Among shapers of contemporary thought, Friedrich Nietzsche is the most mysterious and least understood. To provide flow to Nietzsche’s often puzzling and misunderstood works, this course focuses on the ideas that preoccupied him, while tracing the profound themes that shaped his oeuvre. Is it possible that these themes form the basis of modern Humanistic culture?
Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
In this course, discover that Nietzsche, even at his most polemical and offensive, exudes an unmistakable enthusiasm and love of life.
Overview Course No. 415
About
Dr. Robert C. Solomon was the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for more than 30 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania and his master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy and psychology from the University of Michigan. He held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Auckland, New Zealand; UCLA; Princeton University; and Mount Holyoke College. Professor Solomon won many teaching honors, including the Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award; the President's Associates Teaching Award (twice); and the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award. In addition, he was a member of Academy of Distinguished Teachers at UT, which is devoted to providing leadership in improving the quality and depth of undergraduate instruction. Professor Solomon wrote or edited more than 45 books, including The Passions, About Love, Ethics and Excellence, A Short History of Philosophy with Professor Kathleen Higgins, A Better Way to Think about Business, The Joy of Philosophy, Spirituality for the Skeptic, Not Passion's Slave, and In Defense of Sentimentality. He also designed and provided programs for corporations and organizations around the world. Professor Solomon passed away in early 2007.
Dr. Kathleen Higgins is Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin, where she has been teaching for over 20 years. She earned her B.A. in Music from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. Professor Higgins taught at the University of California, Riverside, and she is a regular visiting professor at the University of Auckland. Her academic honors include appointments as Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center (1993) and Visiting Fellow of the Australian National University Philosophy Department and the Canberra School of Music (1997). She also received an Alumni Achievement Award from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (1999). A prolific writer and recognized Nietzsche scholar, her books include The Music of Our Lives (Temple University Press) and Nietzsche's Zarathustra (Temple University Press), which was named one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1988-1989 by Choice. She coedited numerous books with her husband, Professor Robert Solomon, including Reading Nietzsche, A Short History of Philosophy and the Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume IV: The Age of German Idealism.
01: Why Read Nietzsche? His Life, Times, Works, and Themes
The opening talk in the series provides an overview of Nietzsche's life and the remarkable historical period in which he lived. We also survey the sequence, context, and overarching themes of his works, and catalog the influences upon him.
33 min
02: Quashing the Rumors About Nietzsche
Professors Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins invalidate the spurious rumors surrounding Nietzsche, for example, that he was insane, misogynistic, nihilistic, anti-Semitic, power-mad, relativistic, and amoral.
31 min
03: The Fusion of Philosophy and Psychology
We investigate how Nietzsche's method of explaining human beliefs and practices in terms of personality and character (as opposed to justifying them through reason) enabled him to refute Socratic assumptions, English utilitarianism, Christian compassion, and Schopenhauerian pessimism. Nietzsche's procedures were similar to those used by Dostoyevsky, Marx, Freud, and, ironically, the Christian existentialist Kierkegaard.
30 min
04: "God Is Dead"—Nietzsche and Christianity
With this infamous pronouncement, Nietzsche seeks not to condemn true spirituality, but to question the mindset that insists on eternity, that is obsessed with unity and coherence, and that demands predictability and justice in a world that is neither predictable or just. Nietzsche never fully escapes his Lutheran upbringing, which shapes his ideas about Christian hypocrisy and passivity, and influences his "war" on guilt and sin.
29 min
05: Nietzsche and the Greeks
Nietzsche virtually worshipped the pre-Socratic period in ancient Greece, in particular, the tragedians Aeschylus and Sophocles and the philosopher Heraclitus. Are they the source of his whole philosophy? Moreover, why did Nietzsche rail so harshly against Socrates's and Plato's celebration of reason and accuse Euripides of "murdering" tragedy?
30 min
06: "Why the Greeks Were So Beautiful"—Nietzsche on Tragedy
Nietzsche's first work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), is especially noteworthy for its brilliant analysis of the creative tension between the cults of rational Apollo and ecstatic Dionysus in pre-Socratic Greece. How did Nietzsche contrast tragedy, which accepts suffering and makes something beautiful out of it, with Platonic, Socratic, and Christian thought, which he accuses of trying to deny the meaning of suffering by invoking a superior, otherworldly life?
30 min
07: Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on Pessimism
Schopenhauer, the severe pessimist, is a looming presence in Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche felt the weight of Schopenhauer's pessimism, and struggled to counter it by embracing "cheerfulness," creative passion, and an aesthetic viewpoint.
30 min
08: Nietzsche, Jesus, Zarathustra
Why did Nietzsche feel such a sense of close identification with the ancient prophets Jesus, Socrates, and Zarathustra (Zoroaster)? What was Nietzsche up to in his oddest but best-known book, the Biblical parody "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," which introduces the concept of the Übermensch and its evolutionary alternative, the "last man"?
