Nietzsche: Culture, Critique, Self-Transcendence

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course is conceived as a pathway to the Humanities and an introduction to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). A range of Nietzsche's work will be considered, but the focus will be on three themes to which Nietzsche recurred throughout his writing career: Culture: Nietzsche's thought on the anthropological roots and the expressive forms of human meaning-making: Apollo/Dionysus; Gesture; Music; Metaphor Critique: the vacuous character of modern culture; romanticism, decadence, nihilism. Self-Transcendence: individual self-realization and freedom. The selection of these themes is motivated by the fact that they may be considered as fundamental dimensions of humanistic inquiry. Students will develop a sound understanding of a writer whose intellectual influence continues to grow, but at the same time they will become acquainted with such core concepts of humanistic/interpretive inquiry as form, expression, ideology, genealogy, discourse, self-fashioning, individuality, and value.