Philosophy for Teens: Nietzsche!

“So … Nietzsche, what’s he all about?”

That’s the question, and what your young learner will be able to answer after taking this one-time class.  

Even if your learner is curious to know just a little, or eager to begin studying “real” college-level philosophy, this class is for them.  I will provide stories about Nietzsche’s life and works, explain the key philosophical problems of the modern age, and discuss different academic interpretations of Nietzsche’s most famous quotes.  There is something here for every student, no matter if this is their very first class in philosophy, or if they are already reading the great philosophers to get ready for college.  This will be a fun one-time class to continue their journey of discovery.  No prior knowledge in philosophy is required.  

Class enrollments are kept low so I can adapt my teaching to the learning level of each student.

Technical Overview 
Friedrich Nietzsche is the most influential but least understood Philosopher of the modern age.  This class seeks to provide students a better understanding of him and his philosophy, his aims and hopes, and his continuing influence in the world today.  His commentary and critiques spanned the fields of aesthetics, history, politics, science, and ethics; his legacy can be seen in academic domains of art history, political science, cultural studies, personhood and gender studies, and religious studies. 
 
The class will be presented as follows: 

Biography and Bibliography 
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) died young.  The full expression and development of his thought was cut short.  Though a prolific writer, his works cannot be considered complete—at least measured against what he could have written if he had lived as long and productively as Kant and Schopenhauer.  What is worse, a particularly important work, The Will to Power, was never completed.  Another complication is the inherent difficulty of discerning the intent of Nietzsche’s thought because of his particular stylistic approach, as well as the divergent opinions in subsequent scholarship concerning the same.  Kaufmann (1989) in his introduction Genealogy of Morals remarks that, “Nietzsche had an almost pathological weakness for one particular kind of ambiguity … he loved words and phrases that mean one thing out of context and almost the opposite in the context he gives them” (p.6).  Nietzsche’s chronic health issues would also influence his work, being reflected in developments between his early, middle-period, and late publications.  Nietzsche is possibly the most difficult modern philosopher to try to come to proper understanding of precisely because of these reasons.  This class seeks to give a student an appreciation for all these factors when considering Nietzsche and his legacy.

The Questions of Modern Philosophy 
To understand Nietzsche, it is necessary to appreciate the central questions plaguing modern philosophy, the foremost of which is creating a philosophy without metaphysics.  Academic philosophers wanted a philosophy fully within the realm of critical inquiry, with no basis in theology or anything outside critical investigation.  But this raised two key problems.  The first was the sense of one’s self at the heart of consciousness.  Ancient and medieval philosophies had postulated the metaphysical “soul” as the source of consciousness, a theological claim.  Also problematic was describing the empirical world as having an existence apart from our perception of it (the “thing-in-itself” problem).  Beginning with Kant and continuing to the present day, philosophers have struggled to describe self-consciousness and the empirical world without metaphysics or theology.  Nietzsche’s views on these problems will be presented together with those of Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger.  

The Famous Quotes of Nietzsche 
With an understanding of the two key philosophical problems, I will present Nietzsche’s most famous quotes and what current academic opinion is about their meaning and applications, including:

“I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason—as the ludicrous [wahnwitzige] animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unfortunate [unglückselige] animal” (GS §224).

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.  And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss [Abgrund] also gazes into you” (BGE, §146).

“I teach you the overman. The human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures so far created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great flood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans?” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1st Part §3)

“I say to you: one must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.  I say to you: you still have chaos in you” (Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1st Part §5)

The Parable of the Madman from The Joyous Science (that is the “God is dead” speech), when compared to: “I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.—The very word ‘Christianity’ is a misunderstanding—at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. […] the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian.” (Der Antichrist §39).  

Class Presentation
This will be a lecture with slides and a handout for students to keep, with ample opportunity for student questions – just like in university.