Friedrich Nietzsche – Introduction
Let’s begin slowly. Here’s the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Nietzsche:
Your discussion task: You might have heard about Nietzsche before, and some of you will be familiar with his work. What surprises you most about his life?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Nietzsche’s thought
These two videos give quick, animated introductions to some key ideas of Nietzsche.
(Notice how both emphasize the moustache? People love Nietzsche’s moustache.)
Your discussion task: Can you sum up in a short paragraph the main point of Nietzsche’s thought?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
God is dead
“God is dead” is one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s most famous statements. But it means much more than what it seems to mean on the surface.
Read the statement where it first appeared, in a parable called “The Madman” from his 1882 book The Gay Science (“gay” here means joyous, not homosexual):
The madman. – Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? – Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us – for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.” It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo [= eternal rest for God]. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”
Now, to help you understand what might be meant by this parable, listen to the philosopher Simon Critchley unpack it:
Your discussion task: Do you agree with Nietzsche? Will the death of God lead us to re-evaluate our moral standards? Or do we need a guiding principal like religion?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Nietzsche and Wagner
Richard Wagner was a huge cultural figure in mid-19th-century Europe. His operas were so original and powerful that they took much of the continent by storm, and continue to resonate today. In the German-speaking world, where there was a desire for the many different states and principalities to create a unified German nation, Wagner was seen as an example of the genius inherent in German culture.
Wagner was also an egomaniac of the first order (if I may be so blunt). He let Nietzsche into his inner circle and expected from him complete devotion. But eventually Nietzsche became critical of Wagner and his work.
Read this review about a book on the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche:
Your discussion task: What do you make of the relationship between Nietzsche and Wagner? What role does Nietzsche’s thought play in the dispute between them?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Nietzsche and Hollywood
You’re sure getting a lot of YouTube videos in this module!
This one, though, is really entertaining. It shows how Nietzsche comes up a lot in popular culture, namely films, and that the resulting interpretations of Nietzsche are often quite wrong.
It’s important for us to recognize that even with this module, we’re only dipping our toe into the ocean of Nietzsche’s thought, so it would be difficult to understand everything that he wrote and thought with such a tiny amount of exposure to him. At the same time, however, it also reminds us that when we just take snippets of a person’s writing, we run the risk of quoting out of context, thereby missing the deeper points that the writing is trying to make.
Your discussion task: Discuss one of the misinterpretations in the video. What do you find interesting or funny about it?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Nietzsche’s relevance today
This last content item looks at Nietzsche’s relevance for current political issues such as Brexit (the British plan to leave the European Union) and the rise of Donald Trump. It is an interview with Hugo Drochon who has written a book about Nietzsche’s politics:
What Nietzsche’s philosophy can tell us about why Brexit and Trump won
Your discussion task: How does Nietzsche help us understand current political and social issues?
REMINDER: if someone has already posted to the forum, and your comment relates to what they’ve said, it’s better to respond to that comment than to start a new thread.
Specific Instructions for this Review: Nietzsche
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about Nietzsche, it’s that it’s very hard to explain him and his work. It can be overwhelming and daunting to say the least.
One problem is that when we write about philosophy and other important topics, we feel that our writing must be very formal as well, and that makes the task of trying to make sense of these topics even harder.
So let’s try to explain Nietzsche and his work, but in a more informal manner. Write a letter to your parents or a good friend explaining Nietzsche. Tell them what you’ve learnt in class (not everything, just the bigger, more important takeaways), and what your classmates think of him. Feel free to make use of the content items in the module and the postings of your classmates to help build your answer.
600-750 words
General Instructions for the Module Reviews
Please keep the following in mind:
- your answer should be uploaded as a Word document. If you don’t have Word, please save your answer as a .docx file in the word processor of your choice.
- your answer should be double-spaced.
- no title page, but there should be a title, your name should appear at the top, and there should be page numbers.
- answers should be within the specified word range.
- good essays have grammatically-correct sentences, coherent paragraphs, no spelling mistakes, and a clear argument or point.
Please note: the question may ask you to make use of the discussions that occurred in the module. There are two modes for viewing the discussion forums, GRID VIEW and READING VIEW. (You can change which you view by clicking on the settings – the gear icon – in the upper right-hand corner of your screen when you’re in the Discussions area of the course.) Play around with the two views to find the setting that works best for you. For example, when I’m reading your discussions during the week and commenting on some of them, I use the READING VIEW, but if I have to read and grade a lot of postings I use the GRID VIEW.