Nietzsche

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Undertake, with adequate supervision, independent work, including identifying and using appropriate resources.
• Take notes from talks and written materials.
• Extract key information from complex texts.
• Work effectively to deadlines.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Interpret, synthesise and criticise complex texts and positions.
• Present and debate ideas in writing, in an open minded and rigorous way.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• the central problems that Nietzsche claims to have diagnosed.
• the concepts and arguments that he draws upon.
• how those concepts and arguments relate to issues in other areas of philosophy, for instance to issues in ethics, metaphysics and epistemology.

The syllabus may vary from year to year. Topics typically include:

• The death of God
• Naturalism and genealogy
• The slave revolt
• Ascetic ideals, ascetic procedures
• Truth and perspectivism: the self-overcoming of the ascetic ideal
• Nihilism, the Last Man and eternal recurrence
• The original noble and the sovereign individual
• A counter-art of the soul

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include

• Lectures.
• In-class discussion.
• Individual consultation with the module co-ordinator during office hours or by appointment.

Learning methods include:

• Attending lectures and taking notes.
• Participating in class discussion.
• Meeting with the module co-ordinator.
• Doing research for and writing textual commentaries.
• Independent study and revision for exams.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals.

Michael Tanner (1994). Nietzsche. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brian Leiter (2002). Nietzsche on Morality. London: Routledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil.

David Owen (2007). Nietzsche’s ‘Genealogy of Morality’. London: Acumen.

Assessment strategy

For MA students taking this module, expectations will be significantly higher than those for year 3 undergraduate students attending the same lectures, and the assessment criteria will accordingly by stricter. In particular students will be required to demonstrate extremely high levels of detailed and accurate exposition, critical engagement, organisation and presentation, with scholarship that draws on appropriate primary literature.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External