Ethics after Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality I
Instructor: Dr. Mehdi Parsa
Prerecorded module
Ver. 1.1 (9 July, 2022)
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The course is divided into three sections:
- Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality: Against Formalism;
- Michel Foucault’s Idea of Parrhesia as the Element of Ethics;
- Gilles Deleuze’s Reading of Stoic ethics in Logic of Sense.
Students who register for this course get:
- 8 video-taped lectures, with a total running time of 225 minutes;
- Lecture notes with key points from the course;
- An indicative reading list;
- A set of optional tasks to check your learning;
- Course diploma (beta version).
- Familiarity with history of philosophy, particularly modern and contemporary philosophy with a focus on continental tradition.
- Students of philosophy, social sciences, humanities, and art;
- Graduate students with solid knowledge of Continental Philosophy.
Seminars
The first section on Nietzsche contains a brief account of Nietzsche’s critique of Kant’s moral theory in particular and any normative moral theory in general. Its main focus is the link between normative morality and moral formalism which is the target of Nietzsche’s critique. As an ethical alternative, Nietzsche proposes the notion of life as the element of ethics.
The second section, including three lectures, I discuss Michel Foucault’s idea of Parrhesia which appears in the second year of his College de France lectures, The Courage of Truth. Here, I demonstrate how Foucault locates the notion of truthfulness at the center of philosophy and in this way gives an ethical nature to philosophy in its entirety.
Lecture 2: Michel Foucault’s Idea of Parrhesia as the Element of Ethics; Part I
(32 mins.)
Lecture 3: Michel Foucault’s Idea of Parrhesia as the Element of Ethics, Part II
(23 mins.)
Lecture 4: Michel Foucault’s Idea of Parrhesia as the Element of Ethics; Part III
(29 mins.)
The third section, again including three lectures, deals with Gilles Deleuze’s reading of the Stoic ethics. Here, I discuss the central role of the notion of event in Deleuze’s ethical thought and how this role entails a powerful link between ethics and ontology.
Lecture 5: Gilles Deleuze’s Reading of Stoic Ethics in Logic of Sense; Part I
(22 mins.)
Lecture 6: Gilles Deleuze’s Reading of Stoic Ethics in Logic of Sense; Part II
(28 mins.)
Lecture 7: Gilles Deleuze’s Reading of Stoic Ethics in Logic of Sense; Part III
(33 mins.)
Additional materials
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