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.)
• Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press.
• Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press.

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:

1. Aug. 24:
   • Introduction. Optional prereading: 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). Hollingdale, "The Hero as Outsider," is available through Marriott's online reserve.
   • Straight Readings of Nietzsche: The Eternal Return. 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 at the Marriott reserve desk), ch. 8 ("Eternal Recurrence").
   • Unbearable Lightness and All That. 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).



2. Aug. 31: The Genealogy: Reading It Straight.
   • The Value of Values: 'Bad' and 'Evil'. Reading: GM P, I (= Genealogy of Morals, Preface and first Essay, in Kaufmann, ed., Basic Writings of Nietzsche); Robert Solomon, "Nietzsche ad Hominem" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: Ian Anthony, "Metaphysical Doubling contra ad Hominem" (model paper, on reserve in the Philosophy Department, and on online reserve, under "Model Paper").
     Followon reading: Christopher Janaway, "Nietzsche's Illustration of the Art of Exegesis" (online reserve); John Wilcox, "What Aphorism Does Nietzsche Explicate in Genealogy of Morals, Essay III?" (online reserve).
   • The Creation of the Sovereign Individual. Reading: GM II; Lanier Anderson, "Nietzschean Autonomy and the Meaning of the 'Sovereign Individual'" (online reserve; this is a longish piece, and for the purposes of this session you can stop at p. 28). Optional reading: Solomon, "One Hundred Years of Ressentiment" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department reception area).
   • What Is a Genealogy? (A Continental Version, and Second Thoughts about the Genealogy.)
     Reading: GM III; D 1, 44, 95, 307; BGE 32; and if you're taking the Nehamas option, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, ch. 4 ("Nature Against Something that Is Also Nature").
     

     Optional followon reading: Ken Gemes, "We Remain of Necessity Strangers to Ourselves" (online reserve); Millgram, "Who Was Nietzsche's Genealogist?" (online reserve).


Happy Labor Day -- take Beyond Good and Evil to the beach!

