
Further followon reading: Stendhal, On
Love; Denis de Rougemont, Love in
the Western World (for the very ambitious).
- What Is Nihilism? Reading:
CW 7, 2nd English para. in Kaufmann's
translation (on BW p. 626, starting "For
the present... "). Optional reading: WP P.2-3; WP 12, 27, 38, 43.
- Fitting Nietzsche on the Map of
Contemporary Metaethics. Reading: Hussain,
"Nietzsche's Metaethical Stance" (available
shortly). Optional reading: Hussain,
"Nietzsche and Non-cognitivism" (on reserve in the
Philosophy Department); Alan Thomas, "Nietzsche and Moral
Fictionalism" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department); Smart,
"Philosophical Problems of Cosmology"
(available shortly).
Further reading:
Model paper, "Welshon’s Pervasive Virtues
and Nietzsche’s Brief Habits" (online
reserve, and in the Philosophy Department);
Conant, "Nietzsche's
Perfectionism".
-
Nov. 14: Taking the Antichrist for a Drive.
Reading: The Antichrist.
- Will to Power and Decadence.
WP P.2, P.3, 27, 38, 43, 12 (A), 634, 656,
643, 1067 (on last session handout). Review
BGE 36, GM 2.12 (last para. in Kaufmann's
English rendering), GS 13 (1st English para.),
GM 2.11 (last English para.) Z 2.12 ("On
Self-Overcoming").
Optional reading: Maudemarie Clark,
"Nietzsche's Doctrines of the Will to Power"
(online reserve).
- What Was the Antichrist's Dominant Drive? Reading:
Wagner, "Judaism in Music" (online reserve). Optional
reading
for the very ambitious: Wieder die
Juden: Judentum und Antisemitismus in der
Publizistik aus sieben Jahrhunderten
(available from Marriott).
-
Nov. 21: Tales of the 'Upending'.
- Nietzsche the Neo-Kantian. Review
BGE 15. Optional
followon reading, for the very ambitious: Lange, History
of Materialism.
- How Are Drives Individuated? Optional
reading: Aschheim, The Nietzsche
Legacy in Germany (on reserve in Marriott); Ben Macintyre,
Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for
Elisabeth Nietzsche (available
in Marriott).
- Nietzsche's Girlfriend.
Optional reading: Hollingdale, "Lou Salome";
followon reading, for the very
interested: Rudolph Binion,
Frau Lou: Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple (not on reserve, but
available from Marriott).
Have a great Thanksgiving -- read Ecce
Homo on the plane!
-
Nov. 28: The Return of the
Eternal Return!
Reading: Ecce Homo.
- Decadence! Reading: The Case of Wagner.
Leonard Sax, "What was the Cause of
Nietzsche's Dementia?" (online reserve).
Further followon reading, for the very
ambitious: Klossowski, Nietzsche and the
Vicious Circle.
- Perspectivism and Value Creation.
Optional reading: Nietzsche Contra Wagner.
Optional listening, for people who have way
too much free time: Richard Wagner, Der Ring
des Nibelungen.
- Nietzsche's Best Buddy (for a While).
Followon reading:
Paul Reé, Basic
Writings; Robin Small, Nietzsche and
Reé: A Star Friendship (both
available from Marriott, but not on reserve).
- Dec. 5: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism. Reading: The Birth of Tragedy.
Optional reading: Georges Liebert, Nietzsche on
Music; optional listening: Nietzsche, "Hymn to Life"
(CD on reserve in the Philosophy Department);
Complete Solo Piano Works (CD available from
Marriott); piano
music on Spotify.
Robert Pippin will give a talk in the
Department on Friday, Dec. 7: "Is There a
Philosophical Point to Nietzsche's Literary
Style? The 'New Philosophers' in Beyond
Good and Evil'" (2:30-4:30, Tanner Library).