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Philosophy Speaker Series: Peter Stewart-Kroeker, Divided and Deceived: Nietzsche’s Subversion of Sovereignty
By McMaster Philosophy Department
Free Lecture
Overview
McMaster Philosophy Department Speaker Series Welcomes:
Peter Stewart-Kroeker
(McMaster University)
Divided and Deceived: Nietzsche’s Subversion of Sovereignty
Abstract
I analyze Nietzsche’s conception of sovereign selfhood by comparing his naturalist ideal of psychological enlightenment in Human, All Too Human, with his aestheticist ideal of creative self-fashioning in The Gay Science. These separate strands have tended to divide scholars, who emphasize one ideal or the other, while more recent scholarship emphasizes a synthetic “naturalist-aestheticist” ideal of sovereign selfhood. By contrast, I argue that each strand ironically implicates the other, cutting both ways in what amounts to nothing less than an immanent critique of sovereignty as a cultural value. This juxtaposition illuminates my reading of Nietzsche as a thoroughgoing critic of his bourgeois cultural milieu, subverting dominant value systems rather than purveying salutary ideals.
Speakers
Peter completed his PhD in Philosophy from McMaster University in July 2023. His dissertation, Pessimism and the Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche’s Tragic Philosophy, was supervised by Barry Allen. His recent article, “Nihilism: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Now,” was published in Open Philosophy’s Topical Issue on Nihilism Through a Contemporary Lens.