GERM 181 - Style of Thinking/Thinking of Style: Nietzsche and his Followers

Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)

(Same as GNCS 181) Friedrich Nietzsche once boasted that he could “say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book—what everyone else does not say in a whole book.” Yet though he wrote more than twelve books between 1872 and 1889 (the year he suffered a psychotic break and permanent dementia), his works initially attracted few readers. Desperate to attract an audience for his ideas, he developed an unusually provocative writing style and gave his books incendiary titles like “Beyond Good and Evil” or “The Antichrist.” This course explores the development of his thought in its relation to his writing style before exploring how both were taken up or resisted by subsequent writers and thinkers, including Thomas Mann, early German feminists, Michel Foucault, and others. Jeffrey Schneider.

Readings and discussions are in English.

Second six-week course.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS