SOCRATES
& NIETZSCHE
CL 376 sec 002, W 04
Prof. J.
Porter
This course
is designed as an introduction to two major personalities in the history of
philosophy and literature. In it we will consider “the Socratic method,”
or the method of inquiry into ethical truth (truth about one’s self and
one’s community) that was made famous by the Socrates of the Platonic
dialogues and then later challenged and modified by Nietzsche. The first part
of the course will be focused on the question of whether Socrates is a literary
figure or a biographical reality, and whose version of Socrates we have today.
We will approach this by looking at ancient Socratic literature: Platonic dialogues,
other Socratic writings (Xenophon’s Memorabilia), “minor
Socratic” literature (chiefly, the “mad” Socrates of the Cynics),
and later explorations of the dialogue-form in a comic, Menippean vein (Lucian).
Then we will turn to Nietzsche, who said that Socrates was his greatest, and
closest, philosophical rival. How Socratic is Nietzsche’s writing? How
does he construct his public persona in antagonism with his own “interlocutors”
(playing both the part of Plato, as writer, and the part of Socrates, as verbal
pugilist)? And how does he construct his philosophical persona in relation to
the Socrates of the tradition (which includes Diderot, Hamann, and Kierkegaard)
and in his theories of ethical self-fashioning (how to live one’s life).
Students will be introduced to a rich body of primary writing as well as related
literature in the modern theory of self-fashioning and ethical discourse, from
Plato to Xenophon, Aristophanes, Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, Diderot, Hamann,
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Hadot, Derrida, Foucault, Vlastos, and Nehamas.
(Books available thru Shaman Drum Book
Shop; articles at University
Digital Course Reserves.)
Requirements: two
short papers (6-8 pp.), the second to be presented in preliminary form to the
class (class size permitting), and one short Socratic-style dialogue. Please
send inquiries/questions to the instructor at jport@umich.edu.
Current Syllabus (1/1/04)
Important Dates
Imagines Philosophorum