30 min
09: Nietzsche on Reason, Instinct, and Passion
In some sense a Romantic thinker, Nietzsche went against the grain of Enlightenment philosophy by debunking the primacy of reason in human life and defending instinct and passion. How did Nietzsche anticipate Freud's notion of the unconscious?
31 min
10: Nietzsche’s Style and the Problem of Truth
We subject to analysis Nietzsche's eccentric style of writing and argument, including his use of aphorisms, personal attacks, and appeals to emotion. We also scrutinize Nietzsche's often-exaggerated views about truth and interpretation.
31 min
11: Nietzsche on Truth and Interpretation
Here is a still-closer look at Nietzsche's inconsistent ideas about truth and interpretation. These include his assessment of science at various stages of his work, and his pragmatic "perspectivism," which rejects the idea that there is a privileged, objective, absolute, or "God's eye view" of reality.
30 min
12: "Become Who You Are"—Freedom, Fate, and Free Will
Now we turn to Nietzsche's politics, including his harsh views on socialism and democracy, his subtle views on freedom and free will, his celebration of fate, and his notorious views on the "great man." Accordingly, we discuss Nietzsche's mixed view of Darwin's theory of evolution, how Hegel both anticipated and countered some of Nietzsche's main concerns, and how Nietzsche and Kierkegaard reveal themselves to be kindred spirits in their reaction to Hegel.
30 min
13: Nietzsche as Moral Psychologist—Love, Resentment, and Pity
What were Nietzsche's ideas about the connection between personality, morality, and philosophy? What insights does he offer into the motivations underlying compassion? Is Nietzsche explaining rather than justifying (or attacking) morality?
31 min
14: Nietzsche on Love
Was Nietzsche misanthropic and misogynistic? How do his ideas on love and friendship, which he saw as intimately related, compare to those of his predecessors, especially Plato and Aristotle? Does Nietzsche, properly understood, actually anticipate many of the theses of contemporary feminism?
30 min
15: Nietzsche and Women
Professor Kathleen Higgins examines the claim that Nietzsche was a misogynist. She parses some of Nietzsche's most famous (or notorious) remarks about women, and suggests that they are not the blatantly sexist utterances they are often thought to be.
30 min
16: Nietzsche’s "Top Ten"
Professors Solomon and Higgins catalog those thinkers whom Nietzsche most admired, and those whom he attacked.
31 min
17: Nietzsche on History and Evolution
Nietzsche believed that any understanding of human affairs is necessarily grounded in a particular time and culture. What was his view of history and its uses and abuses? How did he interpret Hegel and Darwin? What hopes for human evolution did he harbor? What is the source and shape of his concern with what is conducive to and what is destructive of life?
30 min
18: What Is Nihilism? The Problem of Asceticism
Is Nietzsche himself a nihilist, or is his entire philosophy in fact an attack on nihilism? Why did he denounce as "decadent" such things as truth, religious belief, egalitarianism, reason, otherworldliness, and, particularly, asceticism?
29 min
19: The Ranking of Values—Morality and Modernity
Why did Nietzsche refuse to think of values as being either objective or subjective? Why did he hold that values are earthly and culture—and species—specific? Why did he argue that, in the final analysis, there are only healthy and unhealthy values, and that modern values are unhealthy?
31 min
20: Nietzsche "Immoralism"—Virtue, Self, and Selfishness
Is Nietzsche's notorious "immoralism" actually an embrace of Homeric ethics? How is it that in his ethical system, personal virtue and character count far more than rational rules and principles, and selfishness and morality are not mutually exclusive?
31 min
21: On the Genealogy of Morals—Master and Slave Morality
We examine the books "Beyond Good and Evil" (1886) and "On the Genealogy of Morals" (1887), wherein Nietzsche details his conception of master versus slave morality. His "Genealogy of Morals" is an attempt to uncover and evaluate the historical roots of these two types of morality. This lecture also examines the idea of "resentment," which provides the basis of Nietzsche's moral psychology.
30 min
22: Resentment, Revenge, and Justice
We continue our discussion of Nietzsche's idea of resentment, adding to it his ideas about revenge and justice. We revisit his condemnation of asceticism, the self-denial that is often a part of extreme religious practice, in light of these new ideas.
30 min
23: The Will to Power and the Übermensch
This lecture considers two of Nietzsche's alleged "doctrines": the "Will to Power" and the over-man. It analyzes the psychological significance of the former, as well as its Schopenhauerian origins. Then it links the two doctrines by analyzing the "Übermensch" as the full manifestation of the will to power.
30 min
24: Eternal Recurrence—Nietzsche Says "Yes!" to Life
We conclude by extending our scrutiny of three of Nietzsche's most famous doctrines: the Will to Power, the Übermensch, and the eternal recurrence of the same. Finally, we evaluate Nietzsche's emphasis on "saying 'yes!' to life."
31 min
