Winter 2022 Undergraduate Reading Group: “Progress is Dead: Nietzsche’s Indictment of Modern Life in The Genealogy of Morals”
David Lyons, University of Chicago
“We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers: and with good reason.” The modern world tells us—and we tell ourselves—that we are enlightened and free, but it isn’t true. Our claims to knowledge are just another moral prejudice; our ostensible freedom is disguised slavery. So contends Friedrich Nietzsche in his On the Genealogy of Morality, where he punctures the self-satisfaction of socialists, democrats, reformers, the bourgeoisie, philosophers, scientists, and anyone else who claims to have it all figured out. This three-week reading group will discuss the three treatises of the Genealogy and debate the following claims: February 10 Is Democracy Slavery? (First Treatise, “ ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good...
