Philosophy Speakers: “The Will to a System: Nietzsche on Philosophy as Psychopathology”

Jessica Berry is an associate professor of philosophy at Georgia State University. She works on late 18th to early 20th century German philosophy (especially issues in epistemology and value theory in the work of Nietzsche) and in ancient Greek philosophy (especially the pre-Socratic and Hellenistic philosophers). She is giving a public talk entitled The Will to a System: Nietzsche on Philosophy as Psychopathology hosted by the Department of Philosophy as part of its Philosophy Speakers Program. About the Talk Most of us eagerly accept, and even promote, a representation of philosophy as a noble and earnest enterprise — a search for truth guided by wholesome ideals of objectivity and the virtues of the examined life. Friedrich Nietzsche rejects this picture. In this paper, Berry examines Nietzsche’s withering remarks about philosophers and develop them as a diagnosis, arguing that for Nietzsche the activity of philosophy is characterized chiefly by what he calls the psychological “will to a system”; that is, the pathological mutation of a common human desire for understanding, which, qua pathological, is the underlying cause of philosophical “symptoms,” from Platonism and Cartesian rationalism, to German idealism and sophisticated contemporary versions of moral realism, and perhaps even to systematic interpretations of Nietzsche’s own work. In many ways, his view anticipates some of the 20th century’s most pointed critiques of philosophy and the recent, burgeoning interest in metaphilosophy, as well as some of the substantive conclusions of early psychoanalysis.
Location:
Social Sciences Tower Room 1253
Speaker:
Jessica Berry, associate professor of philosophy,Georgia State University
More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/philosophy-speakers-will-system-nietzsche-philosophy-psychopathology