3. Sept. 7: The Soul of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.
   • Reading Nietzsche's Metaphysics Straight: Against Atomism. Reading: BGE Part I; BGE 34, 36, 192; GS 57, 58, 108-125, 268, 354, 374; D 115-117; GS 354. Optional reading: Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, ch. 2 ("Untruth as a Condition of Life").
   • Reconsidering Genealogy in the Light of BGE. Reading: Alasdair MacIntyre, "Genealogies and Subversions" (this is ch. 2 of his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry; online reserve).
     Optional reading: sneak preview GS 110-112, 121, 192; Raymond Geuss, "Nietzsche and Genealogy" (online reserve).
   • The Worst Monologue You've Ever Listened To. Reading: BGE, beginning to end. (You can speed read it this time through; we'll reread parts of it more slowly next week.) Nehamas, "Who Are 'The Philosophers of the Future'? A Reading of Beyond Good and Evil" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: Lanier Anderson and Joshua Landy, "Philosophy as Self-Fashioning: Alexander Nehamas's Art of Living" (online reserve).
4. Sept. 14: Taking Nietzsche for a Drive.
   • What Is a Drive? Reading: reread BGE Parts V, VI, plus Paul Katsafanas, "Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology" (online reserve). Optional reading: John Richardson, Nietzsche's System, pp. 117-122, 126-141 (available shortly).
   • A Drive (or Three) on Display. Reading: Review BGE 231-239, 240-251, plus Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche's Misogyny" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: GS 60, 59-63-75, 363.
   • A Neo-Kantian Synthesis. Reading: GS 39, 261, 343, and review BGE 42, 43, 44, 61, 203, 211; Lanier Anderson, "Nietzsche on Strength and Achieving Individuality" (online reserve). Optional reading: D 272; HTH I:475; Anderson, "What Is a Nietzschean Self?" (online reserve)
5. Sept. 21: Inventing Values.
   • Presentation: Was Nietzsche a Constitutivist? Optional followon reading: Paul Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism.
   • What's Beyond Good and Evil? New Values. Reading: Z Part I.
     Optional reading, for your amusement: Sharon Wahl, "I Also Dated Zarathustra" (available shortly).
   • How to Redeem a Coke Can. Reading: Z Part II. Anderson, "Nietzsche on Redemption and Transfiguration" (online reserve).
     Optional followon reading: Nadeem Hussain, "Honest Illusion: Valuing for Nietzsche's Free Spirits" (online reserve).
6. Sept. 28: The Legend of the Overhobbit!
   • What Does Inventing Values Look Like in Real Life?
   • It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's the Overman! Reading: Z Part IV. Optional reading: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Over-Soul" (available from the Philosophy Department reserve).
   • Who Was the Author of Nietzsche's Zarathustra? Reading: Z Part III.
     Optional reading: Hanina Ben-Menachem, "Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Quran" (available shortly). Further reading, for the severely ambitious: Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel.
7. Oct. 5: Getting the 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. 57-59; Book III; GS 374. Nietzsche, "Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: Gemes, "Nietzsche's Critique of Truth". Further followon reading: Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, chs. 3-4 (available at the Marriott reserve desk).
   • Can You Really Will the Past?
     Brian Leiter, "Nietzsche's Theory of the Will" (check in with me if you don't have access to this); Clark and Dudrick, "Nietzsche on the Will: An Analysis of BGE 19" (online reserve).
     Optional reading (model paper): Louise Pedersen, "Nietzsche's Misogyny: A Methodological Illustration of Value Creation" (online reserve, and on reserve in the Philosophy Department).
   • Is Perspectivism Incoherent?
     Reading: review BGE 15; if you're taking the Nehamas option, in NLL, read the first full para. on p. 2 (starting "The first problem is...), and then from the bottom of p. 65 ("Another group of Nietzsche's readers...") to the bottom of p. 66 ("...rob it of its claim to be correct"). Anderson, "Sensualism and Unconscious Representations in Nietzsche's Account of Knowledge" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: Nadeem Hussain, "Nietzsche's Positivism" (online reserve); Lanier Anderson, "Truth and Objectivity in Perspectivism"; Anderson, "Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche" (draft mss, online reserve), secs. 6B, 6C.


Fall break -- take either Madness and Civilization or Nietzsche: Life as Literature to Moab and Capitol Reef!




8. Oct. 19: Questions of Method.
   • Presentation: What Was Nietzsche's Theory of Consciousness? Optional followon reading: Paul Katsafanas, The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious.
   • 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).
   • The Postulated Author. Reading: Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (for those of you who've chosen this option). Nehamas, "The Postulated Author" (online reserve).
     Optional reading: Nehamas, "Writer, Text, Work, Author" (online reserve); Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" (online reserve).
9. Oct. 26: What Is Gay Science?
   • Becoming an Artist of Your Own Life. GS Book IV; Pippin, "What Is a Gay Science?" (online reserve).
   • What Is a "moraliste français"? Reading: Daybreak, Preface and secs. 1, 7, 9, 14, 16, 18, 30, 34, 35, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109, 114-117, 119, 124, 127, 129, 133, 148; Human, All Too Human, Preface, plus secs. I:1-3, 9, 11, 16, 18, 19, 31, 33, 35-38, 50, 65, 95; along with a few sample Rouchefoucauldisms: I:74, 82, 90. Maxims of Duc De La Rochefoucauld, "Reflections" nos. 220-279.
     Optional reading: Paul Reé, Basic Writings; Robin Small, Nietzsche and Reé: A Star Friendship.
   • Who Is Nietzsche's Convalescent? Reading: GS Book V; review GS Preface.
     Optional reading: Mario de Caro, Naturalism in Question, pp. 1-9 (online reserve).
10. Nov. 2: What Is Will to Power? What Is Decadence? (I)
    • The Tradition of Very Personal Philosophy (presentation). Optional reading: Nehamas, The Art of Living.
    • Foucault Pre-Replies to Nehamas. Reading: Foucault, "What Is an Author?" (online reserve)
      
