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COURSES FALL 2007

Histart 290

GRADUATE SEMINAR: Ethics and Aesthetics in Nietzsche (4 UNITS) Thursdays 12:00-3:00 Location 425 Doe, CCN 05685 T.J. Clark & Judith Butler

This seminar will examine Nietzsche's account of decaying systems of morality and his thoughts about possible futures. Key texts will be on the Genealogy of Morals and The Will to Power. In addition we shall explore Nietzsche's changing conception of the aesthetic dimension in human life - not just Nietzsche's evolving views on art, but his notion of the aesthetic as a specific and pervasive form of human practice and self-understanging problematically entwined with ethics and the life of consciousness. We will make some reference to The Birth of Tragedy (and Nietzsche's grounds for repudiating that early work), and consider what role Nietzsche reserved for art and aesthetics when prevailing norms of truth seemd no longer credible. We will think about Nietzsche's own work and what possibilities it opened up for artworks of the early 20th century. Did Nietzsche leave to the at of the earlier 20th century the question of what form art might take in an era when the test of Truth was no longer available? Did the task of art become to avoid, in such circumstances, either a glib acceptance of its "merely aesthetic" mission of its spurious self-elevation to religion or philosophy? The case of Picasso will be relevant here, and will be considered (selectively!) with Nietzsche's ideas in mind.

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