Nietzsche

The common understanding of the philosopher, Nietzsche, is that he is a “philosophical warrior” and a “Nay-sayer” based on his attack on Christian morality as a “slave morality” in On the Genealogy of Morality. What this understanding of Nietzsche overlooks, however, is that On the Genealogy of Morality is a “polemic” (the subtitle) and that because it is a “polemic” it does not reveal to its readers what lies “beyond good and evil” that will take the place of Christian morality for “the philosophers of the future.” In this course, we will encounter a different Nietzsche, one who is an “affirmer of life” and a “Yea-sayer,” by following the thread and weaving together what Nietzsche is saying about the “practice” of “truthfulness” (Wahrhaftigkeit), “genuine honesty” (Redlichkeit), and “intellectual conscience” (das intellektuelle Gewissen) in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra