Joerg Gleiter, Waseda University

Drawn between the old and the new world Friedrich Nietzsche definitively is one of the most outstanding thinkers of modernity. Highly critical towards the European enlightenment tradition as well as the phenomena of the age of industrial production he can be either called the last classical philosopher terminating metaphysics (Martin Heidegger), or the first modern philosopher beyond metaphysics. In Nietzsche’0s philosophical thinking the arts play a prominent role. “Only as aesthetic phenomenon can the world be justified to all eternity”, he wrote in “ The Birth of Tragedy”. Like his teacher Richard Wagner also Nietzsche many times returned to Venice letting influence himself by her architecture and the arts of the various churches and galleries.
Focusing on Nietzsche’s art theory – music, art and architecture – the seminar attempts to be a first approach to the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche. Apart from the reading of selected texts of Nietzsche the seminar will introduce the students to the art Philosophy of Nietzsche’s most influential teachers: Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner and Jacob Burckhardt. Beyond this the seminar puts a strong emphasis on Nietzsche’s encounter with the art and architecture of the Italian renaissance and baroque as experienced by Nietzsche in Venice and Italy.

Required Reading
A reader containing the reading material required will be made available to the students.

Additional Reading
Arthur C. Danto (1989), Nietzsche ad Philosopher
Walter A. Kaufmann (1975), Nietzsche: Philosopher, Antichrist
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea (or: The work as Will and Representation)
Martin Gregor-Dellin (1983), Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His century, translated by J. Maxwell Brownjohn

Biography
Diploma in Architecture (Technische Universität Berlin); Master of Science (Comumbia University, New York); architect in USA, Italy and Germany; Ph.D. in Architecture Theory and Aesthetics (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar); Fellow in residence at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche (Weimar); he taught at Bauhaus-Univeristät Weimar, Universität Karlsruhe, State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Waseda-Bauhaus School in Saga; since 2003 Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Architecture at the G-International Studio of Waseda University in Tokyo. Author of The Return of the Repressed – Towards a Critical Theory of Ornament in Architectural Modernism (in German, Weimar 2003) and Venice Is Not Fallen From Heaven (in German, Tübingen 1988); Co-editor (with Gerhard Schweppenhäuser) of the book series Philosophische Diskurse (presently 5 volumes, Weimar 1999-2002); Editor of Dis-Oriented: Japan, the West and The Concept of Aestheticentrism (in German, Weimar 1998). Other publications include Exoticism Reversed – On Japanese Theme Parks (2003); Weltausstellungen – Die Erfindung der Architektur als Massenmedium (2002); Vom speechact zum sketchact – Architektur als Technik des Körpers (2002) „...Bis zum Umgekehrten hindurch...“ – Nietzsche unde die Physiologie der Architektur (2001); Japanese Theme parks (2000). Forthcoming Nietzsche: Nihilism, Décadence and the Physiology of Architecture.