Nietzsche and His Progeny: Heidegger, Foucault, and Beyond
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NIETZSCHE AND HIS PROGENY: HEIDEGGER, FOUCAULT, AND BEYOND Josef Chytry Stanford Continuing Studies Fall 2014 Preliminary Syllabus Week 1: Introduction to Nietzsche and Nineteenth-Century European Intellectual History Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra Locating Friedrich Nietzsche in the cultural and ideological currents of the nineteenth century. Nietzsche’s career and the special place of Thus spoke Zarathustra in his thought. Week 2: Nietzsche and Zarathustra Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra Discussion of the purposes behind Nietzsche’s writing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Tracing the narrative line of the three components of will to power, superman, and the willing of eternal recurrence in his thought. Week 3: Nietzsche’s Genealogy Nietzsche: Toward a Genealogy of Morals (selections) Studying Nietzsche’s efforts at formulating a counter-genealogy of morals and a revaluation of European values. Week 4: Philosophizing with a Hammer Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols Meanings behind Nietzsche’s final year of production: rounding up the themes of a Dionysian tragic philosophy and a counter-history of noble values against slave values. Week 5: Martin Heidegger and The Question of Being Heidegger: An Introduction to Metaphysics (selections) Seeing Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of being as a response to World War I and its aftermath. Heidegger’s attempts to articulate a new concept of time and timeliness and the break (Kehre) in his thought into the period of German National Socialism. Week 6: Heidegger’s Nietzsche Heidegger: Nietzsche (selections Reading Heidegger’s turn to Nietzsche 1936-1940 during the Nazi period and his interpretation of the history of western metaphysics in light of Nietzsche’s Will to Power notes. Implications for Heidegger’s evolving interpretation of the modern triumph of technics and technology. Week 7: Foucault’s Critique of Reason Foucault: “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” Placing Michel Foucault in the history of post-war French thought and culture. Foucault’s project of reinterpreting the relationships of reason and un-reason: the importance of Heidegger’s Nietzsche in Foucault’s project. Foucault and the notion of a genealogy of morals. Week 8: The Carceral Archipelago Foucault: Discipline and Punish (selections) Reading Foucault’s efforts at working out a general account of modes of incarceration in modern society and its Nietzschean implications. Concluding reflections on Foucault’s final project of a history of sexuality and an aesthetics of existence. Week 9: Deconstruction Derrida: Positions Understanding the strategies behind Jacques Derrida’s notions of deconstruction. The importance of Nietzsche for Derrida’s moves in perspectivism and language. Week 10: Deleuze’s Intensities Deleuze: What is Philosophy? (selections) Reading Gilles Deleuze’s efforts to extrapolate Nietzsche’s philosophy into an empiricism of pure intensities: desire, multiplicity, and the fold. A brief consideration of Alain Badiou’s idiosyncratic reading of Deleuze as philosopher of the One-All. Grading System for Course: Students may take this course for No Grade Requested (NGR). No work will be required and no credit shall be received. Students may receive CR (credit pass) for passing a final examination. Students may receive Letter grade credit for passing a final examination and submitting a short essay successfully. .