Responses to Losurdo’s Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel – by leading North American, European, and Australian experts on Nietzsche (February 2021).
Responses to Dominic Losurdo’s Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel
Transnational Zoom Convocation
24 – 26 February 2021
Convened by Matthew J Sharpe, Philosophy, Deakin University.
The release in translation of Dominic Losurdo’s Nietzsche: The Aristocratic Rebel (2020, Italian 2002) comes as Nietzsche is again being claimed by leaders of the global antiliberal Right as a spiritual inspiration. Losurdo’s massive work, which uses the methodologies of intellectual history, challenges Nietzsche’s widespread reception within philosophical studies as an apolitical, aestheticist, individualistic thinker. It claims we can only coherently read all of Nietzsche, without omissions and elisions, once we acknowledge his metapolitical project of overthrowing the egalitarian ideals and legatees of 1789, and the societies of the “last men” famously tells us they have created, in the name of a “great politics” whose ultimate stake would be overturning the “slave morality” beginning with the Old Testament prophets and arriving, via Christendom, at the Paris Commune and contemporary social democracy and socialism. When we read Nietzsche in the context of currents of liberal and antiliberal reaction against the emerging social movements of the latter half of the 19th century, as well as contemporary debates concerning gender, abolitionism, colonialism, race and the social question, The Aristocratic Rebel contends that the ‘untimely’ label often attached to Nietzsche cannot be sustained.
This global convocation, conducted by Zoom, brings together leading North American, European, and Australian experts on Nietzsche, his philosophy, and the history of ideas to debate, critique, and weigh Losurdo’s book, following its appearance in English for the first time, and the different subjects it raises in ethics, politics, metaphysics, history and the philosophy of history. Papers delivered in 40-minute sessions will be carried out across three sessions. All are welcome, but registration of interest, due to the zoom medium, will be requisite in the week before the convocation.
North American session, Wed 24 Feb 2021, 9-11 am AEST (= 5-7 pm Tue 23 Feb NY time),
Robert Holub (Columbia)
Ronald Beiner (Toronto)
Harrison Fluss (New York)
European session, Thu 25 Feb, 7 pm AEST (= London 8-10 am, Paris/Berlin 9-11 am, Israel 10am-12pm)
Nicholas Martin (Birmingham)
Martin Ruehl (Cambridge)
Ishay Landa (Open U. of Israel)
Australian session, Fri 26 Feb, 7 am EST (8 pm London, = 3 pm NY time)
Vanessa Lemm (Deakin)
Ruth Abbey (Swinburne)
Michael Ure (Monash)
Paper titles TBA. For information, see https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/philosophy/nietzsche-aristocratic-rebel-24-26-february-2021/. Convened by Matthew J Sharpe, Philosophy, Deakin University. For inquiries, contact [email protected].