    • Naturalism (in Psychology and Elsewhere). Reading: Twilight of the Idols, up through "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable"; Williams, "Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology" (online reserve).
      Optional reading: Daybreak, 242, 245, 262, 281, 381, and review D 114; HTH I:375; WP, Preface; 1-54, 634, 643, 656, 693. (If you own a copy of the optional textbook, The Will to Power, this would be a good day to bring it to class.)
11. Nov. 9: What Is Will to Power? What Is Decadence? (II) (tentative)
    • Nietzsche's Girlfriend (presentation). Leonard Sax, "What was the Cause of Nietzsche's Dementia?" (online reserve). Optional reading: Hollingdale, "Lou Salome" (available shortly). Optional followon reading, for the very interested: Rudolph Binion, Frau Lou: Nietzsche's Wayward Disciple (not on reserve, but available from Marriott).
    • Decadence and Will to Power. Reading: Finish TI; The Case of Wagner.
      Optional reading: Peter Poellner, "The Will to Power: Nietzsche and Metaphysics" (online reserve); Maudemarie Clark, "Nietzsche's Doctrines of the Will to Power" (online reserve).
      Optional listening, for people who have way too much free time: Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen.
    • Was Nietzsche a Nazi? Reading: HTH 480.
      Optional reading: Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany (available at the Marriott reserve desk).
12. Nov. 16: Who Was Nietzsche's Antichrist?
    • Presentation: Nietzsche's Sister's Antisemitic Appropriation. Optional reading: Ben Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche (on reserve in Marriott).
    • What Drive Organizes the Antichrist's Personality? Reading: Nietzsche, The Antichrist; Wagner, "Judaism in Music".
      Optional reading: WP P.2-3; WP 12, 27, 38, 43. And for the very ambitious: Wieder die Juden: Judentum und Antisemitismus in der Publizistik aus sieben Jahrhunderten (on reserve at Marriott).
    • What Problem Do Wellhausen's Priests Solve? Reading: AC 26; GS 58, 106, 382. Optional reading: "David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer" (this is the first of the Untimely Meditations).
      

    Final paper topics have been distributed; check in with me if you don't have a copy.

13. Nov. 23: Why Didn't Nietzsche Get His Act Together?
    • Presentation: Nietzsche on Music. 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 on reserve at Marriott); piano music on Spotify.
    • Was Nietzsche a Decadent? Reading: Nietzsche, Ecce Homo; GM 3.12.
      Optional reading: Ken Gemes, "Life's Perspectives" (available in the Philosophy Department); Solomon and Higgins, "Nietzsche's Virtues" (online reserve); Welshon, "Nietzsche's Peculiar Virtues and the Health of the Soul" (online reserve); Christine Swanton, "Outline of a Nietzschean Virtue Ethics" (online reserve).
    • The Return of the Eternal Return. Optional reading: Peter Kivy, "The Fine Art of Repetition" (online reserve).
      
14. Nov. 30: The Birth of Philosophy out of the Spirit of Tragedy.
    • What Could It Be to Aesthetically Justify Existence? Reading: Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy; Z 2.15 ("On Immaculate Perception"); GM 3.6. Optional reading: Sebastian Gardner, "Nietzsche's Philosophical Aestheticism" (available in the Philosophy Department).
    • "I Alone Am Discussed." Reading: "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" (UM 4); review CW.
      Optional reading: Nietzsche Contra Wagner (in The Portable Nietzsche).
    • Nietzsche as Educator. Reading: "Schopenhauer as Educator" (UM 3).
      Optional reading: Conant, "Nietzsche's Perfectionism" (circulated).
15. Dec. 7: Putting Nietzsche to Philosophical Use.
    • Reading: Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" (UM 2). Review "Schopenhauer as Educator" (UM 3), "Wagner in Bayreuth" (UM 4, sec. 8, pp. 233--235 in Hollingdale, starting "His work would not have been finished...")