Nietzsche Colloquium 2022: “Human, All Too Human – A Book for Free Minds”

Thursday, 29 September to Sunday, 2 October 2022, all day, Hotel Waldhaus Sils

The 2022 Colloquium will focus on one of Nietzsche’s works the title of which has long since become a familiar adage. Nietzsche published his first book of aphorisms in 1878. He dedicated these “musings” to “the memory of Voltaire”, positioning himself as “an Enlightenment philosopher” as well as sealing his break with Richard Wagner. The following year, he published “Assorted Opinions and Maxims” and in 1880, “The Wanderer and His Shadow”, written 1879 in St. Moritz. In 1886, he put the three books together in two volumes with new prefaces under the programmatic 1878 title “Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”.

In nearly 1400 aphorisms, Nietzsche devised a broad panorama of his new “enlightened” thinking that was intended to set the modern sciences against traditional philosophy, religion and morality. The Colloquium will examine these issues in lectures, discussions and reading groups.

And, what did Nietzsche himself say? “We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal”. (KSA 2, 443)

The Colloquium is held in German. It is intended both for experts and an interested general public. The events can be attended individually.

Prices: Colloquium ticket CHF 180 (students CHF 50) / individual events CHF 20 (students CHF 10) / concert CHF 30 (students CHF 20).

Nietzsche Colloquium 2019: THE DOMINANT SUPER-ANIMAL – Nietzsche’s Constructions of Masculinity

Thursday, September 26 to Sunday, September 29, 2019, all day, Hotel Waldhaus Sils

Nietzsche shook up gender stereotypes. Long before the feminist controversy as to whether sex or gender contributed to masculine or feminine sexual identity, he explored the question of how biological factors on the one hand and cultural and social norms on the other affect the self-image of people who are constantly confronted with the conflicting needs of body and mind. As a physiologist, Nietzsche postulated that “at our base, really ‘deep down’ […] there is something unteachable, some granite of spiritual fate” (JGB; KSA 5, 170), the weight of which consistently grounds self-identity. As a philosopher and a psychologist, he was interested in interaction with the ego essence, which stubbornly resists all of the instructions issued ‘from above’. Intellectual claims of validity in the form of moral and social norms are unable to impress gender as they hit ‘granite’ with their demands.

A different coordination between “down” and “above” is therefore necessary. Nietzsche posited a typically ideal construction of masculinity for man “who by his nature is  m a s t e r” (ibid., 293), which he sharply delineates against models of female self-determination. His malicious attacks on “woman as such” are legendary and have been interpreted as misogynous. This has often obscured the fact that he also mocked and ridiculed the role-specific pretensions of men.

Programme